Information for Transformation

Genetically Engineered Food

What is Genetic Engineering?

In traditional forms of breeding, variety has been achieved by selecting from the multitude of genetic traits that already exist within a species‘ gene pool. In nature, genetic diversity is created within certain limits. A rose can cross with a different kind of rose, but a rose will never cross with a mouse. Even when species that may seem to be closely related do succeed in breeding the offspring are usually infertile. For example, a horse can mate with an ass, but the offspring, a mule, is sterile. These boundaries are essential to the integrity of any species. In contrast to traditional breeding, genetic engineering involves taking genes from one species and inserting them into another in an attempt to transfer a desired trait or character. For example, selecting a gene which leads to the production of a chemical with antifreeze properties from an arctic fish (such as the flounder) and splicing it into a tomato or strawberry to make it frost-resistant. It is now possible for scientists to introduce genes taken from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals or even humans, into plants. It has been suggested that, because we have been modifying the genes of plants and animals for thousands of years, genetic engineering is simply an extension of traditional breeding practices. While it is true that the foods we are eating today bear little resemblance to the wild plants from which they originated, through this new technology, organisms are being manipulated in a fundamentally different way.

How is This Done?

There are a number of techniques in the genetic engineer's toolkit. Biochemical ‘scissors' called restriction enzymes are used to cut the strings of DNA in different places and select the required genes. These genes are usually then inserted into circular pieces of DNA ( plasmids ) found in bacteria. The bacteria reproduce rapidly and within a short time thousands of identical copies ( clones ) can be made of the ‘new' gene. There are now two principal methods that can be used to force the ‘new' gene into the DNA of the plant that is to be engineered. A ‘ferry' is made with a piece of genetic material taken from a virus or a bacterium. This is used to infect the plant and in doing so smuggle the ‘new' gene into the plant's own DNA. A bacterium called Agrobacterium tumifaciens , which usually causes gall formation in plants, is commonly used for this purpose. Or, the genes are coated onto large numbers of tiny gold pellets which are fired with a special gun into a layer of cells taken from the recipient organism, with any luck finding a hit somewhere in the DNA in the nucleus of the cells.

Genetically engineered (GE) animals and fish are produced by microinjection. Fertilized eggs are injected with new genes which will, in some cases, enter the chromosomes and be incorporated into the animal's own DNA. Because the techniques used to transfer genes have a low success rate, the scientists need to be able to find out which of the cells have taken up the new DNA. So, before the gene is transferred, a ‘marker gene' is attached which codes for resistance to an antibiotic. Plant cells which have been engineered are then grown in a medium containing this antibiotic, and the only ones able to survive are those which have taken up the ‘new' genes with the antibiotic-resistant marker attached. These cells are then cultured and grown into mature plants. It is not possible to guide the insertion of a new gene with any accuracy, and this random insertion may disrupt the tightly controlled network of DNA.

Unpredictable Effects

Current understanding of the way in which genes are regulated is extremely limited. Any change to the DNA of an organism at any point may well have knock-on effects that are impossible to predict or control. A gene coding for red pigment was taken from a maize plant and transferred into petunia flowers. Apart from turning white, the flowers also had more leaves and shoots, a higher resistance to fungi and lowered fertility. The random insertion of a foreign gene may disrupt the tightly controlled network of DNA in an organism. The gene could, for example, alter chemical reactions within the cell or disturb cell functions. This could lead to instability, the creation of new toxins or allergens, and changes in nutritional value. A piece of DNA taken from a virus or bacterium (called a promoter ) is inserted along with the ‘new' gene in order to ‘switch it on' in its new host. Promoters, which often force genes to be produced at 10 to 1000 times normal levels, also have the potential to influence neighboring genes. The promoter may, for example, stimulate a plant to produce higher levels of a substance which is harmless at low levels but which becomes toxic when present in higher concentrations. Yeast was genetically engineered for increased fermentation purposes. This led to the production of a metabolite called methyl-glyoxal in toxic and mutagenic concentrations.

