Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have been creeping onto American dinner plates for 15 years, and lately we've been consuming a good deal more of them than we might realize.

Over 60% of processed foods on supermarket shelves are estimated to contain genetically modified ingredients, notes the nonprofit Center for Food Safety. In 2010, roughly 86% of corn acreage and 93% of soybean acreage came from genetically engineered seeds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Although far fewer GMO-related shareholder resolutions have been filed in the past few years than there were in the mid-2000s-partly because of the difficulty for past proposals to meet Securities and Exchange Commission threshold voting requirements and the stepped up focus on other issues like climate change-the subject remains a hot button for advocates involved in corporate dialogues.

Sister Susan Mika, who directs the Benedictine Coalition of Responsible Investment and the Socially Responsible Investment Coalition, is one of the many who've been pressing seed and food producers for answers to health, environmental and social concerns for more than a decade. "We will continue to raise the questions on these issues regardless of how long it takes. We just don't give up," says Mika, part of the St. Scholastica Monastery near San Antonio.

Genetic modification (GM), also called genetic engineering (GE), involves inserting genes from one species into another. Seed producers use it to create strains with herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant traits.

"The irony to me is that when we first engaged them, their rationale was to lower the environmental footprint," says Margaret Weber, corporate responsibility director for the Congregation of St. Basil in Detroit and the former lead on shareholder resolutions with Dow Chemical. Instead, studies have found that some GM crops have required greater use of the toxic herbicides produced and sold by these same companies.

The unknown long-term risks of GMOs deeply trouble Weber, Mika and other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) who've led efforts with many companies to adopt better testing, reporting and labeling. They've also addressed GMOs with food retailers and restaurants.

"We're not taking an anti-biotechnology position. We want more information," says Weber, who serves on ICCR's board of directors and is the lead with PepsiCo on the issue of GMOs in the context of food sustainability. "What's the mother lode? What's the impact on the watershed and on the people who put it in their mouths or live next to the field?"

Finding answers isn't easy. The U.S. government, which doesn't recognize engineered food as being different from other foods, doesn't require safety testing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration encourages GMO producers to conduct volunteer safety consultations and then relies on their self-reported findings.

"There's a fair degree of transparency [about 80 FDA response letters are posted on its Web site] but the agency has never made a conclusion," says Michael Hansen, Ph.D., a senior staff scientist with Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. Many other countries, particularly European Union members, have much more stringent laws regarding GMOs.

"The important piece to this is why others are raising questions, what are the basis of their questions, and why do they have so many reservations," says Mika, who notes that scientists are among those calling for more research.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have also been viewed as too lax on GMOs. ICCR expressed concern about the EPA's hasty 2009 approval of SmartStax corn, jointly developed and marketed by Dow AgroSciences and Monsanto. Eight genes were inserted (six to resist bugs, two to tolerate weeds) while previous approvals had a maximum of three genes.

In the past few weeks, the Department of Agriculture has also given farmers the green light to resume planting genetically engineered sugar beets and alfalfa, both of which had been temporarily banned. In August, a federal district court judge revoked approval of GM sugar beets on the grounds that the Department of Agriculture hadn't adequately assessed the environmental consequences before approving them for commercial planting. This herbicide-resistant strain, developed by Monsanto and German firm KWS SAAT AG and first grown in 2007, now accounts for 95% of the U.S. crop. Sugar beets provide about half the sugar consumed in the U.S. The Department of Agriculture was supposed to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) before it could approve the crop again.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready Alfalfa, genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, was banned by district and appeals courts prior to a Supreme Court reversal last year. The Department of Agriculture, which completed an EIS on this alfalfa in December, will now allow farmers to resume growing it without restrictions.

Despite legal challenges, "the basic take-home message with genetic engineering itself is the U.S. is really out of step with the rest of the world," says Hansen, who represents Consumers International, a federation of over 220 consumer organizations in 115 countries, at Codex Alimentarius and other international forums. The U.S. has tried to block adoption of international food labeling laws for nearly two decades, he says. It's put pressure on other countries to accept GMOs, a topic recently exposed by WikiLeaks but no surprise to him and others in the industry.

For Hansen, the big concern with GM is that it disrupts the scientific schema of every gene having a very specific location on a chromosome. "You're shooting into the genome and have no idea where, which can cause all sorts of problems," he says. In contrast, marker-assisted breeding-a conventional process performed by scientists, farmers and indigenous people-analyzes and breeds seeds with the best traits without injecting genes.

