USDA Approves Genetically Engineered Super Potato

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday approved a genetically engineered potato that is resistant to bruising and cuts down on a possible cancer-causing substance, though some food-safety experts aren’t so excited about the super spud.

The Innate Potato, trademarked by Simplot, contains the DNA of other kinds of potatoes mixed in through a process known as RNA interference technology, The Guardian reports.

“If this is an attempt to give crop biotechnology a more benign face, all it has really done is expose the inadequacies of the US regulation of GE crops,” Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at Center for Food Safety, said in a statement. “We simply don’t know enough about RNA interference technology to determine whether GE crops developed with it are safe for people and the environment.”

Simplot says the new potato minimizes the creation of an amino acid that at high temperatures reacts with certain chemicals to become acrylamide, a substance the International Agency for Research on Cancer has called a “probably human carcinogen.”

The company has reportedly worked on the potato for more than a decade, but activists are already asking one of the company’s biggest customers, McDonald’s, not to buy it.

[The Guardian]