Unlabeled GMO Potatoes Have Landed on Store Shelves; 6 Steps to Avoid Them

What a bag of the new GMO potatoes looks like as spotted in a New Orleans grocery store. PHOTO: GMO Free USA/Facebook

By Nick Meyer

Who really wants the new genetically modified potato in their shopping cart, anyway?

Certainly not the consumers, who have been flocking away from Monsanto and other companies’ GMOs like the plague, buying organic food at a clip not seen years.

And it’s certainly not the potato farmers, either: the National Potato Council itself even admitted that the new GMO potatoes from the company J.R. Simplot could cause financial losses in the billions for American farmers.

“(There is) concern about the potential for GMO technology to disrupt potato exports valued at more than $1.6 billion,” Potato Council CEO John Keeling admitted in July 2014. He also said there needs to be clear labeling of the GMO potatoes, something that has not happened.

But now, the genetically modified spuds that no one wanted have been found on store shelves, unlabeled and dangerously untested. Here’s what you must know to avoid them.

Six Steps to Avoid the New GMO Potato

Here’s how to identify the potatoes at the grocery store so you can avoid them:

1. Check and see if the bag says “reduced bruising” in the top right corner
2. Make sure the bag doesn’t say “fewer black spots” in the top right corner
3. The bag in this case was labeled “White Russet Potatoes”
4. The GMO potatoes will have a link to the J.R. Simplot website
5. Buy Organic Potatoes whenever possible
6. Consider buying Red Russet or other types of potatoes instead

GMO potatoes were originally halted in Europe after a team of 30 researchers on a budget of 2 million euros in 1998 found serious potential health risks in genetically modified potatoes.

But now a similar potato has landed on United States grocery store shelves, backed by the potato company J.R. Simplot.

As noted in this post from the Facebook page GMO Free USA, customers have been spotting the GMO potatoes on grocery store shelves in New Orleans, LA (see picture above).

Not Good Enough for McDonald’s (But Just Fine For You)

As noted in this article from the website Natural Society, a petition of over 100,000 people to stop the potatoes, which even McDonald’s has rejected, was ignored by the USDA.

The Simplot company says the potatoes help to reduce the amount of acrylamide (a carcinogen) when cooked.

But few know the true effects of the GMO potatoes themselves on human health since there has been no long-term testing.

Already Food & Water Watch has slammed the potatoes, saying, saying the “USDA has inexplicably failed to undertake the legally required rigorous and overarching analysis of the GE crops’ impacts or reasonably foreseeable consequences.”

If that sounds like a cause for concern, you’re not alone. If you’d like to voice your opinion on these unlabeled GMO potatoes you can do so on the Simplot Facebook page by clicking here.

You can also use the tips above to avoid the GMO potatoes for now, and do your best to support organic farmers every day so we can get these unwanted, dangerously untested GMOs out of our food supply.

Nick Meyer is a longtime journalist who’s been published in the Detroit Free Press, Dallas Morning News and several other outlets. He founded AltHealthWORKS, where this article first appeared, in 2012 to showcase extraordinary stories of healing and the power of organic living, stories the mainstream media always seemed to miss. You can sign up for updates (and receive his free ‘Healing Secrets of the Amazon’ eBook) by clicking here.