Consumer health concerns

• Toxic reactions in digestive tract
• Liver and other organ damage
• Reproductive failures and infant mortality
• Farmers report livestock sterility and deaths
• Allergies
• Pesticide-producing GM crops
• Increased herbicide use
• Why don't we see more human problems?

Increased herbicide use from GM crops

When herbicide tolerant (HT) GM crops came to market in 1996, the biotech industry claimed that they would use less herbicide. Although that was true for the first three years, the repeated use of Roundup caused weeds to develop resistance to the herbicide's active ingredient glyphosate, forcing farmers to use more.

According to USDA data, the net effect of HT soybeans, cotton, and corn in the US was a 138 million pound (5 percent) increase in herbicides from 1996-2004. But the rate is increasing.

In the 2005 and 2006 seasons, there was another increase of approximately 120 million pounds. In fact in a single year, from 2005 to 2006, herbicide used increased 38 percent. Roundup use alone nearly doubled from 1996 to 2006.

And because they are becoming less effective, farmers are using more toxic formulations. The use of the highly toxic herbicide 2, 4-D was up by 237 percent between 2004 and 2006. Not only does all this adversely effect the environment, toxic residues on foods increase.

This section on Consumer Health Concerns from genetically modified food crops is derived entirely from the work by Jeffrey M. Smith, director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and author of “Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods” and “Seeds of Deception.” www.responsibletechnology.org