How much gmo do we eat

RT protesterrabbit: Always buy seeds or use your own from previous year. The legal battle around chlorpyrifos continues. RT GMWatch: In the 1st Monsanto trial there were concerns about the restrictions on what evidence could be placed in front of the jury.

Join the Food Movement! Help us grow the food movement and reclaim our food. About Genetically Engineered Foods. A Question of Risk A number of studies over the past decade have revealed that genetically engineered foods can pose serious risks to farmers, human health, domesticated animals, wildlife and the environment.

Share this:. Support the Center for Food Safety and donate today! Site By LK. Furthermore, critics say, the technique of moving genes across dramatically different species increases the likelihood of something going awry—either in the function of the inserted gene or in the function of the host DNA—raising the possibility of unanticipated health effects.

An allergy scare in centered around StarLink, a variety of genetically engineered corn approved by the U. When StarLink found its way into taco shells, corn chips, and other foods, massive and costly recalls were launched to try to remove the corn from the food supply. No cases of allergic response have been pinned to StarLink.

In fact, according to Steve L. Taylor, chair of the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska, "None of the current biotech products have been implicated in allergic reactions or any other healthcare problem in people.

Only rigorous testing can minimize those risks. Often overlooked in the debate about the health effects of these foods is one possible health benefit: Under some conditions corn genetically engineered for insect resistance may enhance safety for human and animal consumption.

Corn damaged by insects often contains high levels of fumonisins, toxins made by fungi that are carried on the backs of insects and that grow in the wounds of the damaged corn. Lab tests have linked fumonisins with cancer in animals, and they may be potentially cancer-causing to humans.

Among people who consume a lot of corn—in certain parts of South Africa, China, and Italy, for instance—there are high rates of esophageal cancer, which scientists associate with fumonisins. Studies show that most Bt corn has lower levels of fumonisins than conventional corn damaged by insects.

Should genetically engineered foods be labeled? Surveys suggest that most Americans would say yes although they wouldn't want to pay more for the labeling. Professor Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University, favors labeling because she believes consumers want to know and have the right to choose. However, no engineered foods currently carry labels in the U. Industry representatives argue that labeling engineered foods that are not substantially different would arouse unwarranted suspicion.

Most scientists agree: The main safety issues of genetically engineered crops involve not people but the environment. Snow is known for her research on "gene flow," the movement of genes via pollen and seeds from one population of plants to another, and she and some other environmental scientists worry that genetically engineered crops are being developed too quickly and released on millions of acres of farmland before they've been adequately tested for their possible long-term ecological impact.

Advocates of genetically engineered crops argue that the plants offer an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides, which tend to pollute surface and groundwater and harm wildlife. The use of Bt varieties has dramatically reduced the amount of pesticide applied to cotton crops.

But the effects of genetic engineering on pesticide use with more widely grown crops are less clear-cut. What might be the effect of these engineered plants on so-called nontarget organisms, the creatures that visit them?

Concerns that crops with built-in insecticides might damage wildlife were inflamed in by the report of a study suggesting that Bt corn pollen harmed monarch butterfly caterpillars. Monarch caterpillars don't feed on corn pollen, but they do feed on the leaves of milkweed plants, which often grow in and around cornfields.

Entomologists at Cornell University showed that in the laboratory Bt corn pollen dusted onto milkweed leaves stunted or killed some of the monarch caterpillars that ate the leaves. For some environmental activists this was confirmation that genetically engineered crops were dangerous to wildlife. But follow-up studies in the field, reported last fall, indicate that pollen densities from Bt corn rarely reach damaging levels on milkweed, even when monarchs are feeding on plants within a cornfield.

Perhaps a bigger concern has to do with insect evolution. Crops that continuously make Bt may hasten the evolution of insects impervious to the pesticide. Such a breed of insect, by becoming resistant to Bt, would rob many farmers of one of their safest, most environmentally friendly tools for fighting the pests. To delay the evolution of resistant insects, U. Farmers must plant a moat or "refuge" of conventional crops near their engineered crops.

