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Why we say NO to GM foods |
 GM Food If you have often wondered what this Geneticaly Modified (GM)food thing is all about, please take time to watch this great film "The Future of Food" here in this article. It will answer all your questions related to the issue
Currently there are no GM crops grown in Ireland. However we cannot become complacent about GM issues advises the insightful Judith Hoad in Organic Matters magazine. We need to be weary of any proposal to test GM crops in Ireland and also we need to ensure that all foods on the Irish market containing GM foods, in any amount, are clearly labelled. It would be ideal to block all foods containing GM ingredients altogether, but this could be virtualy impossible at this stage. Some 70% of the foods in the grocery stores in the USA contain GM foods.
For this reason one should be weary of all American produce being sold here in Ireland. My advice is to eat local and eat natural unprocessed foods.
In Ireland the Minister for Health and Children has the responsibility for GM foods. Judith is currently writing letters to the Minister for clarification on the labelling laws etc. please if you have time join with her and request the Minister to clearly outline Irelands position regarding GM foods and what is the future plan?
The UK is one of the few countries conducting a yearly evaluation of food allergies. In March 1999, researchers at the York Laboratory were alarmed to discover that reactions to soy have skyrocketed by 50% over the previous year.
Genetically modified soy had recently entered the UK from U.S. imports. So the soy used in the study was largely GM. John Graham, spokesman for the York laboratory, said, "We believe this raises serious new questions about the safety of GM foods."
Critics of GM foods often say that the U.S. population is being used as guinea pigs in an experiment. But experiments have the benefit of controls and measurement. In this case, there is neither.
GM food safety experts point out that even if someone tried to collect data about allergic reactions to GM foods, they would likely be unsuccessful. "The potential allergen is rarely identified. The number of allergy-related medical visits is not tabulated. Even repeated visits due to well-known allergens are not counted as part of any established surveillance system."
Indeed, the Canadian government announced in 2002 that they would "keep a careful eye on the health of Canadians" to see if GM foods had any adverse reactions. They abandoned their plans within a year, saying that such a study was too difficult.
If this protein in GM soybeans is causing allergies, then the situation may be made much worse by something called horizontal gene transfer (HGT). That's when genes spontaneously transfer from one species' DNA to another. While this happens often among bacteria, it is rare in plants and mammals.
But the method used to construct and insert foreign genes into GM crops eliminates many of the natural barriers that stop HGT from occurring. The only published human feeding study on GM foods ever conducted showed that
"Parts of the gene inserted into GM soy ended up transferring into the DNA of human gut bacteria!"
Creating a GM crop can produce massive changes in the natural functioning of the plant's DNA. Native genes can be mutated, deleted, permanently turned on or off, or change their levels of protein expression. These facts spell out an unpredictable future for nature and people. Please take the time to watch the following video "The Future of Food" to educate yourself about what exactly is GM and where it may take us.
In Health
Gabriel
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