Richard Beliveau, Ph.D. and Denis Gingras, Ph.D.
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 The real problem with gmos is environmental; its most important aspect concerns the extremely negative impact of gmos on the diversity of living plant species. This is a serious problem and we share the concerns of those who oppose gmos on this count. In our opinion, it is imperative that the efforts now deployed in the production of genetically modified organisms be limited to a strict minimum in order to avoid a potential ecological catastrophe.
Myth 3. Only organic fruits and vegetables offer real health benefits.
False. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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 Taking responsibility
After finding out about gmos, politicians, regulators, reporters, food companies, farmers, chefs, school administrators, and even consumers usually figure that someone else is taking the responsibility. This is the main reason why we still face this travesty. It is easy to assume that someone else is looking out for us or that corporations would not be so stupid as to risk our health and planet. It's easy to let the scientists deal with this. It is, after all, a complicated subject; it's their field and their products, not ours. |
KC Craichy
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 GMOS
Where do gmos (genetically modified, altered, and biotechnical designed foods) play into this picture? According to Nathan Batalion, between 1997 and 1999 gene-modified foods (GM) ingredients suddenly appeared in two-thirds of all U.S. processed foods.8 Between the years of 1997 and 2004, these foods increased 47-fold across the globe. Although there seems to be a downward trend in biotech crop production and FDA approvals, it is still a significant concern. Most soy, cotton, and canola are genetically modified, in addition to half of the corn produced. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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| Unfortunately, there are no special precautions for ingredients produced through gmos. And like GM crops, the safety testing does not adequately guard against unpre-dicted outcomes of the technology.
Case study: fish protein in ice cream
To improve the taste and texture of its lowfat ice cream, Unilever introduced GM ice-structuring protein (ISP), which lowers the temperature at which ice crystals grow. Although ISP is naturally found in an eel-like arctic fish called the ocean pout, isolating the protein from the fish is expensive. |
| Since the nos terminator was introduced as regulatory region in several other gmos, read-through products and RNA variants might be transcribed in these transgenic crops as well."74
—Andreas Rang, et al, European Food Research and Technology
1. A "stop signal" is placed after the transgene, telling the cell, "STOP TRANSCRIBING AT THIS POINT."
2. The stop is ignored in GM soy, resulting in longer than intended RNA.
3. It is transcribed from a combination of the transgene, an adjacent transgene fragment, and a mutated sequence of DNA.
4. |
| Instead: The selection process excluded persons openly expressing concern with GMOs; the selection process seated three pro-GMO activists, these three took the lead in composing three of the four main sections of the HC GMO Task Force Report; two task force members have direct financial ties to the GMO industry; the criterion for member selection has never been revealed even though numerous requests for this information have been made. |
| Numerous studies on gmos reveal unintended changes in nutrients, toxins, allergens, and small molecule products of metabolism.
2. These demonstrate the risks associated with unintended changes that occur due to genetic engineering.
3. Safety assessments are not adequate to guard against potential health risks associated with these changes.
GM crops have altered levels of nutrients and toxins
Previous pages in this section describe how the GM transformation process may alter the composition of GM crops. |
Mark Schapiro
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 Member states are required to include provisions in their national laws offering compensation, with funds generated by a "GMO tax," to farmers whose crops are "contaminated" by gene flow from gmos. Denmark has already implemented such a tax; other countries are in the process of devising schemes to ensure such protections. The European Union also requires what it calls "traceability" —each shipment of GMO food must have a clear paper trail, so if contamination or some other problem occurs, the source of it is clear. |
Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, ND, DACBN
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| While enhanced nutrients and built-in pest resistance may seem to be a step in the right direction, in actuality the foreseeable future for gmos is alarming. Scientists are bioengineering plants to manufacture pharmaceutical compounds (a technique known as "pharming"), trees which yield fruit and nuts much earlier in the season than they would naturally, plants that produce new kinds of plastics, and fish that reproduce more rapidly. Margaret Wertheim, in a 2002 article in LA Weekly, expressed fears that "Quietly and stealthily, our fields are being turned into industrial factories. |
Mark Schapiro
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| We need to talk about using gmos together to fight poverty and hunger.'" Scheele laughs at the recollection: "I never thought of myself as an intellectual before that moment! I come from an agricultural district in north Austria. I didn't read Karl Marx. I wasn't sure whether he was insulting intellectuals by calling me one, or trying to flatter me with something I never thought I was. ... I was thinking, 'Stop this bullshit!'"
