Controversial pesticides linked to catastrophic honeybee declines in North America and Europe may also kill other creatures, posing ecological threats even graver than feared, say some scientists.

According to a report by the American Bird Conservancy, the dangers of neonicotinoid pesticides to birds, and also to stream- and soil-dwelling insects accidentally exposed to the chemicals, have been underestimated by regulators and downplayed by industry.

“The environmental persistence of the neonicotinoids, their propensity for runoff and for groundwater infiltration, and their cumulative and largely irreversible mode of action in invertebrates raise environmental concerns that go well beyond bees,” stated the report, which was co-authored by pesticide policy expert Cynthia Palmer and pesticide toxicologist Pierre Mineau, both from the American Bird Conservancy.

Chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer, a major neonicotinoid manufacturer, said the criticisms lack solid evidence. “This report relies on theoretical calculations and exposure estimates that differ from accepted risk assessment methodologies, while disregarding relevant data that are at odds with its claims,” the company said in a statement.

The BeesNeonicotinoids became popular in the late 1990s, largely replacing earlier insecticides that posed blatant health and environmental risks. Derived from nicotine, which short-circuits the nervous systems of insects that try to eat tobacco plants, neonicotinoids at first seemed both effective and safe.

They now account for some one-quarter of global insecticide sales, used on hundreds of crops and also in gardens and cities. In the last several years, though, it’s become evident that regulators, especially the Environmental Protection Agency, overlooked the extreme toxicity of neonicotinoids to honeybees and other pollinators. Regulatory approvals were partly based on industry studies now considered unreliable, and sometimes despite the concerns of the EPA’s own scientists.

Neonicotinoids subsequently emerged as a prime suspect in colony collapse disorder, the unexplained malady that since 2005 has annually killed about one-third of the nation’s commercial honeybees, and may also affect bumblebee populations. The pesticides are blamed for triggering collapses outright or making bees vulnerable to to diseases and parasites.

'We’re going to see profound changes in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.'
A group of beekeepers and environmental groups have sued the EPA, which now plans to review evidence of neonicotinoid harms. Yet amidst the honeybee furor, far less attention has been paid to what the pesticides may do to other creatures.

Early toxicity studies suggested the risks were relatively small: Vertebrates don’t have precisely the same receptors to which neonicotinoids bind so tightly in insects, so higher doses are needed to cause harm.

It was also assumed that neonicotinoids wouldn’t accumulate in the environment at levels capable of harming either vertebrates or non-pest, non-pollinator invertebrates — the countless insect species that are the foundation of terrestrial and aquatic food webs.

Since then, however, researchers have found widespread evidence of neonicotinoids spreading beyond their crop targets, and the methodologies used to establish neonicotinoid safety have come under question.

“The more studies I see, the more I think the preponderance of evidence is leaning towards neonicotinoids being tremendously bad for lower animals in the food chain, especially all the invertebrates,” said Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation group.

The BirdsSeeds used to grow crops like corn, sunflowers and canola are routinely coated in neonicotinoids, which then spread through plants as they grow. Many species of birds eat seeds. In the absence to date of studies directly observing farmland birds and their day-by-day fates, the question of whether neonicotinoids harm them quickly becomes an argument over methods used to set toxicological guidelines.

In the American Bird Conservancy report, Mineau and Palmer note that the EPA typically sets guidelines for bird exposures using laboratory tests on just two species, mallard ducks and bobwhite quail. Their results become the basis of standards for other birds, but this elides widely varying sensitivities among hundreds of species.

For example, the LD50 — a standard toxicological measure for a dose that kills half of exposed animals — for bobwhite and mallards consuming imidacloprid, the most common neonicotinoid formulation, are 152 and 283 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. For canaries, that number drops to about 35 mg/kg, and for gray partridge it’s just 15 mg/kg.

Were the guidelines calculated more carefully, say Mineau and Palmer, drawing broadly on peer-reviewed literature and accounting for heightened sensitivity in certain species, they’d be very different. What are now considered safe exposure levels would be recognized as poisonous — and many birds could reach them by eating just a few seeds.

Asked for comment, the Environmental Protection Agency said the report “uses a method to compare risks across chemicals that differs from the long-standing peer-reviewed approach EPA uses. The agency will carefully consider the report’s studies, analytic methods and conclusions.”

