The first genetically modified food crop was a tomato created by the company Calgene, in California, called the FlavrSavr. The enhanced tomato was made more resistant to rotting. Engineers were able to add an antisense gene which interferes with the production of the enzyme polygalacturonase. After Calgene submitted FlavSavr to the Food and Drug Administration for testing, which determined that it was indeed a tomato and did not pose any health hazards, the company was allowed to release the tomato to consumers in 1994. Consumers were able to buy it at two to five times the price of a standard tomatoes. A year later, Monsanto, a leading multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, bought Calgene (3).

Other examples of genetically modified crops have included cantalopes, herbicide resistant soybeans and sugarbeets, and pest resistant corn and cotton. However, not all of these products are available in grocery stores yet. Nonetheless, the prevalance of GM foods is supermarkets is quite common. Highly processed foods- like vegetable oils or breakfast cereals, most likely contain some percentage of genetically modified ingredients because raw ingredients have been pooled from different sources into one processing into one processing unit (4).

Worldwide cultivation of the four main commercial GM crops in 2002 (million hectares)

Here is a chart displaying the ratio between GM and Non GM crops of the four major products: Soybeans, Cotton, Canola, and Corn. (7)