The current state of our food industry has seemed to take on an eerie form of satisfaction; both on the part of the consumer and the producers. Everybody on both ends of our food chain seem to be content. Consumers in our country are able to purchase a wide variety of worldly foods conveniently that are guaranteed to be safe to consume. Most Americans feel secure that our regulations provided by the USDA, the FDA, and other government health agencies ensure adequate testing and research before any food product is put on the market. I believe most Americans would be surprised to find out that certain food products now found in 70% of the food available to us, have never been substantially tested for harmful effects to humans! If you’ve not guessed what I’m referring to, I’m talking about genetically modified organisms and, yes, there are now genetically modified (GM) ingredients in 70% of what’s available at the average North American grocery store.

    I bet many folks right now are a bit confused about this, and are probably asking how something that common in our food supply could escape testing. That is a very good question, and when I first asked it, I was incredibly shocked to find the answer.

    Genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) were established widely in the food industry by 1996, and government review of their products began in the early 1990s. Upon initial review, scientists at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advised that GM foods may be potentially dangerous and should necessitate extensive long-term testing. With this information, which was only released to the public because of a lawsuit, the White House at the time ordered a formal policy written regarding GMO’s.

 

They chose Michael Taylor, a former attorney for Monsanto to lead initial policy making efforts. Currently Monsanto is one of the largest producers of GM seeds and has many international interests in big agribusiness. This GMO policy, which is still used today, disregarded the FDA scientists’ warnings and does not require studies of their safety. Instead, the companies producing the seeds are responsible for ensuring their safety. This opened the door for GM ingredients to filter into our food products without much media coverage. There was not much to cover at the time; no definitive studies of GMO’s had been done aside from the glorified PR campaigns constructed by big agribusiness corporations themselves. So, like many of our historical mistakes, we rushed these new products on the market with the idea they will make everything easier.

    However, that is not the case anymore. We are more than 10 years into a huge field experiment of how GMO’s affect humans. We are just beginning to piece together some of the effects they’ve been having on our population, and it all looks pretty scary. In the years following widespread use of GM ingredients, emergency room visits for allergies doubled, food-related illnesses overall doubled, and the incidence of people in the US with three or more chronic illnesses doubled. Although for some reason we lack clear long-term studies on the effects of GMO’s on humans (which is ridiculous), there are many case studies and animal studies to hint at what we’re dealing with. Approximately two dozen US farmers have reported thousands of their pigs sterile –and they became so after munching certain GM corn varieties. In a small feeding study, apparently 100 percent of sheep that were fed Bt cotton died within 30 days while others eating natural cotton in a nearby field were fine. 
 

I strongly encourage you to do your own research, as some doctors now are prescribing non-GMO diets. In May of 2009, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) formally announced that they condemn GMO’s in our food, and that they pose “a serious health risk.” I think it’s time we ask for a little accountability about what we’re eating. 

    I have not even addressed many of the other controversies surrounding GMO’s today. There are many environmental risks involved with incorporating them into our agricultural methods. They encourage large loads of pesticides by genetically modifying plants to allow high chemical doses, which translates to more residues of toxins in our food and higher levels of pollution in run-off. For other varieties of GMO’s, pesticides are produced directly by every cell of the plant. Worse yet, their introduction into our landscapes may be irreversible because they will cross-pollinate with other crops.

    It’s about time to uncover the blanket placed over our eyes by large international corporations and by our own free-market-happy government. And maybe be warned about the garbage we’re eating before we learn from history.