Genetically Engineered Food: Promises & Perils

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Lacey, who was the first to warn British authorities about the mad cow disease epidemic, says the host organism's regulatory system isn't set up to handle these foreign genes, which can cause various unpredictable imbalances that produce toxic substances or allergens, or alter the crops nutritional value.

There also are concerns that the antibiotic-resistant bacterial genes used as markers to identify successful gene transfers will escalate the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

The transfer of an allergen into a transgenic host has been clearly demonstrated. A transgenic soybean that contained a gene from a Brazil nut—a life-threatening allergen to some people—did cause allergic reactions, and the product ),,,as never commercialized. But gene-spliced food will contain genes from many sources that have never been part of the human diet. "Because they are not known as allergens, they can't be definitively tested for allergenicity in advance," says jean Halloran, director of the Consumer Policy Institute. Even if potential allergens in transgenic food could be tested in advance. Lacey says, even continuous testing of transgenic food could offer only limited assurance of the products safety.

And nothing close to that level of scrutiny over transgenic foods has taken place so far. "Peer-reviewed publications of clinical studies on the human health effects of GM food simply don't exist," and animal studies are "few and far between," says biochemist Arpad Pusztai, one of the few scientists who has actually conducted biotech food-safety tests with animals.

Independent scientists, including Pusztai and Lacey, have harshly criticized biotech industry studies as sloppy science. In a June 2001 review of transgenic food-safety studies, Puztai writes that transgenic food is tested by comparing it with nontransgenic crops, using chemical analyses of nutrients and known toxins, which are appropriate for testing and comparing regular foods, but not thorough enough for the unpredictability inherent in GM foods. "To rely on this method is at best inadequate. and at worst, dangerous," he says.

Environmentally Responsible?

Biotech proponents claim their technology will save the environment by allowing farmers to use fewer pesticides and toxic chemicals. But the evidence from transgenic crops on the market now and the mad rush by biotech companies to create GM plants that won't grow properly, or at all. unless they are sprayed with prescribed chemicals, belie that claim.

Herbicides to kill weeds in corn and soybean fields constitute the greatest use of chemicals on American farms each year. says Chuck Benbrook, director of the Northwest Science and Policy Center in Sandpoint, Idaho. The main use of GM technology so far has been to engineer herbicide-resistant corn and soybeans, which enable farmers to simplify their weed management by spraying broadspectrum weed killers throughout the growing season. Between 1997 and 2000. the average amount of pesticides increased with transgenic herbicide-resistant crops, USDA data reveals. Insecticide use did decrease dramatically with the use of Bt cotton, but Benbrook says the reduction is likely temporary.

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