GMO's are they safe? There is no way to be sure yet...there are no absolutes in young science...

[pnwmom]

84. And in Europe they have decided, based on the evidence that you reject, to strictly regulate GMO's.

Only in the US are people still gullible enough to think Monsanto is doing this in an effort to save the world, instead of to pad their own pockets.

No one in the US knows when they're buying a GMO product at the store because they're not labeled. So if there were any ill effects, no one would know what caused them.

In Europe, rather than insisting there is no need for any safety testing of GMO’s because there is “no known mechanism,” they have been busy developing methods for assessing safety of GMO’s. We should be learning from them instead of insisting that no such testing is necessary.

http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-funded_gmo_research.pdf

A number of projects (ENTRANSFOOD, GMO CARE, SAFOTEST, NOFORISK, and GMOBILITY) have focused on the development of safety assessment approaches for GM foods/feed. This is an issue of great scientific interest and also of interest for the general public: to examine whether food/ feed products derived from GMOs pose particular risks for humans, animals and the environment upon long term expo- sure and consumption.

The Thematic Network ENTRANSFOOD which consisted of different stakeholders across Europe specialized in develop- ment and production of GM crops and derived foods, in risk- assessment, -management, and –communication strategies, and has designed a detailed step-wise procedure for the risk assessment of GM crop derived food and feed. The proposed procedure was an important step forward in risk assessment of the new category of foods, since it added a significant level of detail to the general requirements for the actual safety assessment. The risk assessment approach as developed within ENTRANSFOOD has also been embedded in the risk assessment strategy more recently developed by the European Food Safety Authority, and is in line with international guide- lines developed by the FAO/WHO.

The possible occurrence of unintended alterations in the com- position of GM food crops as result of the genetic modifica- tion, was one of the key issues addressed by ENTRANSFOOD. Detection of unexpected effects in GM food crops relies pri- marily on a targeted approach, i.e. comparative determination in GM and non-GM products of levels of selected macro- and micro-nutrients, anti-nutrients, and known toxins. In order to increase the probability of detecting unintended effects, ‘profiling’- or ‘omics’- techniques have been further developed within the GMOCARE project. These evolving technologies include transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics ena- ble measurement of thousands of metabolic compounds in modified and unmodified plants, which are not defined prior to analysis (non-targeted approach). Research has concen- trated on various transgenic potato lines modified in their starch, amino acid, or glycoalkaloid metabolism, on trans- genic tomato lines with elevated phytosterol or isoprenoid contents, and on various Arabidopsis GM-lines, down-regu- lated in their flavonoid pathway. Application of profiling meth- ods is promising since extensive information is provided on the physiology of GMOs and their non-modified counterparts, but further development and validation is needed, before they can be used in a formalized risk assessment procedure. The classical targeted compositional analysis of GMOs and their conventional non-modified counterparts together with infor- mation from the molecular characterization and analysis of agronomical properties of the GMOs, is a sound and robust way to determine possibly whether due unintended effects may have occurred in GMOs possibly due to the genetic modification.

Toxicological testing of newly expressed proteins and of whole GM foods has been examined in the SAFOTEST project. A combination of in vivo animal models, in vitro toxicological systems, and selected profiling methods was used to charac- terize GM rice strains containing lectins, or Bt protein. Repeated dose studies in rats were performed with diets con- taining the target proteins, or the GM rice spiked or not with purified lectin. The results demonstrated that the specificity and sensitivity of the 90-day rat feeding study to detect spe- cific compound-related effects and unintended secondary effects is fit-for-purpose, which enables the establishment of the safety of the GM food. This approach provides relevant guidance for future approaches to establish the safety for consumers.

An increasing number of novel foods are generally marketed with claims of benefits to the consumers (functional foods), but these claims are generally poorly underpinned. . . .


SNIP