Michael Meacher does in fact ask an interesting question:
All of this begs the question: is genetic modification of food safe?
He then goes on to tell us that he doesn’t think it is:
Within the last few months a Russian scientist, found
that an astonishing 55 per cent of the offspring of rats fed on GM soya
died within three weeks of birth compared with only 9 per cent in the
control group.
Then an Italian researcher found
that mice fed on GM soya experienced a slowdown in cellular metabolism
and modifications in liver and pancreas. A third study, in Australia,
showed that genes from a bean introduced into a pea created a protein
that caused such serious inflammation of lung tissue in mice that the
research was halted.
However, just a few days back we had this report:
Over the next months, Fitzpatrick carried out an exhaustive study of
soya and its effects. "We discovered quite quickly," he recalls, "that
soya contains toxins and plant oestrogens powerful enough to disrupt
women’s menstrual cycles in experiments. It also appeared damaging to
the thyroid."
Soya itself appears to be dangerous. Meacher again:
Enough, you might think, for the Government (or the EU, for the
Commission is now in charge of GM policy) to stop the import of GM
processed foods until exhaustive tests had been carried out.
Well, you see, this is the thing. GM foods are indeed subject to testing, in a way and manner which non-GM foods are not. Given the sort of standards Meacher is asking that GM foods be held to it is extraordinarily unlikely that the potato (yes, it can kill people, cause birth defects) would be approved. I don’t mean just GM variations of it, I mean the plant at all.
Yet we now know from leaked documents what the EU really believes. On
human safety it says that "there is no unique, absolute, scientific
cut-off threshold available to decide whether a GM product is safe or
not".
Quite. There is no unique, absolute, scientific cut-off threshold available to decide whether any product is safe or not. If we are to hold the world to the standard being demanded here we would never have anything new ever again. In fact, we would have to go back through the stock of what we already consume and we’d probably have to excise potatoes, tomatoes, nuts (people die every year from nut allergies), rhubarb (not a great tragedy, I agree), possibly coffee…..
Get the picture? Meacher is being absurd in the standards he wants GM crops to be held to.
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