Avoiding Genetically Modified Foods

Ask Ashley

Feb
11
2011

Filed in: Food Choices

Reader Question

Dear Ashley,

I have incredible concerns about the growing number of genetically modified foods finding their way onto supermarket shelves. Despite their widespread use, it seems there is really no way to know what is genetically modified, or contains genetically modified ingredients, and what is not. Are there any guidelines or resources that will help the average shopper make more informed choices?

Sincerely,

Beth

Ashley's Answer

Good day Beth,

Genetically modified (GM) ingredients are now in virtually all packaged and processed foods sold in Canada. There are no laws that require GM foods be labeled but surveys continually show that the majority of Canadians – more than 80% in fact – support mandatory labeling of GM foods. Furthermore, if products were labeled, most Canadians would avoid purchasing GM foods altogether. Yet, despite this sentiment, the vast majority of Canadians consume GM foods each and every day. So where’s the disconnect?

More than eighty-five percent of corn, soy, canola and sugar beet are now genetically modified. Each of these crops has been altered to tolerate herbicide, primarily Monsanto’s Roundup (glyphosate), while corn has also had the genetics of a bacterium - Bacillus thuringiensis – inserted into it to ward off caterpillars. These crops and the ingredients from which they are derived are nearly impossible to avoid. Derivatives of corn – citric and lactic acid; glucose, fructose, and maltodextrin; ethanol, sorbitol, mannitol, and xanthan gum; modified and unmodified startches; as well as dextrins and cyclodextrins and MSG, just to name a few – can be found in virtually every processed food item in the average big-box grocery store. Go to a restaurant and the deep fryers are bound to contain corn or canola oil and the 120 litres of sugary soft drinks that the average Canadian drinks each year are guaranteed to contain GM sugars, either from corn or beets.

But not all is lost and there are three main ways you can protect yourself and your family from the uncertainty – environmental and health - associated with eating GM foods:

1. Eating organic food is a good way to avoid GM foods because they are prohibited in organic farming. This also applies to eggs, meat and dairy because under organic standards animals are not fed GM crops.

2. Avoid eating processed foods with corn, canola and soy ingredients. If in doubt, stick with certified organic products.

3. Buy directly from farmers. Get to know them and support those that do not plant GM seeds or feed their animals with GM crops.

In addition to these recommendations, there are a number of shopping guides to help you make informed decisions. Greenpeace, love them or hate them, has a user-friendly How To Avoid Genetically Engineered Food guide, which is specific to Canada. Two other great resources, though geared more toward a US audience (though very much relevant to Canadians), are the Non-GMO Shopping Guide from the Institute for Responsible Technology and the True Food Shopper’s Guide from the Center For Food Safety, which is also available as an iPhone App.

Now you might be asking, “Aren’t you supposing that GM crops are unsafe? Is there any evidence of this?” These are fair questions but I’m not about to get into all the nitty-gritty details for or against GM foods. But just like climate change there are proponents and detractors. What I will comment on is something I recently saw on Dr. Oz. Love him or hate him, he dove head first into the GM debate and though Monsanto declined to appear on the show, they did send a statement and it read:

There is no need to, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans. As long as the introduced protein is determined safe, food from GM crops determined to be substantially equivalent is not expected to pose any health risks. Further, it is impossible to design a long-term safety test in humans [my emphasis].

What they are basically saying is not that GM foods are safe but that we have no way of determining that they are safe. So how do we know this? The short answer is we don’t.

As David Suzuki stated for The Globe and Mail:

We are performing a massive experiment. The results will only be known after millions of people have been exposed to (these foods) for decades…Any politician or scientist who tells you these products are safe is either very stupid or lying. The hazards of these foods are uncertain. In view of our enormous ignorance, the premature application of biotechnology is downright dangerous.

And the dangers Dr. Suzuki speaks about are now being revealed. A 2009 study released in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that rats fed Monsanto’s GM corn experienced organ damage, particularly affecting liver and kidney function. Effects on the heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. These studies are consistent with a growing number of independent research findings and they urge governments to take a more cautious approach with regards to how they approve GM foods.

Yet despite these findings, the Canadian government has not changed its position on GM foods, with members of parliament defeating a private members bill (C-517) in 2008 that would see that all foods containing GM ingredients would have to be labeled. Defeating this bill was to go against the will of Canadians, who have clearly demonstrated their desire to have proper labeling of GM foods.

So, yet again, we are left with a choice - trust the corporations whose sole function is to maximize profits or take a more conservative and humble path and embrace the precautionary principle that states: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

The potential risks associated with this grand experiment are enormous and it behooves us to be wise and humble and to think about the consequences of our actions, for our children and for the sake of our planet.

For more information on genetic modification and to find out how you can get involved visit the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN).

Vigilantly,

Ashley

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Ashley Lubyk, BSc. in Environmental Science, is the founder of the Healthy Homes program at Green Calgary. Please send your environmental questions to Ashley.