Inherently Unsafe

“The fact that one gene can give rise to multiple proteins . . . destroys the theoretical foundation of a multibillion-dollar industry, the genetic engineering of food crops.” Dr. Barry Commoner, senior scientist at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College . Dr. Peter Wills of Auckland University warns, “an incorrectly folded form of an ordinary cellular protein can, under certain circumstances, duplicate itself and give rise to infectious neurological disease.” Professor David Schubert of The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, says the effect that a particular protein has on a plant or animal “can be modified by the addition of molecules such as phosphate, sulfate, sugars, or lipids.” The BBC's Tomorrow's World Magazine says: “Genetic engineering is generally a hit and miss affair. The genes may be inserted the wrong way round or multiple copies may be scattered throughout a plant's genome. They may be inserted inside other genes—destroying their activity or massively increasing it. More worryingly, a plant's genetic make-up may become unstable. . . . Rogue toxins may be produced or existing ones amplified massively. Such problems may only arise hundreds of generations after the crops are originally modified.”

“British scientific researchers have demonstrated for the first time that genetically modified DNA material from crops is finding its way into human gut bacteria, raising potentially serious health questions.” The Guardian In 1992, Murray Lumpkin, M.D., then director the FDA's Division of Anti-infective Drug Products, warned: “It would be a serious health hazard to introduce a gene that codes for antibiotic resistance into the normal flora of the general population.”

“When inserted into another organism as part of a ‘genetic construct,' it [the promoter] may also change the gene expression patterns in the recipient chromosome(s) over long distances up- and downstream from the insertion site.” Dr. Michael Hansen, Consumers Union, publishers of Consumer Reports, and in their paper, Cauliflower Mosaic Viral Promoter—A Recipe for Disaster , Drs. Ho, Ryan, and Cummins warn, “Horizontal transfer of the CaMV promoter . . . has the potential to reactivate dormant viruses or create new viruses in all species to which it is transferred.” According to Geneticist Dr. Joe Cummins, a promoter can have “the same impact as a heavy dose of gamma radiation.” Dr. Stanley Ewen, one of Scotland's foremost experts in tissue diseases, says, “It is possible GM DNA could affect stomach and colonic lining by causing a growth factor effect with the unproven possibility of hastening cancer formation in those organs.”

“Roundup Ready beans were significantly lower in protein and the amino acid phenylalanine . More disturbing were increased levels of the allergen trypsin inhibitor in toasted Roundup Ready meal. . . . Lectins in Roundup Ready beans almost doubled the levels in controls. What might be the result of consuming foods with high levels of trypsin inhibitor and lectin? Well, maybe slower and lower growth, say scientists.” Medical writer Barbara Keeler, on data that has been omitted from Monsanto's published study. University of Georgia 's Dr. Sharad Phatak says, “When you insert a foreign gene, you are changing the whole metabolic process. . . Each change is going to have an effect on other pathways. Will any one gene kick off a whole slew of changes? We don't know for sure.” Stanford's Dr. Charles Yanofsky says, “Genetic engineering results in the formation of higher than normal concentrations of certain enzymes and products; these could provide the basis for the synthesis of higher levels of toxic substances.” Commenting on the genetically modified supplement L-tryptophan produced by Showa Denko, which killed about 100 people and caused up to 10,000 to fall sick, Yanofsky, one of the world's leading authorities on tryptophan biosynthesis, says, “If Showa Denko engineered the bacterium to overproduce tryptophan, which they did, then there are many unknowns that would be associated with its overproduction.”“Experts on the Government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes have issued a warning about plants being grown in the U.S. and parts of Europe which contain a gene resistant to antibiotics. They are concerned that, if workers breathe in dust as the crops are processed, the resistance could be transferred to bacteria in their throats. Around one in five people are carriers of the meningitis bacteria, even though they are not affected by the disease. Microbiologist Dr. John Heritage, a member of the committee, has written to American authorities to express his worries. ‘It's a huge concern to me,' he said. ‘While the risk is small, the consequences of an untreatable, life-threatening infection spreading within the population are enormous.'” Daily Mail ( UK )

