Genetically Modified Food

[Marcus]

Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Feces Approved for U.S. Consumers

More at the link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-1 ... umers.html

The world of gastronomy has its own hazards . .

[Marcus]

Lni6OAJz3sk

[Azrael]

Golden rice -- rice genetically-modified to contain more beta-carotene.

The research was motivated by the desire to reduce Vitamin A deficiency in the third world.

[Marcus]

Golden rice -- rice genetically-modified to contain more beta-carotene.
The research was motivated by the desire to reduce Vitamin A deficiency in the third world.

Wish it were that cut-and-dried, Az.

Golden Rice not proven safe to eat

When pharmaceutical drugs are tested for safety, they are first tested on animals. Only if animal studies reveal no harmful effects is the drug further tested on human volunteers. If animal tests with a drug were to yield results similar to those seen in feeding studies carried out with GM foods, the drug would most likely be disqualified for further development. Golden Rice has never been subjected to feeding trials on animals. It is therefore criminally irresponsible to test it on humans.

The absence of animal testing data on Golden Rice is especially worrying as Golden Rice is engineered to overproduce beta carotene, and studies show that some retinoids derived from beta carotene are toxic and cause birth defects.[5][6][7][8][9] In particular, high concentrations of the retinoid called retinol are toxic.[10]

One of the breakdown products of beta-carotene, RA, is biologically active at much lower concentrations than retinol, and for this reason excess RA or RA derivatives are extremely dangerous, particularly to infants and during pregnancy.[11]

In his review of GM nutritionally enhanced plants, David R. Schubert of Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, argues that “rigorous, multigenerational animal safety assessments with the hope of identifying risks to health” are needed for all such plants before they are commercialized.[12]

Defenders of Golden Rice have claimed that as humans and not animals are the intended consumers, animal feeding trials are unnecessary.

This argument is a common one from advocates of GM, but it is fatally flawed. It is true that animal feeding trials on Golden Rice may not answer the questions of how much vitamin A humans would derive from eating the rice and how effective it would be in solving vitamin A deficiency in humans. But when it comes to testing for toxic effects, animal feeding trials have been found to be a valuable indicator.

It is especially important to carry out such toxicological testing on GM foods because unexpected toxins or allergens may arise from the GM process itself. These may result from genetic disruptions or disturbed biochemistry arising from new enzyme activities in a place where they do not normally occur. The same enzyme working in different plant hosts and cellular environments, as is the case with Golden Rice, can participate in different biochemical reactions – and produce by-products that affect health.

For these reasons, animal testing is the standard investigation performed to assess possible toxicity both in drugs and in new GM foods. Why should Golden Rice be an exception?

With regard to testing for efficacy and assimilation of the beta-carotene in Golden Rice, defenders of the product say that beta-carotene is broken down differently in animals than in humans and so animal testing is irrelevant. But ferrets have been identified by researchers as animals that break down beta-carotene in a similar way to humans.[13] Why has efficacy and assimilation not been tested on them?

Golden Rice appears to have escaped animal testing because of the pervasive attitude to GM in the USA, which was initiated and perpetuated by industry in partnership with government. Under the US system, GM crops and foods are classed as "GRAS" (Generally Recognised As Safe). This is a completely theoretical evaluation which means that industry can do no safety testing at all and still get products approved.

Tellingly, on the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board website (www.goldenrice.org), the header for the section "Tests performed on Golden Rice" reads, "It's just rice". The unnamed authors claim, "Detailed molecular analyses have failed to find new allergens showing up as a consequence of having introduced a new gene into a plant, and determination of the expression levels of ten-thousands of genes have also shown that the only changes encountered are related to the introduced genes and those involved in related metabolic pathways." But no data have been published to enable independent scientists and the public to evaluate these claims. As one scientist told GMWatch, "If data isn't published, it doesn't exist."

Bizarrely, the "Research on Health Effects" section of the Golden Rice website lists publications NOT on Golden Rice but on general research on the health effects of vitamin A. Even more bizarrely, the main publications listed are by the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The UN and WHO report success from their long-running programmes to combat vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in those places where they have been implemented. These tried-and-tested programmes involve cheap, traditional, and readily available solutions such as vitamin A supplements and encouraging home growing of vitamin A-rich leafy green vegetables. Golden Rice has never been a part of these programmes. Yet in a sleight-of-hand that has become all too typical in the GM industry, the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board is using data from those programmes to promote its risky, heavily patented, and expensive technological 'solution' to VAD!

—more at the link