Linda Stanley

GM Foods

What are GM Foods?

Wikipedia define Genetically modified (GM) foods as food products that have had their DNA directly altered through genetic engineering .

The most common modified foods are derived from soybean , corn , canola , and cotton seed oil .[1] [2]

Many major controversies surround genetically engineered crops and commonly focus on the health and safety effects on human children, long-term health effects for anyone eating them, environmental safety, labelling and consumer choice , intellectual property rights, ethics , food security , poverty reduction , environmental conservation , and potential disruption or even possible destruction of the food chain.

GM Crops were originally hailed as a saviour to the world's food crisis, however, the result has been a threat to global biodiversity as giant multinational companies strive to monpolise the world's seed stocks.

Here is a summary of the benefits and the problems of GM crops.

Benefits

* Crops

* Increased nutrients, yields, and stress tolerance
* Improved resistance to disease, pests, and herbicides

Controversies

* Safety

* Potential human health impacts, including allergens, transfer of antibiotic resistance markers, unknown effects
* Potential environmental impacts, including: unintended transfer of transgenes through cross-pollination, unknown effects on other organisms (e.g., soil microbes), and loss of flora and fauna biodiversity

* Access and Intellectual Property

* Domination of world food production by a few companies
* Increasing dependence on industrialized nations by developing countries
* Biopiracy, or foreign exploitation of natural resources

* Ethics

* Tampering with nature by mixing genes among species
* Objections to consuming animal genes in plants and vice versa

* Labeling

* Not mandatory in some countries (e.g., United States)
* Mixing GM crops with non-GM products confounds labeling attempts

* Society

* New advances may be skewed to interests of rich countries

Reference: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml

Some points to research further:

1. Farmers who have saved their seed for generations, once they buy into GM seed, are not permitted to save their seed as the seed copyright is owned by multi-national corporations. This is bankrupting small subsistence farmers in third world countries. Do a search for Percy Schmeiser to read what happened to one small farmer in Canada.

2. GM seed has the potential to contaminate other non-GM crops and insect repellant GM crops are destroying beneficial insects as well as the target insects. Read http://www.greenpeace .org.uk/blog/gm/counting-the-cost-of-gm-contamination-20071109 for more information.

3. As the multi national companies that own the GM seed have fought to prevent labelling of GM food, the only way that we consumers can be sure we are not eating GM food, is to eat only organic foods.

Genetically Modified (GM) Food

I am currently putting petitions around the Shire of Kalamunda to garner support for a move to be made to council to have GM Foods banned from being supplied to facilities administered by the Shire.   I believe there is insufficient research on the long term impacts on our health and the environment for GM crops to be permitted in our state. 

I also believe that people who are unable to make a choice for themselves on whether or not they would choose to ingest GM products, namely our elderly at aged care facilities and our children at child care facilities, be protected from potential harm to their health.

I came across this excellent article from the Union of Concerned Scientists that spells out the risks of GM food.  The reference to their website is at the bottom of the article. 

If you live in the Perth Hills within the Shire of Kalamunda and would like to support this move and sign a petition, you can download a petition here .