Agriculture changed our food. The crops we grow—even heirloom tomatoes—have little if any resemblance to their ancestors. Everything agricultural has been genetically crossbred over many generations, to improve yield, quality and taste. But the relatively recent method of plant breeding, using biotechnology to enhance genetic properties of crops (“GMOs”), has created an astonishing degree of popular fear.

In an era when scientific breakthroughs are delivering widely embraced technological improvements in communications, transportation, learning and medicine, it is agricultural science that stands alone in its condemned stature.

Around the world, such anti-GMO sentiments have managed to stop the production of engineered crops altogether. But in the U.S. production has flourished. The great majority of American field crops are now GMOs. The battle, instead, has turned to labeling foods produced from such crops. After early failures in California, Oregon and Colorado, the GMO labeling drive scored its first success in Vermont. Beginning on July 1 this year, all food sold in Vermont containing GMO ingredients must be labeled.

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