Food is an everyday passion for many Australians. At the very least, it's an everyday essential. This is why increasing numbers of people are willing to get active to defend it from big companies like Monsanto, which is trying to own 'the rights' to so many of our daily food crops.

A survey released last week by Swinburne University has found, for the sixth year in a row, that consumers don't trust genetically engineered (GE) foods. The main reason? They don't trust the companies and institutions that commercialise and profit from them. 

"They don't see what's in it for them," says Professor of Sociology at Swinburne, Michael Gilding. "Most people see there's something in it for the companies, there might be something in it for the producers, but they don't feel there's anything in it for them."

In terms of 'what's in it' for consumers, independent, peer-reviewed studies continue to show that animals that eat the toxins in GE foods display signs of damage to their bodies ket detoxifying organs, the kidney and liver.

"While corporations claim that people's distrust of GE foods is based on 'ignorance', recent evidence on GE companies faking scientific data shows consumers are very right to mistrust GE companies," says Greenpeace Campaigner Laura Kelly, "and the chronic effects on humans of eating small amounts of GE toxins daily have never been tested."