Unaware Aussies already have a taste for GM foods

The clothes you are wearing may also be GM based.

Australia has come a long way in just one generation, when GM's arrival led to claims of scientists were playing God by tinkering with nature.

Much has changed in such a short time - for instance the NSW and South Australian government only lifted their bans on GM crops a few years ago.

Tasmania is still holding out.

Already three GM crops are being grown in Australia - cotton, canola and safflower with more crops in the works like wheat, sugarcane, banana and barley.

At the turn of the century, town hall meetings were called to declare GM virtual witchcraft.

Horror stories were circulated of humans being invisibly changed at a molecular level by ingesting GM products.

Genetically modified or GM crops are plants whose genes are manipulated in order to "produce desirable characteristics", such as resistance to pests and disease.

Australia and the world has embraced GM's magic just as eagerly as it did the microwave.

A steady stream of GM products are officially approved for introduction to Australia each year.

The first GM crop sown commercially in Australia was in 1996 in NSW.

This was an insect resistant variety of cotton developed under licence by CSIRO.

Scientists squabble over the exact number but today between 98 per cent and 99.5pc of Australian cotton is GM. A slam dunk.

You might be surprised to check the T-shirt you just bought which says 100pc made in Australia from Australian materials and not find a GM warning label.

More about that later.

But cotton is a perfect case.

On the local level, a public rally was called in the mid-sized outback town of Katherine back in 2002. It was one of many similar rallies around the nation.

Katherine is home to about 10,000 residents living three hours south of Darwin, which had called for a ban on GM cotton.

Similar protests were being held in many other places as well.

Back then the people of Katherine and elsewhere won the day, GM cotton growing was outlawed in the Northern Territory.

Today, just a few decades later, Katherine is the reason GM cotton has become the NT's boom crop.

GM varieties were trialled at the local government-owned research farm just outside the town in 2019.

A cotton factory, or gin, has been built not far from the town, the first in the Territory.

This wet season, almost 100 growers will harvest around 10,000 hectares of cotton crops, all thanks to GM producing a variety able to survive the tropical nasties thrown at all crops up there.

In Australia, your food is supposed to have a label on it alerting you to the presence of a scientifically altered ingredient before you put it into your mouth.

But our investigation has revealed those labelling rules are rubbery at best.

You are just as likely to find a manufacturer more willing to state their product is GM free, than the reverse.

Cotton seed from the gins is a popular feed supplement for Australian cattle.

GM corn has been shipped from overseas to feed poultry which end up in freezers or the supermarket roasters.

"Animals that are fed with feed produced using gene technology are not themselves genetically modified," Food Standards Australia New Zealand says.

Our official GM watchdogs are FSANZ (Food Standards Australia New Zealand) and the Gene Technology Regulator.

"Food products such as meat, milk or eggs that come from an animal which has been fed GM feed are not regarded as GM foods and are not required to be labelled," consumers are advised.

Only a month ago a new banana was approved for Australian release.

It has been modified to be resistant to Panama Disease which has devastated banana plantations in the north. Scientists say it was more a case of gene editing, than gene manipulation.

.A new potato which doesn't go brown when cut open and is also disease resistant is also on its way.

The new Cavendish banana variety is home-grown, the spud is being imported by US food giant Simplot Plant Sciences International.

The CSIRO has just completed a reference genome for 'R570', a widely cultivated modern sugarcane hybrid which it calls a "landmark advancement for agricultural biotechnology".

"The mapping of its genetic blueprint opens opportunities for new tools to enhance breeding programs around the world for this valuable bioenergy and food crop," CSIRO says.

All sorts of GM food is already on the supermarket shelves and across our farms after undergoing "pre-market safety assessment and approval" by FSANZ.

Last year alone, FSANZ approved food from two GM corn varieties and one GM soybean variety.

Officially, FSANZ says this: "To date, gene technology has not been shown to introduce any new or altered hazards into the food supply, therefore the potential for long term risks associated with GM foods is considered to be no different to that for conventional foods already in the food supply."

It also approved five human-identical milk "oligosaccharide ingredients" derived from a GM microorganism.

Check out the full list of GM food applications on the FSANZ website.

If you are surprised about the large number of successful applications on that list, check their foods more closely for warning labels.

"GM foods with altered characteristics ... must be labelled with the words genetically modified," FSANZ says.

Many times you will need to examine the fine print for the ingredients to find it but that genie is well and truly out of the bottle now.