une/July 2008
My Mother’s Garden
Muktha Jost
Getting A Grip
Frances Moore Lappé
The Documented Health Risk of
Genetically Engineered Foods
Dr. Jeffrey Bland Interviews Jeffrey Smith
The Emerging Significance of Urban Agriculture
Jody Woodruff
Our Food Future
Scott McGuire
We Need A New Generation of Farmers
Zoë Bradbury
Soft Intentions, Hard Results
Peter Moore
Fitness Training For The Brain
Jim Brown and Molly Brown
Improved Health Through Detoxification
Daniel Smith, ND
Awakening and Embodiment
An Interview with Judith Blackstone
Randall Keller
Reclaiming Our Attention
Guy Finley
Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain
The Documented Health Risk of
Genetically Engineered Foods
Dr. Jeffrey Bland Interviews Jeffrey Smith
Documents made public from a lawsuit show that the overwhelming consensus among the FDA’s own scientists was that GM crops were inherently unsafe and could create hard-to-detect, unpredicted toxins, allergens, new diseases, and nutritional problems and had, in fact, urged their superiors to require the long-term safety studies that they chose not to require.
Jeffrey Smith is the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and a leading spokesperson on the health dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). The following discussion about current practices related to genetically engineered crops and worldwide instances of immune-system response was conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Bland, an internationally recognized leader in the nutritional medicine field.
Frances Moore Lappé, in a forward to Jeffrey Smith’s first book Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods, says that Smith provides citizens with essential information required to make informed choices regarding genetically engineered foods. Her comments are voiced by many others who have read this book and been deeply affected by it, including Jim Turner, author of The Chemical Feast and a well respected lawyer in the area of food advocacy.
Most recently, Jeffrey Smith has authored an updated and more definitive book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risk of Genetically Engineered Foods, a book that brings up to date what has been going on in this extraordinarily important area of applying molecular biology and genetic engineering to the food supply.
Jeffrey Bland: Could you define for us what genetically engineered foods are in contrast to our traditional foods?
Jeffrey Smith: With genetically engineered foods you take single genes or combinations of genes, you make changes in the structure of them, and then you artificially force them into the DNA (the genome) of other organisms. So it is not natural, but it is rather a method of selecting certain traits, pulling them out of context, and transferring them into species that would never naturally contain those genes. The process itself also causes massive collateral damage in the DNA, causing mutations and changed gene expressions, etc.
There has been a longstanding misunderstanding about genetically engineered foods, even with those who are fairly well informed. I recall a conversation I had not too many years ago with a very esteemed vice president of a large food company, and his point of view was that we have been tampering with genes of plants in the formation of foods through selective breeding programs, so why is this any different than genetically modified foods? Can you help differentiate for us what the difference is between the traditional methods of selective breeding and that of genetic engineering?
When you want to genetically engineer a crop, typically you take genes and you add an artificial “on” switch (a promoter). You add an antibiotic-resistant marker gene to verify that the transformation has occurred. You make millions of copies and put it into a gene gun and blast it into millions of cells in the hope that some of your genes make it into the DNA of some of those cells. Then you douse the remaining cells with antibiotics, killing almost all of them. Those that survive indicate that the antibiotic-resistant marker gene is inserted correctly into the DNA and is functioning. Then you clone the resulting cell (using tissue culture) into a full plant, and this is a lot of things, but it is not natural selection. It is nothing that has ever been done before in history. Genes are not like Legos®—you can’t just snap them into place and have them function independently, producing exactly what you want.
The process can cause hundreds or thousands of mutations and changes that can, in turn, change protein expression and the expression of the plant compounds, of which there may be thousands in a particular plant. They have measured changes. For example, in the DNA they found 2% to 4% difference (due to mutation) just from the results of cloning the cell into a full plant. They also found massive changes in DNA in gene expression when a single gene was inserted into a human cell—up to 5% of the functioning genes changed their levels of expression when a single gene was input. So we are talking about global changes, and yet engineering was based on a reductionist model of individual genes functioning independently.
When you talk to proponents or members within the genetic engineering community, they will tell you they have protected against some of the risks that you are talking about because they have put the kandamycin marker gene in there to tell them what is going on. And they make sure that the plant can do its normal functions—and it looks like the plant, tastes like it, and produces the same protein, carbohydrate, and fat.
