this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2026
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United States | News & Politics
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Organic food is also bioengineered... Anything that uses selective breeding falls under the category of bioengineered.
Literally every vegetable and fruit we have has been bioengineered, and basically only don't get the federally required label because of a loop hole since the bioengineered label and genetic engineering labels have weird quirks on the legal side.
But there's no such thing as a non engineered plant grown in the usa, all available seeds are from engineered plants. Unless you can time travel a few hundred years into the past and obtain seeds from before modern techniques started getting used you can't obtain "clean" seeds.
Even just grafting a plant is enough to mutate its DNA and thus making it classed as gmo. And if not for legal exemptions all fruit and veggies would carry the gmo label.
It's only thanks to lobbying that stopped them from doing so. So unless you want to use legal definition instead of actual common sense definitions. Everything's bioengineered or genetically engineered.
While all of that is true and most of what they're saying is nonsense, it is worth acknowledging that bioengineering in the stricter sense of the word they're alluding to has been used to engineer resistance to pesticide that does have carcinogenic effects, so there are meaningful detriments to something being bioengineered beyond what is likely from selective breeding or grafting.
Issues around how to define the term and the way industry lobbying shapes everything ever are valid, but concern around how chemical giants are using the newer processes for modifying the genetics of seeds are also understandable.
In both the cases: the definitional issues, and and also the ways that giant companies are using bioengineering to create proprietary crops with chemical resistance to harmful pesticides they also sell, the underlying issue is capitalism and how money warps anything potentially good. Newer bioengineering processes could greatly improve food supply, and legislation could ensure consumers can make informed choices about what technologies shape the foods they choose to eat. In both cases something that could do good was was warped to serve the financial interests of large corporations