Fact Sheet - What is a Bioengineered Food? (pdf)
Bioengineered Foods
- Retail food products that are bioengineered or contain bioengineered ingredients will say so on the label. Only foods that meet AMS’s definition of bioengineered food will carry that disclosure.
- You will see words, a symbol (see Figure 1), scannable links, text message instructions, or in some cases phone numbers or web addresses that convey the information.
Figure 1
- Sometimes the terms “Bioengineering,” “Genetically Modified Organism,” “GMO,” and “Genetic Engineering,” are used interchangeably for marketing purposes, but disclosures under the Standard use the term “Bioengineered.”
- A bioengineered food disclosure is a marketing label, and does not convey any information about the health, safety, or environmental attributes of bioengineered food as compared to non-bioengineered counterparts.
- Food produced by very small food manufacturers, and food served in restaurants, food trucks, trains, airplanes, delicatessens and in similar establishments will not be required to bear bioengineered food labels, even if the product has bioengineered ingredients.
Derived From Bioengineering
- Foods that carry a symbol that states “Derived from Bioengineering,” (see Figure 2) or that otherwise disclose the product contains ingredients “derived from bioengineering” are not bioengineered foods.
Figure 2
- Such labeled foods do not contain detectable modified genetic material. As a result, entities can make these specific voluntary disclosures for these types of products.