Guest guest Posted February 15, 2003 Report Share Posted February 15, 2003 Sat, 15 Feb 2003 05:17:52 -0800 News Update from The Campaign Two exceptional articles News Update From The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods ---- If you would like to comment on this News Update, you can do so at the forum section of our web site at: http://www.thecampaign.org/forums Dear News Update Subscribers, Posted below are two exceptional articles by Karen Charman, an investigative journalist specializing in agriculture, health and the environment. Karen wrote these articles for the Washington, DC-based public interest journal TomPaine.com. The first article is titled " Is Our Food Safe " and was published on February 13, 2003. It discusses the serious problem that genetically engineered pharmaceutical drug crops pose to our food supply. The second article is titled " Genetically Modified Outcome " and was published August 12, 2002. It discusses the pollution of organic and conventional crops by genetically engineered crops. The information Karen discusses in these two articles must be learned by more Americans. Organic agriculture and our entire agriculture system is under attack by a few biotech corporations seeking to " manipulate the entire genetic heritage of civilization's cultivated crops to their advantage. " As Karen asks in the second article, " Do we really want to give any corporation such power over us? " Craig Winters Executive Director The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods The Campaign PO Box 55699 Seattle, WA 98155 Tel: 425-771-4049 Fax: 603-825-5841 E-mail: label 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. " *************************************************************** Is Our Food Safe? Genetically Engineered Crops Are Here -- Whether We Like It Or Not Karen Charman is an investigative journalist specializing in agriculture, health and the environment. Americans are continually told we have the safest food supply in the world. But recent revelations about genetically engineered food crops -- specifically ones that grow pharmaceutical drugs or industrial chemicals in their plant tissue -- raise serious questions about the safety and future of our food. The practice in question is called biopharming. It is being touted as the agricultural biotech industry's next bonanza, the savior that will bring chronically broke commodity grain farmers not only desperately needed profits, but riches. And in today's harsh rural landscape of bankruptcies and broken dreams, promises of generating $2 million an acre -- the figure commonly bandied about in the farm belt -- are enticing indeed. This particular dream, however, is more likely to turn into a nightmare -- for both farmers and the eating public. Biopharming may even be the proverbial straw that breaks the back of American farming. Why? Because crop plants and farm fields are not closed units. As biological entities that exist in an open environment, plants evolved to spread their traits and mix with, or " contaminate, " other crops. It's in their nature. So, if the government allows biotech companies to test and grow experimental drug- and chemical-producing food crops in the open environment, we better get used to the idea of eating those pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals in our food. As Dirk Maier, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering points out in a Purdue University fact sheet: " Whenever new genetic material is introduced into the agricultural crop mix, trace contamination of non-target crops is unavoidable. This fact is common knowledge in the seed industry. " What foods are we actually talking about? At this point, mainly corn, the biopharmers' crop of choice. But biopharm companies are also tinkering with soybeans, canola, rice, barley, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, wheat and sugarcane. Widespread consumer rejection of genetically engineered food in foreign markets has already cost American grain farmers dearly. European officials have said Europe would prohibit American grain exports if transgenic crops producing pharmaceutical or industrial compounds are planted because of health concerns about pharma-tainted food crops. Too Late? U.S. Department of Agriculture records show that more than 300 experimental pharma plots have been grown in the open environment in 36 states since 1991, most in the farm belt in the last three years. In November 2002, the Texas-based biotech company, ProdiGene, was busted in Nebraska for contaminating 500,000 bushels of soybeans with pharmaceutical corn the company had grown in the same field the previous year. The tainted soybeans were confiscated at a grain elevator in Aurora, Neb. -- but not before they were mixed in with 500,000 bushels that had been destined for the food supply. Two months before, ProdiGene was ordered to burn 155 acres of a neighbor's corn crop in Iowa that USDA inspectors said may have had been contaminated by the company's experimental test plots. At the moment, federal regulations don't permit pharma crops to contaminate food crops. However, the biotech industry and some of its promoters would like to change that, because, as Prof. Maier's comment above reveals, it won't be possible to keep them out of our food. Grain handlers and processors -- those who collect, clean and store commodity grain -- learned this lesson in 2000 when StarLink, an unapproved biotech corn, ended up in more than 300 food products. StarLink contamination prompted massive food recalls and a quagmire of lawsuits. Now this segment of the grain industry is demanding that federal regulators set threshholds that allow measurable quantities of pharma crop contamination. Grain industry representatives aren't the only ones pushing to allow these substances into our food. So are some biotech researchers at leading agricultural universities. According to The Washington Post, even the consumer group, Center for Science in the Public Interest, is arguing that trace amounts of pharma crops should be permitted if the substances undergo early safety tests. Food manufacturers have been enthusiastic supporters of biotech food. But they are understandably mortified at the prospect of expensive recalls and the potential to damage consumer confidence in their products. They have come out strongly against using food crops for biopharming. But after speaking with John Cady, president of the National Food Processors Association, my hunch is that if the government set tolerance levels and deemed those levels safe, the food manufacturing sector's concern would diminish. " As long as the rules are the way they are, there has to be zero tolerance, " Cady said. Downplaying Health Risks Federal agencies are now grappling with the question of how to cope with pharma crops -- largely outside the public's gaze. Instead of raising the alarm, some media reports are downplaying the risks. Both The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times recently reported that in most cases, the bioengineered industrial or pharmaceutical proteins would not be harmful, because as Los Angeles Times reporter Stephanie Simon put it, they would " dissolve harmlessly in the gut. " Michael Hansen, a scientist with Consumer's Union, says that blanket assumption can't be made. Many of these compounds may break down in the gut, but to know for sure, each one would have to be tested for digestibility in a form it is likely to be ingested. " We don't know if those tests are being required, because this is all confidential, " Hansen said. " Right now we're talking in a data vaccuum. " As with all biotech food crops, safety testing of bioengineered crops that produce industrial compounds is currently voluntary. If the crop produces a drug, it must undergo safety tests. But the testing procedures typically used are inadequate. They don't examine either the whole food or even the biopharmaceutical actually produced in the plant. Instead, standard practice is to use a surrogate version of the inserted protein that is produced in bacteria. This method may be cheaper and easier for companies. But plants and bacteria process genes very differently, so testing a bioengineered protein in bacteria can't detect whether the protein creates toxic or allergenic substances in the plant. We are not designed to ingest industrial compounds. Pharmaceuticals -- which often have unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side effects -- are generally prescribed in specific doses for specific illnesses. They don't belong in our food. But if these substances are grown in food crops, they will undoubtedly end up in our kitchens and on our plates -- whether we want them there or not. Published: Feb 13 2003 *************************************************************** 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. " 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. Published: Aug 12 2002 --------- Gettingwell- / Vitamins, Herbs, Aminos, etc. To , e-mail to: Gettingwell- Or, go to our group site: Gettingwell Send Flowers for Valentine's Day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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