The Center for Food Safety - Protecting the Environment and Human Health: GMOs, Organic food, Chemical food, and much more.

November 29, 2005

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CAMPAIGNS

Genetically Engineered Food

Organic and Beyond

Food Irradiation

Aquaculture

rBGH/Hormones

Mad Cow Disease

Sewage Sludge

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Genetically Engineered Food

The genetic engineering of plants and animals is looming as one of the greatest and most intractable environmental challenges of the 21st Century. Already, this novel technology has invaded our grocery stores and our kitchen pantries by fundamentally altering some of our most important staple food crops.

By being able to take the genetic material from one organism and insert it into the permanent genetic code of another, biotechnologists have engineered numerous novel creations, such as potatoes with bacteria genes, "super" pigs with human growth genes, fish with cattle growth genes, tomatoes with flounder genes, and thousands of other plants, animals and insects. At an alarming rate, these creations are now being patented and released into the environment. Currently, up to 45 percent of U.S. corn is genetically engineered as is 85 percent of soybeans. It has been estimated that 70-75 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves--from soda to soup, crackers to condiments--contain genetically engineered ingredients.

A number of studies over the past decade have revealed that genetically engineered foods can pose serious risks to humans, domesticated animals, wildlife and the environment. Human health effects can include higher risks of toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer. As for environmental impacts, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture could lead to uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening numerous microbial, plant and animal species with extinction, and the potential contamination of non-genetically engineered life forms with novel and possibly hazardous genetic material.

Despite these long-term and wide-ranging risks, Congress has yet to pass a single law intended to manage them responsibly. This despite the fact that our regulatory agencies have failed to adequately address the human health or environmental impacts of genetic engineering. On the federal level, eight agencies attempt to regulate biotechnology using 12 different statutes or laws that were written long before genetically engineered food, animals and insects became a reality. The result has been a regulatory tangle, where any regulation even exists, as existing laws are grossly manipulated to manage threats they were never intended to regulate. Among many bizarre examples of these regulatory anomalies is the current attempt by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate genetically engineered fish as "new animal drugs."

The haphazard and negligent agency regulation of biotechnology has had serious consequences for consumers and the environment. Unsuspecting consumers by the tens of millions are being allowed to purchase and consume unlabeled genetically engineered foods, despite a finding by FDA scientists that these foods could pose serious risks. And new genetically engineered crops are being approved by federal agencies despite admissions that they will contaminate native and conventional plants and pose other significant new environmental threats. In short, there has been a complete abdication of any responsible legislative or regulatory oversight of genetically engineered foods. Clearly, now is a critical time to challenge the government's negligence in managing the human health and environmental threats from biotechnology.

CFS seeks to prevent the approval, commercialization or release of any new genetically engineered crops until they have been thoroughly tested and found safe for human health and the environment. CFS maintains that any foods that already contain genetically engineered ingredients must be clearly labeled.

MORE INFO: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/geneticall7.cfm GMO AND NON-GMO FOOD - The True Food Shopping List: http://www.truefoodnow.org/shoppersguide/guide_printable.html

What is Genetic Engineering?

Genetic Engineering (GE) is a radical new technology that manipulates the genes and DNA - the building blocks of all living things. Unlike traditional breeding, genetic engineering creates new life forms that would never occur in nature, creating new and unpredictable health and environmental risks. To create GE crops, genes from bacteria, viruses, plants, animals and even humans have been inserted into plants like soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton. Multinational chemical companies like Monsanto have taken our staple crops and altered them in order to patent and profit from them by increasing their chemical and seed sales and gaining control over farmers and the food chain itself. The same companies that brought us DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange now expect us to trust them with our food supply.

GE Crops: Giving Pollution a Life of its Own

Because they are living organisms, GE crops can multiply, spread and reproduce indefinitely and at will. Once released, genetically engineered organisms can never be recalled, so their effects are irreversible. GE pollen and seeds can contaminate farms and wilderness, creating uncontrollable "super weeds" and threatening the veriatal purity of our crops. We have already seen this genetic contamination of corn in Mexico, the center of diversity for corn varieties.