The FDA's 1992 policy states, “At this time, FDA is unaware of any practical method to predict or assess the potential for new proteins in food to induce allergenicity and requests comments on this issue.” FDA scientist Dr. Carl Johnson wrote, “Are we asking the crop developer to prove that food from his crop is non-allergenic? This seems like an impossible task.” According to FDA microbiologist Dr. Louis Pribyl, “the only definitive test for allergies is human consumption by affected peoples, which can have ethical considerations.” According to a 1999 Washington Post article, there is still “no widely accepted way to predict a new food's potential to cause an allergy. The FDA is now five years behind in its promise to develop guidelines for doing so.” The same remains true today.

Dangers of Genetically Engineered Foods

The following presents some of the dangers of genetically engineered foods and reasons why avoiding them is an important step to safeguard our health.The biotech industry claims that the FDA has thoroughly evaluated GM foods and found them safe. This is untrue. Internal FDA documents made public from a lawsuit, reveal that agency scientists warned that GM foods might create toxins, allergies, nutritional problems, and new diseases that might be difficult to identify. Although they urged their superiors to require long-term tests on each GM variety prior to approval, the political appointees at the agency, including a former attorney for Monsanto, ignored the scientists. Official policy claims that the foods are no different and do not require safety testing. A manufacturer can introduce a GM food without even informing the government or consumers. A January 2001 report from an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada said it was “scientifically unjustifiable” to presume that GM foods are safe. Likewise, a 2002 report by the UK 's Royal Society said that genetic modification “could lead to unpredicted harmful changes in the nutritional state of foods,” and recommended that potential health effects of GM foods be rigorously researched before being fed to pregnant or breast-feeding women, elderly people, those suffering from chronic disease, and babies. How could the government approve dangerous foods? A close examination reveals that industry manipulation and political collusion—not sound science—was the driving force. Government employees who complained were harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired. Scientists were threatened. Evidence was stolen. Data was omitted or distorted. Some regulators even claimed they were offered bribes to approve a GM product. There are only ten published animal feeding studies on the health effects of GM foods—only two of these are independent. One study showed evidence of damage to the immune system and vital organs, and a potentially pre-cancerous condition. When the scientist tried to alert the public about these alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit. Two other studies also showed evidence of a potentially pre-cancerous condition. The other seven studies, which were superficial in their design, were not designed to identify these details. In an unpublished study, laboratory rats fed a GM crop developed stomach lesions and seven of the forty died within two weeks. The crop was approved without further tests.

Many industry studies appear to be rigged to find no problems. In the case of a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH), for example, researchers injected cows with only one forty-seventh the normal dosage before reporting hormone residues in milk. They heated the milk 120 times longer than standard, to report that pasteurization destroys the hormone. They added cows to their study that were pregnant before treatment, to claim that rbGH didn't impede fertility. Cows that fell sick were dropped from studies altogether. With soybeans, serious nutritional differences between GM and natural soy were omitted from a published paper. Feeding studies masked any problems by using mature animals instead of developing ones and by diluting their GM soy 10 to 1 with non-GM protein. There are no adequate tests to verify that GM food will not create dangerous allergic reactions. While an international organization developed testing standards to minimize the possibility of allowing allergenic GM varieties on the market, GM corn currently sold in the U.S. has not been subjected to those tests and would most certainly fail them. One of these tests, for example, uses a test tube simulation to evaluate how long a potential GM allergen can last inside the digestive system before being broken down. Compared to the recommended international standards, however, one biotech company used a far stronger acid concentration and more than 1,250 times the recommended amount of a digestive enzyme to make the claim that their protein degrades too quickly to cause a reaction. The only human feeding trial ever conducted confirmed that genetically engineered genes from soy transferred to the bacteria inside the digestive tract. (The biotech industry had previously said that such a transfer was impossible.) The World Health Organization, the British and American Medical Associations, and several other groups have expressed concern that if the “antibiotic resistant marker genes” used in GM foods got transferred to bacteria, it could create super-diseases that are immune to antibiotics. More worrisome is that the “promoter” used inside GM foods could get transferred to bacteria or internal organs. Promoters act like a light switches, permanently turning on genes that might otherwise be switched off. Scientists believe that this might create unpredictable health effects, including the potentially pre-cancerous cell growth found in the animal feeding studies mentioned above. The biotech industry says that millions have been eating GM foods without ill effect. This is misleading. About 100 people died and up to10,000 to fell seriously ill when they consumed the food supplement L-Tryptophan . Only those who consumed the variety that was genetically modified became ill. That brand had minute, but deadly contaminants that would easily pass through current regulations today. If the disease it created had not been rare and acute, with crippling and deadly symptoms, the GM supplement might never have been traced as the cause. Once discovered, however, industry and government covered up facts and diverted the blame. Even the FDA testimony before Congress withheld vital information.

