It’s the end of another long day. The stalls have been mucked, the horses fed, the barn swept, and the lights turned out. Now you’re finally able to relax on the couch, put your feet up, and watch some TV. Flipping channels, you land on CNN, where the news anchor is describing in solemn tones an unearthly scenario: Hundreds of protesters, some dressed as life-size cobs of corn, are screaming and waving placards which say "Ban the Frankenfoods!" and "Don’t Mess with Mother Nature!" The demonstration, the newscast tells you, is meant to publicize widespread concerns over genetically modified foods. And it hits you–could some of these genetically altered crops be in your horse’s feed?

The simple answer is yes. Since their introduction on a commercial level in 1995, genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, have become widely incorporated in livestock feeds. It’s estimated that some 80% of the genetically modified corn produced in the United States is used as animal feed, and that worldwide, approximately 70% of GMO soybeans are used for this purpose. But at the consumer level, most of us really don’t know that much about GMO crops, or what their impact might be on the health of our horses. It’s easy to get caught up in the alarmist hue and cry over these products, to denounce them as unnatural and insufficiently tested, to panic over the post-apocalyptic implications of altering plants at the genetic level. But is all this hysteria really warranted? Let’s take a realistic look at what GMOs are (and what they’re not) and see how they might affect your horse’s nutrition.

Changing Nature’s Design

The notion of tinkering with a plant’s genetic makeup sounds like the worst kind of science fiction. Movie imagery of mutants running rampant through towns and villages aside, however, there’s nothing particularly new about altering a plant’s (or an animal’s) genetic code or choosing one set of traits over another. We’ve been doing it by the process of selective breeding since the beginning of agriculture