Genetically Engineered Foods Archives

Fouling our nest. Archive in GMF.)

Thanks, Misty.

It is already too late. What will they foist on us next? It ia apparent that they will continue to get away with this stuff until the legislature stops being bought. Since it usually takes 20-30 years for problems to start showing up, what chance will our species have?

Walt

I thought this was interesting...
Misty
http://www.searching-alternatives.com

Genetically Modified Outcome
Drifting Pollen May Settle Debate Over Transgenic Food

Karen Charman is an investigative journalist specializing in
agriculture, health and the environment.

Just as Americans are becoming aware that much of the food on
supermarket shelves is spliced with genes from foreign species,
debate about whether our food should be manipulated in this manner
is on its way to becoming a moot point.

The reason, as crudely put to me by a U.S. Department of Agriculture
staffer more than five years ago, is this: "plants have sex."

Corn wantonly tosses its gene-laden pollen to the wind in search of
nearby mates. Soybeans and canola are somewhat more sexually
bashful -- they depend on insects to spread their pollen. All this
is nature's way of distributing genes and ensuring reproduction. We
humans are powerless to limit such a primal and eternal process.

Humankind has, however, learned to change the genetic makeup of
crops in ways that nature never would. Genetically modified ("GM" or
"transgenic") strains of just four crops already account for nearly a
third of the farm acreage under cultivation in this country. A
multitude of other transgenic varieties not yet commercialized are
also being grown in field trials in the open environment.

The problem is that the natural process of plant sex is taking over,
spreading manipulated genes everywhere, beyond test plots, beyond the
fields of farmers who have chosen to plant them. If we decide for
whatever reason that GM crops are undesirable or discover that
certain, or perhaps all, transgenic foods are dangerous, we will be
stuck with them.

Consumers have a choice, right? If they don't like GM foods, they can
buy food that meets strict organic food standards, which do not
permit genetic engineering.

But Janet Jacobson, a North Dakota organic farmer and president of
the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society, says that after
just six years of commercial production of gene-spliced crops,
organic food's non-GM safe haven is rapidly disappearing.

"Organic producers can no longer produce organic corn. I don't know
any organic farmers that can grow canola, because there's so much GM
canola around," she laments. "There are also organic farmers who
have had soybeans rejected because they were contaminated with
GMOs."

Besides drifting pollen, some of the genetic contamination has
resulted from GM seeds getting mixed into the conventional seed
stocks that farmers use to plant their next year's crops.

Many biotech food opponents have suspected for some time that genetic
pollution is a deliberate strategy of the biotech industry and its
minions in state and federal government.

In January 2001, Don Westfall, a food industry consultant formerly
with Promar International, an American company that advises large
food corporations on industry trends and marketing strategies, told
the Toronto Star exactly that: "The hope of the industry is that
over time the market is so flooded that there's nothing you can do
about it. You just sort of surrender."

Westfall's remarks were made in the context of an interview about
genetic contamination of the food supply in light of the StarLink
debacle. In the fall of 2000, StarLink, a transgenic variety of corn
that was not approved for human consumption, was discovered in Taco
Bell taco shells and eventually hundreds of other foods that contain
corn. More than 300 products were recalled from supermarket shelves,
export markets were lost, and hundreds of farmers got stuck with
their contaminated crop, leading to a quagmire of litigation that
will take years to settle and may well cost a billion dollars before
it's over.

In April 2002, Dale Adolphe, former head of the Canola Council of
Canada and current executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers
Association, told Canadian canola growers at their annual meeting
that despite growing public opposition and new regulations intended
to control GM crops, their increasing acreage may eventually end the
debate.

The Western Producer, a Canadian agricultural paper, quoted Adolphe:
"It's a hell of a thing to say that the way we win is don't give the
consumer a choice, but that might be it."

If these views don't represent industry strategy, they might as well,
considering that new biotech varieties continue their silent march
out into the open environment with, in most cases, virtually no prior
environmental assessment or monitoring once they are released.

Why should we care?

Biotech promoters like to say that opponents and critics rely on raw,
scientifically unsubstantiated emotion to whip the public into a
frenzy of fear. (Actually, some of the most emotional outbursts I've
personally witnessed came from biotech supporters, whether it be
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack railing against the use of the
precautionary principle, or the Hudson Institute's Dennis Avery
thundering to a largely pro-biotech crowd that GM food is on its way
out because the activists -- "organic frenzies" -- have won.)

However, a growing chorus of scientists is starting to question the
wisdom and safety of this technology.

Biotech supporters claim that GM food is no different than food
derived from conventional breeding techniques and that the
technology of genetic engineering simply enables scientists to
improve crops more quickly and with greater precision. Credible
scientists question both claims.

Biotechnologists have no control over where the genes they are
inserting end up in the modified species' genome, leading one
geneticist to dub the technology "genetic randomeering." The
location is important, because where the gene ends up -- actually
it's a package of several genes, because several different genes are
needed to make the technology work -- will determine whether toxic
byproducts or allergens are created, or whether the nutritional
value of the modified food is altered. The placement of foreign
genes can also disrupt the normal functioning of the modified
organism.

David Schubert, a cell biologist at The Salk Institute for Biological
Studies in San Diego, says there is no way to predict these outcomes
in advance. He points to one particularly tragic incident to
illustrate what can go wrong with genetic engineering. In the late
1980s, Showa Denko, a Japanese chemical company, began producing the
amino acid L-tryptophan with genetically engineered bacteria.
Unfortunately the modified bacteria also produced a novel amino acid
that turned out to be highly toxic, killing 37 people, permanently
disabling 1,500 and making more than 5,000 sick.

Now GM plants that produce pharmaceutical and industrial compounds
are spicing up the mix. According to the USDA's Animal Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS), the government agency with chief
responsibility for regulating field trials of bioengineered crops, 30
sites totaling some 100 acres are now testing such crops in the open
environment. But it is impossible to find out where or what is being
tested, because the identity of the compounds is considered
"confidential business information."

Todd Leake, a conventional wheat farmer from the Red River Valley in
North Dakota who opposes GM crops, says corn and soybeans that
produce veterinary vaccines or contain antibiotics have already been
field tested. If they proceed to commercial production, he believes
contamination will be impossible to prevent.

"So your kids will be eating, say, gastroenteritis vaccine with their
cornflakes and cattle antibiotics in their bread," he said. Leake
might have added that also applies to the rest of us.

Transgenic agriculture turns food into intellectual property, giving
profit-driven business corporations the ability to manipulate the
entire genetic heritage of civilization's cultivated crops to their
advantage. Do we really want to give any corporation such power over
us?

That's a question members of a democracy might like to debate while
there is still a chance to influence the outcome of such an
unprecedented experiment. But as long as the secret research trials
continue and biotech acreage expands, our ability to make a choice --
whether it is based on informed debate or not -- diminishes by the
day.

The Campaign
PO Box 55699
Seattle, WA 98155
Tel: 425-771-4049
Fax: 603-825-5841
E-mail: mailto:label@thecampaign.org
Web Site: http://www.thecampaign.org

Mission Statement: "To create a national grassroots consumer campaign
for the purpose of lobbying Congress and the President to pass
legislation that will require the labeling of genetically engineered
foods in the United States."

Re: Fouling our nest. Archive in GMF.)

Re: Fouling our nest. Archive in GMF.)