America's Looming Food Crisis
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/USfoodcrisis.htm
Junk Food Sector Fears Deluge of Lawsuits

Will 'GMron' be next?

  "Junk food companies in America are to warn consumers that eating too many of their products could make them fat. In a move designed to protect companies such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola from the kind of lawsuits brought against the tobacco industry, an industry-funded organisation will begin its advertising campaign - codenamed Activate - in a fortnight.  The campaign will cause uproar in a country whose citizens spent $110 billion last year on junk food.... Lawyers and food industry experts say that the project, which is being backed by the International Food Information Council foundation, could lead to packaged foods such as chocolate buscuits and crisps having cigarette-style health warnings..... Industry backers include McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Burger King, Pepsi, Heinz, Unilever and Monsanto. Critics of the industry say it has been panicked into the move after the publication of a report last December by David Satcher, the US Surgeon General. In unusually blunt language, he warned that obesity-related health problems were costing America $117 billion a year. Treating smoking-related diseases cost just $23 billion more.... Food companies are not only worried about law suits. Campaigners also argue that junk food such as Big Macs should be taxed in the same way as cigarettes... "
Health warning: eating can make you fat
London Times, 14 June 2002

"Biotechnology companies can market genetically engineered (GE) foods without notifying the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or obtaining its approval, thanks to regulatory gaps in a system that consumer and environmental groups today asked Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson to fix.... HHS could begin fixing that system, the groups say, by finalizing a rule stalled at the FDA for more than a year. The period for public comment on the rule ended a year ago today. The proposed rule would require premarket notification of bioengineered foods. And while the rule would not require government approval for GE foods, consumer groups say the rule would be a small step in the right direction.... Currently, the FDA only reviews safety data on biotech crops provided by seed companies on a voluntary basis.... 'The public shouldn’t have to rely entirely on the word of a big biotech company when it comes to the safety of food,' [said Gregory Jaffe, director of CSPI’s biotechnology project] 'But under the current rules, companies can bypass the FDA with impunity.'..."
REGULATORY GAP MEANS GE FOODS ARRIVE ON THE MARKET WITHOUT FDA
APPROVAL AND POSSIBLY WITHOUT NOTICE
CSPI Press Release, May 3, 2002

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A's [Food and Drug Administration] job."
Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications, in an
interview with the New York Times, October 25, 1998

"The FDA said it agreed with the study’s findings but said it should not be obliged to check [GM food testing] data on a regular basis."
USA: GM foods pose no additional risk to health - report
Just-food.com, 29 May 2002

"Does any American want to depend on the Third World for a safe and abundant supply of food and fiber? The outcome is increased anxiety about foreign production methods......"
'The Facts on US Farm Policy'
US House of Representatives Agriculture Committee, Summer 2002

25 June 2002  

Just as the Enron scandal (and now the related plunging of stock markets following investors' loss of faith in the integrity of corporate America) is exposing US economic foundations built on sand, evidence is fast emerging that America has also lost the plot when it comes to food and health. The US House of Representatives Agriculture Committee's latest booklet on US farm policy makes interesting reading in this respect. Here are some excerpts:

"Does any American want to depend on the Third World for a safe and abundant supply of food and fiber?  The outcome is increased anxiety about foreign production methods, at best, and heightened concern about bioterrorism, at worst?"

Ironically this is exactly how much of the rest of the world now views American food products using GM technology. GM crops are developed using exactly the same recombinant DNA technology that is used to develop advanced biological weapons. The US is itself developing such weapons of mass destruction (and, as it happens, the source of the anthrax attacks in the US last year have since been traced to an American military laboratory).

Most US GM crops include a viral DNA sequence taken from a plant virus very similar to Hepatitis B. The sequence is used in a modified form to allow it to function in a greatly increased range of cellular environments. In the case of food grown in America and exported across the world it is the incorporation of such artificial DNA constructs which is leading to 'increased anxiety' about the US's own production methods.

