Since you asked...

This past week a customer bought some barley from one of our outlets and was wondering if the product was Organic and is barley a GMO product. This was the reply.

Progressive Foods currently sells two product lines, an Organic Quick Cooking barley and “Natural” Quick Cooking barley.  These can be identified by the package. The Organic package is 400g in size and has the distinct Canada Certified Organic Label.

The “Natural” product is in a similar package without the Organic symbol but in a 500g bag. All of the barley used in the Progressive Foods Quick Cooking Barley label is grown under Identity Preserve standards and each lot can be traced back to the farm where it was grown. Our standards require the grain to be free of disease and other grain contaminants. Therefore we ask the grower to use Falcon hull-less barley seed and be grown under seed quality standards for field selection and rotation. Barley must also meet food grade criteria.  The grain kernel must be bright in appearance, free of any staining caused by fall weather conditions and other field contaminants. These are also some of the same criteria used in selecting malt barley. 

Barley is not a GMO grain. Barley plant breeding is strongly regulated by the malt and brewing industry and the bulk of barley plant breeding research is directed to this area.  As the final product of malt barley is beer, the industry is very conscious about protecting their image. Most of the barley breeding is still done through the traditional methods of field crossing various lines and making selections for specific traits. Since the barley genome has been sequenced, it is now possible to snip the exact gene and blast it into another barley plant – but this is still quite random in its functionality.

I hope this answers the question and also gives some information on how we have developed our Quick Cooking Barley.

Good Health to You!