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There’s nothing in agriculture these days that produces a heated argument as quickly as genetically modified – or engineered – organisms, commonly known as GMOs.

One of the latest incidents stirring this pot of controversy is the USDA’s recent approval of Dow AgroSciences’ Enlist brand of corn and soybeans.

These are crop varieties that have been genetically engineered to resist applications of the herbicide 2,4-D in combination with glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

Separate approval is needed from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the combined Enlist Duo herbicide that will be applied on these crops, although both ingredients in Enlist Duo are already in wide use separately.

The American Soybean Association called the USDA’s approval welcome news, but the Organic Consumers Association called it proof that today’s industrial agriculture model is a failure.

In a letter to Lancaster Farming, Debbie Murphy of Unionville, Pa., was even more emphatic: “I beg every farmer out there to ignore the experts’ (who did no significant food safety tests) and for the future of your family and all of us, please do not buy GMO seeds – or Roundup – or 2,4-D. Ever, ever again. It is suicidal.”

In an interview last month with Public Radio International, former British anti-GMO activist Mark Lynas commented on the ardor of such sentiments.

“In industrialized countries, there’s this backlash where people feel that their ways of life and food supplies in particular are too artificial, so everyone wants natural’ and organic,’ ” he said. “Genetically modified is seen as unnatural, but there’s really no scientific basis to this – it’s a sort of emotive, emotional position.”

Lynas, who is now a visiting fellow at Cornell University and author of “The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans,” said he once held similar views but changed his mind after taking a close look at the science behind GMOs.

Such heated arguments – both for and against – will continue to be aired for some time as GMO labeling laws are debated in state legislatures and Congress. And in the courts.

For instance, Vermont, the first state in the nation to enact a GMO labeling law, is being sued by the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

The Center for Food Safety, with financial support from the organic ag foundation Ceres Trust and other groups, is seeking to intervene in the case on the side of Vermont’s new law, a move supported by Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell.