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Gene-Edited Salad Greens Are Coming to US Stores This Fall

Biotech giant Bayer plans to distribute mustard greens that have been genetically altered to make them less bitter to grocery stores across the country.

In the US, the Department of Agriculture has decided that crops made with gene editing don’t have to go through a lengthy regulatory review, reasoning that they do not contain foreign DNA and could have otherwise been developed through conventional breeding—that is, choosing parent plants with certain characteristics to produce offspring with those traits. While decades of research has concluded that genetically modified crops are safe and just as healthy as their traditionally bred counterparts, public confusion around how GMOs are created and misinformation on their supposed risks still persist. Ultimately, taste and affordability may be more important to consumers than the technology used to produce the greens, says Khara Grieger, assistant professor of environmental health and risk assessment at North Carolina State University.

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