April/May 2004

Peace Candidate Dennis Kucinich Vows to Stay in Race
Interview by Amy Goodman

Winds of Change in Spain
William Rivers Pitt

"House of Bush, House of Saud"
Interview with Craig Unger by Amy Goodman

"Seeds of Deception"
Jeffrey Smith

Genetically Engineered DNA Found in Traditional Seeds

New Findings Show Health Hazards of Genetically Modified Crops

An Evolutionary Conversatoin with Barbara Marx Hubbard
Alan Sasha Lithman

Making A New Declaration of Independence
Michael J. Tamura

Empathic Listening
Holley Humphrey

Intimacy With Self and Others, Earth and Spirit
Loba

2004 State of the Universe Address
Swani Beyondananda

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

BACK TO TOP

Seeds of Deception

Exposing Industry & Government Lies About the Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods

By Jeffrey Smith

The following excerpt from Seeds of Deception, a powerful new exposé which shows the distortions, omissions and cover-ups which the biotechnology industry and US federal agencies has orchestrated, is a must read for everyone who is concerned about the safety of the food they eat and the crops that are planted in our nation today.

In May 23, 2003, President Bush proposed an Initiative to End Hunger in Africa using genetically modified (GM) foods. He also blamed Europe’s “unfounded, unscientific fears” of these foods for hindering efforts to end hunger. Bush was convinced that GM foods held the key to greater yields, expanded US exports, and a better world. His rhetoric was not new. It had been passed down from president to president, and delivered to the American people through regular news reports and industry advertisements.

The message was part of a master plan that had been crafted by corporations determined to control the world’s food supply. This was made clear at a biotech industry conference in January 1999, where a representative from Arthur Anderson Consulting Group explained how his company had helped Monsanto create that plan. First, they asked Monsanto what their ideal future looked like in fifteen to twenty years. Monsanto executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson Consulting then worked backward from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct.

Integral to the plan was Monsanto’s influence in government, whose role was to promote the technology worldwide and to help get the foods into the marketplace quickly, before resistance could get in the way. A biotech consultant later said, “The hope of the industry is that over time, the market is so flooded that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender.” (The Toronto Star, 1/9/01)

To implement their strategy, the biotech companies needed to control the seeds—so they went on a buying spree, taking possession of about 23 percent of the world’s seed companies. Monsanto did achieve the dominant position, capturing 91 percent of the GM food market. But the industry has not met their projections of converting the natural seed supply. Citizens around the world, who do not share the industry’s conviction that these foods are safe or better, have not “just sort of surrendered.”

Widespread resistance to GM foods has resulted in a global showdown. US exports of genetically modified corn and soy are down, and hungry African nations won’t even accept the crops as food aid. Monsanto is faltering financially and is desperate to open new markets. The US government is convinced that the European Union’s (EU) resistance is the primary obstacle and is determined to change that. On May 13, 2003, the US filed a challenge with the World Trade Organization (WTO), charging that the EU’s restrictive policy on GM food violates international agreements.

On the day the challenge was filed, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick declared, “Overwhelming scientific research shows that biotech foods are safe and healthy.” This has been industry’s chant from the start, and is the key assumption at the basis of their master plan, the WTO challenge, and the president’s campaign to end hunger. It is also, however, untrue. It is industry influence, not sound science, which has allowed these foods onto the market. Moreover, if over-whelming scientific research suggests anything, it is that the foods should never have been approved.

Just as the magnitude of the industry’s plan was breathtaking, so too are the distortions and cover-ups. While many of the stories in this book reveal government and corporate maneuvering worthy of an adventure novel, the impact of GM foods is personal. Most people in North America eat them at every meal. These chapters not only dismantle the US position that the foods are safe, they inform you of the steps you can take to protect yourself and your family.

A Lesson from Overseas

The story of Arpad Pusztai made headlines throughout Europe for months, alerting readers to some of the serious health risks of genetically modified (GM) foods. It was barely mentioned, however, in the US press; the media watchdog group Project Censored described it as one of the ten most underreported events of the year. In fact, major US media avoided almost any discussion of the controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) until May 1999. But that was all about saving the monarch butterfly from GM corn pollen, not about human food safety.

It wasn’t until the massive food recall prompted by StarLink® corn that Americans were even alerted to the fact that they were eating GM foods everyday. Moreover, the American press was forced to question whether GM foods were safe. Up until then, the media had portrayed European resistance to America’s GM crops as unscientific anti-Americanism. But as the story of Arpad Pusztai reveals, the European anti-GMO sentiment had been fueled, in part, by far greater health risks than the scattered allergic reactions attributed to StarLink.

Arpad Pusztai was more than good at his work. In other professions, they would call him great. But in the conservative and exacting world of experimental biology, the accolade given was “thorough.” Pusztai’s thoroughness over fifty years had put him at the top of his field. He had published nearly 300 scientific articles, authored or edited twelve books, and regularly collaborated with other leading researchers around the globe.

