Synthetic Biology Vanillin- Not Natural Not Likely To Be Labeled-And Coming To An Ice Cream Cone Near You

Synbio Vanillin Fact Sheet

No Synbio Vanilla

A new ingredient straight out of a petri dish is about to enter the global food supply in many of our favorite foods from ice cream to birthday cake. And like many of the products of genetic engineering, it won’t be labeled -- instead it is being marketed as “natural”. But this ingredient is anything but “natural”.

Synthetic biology vanilla flavoring (synbio vanilla) is produced with a new, virtually unregulated experimental genetic technology -- synthetic biology -- an extreme version of genetic engineering. Synbio vanilla was designed to replace natural vanillin flavoring from vanilla beans, and is made in labs using synthetic DNA and reprogrammed, genetically engineered yeast.

Take action to keep extreme genetic engineering out of your ice cream!

This is the first major use of a synbio ingredient in food, and dozens of other flavors and food additives are in the pipeline, so synbio vanilla could set a dangerous precedent for synthetic genetically engineered ingredients to sneak into our food supply and be labeled as “natural.”

Ice cream companies are one of the biggest purchasers of natural vanilla flavoring and we need your help to send a strong message to Haagen Dazs, Dryers, Baskin Robbins, and other major ice cream companies asking them commit to not use synbio vanilla in their ice cream.

Synthetic biology vanillin poses several human health, environmental and economic concerns for consumers, food companies and other stakeholders. Synthetic Biology vanillin could speed rainforest destruction and could harm sustainable farmers and poor communities across the world.

Natural vanilla farmers protect intact rainforests by growing the high valued vanilla orchids which depend on these tropical forests. If the demand for synbio vanilla reaches an industrial scale, it could lead to rainforest destruction in two ways. First, synbio vanilla will masquerade as “natural” and could displace the demand for the natural vanilla market. Without the natural vanilla market adding economic value to the rainforest in these regions, these last standing rainforests will not be pro­tected from competing agricultural markets such as soy, palm oil, and sugar.

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Do you want your child's ice cream to come from a petrie dish? This is greed run amok once again without caring for the repercussions. You can take action to send a strong message to ice cream companies about this danger as well as learning more about it at the link above.

Also see:

"Glowing Plants" gimmick a trojan horse for pushing synthetic biology without regulation?