The case against genetically engineered food, By Claire Robinson, Special
to NutriNews.
it is a very long article so i took the time to write the list of the main
paragraphs in the order they come in ,so you can choose the most
interesting topics to you if ou don't have the patience to read it
completely.
the content is worth the effort, lot of interesting stuff.
jean-claude
Genetically engineered food: Who needs it?
But the FDA says GE foods are safe
The lie of substantial equivalence
The rBGH scandal
Americans have been eating GE foods for years, and I can't see a pile of
bodies'
Is GE food inherently more risky than non-GE food?
Breeding ignorance into food
How GE genes spread
Do the benefits of GE justify the risks?
Feeding the world?
Golden rice: Gift or Trojan horse?
Genetically engineered food: Who needs it? The multinational biotechnology
companies, backed by bought-and-owned politicians, would like us to think
we all do. They are spending millions of dollars of private and taxpayers'
money on public relations drives convincing us that we will be worse off
unless we embrace genetically modified food.
But an increasing number of consumers worldwide aren't convinced. We've had
a tough education in the ways of the food industry and its "regulators" in
government in the form of one food contamination horror story after
another. So when they told us GM foods were safe, we replied, "Show us the
evidence."
They could not. According to British food safety expert Dr Richard Lacey --
one of the few scientists who had the foresight to see the United Kingdom's
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) crisis coming -- "There
is insufficient evidence to support a belief that genetically engineered
foods are safe. I am not aware of any study in the peer-reviewed scientific
literature that establishes the safety of even one specific genetically
engineered food, let alone the safety of these foods as a general class."1
Philip Regal, a biologist in the College of Biological Sciences and
professor of ecology, behavior and evolution at the University of
Minnesota, agrees. He says he is not "aware of even one such peer-reviewed,
professionally published study which has detailed scientific criteria for
testing and evaluation and gone on to demonstrate that even one particular
genetically engineered food is reasonably certain to produce no harm when
eaten by a human being."
Regal continues, "Rather, it is my considered judgment that the evidence to
date, in its entirety, indicates there are scientifically justified
concerns about the safety of genetically engineered foods and that some of
them could be quite dangerous. Further, in the absence of reliable
toxicological tests, it is not possible to determine which of these new
foods are dangerous and which are not."2
As of October, 18 years after GE foods were released onto world markets, a
computer-aided search yielded just seven peer-reviewed, published studies
on their health effects.3 Two are by scientists working for Monsanto, the
GE and agrochemical giant. Two are from the laboratory of Professor Arpad
Pusztai, a former research scientist at the Rowett Research Institute in
Scotland until he was fired for going public with his doubts about the
safety of GE potatoes. As Pusztai said recently, "this is a very poor
record for an industry which claims to save man from starvation in the 21st
century."4
Even more worryingly, several of these seven studies, far from showing the
safety of GE foods, raise safety and toxicological questions that remain
unanswered.
Europe's wakeup call: the story of the GE potatoes
Just because industry and government spokesmen constantly parrot the line
that GE foods have been thoroughly tested and proven safe, it doesn't mean
it's true.
Take it from one who knows. Pusztai was an enthusiastic supporter of GE
technology until he carried out an experiment in which GE potatoes were fed
to rats. What he found alarmed him. The rats fed GE potatoes suffered
stomach lesions suggestive of viral infection. They also suffered immune
depression, reduced absorption of nutrients, reduced organ weights and
brain shrinkage. No such problems were found in control groups fed non-GE
potatoes of the same type.
Pusztai went public with his findings on British television, with approval
of the Rowett. Within days, the biotech brigade stormed into action.
Pusztai was fired and gagged, under threat of losing his pension.
Trumped-up charges were brought to try to discredit Pusztai -- a
world-respected biochemist who has authored 300 published studies in
peer-reviewed journals and written or edited eight scientific books -- to
ensure that his findings were never taken seriously.
These included the accusation that Pusztai had fed the rats raw potatoes
that were poisonous -- in fact, different groups of rats were fed raw and
cooked potatoes of GE and non-GE type, and only with the raw GE or cooked
GE potatoes did problems occur. Other critics said the rats' health
problems were caused by a shortage of protein, though all groups including
the non-GE fed rats received the same amount of protein.
Another claim was that the design of the experiment had been faulty. But
Pusztai already had published 40 other nutritional papers with the same
design whose findings had been accepted by industry. In addition, the GE
potato study design had won a massive research grant of 1.6 million pounds
($2.3 million U.S.) of taxpayers' money over 27 rival proposals after peer
review by the experts of the British government's Biotechnology and
Biological Sciences Research Council. It's hard to disagree with Pusztai's
verdict that "the reason the paper was not accepted this time was because
the message was not approved of."
Pusztai says: "Despite all assurances by politicians, no rigorous tests of
GE food have been carried out on animals or humans. Without published
evidence, all assurances that GM food is no danger to public health are of
no scientific value."
A shortened version of Pusztai's results were finally published in the
Lancet5, but only after the editor, Dr Richard Horton, announced he had
received threats from an eminent scientist that he would lose his job if he
went ahead with publication.6
But the FDA says GE foods are safe
We are told the United States has the strictest regulatory system in the
world. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says GE foods are as safe
as their conventionally bred counterparts.
In fact, the FDA consensus on the safety of GE foods isn't all it seems.
Secret FDA documents made public as a result of a lawsuit reveal that the
FDA's own scientists warned that GE foods are different from conventional
foods and pose unique risks. These include the presence of unexpected
allergens, toxins and carcinogens.7
But FDA bureaucrats, under a directive from the White House to foster the
biotech industry, disregarded their own scientists' warnings. The secret
documents show that they approved the first GE food to be submitted to
them, Calgene's Flavr Savr(r) tomato, in spite of its failure to pass
toxicological tests. Lesions were found in the guts of some of the rats fed
the GE tomato -- oddly enough, similar to those found in Pusztai's rats.
The FDA's pathologists said Calgene had not provided any evidence to clear
the Flavr Savr(r) tomato of blame for these lesions and recommended further
studies. No such tests were ever done. The Flavr Savr(r) tomato was the
first
and last GE food to be independently safety tested by the FDA.8
|
