The Hidden Story of GMOs

But accord­ing to best-selling author, con­sumer advo­cate and GMO expert Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), con­sumers still haven’t heard the truth about GMOs; and Smith would know—he’s been fol­low­ing the story from the beginning.

“I learned about GMOs before most peo­ple even knew what one was,” Smith told Organic Connections. “In 1996, just before they were being planted around the Midwest, where I’m from, I went to a lec­ture by a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist who explained that the process of genetic engi­neer­ing was fraught with unpre­dicted side effects and could cre­ate higher lev­els of exist­ing aller­gens, tox­ins, car­cino­gens or anti-nutrients. I real­ized peo­ple needed to know, so I started trans­lat­ing con­cerns by sci­en­tists into lan­guage that every­one could under­stand. I’ve been doing that ever since.”

Information has sub­se­quently become pub­lic that shows GMOs raised reg­u­la­tory alarm right at the begin­ning. “According to doc­u­ments later made pub­lic from a law­suit, FDA sci­en­tists in 1991 and ’92 were very con­cerned about GMOs,” Smith explained. “They deter­mined that GMOs offered unique and dif­fer­ent risks, and that those risks included pos­si­ble aller­gies, tox­ins, new dis­eases and nutri­tional prob­lems. They repeat­edly urged their supe­ri­ors to require test­ing, but the per­son in charge of pol­icy at the FDA at that time was the for­mer attor­ney of one of the largest cor­po­ra­tions pro­mot­ing GMOs. He ignored the sci­en­tists, and his pol­icy allowed GMOs out on the mar­ket with­out a sin­gle safety study. The mythol­ogy about GMOs was then institutionalized—the idea that they would feed the world, improve exports, reduce agri­cul­tural chem­i­cals, and that they were safe and no dif­fer­ent from reg­u­lar produce—and a for­tune has been spent to keep that myth alive in Washington.”

GMO Health Risk

While the FDA has not required that GMOs be tested for adverse health effects, there are indi­vid­u­als and lab­o­ra­to­ries that have pro­ceeded with test­ing any­way. Plentiful results can be found on the Institute for Responsible Technology website.

“The only human feed­ing study ever pub­lished showed that genes can trans­fer from genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops into the gut bac­te­ria and con­tinue to func­tion,” Smith related. “This means long after we’ve stopped eat­ing GMOs we may still have genet­i­cally mod­i­fied pro­teins pro­duced con­tin­u­ally inside us. This was done using soy­beans that were Roundup Ready [made resis­tant to Monsanto Roundup pes­ti­cides]; the folks in the study had Roundup Ready gut bacteria.

“Elsewhere, thou­sands of farm work­ers in India are get­ting aller­gic and flu-like symp­toms from just touch­ing cot­ton that has had Bt [a bac­te­ria that’s been genet­i­cally intro­duced into sev­eral crops] mod­i­fied into it. When they allow ani­mals to graze on the cot­ton plants after har­vest, thou­sands die. And unfor­tu­nately the corn that we eat is genet­i­cally engi­neered to pro­duce this same toxin.”

Dangers to Children

The dan­gers for chil­dren, how­ever, are sig­nif­i­cant enough to moti­vate any par­ent to stay clear of GMOs. “Children are most at risk for the poten­tial dan­gers,” Smith pointed out. “For exam­ple, as regards aller­gies, they are three to four times more likely to develop aller­gic reac­tions, espe­cially chil­dren below two years of age. They are more sus­cep­ti­ble to nutri­tion defi­cien­cies in the food and more sus­cep­ti­ble to tox­ins. A young and fast-growing body will treat the food dif­fer­ently than an adult’s body; it’ll incor­po­rate the food into the organs and into the body, as opposed to just using food for fuel. That’s why the nutri­tional ani­mal stud­ies typ­i­cally employ young, fast-growing animals—and also why one of the major biotech com­pa­nies tends to use older ani­mals for their own stud­ies, because accord­ing to cri­tiques of their stud­ies it would be very dif­fi­cult for those ani­mals to actu­ally show any problems.”