I think your example is great. It looks like, it tastes like, and we have three or four data points, so it must be the same. You know, they don’t even check to see if the transgene ends up the way they intended it to be. In fact, there were studies in Paris that found that they sequenced the transgene (the gene that was inserted into these crops) and in all five cases, what they found was different than what the company had registered. Either it changed during insertion or was unstable and was changing over time. Likewise, the protein that is being produced from the transgene might be different, and they don’t necessarily check that either. For example, they’ll check five amino acid sequences and they will assume that the rest of the six hundred are the same. They will also assume that the transgene will produce the right protein even though the transgene can be interpreted differently.
In one transgene, 30% was lopped off altogether, and the resulting protein was a combination of the inserted gene and part DNA. They don’t actually test the food itself on animals, in many cases. They create a surrogate protein from bacteria and then test that with a single dose on a rodent to see if there has been any death occurring within 7 to 14 days and that is their animal-feeding study.
They don’t test in ways that would even evaluate these unpredicted changes in the crops themselves. They create artificial circumstances to force the conclusion that these foods are safe.
In your books you use a remarkably powerful example that illustrates what you are talking about, the amazing work of Dr. Pusztai.
Dr. Pusztai is a very pro-GM scientist, the leading lectin scientist in the world, working at one of the top nutritional research laboratories in the world in the UK. He received a grant from the UK government to create the ideal testing protocol to evaluate the safety of genetically engineered crops that was to be used EU-wide. He created a genetically modified potato engineered to produce an insecticide (a lectin), and the insecticide turned out to be harmless to animals (he had studied it for six and a half years and characterized it quite well). But the potato that was engineered to produce the insecticide caused damage to virtually every system in the rats that were fed the potato. They had potentially precancerous cell growth in the digestive tract; smaller brains, livers, and testicles; partial atrophy of the liver; and damaged immune systems, among other things.
He was alarmed because he realized it was the inherent process of creating the gene-tically engineered potato that was responsible for the damage. He went public with his concerns, was fired from his job after 35 years, and silenced with threats of a lawsuit. His 20-member research team was disbanded, and he was maligned by the institute he had worked for and by the established pro-GM UK scientists, among others. When he eventually was able to speak because of an act of Parliament, he got his data back and it is now published in The Lancet and it remains the most in-depth animal-feeding study yet produced on genetically engineered crops.
What it shows is that if that same potato which proved to be so damaging had been subjected to the same superficial studies that got the GM crops (soy, corn, cotton, and canola, for example) on the market, those potatoes would have also gotten onto the market. In addition, the other products were made from the same process of genetic engineering that he used to create the potatoes, so they might be creating these types of damage in human beings over the long term, but we don’t know since the studies have not been done.
It is really fascinating how things of this importance, which are discovered by very diligent people, can be held in check and the information not made available to the broader public. I guess we have to really commend what happened in Europe as a consequence of the fallout of this because it seems like it was the catalyst for putting in place regulations about genetically engineered foods that we don’t see in the United States. Why didn’t we see a translation of this from one continent to another?
When Pusztai was able to speak on February 16, 1999, it touched off a major headline war about GMOs. One commentator said it divided the society into two warring blocks on the GM issue, and within six to eight weeks, Unilever, Britain’s largest food manufacturer, publicly committed to remove GM ingredients from their European brands. Within a week, virtually every other major food manufacturer followed suit. However, in the United States, Project Censure describes that (our Pusztai issue) as one of the most underreported events of the year. We don’t really have an open press right now reporting the risks, instead we have press that read like a biotech brochure. This has been the case for many years. If you ask the average American, “Have you ever eaten a GM food in your life?” 60% say no, 15% say I don’t know, and those that don’t want to eat GM don’t know how (they have labeling in Europe but not in the United States). The way that they have been slipped into our diet without notice has been responsible for the fact that Europe has rejected it and the unknowing US consumers have not.
That leads us to the inevitable discussion about the business opportunity and how that has been a motivation for circumventing the normal process of consumer education and discussion and of general political support for the concept. Tell us a little bit about the Roundup Ready seed movement because it seems like it plays a pretty interesting role in this whole discussion.