Far from rejecting food from the developing countries many consumers elsewhere are now turning towards them in order to avoid American food products contaminated with transgenic DNA.

"US farm policy helps all American farm families because all farm families are feeling the sting of [various factors including]... record high costs of production, with 2002 expected to set an all-time record"

The US has the world's largest area of  commercially grown GM crops.  These crops are 'input trait' varieties supposedly designed to reduce farmers costs.  With 2002 providing a record area of such crops in the US, ironically policy makers acknowledge that US farmers are now facing record production costs.

"In today's world market, the vast majority of Americans would agree that uncontrolled world competition that allows anti-competitive trade practices by foreign governments against US farmers standing alone is not free or fair"  

It is especially the anti-competitive practices fostered by the advent of GMOs in agriculture (through the unique intellectual property rights that the US government has allowed to be attached to them), which has facilitated substantial reductions in choice for farmers in the American market place. In particular GMOs impose severe restrictions on farmers' ability to save their own seed in order to cut costs, although they also place restrictions on the freedom of farmers to make cost effective use of pesticides.

"According to Dr Keith Collins, the US Department of Agriculture's chief economist, sharply increased world crop production beginning in 1996/1997 and the decline in world economic growth in 1998 caused crop prices to plummet to current record lows"

In 2001 just four countries accounted for 99% of the global GM crop area, 68% of which was grown in the US.  Global food production as a whole remains overwhelmingly based on non-GM crops.  Yet, according to the USDA sharp increases in world crop production have been taking place since 1996/7. By contrast it is well established that the world's biggest GM crop by far - Roundup Ready Soya, most predominantly grown in the US, and accounting for 63% of the global GM crop area - actually reduces crop production yields.

"...loss of food production in the United States only means increased food production in places like the Third World where there are few food safety and environmental safeguards"

These words echo those of the then US Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman, when he spoke to a congress of the National Corn Growers Association in Washington 5 August 1999. He rejected calls for a land 'set aside' programme to curb US over-production because "That's a sure-fire prescription to have increased production elsewhere [in the world]".

These words of Glickman and those in the latest House explanatory booklet expose the real agenda of the US. It is not the slightest bit interested in promoting increases in global food production. It is purely, though hardly surprisingly given its track record, only concerned with US trade interests.

The disaster of the US's success in promoting GM crops at the recent FAO World Food Summit in Rome needs to be seen in this context. The Guardian quotes one US delegate confirming that "We're here to sell biotech, and that's what we've done". The reality is that America is promoting GMOs in global agriculture purely because the seeds are largely a US mercantile product, and not because it wishes to see world food production increase. It clearly doesn't.

The unspoken US position is this: if people in other countries really must grow food then it should be using US patented seed. That's all.

If more evidence of this callous strategy is needed a recent press report of an international meeting on global poverty which took place in Bali earlier this month exposes the brutal truth. According to the Independent on Sunday 9 June : "The Bush administration rejected any new targets for reducing poverty and, in effect, refused to negotiate, stating its position and challenging the rest of the world to take it or leave it. It blocked plans to halve the number of the world's people without any sanitation – a situation that causes a child to die every 10 seconds from water-borne disease – and to double those who have electricity and other modern forms of energy."

Whatever international aid programmes it may participate in (these frequently merely serving ulterior trade and diplomatic leverage purposes), in practice a large part of stated US government concern about the well-being of citizens in developing countries is clearly bogus.

The overarching shallowness of the US approach to domestic and global food policy does not stop here. Whether or not America has a junk economy is still a matter of considerable, if rapidly diminishing, debate.  But there is no doubt about one thing - America is the world's leading consumer of 'junk food'. The impact on levels of domestic obesity and general ill-health is proving devastating. As a result the US junk food sector is now following the tobacco industry in trying to take action to evade what could become an unprecedented wave of law suits. Such a risk now emanates from the large numbers of US consumers who have had their health damaged through the over consumption of highly processed industrialised food products.   

