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GM
corn not approved for human consumption is known to have contaminated
crops in the US and Mexico.
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President
Bush thinks all nations, especially those in Africa, should warmly embrace
"bio-crops" produced by the United States. He says that their refusal
to accept genetically engineered crops is not scientific, but rather a fear of
economic loss if the European Union continues to reject genetically engineered
foods. Economic loss is a real concern, but a closer look at the reasons given
by other nations reveals widely held, scientifically based concerns about
potential health impacts as well.
More
Safety Testing Needed
People
around the world find it odd that U.S. government officials are saying
engineered foods are safe, when U.S. scientific bodies like the National Academy
of Sciences and a scientific advisory panel serving the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) are calling for more safety testing.
The panel wrote that the
bacterial toxin placed in most forms
of engineered corn may be a human allergen. Meanwhile, dozens of severe allergic
reactions to corn products in the United States were reported in 2000, but
according to EPA advisors, not adequately investigated.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also failed to conduct its own
safety tests of engineered foods. The agency merely asks biotech companies to
voluntarily submit data from their own studies, a form of corporate
self-policing that is not universally accepted. According to the National
Academy of Sciences, the transparency of data provided by industry is woefully
inadequate. Until the FDA requires independent safety testing, people all over
the world will remain justifiably concerned about engineered foods. They will
also be skeptical as long as the biotech crop producers are Monsanto, Dupont and
others that have polluted the planet with the most toxic chemicals ever
generated -- DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange, to name a few.
Crop
Contamination Documented
Once
released, even in small quantities, widespread contamination by engineered crops
can occur, as documented in both the United States and Mexico. In 2000, StarLink
corn, an engineered variety not approved for human consumption due to the
potential to cause life-threatening allergic reactions, contaminated America's
food supply. Just 0.5 percent of the U.S. cornfields were planted with StarLink,
yet an estimated 10 percent of the entire harvest was contaminated.
Real life, not imagined, concerns about remnants of StarLink arose from a
finding in June 2002 by a citizens' group in Bolivia. The group discovered food
aid sent by the U.S. Agency for International Development contaminated with
StarLink engineered corn. More recently, Japanese importers reported that the
corn had contaminated an American grain shipment. This undesirable engineered
crop persists despite a ban of its planting in Fall 2000, and a declaration by
the EPA in July 2001 that no level of StarLink could be determined safe for
human consumption.
The appearance of genetically engineered corn in remote regions of Mexico, which
has banned its cultivation to avoid polluting the origin of corn, also shows how
easily engineered traits can move and multiply.
The
source is thought by some scientists to be American imports for animal feed or
food processing inadvertently planted or spilled during transport.
The
Right to Choose
The
Bush administration argues that any health or environmental concerns held by
people in hungry nations are overshadowed by a shortage of non-engineered corn
to feed those who seek it. On the contrary, there are millions of bushels of
non-engineered corn on commercial markets today in the United States and abroad.
For the past two and a half years, major taco and tortilla producers in the
United States successfully substituted large quantities of conventional white
and yellow corn for the engineered corn they had been using before StarLink
contamination occurred. Additionally, South Africa, Japan, Holland, Norway and
the European Commission were among numerous donors providing huge amounts of
conventional corn over the last year to Zambia and other southern African
nations in need of food aid.
Given the alternatives available to address famine and the very legitimate
concerns about potential health and environmental impacts, a decision to reject
genetically engineered food should be respected. After all, according to
numerous public opinion polls and a recent United States Department of
Agriculture survey of consumer
attitudes, if given the option, the majority of Americans would choose
conventional food over genetically engineered food as well.
**
This article is published with the permission of Friends
of the Earth International.
Nnimmo
Bassey is Executive Director of Friends of the Earth Nigeria, while Lawrence
Bohlen is Director of the Health and Environment Programs, Friends of the
Earth, U.S.