David Fischer, director of environmental toxicology and risk assessment in Bayer’s CropScience division, said the report misrepresented industry testing. “We tested a lot of species. We did tests beyond what was required by the EPA,” Fischer said. If neonicotinoids really were killing birds, said Fischer, it would already have been reported, as were die-offs from the earlier, more-toxic chemicals that neonicotinoids largely replaced.

“There have been few instances of mortality in the field. They’re extremely rare,” Fischer said. “I don’t know of any incidents in North America.” Mineau responded that, even with earlier chemicals, researchers didn’t find evidence of bird deaths until they actively looked for them. That hasn’t yet happened with neonicotinoids, he said, and poisoned birds don’t immediately and visibly drop dead on fields. They may die hours or days later in a tree or bush, making it unlikely that anyone will even notice.

The report also notes that chronic toxicity — effects that don’t kill animals outright, but over time cause health, reproductive and behavioral problems — has largely been overlooked. Preliminary studies suggest a potential for embryo development disorders and decreased immune responses, but guidelines were again set by reference to bobwhite and mallards. Tests only measured obvious birth defects, ignoring the many other ways that animals can be impaired.

Mineau thinks neonicotinoids are at least playing a role in the precipitous decline of birds that live in ormigrate through agricultural areas. “I believe this is happening right now,” he said. Yet that, said Mineau, may be just a prelude to other problems. “I think the aquatic and soil impacts are even greater,” he said. “We’re going to see profound changes in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.”

Sope Creek near Marietta, Georgia, where high levels of neonicotinoids have been detected in the water. Image:Timothy J Carroll/Flickr

Soil and Streams

Neonicotinoids are what’s known as “systemic” pesticides, which spread through plant tissue, suffusing it from root to tip. For any given dose, a large proportion of any dose ends up in soil, carried there by roots or plant debris. Depending on conditions, neonicotinoids can remain active for weeks or even months.

What this does to soil-dwelling insects, which would generally be extremely sensitive to exposure, is uncertain. Fischer said neonicotinoids bind to particles of clay, effectively removing them from circulation and making keeping them from being absorbed by other insects. Black said some invertebrates, such as earthworms, do pick up neonicotinoids, and that the pesticides are re-absorbed by subsequent generations of plants, creating new and unintentional exposures.

Soil-bound neonicotinoids also leach into groundwater, ending up in streams and waterways. The danger to fish appears low, if not negligible, but is much higher for aquatic invertebrates. Not only are they neurologically vulnerable to neonicotinoids, said environmental scientist Jeroen van der Sluijs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, but each exposure builds on the last. Damage caused by neonicotinoids their nervous systems is irreversible, producing compounded effects from multiple exposures.

The EPA’s own reviews state that imidacloprid is “acutely very highly toxic” to aquatic invertebrates, with lethality to common creatures seen at concentrations of .05 parts per million, and chronic damage at even lower concentrations. In the United States, where just one-fifth of all streams are considered healthy, systematic watershed testing for neonicotinoids hasn’t been conducted, but concentrations well above those levels have been measured in multiple locations.

Surface water measurements of neonicotinoids in the Netherlands. Green dots correspond to levels at or below European standards of acceptable risk. Image: Jeroen van der Sluijs


Over a six-month period at waterways near Marietta and Whitesburg, Georgia, for example, imidacloprid levels averaged 7.13ppm, or some 142 times higher than what the EPA had considered highly toxic. Neonicotinoids have also been detected in water in California,Wisconsin, New York and Quebec.

According to Bayer, their own laboratory tests show that, even at the reported concentrations, effects are not significant. “We’ve tested entire aquatic communities, in microcosm tests,” with no decline in biomass until well beyond routinely measured concentrations, said Fischer.

Yet van der Sluijs argues that real-world effects are visible. Large-scale neonicotinoid in the Netherlands started around 2004, and preliminary research from his own laboratory has correlated neonicotinoid levels in Dutch waterways with large drops in insect populations. “This will likely have an impact on insect-feeding birds,” said van der Sluijs.

Insect-eating birds are indeed declining in the Netherlands and elsewhere, a trend that dates to the 1960s and is blamed on a variety of factors, including earlier generations of pesticides, habitat alteration and climate change. Neonicotinoids represent a fairly new threat, but van der Sluijs is not alone in his concerns.

