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Your Food Is Genetically Altered
By Lee M. Leffler
Published in IndZine, the Magazine for the Entire Family! July 1997, page 54-56.
If you care about the food you eat, you need to know how genetic engineering is threatening the quality of your diet. Scientists are altering the genetic code of food crops. These foods are slipping into the food supply without labels, bringing the possibilities of unknown toxins, allergens, and environmental side-effects. When genes from animals are inserted into plants, vegetarians can no longer tell if a vegetable is a vegetable. Without labeling, you have no way of knowing if you are eating such foods. Chances are, you are.
Genetically engineered food is new. The first commercial genetically engineered food, the Flavr Savr tomato, was introduced in 1992. The Flavr Savr tomato was genetically engineered to soften more slowly. Thus, the tomato could stay on the vine an extra week, giving it time to ripen before being shipped.
Since 1992, a trickle, a torrent, and now a flood of genetically engineered foods have been quietly introduced into the food supply. Nearly all the types of food you eat have been genetically altered in the laboratory: apples, barley, chestnuts, lettuce, melon, peppers, watermelons, walnuts, sunflowers, sugar cane, strawberries, rice, and so on. Some foods are now appearing on a dinner plate near you (or perhaps in front of you): corn, potatoes, soybeans, squash, tomatoes, papayas, canola, and who know what else. Every harvest, the list gets longer. The long-term health effects from eating these new foods are unknown.
Genes are a fine level of life. Genes contain the codes that define the makeup of living beings. For example, your eye color, blood type, skin color, and even the shape of your ears are encoded in your genes. Maybe you have your grandmother's eyes, or your father's chin. In the same way, all living beings from the tiniest virus to the largest elephant grow based on their genetic code. Genes provide the pages on which the book of life is written.
In nature, plants pass down genes to new generations through reproduction. Only closely-related species can be bred with each other. "In nature, insect genes cannot get into plants, bacterial genes cannot get into corn, and flounder genes cannot get into tomatoes," said Dr. John Fagan, a Cornell-trained molecular biologist. In 1995, Fagan returned a $614,000 grant to the National Institutes of Health to raise awareness of the dangers of genetic engineering. "Yet, with genetic engineering, all the natural barriers disappear and the biotechnologist is limited only be his or her imagination."
In the laboratory, scientists can breed anything with anything. Let's say you wanted to make a tomato more resistant to freezing. Why not insert genes from a fish that can tolerate very cold temperatures, such as a flounder? Or, how about making a soybean that resists an herbicide by introducing genes from bacteria and viruses? All these and many more have been created in the laboratory. This fall, this genetically altered soybean will comprise 15% of the U.S. soybean harvest; last year, they made up just 2%. And next year, who knows?
In spite of trade pressures, the European Union has issued a warning that it will not accept unlabelled genetically engineered imports from the United States. Yet the plants keep growing. Outcry from Europe over these new foods may wake up the U.S. people, and they will pressure the government to require labeling, provide better safety tests, and educate the public more fairly on the risks.
If Nature has built-in intelligence, then boundaries between species exist for a reason. When humans start crossing these boundaries to create new life forms, they are working from a new level of nature, and the results could be disastrous.
Food allergies are potentially lethal side-effect of genetic engineering. Food allergies are usually reactions to proteins, which can result in mild to severe adverse reactions.
Some of the more common food allergies in the United States are allergies to milk, eggs, fish, tree nuts, wheat, soybeans and peanuts. Genetically engineered foods containing genes from such common food allergens are required by the government to be labeled. Not surprisingly, few or no such foods have been brought to market. Labels on any genetically engineered foods would alert and perhaps alarm the public. The companies that make genetically altered seed do not want this.
People with the less-common food allergies should completely avoid genetically engineered foods. For example, if you are allergic to bananas, and you unknowingly eat a vegetable that has been genetically engineered to contain banana genes, you could have an allergic reaction as if you had eaten a banana. The banana proteins would be in disguise.
The government regulates these foods basically as they regulate most foods. They are treated as food additives. There are a few regulations, particularly when a pesticide is genetically engineered to be inside the food plant. Most genetically engineered foods are treated as being "substantially equivalent" to foods derived from cross-breeding and other natural methods. Yet, if these foods were substantially equivalent, people with uncommon food allergies would not be at risk of reacting to these "disguised" foods. They are.
So where are the labels? A recent survey by Novartis, the largest genetic engineering company, indicated that 93% of Americans want genetically engineered foods labeled.
