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Back to Winter 1999-2000 CivAb home
MORE BIOTECH INFORMATION
Refuting claims that GM foods are the same as traditional foods, the Journal of Medicinal Food (Vol 1 No 4 1999) reported a 12 to 14% reduction of valuable phytoestrogens in GM soy beans.
Far from finding higher yields in GM crops, the US Department of Agriculture has instead found as much as 10% higher yields in
traditional crops. In seven of the twelve areas studied, it found that GM farmers used as much pesticie as thouse growing traditional crops. Roundup Ready soybeans required the use of two to five times more herbicide per acre than growing traditional soy beans using "popular weed management systems".
Making GM crops even less desirable, a study in the Journal of the American Cancer Society (March 15, 1991) reported that exposure to glyphosate ( Roundup) was associated with a higher risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Biotech soy, corn, and canola are manipulated to be resistant to Roundup so that more herbicide can be used to control weeds.
SOURCE: Richard Wolfson, PhD, Alive! #204 Oct 1999
MORE DRAWBACKS TO GE/GM FOODS The highly-regarded British scientific journal Nature has reported a hazardous buildup of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) toxins in the soil where GE plants, manipulated to incorporate Bt in their genes, have been grown. It has been detected in soil for up to 243 days, during which time it destroys essential microorganisms and valuable insects as well as those that harm crops.
In February 1999, the Center for Food Safety, Greenpeace, and the International Federation of Organic agriculture filed a lawsuit in US Federal Court to force all Bt crops off the market. Bt, a natural poison, has been used sparingly as a last resort by organic farmers. Its effectiveness is now endangered because insects are likely to develop immunity to it thereby destroying its usefulness.
An alarming article in Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease no 4, 1999 by British and Canadian researchers May-wan Ho, Angela Ryan and Joe Cummins warns of the danger of of using the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMv), the most commonly used viral promoter, to facilitate transferring foreign genes into plants.
CaMv is suspected of being the agent that caused cancer in rats fed GE potatoes by Dr Arpad Putzai (CivAb Winter 98-99). This does not mean that it would cause cancer in humans but is an indication of its ability to promote abnormal growth.
According to Mae-Wan Ho, PhD (Genetic Engineering, Dream or Nightmare? p 140): CaMV, "routinely used to drive gene expression on transgenic crop plants for herbicide or disease resistance...can also recombine with other viruses to generate new broad range viruses...CaMV has sequence homologies to human retroviruses such as the AIDS virus, human leukaemic virus and human hepatitis B virus, and the promoter gene can drive the synthesis of these viruses as well...thus the possibility to recombine with human viruses when ingested in food."
More information of this type since winter issue January 2000
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