Scheele didn't say that of course, but she did respond with its diplomatic equivalent: "You want to fight poverty? Why is your administration cutting foreign aid? |
| Scheele vividly recalled a meeting which highlighted the diametrically different approaches between the United States and Europe on gmos. She remembers the date precisely; it was March 23, 2003, she says, because it was three days after the launch of the U.S. invasion of Iraq (an event not fondly remembered in the chambers of the Parliament).
Scheele's light-filled office features a spectacular view of downtown Brussels, but it is not spacious; it can fit about five comfortably. She had to obtain extra chairs from colleagues down the hall to accommodate a U.S. |
| She was at the time the Socialist Party's ranking member on the Environment Committee, and one of the lead figures developing a policy that would replace the temporary moratorium with an approval process for gmos based on scientific review, as well as guidelines for labeling GMO products after their approval.
For the Bush administration and the biotech industry, Scheele was key to reopening Europe's lucrative market. |
| Testers of gmos are the flip side of the auctioneers; the presence of the former has contributed to the rise of the latter. Farmers are accustomed to dealing with the vagaries of the weather, of moisture levels, of pests and unforeseen diseases. Here on the docks, however, on the verge of determining what their previous seasons of labor has been worth, farmers now have one new variable with which to contend. An entirely new product line has been created by the biotech firm Strategic Diagnostics, Inc. to ensure that U.S. crops do not go where they are not wanted. |
| Karin Scheele is the Austrian member of the European Parliment who shepherded the EU's policy on gmos through the parliament. Central casting could not have invented a more perfect counterpart to Laura Krause in her fields. The two women actually resemble one another. Scheele dresses in down-to-earth pantsuits, her curly blond hair framing a broad face and mischievous blue eyes. She is the daughter of farmers and represents the district of Upper Austria, that country's agricultural mother lode, with abundant corn, dairy, and apple farms. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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| Eyewitness reports: Animals avoid gmos...........................................................................................58
1.20 A GM food supplement killed about 100 people and caused 5,000-10,000 to fall sick........................60
Section 2: Gene insertion disrupts the DNA.......................................................................................................63
2.1 Foreign genes disrupt the DNA at the insertion site.............................................................................64
2. |
Carlo Petrini
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 The system is wrong: gmos are the highest expression of a concept of agricultural production which no longer has any raison d'etre because it is unsustainable from every point of view.
Monoculture must be rejected. It is the embodiment of the impoverishment of biodiversity in the fields and soil. Extensive monocultures remove both the good weeds and the bad; in order to make room for themselves, they eliminate the flora and fauna native to the ecosystem into which they are introduced. |
KC Craichy
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| More and more Americans are demanding to know what foods contain gmos. An ABC news poll found that 92 percent of Americans want mandatory GMO labeling on foods.10 Many labels, especially in health food stores, are now making it a point to let us know that the foods we are purchasing have no genetically modified organisms in them.
EASY SOLUTIONS TO SAFER FOODS
¦ Eat only whole, natural organic foods. |
Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
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 This the most significant piece of data on the health dangers of gmos - and an ominous warning.
Public relations hacks for GE foods talk about the importance of "feeding the worlds hungry." This is a cruel joke. The GE crops are primarily intended as feed for livestock, not to provide nutrition to people. Contrary to corporate public relations spiels about producing more per acre, genetically modified soybeans, for example, actually produce approximately 4 percent less than conventional varieties, according to the research of agronomy professor Ed Oplinger at the University of Wisconsin. |
| The dangers of GE foods - also known as gmos, genetically modified organisms - are multiple.
Once a gene is inserted into an organism, it can cause unanticipated side effects. Mutations and side effects can cause GE foods to contain toxins and allergens, and to be reduced in nutritional value.