As reported in the London Times 14 June: "When the lawyer John Banzhaf pioneered the notion of suing tobacco companies in the mid-60s for the health problems they caused, everyone thought he was crazy. Thirty years later, the big five tobacco companies have been forced to settle a £130 billion claim made by US state governments to pay for the health costs of treating their citizens made ill by smoking".  

Just like the GM industry today (although it does not make this direct comparison for itself ) the Times points out that "The tobacco companies argued persistently that cigarettes caused no harm". However, "....[they] were eventually forced to concede defeat under a barage of scientific evidence and leaks from employees disgusted at the dishonesty of their employers....The junk food industry feels it can no longer ignore threats from its customers."  

Based on profoundly junk science GMOs are the ultimate junk food - the denaturing of food using this technology begins at the absolute source even before the seed for the food is planted in the ground. As with tobacco and other forms of junk food, it is likely to be decades before the science concerning the effects of GMOs on human health catches up with consumption. But when it does the claims are likely to be on an altogether larger scale.  

Apart from the uniquely radical nature of the technology, there is a particular legal reason for this.  With tobacco and Coca-Cola US consumers know that they are consuming it and they do so voluntarily for the most part.  With GMOs the fact that US citizens are consuming them is not disclosed. They consume them with neither knowledge nor consent.  Aided and abetted by a continuous stream of corporate sponsored American governments - both Republican and Democrat - this policy of non-disclosure is conscious and deliberate.  

Just like the Enron scandal, a large part of the impending GM debacle is going to hinge around the issue of non-disclosure.   So if you are wondering what to do with your investments as stock markets threaten to go into free fall, you might like to think about selling those ag-biotech company shares first - before they go the way of Enron shares and fail to bounce back. 

When it finally arrives 'GMron' is, in fact, likely to be far worse. With an impact spreading well beyond stock holders and company pensions, GMron will directly affect the entire population. Whilst other shares will no doubt one day recover, GM stocks are likely to prove the ultimate long term investment liability.  

America has some of the worst health indicator scores amongst all of the developed (OECD) countries despite having by far the highest per capita spending on health services in the world.  The way it eats is a key factor. Yet it is this most health-ignorant of countries which is trying to tell the rest of the world what to eat - GM food. 

Since the introduction of GM food in the US, reported food related illnesses have more than doubled and in most cases the cause is not known.  Whether or not there is a GM connection remains to be seen, but with thousands more GM foods in the development pipeline such a linkage can only be a matter of time given the shaky science underpinning the whole venture. No doubt the lawyers can hardly wait.

In the meantime there is already plenty of evidence of harm for the lawyers to be getting stuck into with the more traditional junk foods (see press excerpts below), even though it took decades for this evidence to surface.

In addition the willingness of American consumers to sue over the application of new technology is demonstrated by the announcement earlier this month that Vodafone is now subject to a $1 billion claim by mobile phone users in the US who have suffered brain cancer. Vodafone says there is no evidence of a connection between these instances of disease and the use of their technology. Nonetheless, the announcement awkwardly coincides with the publication of new research which has reignited the debate on potential causal links.

Unlike GMOs, however, mobile phones have never been introduced on the basis of de facto compulsory consumption. To make matters considerably worse companies in the US can even introduce GM foods onto the market without notifying the Food and Drug Administration or obtaining its approval.

Mix together food, radical and invasive technology, lack of proper testing, compulsory consumption and more than a pinch of non-disclosure, and you have the perfect recipe for social and economic disaster.

And they didn't see it coming. Oh, boy.

NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
nlpwessex@bigfoot.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex

Act Now

Congressman Kucinich Introduces Bills to Label Genetically Engineered Food and Protect Consumers in US

Contact Kucinich - click here

"While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agrees that pieces of foreign DNA spliced into an edible plant (and all substances they then produce) are in principle food additives, it claims they are relieved from the testing requirements by the exemption granted to substances that are 'generally recognized as safe' (GRAS).... Neither the FDA's records nor the scientific literature indicate that even one bioengineered food has been established safe as required by law. In fact, the main study attempting to do so failed. "
Vilolating Federal Law
Alliance For Bio-integrity

(for more on how this situation was created see 'How GM Food Regulations in the US were fixed' at bottom)

Leading By Example
Trust us, we know a thing or two about health

"The United States remains far and away the world's biggest spender on health care, a new study shows, but the big bucks haven't stopped the country from slipping further down international rankings of health status and access to care.... Anderson and economist Jean-Pierre Poullier of the World Health Organization compared 29 industrialized nations, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, the United States and most of Europe. The researchers used 1997 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, making adjustments for cost-of-living differences between countries. The United States spent close to $4,000 a person on health -- more than twice the median per capita expenditure. When the researchers compared measures of health status, they found that the United States fell in the bottom half of the group of nations..... In infant mortality, the United States fared worse than all but Hungary, Korea, Mexico, Poland and Turkey. More than half of all the countries in the group have, since 1960, managed to cut their infant mortality rates faster than has the United States. And likewise the relative ranking of the United States declined in terms of overall life expectancy and life expectancy at age 65. The journal Health Affairs published the study in its May/June issue."
U.S. ranks lower still in health care
The Oregonian, 12 May 1999

Avoiding Junk

"What junk food does to the body, junk impressions, such as our mental diet of violent movies, does to the mind, rendering it dull and heavy..... Ayurveda emphasizes the role of consciousness in health and disease .... [it] teaches us the dynamic effects of each food article for health and disease. While modern medicine is only now beginning to accept the role of food and disease through an examination of phytochemicals, Ayurveda has long regarded diet as the basis of health. We are not only what we eat but also how we eat and with whom we eat. Food preparation is as important as food types. As we move into a new millennium and a global age, Vedic knowledge of all types, with its universal vision, is becoming increasingly important."
Ayurveda, the World’s Medicine for the Next Millennium
India Post, June 25 1999

What The Junk Does

"Nationwide, the land of the free boasts 54 million obese adults, that's people who are 30 or more pounds over the healthy norm based on height. Health groups say one of the biggest culprits for this growing epidemic is junk food...."
Junk food battle hits US schools
BBC Online, 30 May 2002

"The World Heart Federation is warning that obesity will overtake tobacco smoking as the biggest cause of heart disease unless the current trend of unhealthy lifestyles stops..... Nearly one in three children in the United States between the ages of five and 14 are obese, compared to one in six 30 years ago."
Obesity rise prompts health warning
BBC Online, 4 June 2002

"Forsaking healthy, home-cooked meals, more Americans than ever are gorging on calorie-rich, nutrient-poor snacks, sodas and sweets when the dinner bell rings, according to three studies tracking changes in the US diet over the past 25 years."
Craving for Hi-Cal, Low-Nutrient Foods Soaring
Reuters, 23 April 2002

"Scientists believe junk food may be partly responsible for an increase in rates of childhood asthma in developed countries. Researchers examined communities in Saudi Arabia, where there are striking differences in lifestyle and rates of allergies across the country..... One in seven children in the UK suffers from asthma. The number of children under five who develop asthma and wheezing has almost doubled in less than a decade."
Junk food link to asthma
BBC Online, 22 August 2000

"University of Toronto researchers at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care have discovered that fat-rich diets are not only bad for your heart, they may also impair essential brain functions like concentration and memory."
Junk food impairs brain: study
University of Toronto News, 26 Feb 2001

"Staying away from high-fat, high-cholesterol foods isn't just a warning for adults to heed. A new study of teen-agers found one-third of them had increased their heart disease risk factors with junk food diets that could lead to high blood pressure and clogged arteries as they grow older. The findings were presented Monday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, held in Anaheim, California."
Study: Junk food raises teens' risk of heart disease
CNN.com, 14 March 2002

