Last week, CBS This Morning interviewed a spokesperson from Consumer Reports about the organization’s recent study on GMOs in packaged food. Unfortunately, several misleading and untrue statements about GMOs were mentioned, including their history, safety, and regulation. Here we identify several of those issues in the segment, and provide clarification for each.
Thousands of studies have demonstrated that GMOs do not present any health risk—they do not cause new allergies or cancers, infertility, ADHD or any other diseases or conditions rumored to be associated with their use.
Farmers have grown crops from GM seeds for nearly 20 years – food for consumers and their own families - and in all those years there has not been a single documented instance of harm to human health resulting from genetic modifications, including new allergic reactions. Additionally, a recent review of data from more than 100 billion animals studied after the introduction of GM crops, did not indicate any negative effects on livestock health and productivity, or on the nutritional profile of animal products from livestock fed a GM crop-based feed. Today’s GM products are the most researched and tested agricultural products in history.
To date, the preponderance of evidence points to the safety of GMO crops. In fact, leading health organizations around the world - including the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, and the European Commission - stands behind the safety of GMO crops.
Image Credit http://www.axismundionline.com/blog/
Issue #2: Confusion about how GMOs come to market.
In the United States, before a GMO crop goes to market, it undergoes extensive safety testing and then review by at least two, and sometimes three, federal regulatory agencies: the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to show the crop is as safe to grow and eat as any other crops. GMO researchers characterize very precisely what change they are making to the plant’s DNA, how it will impact the plant performance, and whether any safety issue is raised. This process of research, review, and regulation takes on average 16.5 years and costs $115 million - all before the product comes to market.
Issue #3: Concerns about GMO studies.
You might have heard about a rat or pig feeding study that seemed to indicate GM crops can cause detrimental health effects. However, those studies were found to have serious flaws.
Alan McHughen, biotechnology specialist at the University of California, Riverside, provides context to the rat feeding study conducted by Gilles-Eric Séralini in this response. He states, "The pictures from that study conducted by Gilles-Eric Séralini are frightening—and made for sensationalistic media coverage. However, when teams of scientists from around the world looked at the study carefully, they found that the conclusions drawn by Séralini were not credible and that the study itself was seriously flawed and provided no new grounds for concern about GM food." Note: This study was later retracted from the original journal in which it was published. It was later republished in an open-access environmental journal, receiving a similar response from much of the scientific community.
Whereas that was one sensational study alleging negative effects, this link lists 1,785 GMO safety studies, including long-term studies, many of which you can download, and this link will take you to a list of 610 more. On Biofortified.org, you can research a growing list of exclusively independent studies. Those studies, more like them (including the 29-year, 100 billion animal study) and the scientific consensus support the safety of GM crops for food.
Issue #4: Patents.
Many types of seeds are patented -- not just genetically modified seeds. According to EuropaBio, "Almost all conventional (non-GM) and organic hybrid seeds are patented and cannot be saved for use in the next planting season."
Drew Kershen, Earl Sneed Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma, provides context to seed patents in this response, and states, "Patented seed exists in seed produced through modern breeding, both conventional breeding and genetically engineered breeding. It is completely inaccurate . . . to think that farmers first faced intellectual property in seeds and reproductive material after genetically-engineered seeds came to market. Farmers in the United States, and many other countries, have dealt with intellectual property rights in seeds for 100 years."
Bart Schott, Past-President of the National Corn Growers Association and a third-generation farmer, explains why farmers often choose to not re-use seeds when he writes, "Most farmers do not choose to save seed because they can be assured that newly purchased seed is free of disease and pathogens, and in the case of hybrids, demonstrates hybrid vigor, with consistent, uniform characteristics."
Issue #5: A “Natural” label suggests non-GMO.Consumer Reports’ study was focused on consumer perception of the “natural” label. We understand that some labels may be confusing or misleading to consumers, the "natural" label potentially being one of them. Vox.com explores many of those reasons why this may be the case. That said, foods containing ingredients derived from GMO sources can be considered natural. Why is this? Because genetic engineering is a precision breeding technique used to produce a seed, and the end result is a crop that is compositionally and nutritionally the same as its non-GMO counterpart.
It's important to note, as Gregory Conko explains in this post, that "...nearly every food on grocery store shelves has been modified by human hands at the genetic level. In the agriculture world, it's called breeding. And, as many of us learned in high school biology class, breeding alters a plant's genes so it expresses new traits. This may be as simple as a new color or flavor, or even resistance to pests and plant diseases. And whether we use genetic engineering or more conventional techniques, breeding can mean just tweaking the genes already inside a plant or introducing entirely new ones." The foods we eat are modified using various breeding methods including hybridization (example - seedless watermelon) mutagenesis (example - red grapefruit) cross-breeding (example - peanuts) and genetic engineering (soybeans, corn, Hawaiian Rainbow papayas). Without human intervention, this is what many of our favorite foods would look like today.
Image Credit: Genetic Literacy Project
So how do we know that GMO crops are equivalent to non-GMO crops, and safe to eat? From initial concept to commercialization - which can take up to 13 years - GMO crops go through comprehensive safety assessments, the overall goal of which is to determine whether the GM plant is essentially no different from a non-GM plant, except for the specific desired trait like disease-resistance, with the knowledge that the non-GM plant has an established history of safe consumption.
This post explains these studies in-depth. For more information on these reviews and assessments, and for an overview of GMOs and our health, visit our Explore section.
Issue #6: Your right to know.
In the United States, foods are labeled according to FDA policy, which requires a label “anytime a food differs from its conventional counterpart in a meaningful way, such as a reduction in nutrients, the introduction of an allergen or even a change in taste or smell.” The purpose of mandatory food labeling is to convey information to consumers about the safety and nutrition of a product.
Many consumers wish to avoid foods with genetically modified ingredients, and food companies have responded by voluntarily labeling thousands of foods produced without GM ingredients, which we fully support. Consumers in the United States can shop for products with U.S. Department of Agriculture Certified Organic or non-GMO or GE-free labels to avoid GM ingredients in food.
As Greg Conko, senior fellow for the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains in this response, "Some GE labeling advocates say they have a right to know what’s in their food. But genetic engineering is not a thing that’s in the food. It is simply one of many breeding methods used to modify plants and animals at the genetic level. The very purpose of all breeding is to modify an organism’s genetic composition and expression, in turn changing the food product’s characteristics."
Cathy Enright, executive director for the Council for Biotechnology Information, describes the mandatory labeling we do support in this response, she states, “when it comes to safeguarding your health and nutrition, we support the mandatory labeling of food, including GMO food, if it raises a safety or health concern, for example, to alert sensitive populations to the potential presence of an allergen. We also support mandatory labeling of GMO food if there is a change to the food’s composition, nutritional profile, taste or smell, or any other characteristic that would make it different from its conventional counterpart.”
In addition to these issues, a number of questions were asked during the video segment, which were left unanswered. We’ll be following up with answers to each of those questions in our next post.