Ron Garner
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 In 2000, 25% of the U.S. corn crop and 55% of the soybean crop were of genetically modified varieties.22 A livestock example is pigs that are being injected with genetically engineered growth hormones to make them grow faster and 40% larger.
Genetically altered produce has now found its way into many foods in our stores. Do you know what you are eating? Do you know whether the tomato has fish genes, or your corn has genes from bacteria? Is this a problem?
Often, problems with this kind of experimenting can be observed in nature first. |
Michael T. Murray
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 American corn crop in 2000.
The consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has played the greatest role in the rise of added sweeteners in the American diet. Studies
Table J.3. Ranking the Non-sugar Sweeteners
RECOMMENDED
SWEETENER OTHER NAMES USE LEVEL QUICK COMMENTS
Sweet Fiber
Stevia
Sweet leaf
Tagatose
Liberal An all-natural combination of inulin, tagatose, xylitol, and natural flavor. One teaspoon of Sweet Fiber is as sweet as 1 teaspoon of sucrose (table sugar) without the calories, but with the health benefits of dietary fiber and tagatose. |
Peter Pringle
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 In 1970, 15 percent of the U.S. corn crop was lost to southern corn leaf blight at a cost of $ 1 billion. In some states half of the corn crop withered in the field. One variety used in 85 percent of the hybrid corn plants was implicated. Corn plants across the country had become "as alike as identical twins," the National Academy of Sciences reported. "Whatever made one plant susceptible made them all susceptible." The academy concluded ominously that U.S. agriculture was "impressively uniform genetically and impressively vulnerable."13
But there was another side to the hybrid story. |
by Michael Murray, N.D. and Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.
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| American corn crop. The consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has played the largest role in the increase of added sweeteners in the American diet. Food consumption studies have found that the recent increases in energy intake coincide with increased consumption of soft drinks.
Simple Carbohydrates
Simple sugars are either monosaccharides composed of one sugar molecule or disaccharides composed of two sugar molecules. The principal monosaccharides that occur in foods are glucose and fructose. |
Peter Pringle
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| In America 35 percent of the corn crop and 75 percent of the soybean crop was GM, but worldwide, the figures dropped dramatically—to 36 percent of soybeans, and 7 percent of corn. The European market remained bleak. Consumer opposition was still high; the EU was about to introduce strict labeling rules for GM foods. The outcome of the British farm-scale trials of GM crops—the most comprehensive tests so far of the effects of these crops on the environment—was expected in the summer of 2003. |
Dr Bernard Jenson and Mark Anderson
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 THE CARCINOGENIC corn crop OF 1988
The severe summer drought of 1988 has underscored the man-made weakness in our American soils caused by dependence on artificial chemicals. The smallest corn harvest since 1970 was also the largest toxic harvest of the cancer-causing, fungus-produced aflatoxin. The fungus is called Aspergillus fla-vus. Aflatoxin is so poisonous, it is reported to be 100 times more capable of causing a cancer than the notorious industrial pollutant PCB. The inferior corn crop was unable to resist this fungus-based carcinogen. |
Peter Pringle
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| The country's corn crop would then be contaminated in European eyes, and Zambian exports might suffer—even though the exports were mainly horticultural and did not include corn.
The fourth reason was that Zambia, again like most African nations, still lacked a system of internal regulations for monitoring and testing GM crops and products. For several years, the developing countries had sought a way of regulating the import and cultivation of GM crops and foods. In 2000 they had succeeded, against U.S. |
| In some states half of the corn crop withered in the field. One variety used in 85 percent of the hybrid corn plants was implicated. Corn plants across the country had become "as alike as identical twins," the National Academy of Sciences reported. "Whatever made one plant susceptible made them all susceptible." The academy concluded ominously that U.S. agriculture was "impressively uniform genetically and impressively vulnerable."13
But there was another side to the hybrid story. |
| At the time twenty million acres of American farmland, representing a quarter of the U.S. corn crop, had been planted with seeds that included a toxin-producing gene from the common soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringien-sis or Bt. The insect-poisoning power of Bt had been known for over a century; the first commercial spray was developed in Europe during World War II. Half a century later there were 182 Bt products registered by the EPA.1
Two other big crops—cotton and potatoes—had also been fitted out with the Bt gene. |
David Heber, M.D., Ph.D.
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 In 1970, 15 percent of the U.S. corn crop was destroyed by a blight that swept through the corn belt.
