GMOs May Feed the World Using Fewer Pesticides — NOVA Next. Walter De Jong shouts over the roar of fans in the greenhouse. He’s telling me about the seedlings beside him, which pepper the dark soil in a grid of small planting pots. De Jong, a potato breeder and geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, hopes that at least one of the plants will yield a best seller, but it’s far more likely that they’ll amount to compost. De Jong produced the plants in the same old, laborious way that his father did before him. He collected pollen from a plant that produces potatoes that fry as potato chips should and then sprinkled the pollen on the flower of a potato plant that resists viruses. If the resulting potatoes bear their parents’ finest features—and none of the bad ones—De Jong will bury them in the ground next year and test their mettle against a common potato virus.
If they survive—and are good for frying and eating—he and his team will repeat this for 13 years to ensure that problematic genes did not creep in during the initial cross. What is GMO? GMOs (or “genetically modified organisms”) are organisms whose genetic material has been artificially manipulated in a laboratory through genetic engineering, or GE. This relatively new science creates unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacteria and viral genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods. For consumers, it can be difficult to stay up-to-date on food ingredients that are at-risk of being genetically modified, as the list of at-risk agricultural ingredients is frequently changing.
As part of the Non-GMO Project’s commitment to informed consumer choice, we work diligently to maintain an accurate list of risk ingredients. High-Risk Crops (in commercial production; ingredients derived from these must be tested every time prior to use in Non-GMO Project Verified products (as of December 2011): You may also be wondering about… Tomatoes: In 1994, genetically modified Flavr Savr tomatoes became the first commercially produced GMOs. 10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs - Institute for Responsible Technology. 1. GMOs are unhealthy. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) urges doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients. They cite animal studies showing organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility. Human studies show how genetically modified (GM) food can leave material behind inside us, possibly causing long-term problems.
Genes inserted into GM soy, for example, can transfer into the DNA of bacteria living inside us, and that the toxic insecticide produced by GM corn was found in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses. Numerous health problems increased after GMOs were introduced in 1996. The American Public Health Association and American Nurses Association are among many medical groups that condemn the use of GM bovine growth hormone, because the milk from treated cows has more of the hormone IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1)―which is linked to cancer. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. 9. 10. GE Food Dangers: Why GMOs Can Never Be Safe. By Dr. Mercola While no one knows exactly what the effects of consuming pesticide-soaked genetically-engineered (GE) crops will be over time, all of humankind serves as "lab rat" as a few massive corporations profit handsomely from their experiment.The good news is, although we've lost some battles, we seem to be winning the war.
Awareness about the potential risks of GE foods continues to grow, largely through the publicity generated by state direct ballot initiatives that bypass the legislatures. The latest polls suggest more than 90 percent of Americans now want to know what's in their food. Economic Impacts That Are Rarely Discussed Why GMOs Can Never Be Safe Genetic modification interferes with the naturally occurring genetic modifications organisms undergo in order to survive. EPA Has Raised Allowed Limits for Carcinogen Levels in Your Food Enough Already — It's Time to Boycott Prevent Your Senator from Voting Yes on HR 1599 HR 1599 Eliminates States' Rights.