GE foods have potential to damage the ecosystem, harm wildlife, and change the natural habitat. Our plant and animal species have evolved over millions of years, and introducing genetically engineered species upsets the delicate balance of the ecology.
Gene pollution may never be able to be cleaned up. |
| Authentic Food
Going beyond the focus of getting chemicals and gmos out of our food, authentic food production focuses on enhancing the biological quality of food. So we are talking about a new set of concepts that do not dictate what one shouldn't do in order to be considered "organic." Authentic food has to do with what we can do to add energy to food and soil, by Love and devotion in its production. This allows us to absorb the highest energy from our food, which is the main way we derive energy from the planet. Authentic food lifts food to a new level and quality. |
| Live foods are raw and uncooked foods, naturally fermented foods such as sauerkraut and miso, and dehydrated foods, in which the food temperature does not exceed 118°E They are foods that have their natural enzymes intact and have not been processed by irradiation, pesticide use, microwave, artificial additives, gmos (genetically modified organ-ics), or cooking (heated above 118°F through boiling, baking, frying, broiling, toasting, etc.). |
Carlo Petrini
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| The level of pollution, along with the indiscriminate use of gmos and of agricultural practices so noxious that they are banned in every other part of the world, show an aspect of Chinese development that few seem to take into consideration—the same problems that we used to have in the West, except that in China they are happening now and far more quickly. |
| Where is the need for inventing gmos? Why do we persist in exceeding the limits of the earth? All we achieve by this is the creation of new limits, until it is impossible to rectify the situation. As the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote:
Man, monotonous universe, thinks he is increasing his goods, but the only numberless things produced by his frantic hands are limits
Managing limits is the first step toward sustainability, and not just in an environmental sense. But in order to achieve this, we must renounce economic growth as the sole criterion of human progress. |
| There can be no doubt that gmos, even leaving aside all ethical, health-related, or ecological considerations, are the most underhanded and powerful weapon in a commercial strategy aiming to dominate the entire productive process, starting with the first principle of life itself: the seed.
The reduction in biodiversity thus has a strategic importance in the commercial plans of the multinationals, and it is not just biodiversity, or the raw materials, that are lost; along with them are lost the related knowledge, techniques, and economies. The loss goes much further than simple biology. |
| Some kinds of GMO (especially corn) are highly contaminant of conventional crops: they invade other fields and spread throughout the environment. gmos are the "perfect" product of the agricultural industry, the pinnacle reached in the quest for the "perfect variety": more resistant, more productive, the ideal monoculture. |
Richard Beliveau, Ph.D. and Denis Gingras, Ph.D.
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| This is a serious problem and we share the concerns of those who oppose gmos on this count. In our opinion, it is imperative that the efforts now deployed in the production of genetically modified organisms be limited to a strict minimum in order to avoid a potential ecological catastrophe.
Myth 3. Only organic fruits and vegetables offer real health benefits.
False. Every study that succeeded in establishing the anti-cancer potential of fruits and vegetables focused on the consumption of foods cultivated in "traditional" ways. |
Carlo Petrini
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| And now we have gmos, the culmination of this "unnatural" evolution. Twelve thousand years of gradual selection made by the farmers have been wiped out in a mere fifty years in the pursuit of commercial targets.
This trade in seeds gives rise to absurd situations all over the world. In Saskatchewan, Canada, for example, the farmer Percy Schmeiser has been engaged for the past ten years in a long and exhausting legal battle against the multinational Monsanto, which accused him of illegally taking some of their genetically modified seeds. |
Jeremy P. Tarcher
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 Consumers also called on Starbucks to ensure that none of its products contain gmos or are grown under terms unfair to farmers. After protests and news conferences and letters to the company, Starbucks finally agreed to serve fair-trade coffee, but that's it—so far.
Besides Starbucks, TransFair USA has signed certification contracts with 160 companies, who are now selling fair-trade-certified coffee in more than 12,500 cafes and supermarkets—up from several hundred a few years ago. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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 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? |
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