The science and business of agriculture has evolved to incorporate modern industrial technologies such as automated harvesting, which works better in large, uniform fields where the plants all look alike. Agricultural science has also continued to seek out plants that grow faster, resist pests, and yield more per acre. |
Committee on Comparative Toxicity of Naturally Occurring Carcinogens
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 If a particular corn crop is stressed, for example, by drought or insect attack, it is susceptible to A. flavus growth and hence anatoxin contamination (U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA], Compliance Program Guidance Manual 7106.10). Available data from various parts of the world suggest that the median levels of anatoxins in corn range from <0.1 to 80 ng/kg, and that in groundnuts (peanuts) the median levels are always below 26 ng/kg (IARC 1993). |
John Robbins
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 U.S. corn crop contain genes from viruses and petunias.
It is this crossing of, and violation of, Nature's species barriers that makes the process unprecedented and uniquely powerful. It is also, however, what makes it uniquely dangerous.
Nature has not made it easy to cross species boundaries. Dogs cannot breed with cats, much less fish with tomatoes. But genetic engineering overcomes the formidable barriers that Nature has erected, and that have almost never before in billions of years of life on Earth been transgressed, by creating "vectors. |
| By 2000, more than half of the American soybean and cotton crops and one-third of the corn crop were genetically engineered. By then, too, much of the Canadian canola (rapeseed) crop was also transgenic.4'
For this rapid change to have occurred with a minimum of resistance from consumers, the FDA had to insist that genetically engineered foods not be labeled. It could not have happened if there had been labeling. Polls have consistently found that 80 to 95 percent of the American public wants genetically engineered food to be labeled.44
American consumers also overwhelming!} |
Dr Bernard Jenson and Mark Anderson
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| The United States Midwest produces about a third of the world's corn crop and it is the most important commodity produced in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. As much as 36 percent of the tested corn in some Midwestern states shows positive for aflatoxin. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of milk have had to be destroyed from Texas to Wisconsin, from Minnesota to Florida. Japan and the Soviet Union are rejecting United States corn products and bulk shipment, unless it is certified to be exclusively 1987 harvest. Corn-laden ships in New Orleans have been offloaded. |
| To dilute corn, brokers are mixing the previous year's stored corn crop with the unfit harvest of 1988. In response to this toxic problem, the FDA is protecting the farmers by raising the permissible level of aflatoxin contamination on corn in interstate commerce by 1,500 percent! Is our nation's "bread basket" becoming a "dead basket"? In the past, this corn would have been condemned as "unfit for human or animal consumption" and destroyed. Asians and Africans exposed to aflatoxin have the world's highest rate of liver cancer. |
| The front page headline declared: "Spreading Poison; Fungus in corn crop, A Potent Carcinogen, Invades Food Supplies; Regulators Fail to Stop Sales of Last Fall's Harvest Laden With Aflatoxin." The first sentence could well serve as a foundation for an overhaul of the agricultural practices of our country: "OQUAWKA, ILL.— From the corn fields that stretch for hundreds of miles around this Mississippi (river) town, one of the most potent cancer-causing agents known to science is coursing into the nation's food supply. |
John Robbins
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| U.S. corn crop are genetically engineered.'- The second is that soy and corn are widely disseminated in processed foods. (Soy oil accounts for 80 percent of the vegetable oil consumed in the United States," and various forms of corn syrup are the most widely used sweeteners.) And the third reason is that genetically altered foods are not labeled in the United States, so consumers have been eating increasing amounts of genetically engineered ingredients without even knowing it.
If salt is added to a bag of corn chips, for example, there must be a label to disclose that salt has been added. |
D. Lindsey Berkson
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 By 1988, 96 percent of the annual corn crop (grown on 65 million acres of land in the United States) was sprayed. Atrazine is the best-selling pesticide in the nation (68-73 million pounds in 1995) and accounts for one-quarter of Ciba-Geigy's crop chemical business.
Atrazine eventually gets into ground water and mingles with drinking water. The U.S. Geological Survey found atrazine in 990 out of 1,604 water samples in midwestern streams, rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers from 1989 to 1994. Even rainwater contained atrazine. |
the Editors of FC&A Medical Publishing
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 Other experts argue that almost half the soybean crop and about one-fourth of the corn crop now consists of genetically modified plants. And people have been eating these foods for some time with no ill effects.
The debate over the safety of what some call "Frankenfoods" will undoubtedly continue, with many demanding laws to ban or regulate GM foods. If you're concerned, choose products with the label "GMO-free" whenever possible.
New USPA labeling defines organic
The label says "organic," but does that mean it's healthy? |
Peter Pringle
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| University of California at Berkeley reported that the genetic purity of the treasured native criollo corn had been contaminated by alien genes from transgenic varieties grown in the United States. The Mexican government's environment ministry declared the contamination to be "the world's worst case of contamination" of traditional farmer varieties by genetically modified crops.1
Environmental groups labeled the new research evidence of the nightmare of genetic engineering—the loss of ancient gene pools that provide breeders with genetic insurance against plagues and pests. |
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