Mon 10 Nov 2008
A response to common misconceptions of GE foods
Posted by Nigel Tunnacliffe under Food , Genetic engineering
Image credit: Greenpeace
A blogger recently commented on a post from March, and while I replied to the comment, I don’t think that enough people are going catch my response. To bring this discussion forward, I will respond to Karl from Inoculated Mind here.
Karl: “The sugar that results from the GE sugar beets is identical to the sugar from non-GE beets. You’re giving yourself unnecessary food-fear hurdles.
Do you think that mixing DNA from different species is unnatural? Would it interest you to learn that Sugar Cane is a mixture of two different grass species, a polyploid? A whole host of other crops that we eat are polyploid, and have had their genetics modified drastically.”
Nigel: You have raised the most common misconceptions from the pro-GE community, which makes my response easy. First of all, it is impossible that sugar from GE beets would be identical to sugar from non-GE beets. if that were the case, one would not be able to design a test that would identify GE sugar. GE crops have novel DNA, and novel proteins. No tests are done to identify all of the novel proteins, and adding these types of proteins into people’s diets could cause serious issues if they turn out to be allergic.
Second of all, conventional breeding and even hybrid breeding combine genetic material from plants that are in the same family or at least the same species. Genetic engineering can introduce genetic material from plants/animals/microbes/fungi that are in a different kingdom. It has been demonstrated that a genetic code will produce a different protein if it is in bacteria or in a plant, yet test are not done to determine the effects of this new protein on humans, or even animals. The genes that have been introduced into sugar beets are taken from the only bacteria able to survive in the tailings of a Monsanto herbicide factory.
Finally, it should not be for you to say that I should eat genetically engineered food. That should be my decision. Smoking was not considered unhealthy in the thirties and fourties, but people still had the choice as to whether they would smoke. We now know that smoking is carcinogenic. Furthermore, we now know that second-hand smoke is carcinogenic, so even non-smokers can get smoking related diseases. There is no conclusive evidence that genetically engineered foods are carcinogenic, yet there is also no conclusive evidence that genetically engineered foods are not carcinogenic. I would rather not take the chance. If we find out thirty years from now that GMOs are cancer-causing, I think everyone would rather have stayed away from them.
I always welcome comments from the pro-GE and the anti-GE communities. Please feel free to post a response.
Further reading:
Genetically Engineered Food May Cause Rising Food Allergies
50 Harmful Effects of Genetically Engineered Food
Hazards of Genetically Engineered Food: Why We Need a Global Moratorium
November 13th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
It is funny you mention the logic about how many people used to smoke before they knew it was unhealthy and what we know now. That is what I thought about with GE.
I am frugal with my shopping and I struggle sometimes buying the organic meat and vegetables at the store. But then, I think, how much money would I be saving if I buy the nonorganic and I get cancer or die young from something I could have prevented getting if I ate organic foods…Would that additional cost matter then?
That is my take. We know that before GE, our food did not cause cancer…what about now?
Thank you for the great post!
November 26th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I am glad you raised the issue of cost, Kate. Unfortunately, unhealthy food is subsidised in North America though farm subsidies for industrial agriculture, and with reduced crop insurance for growers of GE crops. It means that those of us who want to protect our bodies and the environment by eating organic have to pay a premium. However, one cannot put a price on good health, and it will always be worth it to me to spend a little more to eat healthy food.
December 14th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I don’t want to support agribusiness so i eat organic as much as i can afford.
It’s just a matter of awareness. The more you learn who’s behind it and what they’re up to, the more you revolt. lol
December 29th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
GMO’s are safe some just think there unetnical so just say if you dont think its right not that its unsafe
December 30th, 2008 at 10:39 am
You are right in a way, think, because GE foods have not been proven to be unsafe. There is strong and mounting evidence that it is unsafe, but no solid proof. Recently and Austrian government study found that GE corn significantly reduced fertility rates of mice. That is extremely concerning, especially given that we have been seeing reduced fertility rates in humans in the past ten years. However, I believe that we have the fundamental right to choose what we eat, and I do not want to eat food that is the product of a technology that hasn’t been proven safe. There is currently no law requiring GE foods to be labeled in North America (Europe countries, Australia, China and many other countries have such laws), and I believe that is not right.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Hi Nigel, sorry I’ve been really busy lately, and haven’t been able to continue our conversation until now.