Due to this high risk, Smith and his orga­ni­za­tion have made get­ting GMOs out of schools a prime objec­tive. It’s no small target—and they are not tak­ing small mea­sures to address it. “We are train­ing peo­ple to speak about GMOs—we’ve already trained around 140 this year,” Smith said. “We are also start­ing a non-GMO work­ing group specif­i­cally focused on par­ents and on schools, and there will be another one for cam­puses. Beyond that, we’ll be start­ing other work­ing groups, each focused on dif­fer­ent tar­geted demographics.

“We have a 35-page man­ual on how to con­duct a GM-free school cam­paign, which we will send to peo­ple who would like to par­tic­i­pate. We have other mate­ri­als that eas­ily con­vey the dan­gers, such as a brochure called the GMO Health Risk. We have a non-GMO shop­ping guide, which makes it much eas­ier for par­ents to select non-GMO foods for their chil­dren and their whole fam­ily. And we have the source book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, which can con­vince any open-minded per­son that GMOs are unsafe, because it actu­ally presents the sci­en­tific evi­dence in ways that peo­ple can under­stand. It was laid out in a for­mat that can be read very quickly so that it could be used by super­in­ten­dents, by biol­ogy teach­ers in the schools, and so on.”

These and many other mate­ri­als are avail­able on the Institute for Responsible Technology website.

Hope for the Future

Despite the lack of main­stream media, the fight against GMOs has been mount­ing and is hav­ing suc­cess in many areas. In addi­tion to the plen­ti­ful work being done by Smith and the Institute for Responsible Technology, the Center for Food Safety, using legal chan­nels, man­aged to halt the plant­ing of GM alfalfa and sugar beets, and is wag­ing a bat­tle to pre­vent the breed­ing of GM salmon.

“As far as over­all GMOs go, we are look­ing to get 5 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion to avoid GMOs,” Smith said. “We think par­ents are among the most recep­tive groups; many peo­ple could care less about their own diets but are much more con­cerned about their young babies. That’s when more peo­ple con­vert to health­ier organic food than any other time, and when they’re more recep­tive to the fact that GMOs are so dan­ger­ous and should be avoided. I’ve seen a lot of par­ents very, very con­cerned about GMOs; and I find that this year, com­pared to all other years of trav­el­ing around the coun­try, there are more informed and enthu­si­as­tic par­ents spread­ing the word about GMOs than ever before. It’s a very good sign, and we actu­ally are hav­ing an effect in the mar­ket­place. We know that ‘GMO free’ was the fastest-growing store brand claim in 2009 and the fifth fastest over­all health-and-wellness claim in 2010 so far. The Supermarket News trade jour­nal pre­dicted an unprece­dented con­sumer aware­ness and con­cern about GMOs for this year. We saw Non-GMO Month take hold in October, and over 600 par­tic­i­pat­ing stores and man­u­fac­tur­ers are edu­cat­ing con­sumers about GMO health risks and pro­mot­ing the Non-GMO Project’s third-party ver­i­fi­ca­tion system.”

The Non-GMO Project is the first third-party entity to cer­tify prod­ucts as “non-GMO,” giv­ing shop­pers a def­i­nite guide­line, and now has thou­sands of prod­ucts enrolled in their program.

Smith con­cluded by offer­ing strong encour­age­ment. “I would like to say to peo­ple, don’t lose hope, don’t feel like a vic­tim. Flip it and feel like a vic­tor. Make the deci­sion that it will be up to you to decide what you would call food for your­self and your fam­ily. Rather than tak­ing direc­tions from the biotech indus­try, you can opt out of this dan­ger­ous exper­i­ment and learn to avoid GMOs by going to www.nongmoshoppingguide.com or down­load­ing the iphone appli­ca­tion shopnogmo. By doing so and by shar­ing with oth­ers, we can cre­ate a rev­o­lu­tion from our kitchens, from our shop­ping carts, from our health­ier non-GMO choices, so that a small per­cent­age of peo­ple can dic­tate terms to the food indus­try and we can reclaim a non-GMO food supply.”

For much more infor­ma­tion, or to become involved, visit the Institute for Responsible Technology web­site at www.responsibletechnology.org.