Interesting article about altered foods!

[Guest guest]

REPORT: MORE RESEARCH NEEDED ON GENE ALTERED FOOD: In the face

of increasingly frenzied public outcry about " Frankenfoods, "

a scientific committee has released a controversial report

calling for a tighter government regulatory process and more

research on corn, soybean and other crops genetically engine-

ered to resist pests and disease. At the same time, the scien-

tists from the National Research Council of the National

Academy of Sciences gave the products a vote of confidence,

saying that they were " not aware of any evidence suggesting

foods on the market today are unsafe to eat as a result of

genetic modification. " The report looked only at plants

modified to fight off bugs and disease, not those designed

to stand up to weed killers, such as Monsanto's popular

herbicide Roundup. Plants altered to boost nutritional

value were also not considered by this committee, although

the conclusions from this report may apply to them as well.

In the report, the panel recommended more research and bet-

ter tests to assess the hazards of the technology, ranging

from its potential to spark dangerous allergic reactions

in humans to the chance it will wipe out monarch butter-

flies or give rise to impossible-to-kill superweeds. The

report, which took the 12-member committee a year to com-

plete, says one priority should be the development of ways

to gauge whether a gene-altered food could cause severe

allergies. So far, there have been no documented reports

of such reactions to commercially available products. The

NAS says, however, that allergies were observed in one

laboratory study in which people sensitive to Brazil nuts

had reactions when given skin-prick tests of extracts

from soybeans carrying a Brazil nut gene, and therefore

warrants investigation.

 

~Emmy~

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