Continued from **Scientists and Consumers Retaliate Worldwide Against GE Foods**

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Conitined from " Scientists and Consumers Retaliate Worldwide Against GE

Foods "

Vitality July 2001

by Helke Ferrie

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Health Impact of Genetically Modified Foods

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Vitality July 2001

by Helke Ferrie

 

Indeed, GE foods have the potential to interfere very seriously with us as

well. For the past decade, Dr. Shiv Chopra has led Canadian Health Protection

Branch scientists in resisting our government’s determined effort to bypass

the mandatory regulatory process on behalf of their corporate biotech friends

(see my Vitality article February 2000 for the full story). Persecuted for

years, public opinion has recognized him for the hero he is, and Health Canada

recently appointed him to the committee which addresses both the medical

antibiotic resistance crisis and the GE food issue. They are related problems:

antibiotics are (ab)used in making GE foods. Dr. Chopra said in a recent

interview: “You can eat a cancer tumour and you will definitely not get

cancer, but

when you eat GE food you are eating an unpredictable process.†The primary

scientific reason that gave Dr. Chopra the ammunition to stop bovine growth

hormone in Canada was the fact that the rate of breast cancer is seven times

higher in the presence of an insulin-like growth factor which BGH treated milk

contains.

 

 

 

Environmental and nutritional medicine expert, Dr. Sherry Rogers, tells us

that cancer in chickens is often caused by infection with the Rous sarcoma

virus. This virus is used by biotech scientists as a carrier to implant human

growth hormone genes into farmed fish to make them grow faster. The

hydrochloric acid in human stomachs does not kill it; nobody knows what the

combined

effect will be of the virus and the hormone (which also can persist). Industry

assures us that nothing bad can possibly happen. Since every second person is

expected to get cancer now, cancers caused through eating such fish would be

impossible to trace and no one could be held liable. But reports of humans

being infected by the chicken leukemia retroviruses, used in pigs to implant

human hormones, already exist.

 

 

 

The clearest evidence for the dangers of ingesting GE foods comes from

experiments done by the Hungarian scientist-couple Ardai Puzstai and Susan

Bardocs

at Edinburgh’s Rowett Institute. They told their story in Ottawa at the

Council of Canadians’ February conference on food safety. The government,

appalled at finding not a single food safety study on GE potatoes about to be

released for consumption, appointed Puzstai in 1995 to provide such a study at

the

cost of 1.6 million pounds sterling. He expected nothing serious, but the

carefully designed animal trials resulted, to his own shock, in clear evidence

of brain damage, immune system dysregulation, pre-cancerous cell changes, and

hormone imbalances especially in young, rapidly growing animals. With the

permission of the Rowett Institute, Puzstai went public.

 

 

 

But when Monsanto (Rowett Institute’s chief money source) learned of this,

Rowett was forced to fire these internationally renowned scientists. The

British parliament ordered Puzstai to testify publicly. The UK turned against

GE

foods as a result of this testimony and Dr. Chopra’s resistance to BGH in

Canada. To this day, Puzstai’s studies are the only genuine safety studies on

GE

foods.

 

 

 

The director of the U.S. National Corn Growers Association, Fred Yoder,

summed up the unfolding biotech debacle best, revealing the hypocrisy of the

entire enterprise (Ontario Farmer, May 8, 2001). He observed that the biotech

industry went about introducing this technology “the wrong way.†They

should

have “created a need first, and then come up with a solution, and then you

are

going to make moneyâ€â€”which is what it was all about in the first place.

 

 

 

Organic Movement Gains Momentum

 

 

In January, the international organic farmers’ conference at Guelph

University provided evidence for the world-wide organic food boom. And on

February 16

in Ottawa, the Council of Canadians brought together activists,

whistleblowers, and scientists from all over the world. Drs. Shiv Chopra and

Margaret

Haydon were given the “Whistleblower Award,†and both told an audience of

more

than a thousand that they intended “to remain a royal pain in the side of the

Canadian government†for years to come.

 

 

 

At Guelph, Bernward Geier, the CEO of the International Federation of

Organic Agriculture Movements (_www.ifoam.org_ (http://www.ifoam.org) ),

provided

data from 105 countries showing how organic farming has grown in a mere three

seasons from US$10 billion to $20 billion in revenues, and is expected to

reach US$100 billion by the end of this decade. The organic movement started in

1924 in Germany with the philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Now, every university in

Germany and Switzerland, and most throughout Europe, have professorships and

full departments, financed by only public research money, devoted to organic

farming research.

 

 

 

Geier stated that McDonalds in Sweden has gone organic, Swiss Air and

Lufthansa are the first airlines to be totally organic; the German government

announced in January that its official agricultural policy is now organic. The

European Union has introduced legislation requiring labelling. Most of Europe,

Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Arabia, China, many African countries and some

South American countries all require labelling already. It was also learned

that Canada is quietly pouring millions into developing technologies to

segregate GM crops from the real thing after having asserted for years that this

could not be done.

 

 

 

Also at the Guelph conference, the courageous agricultural professor, Ann

Clark, who nearly lost her job at Monsanto-money-padded Guelph University for

revealing that our government has not done any safety tests of GMO foods at

all, described how organic farming is the ultimate challenge to globalization.

Bruster Kneen, editor of The Ram’s Horn newsletter, provided details on the

efforts of biotech companies to gain total control of the world’s food

supply—

and how that control is coming unravelled through the world-wide grassroots

movements demanding that “the world is our home, not the playground for

corporate agendas.â€

 

 

Just how effective and organized this public protest is becomes clear when

considering the following statistics: research at Johns Hopkins University

examined the non-profit sector world-wide. The so-called NGOs (non-governmental

organizations like Greenpeace etc.) are growing at four times the rate of the

world’s economy. Annual total world expenditure is at roughly one trillion

dollars; if all the NGOs were one country—the voice of the common people

calculated as a single nation—it would be equivalent to the eighth-largest

economy

in the world. Furthermore, NGOs employ more people than the for-profit

private sector by a margin of six to one (M. Barlow, 2001).

 

 

 

In Ottawa, the Council of Canadians conference also featured Ralph Nader who

provided a magisterial overview of activism. (The entire conference can be

enjoyed on CD ROM; call 1-800-387-7177, ext. 250 for instructions.) The

speakers from Brazil, Argentina, the U.S., and Asia told of their devastating

experiences with corporate power undermining their governments as well as the

actions of courts and individuals turning the tide everywhere. Leanne Simpson,

the director of the Indigenous Environmental Studies program at Trent

University, said that among her people it is the responsibility of everyone to

“think

ahead seven generations,†which is what made her into an anti-GE activist.

Native people in Canada already consume most of the GE foods, as their

traditional food sources have become contaminated with heavy metals.

 

 

 

Why eat organic? Because it is free of carcinogenic pesticides,

endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and foreign genes that our enzyme system cannot

handle

safely; it protects the soil and water quality as well as sustainable farming

practices, and provides humane treatment for animals. Organic food consumption

also encourages local food production and varieties (as opposed to

jet-setter strawberries). The single most important health choice you can ever

make is

to protect your body from the witches’ brew of money-science. Regaining the

Garden of Eden is a task to be accomplished and we have the knowledge to

create it.

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