Tomatoes

Market Status

There are no genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) tomatoes on the market in Canada. The genetically engineered Purple Tomato™ is not yet legal to sell in Canada and the slow-ripening GM Flavr Savr™ was taken off the market by Monsanto in 1997.

CBAN Report – October 2025: Gene-Edited Fruits and Vegetables: The Threat of New GMOs in Canada

The Purple Tomato™

“We’re exploring it now and will likely be active next year on the Canadian front. What’s really important for us is to show in a market or test in a market, is this something that a lot of consumers really want?” – Nathan Pumplin, CEO, Norfolk Plant Sciences, US, 2023.

Purple Tomato™ is approved in the US and sold in a small number of US grocery stores as the “Empress Limited Edition Tomato” packaged for stores by Red Sun Farms. It is also sold as seeds for home gardeners and small growers in the US on Norfolk Healthy Produce’s website and has been sold as seedlings and fruit at a few farmers’ markets in the US.

The company Norfolk Healthy Produce says the Purple Tomato™ was engineered for “health and nutrition.” It was genetically engineered with two genes from snapdragon flowers, to increase the plant’s anthocyanin production which is also makes the tomato purple. Anthocyanins are a type of flavonoid that has antioxidant properties. Media headlines over the years have claimed this GM tomato can fight cancer because of the health benefits associated with anthocyanins. However, there are already non-GM purple tomato varieties on the market, that have been bred using traditional breeding methods to contain higher levels of anthocyanins, such as the varieties Indigo Cherry Drops, Indigo Rose, Indigo Pear Drops, and Midnight Roma, bred through Oregon State University’s breeding program led by Dr Jim Myers.

Norfolk Healthy Produce enforces patent protection over their GM seeds but tells gardeners that they may save and share the patented seeds as long as they do not sell them: “Growers can save the seeds and enjoy the plants and fruits in your home garden and with your local community.” Saving and sharing the seeds means that GM contamination will occur.

There has already been confusion and controversy over this product when, in 2024, a well-known, non-GM heirloom seed company in the US sourced and advertised a purple tomato variety that may have been the GM tomato or was contaminated by it.

• GM purple tomato company targets non-GMO seed company over alleged patent infringement. GMWatch. March 12, 2024.
• Rotten tomato: Biotech company makes false claim about its GMO purple tomato. Ken Roseboro, The Organic and Non-GMO Report. April 9, 2024.

The Flavr Savr Tomato™

The first GM food approved in Canada (and the US)
 was the “Flavr Savr” tomato from the company
Calgene, which was later bought by Monsanto. It
was genetically modified to soften at a slower rate, so that the tomato could stay ripening on the vine longer, before being picked for transport “resulting 
in more flavour.” (Tomatoes are generally picked
unripe so they can survive transport to grocery
stores and have a longer shelf-life).

The “Flavr Savr” was launched in the US in 1994 and approved in
Canada in 1995, but was taken off the market by Monsanto in 1997 due to financial problems.

Despite the disappearance of the “Flavr Savr,” the industry was still using it as an example to advertise
the consumer benefits of genetic modification three
years later: An information kit circulated in the year 2000 in
Canada, from the industry public relations group called the Council for Biotechnology Information (funded by Monsanto and other biotech
companies) said, “Biotechnology is producing food
that tastes better and stays fresh longer. Our new
type of tomato ripens slowly, keeping it fresh for longer periods of time.”

Discussion of the tomato from Dr Belinda Martineau, the former genetic engineer who developed the Calgene GM tomato in the early 1990s:

• We need the whole truth to regulate GMOs, Belinda Martineau, Biotech Salon, July 15, 2023. In this article, Martineau describes that they had inadvertently inserted bacterial DNA into the Flavr Savr tomatoes but found the error before commercialization.
• Martineau, Belinda. First Fruit: The creation of the Flavr Savr TM tomato and the birth of biotech food. McGraw-Hill, 2001.