The idea is to prevent two resistant bugs from mating. The few insects that emerge from Bt fields resistant to the insecticide would mate with their nonresistant neighbors living on conventional crops nearby; the result could be offspring susceptible to Bt. The theory is that if growers follow requirements, it will take longer for insects to develop resistance. It was difficult initially to convince farmers who had struggled to keep European corn borers off their crops to let the insects live and eat part of their acreage to combat resistance.

But a survey by major agricultural biotech companies found that almost 90 percent of U. Many ecologists believe that the most damaging environmental impact of biotech crops may be gene flow. Could transgenes that confer resistance to insects, disease, or harsh growing conditions give weeds a competitive advantage, allowing them to grow rampantly? Still, Snow says, "even a very low probability event could occur when you're talking about thousands of acres planted with food crops.

While no known superweeds have yet emerged, Snow thinks it may just be a matter of time. Given the risks, many ecologists believe that industry should step up the extent and rigor of its testing and governments should strengthen their regulatory regimes to more fully address environmental effects.

But right now only one percent of USDA biotech research money goes to risk assessment. Genetic engineering can help address the urgent problems of food shortage and hunger, say Prakash and many other scientists. It can increase crop yields, offer crop varieties that resist pests and disease, and provide ways to grow crops on land that would otherwise not support farming because of drought conditions, depleted soils, or soils plagued by excess salt or high levels of aluminum and iron.

The farmers just plant the seeds, and the seeds bring new features in the plants. Some critics of genetic engineering argue that the solution to hunger and malnutrition lies in redistributing existing food supplies. Others believe that the ownership by big multinational companies of key biotechnology methods and genetic information is crippling public-sector efforts to use this technology to address the needs of subsistence farmers.

The large companies that dominate the industry, critics also note, are not devoting significant resources to developing seed technology for subsistence farmers because the investment offers minimal returns. And by patenting key methods and materials, these companies are stifling the free exchange of seeds and techniques vital to public agricultural research programs, which are already under severe financial constraints.

All of this bodes ill, say critics, for farmers in the developing world. Prakash agrees that there's enough food in the world. People say that this technology is just earning profit for big companies. This is true to some extent, but the knowledge that companies have developed in the production of profitable crops can easily be transferred and applied to help developing nations.

The debate over the use of biotechnology in developing countries recently went from simmer to boil about rice, which is eaten by three billion people and grown on hundreds of millions of small farms. It has very little iron, and virtually no vitamin A. According to the World Health Organization, between million and million children in the world suffer from vitamin A deficiency, some , go blind every year because of that deficiency, and half of those children die within a year of losing their sight.

Canola seed meal can also be used in food for animals. Canola oil is used in many packaged foods to improve food consistency. Most GMO canola is resistant to herbicides and helps farmers to more easily control weeds in their fields. GMO alfalfa is primarily used to feed cattle—mostly dairy cows. Most GMO alfalfa is resistant to herbicides, allowing farmers to spray the crops to protect them against destructive weeds that can reduce alfalfa production and lower the nutritional quality of the hay.

A few varieties of GMO apples were developed to resist browning after being cut. This helps cut down on food waste, as many consumers think brown apples are spoiled. Sugar beets are used to make granulated sugar. More than half the granulated sugar packaged for grocery store shelves is made from GMO sugar beets. Because GMO sugar beets are resistant to herbicides, growing GMO sugar beets helps farmers control weeds in their fields.

Independent studies show that there is no difference in how GMO and non-GMO foods affect the health and safety of animals. Research shows that foods like eggs, dairy products, and meat that come from animals that eat GMO food are equal in nutritional value, safety, and quality to foods made from animals that eat only non-GMO food. The U. FDA requires that all food for animals, like food for human foods, be safe for animals to eat, be produced under clean conditions, contain no harmful substances, and be accurately labeled.

There soon will be.