GMOs

Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) are plants or animals created in laboratories by

inserting genes from one species into the DNA sequence of another, thereby producing
new life forms that never existed before with specific characteristics (such as, for
agricultural purposes, increased water retention or the ability to grow faster on less feed).
Nanotechnology is also increasingly being used to create new foods and food packaging
by breaking matter down into microscopic nanoparticles that are just atoms wide and
“programming” them to perform specific tasks. A range of nanotech applications for food
have been used and proposed, from packaging (e.g., forming an air-tight vacuum seal) to
taste (e.g., mimicking the flavor and texture of familiar foods). While these two
technologies have been used in food production for decades, particularly in the US,
neither has been proven safe—and both present dangers to the environment, workers
and consumers.

Overview of GMOs

The GMO creation process shares similarities with the millennia-old selective-breeding
techniques humans have used since the birth of modern farming to domesticate wild
plants and animals. That is, both methods focus on “customizing” living organisms for
agricultural purposes. However, there is a major difference between the two technologies:
whereas selective-breeding strictly limits gene-sharing to closely-related species, genetic
engineers modify organisms by combining the genes of completely divergent species—
and even splicing plant and animal DNA together. The most well-known example of this
is the infamous “Flavr Savr” tomato created by splicing a modified arctic flounder gene
into the plant’s DNA to make it frost-resistant. The US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) approved the product for sale in 1994, but it was taken off the market in 1997
because of abysmal sales.

US consumers have been eating genetically-modified (GM) crops since the early 1990s,
and today, more than two-thirds of the processed foods sold in the country’s grocery
stores contain GMOs. The pervasiveness of GM foods in the US is driven by sheer
agricultural volume: more than two-thirds of the world’s total GM acreage is in the US,
and 89 percent of the soybeans and 61 percent of the corn grown in the US are
genetically-modified. Since their inception, companies that produce GMOs have claimed
that their technology will create foods with enhanced nutrition and greater plant density
per acre of farmland—yet only 0.1 percent of GMOs have increased nutritional content or
crop yields. In fact, studies show that most GMO crop yields are lower than their
conventionally-grown counterparts.

Having successfully saturated the US market with GMOs, powerful biotech corporations
are consolidating their economic control over the global food supply by displacing
traditional farmers around the world. GM technology itself has even infiltrated non-GMO
farms, hurting farmers agriculturally and economically. This happens when wind or insects
carry pollen from GMOs to neighboring farms as far as several miles away and sprout
among the conventionally-grown crops. This is especially problematic for organic farmers,
because their produce can no longer be organically certified when it is contaminated with
GMOs —and one of the largest biotech corporations, Monsanto, has actually sued organic
farmers whose farms were polluted by their patented plants. Monsanto has even patented
“terminator seeds” that can be planted only once, allowing the company to make farmers
buy a new supply every year instead of saving seeds from previous seasons. In 1999,
Monsanto announced its intention to not market “Terminators” in response to widespread
public outcry, and these seeds are not commercially available at present. Nevertheless,
biotech companies continue to patent such genetic use restriction technology, and may
yet move ahead with commercializing it. This system of licensing the growing of plants as
trademarked intellectual property leaves many nations, especially developing ones, in a
bind: if they adopt GM farming techniques, their farmers face these problems and become
dependent on corporations for the technology; if they don’t, they face stiff importation
competition from countries that do.
Since GM crops can be patented in the US, it is legal for corporations like Monsanto to
restrict independent scientific research on the seeds; therefore, it is almost impossible for
an independent entity to verify their claims. Seed producers maintain that GM crops are
superior to traditional crops.

These are just some of the reasons that the European Union maintained a longstanding
ban on the growth and importation of GM foods. However, US food corporations
effectively ended the EU’s moratorium on GMOs in 2006 by lobbying the World Trade
Organization, which ruled that prohibiting this technology in the European economic
territory violated an international commerce clause. Similarly, in 2009, Mexico lifted an
11-year ban on growing GM corn to compete with US growers. Being that corn originated
in Mexico and continues to be of profound cultural importance to the country, traditional
farmers fear that the new strain could cross-breed with the dozens of native Mexican
maize varieties, permanently altering their DNA.

While GM crops increasingly dominate the agricultural sector, the US government has not
yet approved “meat,” dairy and eggs from transgenic animals for human consumption.
However, several companies are already petitioning the FDA to authorize their
experimental species’ flesh for sale. Examples include:

 The “Enviropig” – A Yorkshire-breed pig whose chromosomes are spliced with a bit
of mouse DNA, thereby lowering its feces’ phosphorous content by 30 to 65
percent.
 The “AquaAdvantage salmon” – An Atlantic salmon whose inserted Chinook
salmon and ocean pout genes promote accelerated growth, enabling it to reach
market weight in just half the time of a normal salmon.

If the FDA does approve GM animals for commercial production, they will not require
companies to label these products any differently than “meat,” dairy and eggs already
available to consumers. In addition, the welfare of GM animals remains completely
unregulated because the inadequately-enforced federal Animal Welfare Act does not
apply to animals used in agriculture or agricultural research. Agriculturally-transgenic
animals therefore routinely suffer from high rates of birth defects, disabilities and
premature death as a result of having their DNA experimentally manipulated.

Even though cloning animals (i.e., creating genetic replicas of individual animals) results
in similar physical problems, in 2008 the FDA officially declared “meat,” dairy and eggs
from animal clones safe for human consumption.

GMOs’ Environmental Impacts

Some of the documented and potential environmental impacts of GMOs include:

Gene flow – Pollen from GMOs can be carried through the air and mix with the DNA of
other plants, resulting in hybrid species. This happened in North Dakota in 2010 when GM
canola was discovered growing in the wild with an herbicide-resistant trait that did not
previously exist either on the farm or in nature.