Ecotoxicologist Christy Morrissey of the University of Saskatchewan said there is “considerable circumstantial evidence that these chemicals are causing large-scale reductions in insect abundance. At the same time, we are observing serious declines in many species of birds in Canada, particularly aerial insectivores, swifts and swallows for example, that are highly dependent on insects to raise their young.”

Like the EPA, Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency is also reviewing neonicotinoids. Morrissey’s research is still preliminary, but in most of the wetlands she’s sampled, she’s found neonicotinoids. “It is moving off the seeds in the fields and into the water,” Morrissey said. There appear to be fewer insects in heavily agricultural sites than elsewhere, she said, and birds nesting nearby have lower body weights.

The FutureConcerning as these observations may be, correlations are not proof of causation. Still, the American Bird Conservancy and Xerces Society think there’s concern enough for the EPA to accelerate their neonicotinoid review, which is expected to finish in 2018, and consider limiting some uses of the pesticides immediately.

Though prompted by concerns over pollinators, the EPA’s review “is not limited to evaluating potential impacts on bees,” but will include comprehensive ecological assessments, said the agency. Companies will be required to monitor the environmental presence of neonicotinoids.

Bayer argues that neonicotinoids have become invaluable to farming, and trying to replace them could backfire. “Without these products, an additional three million acres of corn would need to be planted to compensate for the lost productivity,” the company said in the statement. “There would be pressure to convert land currently set aside for nature to farmland.”

Black said that integrated pest management, or IPM, which combines precisely targeted chemical use with other, non-chemical means of pest control, can deliver industrial-scale yields in an environmentally sustainable way. “We’ve moved away from IPM, from scouting your farm, putting in habitat for beneficial insects, and spraying only if there’s damage,” he said. “With neonicotinoids, you don’t do that any more.”

In coming months, more studies are expected to be published on the ecological effects of neonicotinoids. These may provide a more conclusive diagnosis of what’s happening. For Black, the situation resembles what happened with the pesticide classes they replaced, which were rushed to market to replace environmentally toxic DDT. Only later were their dangers recognized. “We’ve gone full circle here,” he said. “We seem to approve these products before we have all the information.”

By Brandon Keim
 
     Genetically modified seed giant Monsanto likes to trumpet its "commitment to sustainable agriculture." The story goes like this: by generating novel, high-tech crop varieties, Monsanto will wean farmers off of synthetic chemical poisons. The company even markets its flagship product, seeds genetically engineered to survive its own Roundup weed killer, as a tool they can use to to "decrease the overall use of herbicides."

But as I've shown before, herbicide use has actually dramatically ramped up as the Roundup Ready technology conquers vast swaths of US farmland. That's because weeds quickly developed resistance to it, forcing farmers to apply ever-larger doses and resort to older, more toxic herbicides to combat resistant weeds. And while the company has tried hard to leave behind its past as a purveyor of toxic chemicals and rebrand itself as a technology company, those toxic chemicals remain central to its growth and profitability, as its latest quarterly profit report shows.

The report--press release here—cheered investors, driving Monsanto shares to their highest levels since 2008. Here's the main bit, lifted from the press release (note that by "second quarter," the company means the January to March period):

Monsanto's latest earnings report—all about corn and "ag productivity" (herbicides) Detail from a Monsanto press release.
Note that the company consists of two main segments: what it calls "Seeds and Genomics," which involves sales of seeds, obviously, plus licensing fees on genetically modified traits; and "Agricultural Productivity," which means, essentially, chemicals, mainly Roundup in a variety of forms. Seeds and Genomics is by far the largest of the two in terms of contribution to overall sales, but good old Agricultural Productivity is still really important. Indeed, its sales shot up from $824 million in second-quarter 2012 to $1.12 billion in the same time period of this year—that's an amazing 36 percent jump.

By contrast, Seeds and Genomics sales went from $3.92 billion to $4.35 billion over the same time span—just a 10 percent rise.

Overall, the herbicide contribution to Monsanto's total sales went from 17 percent in second-quarter 2012 to 20 percent in the the same period of 2013.

