Andy wrote:
>
> said...
>
> > Canola oil, a new variety of rapeseed oil
>
> Which in actuality means it is a genetically engineered cooking oil,
> if I'm not mistaken.
If you call "selective breeding" a form of
genetic engineering, then yes it is genetically
engineered. In the same sense that all corn and
cattle and chickens are genetically engineered.
If you restrict the term to organisms that
have their DNA spliced or artificially modified,
then the low-erucic-acid rapeseed from which
canola oil is made is not GMO.
But even that makes no difference to safety.
It's not like irradiation or certain food additives
for which a reasonable case can be made that the
food could be harmful. Genetically modified
organisms are composed of the same biochemicals
as their unmodified counterparts. They don't
contain PCB's or PFOA or any other suspect
chemicals that their parent organisms did not
contain. (However, one incentive to making GMO
plants is to increase their resistence to
agricutural chemicals, so greater amounts of
these chemicals may be used -- those products
may contain higher levels of herbicides, etc.)
Lumping GMO together with synthetic chemicals
or irradiation is a grave injustice. It caters
to scientifically ignorant hypochondriacs.