GMOs also raise social justice concerns. Since the seed producers own the genetically engineered DNA, farmers are forced to abandon traditional seed-sharing customs common in both developing countries and the United States' small rural communities. Farmers who acquire DNA through spillage or the spread of pollen from neighboring farms have been slapped with patent-related lawsuits. And although GMOs have long been touted as a way to solve the world food supply crisis, many have their doubts.

Steven Heim, director of ESG Research and Shareholder Engagement at Boston Common Asset Management, points out that alternative steps-such as promoting traditional agricultural breeding methods, developing fair trade policy and localizing food production in agrarian communities-have a record of success without potential harm.

Since GMO crops haven't been proved safe, "it's a risk for the environment and investors," says Heim. Boston Common policy since 2003 has been not to invest in GMO seed producers, such as Dow Chemical, Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Bayer, the parent of Bayer CropScience.

Boston Common also won't buy Eli Lilly, which in 2008 purchased all rights to Posilac, Monsanto's genetically engineered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). The U.S. is one of the few countries where rBGH is approved for commercial use, says Heim.

On the food front, Boston Common's portfolios have included Whole Foods Market, the world's largest retailer of natural and organic foods; Unilever, which has worked to produce sustainable sourcing practices for a wide variety of its food and personal care products; French dairy manufacturer Danone; and food producer Organic Valley, which offers debt instruments as a way to support sustainable agriculture, says Heim.

Whole Foods and some food manufacturers have recently begun using the "Non-GMO" seal through the non-profit Non-GMO Project. Labeling of items that contain GMOs is another story. There's been tremendous resistance by companies, says Sister Barbara Aires, coordinator of corporate responsibility for the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station, N.J., and the lead on DuPont.

For the 2011 proxy season, she and other ICCR members have submitted a Genetically Engineered Seed resolution to DuPont. It asks the company's board of directors to review the adequacy of its current post-marketing monitoring systems and of plans for providing alternatives to GE seed if necessary, the possible impact on all DuPont seed product integrity, and the effectiveness of established risk management processes for different environments and agricultural systems. It also cites several recent scientific studies.

For 2010, ICCR filed a resolution asking DuPont's board to review and amend its human rights policy to include respect for and adherence to the seed-saving rights of traditional agricultural communities.

On The Farm
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's recent request for "coexistence and cooperation" between biotech and organic farmers raised much ire from those who dub GMOs as "Frankenfoods." Organic farmer Margie Redmon, president of Honey Locust Valley Farms near Louisville, Ky., is trying to be open-minded but is worried for consumers and family farms.

"I don't blame food companies for buying whatever is on the market for their products unless they mislabel them, such as calling something 'organic' when it isn't [which they are not allowed to do] or calling a GMO product 'all-natural' [which they can do]," says Redmon. What she wants to see is labeling that gives consumers choice.

Outside of medical uses, Redmon doesn't like the use of GMOs. She says they've boosted pesticide use by 25%, and she also suspects a link between the concurrent surge in GMO peanut production and life-threatening allergies in children. "I would like consumers and investors to know that GMOs are NOT hybrids," she says. Bypassing the pollination process creates plants that may not be recognized by digestive systems or have natural predators. The latter can potentially threaten ecosystems if their pollen gets into the wild, she says.

Requiring farmers to buy new patent-protected seed each year is not financially sustainable for most family farms, says Redmon. "[This] is how we have destroyed most of the family farms," she says. "Also, monoculture is killing the very ground we depend on for survival, because of the chemicals used and the lack of a completed cycle of rotation to return to the earth that which we have taken from it," she says. Since plant pollen can drift up to five miles, she worries about the legal consequences if it's found on farms that didn't buy the seed.

Dion Madsen, co-founder and managing director of Physic Ventures, a San Francisco-based firm that provides capital and support to entrepreneurs focused on building science-based, consumer-directed health and sustainable living companies, has a different take on GMOs. "Our mandate is around health and sustainability. ... We don't see GMO as anti- to that thesis," says Madsen, who believes they can help meet global food needs.

Madsen, who grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, sees no reason to be more apprehensive about GMOs than about the traditional cross-breeding techniques farmers have used for thousands of years. He likens gene sequences to Lego bricks and says GE enables them to be worked piece by piece in a very controlled process. "Traditional breeding takes it all apart and puts it all together. To me, that's more scary than the engineered process," he says. He does think companies should tell consumers which products contain GMOs.

Currently, the FDA is considering whether GMO salmon, produced by AquaBounty Technologies, should be sold in the U.S. "If it comes to market, we'd raise questions with retailers," says Constantina Bichta, principal ESG analyst for Boston Common, who engages Costco Wholesale in discussions on sustainable farming and fishing practices.