Let's dig a little deeper into the Seeds and Genomics part of the above chart. Note that for every business line but one—corn seed and traits—sales declined in second-quarter 2013 compared to the same period of a year before. Monsanto's corn business is booming—sales went from $2.816 billion to $3.28 billion—a 16 percent gain. Everything else, though—soybeans, cotton, vegetables, etc.—stagnated. (And the same trend holds true when you look at the six-month comparison, also shown in the above chart.).

In short, Monsanto's growth now dependslargely on corn and Roundup.

Widespread use of Bt corn did reduce insecticide use for several years, but certain insects are now developing resistance to it.
The press release does not exactly trumpet the fact that Roundup plays a massive role in driving its growth. But it does declare that "the company remains focused on its established Roundup® strategy." I'll say.

But Roundup isn't Monsanto's only strategy triggering an surge in chemical use. Most of the corn seed Monsanto sells is engineered to contain a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis(Bt), a soil bacteria that's toxic to bugs. Widespread use of Bt corn did indeed reduce insecticide use on corn for several years, but as I've reported before, certain insects are developing resistance to it. Predictably, farmers are planning to react by resorting to chemical pesticides, according to Michael Gray, an entomology professor at University of Illinois who polls farmers on planting decisions. Here's the trade magazine Ag Professional:

Gray also said that in 2013, he anticipates a sharp increase in the use of planting-time soil insecticides with corn rootworm Bt hybrids. On average, nearly half the producers indicated they intend to use both a soil applied (at-planting) insecticide with their corn rootworm Bt hybrid this spring.

"From my perspective, the escalation of soil insecticide use along with corn rootworm Bt hybrids has been fueled primarily by concerns about Bt resistance and high commodity prices," he said. [Emphasis added.]

Far from ushering in an era of widespread sustainable agriculture, Monsanto and its products are keeping farmers stranded on what ecologists call a "pesticide treadmill"—never-ending chemical warfare against fast-adapting ecosystems.

—By Tom Philpott



 
SALEM -- Oregon could become the first state in the nation to require the labeling of foods with genetically modified ingredients under several bills in the Legislature.State lawmakers are considering at least eight bills on genetically modified food labeling, fish and crops. Several bills would require foods produced with genetically engineered materials to be labeled. Others bills would prohibit importing or cultivating genetically engineered fish. Three other bills would place restrictions on the planting of genetically modified crops and require manufacturers of genetically engineered seeds to be held liable for damages to neighboring crops.

"I think consumers have a right to know and make their own decisions about these foods," said Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, who is sponsoring several of the bills on genetically modified labeling and fish.

The battle over genetically modified -- or engineered -- organisms and their safety for farming and consumption has long been a hot topic. Proponents of the bills say consumers should know what they eat, and they fear contamination of native fish stocks and organic produce and seeds. Opponents say that genetically modified foods are scientifically proven to be safe and that requiring special labeling will stigmatize the foods and cost consumers more.

Lawmakers in at least 12 other states are considering requirements for the labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients, according to the Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that supports the labeling of genetically engineered foods.

California voters in November narrowly rejected Proposition 37, which would have required labeling of genetically engineered food. A Washington ballot initiative proposes similar labeling requirements. The Washington Legislature could adopt the measure or let voters decide in November.

Businesses are taking note. Earlier this month, Whole Foods became the first national grocery chain to require the labeling of products that contain genetically modified materials. Company officials plan to phase in the requirement over five years.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve genetically engineered Atlantic salmon soon. That's a move that some Oregon lawmakers fear could threaten the local fishing industry and native Pacific salmon.

Holvey said he visited Atlantic salmon fish farms in Washington and British Columbia and grew concerned that those fish could escape into the wild.

"Our fisheries are extremely important to the economy," Holvey said. "If we allow the Pacific Northwest to become a mixed bag of Atlantic salmon and genetically engineered salmon, I think consumer confidence in Pacific salmon will be undermined and damage the industry."

If the bills requiring the labeling of foods with genetically engineered ingredients pass, it would be the first time a food is labeled based on the manner in which a plant is bred, said Scott Dahlman, executive director of Oregonians for Food & Shelter. The group represents about 3,000 farmers and opposes all of the bills on genetically engineered labeling, fish and crops.

