What are Genetically Engineered Foods?

Genes are the blueprints of life. Genetic material found within cells determines the differences between all living organisms - plants, animals, humans and microorganisms. Genetic engineering is the process by which scientists artificially alter this information. It is accomplished by introducing selected genes and artificial genetic constructs into the host DNA. Given the complexity of DNA material, most of which is still unknown to us, this procedure has the potential to cause unexpected problems that could be passed on to future generations.

Genetically engineered (GE) foods are different from traditional breeding techniques that exchange genes between the same species. Genetic engineering combines genes from completely different species. In the case of genetically engineered foods, fish genes have been spliced into tomatoes, human genes into pigs, and insect genes into potatoes.

Genetic engineering is a new, relatively untested technology that can have enormous impacts on the very fabric of life. Given the many unanswered questions about this technology, its widespread application to agriculture and food makes it a risky experiment that is being tested on American consumers without their knowledge or consent.

How Much Testing Has Been Done?

There are a mounting number of scientific studies from around the world that show the real and potential dangers of GE foods. This has led to a growing movement to ban or at least require the labeling of GE foods in Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand and several dozen other nations. US food laws do not require stringent pre-market safety testing or labeling and allow industry to study and police itself almost entirely on the honor system. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that GE foods must be thoroughly tested but leaves it up to industry to do and define the rigor of testing. Industry does not even have to provide actual data from their testing.

What Are the Risks of GE Foods?

Public Health Risks

• Increased Resistance to Antibiotics: Antibiotic resistance genes are often used by scientists as "marker" genes to indicate whether or not cells in a receiving organism, such as plants, have accepted foreign DNA. The trait for antibiotic resistance could be spread from plants to bacteria in the digestive tract of animals or humans. This could result in increased resistance to antibiotics.
• Cancer Risks: European and Canadian scientists found that dairy products from animals treated with a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH), that is injected into cows to increase milk production, contain excessive amounts of a naturally occurring Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1) which may increase the risk of breast, prostate and colon cancer. There is a ban on rBGH in all industrialized countries except the US.
• Toxic Reactions: In 1989, Showa Denko, Japan's third largest chemical company, manufactured L-tryptophan, a common dietary supplement, using genetically engineered bacteria which resulted in the deaths of 37 Americans and left more than 5,000 others ill with a potentially fatal and painful blood disorder. More recently, a UK study reported that GE potatoes were poisonous to mammals, damaging the vital organs and immune systems of lab rats.
• Reduced Nutritional Value: GE foods that are modified to look fresher may have a longer shelf life, resulting in reduced nutritional value. Of more concern is that GE foods may have less nutritional value to begin with. A recent US study reported that GE soybeans have lower concentrations of phytoestrogen compounds, which are believed to protect against heart disease and cancer. A recent Scottish study reported that rats fed GE potatoes suffered damaged organs and stunted growth compared with rats eating normal potatoes.

Environmental Risks

• Increased Pesticide Residues and Damage to Soil and Beneficial Insects: Many GE crops are designed to produce their own pesticides. This higher level of pesticide has, in the case of the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) potato, led to its being classified as a "plant pesticide" regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, instead of it being a food regulated by the FDA. Genetically engineered Bt crops have had surprisingly different effects than the naturally occurring Bt gene found in soil bacterium. In a highly publicized study, Cornell researchers found that pollen from genetically engineered Bt corn was poisonous to Monarch butterflies. Additional studies have shown that GE crops have also negatively impacted other beneficial insects such as bees, ladybugs, and lacewings, as well as soil fertility.
• Genetic Pollution and the Creation of "Superweeds": GE pollen can cross-pollinate with wild fields and neighboring farms of organic and non-GE crops. This will also lead to a new generation of herbicide and pesticide resistant "superweeds" and "superpests" which will necessitate even strong toxic chemicals be used to kill them. Studies already document this cross-pollination, which led the EPA to place restrictions on the percentage of GE corn that can be planted in any field. Unlike chemical pollutants, GE crops are alive and reproduce, mutate and migrate, once released into the environment they cannot be cleaned up.
• Threat to World's Food Supply: The proliferation of GE crops increases the danger of widespread crop failure. GE seeds have an identical genetic structure and it has long been recognized that the weakness of monocultures is their vulnerability to an unpredicted fungus, virus, or pest, which can attack and damage or destroy a crop.
• Food Monopolies: Billions of people around the world still live in agrarian societies continuing thousands of years of traditional farming practices of saving and sharing seeds. The patenting of genes and crops by a few multinational corporations has led to new laws against saving seeds. The development of "life patents" combined with new technologies such as "terminator" seeds - GE crops whose seeds are sterile - can make farmers completely dependent on buying their seeds from a few large companies. Where the cause of hunger is poverty, requiring poor farmers to pay for seed will only worsen the situation.

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