The chickens on genetically modified (GM) food have been coming home to roost this week, though as happened with DDT, thalidomide and other toxic chemicals those involved will doubtless fight a rearguard action for years to come.
The following URL http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/22/superbugs-destruct-food-supply.aspx?e_cid=20120922_DNL_art_1 relates how
“a study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, found that rats fed a type of genetically engineered corn that is prevalent in the US food supply for two years developed massive mammary tumors, kidney and liver damage, and other serious health problems.”
The research was considered so "hot" that the work was done under strict secrecy i.e. to prevent sabotage by vested commercial interests.
Rats only live a few years. Humans live around 80 years, so we will notice these effects in animals long before we see them in humans. The gigantic human lab experiment is only about 10 years old, so we are likely decades away from tabulating the human casualties. This is some of the strongest evidence to date that we need to exercise the precautionary principle ASAP and avoid these foods.”
In short we now know that where genetic engineering introduces genes into plants for insect resistance additional toxic proteins will subsequently accumulate in plant tissues consumed by animals and man. “These toxins are found in the blood and readily transferred across the placenta to developing babies in the womb”. In a Quebec study the Bt toxin was found in the blood system of 93% of women from non-farming communities. 80% of them passed that on to their babies i.e. the placental barrier is not a barrier to endocrine-disrupting chemicals like glyphosate.
We also know that a substance called glyphosate which is the ‘active ingredient’ in many modern herbicides eg Roundup used on GM corn, soybeans etc can have very unwelcome effects on humans.
Glyphosate doesn’t kill weeds or grass directly; it accumulates in the plant and ‘gives it a bad case of (the equivalent of) AIDS’ ...... so that the plant succumbs to local soil borne pathogens. Glyphosate in fact stops the weeds or grass absorbing the beneficial nutrients they need from the soil. In other words, it lowers their immune system and they die as a result.
“The problem stems from the way glyphosate persists in and alters (plants and) the soil, which has wide-ranging ramifications. As a potent organic phosphate chelator, glyphosate immobilizes micronutrients that are essential for normal physiological functions not only in soils, but also in growing plants and in those who eat the plants, namely animals and humans.
The nutritional efficiency of genetically engineered plants is profoundly compromised. Far from helping improve nutrition, micronutrients such as iron, manganese and zinc can be reduced by as much as 80-90 percent in such plants! Glyphosate also decimates beneficial microorganisms essential for proper plant function and high quality nutrition, while promoting the proliferation of disease-causing pathogens.
"Glyphosate is a very powerful selective antibiotic that kills beneficial, but not pathogenic, microorganisms in the soil and intestine at very low residual levels in food," Dr. Huber writes. Residue levels permitted in food are 40 to 800 times the antibiotic threshold and concentrations shown in clinical studies to damage mammalian tissues.”
Both the toxic proteins produced by the foreign bacterial genes and the glyphosate chemical are now present in the feed and food produced for animal and human consumption.”
Even in the EU where GM foods have to be marked this is no protection for the end consumer who eats meat which has been reared on GM foodstuffs, which is currently permitted to be imported into the EU. So, at the moment the only way we can be reasonably sure that we are not ingesting ‘the nasties” mentioned above is by eating food from a trusted supplier which is labelled as organic.