The Genetic Experiment with our food

Chances are you have already eaten Genetically Engineered (GE) ingredients. Without warning or notice you have been included in a dangerous experiment on our food.

Thousands of products on the shelves of your local supermarket contain GE ingredients ö foods from crops that have not evolved in any natural environment, from crops that have never before been part of the human diet.

Look at the ingredient list on any of the packaged foods in the supermarket. You are almost certain to find ingredients made from corn, soy, canola or cottonseed oil. These ingredients commonly come from plants that have been genetically altered and are being grown on millions of acres in the United States. For example, soy ingredients like lecithin, soy oil, and soy protein are found in 60- to 70 percent of all processed foods.

Yet you won't find "genetically engineered" on the label of any products containing GE ingredients. The supermarkets don't want you to know that their products are an experiment unique in human history ö an experiment that doctors and scientists around the world are warning may not be safe.

Multiple Risks and Little Testing

Unlike traditional crop or animal breeding, genetic engineering enables scientists to cross genes from bacteria, viruses, and even humans into plants and animals. Never before have scientists been able to break the species barrier. Strawberries and flounder could never breed on their own, but with genetic engineering, fish genes have been spliced into strawberries. There have been no long-term studies on what impact these crops may have on the environment, but scientists are already finding signs of trouble:

Environmental Risks

Biological Pollution: Unlike chemicals that are released into the environment, genetically engineered organisms are living things that will reproduce and spread uncontrollably and at will, with little possibility of containment or clean-up.

Increased Pesticide Use: Most GE crops have been designed to withstand herbicides. Studies show that farmers who grow GE soybeans use 2-5 times more herbicides than farmers who grow natural soy varieties.

Superweeds: Other studies have shown that GE crops can cross-pollinate with related weeds, resulting in "superweeds" that become difficult to control. Canadian canola growers have found weeds in their fields resistant to Round-Up and Liberty herbicides, forcing the growers to use more potent toxic herbicides.

Threatening organic farming: GE insect resistant crops could create ãsuperbugsä who will build up a tolerance to a fundamental pest control tool used by organic farmers; the loss of this tool would be devastating to the safest, most environmentally friendly food production we have.

The Health Risks

The genetic engineering industry claims that no one has been harmed by eating GE foods. But without labeling of GE ingredients, there is no way to track any harm. Doctors and scientists warn that there is not enough evidence to insure that these foods are safe in the human diet. Medical experts, including over 2,000 doctors and health professionals in Germany and the British Medical Association, have questioned the safety of GE foods. In fact, there is ample evidence of risk:

Allergies: By inserting foreign DNA into common foods, without adequate safety testing, the biotech industry is introducing possible new food allergens.

Antibiotic Resistance: The rise of diseases that are resistant to treatment with common antibiotics is already a serious medical concern. Doctors warn that the current use of antibiotic resistance genes in GE crops may add to this risk.

In short, Genetic Engineering is an unpredictable technology that, for the sake of corporate profits, puts our environment and health at risk.

MORE INFO: http://www.truefoodnow.org/home_whatis.html

What is GE Food?

Start with the facts

Learn to tell myths from ealities

Investigate the biotech industry

Regulations - U.S. & the World

U.S. opinions on GE food

Organic and Beyond

An historic struggle is currently raging in this country over the future of food in the 21st century. A grassroots movement for organic, ecological and humane food is now challenging the decades-long dominance of "industrial" corporate-controlled agribusiness. While industrial agriculture still dominates our crop fields and supermarkets, organic agriculture is now expanding faster than any other sector in U.S. food production. It is now a $9 billion industry growing at 20 percent per year. Moreover, thousands of farmers and producers are even pushing beyond organic to establish food production systems that are locally based, humane, and socially just and that encourage biodiversity.

Despite organic agriculture's positive growth, it has reached a critical juncture in its struggle for a more sustainable food future. On October 21, 2002, national organic standards became law. While these standards are worthy of celebration, they are not the final word in the protection and promotion of organic food systems.

