Ask yourself why foods are being genetically modified in the first place?
Plants are genetically modified, inter alia, to increase their nutrient profile, to increase yield, to require less water (survive drought conditions), to be resistant to herbicides, and even to eliminate allergens. From the Union of German Academics of Sciences and Humanities (my underlining):
Based on the published scientific literature, this report examines the potential hazards and risks of consuming genetically modified (GM) plant products. Toxicity, carcinogenicity and food allergenicity, and the possible effects of consuming foreign DNA (including antibiotic resistance genes) are all taken into account. The report concludes that food derived from GM plants approved in the EU and the US poses no risks greater than those from the corresponding conventional food. On the contrary, in some cases food from GM plants appears to be superior with respect to health.
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Conventional maize cobs are often infected with the fungus Fusarium moniliforme, resulting in production of the fungal toxin fumonisin. For more than a century, “mouldy corn disease” has been recognised as a hazard for horses, pigs and other livestock, with entire herds dying after being fed corn infected with Fusaria. Sixteen years ago, the fumonisin was identified as the cause of the disease. It is known to induce liver cancer in rats. Fumonisin is thus a serious problem; it so stable that it survives processing and can sometimes be found in cornflakes. In the UK in September 2003 the analysis of 30 samples of maize products in supermarkets led to the removal of ten of them because of excessively high levels of fumonisin content; the contaminated samples with the highest fumonisin contents were those labelled “organic”.
Several studies have found contamination with fumonisin to be greatly decreased in insect-resistant (Bt) GM maize; whereas in conventional maize plants the fungi proliferate in cobs injured by insects, in GM maize there is much less insect damage and hence less fumonisin. These findings indicate that food from GM maize is more healthy for humans than that from conventionally grown maize.
Is there a higher risk of food allergy from eating food derived from GM plants than from conventional food?
Estimates suggest that 5-8% of children and of 1-2% adults are allergic to certain conventionally produced foods. Peanuts, for instance, are known to contain 12 allergenic proteins.
While there is no legal requirement for the testing of foods from conventional varieties, strict allergy tests are mandatory for GMO products. The WHO (World Health Organisation) has introduced a protocol for detailed GMO allergenicity tests, both for the plant products concerned and also for their pollen. This protocol is being constantly improved. Tests of this sort on one occasion alerted scientists to the fact that the introduction of a gene from brazil nut into soy bean, in the hope that it would improve quality, would be allergenic for certain persons. As a result, further development of that GMO was abandoned by the company involved prior to any commercialisation, demonstrating that the safety regulation system functions well.
Our collective experience to date shows the strict allergenicity tests of GM products to have been very successful: not one allergenic GM product has been introduced onto the market. In conventional breeding, in which genes are altered at random by experimentally caused mutations or unexpected gene combinations generated by crossings, such tests are not legally required. For this reason the risk of GM plants causing allergies can be regarded as substantially lower than that of products from conventional breeding. Furthermore, intensive gene technology research is already under way with a view to removing allergens from peanuts, wheat and rice.
Food From GM Plants Appears to be Superior with Respect to Health
