The U.S. Beet Sugar Industry’s principal objective is to produce high quality products that meet the standards our customers and consumers demand. Through our commitment to best practices and continuous improvement we are global leaders in sustainable sugar production. To that end, we integrated biotechnology into our farming practices which has allowed us to use less water, fertilizer, pesticides, and fuel, while producing healthier plants on less acres. Before doing so, however, we carefully examined the science and conducted extensive testing to ensure that refined sugar produced from bioengineered sugarbeet plants is identical to refined sugar produced from conventional sugarbeets, cane sugar, and organic sugar from U.S. sugar producers and major foreign suppliers.

The science and testing confirms that all plant genetic material (DNA and protein) is removed early in the sugar refining process. Thus, regardless of whether the plant from which the sugar (sucrose) is derived is biotech or otherwise, the resulting sugar molecule is identical in all cases.

The following summarizes the science and testing that has been conducted demonstrating that refined sugar, whether derived from bioengineered sugarbeets or cane, does not contain genetic material:

U.S. Beet Sugar Summary of the Science | PDF 269 kb