Milk from rbGH-treated cows contains an increased amount of the hormone IGF-1 , which is one of the highest risk factors associated with breast and prostate cancer, among others. Soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% in the UK, coinciding with the introduction of GM soy imports from the U.S.

According to a March 2001 report, the Center for Disease Control says that food is responsible for twice the number of illnesses in the U.S. compared to estimates just seven years earlier. This increase roughly corresponds to the period when Americans have been eating GM food. Could that be contributing to the 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 76 million illnesses related to food each year? Might it play in role in our national epidemic of obesity or the rise in diabetes or lymphatic cancers? We have no way of knowing if there is a connection because no one has looked for one. One of the most dangerous aspects of genetic engineering is the closed thinking and consistent effort to silence those with contrary evidence or concerns. Just before stepping down from office, former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman admitted the following: “What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good, and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn't good, because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. . . . And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you're against it, you're Luddites, you're stupid. That, frankly, was the side our government was on. . . . You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view” Contrast this with the warning by the editors of Nature Biotechnology : “The risks in biotechnology are undeniable, and they stem from the unknowable in science and commerce. It is prudent to recognize and address those risks, not compound them by overly optimistic or foolhardy behavior.”

The biotech industry and the government have been foolhardy indeed. Blinded, perhaps by the baseless myth that GM foods are needed to feed the world, they gamble with our health and support their safety claims on obsolete or unproven assumptions. Accepting their vacuous assurances by eating these dangerous foods or serving them to your customers may likewise be overly optimistic or foolhardy.

Risk for Children : Young, fast-developing bodies

Children's bodies develop at a fast pace and are more likely to be influenced and show the effects of genetically modified (GM) foods. That is why independent scientists used young adolescent rats in their GM feeding studies. The rats showed significant health damage after only 10 days, including damaged immune systems and digestive function, smaller brains, livers, and testicles, partial atrophy of the liver, and potentially pre-cancerous cell growth in the intestines.

Allergies

Children are three to four times more prone to allergies than adults. Infants below two years old are at greatest risk-they have the highest incidence of reactions, especially to new allergens encountered in the diet. Even tiny amounts of allergens can sometimes cause reactions in children. Breast fed infants can be exposed via the mother's diet, and fetuses may possibly be exposed in the womb. Michael Meacher, the former minister of the environment for the UK, said, “Any baby food containing GM products could lead to a dramatic rise in allergies.” GM corn is particularly problematic for children, as they generally eat a higher percentage of corn in their diet. Further, allergic children often rely on corn protein. Mothers using cornstarch as a talc substitute on their children's skin might also inadvertently expose them via inhalation.