"By the time it gets to food, there's no difference between a plant that was created through genetic engineering versus one that was created through conventional breeding," Dahlman said. "Genetically engineered foods have been found time and time again to be completely safe. Slapping a label on it would insinuate there was something wrong."

Oregon farmers already grow genetically modified corn, alfalfa and likely soy varieties, said Bruce Pokarney, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Farmers in the state can plant any genetically modified crops that have been approved by the federal government without state oversight, he said, and no labels are required.

The battle over genetically modified crops and seeds is especially ripe in Jackson County, where a measure on the May 2014 ballot would ban the growing of genetically engineered plants and allow the county to enforce it.

The Rogue River Valley is home to dozens of organic farmers, including Chuck Burr,  who sells more than 200 varieties of organic seeds through his company, Restoration Seeds.

Last year, Burr said he destroyed about a tenth of an acre of rainbow chard after learning that a plot of genetically engineered sugar beets might have cross-pollinated his crops. The crop was worth about $4,400, Burr said, which would've covered property taxes on his 10-acre farm for the year.

"As a small farmer, that's a big deal," Burr said. "If a transgenetic trait gets into my crop, then I can't sell my crop as organic. It's no longer true to type, and I cannot market it, so I have to destroy the crop."

Under a bill introduced by Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, Burr could have sought compensation from the beet planter.

The science on long-term effects of genetically modified foods is mixed, Buckley said. "Anybody who says the science is black and white is not accurate," he said.

Buckley has also introduced a bill that would allow counties to establish control areas for commodities. It would allow the Jackson County ballot measure to move forward, he said.

A separate Senate bill would prevent the Jackson County ballot measure from reaching voters by designating the state as the authority to regulate seeds. The potential of having 36 counties each with different standards would create a "nightmare for compliance," said Sen.Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, one of the bill's sponsors. Kruse grows about 50 different crops on his family's 700-acre farm, including seedless watermelon and other cross-pollinated crops.

"There is not a crop grown on this planet that hasn't been genetically modified," said Kruse, who added that he doesn't grow any crops that most people would consider to be genetically engineered. "Anytime you cross-pollinate something, it's been genetically modified."

By Yuxing Zheng, The Oregonian 




 
     Whole Foods Market, the grocery chain, on Friday became the first retailer in the United States to require labeling of all genetically modified foods sold in its stores, a move that some experts said could radically alter the food industry.

A. C. Gallo, president of Whole Foods, said the new labeling requirement, to be in place within five years, came in response to consumer demand. “We’ve seen how our customers have responded to the products we do have labeled,” Mr. Gallo said. “Some of our manufacturers say they’ve seen a 15 percent increase in sales of products they have labeled.”

Genetically modified ingredients are deeply embedded in the global food supply, having proliferated since the 1990s. Most of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States, for example, have been genetically modified. The alterations make soybeans resistant to a herbicide used in weed control, and causes the corn to produce its own insecticide. Efforts are under way to produce a genetically altered apple that will spoil less quickly, as well as genetically altered salmon that will grow faster. The announcement ricocheted around the food industry and excited proponents of labeling. “Fantastic,” said Mark Kastel, co-director of the Cornucopia Institute, an organic advocacy group that favors labeling.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the trade group that represents major food companies and retailers, issued a statement opposing the move. “These labels could mislead consumers into believing that these food products are somehow different or present a special risk or a potential risk,” Louis Finkel, the organization’s executive director of government affairs, said in the statement.

Mr. Finkel noted that the Food and Drug Administration, as well as regulatory and scientific bodies including the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association, had deemed genetically modified products safe.

The labeling requirements announced by Whole Foods will include its 339 stores in the United States and Canada. Since labeling is already required in the European Union, products in its seven stores in Britain are already marked if they contain genetically modified ingredients. The labels currently used show that a product has been verified as free of genetically engineered ingredients by the Non GMO Project, a nonprofit certification organization. The labels Whole Foods will use in 2018, which have yet to be created, will identify foods that contain such ingredients.

The shift by Whole Foods is the latest in a series of events that has intensified the debate over genetically modified foods. Voters defeated a hard-fought ballot initiative in California late last year after the biotech industry, and major corporations like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, spent millions of dollars to fight the effort. Other initiatives have qualified for the ballot in Washington State and Missouri, while consumers across the country have been waging a sort of guerrilla movement in supermarkets, pasting warning stickers on products suspected of having G.M.O. ingredients from food companies that oppose labeling. Proponents of labeling insist that consumers have a right to know about the ingredients in the food they eat, and they contend that some studies in rats show that bioengineered food can be harmful.

Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Just Label It, a campaign for a federal requirement to label foods containing genetically modified ingredients, called the Whole Foods decision a “game changer.”

“We’ve had some pretty big developments in labeling this year,” Mr. Hirshberg said, adding that 22 states now have some sort of pending labeling legislation. “Now, one of the fastest-growing, most successful retailers in the country is throwing down the gantlet.”

He compared the potential impact of the Whole Foods announcement to Wal-Mart’s decision several years ago to stop selling milk from cows treated with growth hormone. Today, only a small number of milk cows are injected with the hormone.

Karen Batra, a spokeswoman for BIO, a trade group representing the biotech industry, said it was too early to determine what impact, if any, the Whole Foods decision would have. “It looks like they want to expand their inventory of certified organic and non-G.M.O. lines,” Ms. Batra said. “The industry has always supported the voluntary labeling of food for marketing reasons.” 

She contended, however, that without scientific evidence showing that genetically modified foods caused health or safety issues, labeling was unnecessary.

Nonetheless, companies have shown a growing willingness to consider labeling. Some 20 major food companies, as well as Wal-Mart, met recently in Washington to discuss genetically modified labeling.

Coincidentally, the American Halal Company, a food company whose Saffron Road products are sold in Whole Foods stores, on Friday introduced the first frozen food, a chickpea and spinach entree, that has been certified not to contain genetically modified ingredients.

More than 90 percent of respondents to a poll of potential voters in the 2012 elections, conducted by the Mellman Group in February last year, were in favor of labeling genetically modified foods. Some 93 percent of Democrats and 89 percent of Republicans in the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent, favored it.

But in the fight over the California initiative, Proposition 37, the opponents succeeded in persuading voters that labeling would have a negative effect on food prices and the livelihood of farmers.

That fight, however, has cost food companies in other ways. State legislatures and regulatory agencies are pondering labeling on their own, and consumers have been aggressive in criticizing some of the companies that fought the initiative, using Twitter and Facebook to make their views known.

Buoyed by what they see as some momentum in the labeling war, consumers, organic farmers and food activists plan to hold an “eat-in” outside the F.D.A.’s offices next month to protest government policies on genetically modified crops and foods. Whole Foods, which specializes in organic products, tends to be favored by those types of consumers, and it enjoys strong sales of its private-label products, whose composition it controls. The company thus risks less than some more traditional food retailers in taking a stance on labeling.

In 2009, Whole Foods began submitting products in its 365 Everyday Value private-label line to verification by the Non GMO Project.

But even Whole Foods has not been immune to criticism on the G.M.O. front. A report by Cornucopia, “Cereal Crimes,” revealed that its 365 Corn Flakes line contained genetically modified corn. By the time the report came out in October 2011, the product had been reformulated and certified as organic.

Today, Whole Foods’ shelves carry some 3,300 private-label and branded products that are certified, the largest selection of any grocery chain in the country.

Mr. Gallo said Whole Foods did not consult with its suppliers about its decision and informed them of it only shortly before making its announcement Friday. He said Whole Foods looked forward to working with suppliers on the labeling.

By Stephanie Strom

 
GE organisms actually become part of the bacteria in our digestive tracts and reproduce continuously inside us. But the USDA now wants to to remove all controls from GE corn and cotton!

There are no human clinical trials of genetically engineered foods. The only published human feeding experiment revealed that genetic material inserted into GE soy transfers into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function. Even after we stop eating GE foods, we may still have the GE proteins produced continuously inside us.

As the Institute for Responsible Technology has noted, the genetic engineering process creates massive collateral damage, causing mutations in hundreds or thousands of locations throughout the plant’s DNA. Natural genes can be deleted or permanently turned on or off, and hundreds may change their behavior. Even the inserted gene can be damaged or rearranged, and may create proteins that can trigger allergies or promote disease.

