--> They were, however, the only company that had genetically engineered their bacteria to produce LT. And starting in 1984, as they progressively added more genes to their bacteria, there was a corresponding increase in contamination levels. The final strain, which caused the most illness, contained five separate transgenes.126
There are several ways in which genetic engineering could have produced the contaminants. Unintended changes in the DNA might create unintended proteins or shift proportions of naturally occurring ones. |
| The amount varied significantly "in different lots or varieties of corncob, and genetically engineered corn." 51 The differences, they say, "may serve to limit or enhance exposure and potential toxicity."52
The non-investigation
In the summer of 2001, Garst was given a sample of Rosman's corn for analysis. About six weeks later, Rosman's agronomist was told by Garst that the sample had been regrettably lost. When Rosman offered to furnish more, the company did not return his calls. |
| Genetically engineered plants are alive, and cannot be regulated with a system developed for inert chemicals. "4S
—William Freese, testimony before the EPA's Scientific Advisory Panel
1. Environmental factors, natural and man-made substances, and genetic disposition of a particular plant can influence levels of transgene expression and cause unique health effects.
2. These factors are not adequately accounted for in assessments.
Just as humans have genetic differences that make individuals and sub-groups unique, so do plants. |
| The FDA division warned, "unless genetically engineered plants are evaluated specifically for these changes," the four potential dangers "may escape breeders' attention." The division recommended testing every GM food "before it enters the marketplace."56
Although their recommendation was ignored by the US government, research presented in the preceding pages did reveal that herbicide residues and their metabolic byproducts (NAG and AMPA) do increase in GM crops. |
| Soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% in the United Kingdom, soon after genetically engineered soy was introduced; and one human subject out of the few tested showed a skin prick allergic-type reaction to GM soy, but not to natural soy. In the 1980s, a GM food supplement killed about one hundred Americans and caused sickness and disability in another five to ten thousand people.
How do biotech companies deal with adverse reactions to their products? A cursory look at how Monsanto responded to adverse reactions from its toxic chemical PCBs (polychlorinated bi-phenyls) gives us some insight. |
| Such testing assumes that the only new substance that will appear in the food is the one genetically engineered to appear, that the GM plant-produced substance will act in the same manner as the tested substance that was obtained from another source, and that the substance will create disease within a few days. All are untested hypotheses and make a mockery of GM proponents'claims that the risk assessment of GM foods is based on sound science. |
 Editorials, Letters, and Cancer Prevention Coalition Press Releases
Growth Hormones Would Endanger Milk The Los Angeles Times July 27,1989
With the Food and Drug Administration ready to approve the use of genetically engineered growth hormones in cows to boost milk production, concerns are mounting among dairy farmers, state legislatures, animal-rights activists and consumer and public-interest groups. |
| E: Yes, bovine growth hormone is a natural product, but we've been talking about genetically engineered variant.
A: Is there rBGH in all the milk we're drinking?
E: Not in all the milk. rBGH is used in about 8% of all herds and that milk is bulked. So we can't really say how much milk is contaminated. It could be 80% or more of the milk, we don't know exactly.
A: You've made some very serious charges against Monsanto.
E: Correct.
A: Why?
E: On the basis of the data that I analyzed carefully, including their own published studies. |
| Guest
Director, Center for Veterinary Medicine, FDA
We Must Ban Growth Hormones Until All Questions Are Answered Madison Capital Times August 1989
With the Food and Drug Administration ready to approve the use of genetically engineered growth hormones in cows to boost milk production, concerns are mounting among dairy farmers, state legislatures, animal rights activists, and consumer and public interest groups. |
| National Institutes of Health panel of genetically engineered or biosynthetic bovine growth hormones designed to increase milk production. The endorsement raises critical questions on the safety of the nation's dairy products, and on current procedures for technology assessment. |
| In March 1994, the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of unlabeled milk from cows injected with Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, rBGH to increase milk production. As detailed in a January 1996 report in the International Journal of Health Services, rBGH milk differs from natural milk chemically, nutritionally, pharmacologically and immunologically, besides being contaminated with pus and antibiotics resulting from mastitis induced by the biotech hormone. |
| The strongest evidence for this is provided by examination of FDA's and Monsanto's two decade long complicit track record on milk from cows injected with the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, in order to increase milk production.
