The Food Issue
2015
Grains
West
48
FACE
OFF
Thescience is sound
BY ROBERT WAGER
STUDIES CONTINUE TOSHOWTHAT GMOs ARE SAFE FOR USE IN FOODAND FEED
GENETICALLY MODIFIED (GM)
crops and derived food have been part
of our diet since 1996. Without a single
documented case of harm, there should be
no debate about these products.
In 1987, the United States National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) looked at the
safety of genetically modified crop tech-
nology. It stated: “There is no evidence
that unique hazards exist either in the use
of recombinant DNA techniques or in the
movement of genes between unrelated
organisms.”
Twenty-five years later, even the very
GMO-skeptical European Commission
agreed with the NAS statement in its
report,
A Decade of EU-funded GMO
Research
: “GMOs are not per se more
risky than conventional plant breeding
technologies.”
This has not stopped anti-GMO activ-
ists from disregarding globally accepted
science. A great deal of false or misleading
information about GM crops abounds on
the Internet.
Two general categories of safety must be
met before any GM crop can be commer-
cialized—food safety and environmental
safety.
There have been thousands of studies
on food safety. This has led to a global
scientific opinion of confidence in GMO
safety, according to the American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science: “The
World Health Organization, the American
Medical Association, the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences, the British Royal
Society, and every other respected organi-
zation that has examined the evidence has
come to the same conclusion: consuming
foods containing ingredients derived from
GM crops is no riskier than consuming
the same foods containing ingredients
from crop plants modified by conventional
plant improvement techniques.”
Critics of GM crops have said there is
no long-term testing, but this is false. A
2012
Food and Chemical Toxicology
review
of “12 long-term studies (of more than 90
days, up to two years in duration) and 12
multigenerational studies (from two to
five generations) do not suggest any health
hazards.”
GM feed for animals has been studied
equally thoroughly. A 2013 University of
California scientific review of GM feed
studies found more than 100 billion ani-
mals have safely consumed GM feed.
In 2012 Health Canada stated explicit-
ly: “The overwhelming body of scientific
evidence continues to support the safety
of genetically modified food and feed
products . . .”
Recently, critics have changed tactics
to claim that glyphosate, one of the main
herbicides used with GM crops, is a
health hazard. Contrary to a recent press
release from the World Health Organiza-
tion’s International Agency for Research
on Cancer, 30 years of research on this
compound has found it to be safe. A
recent German government report looked
at more than 900 studies and concluded
that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. The
conclusions of this huge meta-analysis
are important from both food safety and
environmental perspectives.
Bees are essential to agriculture.
Despite the doom-and-gloom headlines,
recent data shows bee colony numbers
are again rising according to the U.S. De-
partment of Agriculture, which has stated
that there is no connection between GM
crops and colony collapse disorder.
In 2010, the United States National
Academy of Sciences released a report,
The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops
on Farm Sustainability in the United States
.
The general conclusion was this: “The
committee finds that genetic-engineering
technology has produced substantial net
environmental and economic benefits to
U.S. farmers compared with non-GE crops
in conventional agriculture.”
The 2013 European National Academies
of Science report,
Planting the Future
,
summed up the GMO debate well: “It is
vital that sustainable agricultural pro-
duction and food security harnesses the
potential of biotechnology in all its facets.”
Many people fear GM crops because
of false information they have heard or
read. This lack of accurate knowledge by
laypeople cannot dismiss decades of GMO
research nor should their fear be used to
advance restrictive public policy towards
GM crops and food.
GM crops are not a panacea but in order
to feed nine to 10 billion people sustain-
ably by 2050, we are going to have to
use the best of every type of agriculture:
conventional, organic and GM crops.
Robert Wager has been a faculty member
in the biology department at Vancouver
Island University in B.C. for the past 20 years
and is a scientist trained in microbiology,
biochemistry and molecular biology.
