Why aren’t long-term health studies conducted on GMO plants?
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Long-term health studies have been conducted on GMOs. Aside from the fact that GM foods have a long, safe track record (18 years in the marketplace), GM crops are repeatedly and extensively tested for consumer and environmental safety, and those tests are reviewed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration, and similar organizations internationally.
A list of 1,785 GMO safety studies, including long-term studies, are available for download at Informa Healthcare.1
The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA)2 provides 610 scientific papers published in peer reviewed journals which evaluate the safety of foods derived from GM crops, and biofortied.org provides a growing list of exclusively independent studies on GMOs.
In addition, the European Commission conducted numerous studies on the safety of GMOs. According to the European Commission, “the main conclusion, after more than 130 research projects covering a period of more than 25 years of research and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than, e.g., conventional plant breeding technologies.” 3
Sources:
[1] Informa Healthcare: http://informahealthcare.com/
[2] The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA): www.isaaa.org/
[3] A decade of EU-funded GMO research 2001-2010. (2010). Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-funded_gmo_research.pdf