About 80% of genetically engineered crops are designed to withstand death by a particular herbicide. So the company markets their (for example) Roundup Ready seeds or soy to withstand sprays of Roundup herbicide which over time increases the use of that herbicide. By 2004, for example, Round-up Ready soy fields received an estimated 86% more herbicide than the natural soy fields, and it allowed Monsanto to maintain a de facto domination of the glyphosate (the active ingredient) market.
Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%. We know that in an analysis of the composition of GM soy by Monsanto (information that had been left out of their study and found later) that among cooked soy, the trypsin inhibitor—which is a known allergen—was seven times higher than compared to one variety of non-GM soy. When they then did a profile of the proteins within the soy, they found a unique allergenic protein in the GM soy, one that was able to bind with IgE antibodies.
We also know that the Roundup Ready protein that was intended to be created within the Roundup Ready soy has two sections of amino acid sequence that are identical to known allergens, which (according to the WHO) either should have stopped approval or forced further tests.
And finally, we know that the high levels of Roundup residue might also be associated with food sensitivity or allergic-type reactions. In addition, there is a mouse study that showed the production in the pancreas of digestive enzymes was dramatically reduced in the mice that were fed the GM soy. Any reduction in (for example) protein enzymes could allow the protein to last longer in the system, causing it to be more likely to achieve an allergic reaction, so it potentially could increase allergic reactions not just to soy proteins, but to other proteins. When the GM soy was fed to mice and rabbits they showed changes in DNA expression and enzyme expression and metabolic activity in all the major organs that were tested. Also, mice that were fed GM soy had problems in the development of their young sperm cells and the embryos showed altered gene expression as well.
In the Russian National Academy of Sciences they fed rats genetically engineered soy and over 50 percent of the offspring died within three weeks compared to about 10 percent of the offspring whose mothers were fed non-GM. The size of the offspring from the GM-fed mothers was also radically smaller, and they were not able to reproduce in subsequent studies. They also fed soy to males and they found that the testicle structure was considerably different among the GM-fed group.
So we have a lot of information from the very few studies that have been done indicating that this is not just an accident waiting to happen, but might already be creating a health catastrophe in the United States with 89 percent of the soy acreage in the US now Genetically Modified.
How do you respond to those who might ask, “It seems so self-evident—the way that you describe it. Are your assertions documented and supported?”
There are over a thousand endnotes in Genetic Roulette from a combination of published literature and reports from the field. As I mention at the beginning of the book, if we had thousands of appropriately done studies, we wouldn’t need to look at medical reports or correlational relationships.
Bt-toxin is an example of where they took a toxin and put it into food supply, so it was produced in every cell of corn (which means in every bite of corn) on the assumption that the toxin had a history of safe use because it is used in organic agriculture, that the protein was truly destroyed during digestion, and that there were no receptor cells in humans or mammals so it would pass right through even if it weren’t destroyed during digestion. They didn’t have a whole hoard of scientific studies and data points to say that this toxin in our food supply would be safe—it was based on assumptions as so much of the GM approvals are.
However, even among the small number of data points that were there, they had overlooked the fact that about five hundred individuals complained of allergic-type reactions when they got sprayed with the natural version of this Bt-toxin that was used for Gypsy moth infestation in the Pacific Northwest. They take that gene and make the Bt-toxin at three- to five thousand times more concentration than the natural spray version, and farmers in India who are harvesting GM cotton (or loading it onto trucks, or working in ginning factories) are complaining of the same allergic type reactions that the five hundred people complained about in the Pacific Northwest. Then they let sheep graze in the Bt cotton plants after harvest, and within five to seven days twenty-five percent of the herds died (about 10,000 sheep in total).
About two dozen farmers in the United States complained that certain Bt-toxin corn caused their pigs or cows to become sterile. A German farmer and others in the Philippines claim that the Bt corn caused death among their livestock. And in the Philippines people living next to the Bt corn field developed skin, respiratory, intestinal reactions, and fever during the time that the corn was pollinating. The following year, the same seeds were planted in four other villages and during the time of pollination when they were breathing in the pollen, there were more reactions among people living nearby.
