What You Don't Know...COULD Hurt You

Kara Job, RN

July 27, 2023

The FDA does not require food producers to test genetically engineered foods for safety, nor to identify for the public whether a product is genetically engineered. Yet scientists have clearly linked these foods to disease.

For nearly twenty years of his young adult life, my uncle struggled with red and swollen joints. At times his hands were so enflamed and hot to the touch that he could hardly move them. His knee and back pain made it difficult to move around. After inconclusive testing left him with no medical help, he started experimenting with diet changes, and discovered that eliminating gluten from his diet completely cleared up all of the symptoms. Now in his sixties, he no longer experiences the pain he did in his 30s and 40s. "Cheating" occasionally confirmed that gluten was indeed the culprit; one day of eating regular grain products would make his hands and knees swell painfully again. However, cheating with foreign wheat products did not seem to trigger the same results. When he couldn't resist the wheat-flour flat bread his daughter made from a different variety of wheat imported from India, he did not experience any of the joint issues which American-grown wheat flour consistently triggered. It was a suggestive and thought-provoking discovery. Perhaps gluten itself was not the problem.

Using a grant from the Scottish government, Drs. Arpad Pusztai and Stanley Ewen conducted a study on the effects of genetically engineered potatoes on rats who consumed them. These potatoes contained the genetically engineered biopesticide Bacillus Thuringiensis (B.t.). (This same bacteria is used to genetically modify soybeans, mazie, and cotton (Latham, 2015).) The results of the study, published in the acclaimed British medical journal The Lancet, demonstrated significant negative effects on the rats' organ development, metabolism, and immune function (CFS, n.d.). In response to the huge backlash Dr. Pusztai received from the biotechnology industry, numerous scientists responded with other tests which confirmed the conclusions Dr. Pusztai reported.

The Center for Food Safety in the United States has also raised numerous other concerns about the effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This organization cites many scientists who worked for the Food and Drug Administration who issued serious warnings to the FDA that genetic engineering of food products could produce thousands of new and previously unknown toxins, allergens, and issues with antibiotic resistance, and that each genetically engineered food needs to be tested for safety. Unbelievably, the FDA ignored the warnings from their own scientists, as well as the published statement from the British Medical Association that antibiotic resistance from genetically engineered foods would be one of the major public health threats of the 21st century and that genetically engineered foods should be banned (CFS, n.d.).

Despite the host of warnings, the FDA put out a statement in 1992 that genetically engineered foods were as safe for human consumption as traditional foods, and passed a "no-test policy" for all genetically engineered foods, allowing them to be fed to the public without any testing for safety at all. Scientists employed by the FDA protested that the FDA had no scientific backing for their statement whatsoever and were actually denying the evidence presented. In 1998, the Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit against the FDA, which admitted that they had no scientific backing for their statement that genetically engineered foods were safe (CFS, n.d.).

The concerning matter is not simply that the biotech industry is not required to test genetically engineered foods for safety, but that they are not even required to reveal that their foods are genetically engineered. According to the Center for Food Safety, "Consumers have no way of knowing what foods are genetically engineered because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require labeling of these products." (CFS, n.d.) They further stated, "The agency’s failure to require testing or labeling of GE foods has made millions of consumers into guinea pigs, unknowingly testing the safety of dozens of gene-altered food products." When consumers don't even know which foods they are consuming are genetically engineered, however, it is very difficult to collect and correlate data, even when people do experience harmful effects. The public must attempt to piece together their own data, often without the information they need.

What we do know is that genetically engineered foods contain foreign genes, bacterial and viral vectors, viral promoters and antibiotic marker systems all genetically incorporated into their biological makeup, and that what scientific testing has been done has shown that these elements are not harmless. Jonathan Latham, PhD, once involved in the biotech industry and now writing for the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, writes that "I now believe, as a much more experienced scientist, that GMO crops still run far ahead of our understanding of their risks." (Latham, 2015) We also know that some of the biggest crops that contain GMOs include corn, soybeans, and canola (Latham, 2015). These as well as several other culprits are found in nearly every processed food, as well as in most animal feeds, making them difficult to avoid.

One thing that food producers have done to help us, however, is to identify which foods do not contain genetically modified organisms. Countless individuals have found their puzzling health conditions have improved or even disappeared when they made the effort to only consume foods identified as free from GMOs. We also know that there is genuine scientific research that suggests this is a very reasonable correlation to make.

Is it really worth the effort to avoid GMOs when they are in virtually everything we eat? That decision is yours. Thankfully there are farmers such as the Stelzer family of Azure Standard, one of our bulk suppliers, who noticed the health benefits their family experienced when they made the commitment to switch to organic farming in the early 70s, and now provide the public with foods they have grown without harmful modifications. Our commitment is to make such honest foods as convenient to you as possible.

Center for Food Safety (n.d.) GE Food and Your Health. https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/issues/311/ge-foods/ge-food-and-your-health

Latham, Jonathan R. (14 August 2015). GMO Dangers: Facts You Need to Know. https://nutritionstudies.org/gmo-dangers-facts-you-need-to-know/