Is GMO rice injected with animal DNA?

Expert response from Community Manager

Moderator for GMOAnswers.com

Thursday, 02/25/2016 17:38

Rice is not a commercially available GMO here in the US. There are only nine commercially available GMO crops in the U.S.: soybeans, corn (field and sweet), canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, summer squash, papaya, and potatoes. To answer your question further, we reached out to Dr. Ruth MacDonaldwho shared,

“There are no genetically modified varieties of rice currently on the market in the US. Golden rice is a product that was developed to assist developing countries in obtaining a dietary source of vitamin A. The genetic trait in Golden rice is not from an animal source. Even if a gene was derived from an animal source, there are thousands of similar genes between plants and animals and therefore no logical reason to be concerned about an animal gene versus a plant gene. All DNA is made of the same basic chemical compounds – there is no unique composition for animal compared to plant DNA.”

It is a common myth that there is animal DNA in GMOs. We would like to take a minute to address this myth: 
Once upon a time there was an experimental tomato that contained a gene from the winter flounder to increase the tomato's resistance to frost, but that tomato was never commercialized. While that tomato did not survive, its legend continues to live on in online search engines. While there are many fake images online featuring fishy tomatoes, there are, in fact, no GMO tomatoes commercially available today. Further, there are no commercial GM crops on the market today that are genetically modified to contain “animal genes”.

Get more information on this misconception, including links to articles on the subject, here.

Lastly, we thought we’d share additional information on how GMOs are defined. A GMO is a plantdeveloped through a process in which a copy of a desired gene or section of genetic material from one plant or organism is placed in another plant.

We hope this information answers your question. Also, feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comment section below!