Home

Eating GM foods is a health risk
The US Food and Drug Administration warned that gene-spliced foods might lead to allergies, toxins, new diseases and nutritional problems

Jeffrey Smith says:

JOHN BRUMBY'S ANNOUNCEMENT  to allow genetically modified (GM) foods to grow in Victoria threatens more than the incomes of Australia’s farmers and food companies. There is irrefutable evidence that GM foods are unsafe to eat.

Working with more than 30 scientists worldwide, I documented 65 health risks of GM foods.There are thousands of toxic or allergic-type reactions in humans, thousands of sick, sterile and dead livestock, and damage to every organ and system studied in laboratory animals.

Government safety assessments, including those of Food Standards Australia New Zealand, do not identify many of the dangers, and a careful analysis reveals that the industry’s superficial studies submitted to FSANZ are designed to avoid finding them. The process of inserting a foreign gene into a plant cell and cloning that cell into a genetically engineered crop produces thousands of mutations throughout the DNA. Natural plant genes may be deleted or permanently turned on or off, and hundreds can change their function. This massive collateral damage is why GM soy has less protein, an unexpected new allergen, and up to seven times higher levels of a known soy allergen. It also may explain why British soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% soon after GM soy was introduced.
But there is another possible cause. Genes inserted into GM soy produce a protein with allergenic properties. Moreover, the only human feeding study on GM foods found that those genes had transferred into the DNA of our gut bacteria and remained functional. This means that long after we stop eating a GM food, its potentially dangerous protein may be produced continuously inside our intestines.

GM corn and cotton have genes inserted that produce a pesticide called Bt. If the gene transferred from corn snacks, for example, it could turn our intestinal flora into living pesticide factories. Farmers on three continents link Bt corn varieties with sterility in pigs and cows, or deaths among cows, horses, water buffalo and chickens. Hundreds of farm workers who pick Bt cotton get allergic reactions.

When sheep grazed on the cotton plants after harvest, one out of four died within a week - about 10,000 sheep died last year. Lab animals fed GM crops had altered sperm cells and embryos, a five-fold increase in infant mortality, smaller brains, and a host of other disturbing problems.
Documents made public by a lawsuit revealed that scientists in the US Food and Drug Administration warned that gene-spliced foods might lead to allergies, toxins, new diseases and nutritional problems.

Although they urged superiors to demand long-term studies, official FDA policy claims they never heard such concerns and that no safety tests are required. The person in charge of that FDA policy was the former attorney for the biotech giant Monsanto - and later the company’s vice-president.

So with all this evidence, why is Australia turning a blind eye to the dangers of genetically engineered foods?

Australia should be sitting down and taking note of the response to GM foods throughout the world.
With the state ban lifting in Victoria and NSW, before we know it there won’t be any food on our tables that is not genetically engineered.

Jeffrey Smith, the author of 'Genetic Roulette' and 'Seeds of Deception', is the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology in Iowa, USA.
www.responsibletechnology.org




Published in The Diggers Club
www.diggers.com.au