Genetic Modification, also known as biotechnology, is the alteration of the genetic makeup of organisms such as plants, animals or bacteria. GM products include medicines, vaccines, foods and food ingredients, feeds and fibers.
Scientists identify a favorable genetic trait in one organism’s DNA and transfer that favorable gene trait to another organism’s DNA. Examples include conferring insect resistance, fungal resistance, desired nutrients, ripening speed or overall yield to an organism lacking in these characteristics.
But as with many new technologies and good intentions, do we really understand the risks and long-term effects of what we are doing? It is serious business when we tinker with the
fundamental intelligence of every cell – our genes or DNA, and it can pose a number of frightening prospects. Did you know?
• The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has issued a warning urging the public to avoid genetically modified foods as a result of its own studies that strongly point to GM foods causing serious adverse health effects including rapid aging, severe alterations to major bodily organs, infertility, immune problems, gastrointestinal dysfunction and disruption to proper insulin regulation.
• GMO’s can live and reproduce in the intestinal flora of the body long after being eaten, transferring GMO genes into the DNA of favorable, intestinal bacteria so essential in optimal digestion and good health.
• Female rats fed a diet of GM soy had drastically higher infant death rate, and surviving infants were much smaller and less fertile than the offspring of rats fed a non-GM soy diet.
• Animals that have consumed crops that were genetically modified to produce the pesticide Bt (approved for consumption in the US), have died by the thousands and upon autopsy black patches on the liver and intestines along with internal bleeding were discovered.
• Genetically modified tomatoes fed to rats were shown to cause bleeding stomachs and eventually killed many of the rats.
• Japan, China, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Australia, New Zealand are just some of the world’s countries that have banned or restricted the import, distribution, sale, utilization, field trials and commercial planting of GMO’s
• Despite the fact that FDA scientists have been aware of these health concerns since the early 1990’s, Washington is unwilling to ban them, label them or require safety studies.
Approximately 95% of soy in the US is genetically modified, and that includes all the products on the shelves that contain soy (which is most products!!). NOTE: Eat organic whenever possible. If a food product is labeled ‘certified organic’, it, by definition, cannot be genetically modified.