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Genetically Modified Foods Hide Health Risks; Live with Peace of Mind by Relying on Yourself

General News By Emily Carter 0 views

Seeds of Deception, an important work exposing the truth about genetically modified food (GMO), has already gone into a third printing just one month after its publication in Taiwan, showing how much the public cares about the GMO food issue. The author, Jeffrey M. Smith, came to Taiwan and held book events in Taipei and Hsinchu on the 8th, 9th and 10th respectively. On the afternoon of the 8th, a launch event for Seeds of Deception was held at the Eslite Xinyi Store in Taipei, where he talked with scholars and experts who have long followed the GMO issue in Taiwan: Professor Guo Huaren of the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University, Chairwoman Huang Shude of the Homemakers United Foundation Cooperative, Associate Professor Hong Tingxuan of the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at National Taiwan University, and Wu Dongjie of the Green Front Association, sharing how to choose non-GMO food and protect one's own rights.

The book exposes how multinational seed companies led by Monsanto, in order to develop decisions that serve corporate interests, collude with government agencies and domesticate scientists to serve them. In order to control the world's seed supply, Monsanto dreams of making 90% of the world GMO seeds, and through control of GMO seeds, controlling the whole world. Under these circumstances, the GMO issue has also become an unspeakable secret.

Awareness shapes action

The author Jeffrey M. Smith is also the executive director of the nonprofit organization the Institute for Responsible Technology. He said that before speaking in the United States, he usually first asks the audience whether they try to avoid eating GMO food, and asks again afterward, finding that once people understand the problems with GMO, most choose not to eat it.

The first chapter of Seeds of Deception explains that after Arpad Pusztai's gag order was lifted, people's perception of GMO food changed. In a designed safe testing model, even a lectin that was harmless to white mice, when inserted into potatoes, produced a protein harmful to white mice.

Pusztai merely pointed out this phenomenon and argued that the safety of GMO crops should be tested further, yet for this he was vilified by the government and society. However, after the facts were exposed through extensive media reporting, the public woke up and took action, leading companies including Unilever, McDonald's, Burger King and Nestle to state that they would not sell GMO food.

GMO health risks surface

What the United States poured into the world with all its strength through the bureaucratic system was not only cheap beef; even earlier it had already pushed GMO crops onto the whole world. Smith pointed out that more and more evidence shows that GMO (Genetically modified organism) is not as harmless as the biotech industry claims. Take Bt corn, in which each corn plant produces its own toxic protein: both the U.S. government and the companies that developed it said Bt would not enter the human body.

Yet not only did a 2011 Canadian experiment find Bt toxin in the blood of women and newborns, a 2012 study also pointed out that Bt toxin damages human cells.

Bt was originally used to destroy the gut of the corn borer, causing the worm to die from a ruptured intestine. If the Bt gene were cloned into the human body, Smith describes it as "they may turn the bacteria in our intestines into pesticide factories," and this research is the only study of humans eating GMO food, proving that gene fragments can transfer into the human intestine and continue to act.

Russian scientists fed female rats the same GMO soy imported into Taiwan and found that the newborn rats were noticeably smaller. When hamsters were fed GMO soy, by the second and third generations deaths increased 4-5 times, the third generation had no reproductive capacity, and the hamsters grew hair on their mouths.

When GMO was first introduced to the United States, the rate of chronic disease there was 7%, and nine years later it rose to 13%. To this day there is still no monitoring study of GMO food diets, and people merely believe what the GMO food development companies say, that there is no problem. In May 2009, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine asked doctors to prescribe non-GMO food to patients, because GMO food can trigger serious health risks.

GMO food testing ignores public welfare

An internal statement by the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) dated May 29, 1992 shows that the United States held that GMO did not require strict testing and experiments, yet FDA scientists had already raised warnings, including risks that GMO food causes allergies, increases toxicity, new types of diseases and nutritional problems; the food chemistry and technology department also mentioned 4 potential dangers, including increasing the concentration of known naturally occurring toxins, producing previously unknown new toxins, increasing the accumulation of environmental toxins (such as pesticides or heavy metals) and abnormally increasing nutrient content, and they recommended that every GMO food should be tested before going on the market.

These scientific opinions were all ignored, because corporations permeate the system to carry out decisions favorable to them. The figure Smith cites is Michael Taylor, who served as a Monsanto lawyer and vice president and is now the most influential official in U.S. food safety decision-making.

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Promoting GMO food labeling

Smith pointed out that with independent research scientists all being suppressed, and the companies paying for the studies all hoping the experimental conclusions will favor them, the only change depends on consumers waking up. In addition to continuing to promote the consumer movement, the Institute for Responsible Technology not only sees a rapidly growing number of manufacturers voluntarily labeling GMO food, but also provides a non-GMO food shopping guide, downloadable through its website and iPhone. In the United States there has recently been a series of petition campaigns demanding that mandatory labeling of GMO food be written into law.

A reader asked what to do, since the people of Taiwan still feel nothing about the ubiquity of GMO food? Smith said that as long as the population refusing GMO reaches 5%, it can shake the food supply chain, and once suppliers see there is no commercial interest they will give up GMO food. Although 91% of people in the United States support GMO food labeling and more than 50% say they will avoid GMO food once they know it is labeled, those who actively avoid GMO are still a small minority.

Associate Professor Hong Tingxuan of the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at National Taiwan University believes that GMO food relies on the government to gatekeep, and GMO policy must also be clear, but at the very least it should be clearly labeled.

