The Food Integrity Collective, launched by the Non-GMO Project in 2024, represents a crucial expansion of the Non-GMO Project's mission, born from a pressing need to amplify our work within a larger conversation about food integrity. As we face an unprecedented surge in GMO development — with nearly 600 companies working on new GMO products, many positioning themselves as solutions to climate change, nutrient deficiency and other global challenges — the landscape of genetic engineering is rapidly expanding beyond traditional GMO crops. These new GMOs are appearing throughout our food system in everything from synthetic flavors and fragrances to non-browning produce and lab-created proteins, often marketed as "non-GMO" despite being products of genetic engineering. While continuing our essential work in non-GMO verification to address these evolving challenges, we recognize that our mission must also evolve to address broader issues.
In addition to enhancing the impact of non-GMO, organic, and regenerative agriculture movements, the Food Integrity Collective provides a unifying framework. This framework contextualizes essential certifications and related efforts within a holistic vision of food integrity and asks us all to consider what more is possible. By shifting our paradigm from separation to interdependence, we're creating a rallying point for the good food movement, fostering strategic alliances among all stakeholders — from eaters to farmers, brands to healthcare providers to retailers.
Our first major initiative under this expanded vision is the Non-UPF Verified program, focusing on minimal processing and additives — a critical yet previously unaddressed aspect of food integrity. The prevalence of ultra-processed foods represents a fundamental challenge to human wellbeing and cognitive function, which in turn affects our collective capacity to make choices that support the thriving of all life. By providing clear standards for identifying and avoiding ultra-processed foods, we're addressing a crucial gap in food certification while supporting the foundational human capacities needed for broader system change.
This collective approach not only enhances our core work in non-GMO verification but also reinforces our commitment by integrating it with a more comprehensive vision for food integrity. Through both the Non-GMO Project Verified and Non-UPF Verified programs, as well as collaborative efforts across other areas of food integrity, we're actively promoting food systems that truly nourish all life while providing the trusted verification consumers rely on. The Food Integrity Collective invites us to reimagine our relationship with food, nature and each other, recognizing that human wellbeing is inseparable from the health of our planet. Together, we can co-create a future where our food choices reflect our understanding of the intricate web connecting all life, supporting both human and ecological thriving.
Find out more at www.foodintegritycollective.org.
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Learn more about Non-UPF Verified at www.nonultraprocessed.org.
On September 12, 2022, President Biden issued Executive Order 14081, Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy. The order aims to significantly aid food security, supply chain resilience and environmental health. However, the Non-GMO Project is gravely concerned about how biotechnology is applied to food. We believe the executive order’s wholesale embrace of biotechnology is a distraction from indigenous, natural and non-GMO methods for growing food — methods that have already proven successful.
The Non-GMO Project agrees with international bodies such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Committee on World Food Security that agroecological food systems offer the best tools to address the challenges in the coming decades. Biotechnology is a costly divergence of funds that takes us away from building a truly regenerative and sustainable food system.
The executive order fundamentally misrepresents the nature of biological systems. It imagines genetic material and cells as a collection of programmable entities, like computers or software. This simplification of complex relationships distorts our relationship with the natural world. Building a food system based on biotechnology preserves our current extractive view of natural resources, continuing to degrade soil health, biodiversity and our ability to nourish ourselves.
With its unqualified support for novel biotechnology, the executive order will encourage the ongoing privatization of the food supply, placing even more of our shared resources into the hands of a few multinational corporations. It ensures continued prosperity for agrichemical and biotechnology companies at the expense of food security, environmental resilience, health and equality.
There are more promising paths to achieve our shared food security and supply chain resilience goals. Global experts agree that holistic systems, including regional agroecological approaches to food production, offer accessible and cost-effective tools to ensure food security, human rights, biodiversity and environmental regeneration.
We are now 30 years into the GMO experiment. We have heard this story before. Biotechnology in the food space continues to overpromise and underdeliver, increasing the need for costly and destructive inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers while failing to address hunger in the most vulnerable populations. Most troubling, perhaps, is that this has diverted billions of dollars – and millions of acres – toward failed systems, and created barriers to promising new ones. We can no longer make decisions that benefit the few. We must work toward a state of mutual prosperity with each other and our environment, boldly embracing production systems that work with nature rather than against it.