The idea of having genetically engineered genes permanently living inside our guts has staggering implications:

  • If the antibiotic gene inserted into most GM crops were to transfer, it could create antibiotic-resistant diseases.
  • Bt toxins (Bacillus thuringiensis) inserted into GM food crops to kill pests are reaching the bloodstreams of 93% of women and 80% of unborn babies because of the consumption of meat, milk, and eggs from livestock fed GE corn. This could turn bacteria in our intestines into pesticide factories.
  • Animal studies show that DNA in food can travel into organs throughout the body, even into the fetus.
And we’ve seen cross-species transfer of DNA happen before. A significant percentage of human DNA is actually viral DNA that became part of us over 40 million years ago. There is concern that virally transmitted DNA may cause mutations and psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and mood disorders. GE organisms may exacerbate this phenomenon.

Genetically engineered food genes transferring to our own genes could lead to problems like leaky gut syndrome:

  • Our small intestine, which is responsible for about 70% of our immune system, behaves like a selective sieve: it lets only nutrients and well-digested fats, proteins, and starches enter the bloodstream and keeps out large molecules, microbes, and toxins.
  • Leaky gut syndrome happens when the intestinal lining becomes inflamed, and the microvilli on the lining become damaged; this prevents the microvilli from absorbing nutrients and producing necessary enzymes and secretions for healthy digestion and absorption.
  • In between cells are desmosomes, which keep the cells together, forming a strong structure preventing large molecules from passing through. When an area becomes inflamed, the structure is weakened, allowing larger molecules to escape. The makes the immune system produce antibodies and cytokines to fight off molecules because they are perceived as antigens.
Allergies have already skyrocketed in the US, and with the introduction of GE soy in the UK, soy related allergies rose to 50%. Yet federal agencies turn a blind eye to the dangers of genetic engineering.

In 1989 there was a tragic outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome (EMS), an incredibly painful disease. The outbreak was traced to consumption of l-tryptophan supplements produced by a Japanese company using genetically engineered bacteria. The bacteria are used to increase yields, but they increase impurities during the fermentation process—possibly leading to a level of contaminants that caused the EMS.

To this day, the government has refused to address the issue of purity standards for GE-manufactured products. Instead, federal agencies and biotech companies claimed that contaminants linked to the EMS tragedy were caused by changes in the company’s manufacturing process—despite the fact that the company was precisely following the purity standards enforced by government rules.

The EMS was rare and had a fast enough onset that the case histories of the patients could be linked to this supplement, and it was also acute enough that doctors took notice. There is a very clear causal link between EMS and these genetically engineered organisms.

The effects of other genetically modified products may not be as obvious so quickly, but can be even more devastating; as we have reported previously, GMOs are causing terrible genetic changes in mammal offspring. Scientists are seeing birth defects, high infant mortality rates, and sterility in hamsters, rats, and livestock fed GMO soy and corn, and some hamster pups even begin growing hair inside their mouths.

The late George Wald, Nobel Laureate in Medicine or Physiology in 1967 and Higgins Professor of Biology at Harvard University, was one of the first scientists to speak out about the potential dangers of genetic engineering:

Recombinant DNA technology [genetic engineering] faces our society with problems unprecedented, not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth….Now whole new proteins will be transposed overnight into wholly new associations, with consequences no one can foretell, either for the host organism or their neighbors….For going ahead in this direction may not only be unwise but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics.[1]

The USDA has released two Environmental Assessment reports, one for Monsanto’s corn genetically engineered to be drought-tolerant, and the other for Syngenta Biotechnology’s cotton genetically engineered to be pest-resistant. USDA believes the cotton is “unlikely to pose a plant pest risk”; for the corn, the agency is considering either keeping the corn under regulation, or assigning it nonregulated status (banning it altogether is off the table). The comment period for both EAs is open until July 11.

Please take action today! Tell the USDA that the corn and cotton must not be deregulated—that without strict controls, GE crops will encroach on non-GE crops, contaminating them, including organic crops—which will, of course, render them non-organic.

The GE corn is especially dangerous because it is for human consumption. As noted above, GE genes from foods can affect the bacteria from our digestive system, and can lead to allergies, disease and even sterility.

GMOs are causing terrible genetic changes in mammal offspring. Scientists are seeing birth defects, high infant mortality rates, and sterility in hamsters, rats, and livestock fed GMO soy and corn, and some hamster pups even begin growing hair inside their mouths.

By The Liberty Beacon™ Staff