Problems with milk

Milk and dairy products from cows treated with the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH) contain an increased amount of the hormone IGF-1 , which is one of the highest risk factors associated with breast and prostate cancer. The Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association called for more studies to determine if ingesting “higher than normal concentrations of IGF-1 is safe for children, adolescents, and adults.” Sam Epstein, M.D., Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and author of eight books, wrote, “rbGH and its digested products could be absorbed from milk into blood, particularly in infants, and produce hormonal and allergic effects.” He described how “cell-stimulating growth factors . . . could induce premature growth and breast stimulation in infants, and possibly promote breast cancer in adults.” Dr. Epstein pointed out that the hormones in cows could promote the production of “steroids and adrenaline-type stressor chemicals. ... likely to contaminate milk and may be harmful, particularly to infants and young children.”

Nutritional problems

A 2002 report by the UK 's Royal Society, said that genetic modification “could lead to unpredicted harmful changes in the nutritional state of foods.” They therefore recommended that potential health effects of GM foods be rigorously researched before being fed to pregnant or breast-feeding women, elderly people, those suffering from chronic disease, and babies. Likewise, according to former minister Meacher, unexpected changes in estrogen levels in GM soy used in infant formula “might affect sexual development in children,” and that “even small nutritional changes could cause bowel obstruction.”

Antibiotic resistant diseases

Children prone to ear and other infections are at risk of facing antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, due to the use of antibiotic resistant genes in GM food. The British Medical Association cited this as one reason why they called for a moratorium of GM foods.

Unknown Risks

Recently, the term genetic pollution officially entered the public lexicon. Scientists at Cornell University reported in the journal Nature that the pollen from genetically engineered corn, containing a toxin gene called Bt , killed 44 percent of the monarch butterfly caterpillars who fed on milkweed leaves dusted with it. By contrast, caterpillars fed with conventional pollen all survived. The results are all the more shocking given the fact that nearly 25 percent of the US corn crop now contains the Bt transgene and the Corn Belt states of the Midwest are where half of the monarch butterflies are produced each year. In the wake of the monarch butterfly study, a growing number of scientists now say they wonder about the potential environmental effects of scores of other genetically engineered crops being introduced into the agricultural fields. Indeed, some critics are asking why these and other studies weren't done before introducing genetically engineered corn, soy, cotton and other crops over millions of acres of farm land.

The fact is, genetically engineered crops are radically different from conventional crops because they contain genes in their biological makeup from completely unrelated species. For example, scientists have introduced an antifreeze gene from flounder fish into the genetic code of a tomato plant to protect the plant from cold spells. While scientists have long been able to cross close relatives in the plant kingdom, the new genetic tools allow them to cross all of the biological boundaries, adding genes from viruses, bacteria, other animals and plants into the genetic code of traditional food crops. Ecologists are unsure of the impacts of bypassing natural species boundaries. Consider, for example, the ambitious plans to engineer transgenic plants to serve as pharmaceutical factories for the production of chemicals and drugs. Foraging animals, seed-eating birds, and soil insects will be exposed to a range of genetically engineered drugs, vaccines, industrial enzymes, plastics, and hundreds of other foreign substances for the first time, with untold consequences.

Over the next 10 years, life science companies plan on introducing thousands of laboratory-conceived transgenic plants over millions of acres of farmland around the world. Ecologists tell us that the risks in releasing these novel crops into the biosphere are similar to those we've encountered in introducing exotic organisms into North America . While many of these nonnative creatures have adapted to the North American ecosystems without severe dislocations, a small percentage of them have wreaked havoc on the flora and fauna of the continent. Whenever a genetically engineered organism is released, there is always a small chance that it too will run amok because, like nonindigenous species, it has been artificially introduced into a complex environment that has developed a web of highly integrated relationships over long periods of evolutionary history. Much of the current effort in agricultural biotechnology is centered on the creation of herbicide-tolerant plants. To increase their share of the growing global market for herbicides, life-science companies like Monsanto and Novartis have created transgenic crops that tolerate their own herbicides. Monsanto's new herbicide-resistant patented seeds, for example, are resistant to its best-selling chemical herbicide, Roundup .

