Oct/Nov 2002
A
Statement of Conscience: "Not In Our Name"
The Bill of Rights Foundation
We
Must No Longer Tolerate a Culture of Violence
Depak Chopra
Murder
for Profit
William Rivers Pitt
Opposing
the President's Call for "Relentless War"
David Krieger
"Diplomacy"
in the Age of the American Empire
Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan
The
Middle East: A Human Perspective
Pam Derby
What
Awaits Us in Iraq "Warrior Kings and the Test of True Vision"
David LaChapelle
Free
to Choose: Health Care for All-Oregon: Measure 23 on the Ballot this November
Gerald Cavanaugh
We
Have the Right to Know What's in Our Food
Louis Mincer
Oregon's
Measure 27
Give Oregonians A Choice
Same
News Every Channel, Every Media
Don Monkerud
The
Cult of Greed and the Anesthetization of Democracy
John Darling
Forest
Health & Logging Wealth
Lesley Adams and Joseph E. Vaile
Finding
Balance in the Autumn Season with ayurvedic Practices
Myrica Morningstar
Sacred
Plants
David Crow
The
Movie Mystic
Stephen Simon
The
Thomas Messages
James Twyman
The
Yearly Round
Richard Moeschl
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
We Have the Right to Know What’s in Our Food
By Louis Mincer
Approximately 85% of food sold in supermarkets now contains Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s). Genetic engineering, a monumental transformation in the evolution of plants, has completely altered the intrinsic makeup of the American food basket.This unprecedented change in food production has occurred in a relatively short span of time, with little fanfare, and has been sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration despite the fact that it lacks adequate testing by health agencies to establish its potential long term effects on human health.
No one can predict with any certainty or assurance whether man’s intervention in the mutation of plants, by splicing foreign genetic material and viruses into their biological makeup, will or will not have an adverse effect on consumer’s health. That conundrum will only materialize in an indeterminate period of time.
Not knowing though, therein lies the bone of contention arousing people’s anxiety. The initiative that qualified for the November 5th ballot, designated “Labeling For All Food Commodities Containing GMO Ingredients,” would allow consumers to make an informed purchasing choice. Also to be listed under the GMO indicator would be the type of gene involved to allow consumers who have allergic reactions to avoid a particular product.
Other countries are reluctant to purchase GMO food products from the US, being fearful that this recent technology might have long term detrimental effects on the health of their populations. Instead, they are taking a wait and see attitude, as they believe the American people are being used as guinea pigs to determine the inherent dangers of GMO’s.
There are currently massive amounts of agricultural land being sown with GMO seed in the US. In 2002, 79 Million Acres of GMO Corn was planted. Almost 74% of this year’s soy crop, 54 million acres, will be planted with GMO Seed. The biotech industry, dominated primarily by Monsanto Chemical, is booming thanks in great part to the US federal government’s cooperative assistance. The fact that this alteration procedure is a venture into the unknown fraught with hazards seems to be of little consequence. For instance, biotech soybeans contain a bacterium gene that insulates the seed making it immune to the herbicide Roundup. But if the maturing plant absorbs the Roundup herbicide systematically during its growth cycle does that make the soybean more toxic? Roundup is a patented product of Monsanto Chemical, as are most of the GMO’s. Monsanto’s strategy is that GMO’s seed be structured so that specific pesticides that Monsanto manufactures will be the selective killer of insects and weeds without the seed being damaged or destroyed by intensive pesticide application.
With the majority of consumers concerned about the safety factor once the seed undergoes a biotechnical transformation, the desire to know whether the food product is of GMO origin is a seemingly simple request. But the objective to know is not that easily obtainable. The well-heeled opposition is formidable, mounting a fierce counter-offensive, lying about the exorbitant costs they claim will be involved in labeling. The corporate battle cry carries a pointed threat of “higher food prices for the right to know.” These scare tactics will be saturating the news media in Oregon, funded primarily by the companies which produce GMO seed and herbicides of course.
Dating back to 1999, labeling of GMO’s was a hot issue and was under attack by biotech industries. In spite of polls showing that most people want to know which foods contain GMO’s the biotech industry opposes man-datory labeling because they claim GE food would be stigmatized and labeling would imply a health or safety concern. And the US government agrees, maintaining a no labeling position except when genes from common allergens, such as peanuts, are inserted into a food.
The politics behind this decision illustrates the revolving door between government officials and the industry they are supposed to regulate. The US Food and Drug Administration no labeling policy was written by Michael Taylor, a lawyer who represented Monsanto at the Corporate law firm King and Spalding from 1981 to 1991. In July of 1991, Taylor became a deputy com-missioner for policy at the FDA. After the FDA approved Monsanto’s BGH, the con-troversial hormone that enhances milk production, Taylor moved to the USDA director of food safety. He is now back at Monsanto as head of public policy in Washington.
Concern about Taylor’s and two other FDA scientist’s ties to Monsanto prompted a report by the Government Accounting Office. While the GAO found “conflicting financial interest, there is little doubt that Taylor (and others) had close ties to Monsanto,” says Anthony Pollina, former aide to Representative Bernie Sanders (D-VT) who requested the investigation.
Another camouflaged industry insider is Carol Tucker Foreman, head of Safe Food Coalition and an assistant secretary of agriculture in the Carter Administration who became one of Washington’s most influential food lobbyists. Foreman has defended the fat substitute Olestra and worked to ease the way for FDA approval of BGH. Foreman “calls herself a public interest activist when in fact she has been a corporate lobbyist working for Bristol Myers Squibb, Monsanto and Proctor and Gamble,” says John Stauber, co-editor of PR Watch. This is but a glimmer of interchange and alliance between industry and government that is manifest in both federal and state.