New allergies from genetically engineered foods could be on the horizon. By cutting and splicing genes (basically reprogramming the genes already present in a species), scientists can create brand-new proteins that people have never eaten before. By crossing the reproduction barrier and combining genes from several species, scientists introduce foods we do not normally eat, such as insects, bacteria, viruses, and flowers. When was the last time you ate a petunia? Were you allergic to it? It is questionable whether we should be eating such novel organisms that our bodies may not have been designed to process correctly.
Toxins are another real possibility with these brave new foods. In 1989, a genetically engineered batch of L-tryptophan, a food supplement, left 37 dead and 1,511 severely ill, some even permanently disabled, in the United States. The food supplement was made from bacteria that had been genetically altered to produce large amounts of L-tryptophan. A study revealed this food supplement was contaminated with a new, toxic protein not present in tryptophan produced by conventional methods.
Routine food-safety tests would not have prevented this tragedy. Only tests on humans would have detected these problems. However, these tests were not done, and government regulations still do not require them.
We need labels on genetically engineered foods. Without them, we do not know if we are following a certain diet, such as vegetarian or vegan or kosher. Without them, we cannot tell if a food contains a protein we know we are allergic to. Without them, we do not have a choice about participating in a grand feeding experiment. Without them, we cannot register moral objections to altering the code of life.
Unlike a car or a baby seat, altered genes cannot be recalled. Insects and winds cannot tell that plants have been genetically altered. They will spontaneously bring pollen from genetically engineered plants to related plants and weeds, and sometimes the altered gene will be accepted by the relatives. This is called genetic pollution, and it is the most irreversible effect of genetic engineering. Genetic pollution has already been proven in an experiment involving canola plants and their weedy relatives.
Beware of public relations efforts by the companies that develop, patent and market genetically engineered seeds, such as Monsanto, Novartis and Pioneer Hi-bred. Many of these companies have based their future on winning people over to the potential benefits of genetic engineering and lobbying the government to relax regulations. They are reaping huge profits, and have a lot of money at their disposal to hire top-notch public relations people, take out television and newspaper ads, "educate" farmers, and fund agricultural research at universities.
Think critically when seed companies tout genetic engineering as the solution to world hunger. Genetic engineering will perpetuate pesticide- and herbicide-intensive farming in third world counties, or introduce a new dependence on genetically altered seeds. These seed companies salivate over new markets. The real solution to hunger is sustainable, organic farming. Working in harmony with nature, such farming practices honor Nature's intelligence without the negative side effects of chemical poisoning and unpredictable genetic engineering.
Organic food may provide a safe haven for those who do not want to eat such foods. Most organic farmers find genetic engineering in violation of the basic tenets of organic and will not use it. Ronnie Cummins, a political consultant for the Pure Food Campaign, says we do not need genetic engineering. "We need organic food," Cummins said. "It tastes great, it's good for farm workers, it's good for the environment."
The National Organic Standards Board recommended to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that genetic engineering in all forms be kept out of the organic market. A decision from the USDA should appear in the Federal Register later this year.
Yet, many packaged organic foods contain non-organic ingredients. These are listed on the label without the word "organic" in front of them. Particularly avoid non-organic soy and corn products, which are in most processed foods: soybean oil, lecithin, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, corn starch, corn meal, corn oil. These items are more likely than other processed food ingredients to be genetically engineered.
However, no one really knows what to avoid if they do not want to eat such dangerous foods. Today, eating is a game of Russian Roulette. Shoppers, retailers, manufacturers, distributors and sometimes even farmers do not always know what is genetically engineered and what is genetically original. Eat with caution! And support initiatives to get these new foods labeled, so we all have a choice.
For more information on Genetically Engineered Foods:
The Alliance for Bio-Integriy is preparing a lawsuit that would force the government to label these foods, based on religious and moral freedom. Write to P.O. Box 2927, Iowa City, Iowa 52244-2927. Phone: (641) 472-5554. On the web: http://www.bio-integrity.org/
Mothers for Natural Law is heading the American Campaign to Ban Genetically Engineered Foods and the Consumer Right-to-know Initiative for Mandatory Labeling. Mothers for Natural Law, P.O. Box 1177, Fairfield, Iowa 52556. Phone: (641) 472-2809. On the web: http://www.safe-food.org/
Lee Leffler, "The Newsletter Gal" |