Taiwan has no reason to eat GMO food

In Taiwan, besides imported soybeans and corn containing GMO traits, there is in fact a homemade GMO papaya circulating on the market from south to north. Although this GMO papaya that escaped from the laboratory has passed field trials by the Council of Agriculture, it has not passed review by the Department of Health. Associate Professor Hong Tingxuan of the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at National Taiwan University said that unless the food problem has already become overwhelming, Taiwan has no reason to eat GMO crops.

Taiwan's technology is now mature, and scientists can all do genetic modification, with the most active GMO research being on cucurbits. GMO papaya is meant to resist papaya ringspot virus; the current variety uses a reverse cloning method that inserts a virus to stimulate its antiviral ability. It is slightly safer than forward insertion, but it is still horizontal cloning and the risk still exists. Hong Tingxuan said that although disease resistance is a strong specific remedy, it is not a panacea, and now there is news that papaya is diseased again.

Hong Tingxuan explained that GMO crops mainly have three purposes: one is trait improvement, making crops taste better and improving color, aroma and flavor; another is resistance to viruses and pests; and another is resistance to herbicides. He described the principle of herbicide resistance as "laziness": farmers first spray herbicide to prepare the field after tilling, then buy seed from the same company to sow, letting companies like Monsanto monopolize, because ordinary seed also cannot resist herbicides.

Hong Tingxuan said that humans insert genes that should not be transferred into crop seeds, not plant genes into plants, but horizontal transfer of bacterial or animal genes into plants, and this creates risks to the human body and the environment. He said that humans playing the role of God is really very dangerous. And these GMO crops may cause genetic contamination in the wild, so that wild flowers and wild grasses may all contain genes that should not exist.

GMO crops have changed the habits of cultivation, and farmers have become very dependent on GMO seeds. Once GMO papaya is approved for market, it may change the structure of the papaya industry, and will also make papaya absent from precision agriculture. Hong Tingxuan said that the papaya grown by Taiwan's papaya masters is so sweet that it must be sold with bottled water, showing how skilled the technique is. Once GMO papaya goes on the market, anyone can grow papaya, and these skills will surely decline. And unless it is labeled as GMO papaya, the public has no way to tell.

"What Taiwan should develop is sustainable agriculture." Hong Tingxuan said that for Taiwanese people to eat GMO crops is as unreasonable as eating leanness-enhancing drugs. He does not oppose laboratory research on GMO crops, but it does not have to be produced; research and development should be separated from production. Taiwan could even make non-GMO food a tourism highlight, with tourists coming to Taiwan to eat non-GMO crops.

When a reader asked how to view GMO crops that resist drought and cold damage, Hong Tingxuan frankly pointed out that many crops already have drought-resistance genes themselves, and after genetic modification they are not necessarily more drought-resistant than traditional breeding, and they are more expensive, with risks. Some crops have these traits, but Monsanto is unwilling to emphasize it. There is not yet any GMO crop on the market that resists cold damage or increases nutrition.

Traits such as disease resistance, cold resistance and drought resistance can actually all be achieved through traditional breeding, but it takes a relatively long time. Hong Tingxuan lamented the decline of traditional breeding talent, saying that it is now not easy for traditional breeders to get funding.

Don't plant, don't buy, don't eat, oppose GMO

Huang Shude, chairwoman of the board of the Homemakers United Foundation Cooperative, said that Taiwan's dependence on soy products is higher than that of the United States, and vegetarians as well as children allergic to milk must rely on soy products such as soy milk. Although Taiwan has had labeling regulations since 2003, there has not been enough monitoring.

She reminded consumers that when buying tofu, soy milk, dried tofu and popcorn they should first check the label. Soy sauce and soybean salad oil are not required by law to be labeled, but recent research has also found genes detected in salad oil. Currently there is no GMO variety of black beans, so it can be chosen, and it is best to grow soybeans in Taiwan itself.

Professor Guo Huaren of the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University said in his introduction that among the four principles emphasized by organic food, health, ecological balance, fairness and precaution, the principle of fairness means that organic agricultural production cannot sacrifice the farmers who produce just because consumers want things cheap and distributors want to make money, and GMO companies are the most unfair to small farmers; the principle of precaution means that new technology should be treated cautiously, and this is also the reason organic agriculture opposes GMO (no research has yet shown that GMO crops cause no harm). This is also why the Homemakers United Foundation Cooperative promotes GMO-free farming areas.

Wu Dongjie, secretary-general of the Green Front Association, said that Taiwan uses GMO-free farming areas to draw consumers' attention and awaken them. This movement mainly emphasizes that farmers should not plant and consumers should not buy or eat GMO crops, and encourages farmers to grow organic soybeans.

A secure life depends on yourself

How can one eat non-GMO food in Taiwan? Huang Shude said that at present institutional meals do not need to be labeled; only packaged food must be labeled. A secure lifestyle depends on yourself, and it was under this belief that the Homemakers United Foundation Cooperative was founded.

The Institute for Responsible Technology founded by Smith has a shopping guide that teaches consumers through 4 steps how to avoid GMO food: buy organic, buy food voluntarily labeled non-GMO, foods listed in the consumer guide, and avoid high-risk GMO foods. Since Taiwan requires labeling of GMO food, a 5th step can be added: avoid eating food labeled as GMO.

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