The safety of GE foods is well-established. I’d like to point you toward several good resources. The first is produced by the National Academies Press, and is a book called Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods. The whole thing has a lot of good information, and might clear up a few misconceptions you might have about the process. I’d like to direct your attention to chapter 3: Unintended effects of breeding:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10977&page=39
There’s a lot of information in there about the relative risks involved in plant breeding and genetic engineering. They summarized the relative risks on page 64:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10977&page=64
Take a look at the chart on that page displaying the continuum of “risks of unintended consequences.” That’s not risk in terms of safety per se, but things happening that were unexpected, good or bad. Notice that some methods of genetic engineering are considered to be far less risky than many accepted methods of plant breeding including crossing with wild relatives, variation from tissue culture (somatoclonal variation), and mutagenesis is way at the top in terms of risk!
Also, you could read “Safety of Genetically Engineered Food” by Dr. Carl Winter:
http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8180.pdf
I interviewed him about a year and a half ago on my radio show, and he’s got some funny food safety music, too, look him up!
Now for the studies. You claimed that evidence is mounting that GE crops are unsafe. I encourage you to do a little more research on the Austrian study. The first thing you might notice is that it was not peer-reviewed. This is a basic standard for scientific research to help ensure quality of the data and the conclusions drawn from them. Peer review would have caught the fact that 8% of the control mice were dying, which is eight times what should have occurred for a properly conducted study. In other words, the mice were all living in poor conditions. I worked in a mouse lab for almost 2 years, and no matter how many times I forgot or was late in changing the mouse cages I hardly ever lost a mouse. How do you lose almost a tenth of your mice from the get-go? If you read the study, you might also notice that the mice fed the GE food had a better mortality rate than the control mice in the first few generations. Does that mean that the GE food is better for you in the first couple generations of eating it? No. You can’t draw those kinds of conclusions from a study that wasn’t conducted properly enough to pass peer review. You might notice that there are a great many ’studies’ that some out attesting that GE crops are unsafe, but were never subjected to the standard scientific process of review by experts in the field. We call it “Science by Press Release.”
Now for the studies that address the safety of GE crops. I couldn’t find you a single study. So here’s over two hundred:
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2007/06/150-published-safety-assessments-on-gm.html
These have been compiled by David Tribe. I submitted it back in Decmeber in a comment but I guess it didn’t go through.
There is also no evidence that Kiwifruits are not carcinogenic. But there’s also no reason to expect that they are, the same with GE foods.
Inoculated Minds last blog post..Human-Chimp Hybrids?
January 8th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Thanks for keeping the conversation alive, Karl. I will take some time to read over some of the stuff from GMO Pundit, but would you mind posting what you believe is the one most conclusive, independently funded, peer reviewed study you know of for the readers who are not willing to put in the time and read all 230.
I should also note how meaningless the picture on page 64 is. There are no figures or data, it is just some abstract image showing someones opinion.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Nigel, one thing to keep in mind about these studies is that you cannot take one individual study to represent the whole of genetic engineering. I could pick one out for you, but that applies for that crop, the trait introduced, etc. The reason why I mention this is that there is a tendency in the anti-GE crowd to treat every GE crop the same. This is predicated on the false belief that the gene insertion process itself causes some wild change in all GE crops. I suppose if I knew a bit more precisely what you were looking for I could find one that more meets your criteria. Do you want a feeding study conducted on mice, or how about something more on the theoretical side involving gene expression or metabolomics?
The image on page 64 is not just “someone’s opinion”, it reflects the educated opinion of a committee of experts that wrote the report, and is a summary of their analysis of risk. You should really read the whole chapter because they back up the comparisons. Mutagenesis is widely known in the field to be the most unpredictable and risky form of genetic modification - and is entirely unregulated and (almost) no one pushes to have the products of straight-up mutagenesis labeled. The chapter is fully referenced - this isn’t shooting from the hip.
Besides, if you play the post-modernist “just an opinion” game then you get nowhere. The views of Jeffrey Smith just become “someone’s opinion” and you have no basis for preferring one opinion over another. Here’s a hint: Smith has no background in science, does not understand the scientific method, and continues to recycle long-since-disproven claims.
What standard are we to use to choose one opinion over another, is it the educational background or expertise of the opinion-writer? No, the standard I propose is the evidence backing up one side over another. Find me just one peer-reviewed study that has found a single GE crop dangerous to your health.
Inoculated Minds last blog post..Human-Chimp Hybrids?
January 30th, 2009 at 7:50 am
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March 16th, 2009 at 2:41 am
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June 30th, 2009 at 9:04 am
my God, i thought you were going to chip in with some decisive insght at the end there, not leave it with
September 9th, 2009 at 7:57 am
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September 10th, 2009 at 8:10 am
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October 11th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
the main problem with the ge food in my point of view is that this kind of crops are exterminating the “natural”ones. No farmer whant to plaint the normal one, because the profit from the ge is higher. for exemple. in south america there was about 30000 sort of mais. now the farmers are planting only 5.