In 1995, Arpad, his wife Susan—also a distinguished senior scientist—and colleagues at the Rowett Institute, Scottish Crop Research Institute, and University of Durham School of Biology were awarded a £1.6 million research grant by the Scottish Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries Department. Selected over twenty-seven other contenders, this consortium of scientists, with Arpad Pusztai as their coordinator, was chosen to create a model for testing genetically modified (GM) foods, verifying that they were safe to eat. Their testing methods were to become the standard used in Britain and likely adopted throughout the European Union.

At the time of the grant, no research had yet been published on the safety of GM foods, and the world’s scientific com-munity had plenty of questions and concerns. Pusztai and his team, therefore, were charged with designing a testing regimen that would create confidence and, of course, be thorough.

The team’s research had been underway for about two years when, in April 1998, the Rowett Institute’s director, Professor Phillip James, told the Pusztais that ministers from throughout Europe were about to meet in Brussels to cast their votes regarding regulation of genetically engineered foods. He presented the Pusztais with a stack of documents which were submissions from biotech companies seeking approval of their own varieties of GM soy, corn, and tomatoes. The British Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) was attending the conference and needed a scientific basis with which to recommend them. There were about six or seven folders, each representing a different request for approval—nearly 700 pages in all. Arpad and Susan had been working for more than two years on designing the methods for approving GM foods. And as part of their grant, they were conducting tests on a new variety of genetically engineered potatoes that the Scottish Ministry had hopes of commercializing. They didn’t just know the theory; they had practical experience. The Pusztais were therefore among the most qualified scientists in the world to read and evaluate the stack James had just handed to them.

As Arpad Pusztai looked first at one submission, and then another, he was flabbergasted.

“As a scientist, I was really shocked,” Pusztai said. “This was the first time I realized what flimsy evidence was being presented to the committee. There was missing data, poor research design, and very superficial tests indeed. Theirs was a very unconvincing case. And some of the work was really very poorly done. I want to impress on you, it was a real shock.”

The research presented was in no way adequate to demonstrate that the genetically modified foods described were safe for human or animal consumption. All of them failed to produce sufficient evidence. Pusztai was stunned to hear that not only had the committee approved the GM food submissions based on flimsy evidence, the approvals had taken place two years earlier—James had only wanted some scientific assurances for the minister to use. And neither Pusztai, nor other scientists working in the field, or the more than 58 million people of the UK knew that they were already eating GM tomatoes, soy and corn—and had been for almost two years. The approvals had all been done under the cloak of secrecy.

The incident was a turning point for Pusztai. Up until then, he had been confident that the scientific and regulatory community would carefully and thoroughly scrutinize this new technology. But now he was concerned. Very concerned.

As Pusztai continued his research, his concerns about GM food intensified. Pusztai’s consortium of scientists was altering the DNA of a potato so that it would do something no potato had ever done before. It was to produce its own pesticide, a lectin, normally found in the snowdrop plant that protects it from aphids and other insects. The industry’s goal was to mass produce this combination potato/insecticide, relieving farmers of the burden of having to spray the fields themselves. As part of the research, Pusztai and the team at the Rowett were to test the potato’s effects on the health of rats.

Genetically modified potatoes were already being sold and consumed in the United States. Their DNA was spliced with a gene from a soil bacterium similar to Bacillus anthrax. The added gene caused the potatoes to create their own pesticide called Bacillus thuringiensis toxin or Bt. If insects had the misfortune to eat one of these genetically modified wonders, the Bt, which was manufactured by every cell of the plant, quickly killed the insect. The same Bt-creating genes have also been placed into the DNA of corn and cottonseed, also sold and consumed in the United States, and all officially classified as pesticides by the US Environmental Protection Agency. However, the US Food and Drug Admini-stration (FDA) had made it clear that in their view, genetically modified crops were assumed to be safe and to offer similar nutritional value as their natural coun-terparts. This assumption is the cornerstone in US policy, allowing millions of acres of GM food to be planted, sold, and eaten without prior safety testing.

Pusztai’s team engineered a potato plant to create a different pesticide—a lectin, a natural insecticidal poison that some plants produce to ward off insects. Arpad Pusztai had spent nearly seven years researching this lectin’s properties. He was the world’s expert on lectins and he knew this particular lectin was safe for humans to eat. In fact, in one of his published studies, he fed rats the equivalent of 800 times the amount of lectins that the GM potatoes were engi-neered to produce, with no apparent damage. So when he fed the rats his lectin-producing potatoes, Pusztai didn’t expect any problems.