The companies hope to convince farmers that the new herbicide-tolerant crops will allow for a more efficient eradication of weeds. Farmers will be able to spray at any time during the growing season, killing weeds without killing their crops. Critics warn that with new herbicide-tolerant crops planted in the fields, farmers are likely to use even greater quantities of herbicides to control weeds, as there will be less fear of damaging their crops in the process of spraying. The increased use of herbicides, in turn, raises the possibility of weeds developing resistance, forcing an even greater use of herbicides to control the more resistant strains. New pest-resistant transgenic crops, such as Bt corn, are also being introduced for the first time. Monsanto and Novartis are marketing transgenic crops that produce insecticide in every cell of each plant. A growing body of scientific evidence points to the likelihood of creating ‘'super bugs'' resistant to the effects of the new pesticide-producing genetic crops. Some ecologists warn of the danger of gene flow –the transfer of transgenic genes from crops to weedy relatives by way of cross-pollination. New studies have shown that transgenic genes for herbicide tolerance and pest and viral resistance, can spread by way of pollen and insert themselves into the genomes of relatives, creating weeds that are resistant to herbicides, pests, and viruses.

The insurance industry has quietly let it be known that while it will provide coverage for negligence and short-term damage, resulting from the introduction of genetically engineered crops into the environment, it will not offer liability coverage for long-term catastrophic environmental damage, because the industry lacks a risk assessment science–a predictive ecology–to judge the risks. The industry understands the Kafkaesque implications of a government regime claiming to regulate the new field of biotechnology in the absence of clear scientific knowledge of how genetically modified organisms interact once introduced into the environment. Who, then, will be held liable for losses if a transgenic plant introduction were to trigger genetic pollution over an extended terrain for an indefinite period of time? The life-science companies? The government? The introduction of novel genetically engineered organisms also raises a number of serious human health issues that have yet to be resolved. Most of these new crops contain genes from nonfood-source organisms. With 2 percent of adults and 8 percent of children having allergic responses to commonly eaten foods, consumer advocates argue that all novel gene-spliced foods need to be properly labeled that consumers can avoid health risks.

The British Medical Association has become so concerned about the potential health effects of consuming genetically modified foods that it has just called for an open-ended moratorium on the commercial planting of genetically engineered food crops until a scientific consensus emerges on their safety. And the European Commission recently announced a freeze on licenses for genetically engineered plants after learning about the monarch butterfly study. A worldwide moratorium should be declared now on releasing genetically engineered food crops and other gene-spliced organisms into the environment pending further study of the potential environmental and health risks and liability issues at stake. It would be irresponsible and foolish to continue seeding farmland with genetically engineered food crops when we have yet to develop even a rudimentary risk assessment science by which to regulate these new agricultural products.

The US Is One of Only a Few Countries Using Genetically Engineered Food

Despite industry rhetoric, very few countries are willing to ignore public opposition and allow the commercial cultivation of GE soybeans, corn, cotton, or canola, the only four crops currently being grown on any significant scale. While farmers in 130 nations are currently producing certified organic crops in 2002, a grand total of three nations, (the US-with 68% of the world's GE crops, Canada-6%, and Argentina-22%) are still producing 96% of the world's GE crops. Moreover the US, Canada, and Argentina are finding that that their major overseas customers such as Europe, Japan, and South Korea no longer want to buy GE crops, even for animal feed. In Europe, the largest agricultural market in the world, grassroots market pressure has forced all of the major supermarket chains and food companies to remove GE ingredients from their consumer products. Meanwhile, on the regulatory front, no new GE crops have been approved for commercialization in the EU since 1998.

Syngenta (formerly Novartis), the largest biotech company in the world, has removed all GE ingredients from its consumer food products. Because of increasing marketplace pressure, 25% of all animal feed in the EU is already GE-free. Industry propaganda about feeding the world through increased productivity is no longer credible. Genetically engineered crops were created not because they are productive but because they're patentable . Their economic value is oriented not toward helping subsistence farmers to feed themselves but toward feeding more livestock for the already overfed rich. Currently 63% of the world's GE crops are soybeans, used primarily for animal feed. Corn, again mainly for animal feed, makes up 19% of all GE crops, while rapeseed, used for animal feed and cooking oil, makes up 5%. Even cotton, which constitutes 13% of all GE crops, provides feed for cattle, in the form of cottonseed and cotton gin trash.

