A highly influential organization of pediatricians is facing blowback over advice it published earlier this year urging parents to avoid foods with ingredients from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are a go-to source for practicing pediatricians and for some parents. But critics say the advice ignores a wide body of evidence supporting GMOs’ safety. They add that AAP is raising unfounded fears that will drive parents to assume they must buy only organic products, which by definition are not genetically engineered—an option that’s financially out of reach for many families.
Usually, “When the AAP says something I believe them,” says Nicole Keller, an Illinois pediatrician and mother of three, married to a fourth-generation farmer who grows both genetically modified and conventional crops. “It floored me that they were getting something so wrong.” Keller and colleagues recently criticized the guidelines in a submitted commentary and on social media. AAP declined an interview request or to answer written questions.
The guidelines, published in Pediatrics in January, were accompanied by a parent newsletter that included “tips for limiting GMOs on your family plate” and referred to “news stories [that] may shrug off the dangers of GMOs.” The Pediatrics paper, whose senior author is Boston College pediatrician and epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, cautioned about potential health harms, especially to infants and children, of residues in food from the weed killer glyphosate, which is widely used on genetically engineered crops.
The AAP guidelines had an impact almost immediately; by March, Mexico was citing them in a trade dispute with the United States, which is challenging Mexico’s ban on imports of genetically modified corn grown in the U.S. But the Pediatrics paper did not mention that regulators in the U.S. and Europe have judged glyphosate at the levels currently found in food to be safe.
Keller and two colleagues submitted a detailed response to Pediatrics, cataloging what they call citation bias and other flaws in the guidelines. After that was rejected in July—one reviewer wrote “the AAP statement is balanced and transparent [and] does not contain hyperbole”—Keller posted it in a blog last month. In it, she pointed to a paper that surveyed more than 500 low-income shoppers: Fifteen percent said they would be less likely to buy any fruits and vegetables at all after being provided with a list of fruits and vegetables believed to have the highest pesticide levels. (That paper was funded by agriculture industry-affiliated donors and cost, like other studies of its kind, about $100,000 to conduct, its senior author says.)
Others who haven’t so far spoken publicly about the guidelines agree they are flawed. “The takeaway from the guidelines is that GMOs are bad and organic is good, and this simply does not reflect the literature,” says Timothy Caulfield, an expert in science communication at the University of Alberta. “These guidelines feel more like fearmongering than good science.”
The AAP report authors focus on glyphosate, sold commercially by Bayer as Roundup, because its use has exploded in recent decades: Ninety percent of the corn and 96% of the soybeans planted in the U.S. this year were genetically modified, much of it to be resistant to destruction by glyphosate, which instead kills all the weeds around the crops. The herbicide is often sprayed on genetically modified canola and sugar beets as well. As a result, glyphosate residues are in foods made with ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and canola oil, among them children’s favorites from hot dogs and chicken nuggets to sweetened cereal and potato chips.
The AAP report notes a 2015 finding from an arm of the World Health Organization that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It also cites one meta-analysis that found an elevated risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in people with high exposure to glyphosate from years of applying it to crops.
But the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found no evidence of adverse health effects in humans from genetically engineered foods or from glyphosate residues in them. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration tests foods for glyphosate residues and has rarely found levels exceeding those determined safe for consumption by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Numerous other agencies worldwide have similar positions.
Responding online to a critical comment on the guidelines that noted EPA’s stance, first author Steven Abrams, a pediatrician and nutrition expert at the University of Texas at Austin, noted that the agency’s most recent analysis was conducted more than 4 years ago and didn’t consider new findings such as an April publication showing possible adverse effects on early measures of cognitive function in babies exposed to glyphosate before birth. The guideline article itself flags a 2021 study suggesting glyphosate may disrupt sex hormones in female infants exposed during pregnancy. But it does not note that in 2020 EPA found no evidence that glyphosate causes so-called endocrine disruption.
Bill Freese, science director at the advocacy group Center for Food Safety, commends the Pediatrics paper, noting that infants and children are more vulnerable to exposures to humanmade chemicals than adults. He added: “AAP linked the GMO and glyphosate issue to processed foods which I think is fairly accurate—and then used that to encourage what we all know is good practice: Eat more whole fruits and vegetables and whole grains rather than highly processed foods.”
The AAP authors “are siding with caution here,” adds Omanjana Goswami, an aqueous geochemist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which lobbies for more U.S. oversight of genetically engineered food. Confronted with conflicting evidence in the literature, “AAP is basically prioritizing human health … and in particular children’s health,” says Goswami, who studies the health impacts of industrial agriculture.
But Nimali Fernando, a pediatrician who runs a nutrition-focused nonprofit called the Dr. Yum Project, says the guidelines are confusing. “It’s not actually very clear that the dose of herbicides we are talking about is harmful to children and families.” Adds Fernando, whose organization works with low-income children: “We just have to be aware that we may be putting more barriers in front of these families by creating worry.”
The worry spans economic lines. Katie Mastaler, an executive at a legal technology startup, is a mother of three in Arlington, Virginia. “Only buying organic, maybe that works for some people … but for our family that’s not realistic,” says Mastaler, who has repeatedly sought out AAP guidance, for instance on COVID-19 vaccination. After reading the group’s newsletter, she says, “If like most parents you’re reading this quickly, you are just taking away these very scary statements without a lot of help” from AAP.
Keller, who sits on the food insecurity committee at her hospital, hears similar reports from low-income parents. One family, she learned, was feeding its underweight 9-month-old only breast milk and no solid food because the family couldn’t afford to buy organic, which they thought they had to do. When it comes to food choices, “It’s incredibly important that [parents] feel comfortable and safe with whatever option they can access,” she says.