In 1985, the FDA allowed the sale to an unsuspecting public of GE milk from Monsanto's large scale nation-wide milk production trials. Both the FDA and Monsanto knowingly and falsely claimed that:
¦ The GE hormone is harmless to cows.
¦ There are no differences between GE and natural milk.
¦ GE milk is safe to humans. |
 He told the Pusztais that ministers from throughout Europe were about to meet in Brussels to cast their votes regarding regulation of genetically engineered foods. The documents were submissions from biotech companies seeking approval of their own varieties of GM soy, corn, and tomatoes. The British Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) was attending the conference and needed a scientific basis with which to recommend them. |
 BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR" shall mean any woman who isn't immediately killed by the chemotherapy.
"GENETICALLY ENGINEERED" shall be banned from the English language, as the phrase only misleads consumers. From now on, "genetically engineered" shall be replaced with the word, "organic."
Additional language rules
According go these new FDA rules, nutritional supplement companies are hereby banned from using verbs. This is to prevent them from making unsubstantiated claims that involve worlds like, "prevents" or "cures. |
| The task of overseeing the expansion of genetically engineered food was given to the enthusiastic Robert Shapiro. He "shelved the go-slow strategy of consultation and review," and brought the GM campaign up to ramming speed. According to the New Tork Times, "Monsanto would now use its influence in Washington to push through a new approach." To help Monsanto "speed its foods to market, the White House quickly ushered through an unusually generous policy of self-policing."1
Monsanto's influence was legendary. |
| These tomatoes were genetically engineered to have a prolonged shelf life. As this was the first GM crop to be approved in the U.S., the manufacturer actually requested the FDA to review their feeding study data—a gesture no subsequent manufacturer has repeated. Documents revealed that many of the rats that ate the GM tomatoes developed lesions in their stomachs. For unknown reasons, researchers did not examine tissue elsewhere in the digestive tract. They also did not provide an explanation as to why seven of the forty rats that were fed the GM tomatoes died unexpectedly within two weeks. |
| And as part of their grant, they were conducting tests on a new variety of genetically engineered potatoes that the Scottish Ministry had hopes of commercializing. They didn't just know the theory; they had practical experience. The Pusztais were therefore among the most qualified scientists in the world to read and evaluate the stack James had just handed to them.
"How soon does the minister need his recommendations?" asked Pusztai.
"Two and a half hours," said James.
Arpad and Susan quickly got to work. |
 Exactly the same hormones -- the genetically engineered cows will give you milk with more hormones, but you won't be drinking genetically engineered hormones. You'll just be drinking more of those naturally occurring hormones.
Mike Adams: So it's just a concentration difference.
Robert Cohen: It's just a difference of number of those hormones. It's all the same hormone in the milk -- genetically engineered milk does not contain genetically engineered hormones. It works on the brain to stimulate the cow to make milk containing more hormones. |
| S in 2003 is genetically engineered. Derivatives from these two crops are found in about 70 percent of processed foods. In addition, 70 percent of the cotton crop and more than 60 percent of the canola crop, both used for cooking oil, are also genetically modified. About 75 percent of these crops are engineered to withstand otherwise deadly applications of an herbicide, 17 percent produce their own insecticide, and 8 percent are engineered to do both. |
| Exactly the same hormones -- the genetically engineered cows will give you milk with more hormones, but you won't be drinking genetically engineered hormones. You'll just be drinking more of those naturally occurring hormones.
Mike Adams: So it's just a concentration difference.