Unfortunately, the future of organic food is in the hands of an Administration and a regulatory agency--the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)--that are backed by powerful agribusiness interests, all of which are openly hostile to the organic and beyond alternative. In less than a year from passage, the Bush administration has sought to seriously undermine the national organic standards in a number of significant ways, including creating numerous potential loopholes that would allow placing unacceptable chemical materials on a list of substances approved for organic use; a number of unapproved additives to be used in processing organic foods; eliminating outdoor access requirements for poultry; eliminating the requirement that livestock feed be 100 percent organic; and forcing small-scale, farmer-based organic certifiers out of the program. If the Bush administration's current policies are continued, the integrity of all organic food could be fatally compromised, and this crucial alternative to industrial agriculture would be lost.

CFS seeks to maintain strong organic standards that live up to the quality and integrity that consumers expect from organic foods while evolving the ethic by promoting agriculture that is local, small-scale and family operated, biologically diverse, humane, and socially just. The ultimate goal of the Organic & Beyond campaign is to replace the industrial agriculture model with a new vision of farming with the natural world.

MORE INFO: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/organic_an.cfm

Food Irradiation

Most people naturally understand that food and radiation should never meet. But irradiated food is already on our supermarket shelves and may even be in your refrigerator. Most consumers are probably unaware that a growing portion of their food supply is at risk of exposure to potentially harmful sources of radiation, or that irradiated meat has been approved for the National School Lunch Program.

Food irradiation uses high-energy gamma rays, electron beams, or X-rays to break apart bacteria and insects that can hide in meat, grains, and other foods. Instead of addressing the unsanitary conditions of factory farms that cause many food-borne illnesses, the food industry sees this technology as a quick fix for the negative consequences of industrial livestock production. Moreover, the influence of the food industry on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has led to the legalization of several irradiated food items, including spices, produce, and meats.

Corporate food processors are eager to expand the use of food irradiation on a wide variety of ready-to-eat foods such as deli meats, hot dogs, snacks, packaged salads and baby food, claiming that the process kills organisms that cause spoilage and human disease. In fact, corporations see the use of irradiation as a means to increase their market shares in the international import and export trade and ultimately boost their profits. Despite the findings of well-respected international scientists that show irradiated foods may cause health impacts in people who eat them, key regulatory agencies and some members of Congress support the widespread use of irradiation.

New scientific evidence of the potentially harmful human health impacts of food irradiation has begun to emerge just as the food industry is pressing the government to expand its use. Internationally recognized scientists have presented a growing body of evidence indicating that foods created using this technology may not be safe to eat. Irradiating some types of foods, including ground beef products, can create potentially dangerous chemical byproducts and reduce the foods' nutritional value.

A thorough, independent scientific test commissioned by CFS revealed the presence of the chemicals known as 2-alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACBs) in three types of irradiated ground beef. Earlier research had discovered the cancer-promoting characteristic of 2-ACBs in the colons of rats. The ground beef testing was the first to demonstrate the presence of these risky chemicals in U.S. consumer products. Furthermore, one-third of earlier published studies that examined mutagenicity link the byproducts of irradiation to DNA damage.

Despite these troubling findings, Congress and the USDA are allowing school systems under the National School Lunch Program to serve irradiated food to a potential population of 27 million kids. This effectively makes school children human guinea pigs in the next round of food irradiation tests.

CFS seeks to force government agencies to take a precautionary approach to the untested process of irradiating the nation's food supply. CFS urges FDA to deny the industry's request to irradiate ready-to-eat foods (like packaged lunch meat, hotdogs and TV dinners) and to revoke its earlier approval of irradiated meat and other products. CFS is also working to reverse the government's decision to feed irradiated foods to schoolchildren through the National School Lunch Program.