"Junk food, long cited as the culprit in Americans' expanding waistlines, may be bad for eyesight too, a new study suggests.... Overindulging in fat-filled snack foods may heighten the risk of developing advanced age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness and vision impairment in the United States for those over 55, researchers at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary said in a new study."
Study Shows Snacks May be Bad for Vision
ABC News, 15 Aug 2001

"Children who drink sugary soft drinks are at higher risk of becoming obese, researchers in the United States report. Their work, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, is the latest in a string of studies warning that American teenagers are increasingly putting their health at risk by consuming too much junk food."
Study: Sodas linked to obesity
CNN, 15 Feb 2002

"Most children can be accurately diagnosed as having AD/HD between the ages of 5 and 9, although some of the behaviour patterns are clearly present earlier. Diet is at stake here: some parents have found that excluding certain foods such as sweets with food additives and fizzy drinks can help..."
BBC Education - Children's health

"Encouraging healthier eating could be the government's secret weapon in the fight against crime, according to experts. A study by researchers at the University of Oxford has found that adding vitamins and other vital nutrients to young people's diets can cut crime. They found that improving the diets of young offenders at a maximum security institution in Buckinghamshire cut offences by 25%. ... Bernard Gesch and colleagues at the University of Oxford enrolled 230 young offenders from HM Young Offenders Institution Aylesbury in their study.... Mr Gesch said: 'The supplements just provided the vitamins, minerals and fatty acids found in a good diet which the inmates should get anyway. Yet the improvement was huge'.... He said that given that nutrients were the building blocks of the brain and its associated structures, it was highly likely that a good diet would have a direct impact on behaviour."
Healthy eating 'can cut crime'
BBC Online, 25 June 2002

"A diabetic judge who put on 40kg after a year of eating and drinking sweet foodstuffs took Coca-Cola to court yesterday, arguing that it should carry health warnings on its sugar content. Judge Hans Josef Brinkmann, 54, the vice-president of the Neubrandenburg regional court, is suing for €7,000 (£4,500) compensation because, he claims, Coca-Cola consumption contributed to the onset of diabetes. He is also demanding that Coca-Cola pay for all future medical costs stemming from the illness. The east German lawyer said that he had distrusted the canteen in his local courthouse and took to lunching on a litre of Coca-Cola and two chocolate bars of Mars and Snickers. Within a year Herr Brinkmann, who is 1.87m (6ft 2in) tall, had gained 39.9kg. At one stage he weighed 111kg. The sudden obesity appears to have triggered diabetes mellitus; the pancreas fails to produce enough insulin to sustain normal functioning of the body cells. The lawyer’s vision was affected, he became susceptible to infection and suffered from constant thirst."
Diabetic judge sues Coca-Cola
London Times, 25 June 2002

Who's Pulling the Strings?

"After a March 23 hearing on soft drink sales in Florida high schools, Governor Jeb Bush said he wanted to go on record in favor of repealing a state rule that restricts the in-school sale of beverages from vending machines. A Coca-Cola spokeswoman, school board officials, and nutritionists presented testimony before Bush and his Cabinet, sitting as the State Board of Education. What Bush didn't say was that during the 1998 election cycle, the Coca-Cola Company gave him $500 and Lt. Governor Frank Brogan $500. Brogan served as Florida's Commissioner of Education before joining Bush's campaign ticket in 1998. Members of Bush's Cabinet also benefited from Coca-Cola's generosity. Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Attorney General Bob Butterworth and Commissioner of Education Tom Gallagher each received $500 from the company. Florida law prohibits corporations like Coca-Cola from making contributions in excess of $500 per election to individual candidates..... Hedging its bets, Coca-Cola also contributed $500 to Commissioner of Education candidates Faye Culp, a Republican, and Peter Rudy Wallace, a Democrat (both lost). Sandra Mortham, who lost her second bid for Secretary of State, received $500 as well.  The company, however, was more decisive about choosing which party to back: The Florida Republican Party, which took control of both the state House and Senate in 1996, received $7,500 and the Bush/Brogan Inaugural Committee received $5,000. ...... In what has become a nationwide trend, hundreds of school districts are entering into exclusive contracts with soft drink manufacturers like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. In exchange for the exclusive right to sell their soda, juices, and bottled water in district schools, these companies typically offer districts anywhere from 50 percent to 65 percent of sales. For schools that have difficulty paying for necessities such as textbooks and sports equipment, vending machine contracts can mean millions in much needed revenue."
Coke Thirsts for Business in Florida Schools
CAPITAL EYE VOLUME 6 NUMBER 3

