Scientists Say 'No Consensus on GMO Food Safety'
Scientists Say ‘No Consensus on GMO Food Safety’
Kaye Spector |October 21, 2013
An international group of more than 90 scientists, academics and physicians released a statement today saying there is no scientific consensus on the safety of genetically modified (GM) foods and crops.
The statement was issued in response to recent claims from the GM industry and some scientists, journalists and commentators that there is a “scientific consensus” that genetically modified organisms (GMO) were generally found safe for human and animal consumption. The statement calls these claims misleading and says, “This claimed consensus on GMO safety does not exist.”
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Sigers of the statement include prominent and respected scientists, including Dr. Hans Herren, a former winner of the World Food Prize and this year’s Alternative Nobel Prize laureate, and Dr. Pushpa Bhargava, known as the father of modern biotechnology in India.
Signers of the statement are calling for the compliance to the precautionary approach to GM crops and foods internationally agreed upon in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and UN’s Codex Alimentarius.
ENSSER released the statement the week after the World Food Prize was awarded to two executives of the GM seed giants Monsanto and Syngenta, provoking outrage worldwide.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aminomethylphosphonic_acid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
[font color="purple"]Glyphosate[/font] has a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Toxicity Class of III (on a I to IV scale, where IV is least dangerous) for oral and inhalation exposure.[19] Thus, as with other herbicides, the EPA requires that products containing glyphosate carry a label that warns against oral intake, mandates the use of protective clothing, and instructs users not to re-enter treated fields for at least 4 hours.[19][47] Glyphosate does not bioaccumulate in animals; it is excreted in urine and faeces.[19] It breaks down variably quickly depending on the particular environment. Health, environmental and food chain effects from alteration of gut flora by wide use of glyphosate are largely unexplored.[48][49][50]
It does say Glyphosate does not "bioaccumulate in animals".. but it also says that "Health, environmental and food chain effects from alteration of gut flora by wide use of glyphosate are largely unexplored". That is what concerns me - It seems to me there has been not very much investigation of long term effects of eating GMOs.
I didn't look up 3-methylphosphinicopropionic acid.
I would think a more informative approach you might have taken would have been to refer to studies investigating the long term effects of ingesting GMOs.
Does eating GMOs make one a bit too prone to being snarky?... I wonder?
Glyphosate, a herbicide sold by Monsanto as Roundup, is NOT engineered into crop plants. It is applied during cultivation (which is why the authors referred to it as "GMO associated"
. What is engineered is glyphosate resistance so that herbicide can be applied for weed control without killing the crop. Serum glyphosate is the result of improper rinsing and other forms of simple mechanical contamination, not genetic engineering.
The Cry1ab protein is Bt, as you noted, and it IS engineered for expression in transgenic crops. However, as noted earlier, it is entirely nontoxic except to target organisms. It is safe and certified for organic produce.
While glyphosate exposure is not a good thing at all, it's important to note that you will NEVER accumulate glyphosate or its metabolites from transgenic crops themselves, because there aren't any that express the stuff. If they did, they'd die. The problem is bad weed management methods and post-harvest hygene, not GMOs.
Global climate change? We need more research.
The oceans are dying? We need more research.
Smoking causes cancer? We need more research.
Nuclear power is dangerous and highly toxic. We need more debate.
NSA unconstitutional surveillance overreach? We need more debate.
Hackable electronic voting machines? We don't need any research or debate.
Corporate controlled media? We don't need any research or debate.
The ACA is really landmark national healthcare legislation? We don't need any debate.
No. GMOs are not safe. They allow the farming industry to manufacture, sell and dump unprecedented millions tons more of pesticides and weed killers into the ecosystem. Not only does it represent yet another ecological time bomb, the pesticides are very difficult to remove from the surface of vegetables and fruit and will be going into our systems at unprecedented levels. These pesticides cause cancer and nerve degeneration.
This doesn't even address all the unknowns that remain about the safety of consuming these new super chimera foods that are somehow invulnerable to all these poisons.
Yeah. Just let the "authorities" continue to frame the narrative.
Hell. Maybe people really are just that stupid.
