Directed by Jeremy Seifert

Jeremy Seifert’s advocacy documentary GMO OMG isn’t the first film to express concern over genetically modified crops. Nor, unfortunately, is it even close to being the best. It certainly has its heart in the right place: Seifert is a concerned father worried about the types of food that his kids are ingesting, and he begins to do detective work after he learns about the Haitian farmers who burned the seeds given to them by Monsanto after the 2010 earthquake. Why would these farmers do such a thing, he asks? What he finds aren’t really answers but rather more questions—and increasingly alarming ones.

Like many people, Seifert is frustrated over the fact that it’s so hard to get a clear answer from the massive corporations that rule the world of genetically modified food crops, and this call for accountability is a compelling one. However, he’s tackling a huge subject and seems to lose his way amid the alarming statistics, the uncertain (and contradictory) scientific studies, the stonewalling companies, the impassioned activists, the crusading politicians, etc. You want to admire his can-do spirit, but you also yearn for the more methodical, revealing, and, ultimately, alarming approach of a film like Food, Inc. Still, there’s a lot of value in GMO OMG, and to his credit, Seifert doesn’t focus only on the problem but devotes some time to the solution, profiling the organizations that are hoping to counter the increasing genetic modification of American farming.