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?

Why don't we see more human problems?

One of the most unscientific and dangerous claims by the biotech industry is that millions have eaten GM foods for years without a problem. But there is no surveillance system that could identify problems if they did arise.

The Canadian government announced in 2002 that it would do such monitoring, but abandoned its plans within a year, saying it was too difficult. There are not even human clinical trials. Some GM varieties are approved before any human has ever eaten it.

The difficulty in identifying a problem is illustrated by a deadly epidemic in the 1980s, which killed about 100 Americans and caused sickness and disability in 5,000 to 10,000. It was caused by one company's brand of a food supplement, L-tryptophan. The company, Showa Denko K.K. from Japan, had genetically engineered bacteria to produce the supplement less expensively. This process was almost certainly responsible for the contaminants in the batches, which led to the disease.

The epidemic took years to identify and was almost missed. The only reason it was discovered was because the disease had three concurrent characteristics: its symptoms were rare or unique, they were acute, and they came on quickly. If all three had not been present, it might still be on the market.

What then of the thousands of products currently being fed to U.S. citizens that contain ingredients from genetic modification? Might they have contributed to the doubling of food-related illnesses in the United States between 1994 and 2001, or the increase in asthma, obesity, diabetes, migraines, allergies, etc.? We don't know because no one is looking.

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