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A's [Food and Drug Administration] job."
Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications, in an
interview with the New York Times, October 25, 1998
http://www.purefood.org/monlink.html

"Buried Data in Monsanto's Study on Roundup Ready Soybeans"
http://www.biotech-info.net/buried_data.html

Monsanto's genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone scandal
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1527/text4.html

Revolving Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators
http://www.psrast.org/ecologmons.htm

Monsanto employees and government regulatory agencies
employees are the same people!
http://www.purefood.org/Monsanto/revolvedoor.cfm  

Does your food and drink include Monsanto-developed 'Aspartame' artificial sweetener?
- to find out why you should be interested click here

Enron Style Food Safety Testing

Nearly all tests carried out on GMOs are by the companies themselves
Why should GM food testing be any different to what you are about to read below?

"Of the 90 non-industry-sponsored studies, 83 (92%) identified one or more problems with aspartame. Of the 7 studies which did not find a problems, 6 of those studies were conducted by the FDA. Given that a number of FDA officials went to work for the aspartame industry immediately following approval (including the former FDA Commissioner), many consider these studies to be equivalent to industry-sponsored research.

Of the 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies, all 74 (100%) claimed that no problems were found with aspartame.

This is reminiscent of tobacco industry research where it is primarily the tobacco research which never finds problems with the product, but nearly all of the independent studies do find problems. The 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies are those which one inveriably sees cited in PR/news reports and reported by organizations funded by Monsanto/Benevia/NutraSweet (e.g., IFIC, ADA). These studies have severe design deficiencies which help to guarantee the 'desired' outcomes."
Analysis Shows Nearly 100% of Independent Research Finds Problems With Aspartame
Aspartame ( NutraSweet ) Toxicity Information Center, 17 October 1996

Aspartame Victims Support Group - click here

How Financial Regulations in the US were Fixed

"The meteoric rise and stunning collapse of Enron caused many to question why the corporate oversight system that was supposed to protect investors failed to sound any alarms about the company's dubious finances. But Enron and Arthur Andersen turn out to be merely the tip of the iceberg. In the 1990s, more than 700 U.S. companies were forced to correct misleading financial statements as a result of accounting failures, lapses, or outright fraud. Together with Enron -- the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history -- these failures have cost investors an estimated $200 billion. What went wrong?

In 'Bigger Than Enron,' FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith shines a spotlight on how the corporate watchdogs -- the bankers, lawyers, regulators, politicians, and above all, the accountants -- failed to prevent Enron and other scandals from happening. Through interviews with current and former SEC officials (including SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt and his predecessor, Arthur Levitt), Arthur Andersen executives (including former Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino), members of Congress (including Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut), investor advocates, and others, the report explores how the system of controls was eroded by conflicts of interest, as well as by congressional intervention that blocked efforts at protecting investors.

'The trail leads to Washington,' Smith reports, 'where Congress weakened the protections and tied the hands of regulators, making it easier for aggressive companies like Enron to push the envelope.' During the past decade, the accounting industry has flexed its lobbying muscle on Capitol Hill as never before, and Smith examines the three major political battles of the decade's accounting wars: the fight over stock options, the fight over tort reform, and the all-out war over SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt's attempt to rein in conflicts of interest by forcing accounting firms to separate their auditing and consulting practices.

But ultimately, as this report shows, it was not just Congress but the big accounting firms themselves that failed to protect investors, and what happened at Arthur Andersen illustrates the wider story of how the oversight system broke down."
Why Enron, The Largest Business Scandal In American History, Is Only The Tip Of The Iceberg. And Why You Should Care.
PBS, 20 June 2002

From Enron to GMron - shredding evidence - click here

How GM Food Regulations in the US were Fixed

"The FDA acknowledges it has been operating under a government policy 'to foster' the U.S. biotechnology industry. ('Genetically Engineered Foods,' FDA Consumer, Jan.-Feb. 1993, p.14) This policy was initiated by the Reagan/Bush administration and has continued through Clinton/Gore. Further, when in 1991 the FDA created a new position of Deputy Commissioner for Policy to supervise the formulation of its policy on GE foods, it appointed Michael Taylor, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who had been representing Monsanto and other members of the biotech industry on regulatory issues. During Mr. Taylor's tenure as Deputy Commissioner, warnings from FDA scientists were persistently overridden and drafts of the policy statement increasingly contradicted their assertions about the hazards of bioengineering. (Subsequently, Mr. Taylor was hired by Monsanto as Vice-President for Public Policy.) Moreover, when Vice-President Dan Quayle introduced FDA's final policy in 1992, he referred to it as 'regulatory relief' for the industry. The White House directive to foster biotechnology advocates the premise that GE foods are essentially the same as others. However, the agency's attempts to bend its policy to conform to this premise met with strong resistance from its own scientists. Numerous agency experts protested that the proposed policy was ignoring the recognized potential for bioengineering to produce unexpected and unpredictable toxins, carcinogens and allergens -- hazards not ordinarily involved with conventional breeding....Nonetheless, so strong was the FDA's motivation to promote the biotech industry that it not only disregarded the warnings of its own scientists about the unique risks of gene-spliced foods, it covered them up and claimed that no such input had been received."
FDA's Admitted Agenda to Promote the Biotech Industry
Alliance For Bio-integrity

You Trusted Enron, So Why Not Trust The Biotech Boys?
Junk Science, Business and Government - The Deadly Partnership

"The FDA said it agreed with the study’s findings but said it should not be obliged to check [GM food testing] data on a regular basis. The agency said the risk of criminal penalties for submitting false data was a significant deterrent for biotech companies, reported Reuters."
USA: GM foods pose no additional risk to health - report
Just-food.com, 29 May 2002

"Biotechnology companies can market genetically engineered (GE) foods without notifying the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or obtaining its approval, thanks to regulatory gaps in a system that consumer and environmental groups today asked Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson to fix."
REGULATORY GAP MEANS GE FOODS ARRIVE ON THE MARKET WITHOUT FDA
APPROVAL AND POSSIBLY WITHOUT NOTICE
CSPI Press Release, May 3, 2002

"In a country where the Government is often accused of caving in to the interests of large corporations, [US] legal activists have coined a simple motto: 'If you can’t regulate, litigate'...."
Attack on tobacco showed the way
London Times, 14 June 2002

"These findings demonstrate the fragmentary nature of current knowledge of genome structure and function and regulation of gene expression in general, and the limited understanding of several physiological, ecological, agronomical and toxicological aspects relevant to present-day and planned genetic modifications of crops"
Plant Research International (No. 12) 70 pp, 2000

  Health Statistics - Lies, Damn Lies, and GM foods?

GMOs - Does the British Prime Minister Know What He is Talking About?

GMO Debate on BBC Radio 4 Food Programme

  NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
nlpwessex@bigfoot.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex

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