These are all medical reports or farming reports that are documented, yes, but not necessarily in peer-reviewed journals. For the studies that got Bt crops approved, they are typically not peer reviewed by the companies; they are submitted only to the regulatory bodies and labeled “Confidential Business Information.” However, a lawsuit forced Monsanto’s Bt corn study for their Mon 863 into the public domain a couple of years ago. It turns out that they had an enormous amount of problems with the rats that were fed the GM corn, and some scientists recently reevaluated the raw data based on the study and found clear signs of toxicity in the liver and kidneys that was not reported or acknowledged by Monsanto or the regulators that approved the product. Even among the company’s own studies—which they meticulously design to avoid finding problems using the wrong samples, the wrong control group, the wrong statistics, under-reporting the details—even with all that, they found signs of toxicity.
Michael Pollan, in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma, mentions that often when farmers animals have a choice between genetically engineered corn and non-genetically engineered, they will choose the non-genetically engineered, suggesting that animals know the difference. Is there any history of that that you have seen in the way that animals respond to these foods?
Absolutely. There are reports from all over North America that show cows, pigs, geese, elk, deer, raccoons, mice, and rats all avoided GM feed when given a choice. In fact, the CEO of Calgene, the company that put out the first approved, genetically engineered food crop (the Flavr-Savr tomato) said that even if you were Chef Boyardee, these rats were not going to eat their GM tomatoes. They force fed the rats the tomatoes and several developed stomach lesions and seven of twenty died within two weeks. We know now from documents made public from a lawsuit that the FDA was willing to let that go on the market as is. Calgene voluntarily used a different line of their transformed tomato to introduce to the market. But it shows you that the FDA was ready to turn a blind eye to some pretty serious results. Now the FDA has no required consultation (it is all voluntary), so that was the only study in which raw feeding-study data was ever submitted. If the FDA asks for further studies and further questions, they are typically ignored.
This voluntary consultation process came about because the 1992 policy of the FDA claimed that the agency was not aware of any information showing that foods created from these new methods differed in any meaningful or uniform way. On the basis of that sentence, they said that if Monsanto wants to introduce a GM crop to the market, they can determine whether it is safe and don’t even have to tell the FDA. That sentence turns out to be a deception. Documents made public from a lawsuit show that the overwhelming consensus among the FDA’s own scientists was that GM crops were inherently unsafe and could create hard-to-detect, unpredicted toxins, allergens, new diseases, and nutritional problems and had, in fact, urged their superiors to require the long-term safety studies that they chose not to require.
What do we do? You have already told us that there is no mandatory requirement in the United States for labeling foods that were produced by genetic engineering. Maybe you can help us to define a strategy.
I think that among all the health and environmental problems in the world that we face, ending the current generation of GM crops is one of the easiest things we can do. I emphasize the words “current generation” because I’m not against the possibility that some day in the future we can safely and reliably and predictably manipulate the DNA for the benefit of human health and the environment, but the current generation is a primitive technology based on obsolete science and faulty assumptions.
How do we stop that? Like in the European situation—when a certain number of consumers reached the tipping point of pushback against GM, who were unwilling and very unhappy about the fact that their diet was being converted to GM—the food industry reacted for the sake of protecting market share. And that kept GM crops out of Europe in spite of a very pro-GM European commission and a pro-GM European food safety authority. We need to create the tipping point of enough consumers in the United States to say no to GM.
The food industry gains nothing from these GM crops where 80% are herbicide tolerant and about 20% produce their own pesticide. They do not have consumer benefits, so the food industry gains nothing from using GM, and if they saw a drop in market share of just a few percentage points and they perceived a trend that might grow over time, it is very easy to see how the stampede away from GM could be repeated in the United States as it was in Europe. I am predicting that with as little as 5% of the US consumers avoiding GM ingredients very consciously, that 15 million people could drive the decisions for the entire food industry.
Where can we get 15 million people? Well, certainly health conscious shoppers are low-hanging fruit since there are already 28 million people who buy organic food on a regular basis, but they rarely avoid GM ingredients in their non-organic purchases. I’m working with some CEOs of major food companies in the natural food industry, and we are cleaning out any remaining GM ingredients from the entire natural food sector, setting up GMO information centers in all the health food stores, non-GMO shopping guides, and later on, in-store, on-shelf labeling of any products that have held out and not participated in the clean-up.
