{"id":995,"date":"2011-10-12T22:47:41","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T03:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=995"},"modified":"2011-10-12T23:19:05","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T04:19:05","slug":"what-does-genetically-engineered-or-gmo-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2011\/10\/12\/what-does-genetically-engineered-or-gmo-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does Genetically Engineered (or GMO) Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

After my last post on GMO labeling, I was asked “What are GMOs?”\u00a0 Most people don’t really\u00a0know much about it, and they certainly\u00a0don’t know how\u00a0extensively these organisms have\u00a0already affected our food supply.\u00a0 To help avoid possible confusion, in this post I will use the term genetically engineered (GE)\u00a0rather than genetically modified organism (GMO).\u00a0 The term GMO can also\u00a0refer to\u00a0more\u00a0acceptable methods of genetically modifying organisms such as hybridization and selective breeding.\u00a0 Most stories and articles\u00a0use the terms GE and GMO interchangeably, usually referring to genetically engineered organisms.\u00a0 Here’s how genetically engineering products works,\u00a0as described by Food & Water Watch<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Biotechnology involves manipulating the genetic makeup of plants or animals to create new organisms.\u00a0. . Genetic engineering uses recombinant DNA technology to transfer genetic material from one organism to another to produce plants, animals, enzymes, drugs and vaccines.\u00a0. .\u00a0Most commercial biotech crops are developed to be either herbicide tolerant, allowing herbicides to kill weeds without harming crops, or insect resistant, which protects plants from destructive pests.\u00a0. . Genetic engineering can insert a specific gene from any plant, animal or microorganism into the DNA of a host organism of a different species. One GE tomato even used a fish gene to make the tomato frost-resistant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I understand it, this means that some of the GE crops have been embedded with pesticides that either kill the bugs or the bugs won’t eat the crops.\u00a0 Other GE crops have been altered to be herbicide resistant so that even more poisons can be applied to the plants without killing them, only killing the weeds.\u00a0 We eat these pesticides and herbicides\u00a0because they can’t be washed off, they’re inside the plants.\u00a0 Although biotech companies have issued assurances that “the pesticide would be destroyed in the gut and pass harmlessly from the body,” in one study in Quebec<\/a>, the bacteria engineered into Bt corn (GE) as a pesticide\u00a0was found in\u00a093% of 30 expectant mothers.\u00a0The pesticide was obviously not destroyed in the gut.\u00a0 Other GE crops could cause allergic reactions.\u00a0 For example, if someone with allergies to fish ate the GE tomato mentioned above, that person\u00a0couldn’t know about the\u00a0risk of a reaction.\u00a0 Who would think that a tomato was related to a fish? We can’t know when\u00a0we are eating\u00a0GE foods because the FDA has prohibited labeling\u00a0foods either GMO or non-GMO.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most common GE crops in the USA are soy (94%), sugar beets, corn (66%), Hawaiian papaya, cottonseed (used in vegetable cooking oils), some zucchini, canola, and crookneck squash.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s been estimated that about 75% of processed foods in supermarkets contain GE ingredients.\u00a0 For example, any food\u00a0listing corn, corn syrup, corn starch, sugar, etc., would probably contain GE ingredients.\u00a0 Since foods certified as organic are the least likely to have GE ingredients, only organic varieties of these foods should\u00a0be eaten.\u00a0 USA has more acres planted with GE crops than any other country–165 million acres, about half the world’s production.\u00a0 No GE animals have yet been approved; however, several petitions for approval have been submitted, including AquaBounty’s GE salmon,\u00a0popularly called “Frankenfish.” For the latest information about what foods are GE, see the Non-GMO Shopping Guide<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are these GE foods safe for humans?\u00a0\u00a0 We don’t really know. \u00a0According to the Food & Water Watch report, “the FDA does not determine the safety of proposed GE foods.”\u00a0 The FDA just\u00a0“evaluates whether the GE product is similar to comparable non-GE products.”\u00a0 The FDA doesn’t do any testing; it “relies on data submitted by the biotech company.”<\/p>\n

Although we don’t know if GE foods are safe for humans, here are some of the problems that have been found with GE products in animal studies:\u00a0 A review<\/a> of 19 animal studies showed that “consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice.”\u00a0 Humans aren’t rats or mice, but we are all mammals, and we’re eating the same GE foods that were fed to the rats and mice. “The Roundup Ready trait [genetically engineered into the plant]\u00a0lowers the nutritional content of crops by inhibiting the absorption of nutrients including calcium, iron, magnesium and zinc, making plants more susceptible to disease.”\u00a0 Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup has been found\u00a0to cause birth defects in frogs and chickens.\u00a0 The levels of glyphosate that caused the birth defects were “at far lower levels than used in agriculture and garden applications.”\u00a0 Other scientific research has found that glyphosate causes DNA damage, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, and cancer.\u00a0 Many GE crops have been specifically engineered to\u00a0resist\u00a0Monsanto’s pesticide Roundup, called “Roundup Ready.” Roundup\u00a0is widely used on agricultural crops as well as by home owners to kill weeds along their driveways and sidewalks.<\/p>\n

Sources for more information:<\/p>\n

The complete 29 page\u00a0Food & Water Watch report, “Genetically Engineered Food an Overview”<\/a>
\nNatural News, “Scientific studies conclude GMO feed causes organ disruption in animals”<\/a>
\nDr. Mercola, “Perhaps the World’s Most Overlooked Poison”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After my last post on GMO labeling, I was asked “What are GMOs?”\u00a0 Most people don’t really\u00a0know much about it, and they certainly\u00a0don’t know how\u00a0extensively these organisms have\u00a0already affected our food supply.\u00a0 To help avoid possible confusion, in this post …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,16,11,63,59,18,19],"tags":[26,25,64,405],"class_list":["post-995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-access-to-real-food","category-food-freedom","category-food-rights","category-food-safety","category-gmos","category-organic-food","category-real-food","tag-food-freedom-2","tag-food-rights-2","tag-food-safety-2","tag-gmos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-g3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1015,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions\/1015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}