Ben & Jerry's Announced That It WIll Stop Using Harmful Ingredient And Be GMO-Free; What Exactly Are GMOs?[VIDEO]

Ben & Jerry's announced last week that it will remove genetically-modified organisms, an ingredient more commonly known as GMOs, from its products. Ben & Jerry's said that it will terminate the ingredient and be completely GMO-free by 2015.

Currently 80 percent of Ben & Jerry's ingredients in the U.S. and Canada are GMO-free. All Ben & Jerry's products made in Europe are already GMO-free.

 "Ben & Jerry's has also committed to sourcing only Non-GMO ingredients for our products.  Our goal is to do so by the end of 2013, but we will still be making this conversion into 2014," a Ben & Jerry's statement read about the harmful ingredient.

Critics of GMOs argue that the modified foods are harmful to the environment and create health problems.

So what exactly are GMOs?

GMOs, or "genetically modified organisms," are plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This experimental technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding.

For consumers, it can be difficult to stay up-to-date on food ingredients that are at-risk of being genetically modified, as the list of at-risk agricultural ingredients is frequently changing.

Agricultural products are segmented into two groups: (1) those that are high-risk of being GMO because they are currently in commercial production, and (2) those that have a monitored risk because suspected or known incidents of contamination have occurred and/or the crops have genetically modified relatives in commercial production with which cross-pollination (and consequently contamination) is possible.