David Dees: click to enlarge

Catherine J. Frompovich, Contributor

Activist Post

Genetically modified foods are getting a lot of press these days, especially in California where Proposition 37, the labeling of GMO foods, will be on the November 6th Election Day ballot. Why is the GMO industry so upset about having GM foods labeled? Could it be if consumers knew what GMOs are capable of doing not only to the environment but also to the human body, they would not purchase them, as happened in many countries, especially the European Union?

Would you believe that the United States is the only industrialized country in the world that does not permit the labeling of GMOs for either fresh or processed foods? However, 14 states have legislation introduced regarding GMO labeling that seems to be going nowhere fast. In 2005 Alaska passed a biotech seafood labeling law.

Alaskan Governor Frank Murkowski recently signed into law Senate Bill 25 which is the United States’ first law for labeling genetically engineered food. [4]

Interestingly, Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union says, “If companies say genetic engineering is fine, then OK let’s label it and let the consumers make their own decisions.” So what are the biotechs afraid of?

Scientific facts? Being caught with fudged science, especially since the recent 2-year rat study, performed by Professor Giles-Eric Seralini, PhD, at the independent research facility CRIIGEN in France, was published in Food and Chemical Technology. Photographs of tumor-laden rats from that CRIIGEN study can be viewed at http://sustainablepulse.com/2012/09/19/criigen-study-links-gm-maize-roundup-premature-death-cancer/ Rat studies in the past also confirmed devastating problems when fed GMO food stuffs. So what’s the history on GMOs? Well, back on June 16, 1980, the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals stated:

The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals reversed, concluding that the fact that micro-organisms are alive is without legal significance for purposes of the patent law. [1] And then held:

A live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under § 101. Respondent’s micro-organism constitutes a “manufacture” or “composition of matter” within that statute. Pp. 308-318. [1] That monumental ruling became the genesis of the genetically modified organism industry that seemingly has gotten out of hand since life in any form should not be patented. One unthinkable question that begs to be asked, I think, is: If consumers eat a biotech company’s GM products, can that company then sue consumers for infringing upon their patent(s), as Monsanto does with farmers whose fields are contaminated with GMO pollens, even though farmers do not plant Monsanto GM seeds? This question also begs to be asked: Can, at some future point in time, biotech companies claim ownership of consumers’ bodies and their children since consumers are eating their proprietary patented products? Personally, I think that is a legal issue that should be answered by the U.S. Supreme Court before any more GMO products are forced down consumers’ unwitting throats. Additionally, there are major concerns and/or problems that GMOs seem to be having on the environment, restructuring age-old farming practices, economic factors especially in developing countries, serious issues about and the flagrant disregard for self-determination and freedom of choice, and last—but far from least—human health. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of GMO crop technology is the fact that GM seeds and plants have been programmed to withstand inordinate amounts of herbicide spraying during the growing season. Herbicide spraying contaminates crops with more pesticides than ever before due to crop abilities to withstand pesticide saturation. We know the dramatic health problems herbicides and pesticides cause, but we really don’t know the health problems GMOs will cause. However, the CRIIGEN rat study confirms cancerous tumors! We do know GMOs are endocrine disruptors; they produce new protein coatings that have never been seen, plus mutations occur in the gene splicing process. What will that cause? However, the most insidious of all, I think, is the Epicyte gene patented in 2001, which can prevent human conception. It was ‘contraceptive corn’ developed by the biotech company Epicyte, which Monsanto and DuPont bought out and subsequently commercialized the Epicyte gene. What that gene does is creates human antibodies that attack sperm. So, in essence, what they came up with according to the then Epicyte president Mitch Hein was, “…a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies.” [2] What that contraceptive Epicyte gene does is rather ‘amazing’ insofar as it induces a female’s body to make antibodies that attack sperm after coitus. Do consumers know they will get that ‘freebee’ after eating GM Epicyte-gene-laden corn? How does that fit in with the eater’s philosophical or religious belief system? Why isn’t the Roman Catholic Church backing away from GM food since GM food apparently is a contraceptive that flies in the face of that church’s very dogma on contraception and life? According to the Catholic News Service December 1, 2010: The Pontifical Academy of Science’s headquarters hosted a study week in May 2009 on ‘Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development.’ The final statement summarized the week’s proceedings and recommended that genetic engineering techniques be freed from ‘excessive, unscientific regulation’ so that modern and predictable GM technologies could be used to enhance nutrition and food production everywhere. It called for greater cooperation among private corporations, governments and nonprofit organizations with the aim of increasing funding from governments and charities so that GM crops could be ‘cost-free’ for poorer regions. [3] Now it’s time, I’d say, for food-buying U.S. consumers to have their say, since everyone else apparently has made known their mandates, especially the U.S. FDA. On May 26, 1992 the