What Pusztai and his team found was quite a shock. First, the nutritional content of some GM potatoes were considerably different from their non-GM parent lines, even though they were grown in identical conditions. One GM potato line, for example, contained 20 percent less protein than its own parent line. Second, even the nutritional content of sibling GM potatoes, offspring of the same parent grown in identical conditions, was significantly different.

If Pusztai’s results were limited to just these facts, they alone might have undermined the entire regulatory process of GM foods. FDA policy was based on the assumption that genetically modified foods were stable. Nutrient levels were not supposed to vary.

But these findings were completely eclipsed by Pusztai’s other, more disturbing discoveries. He found that rats which were fed GM potatoes suffered damaged immune systems. Their white blood cells responded much more sluggishly than those fed a non-GM diet, leaving them more vulnerable to infection and disease. Organs related to the immune system, the thymus and spleen, showed some damage as well. Compared to rats fed a non-GM control diet, some of the GM-fed rats had smaller, less developed brains, livers, and testicles. Other rats had enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines. Some showed partial atrophy of the liver. What’s more, significant structural changes and a proliferation of cells in the stomach and intestines of GM-fed rats may have signaled an increased potential for cancer.

The rats developed these serious health effects after only ten days. Some of these changes persisted after 110 days, a time period corresponding to about 10 years of human life.

In preparing the diet, Pusztai had been characteristically thorough. Comparisons had been made between rats fed GM potatoes, natural potatoes, and natural potatoes spiked with the same amount of pure lectin as found in the GM potato. The researchers varied the potato preparation, using raw, boiled, and baked potatoes, and varied their amounts in the diet. They also varied the total protein content of the diets and tested all these variations over both 10-day and 110-day periods. These testing protocols had all been thoroughly scrutinized and approved in advance by the government’s funding office and were consistent with several published studies.

In the end only the rats that ate the GM potatoes suffered the serious negative effects. From the evidence, it was clear that the lectins were not the major cause of the health damage. Rather, there was some effect from the process of genetic engineering itself that caused the damaged organs and immune dysfunction of the adolescent rats. “We used exactly the same methods of genetic engineering as used by the food companies,” says Pusztai.

Pusztai’s potato study, plus his earlier paper on experimental GM peas, remain the only two published independent peer-reviewed feeding studies on the safety of GM foods. As of early 2003, there were only eight other peer-reviewed published feeding studies, all of which were funded directly or indirectly by the biotech companies.

One of these, which has been used by the biotech industry as their primary scientific validation for safety claims, studied the GM soybean called Roundup Ready®. This soybean is engineered to withstand the normally fatal effects of Monsanto’s herbicide called Roundup®. Using these herbicide-tolerant crops, a farmer can spray his or her field several times during the growing season, making weeding easier. Roundup, which is Monsanto’s brand name for glyphosate, is the world’s best-selling herbicide. Its patent was due to expire in 2000. To prevent a huge loss in market share, Monsanto introduced Roundup Ready crops. Now when farmers buy the GM seeds, they sign a contract requiring them to use only Monsanto’s brand, or one of their licensees.

In 1996, Monsanto scientists published a feeding study that purported to test their soybeans’ effect on rats, catfish, chicken, and cows. But, Pusztai says, “It was obvious that the study had been designed to avoid finding any problems. Everybody in our consortium knew this.”

For example, the researchers tested the GM soy on mature animals, not young ones. Young animals use protein to build their muscles, tissues, and organs. Problems with GM food could therefore show up in organ and body weight—as it did with Pusztai’s young adolescent rats. But adult animals use the protein for tissue renewal and energy. “With a nutritional study on mature animals,” says Pusztai, “you would never see any difference in organ weights even if the food turned out to be anti-nutritional. The animals would have to be emaciated or poisoned to show anything.”

But even if there were an organ development problem, the study wouldn’t have picked it up. That’s because the researchers didn’t even weigh the organs, “they just looked at them, what they call ‘eyeballing,’” says Pusztai. “I must have done thousands of post-mortems, so I know that even if there is a difference in organ weights of as much as 25 percent, you wouldn’t see it.”

One additional unpublished study is worth mentioning. It was conducted on FlavrSavr tomatoes. These tomatoes were genetically engineered to have a prolonged shelf life. As this was the first GM crop to be approved in the US, the manufacturer actually requested the FDA to review their feeding study data—a gesture no subsequent manufacturer has repeated. The Washington Post reported that the rodents, usually happy to munch on tomatoes, turned their noses up at the genetically modified FlavrSavr tomato and were eventually force fed the tomato through gastric tubes and stomach washes. Documents revealed that many of the rats that were fed the GM tomatoes developed lesions in their stomachs. For unknown reasons, researchers did not examine tissue elsewhere in the digestive tract. They also did not provide an explanation as to why seven of the forty rats that were fed the GM tomatoes died unexpectedly within two weeks.