MORE INFO: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/food_irrad.cfm

Aquaculture

The farming of fish and seafood, often referred to as aquaculture, is the fastest growing sector of the world food production industry--and one of the fastest growing threats to our water environments and native species. More than 100 fresh and marine water species are farm-raised in open-water net pens, land-locked ponds and fully enclosed land-based systems. Rapidly increasing demand for fish and fish products has outpaced our regulatory agencies' ability to manage emerging environmental and human health threats from the burgeoning aquaculture industry. The exponential growth in the industry has created enormous pressure on fresh water and marine environments and native, non-farmed species. In the absence of minimal state and national regulatory standards, this country's 4,000 aquaculture facilities are largely left to their own designs.

The environmental problems arising from the industry are altering the biodiversity of entire ecosystems. Some of the impacts include the introduction of non-native farmed fish species that diminish or replace indigenous fish populations; the propagation of deadly fish diseases; and the over-fishing of vast quantities of non-commercial fish to feed carnivorous farmed fish, such as salmon. Yet fish are not the only organisms affected--federally protected marine mammals and birds are continually harmed by entanglement in net pens and by the concentration of harmful wastes and industrial drugs and chemicals escaping into open waters.

Consumption of aquaculture-bred fish is raising serious human health and food safety concerns as well (almost all the catfish and trout, and close to half the salmon and shrimp sold in the U.S. are raised in aquaculture facilities). Farmed fish often receive large doses of antibiotics to protect them from disease and are exposed to a variety of pesticides used to kill parasites and body fungi--all of which accumulate in the fish's tissues.

CFS is working to activate and educate federal agencies, consumers, chefs, grocers, fish retailers and legislators on the need to protect seafood consumers and our water environments from the dangers posed by existing aquaculture practices.

Visit our genetically engineered fish campaign - http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/geneticall3.cfm

MORE INFO: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/aquacultur.cfm

rBGH / Hormones

With little regard for the cows or the humans that eventually eat them, the beef industry pumps growth hormones into upwards of 80 percent of beef cattle raised in the U.S. each year. These hormones are intended to boost growth rates and increase body mass--think cows on steroids. Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not allow producers to treat chickens or pigs with hormones, the agency does permit the practice for cattle and sheep.

In addition to hormones used to increase milk production (see rBGH), there are six hormones approved for use in beef cattle. Two of these hormones, estradiol and zeranol, are likely to have negative human health effects, including cancer and impacts on child development, when their residues are present in meat. Concerns about these potential health impacts have left many scientists doubtful of the safety of hormone use in meat production.

The negative environmental impact of hormones entering waterways from livestock feedlots also is cause for alarm. Researchers have found that fish can exhibit significant effects from this pollution, e.g., females begin to exhibit male characteristics, and vice versa, in areas of high hormone concentrations.

The European Union has criticized the use of hormones in meat production since the 1980s due to strong concerns about their safety. The EU prohibited the use of hormones for non-therapeutic purposes in 1985, and banned the importation of U.S. beef in 1988 to avoid importing hormone-treated meat. Since then, there has been a heated dispute between the United States and the EU over the ban, and, in a 1999 ruling, the World Trade Organization (WTO) decided in favor of the US. However, in April of that year, the EU's Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures relating to Public Health (SCVPH) released a report indicating that the use of the six growth hormones posed a risk to consumers. The EU ban remains in place.

MORE INFO: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/rbgh_hormo.cfm

Mad Cow Disease

For over 30 years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have been flirting with a mad cow disease epidemic. The public has largely been kept in the dark about regulatory decisions leading toward this potential public health catastrophe and even about the dangers associated with eating contaminated meat and meat products. Recently, some of the glaring deficiencies in the regulation of the U.S. meat production system were revealed when a cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was discovered in Washington.

