- America's fruited plain will yield another
bumper crop this year, but it will be a harvest like no other. The genetic
codes of roughly one-quarter of the corn and one-third of the soybeans
grown this year have been altered to resist herbicides or produce pesticides.
Potato, tomato, and squash crops have also been genetically engineered.
The unknown dangers that might lurk inside these Frankenstein foods are
enough to scare anyone.
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- Mothers for Natural Law: Campaign to
label transgenic crops Campaign for Food Safety Union of Concerned Scientists
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- A rapid transformation of our food supply
is underway with no public consent or warning about unknown impacts on
public health.
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- In coming weeks, these crops will be
refined into vegetable oils, livestock and poultry feed, frozen potato
slices, and high-fructose corn syrup. These ingredients will find their
way into breakfast cereals, tofu, margarine, milk, hamburgers, french fries,
soda, candy, and most other foods sold throughout the United States.
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- A rapid transformation of our food supply
is underway with no public consent or warning about unknown impacts on
public health. But you wouldn,t know it, because the Food and Drug Administration,
the federal agency responsible for safeguarding our food supply, does not
believe genetically engineered foods should be labeled as such.
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- Across the globe, people are becoming
concerned about transgenic crops - the products of genetic engineering.
The American organic foods community blew a gasket when these crops nearly
slipped into their national standards. France, the United Kingdom, Austria,
and Italy have banned the planting genetically altered crops, citing possible
environmental and health risks. India recently banned imports of so-called
'Terminator' seeds, which contain a sterility gene that prevents farmers
from planting seed from the first year's harvest.
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- Multinational corporations that develop
and market these agricultural products claim that much of the hysteria
is unfounded. But consumer advocates and ordinary citizens are picking
up on the concerns of environmentalists and biologists who contend there
is plenty of reason to suspect that there could be serious risks involved
with splicing genes into foods that humans consume.
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- CHANGE IN DIET
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- Transgenic crops represent the most serious
change in our diet since humans first domesticated plants some 10,000 years
ago. In contrast to traditional crop-breeding, in which genes can only
be exchanged between closely related species, these new crops contain genes
from a grab-bag of diverse plant and animal species, including viruses,
fungi, and bacteria.
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- These transgenic foods contain genes
designed to pump out proteins, enzymes, and all types of foreign substances
- including deadly insecticides - that were never before part of the human
diet. Pesticide-producing crops, engineered to churn out plant toxins in
significantly greater volumes than found in nature, may cause many of the
adverse effects on human health and the environment that are associated
with the spraying of pesticides.Should the government label genetically
altered produce?
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- The pesticides produced within the plant
ripple throughout the farm food chain, disabling not only the intended
pest, but other organisms. The pollen of genetically modified crops spreads
from farm to farm, unleashing a persistent genetic pollution that can be
passed from one generation of plants to the next. Crops engineered for
herbicide-resistance pass this trait on to nearby weeds, making them immune
to the very herbicide intended to destroy them, leading farmers to use
larger doses of toxic herbicides.
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- THE RIGHT TO KNOW
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- Two recent public opinion polls conducted
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and by the pharmaceutical and food
corporation Novartis show that a majority of Americans want to see labels
indicating when a food is genetically modified. Yet biotechnology companies
and the FDA continue to argue that labeling genetically engineered foods
will just confuse consumers: by indicating difference, the label implies
the product is unsafe.
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- Under current loophole-laden regulatory
mechanisms, a corporation can obtain approval for sale of a new transgenic
crop simply by presenting the FDA or Environmental Protection Agency, (depending
on whether the crop produces pesticides) with brief summaries of safety
assessments. There are no independent assessments done by the FDA or EPA.
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- Despite the fact that transgenic crops
contain pesticides and food additives (which both require labels in the
United States) clever and fierce industry lobbying has distorted food safety
laws and successfully blocked labeling. Most Americans want genetically
modified food to be labeled. Biotech companies and the FDA argue that
labeling will just confuse consumers.
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- The risks attached to this manipulation
of the food chain are complex and poorly understood " even, admittedly,
by the corporations whose responsibility it is to assess them. Thus, it
would seem wise to maintain impeccable records of production and consumption
of these foods and to acknowledge that we do not understand all of the
risks, and that the adverse health and environmental effects may not be
detected for years.
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- Mandatory labeling would allow consumers
to make informed choices, and give food retailers valuable information
on what the public will and will not buy.
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- Brian Halweil is a research fellow at
Stanford University.
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