The complete body of research on the safety of GM foods also includes: a study published in a non-peer-reviewed journal, which demonstrated that tissue samples from the digestive tract of both humans and monkeys reacted with GM tomatoes in a test tube; an unpublished feeding study of a GM corn grown in the US, which showed an increased death rate among

In spite of this small body of research, GM foods are a regular part of the US diet. Approximately 80 percent of the soy and 38 percent of the corn planted in the US in 2003 was genetically engineered. Derivatives from these two crops are found in about 70 percent of processed foods. In addition, 70 percent of the cotton crop and more than 60 percent of the canola crop, both used for cooking oil, are also genetically modified. About 75 percent of these crops are engineered to withstand otherwise deadly applications of an herbicide, 17 percent produce their own insecticide, and 8 percent are engineered to do both. There are also hundreds of foods produced with genetically engineered cooking agents, food additives, and enzymes, as well as varieties of GM squash and papaya. And there are dairy products from cows injected with a GM bovine growth hormone. All these are sold without labels identifying them as GMOs.

The regulations in the US are so lax, there are no required pre-market safety tests. There is no way to determine if these GM foods are creating serious health problems. People get sick all the time without tracking their illness to food, or pesticides, or air or water pollution. The causes remain well hidden.

Follow the Money

With such slim research on the safety of GM food and such enormous risks, why are respected institutes, scientific panels, research journals, even government officials lining up to defend it as proven safe? And why are they so quick to condemn evidence that might be used to protect the public? Although subsequent chapters will illustrate how pervasive and dangerous these trends really are, a key to understanding why they happen is to follow the money.

With less research money available from public sources, more and more scientists in the US and Europe are dependent on corporate sponsors, and hence, corporate acceptance of their research and results. Among Britain’s top research universities, for example, dependence on private funds often amounts to 80 to 90 percent of the total research budget. But reliance on corporate sponsorship can carry a hidden price.

A poll of 500 scientists working in either government or recently privatized research institutes in the UK revealed that 30 percent had been asked to change their research conclusions by their sponsoring customer. According to the report, published in the UK’s Times Higher Education Supplement in September 2000, “The figure included 17 percent who had been asked to change their conclusions to suit the customer’s preferred outcome, 10 percent who said they had been asked to do so [in order] to obtain further contracts and three percent who claimed they had been asked to make changes to discourage publication.”

If 30 percent admitted to having been asked to change their results, one wonders how many others, having succumbed to their customers’ requests, were too embarrassed to answer truthfully.

The article, entitled “Scientists Asked to Fix Results for Backer,” said scientists complained that “contracting out and the commercialization of scientific research are threatening standards of impartiality.”

Please see Seeds 2 to continue reading this article, Seeds2

As citizens, we’ve been duped and marginalized from our rightful role in momentous public choices. Surveys show that the ma-jority of Americans share unease about the extent of corp-orate power within government, but that unease remains vague and unfocused. No more—for here Jeffrey Smith snaps us to attention: He offers the dramatic, fascinating, insider detail we need. He shows how a handful of corporations, led by Monsanto, has used its enormous wealth, as well as intimidation and deception, to turn Americans into nutritional guinea pigs. How we’ve been forced without our knowledge—as “our” government rejects citizen demands for labeling—to consume staple foods that have been virtually untested as to their effect on our health.

When you read this extraordinary and courageous book, you will never see your country the same way again. You’ll understand why other nations are appalled by US actions to try to bully them into accepting genetically modified seeds. You’ll see how out-of-step we are with countries where citizens have, thank God, found their voices to bring forth intense public dialogue, raising essential questions about GMOs.

Perhaps you’ll conclude, as I have, that the genetic engineering craze—absorbing hundreds of millions of dollars and untold time and energy both of promoters and doubters—is yet another catastrophic diversion from the core question of any democracy: Why hunger amidst plenty? The GMO debate jumps over this question entirely, as self-interested corporations deliberately reinforce the myth that our planet’s problem is scarcity from which only their products can save us. In fact, Monsanto, and other corporations seeking to make the world dependent on their engineered seeds, have had the gall to tell us we need their technology to “feed the hungry” when the bane of farmers around the world has long been overproduction, because too many people are so poor they can’t afford what’s already grown.

Jeffrey Smith has written a powerful, desperately needed book. My fervent hope is that in the years ahead we will look back and see his seminal work as a none-too-soon alarm that helps us to find our own courage to perceive GMOs as both a threat to health as well as a symptom of a deeper crisis. Genetic engineering could turn out to be our ultimate wake-up call. Where is democracy, we can ask, when just one company, Monsanto, controls 85 percent of all genetically engineered germplasm and has the power to saturate the commercial seed supply with genetically engineered varieties—with no input from the public who must bear the consequences? Could genetic engineering be what finally shocks us into finding our voices to ask the questions we must if we are to create authentic democracy and heal our planet?

- Frances Moore Lappé, coauthor, with Anna Lappé, of Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet