These genetically altered varieties now make up about 90% of America’s soy, about 50% of the corn, canola, cotton and lesser amounts of other crops including papaya, squash, potatoes and others depending on the year.
Genetically engineered events often have names to identify the company that holds the patent as in MON for Monsanto. Others indicate the herbicide they tolerate. That’s the case with Bayer’s LL601 rice, the source of a widespread accidental contamination in 2006 that had other nations pulling US rice off the shelves, as we were hearing about e-coli spinach.
So much for America’s corporate media.
The LL601 was created to have a tolerance to an herbicide called Liberty Link made by Bayer Crop Science. The designation LL helps growers match the altered seed with the herbicide or pesticide it is grown with. It’s not so yummy to think of LL601 Rice Krispie Bars or Frosted MON863 Corn Flakes but that’s what’s in much of it here in America where the gmo crops are unregulated and unlabeled.
Beyond the idea that the names aren’t exactly a marketing departments dream, these genetically altered events have special properties that are important to talk about. Now the industry claims that changing a single gene isn’t significant and in the case of foods it doesn’t change the traditional varieties in ways that affect us when we eat them.
There is both serious science and feeding study results that suggest quite the opposite.
In some ways common sense tells us that to change the basic genetic code that has evolved over the course of the history of life on the planet, to produce characteristics in plants where they tolerate toxic herbicides or make their own pesticides to kill the bugs that eat them, is not quite the same as a food that has evolved to nourish the planet’s life forms. But there is science to cite so we’ll move along to that.
We know now that genetic modification requires the insertion of foreign genetic material into the gene of the plant. In the case of gmo foods they accomplish that with a promoter which is generally an antibiotic resistant marker and the entire thing is then coated with an antibiotic.
That creates cause for concern on several levels. As we know Nature is based on evolving and all organisms, including the human body is designed to mutate in response to threats encountered. Our internal operations are much like a microcosm of the global ecology. Our immune system needs to identify the proteins that are threats and attack them.
Genes are ecologies too, they work in conjunction with one another to build defenses against natural attackers. When we introduce new genetically modified substances they posses new proteins. These are novel substances in the plant and they are substances our bodies have never encountered in nature.
The new proteins are also alien to the plant. When those plants then interact with the entire ecosystem and the human body, nature is faced with challenges that evolution has never prepared for. In a worst case scenario these novel proteins may be toxic. In a lesser extreme they can trigger allergic reactions or other immune system responses.
The body identifies the novel substance as a foreign substance that it does not recognise as a food. The numbers of reactions an immune system can have to this foreign protein are as varied as the varied novel proteins and as the individuals.
Just as one person may be allergic to peanuts and another has no problem eating them, the proteins that generate an immune response, and what that response is in terms of severity and body reaction, varies as much as we do. It goes back to the basic divirsity of nature and the fact that no two living organisms are exactly alike.
One person may get a rash while another gets breathing problems from an allergic reaction to an identical item of conventional or natural food. The protein that triggers the reaction is the same but the individual immune system responses are different.
We do share many traits within species though. That’s when numbers come into play and we begin to see paterns of reactions. For example we look for a spike in the number of individuals who are afflicted with a given ailment and try to find a common source for the problem.
In the case of the genetically altered foods and patterns resulting from those we would look to the US as a test group. Since we have been eating these for a decade indicators of allergic reactions would manifest in rising food allergies or increased rates of other auto-immune diseases.
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