There have been some assertions made on the web that GMO is an operational arm of the Bilderberg Group and the Illuminati related to Agenda 21 that intends to depopulate the earth of 90 percent of its population in accordance with the Georgia Guidestones. Animals eating crops that are GMO after harvesting all died within three days. The third generation of animals eating GMO reportedly were sterile. What do you say about these claims that GMO?

Expert response from Community Manager

Moderator for GMOAnswers.com

Monday, 04/11/2013 23:09

These assertions are untrue. Please review the following responses, which address the topics your question raises.

First, GMOs are safe. See these responses:

Answered by Denneal Jamison-McClung, associate director of the UC Davis biotechnology program:  

"GM foods have a long, safe track record (17 years in the marketplace). From their introduction in 1996 until now, scientists have found, through repeated and extensive testing, that GM foods are no more risky than comparable non-GMO foods, nor do they differ in nutritional value.

"Currently approved GM crops developed through specific genetic additions or subtractions are as safe as conventional and organic crops developed via random genetic shuffling. Most people do not realize that plant breeders have been randomly altering and admixing plant genomes for centuries. Techniques using chemicals and radiation to break plant DNA and induce mutations have been used to develop many conventional and organic crops. Whether plant scientists use traditional approaches or genetic engineering, their goal is to develop crops with new and agriculturally useful traits. Humans have been changing plant genomes for generations—we just have new, more precise, tools."

Answered by Cathleen Enright, executive director of the Council for Biotechnology Information:

"GMOs are as safe as other foods. Hundreds of independent studies, including long-term feeding studies, regulatory officials around the world and renowned institutions recognize that GM technology does not present any new food-safety or health risk to humans or animals. The few studies and articles that have made negative safety or health claims about GMOs have been discredited by the global scientific community. Additional information on this topic:

• RETRACTED: Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize
  
• Maybe GMO's aren't the problem. They are only the enabler in the case of Roundup Ready. Enabling food to be doused with it. Roundup is supposed to be safe on humans since it only attacks plants. Isn't our gut flora and fauna plant like? This retired MIT scientist explains my question. http://youtu.be/h_AHLDXF5aw
  
• Yogic Flying and GM Foods:The Wild Theories of Jeffrey Smith"
  
  

Answered by Bruce Chassy, professor emeritus of food safety and nutritional sciences in the department of food science and human nutrition at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: 

"It’s important to recognize that there is an unstated assumption underlying this question. The question assumes that transgenics are inherently different in some way that might prompt us to wonder about their long-term effects. Are GM crops really different? Obviously, the answer to that depends on how one defines a difference. Almost none of our crops grown today exists as such in nature; very few even resemble the wild ancestral plants from which they were domesticated. Virtually all our crop plants have been genetically modified by a combination of human selection of desirable phenotypes from spontaneous changes and/or human-induced mutations in DNA, without a detailed understanding of the genomic or compositional changes. Changes in DNA, or genetic modifications, underlie all crop plant improvements. The methods of modern molecular biology that are used in the laboratory to breed transgenic plants are simply new and more precise tools that allow researchers to introduce new traits into plants. There is a substantial body of evidence that shows that transgenic breeding used to develop new GM crop varieties actually causes fewer unwanted changes in the DNA, in gene expression (transcriptome), in the proteins present in the crop plant (proteome) and in the composition of the plant (metabolome)."

Depopulate?  No. See this response: Are GMO's a form of population control?

Animals? Not true.  See this response: Few years back it was alleged that cattle which grazed in Bt Cotton field died in some villages in Andhra Pradhesh India ( How ever no such incidents reported any where else ). How far this allegation by the activists sustainable?

A passage from Gary Hartnell’s response is included below:

"I think the allegation that you are referring to is one from 2006 by the Andhra Pradesh (AP) Sheep Growers association, which alleged that more than 10,000 sheep/goats died after eating Bt cotton leaves. It was unfortunate that farmers lost that number of animals. However, there are several interesting points about the allegations:

"There was no actual data presented that showed that Bt cotton was the cause of death. It was an easy correlation for the activist groups to make, simply because Bt cotton was grown in parts of the area where the animals had been grazing.

"The veterinarian who performed the autopsies on four to five sheep came to a scientifically reasonable conclusion that the sheep deaths may have been due to insecticide poisoning.

"Large amounts of Bt cotton were grown in India starting in 2002, with no adverse reports of animal deaths until this large amount in 2006. No additional deaths have been reported since."