International fruit growers up in arms over Canadian-designed GM apple that cannot brown

In test fields in New York and Washington state stand about 100 trees bearing the Canadian-designed Holy Grail of fruit science: an apple that cannot brown.

“It’s a tremendous trait to have overcome when it comes to putting apples in new markets and new places — and building the consumption of apples,” said Neal Carter, the founder of Okanagan Specialty Fruits, the small biotechnology company that createdthe Arctic Apple, so named for its unspoiled interior.

When hell freezes over, when pigs have wings, when peeled apples stop browning

But as the Arctic Apple wends its way toward final approval in both the United States and Canada, genetic-engineering alarmists and entrenched apple interests alike are increasingly framing the new fruit as a profane creation of perverted science.

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