Stanley Aronowitz, the Green Party candidate for Governor, today called for a moratorium on the planting of genetically engineered crops in New York State. He also announced support for legislation to require genetically engineered food to be labeled as such.
"Americans have become guinea pigs for the biotechnology industry due to the negligence of federal policies to protect consumers. Genetic engineering represents nothing less than a going-out-of-business sale on genetic diversity. We need a dramatic shift away from the industry-dominated laissez-faire non-regulation of GMOs. American consumers are not being protected against the risks that are associated with genetically engineered foods such as allergenicity, toxicity and antibiotic resistance. Once again, corporate profits are being placed ahead of consumer safety and environmental protection," said Aronowitz.
Due to the prevalence of corn, soy and canola in processed foods, two-thirds of all processed foods currently produced in the US are genetically engineered. Despite this, the US government does not require GE foods to be labeled or tested for potential health risks to consumers. A recent Freedom of Information Lawsuit by public interest groups and scientists forced the release of internal documents showing that political appointees of the Food and Drug Administration overruled staff scientists concerning the dangers posed by GE foods.
While industry spokespersons usually portray genetic engineering as helping to improve the nutritional quality of food, in reality genetic engineering has overwhelmingly been used either to allow for increased spraying of pesticides / herbicides or to enable the ge crop to emit its own pesticides.
Genetically modified crops are produced using laboratory techniques that allow the natural means of genetic recombination and plant reproduction to be circumvented. A moratorium would give the government and researchers time to evaluate the potential risks to human health and the environment. Potential hazards include: the development of insect and weed resistance to pesticides (e.g., superweeds); injury or death of non-target species (e.g., monarch butterfly); crop loss from seeds that do not yield as expected or that produce crops with unexpected characteristics; and allergenicity, toxicity, or decreased nutritional value of genetically modified crops.
Dramatic increases in the planting and consumption of such crops over the past several years have far outpaced our understanding of their immediate and long-term effects. Nationwide, one-fourth of US cropland contains genetically modified crops, including more than 35% of all corn. Most genetically crops in the world are grown in the U.S. More than 50 genetically engineered crop plants have been approved by the USDA, including potatoes, tomatoes, melons and beets. USDA does not presently require any health or safety tests before genetically engineered crops are marketed, leaving it to biotech firms to decide whether they are safe.
Polls consistently show that people want the right to know when they are eating genetically engineered foods, just as they know how much salt, sugar, and fat contained are in the products they purchase. According to a June 2001 ABC News telephone poll, 93 percent of Americans support labeling of genetically engineered foods. For some, such as people with food allergies, knowing is a matter of life and death. About 2% of adults and 8% of children suffer from food allergies.
In May of 1992, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued a policy statement that covered up the warnings of its own scientists about the health hazards of GE foods and blatantly misrepresented the facts. This fraud only came to light when a coalition of public interest groups and scientists filed a lawsuit against the FDA that forced it to divulge internal files.
FDA records reveal that during the year prior to the issuance of the policy statement, the agency's scientific experts extensively examined the issue of GE foods and concluded that they pose unique health risks, especially the potential for unintended harmful side effects that are unpredictable and difficult to detect. Accordingly, these experts cautioned that no GE food can be presumed safe unless it has undergone rigorous toxicological feeding studies employing the whole food in order to screen for such side effects. The pervasiveness of the concerns within the scientific staff is attested by a memo from an FDA official stating: "The processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different, and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks."
Nevertheless, FDA political appointees "who admit they have been operating under a White House directive 'to foster' the biotech industry" covered up these warnings, professed themselves "not aware of any information" showing that GE foods differ from others in any meaningful way, and allowed all GE foods to be marketed without any testing by claiming there is an overwhelming consensus among experts they are safe.
Aronowitz also joined with a national coalition calling upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to end the open air cultivation of crops engineered to produce prescription drugs or industrial chemicals. The new crops, already planted in over 300 field trials at secret locations nationwide, include plants that produce an abortion-inducing chemical, growth hormones, a blood clotter, and trypsin, an allergenic enzyme. The coalition proposed that the USDA permit only contained cultivation of non-food plants under the same controlled circumstances as other drug production. "The USDA should prohibit the planting of food crops engineered with drugs and chemicals to protect the food supply from contamination. Just one mistake and we'll be eating other people's prescription drugs in our corn flakes," said Aronowitz.