All three watch dogs of public safety appear to be cheerleaders for the GE extravaganza, instead of impartial guardians charged with regulating and advocating stringent policies for this new untested powerful technology. Farmers may sell their product to companies without disclosing whether they are raising GE produce along with traditional crops, precluding consumers from avoiding GE products.
BGH, injected in milk cows, has this seal of secrecy in that dairy producers who use BGH need not divulge that their herd is being injected with a hormone to stimulate greater production. Monsanto, the producer of BGH, laid out a manifesto for farmers that under their contractual obligation they are forbidden to reveal the use of BGH to the public. They also induced the FDA to allow them to sell the milk product without informing the consumer. In fact they even attempted to prevent organic farmers from indicating on their milk cartons that their product was free of the genetically modified BGH hormone!
US law requires that all commercially sold foods list their ingredients without exception. Irradiated foods, zapped with powerful irradiation rads derived from Cobalt 60 or Cesium 137 (spent weapon grade material derived from nuclear plants), which will soon be as widespread as GE products, must be listed on the label as having been subjected to this procedure. Why then are GE foods given such wide latitude and exempted from public exposure? Is it because it will prevent epidemiologists from being able to track the health effects, should they appear in the future, since no one will know who has been exposed to a particular gene that might produce adverse reactions or other even more severe health problems?
On January 29, 2000 delegates from 130 nations signed an agreement in Montreal requiring labels on exported food or seed that includes GMO’s. If foreign countries have the right to know, we should also have the right to know whether our food has been altered.
Throughout the world Monsanto has made forays attempting to establish their GE technology. A strong show of resistance was encountered by the populace in Europe Brazil, Argentina, India, China, and Mexico. Monsanto claims were that GE crops were mandatory to keep pace with the world’s growing populations need for more aggressive food production. The statement though is unquantified, and open to speculation. If indeed that was the premise from their present research program, logic would dictate that their testing would be conducted on soil that were sub standard since the world’s arable soil is marginal. GE crops demand high tech farm equipment, greater chemical treatment, highly arable soil and despite all the additional expense indications are that by using GE seed there is apparently a lower yield per acre, perhaps 5 to 10 percent. Therefore one can conclude that the program has little to do with feeding the world’s hungry. What it does accomplish, and this is a frightening thought, is placing the world’s food supply in the hands of the biotech consortium, a monopoly surpassing all monopolies and attempting to subject the masses of the world to their mandate.
“Two thirds of GE seed,” says Peter Montague, editor of Rachel’s Environmental News, “are designed to increase the sale of pesticides patented by the very same companies who developed the GE form-ulation. Farmers who use Monsanto GE seeds must agree to utilize Roundup (Glyposate), which kills weeds. But allowing the crops being genetically engineered to tolerate heavy applications of Roundup, accommodating a tripling of permissible residue, GMO’s may uncork a genie that will have severe environmental repercussions.” Montague goes on to say that genes taken from bacteria and other life forms may prove highly allergenic. Since Federal regulations require no allergenic testing the public is left without protection or recourse. In some eases, GMO’s change the pesticides themselves, giving them new enhanced toxicity.
“Genetic engineering is not simply a matter of trying to improve upon a few species of plant food. When a gene from one species is placed in a different animal or plant a vector, or something that will carry that gene into the genetic factory of the unrelated organism, is required. Oftentimes a virus is used, since it is merely a piece of genetic material with a protein coat that is so small that it can easily ‘infect’ other genetic material. Some of the viruses used as vectors for genes and inserted into plants to make them virus resistant can be combined with genetic material from another invading virus (like the common cold) forming a brand new more virulent virus.
Cancer in chickens often results from infection with the Rous Sarcoma virus. Biotech scientists are using this chicken cancer virus as a vector to implant the growth hormone gene into farmed fish so they will grow faster. The problem is that once inside the fish, this virus can persist and infect the next host that eats that fish. Scientists who say there is no danger to consumers are not required to prove their claims because the U.S. government does not require any testing or proof of the safety of genetically engineered organisms.
These viruses can also combine with one another to create new plant and animal diseases, and, foreign genetic material from these viruses can be absorbed through our intestines and become incorporated into the cells of our own bodies creating new diseases in us. Genes inserted into plants are put there to make them resistant to certain pests, pesticides, herbicides or antibiotics. But these vectors or gene transporters can also infect the bacteria and other organisms in our intestinal tracts and can even create new antibiotic resistance in them.
Studies conducted by Dr. Arpad Pusztai in the late 1990s in Scotland showed that potatoes, gene-spliced with a substance called lectin from a snowdrop plant, caused major damage to laboratory rats—suppressing their immune systems, damaging vital organs, and producing what appeared to be a severe viral infection in their stomach linings and digestive system. After going public with his test results, Pusztai was fired from his lab and denigrated by the biotech establishment. Despite recommendations by the British Royal Society that Pusztai’s research should be continued, the British government and the biotech industry have refused to release any funding to do so.
An official European Union study has concluded that genes will inevitably escape from genetically modified crops, con-taminating organic farms, creating super-weeds, and driving wild plants to extinction. Pollen from the crops, it concluded, traveled far further than the official ‘isolation distances’ laid down to separate them from ordinary crops. Cross-pollination by GM oilseed rape (canola) has been recorded about two and a half miles away from the crop. Research in Scotland has suggested that bees could carry the pollen at least six miles. The report concludes: ‘Under current farm practices, local contamination between crops is inevitable.’” *
Come November 5th, vote YES on Measure 27 and declare your right to require that all Genetically Engineered Food be labeled.
*From the “Total Wellness,” newsletter, May 2001, by Dr. Sherry Rogers, MD and The Bio-Democracy News, www.organicconsumers.org.
Louis Mincer is a representative of the Area Agency on Aging in Oregon.By Louis Mincer
