The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) says a new “non-browning” strain of genetically engineered Fuji apple poses no “risk to human health or the environment,” Agri-Pulse reports. It will be the third in Okanagan Specialty Fruits’ “Arctic Apple” line of apples to gain USDA approval. The first two were Granny Smith and Golden Delicious varieties approved in February 2015.
AgriPulse said APHIS relied on its environmental assessment of those earlier varieties to make its determination that the Fuji apple posed no threat. “It said approval of the new variety will not change consumer demand for other apples including conventional or organic varieties. Nor will it ‘result in any changes to current planting, fertilizer application/use, cultivation, or pesticide application use.'”
The non-browning trait “reduces the need for anti-browning agents on cut fruit and minimizes losses caused by harvest and post-harvest damage,” APHIS said. AgriPulse said APHIS received “thousands” of comments on the two earlier non-browning varieties during the public-comment period, and that many of them were negative. The environmental watchdog Food & Water Watch, for instance, cited “a lack of data on the environmental risks associated with weakened plant defenses for apples with PPO suppression, genetic contamination of non-GE and organic apple orchards, economic risks from GE contamination and opposition from apple growers, the health impacts on consumers and the potential market rejection of this GE food.”