Invasive species – GM animals could also escape into the wild and potentially displace
native fauna by out-competing them for habitat and resources (e.g., fish who are
genetically engineered to grow faster or larger than they naturally would). GM animals
could even potentially cross-breed with wild species, irrevocably mutating their genetic
code and decimating their populations in the process.

Overuse of agricultural chemicals – GMOs require more agricultural chemicals (i.e.,

herbicides and insecticides) than conventionally-cultivated crops because many GM
plants are deliberately designed to be highly resistant to these toxic compounds. Some
GMOs even produce their own pesticides. These unprecedented innovations have led to
the unintentional evolution of herbicide-resistant super weeds and super pests that can
only be killed using greater amounts of toxic chemicals.

GMOs’ Impacts on Farm Workers

The heavier reliance on agricultural chemicals associated with GM crops exposes farm
workers to increased amounts of toxic compounds, jeopardizing their health. There have
also been cases in which people working on and living near farms growing GMOs suffered
allergies and sickness from touching and breathing in pollen from the crops. Entire
farming communities are also drastically impacted when large corporations start growing
GM crops. In South America, for example, thousands of families that farmed the land for
generations have been displaced to urban slums because they cannot compete with
agribusiness conglomerates growing GM crops. Some who protested losing their
livelihoods have even been killed by paramilitary squads.

GMOs’ Impacts on Consumers

The health risks of consuming GMOs are still unknown, because comprehensive long-
term studies have not been done, but experts cite allergic reactions as one of the gravest
concerns. For instance, people with severe nut allergies have no way of knowing whether
GM foods contain DNA from nuts. Novel gene combinations present in GMOs could also
create allergic reactions that did not previously exist. Other concerns about GMO
consumption include new types of gastrointestinal disorders (caused by imbalances in
intestinal flora) and resistance to antibiotics.

Overview of Nanofoods

Gmo_small2Nanoparticles are now used in hundreds of consumer products, from potato

chip bags to baby food—even some fruits and vegetables are treated with nanocoating
to lengthen their shelf life. But even though nanoparticles have been used in food
manufacturing for decades, no one really knows how prevalent they are because (just like
GMOs) the FDA does not require companies to label nanofoods or even report their use
in food products. However, nearly 20 of the world’s largest food manufacturers maintain
in-house nanofood labs (including Nestlé, Hershey, Cargill, Campbell’s, Sara Lee and
Heinz), and some industry experts speculate that 40 percent of US food products will
contain nanoparticles by 2015.

Nano’s Environmental Impacts

One of the ecological problems with nanotechnology is that certain types of matter that
are stable on the macro scale can be volatile on the micro level. For example, antimicrobial
properties of nanoparticles can disrupt signals between bacteria and plant hosts and
transmit contaminants, which can endanger entire ecosystems. Studies have shown that
the nanosilver particles used in food packaging can interfere with organisms’ DNA
replication. Nanoparticles are so small that sewage treatment cannot filter them out when
they are washed down drains, so they enter aquatic ecosystems where, research has
found, they can kill and mutate fish embryos.

In 2008, government scientists with the National Research Council released a report
charging that the FDA, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies
responsible for regulating nanotechnology do not have an adequate plan to determine
whether it endangers the environment and human health. Notably, just as the early
purveyors of GMOs claimed their technological advances would increase food output
while reducing pollution, so do nanotech advocates insist that their methods will produce
food and other products more efficiently and cleanly by conserving natural resources.
However, critics point out that nanotechnology production requires excessive amounts of
water, energy and toxic compounds. Clearly, those who stand to make fortunes from
GMOs and nanofoods have strong economic incentives to accentuate the positive aspects
of their technologies while de-emphasizing the dangers.

Nano’s Impacts on Workers

Some nanoparticles used in food production are so small that they can be absorbed
through the skin, posing potential health threats to workers who are regularly exposed to
such materials. One study demonstrated that even very low concentrations of zinc oxide
nanoparticles are toxic to human lung cells under controlled laboratory conditions. People
working with nanoparticles inhale these micro-poisons on a regular basis.

Nano’s Impacts on Consumers

Other studies have shown that nanoparticles can penetrate cell membranes and the
blood-brain barrier when ingested, damaging DNA and causing cancer, as well as heart
and brain disease. Some nanoparticles used in food products, like nanosilver and silica,
cannot be broken down by the body, and could potentially accumulate and cause illness.
Despite these dangers, the vast majority of nanoparticles used in food production have
not been safety tested by the FDA or other government regulatory agencies.

How You Can Help

Avoid eating GMOs by purchasing vegan organic foods. Also, to find food brands that
don’t use GM ingredients, consult the Center for Food Safety’s “Non-GMO Shoppers’
Guide” (conveniently downloadable as a mobile SmartPhone application).*

Unfortunately, government-regulated organic standards do not currently prohibit the use

of nanoparticles, making it difficult to entirely exclude these microscopic materials from
your diet. One resource that can help is the Consumer Products Inventory compiled by
the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. This database lists “1,000+ manufacturer-
identified nanotechnology-based consumer products currently on the market.”*

The prevalence of GMOs and nanoparticles in food makes it all the more important to
voice your concerns about these issues by urging your elected officials to pass legislation
requiring mandatory labeling of all foods containing GMOs and nanoparticles so
consumers can make fully-informed choices about what they purchase and eat.
You can also encourage Congress to pass laws that make agribusiness corporations pay
out when their production methods and products damage the environment or make
workers and consumers sick.

*Please note, although Food Empowerment Project is linking to other organizations, we

do not necessarily endorse the entire content of their website or mission.

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