Government Subsidies—Why US Farmers Plant G.E. Crops

American farmers are planting millions of acres of Roundup-ready (RR) soybeans and other GE crops, not because there is a market demand for them, but because they are receiving taxpayer subsidies from the US government. Although gene-altered RR seeds and Roundup herbicide are expensive, herbicide-resistant soybeans are more convenient and less time-consuming to grow than traditional varieties-enabling farmers to plant, weed, and harvest more and more acres in a limited amount of time. Instead of having to till weeds with their tractors and spray several different toxic pesticides, farmers need only spray Monsanto's potent broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, which kills everything green-except for the GE soybean plants. Especially for cash and time-strapped farmers earning most of their money from off-farm employment (US family farmers get about 90% of their net income from jobs off the farm), this “efficiency” makes RR soybeans seem attractive.

Far more important is the fact that in the US, the more acres a farmer plants in soybeans (or other subsidized crops like corn or cotton), the more money the farmer gets from the government farm subsidy program, which, in 2001, paid out $28 billion. Of this $28 billion in farm subsidies, at least $7-10 billion went to farmers growing GE crops. Thus even though Cargill or ADM routinely rob farmers by paying them less for a bushel of RR soybeans or Bt corn than it took to grow them, farmers can count on recouping their losses with a subsidy payment from the USDA.

The fundamental flaw, from an economic standpoint, of planting more and more GE soybeans so as to collect more and more subsidy payments from the government, is that there is already a huge global surplus of soybeans, not to mention corn and cotton. This massive surplus is quite profitable for the crop commodities giants like Cargill and ADM, cotton buyers, and the big factory farm cattle feedlots and hog farms, who can count on getting cheap grain and fiber from farmers desperate to sell at any price, but it's nothing less than a recipe for disaster for rural America.

Billion dollar subsidies are the driving force for GE soybeans and corn, but they are also the major destructive force flooding the market and lowering the price for soybeans paid to the farmers. This ever-declining price results in farmers planting even more soybeans or corn. The end result of this process will likely be the elimination of most small and medium sized farms in the US who depend upon subsidies (with the notable exception of organic farms, which are selling products which consumers want). Organic farmers currently receive no US government subsidies whatsoever.

Vaccines in Plants

Rather than manipulating plants to make a firmer tomato or a sweeter peach, “pharmers” insert genes that instruct a plant to manufacture pharmaceutical compounds. In the future they envisage flu shots will be replaced by bananas. Try this corn puff. Pharmers dream that all drugs will ultimately be delivered in snacks.

First out of the pipeline will be vaccines. In August 2002, industry leader ProdiGene began Phase I clinical trials for a vaccine against traveler's diarrhea. Resulting from a dismal species of e.coli , the condition is also a prime cause of infant mortality in many poorer nations.

Instead of pursuing the regular path of cell-culturing and purification, Texas-based ProdiGene hopes to deliver a vaccine in a simple kernel of corn. To understand what is at stake here, consider the case of hepatitis-B . Worldwide, that virus kills more than 900,000 people a year, many of them in China , where the disease is at almost epidemic levels. A dose of hep-B vaccine costs around 50 cents, yet even that—in quantity—is beyond the budgets of many developing countries.

Besides the cost of the drug itself, vaccination is hampered by the additional expense of needles and by lack of refrigeration. Vaccines produced the traditional way cost thousands of dollars a gram, but corn can be grown very cheaply. Hoping to tap into the huge hepatitis market, ProdiGene is currently conducting field trials on a strain of transgenic corn that has been spliced with hep-B antigens which can be delivered like a vaccine simply by consuming an ear of corn.

Please read the evidence amassed in the book Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey M. Smith. The meticulously documented facts leave no doubt about a massive injustice. The topic is too important to put this off until tomorrow.