We are also working with communities around the country, showing a video that I created with others called Hidden Dangers in Kids’ Meals, alerting parents and schools to the fact that children are most at risk to the health dangers of GM foods and we are establishing GM-free campaigns around the country. Likewise, we hope to approach religious leaders to explain to them the dangers. They, themselves, may believe that “GMO” means “God Move Over” and are unwilling to participate in this experiment and might choose to distribute the non-GMO shopping guide.
The fourth demographic that are really important is the health practitioners—the doctors, the nurses, the dietitians, those who evaluate science and make recommendations to their patients and clients. If the word got out to the food industry that more and more doctors are now prescribing diets to be free of GMO, then GMO will be over in the United States very quickly. I do know many doctors who tell their patients to avoid eating GMO foods. What we hope to do at ResponsibleTechnology.org is to post patient education materials that doctors can download. In the meantime, they can always use Genetic Roulette in their waiting rooms. It is designed for a quick, five-minute flip-through in the way that is has executive summaries on one side and detailed text on the other side of each two-page spread.
We have one doctor, an allergist, who said he used to do soy allergy tests all the time but now that soy is genetically engineered he tells his patients just don’t eat it unless it says organic. He buys in bulk an audio CD we created called, You’re Eating What? Stop Eating Genetically Engineered Foods and Please Copy this for your Friends. He buys them for a dollar or so from our website and sells them for a dollar and has distributed over a thousand to his patients. We have ways that we are working with the medical community so that we create this buzz that healthy eating means no GMOs, so then quickly we can reach the tipping point and the food companies will end this dangerous experiment, even if our government is unwilling to act.
It is very important to hear that you are not anti-technology. Your point is that if we knew enough about what we were doing it would be a very different story than doing an experiment that is early on in our understanding. The uncertainty is really a cause for great concern. It seems like we started inserting genes prematurely into our food supply, and I think that position that you have taken is a very, very scientifically supportable position.
I agree with you completely, and yet the public relations spin by the biotech industry, which has been so successful around the world, wants people to believe that those of us who are demanding more science are anti-science. But there is also another very dangerous aspect. I’ve interviewed scientists all over the world who have incredible pressure silencing them, taking away their funding from doing research, denying them access to genetically engineered seeds to do their research.
Doctors have had information stolen. Even scientists in government have had documents stolen from their locked file cabinets as is the case with the scientists in Health Canada who were evaluating Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone. They also said, for example, that Monsanto had offered them a bribe of one- to two-million dollars to approve their drug and that Monsanto was fined 1.5 million dollars by the US Justice Department for bribing up to 140 Indonesian government officials to try and get their patent approved there. It is not just an avoidance of science, it is actually a rather sophisticated manipulation with very big goals in mind.
Arthur Anderson Consulting admitted at a 1999 biotech conference that they had asked executives at Monsanto to describe their ideal future in 15 to 20 years and the executives described a world in which 100 percent of all commercial feeds were genetically engineered and patented. They went backwards from that goal to create a strategy and tactics to achieve it. Imagine if they had been successful. Imagine if there hadn’t been push-back from Europe. We would be replacing the genomes—the DNA—with self-propagating genetic pollution and reducing the number of seeds around the world, because they obviously would have taken over a larger percentage of the seed supply and reduced the amount of natural seeds made available, causing a much higher level of food insecurity. If they had gone forth with their plans they would be gambling with our entire food supply on this untested, primitive technology. They are not above really risking as much as you can possibly risk.
Self-propagating genetic pollution will outlast, theor-etically, the effects of global warming and nuclear waste. We have never had an experience like this before in our history. Going slow, going cautious, going with plenty of consensus and thinking is the only way to proceed with such a technology, and yet we are seeing just the opposite.
Genetic Roulette includes sixty-five documented health risks of genetically engineered foods. We posted a page for each one of those health risks at www.geneticroulette.com and then asked the biotech industry and others to give updates, challenges, corrections, etc. in the hope that it can become the world’s forum on discussing the health risks. Not only that, but it is actually a gauntlet which we are throwing down to the industry, saying “You must respond to these 65 risks with rigorous scientific data showing that they are not concerns, otherwise there is no justification for allowing these foods to be on the market.”
I testified before the EPA and met with senators and congressmen, saying “We want to reframe the issue now. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that these foods are unsafe. We have parsed it out into 65 main risks. Let’s give them the checklist. If they can respond to the 65 risks, we have no further questions. If they respond with more assumptions and no data points and sweeping dismissals, then they have no justification to allow the food to be fed to humans or to animals.”