Mad cow disease, or BSE, belongs to a group of related brain-wasting diseases known as "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies" (TSEs). While TSEs are known to occur spontaneously, they also are spread through cattle herds by feeding infected nervous system tissue to other animals. Beginning in the 1970s, the meat rendering industry began processing dead, dying, disabled, and diseased animals for use in livestock feed--and pet feed--as a way to increase the protein consumption of cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry (cattle can get the disease by eating less than one gram of diseased meat and bone meal fed to them as a protein source). Consequently, these quasi-cannibalistic feeding practices quickly spread the fatal TSE diseases, resulting in hundreds of thousands of diseased animals, some of which ended up in the food supply in Britain and Europe. Over 140 people in Britain have been infected with vCJD from contaminated beef. Humans who eat contaminated beef products are at risk of contracting the human version of mad cow disease known as new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD). The disease slowly eats holes in the brain over a matter of years, turning it sponge-like, and invariably results in death. There is no known cure, treatment, or vaccine for TSE diseases.

Tissue from infected cows' central nervous systems (including brain or spinal cord) is the most infectious part of a cow. Such tissue may be found in hot dogs, taco fillings, bologna and other products containing gelatin, and ground or chopped meat. The process of stripping every last piece of meat from a cow carcass, including connective tissue from bone, can contaminate this meat with infected nervous system tissue. Transmission of vCJD between people has also occurred in over two-dozen cases as a result of transplants or injections of body tissue from infected people.

Despite the adoption of additional safeguards following the discovery of mad cow in the United States, the FDA still allows the risky practice of recycling animal offal into feed: ruminant animals (cattle, sheep, goats, deer) are fed to non-ruminants (pigs and poultry), and these non-ruminants are rendered and fed back to ruminants. Such practices are banned in Britain and Europe. Also, in spite of the wake-up call the FDA and the USDA recently received, only a small percentage of slaughtered or soon-to-be slaughtered cows are tested for BSE in the U.S. By contrast, Britain tests 70 percent of its beef cattle and Japan tests 100 percent.

So far, none of the vCJD cases diagnosed in the U.S. have been linked to domestically-produced beef, but this fact may have little bearing on the reality of the situation: the disease has a long incubation period and few dementia-related deaths in the U.S. are investigated. Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is not yet a reportable disease with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

CFS seeks to make CJD a reportable disease so occurrences can be tracked, and to plug the loopholes that still exist in FDA and USDA regulations, i.e., require testing of all cattle over 20 months of age and ban all animal products from feed.

Sewage Sludge

Every time you flush your toilet or clean a paintbrush in your sink, you may be unwittingly contributing fertilizer used to grow the food in your pantry. Beginning in the early 1990s, millions of tons of potentially-toxic sewage sludge have been applied to millions of acres of America's farmland as food crop fertilizer. Selling sewage sludge to farmers for use on cropland has been a favored government program for disposing of the unwanted byproducts from municipal wastewater treatment plants. But sewage sludge is anything but the benign fertilizer the Environmental Protection Agency says it is.

Sewage sludge includes anything that is flushed, poured, or dumped into our nation's wastewater system--a vast, toxic mix of wastes collected from countless sources, from homes to chemical industries to hospitals. The sludge being spread on our crop fields is a dangerous stew of heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive material. In fact, hundreds of people have fallen ill after being exposed to sewage sludge fertilizer--suffering such symptoms as respiratory distress, headaches, nausea, rashes, reproductive complications, cysts, and tumors.

The compounds added and formed during the sewage treatment process create an unknown and unpredictable product, one that should fall under the category of hazardous waste. Monitoring and regulating the content of these dangerous combinations has fallen terrifyingly short of protecting public health and the environment. Currently, no records are kept on the date or location of these lethal land applications, allowing these toxins to enter the soil of our nation's cropland untraced.

Despite the apparent danger of using sludge in food production, federal regulations are woefully lax. The EPA monitors only nine of the thousands of pathogens commonly found in sludge; the agency rarely performs site inspections of sewage treatment plants; and it almost never inspects the farms that use sludge fertilizer. Regulations governing the use and disposal of sewage sludge have been criticized by both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Research Council, as well as numerous medical professionals, engineers, and activists.

CFS seeks to end the use of sewage sludge as an agricultural fertilizer--first through an immediate moratorium on its application to croplands. CFS strongly suggests that the government launch an independent investigation into all specific claims that sludge has caused harm to people, animals, and the environment.

MORE INFO: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/sewage_slu.cfm