Robert Cohen: It's just a difference of number of those hormones. It's all the same hormone in the milk -- genetically engineered milk does not contain genetically engineered hormones. It works on the brain to stimulate the cow to make milk containing more hormones. |
| This was evidenced when David Kronfeld wrote articles and letters to veterinary journals that challenged the animal-safety studies conducted on the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH). According to the dairy newspaper The Milkweed, "For his 'heresy,' a Monsanto employee . . . wrote three letters to [Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the university where Kronfeld worked] during 1989 implicitly threatening that Monsanto might cease all research grants to that university if Kronfeld didn't silence his criticisms of bGH research. |
 In the name of progress and improvement of food production, the plan is to make every nation dependent on using the genetically engineered seeds that the world's leading food industries have produced and for which they own the patent rights. The agricultural products manufacturer Monsanto is doing exactly that. In January 2005, Monsanto announced it will buy the commercial fruit and vegetable seed company Seminis. The deal is said to be worth $1.4 billion. |
| With increasing usage of genetically engineered plants, we will be faced with the following global scenario:
1. Loss of thousands of species of plants
2. All small farmers have to give up their farming businesses
3. Creation of Frankenstein foods that our bodies won't know how to handle
4. Super weeds resistant to all herbicides
5. Plants resistant to pesticides
6. New viruses and diseases for which there won't be a cure
Already, 60 percent of processed foods now contain at least one genetically modified food item. |
 To compound the problem, more than two-thirds of America's soy is genetically engineered. Data published by Monsanto in the Journal of Nutrition, March 1996, shows that relative to conventional soy meal, Roundup Ready soy meal contains 27% more trypsin inhibitor, meaning it has even greater potential for setting off allergic reactions and digestive disturbance. In 1999, the York Nutritional Lab in the U.K. attributed a 50% increase in soy allergies to the fact that British consumers had started eating large amounts of imported genetically engineered (GE) soybeans the previous year. |
| Because a smaller population and the world's natural resources would be a lot easier to control than 8 billion people. genetically engineered foods play a decisive role in this plan, and unless the rest of humanity wakes up to its responsibility as caretakers of Mother Earth, it is most likely going to succeed.
Monsanto, which also produced the poisonous sweetener aspartame, is inserting genes from plants of unrelated species into the soybean plant to make it resistant to the potent herbicide Roundup (glyphosate). |
| One of the more harmful oils is the genetically engineered canola oil made from rapeseeds. Rapeseeds are not suitable for human consumption. Produced in Canada (hence the name canola) this renamed, refined rapeseed oil found a huge and instant market in the U.S. during the height of the cholesterol mania (still going on). It is cheap and, therefore, widely used in restaurants and by people on a low food budget. The reason for its huge popularity is that it contains very little cholesterol. |
| In 1994, the genetically engineered growth hormone rBGH, designed to increase milk production in cows, was approved for use in the U.S. About a third of U.S. farmers now use it to speed up milk production. The viruses used to make the growth hormone, of course, are in the milk. The prestigious medical journal, Lancet, reported in 1998 that breast cancer is seven times higher in women with tiny increases in the growth hormone, Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1), which comes from cows injected with rBGH. |
 Onkoloqie 25: 374-80, 2002]
However, a review of 23 published studies suggests further investigation of mistletoe extract be continued [European Journal Medical Research 8: 109-19, 2003], and a study using genetically engineered mistletoe has entered human clinical trials. [Drug Discovery Today 8: 52-53, 2003]
More recently, researchers in Germany instilled mistletoe extract into the bladder of patients who had undergone bladder cancer surgery and reported that it was equally as effective in preventing recurrence of bladder tumors as another widely used drug (bacillus Calmette-Guerin BCG). |
 The commercialization of many genetically engineered plants and plant products is currently being actively pursued by biotechnology and seed companies, and many of the genetically engineered plants are presently field-tested to determine their potential for commercialization. |
 A USDA study found no overall reduction in pesticide use associated with genetically engineered crops, even though increased pest resistance is touted as a major advantage of crop engineering. Whereas the promise of gteatly increased crop yields from genetic engineering has proven elusive, some fear that genetically modified genes that convey sterility could cross to nonproprietary crops, with catastrophic results.
Given the significant real and potential drawbacks of bioengineering and agrochemistry, alternative approaches deserve a closer look. |
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