Jeffrey Smith’s latest book, Genetic Roulette: The Docu-mented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods is published by Yes! Books (2007). For more on genetically modified foods visit www.seedsofdeception.com, www responsibletechnology.org, or www.geneticroulette.com. Dr. Jeffrey Bland, an internationally recognized leader in the nutritional medicine field for over 25 years, is a nutritional biochemist and registered clinical laboratory director, former professor of biochemistry at the University of Puget Sound, and a previous Director of Nutritional Research at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine.
How To Avoid Genetically Modified Foods
Though most industrialized countries require labeling of Genetically Modified Foods, the US does not—although nine out of ten Americans polled by Pew Research say they want genetically modified foods to be labeled. Most people say they would avoid brands if labeled as GM. Crops most often genetically modified are Soy (90%), Corn (61%), Cotton (83%), and Canola (80%). Canada, is GM. Three minor crops are Hawaiian papaya, and a small amount of zucchini and yellow crook neck squash.
Chocolates use soy lecithin. Breads use soy flour. Shakes use soy protein concentrate. Baby formulas use soy milk. High fructose corn syrup is found in sodas, cereals, cookies, candy, salad dressings, spaghetti sauces, and 1,000 other products. Baked goods use cornstarch. Vegetable oils use corn oil. Breads use corn flour. Fried products use canola oil. Baked goods and many health products use canola oil. Chips and fried snacks use canola and cottonseed oil.
Chosing organically grown foods is best. Here are three types of organic labels. “100% Organic” means all ingredients are organic. “Organic” means that at least 95% of the ingredients are organic. The other 5%, however, still have to be non-GMO. “Made with organic _ _ _ _ _ (ingredient name, e.g. soy)” means that at least 70% of the ingredients are organic, but the remaining 30% still have to be non-GMO. If the term organic is only in the list of ingredients and not found anywhere else on the package, then there is no required percentage for organic ingredients in the product, and any non-organic ingredient may be GMO.
Aspartame, also referred to as NutraSweet® and Equal® and found in over 6,000 products, is a GMO sweetener. It is contained in soft drinks, gum, candy, desserts, mixes, yogurt, tabletop sweeteners, and some pharmaceuticals such as vitamins and sugar-free cough drops.
Meats, dairy products, farmed fish, and eggs are usually from animals fed GM feed. Buy “Organic,” “Wild Caught,” or meat or dairy from “100% Grass-Fed” animals. Avoid dairy products from cows injected with GM bovine growth hormone (called rbGH or rbST).
There are many additives, enzymes, flavorings, and pro-cessing agents used in foods which are produced by GM bacteria, yeast, or fungi including non-organic beer and wine. Avoid non-organic or non-GMO declared processed foods which often have hidden GM sources. For a complete list of ingredients that may be made from GM soy, corn, cotton, or canola visit www.responsibletechnology.org.
Genetically Engineered Sugar Coming in 2008
American Crystal, a large Wyoming-based sugar company and several other leading US sugar providers have announced they will be sourcing their sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets beginning this year and arriving in stores in 2008. Like GE corn and GE soy, products containing GE sugar will not be labeled as such. Since half of the granulated sugar in the US comes from sugar beets, a move towards biotech beets marks a dramatic alteration of the US food supply. These sugars, along with GE corn and soy, are found in many conventional food products, so consumers will be exposed to genetically engineered ingredients in just about every non-organic multiple-ingredient product they purchase.
The GE sugar beet is designed to withstand strong doses of Monsanto’s controversial broad spectrum Roundup herbicide. Studies indicate farmers planting “Roundup Ready” corn and soy spray large amounts of the herbicide, contaminating both soil and water. Farmers planting GE sugar beets are told they may be able to apply the herbicide up to five times per year. Sugar beets are grown on 1.4 million acres by 12,000 farmers in the US from Oregon to Minnesota. Candy companies like Hershey’s are urging farmers not to plant GE sugar beets, noting that consumer surveys suggest resistance to the product. In addition the European Union has not approved GE sugar beets for human consumption. Take action to prevent GE sugar from being added to our food supply at www.organic consumers.org.