Comments

On February 16, 2011, MPerreault said:

Dear Ashley,

Consider the following information.
Corn yeilds proir to Genetic Modification was around 30 bushels per acre, and now with GM corn can yeild from 150 to all the way up to 300 bushels per acre. Is it less important to feed the world, or to worry about GM crops? There are starving people in the world today. I would like to see you try to grow 100 bushels per acre of non-GM canola under dryland and organic methods.

Good Luck

On February 16, 2011, ashleylubyk said:

Thanks for your comment but this is perhaps the greatest misconception that exists in our world today and one that I’ve already commented on - http://www.greencalgary.org/ask-ashley/details/food-misconceptions-deconstructed/ (See Misconception #1). It is absolutely clear that GM crops are not the solution to solving world hunger. We now have a billion people dying from too much food and another billion dying from too little. Distribution, coupled with land access, are the problem, not lack of food.

And finally, it has been traditional breeding that has produced greater yields, not genetic modification. GM corn resists caterpillars and Roundup. That is it! Its ability to yield more corn is not the function of the modification; it is that of traditional breeding. Same goes for canola, wheat, etc. Therefore, it is absolutely possible to get better yields without genetic modification and I think this is a noble goal and something we have done for 12,000 years.

If you want to learn more about this topic I’d invite you to listen to Genetically Engineered Crops - A “Spectacular Failure?” with DR. E. ANN CLARK (she is an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph and holds a Ph.D. in Crop Production and Physiology from Iowa State University). It can be accessed here: http://www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner/051409.htm.

Sincerely,

Ashley

On February 17, 2011, Agronomist said:

Ashley,

As a professional advisor in the Ag. industry and as an individual that has been immersed in agriculture all my life, I believe “MPerreault” has a good point about genetic modification improving yields in crops that they have been used in.

For example: the majority of wheat varieties grown in the world are non-GM, while the majority of corn varieties are genetically modified. Considering this, over the past twenty years time, increases in wheat yield have only been a fraction of the yield increases seen by GM crops (like corn.) So NO, conventional breeding techniques have had nowhere near the impact that genetic modification has had in terms of yield. This is due to many factors, one of which being that conventional breeding takes 7-10+ years in many cases to bring a new variety to the level of commercial production, GM varieties typically being more rapidly commercialized, thus leaving convential breeding in the dust.

There are many factors that lead to the yield increases witnessed in GM crops:
1- decreased weed pressure on crops (example- the use of Glyphosate for weed control in “RoundupRdy” crops) leading to less competition for water, sunlight and nutrients meant for the crop to take up.
2- decreased insect and disease pressure on the crop due to inserted genes that provide resistance of the crop to the pest.
3- increased water use efficiency, drought tolerance, etc. due to genetic modifications make the crop more hardy to adverse environmental condidtions
4- decreased pesticide application due to the presence of genes in the crop that deter various pests (ie- BT in corn to deter the corn-borer insect.) This saves the grower money to use on higher seeding rates, equipment upgrades improving efficiency etc, etc)
... the list goes on.

The point is that there is a bigger issue than the long term health benefits/negative impacts of the GM foods that may not be known currently, although studies have typically shown no negative impacts of consuming GM foods, with obvious exceptions.
That issue is that ur planet is over populated! Farmers need to feed the people that occupy it and will soon need to feed 10 billion people on the same amount of land! Here’s a tip to find out for yourself:
go ask an organic farmer if he thinks his land could feed the same number of people as his conventional farm neighbor.. then get their actual yield results and compare them! I have seen this first hand, believe me, there is no doubting it.

So, at current food production levels (considering all variables remain constant) and considering Ashley’s comments about distribution and land access problems and added that our society has an inherent wasteful nature with food..
IF all farmers switched from conventional farming practices to organic farming practices today, much of the world’s population would starve to death - production of organic crops cannot presently sustain the earth’s population, and earth’s population is always growing!

Now, saying all of that, there should be some middle ground between conventional and organic systems.. NEITHER conventional nor organic farming system is sustainable for the planet nor it’s inhabitants. There needs to be a hybrid system put in place.. a SUSTAINABLE food production system and yes, GM technologies would be a big part of this system due to the high production potential they bring without the use of extra pesticides or finite fertilizer resources.
I encourage people to grow their own produce in a garden, use resources wisely and buy local when possible.. there is presently work being done on SUSTAINABLE farming/food production systems, look into it and use professionals to help you make decisions! (There is FAR too much un-educated, ill-informed information about agriculture and food floating around the internet, magazines, etc.) The only way is to get out to the farm gate and do your research!

Either we start being proactive by thinking about how to use the planet’s resources, our people’s enginuity, and emerging technologies in a responsible and sustainable manner to continue to feed ourselves at present and into the future, OR continue to practice in our same wasteful and unsustainable production systems and argue over what type of apple will kill us first.

Signed - do your research

On February 17, 2011, ashleylubyk said:

I absolutely agree that we need to seek a balance. The World Watch Institute’s ‘Nourishing the Planet’ site is a resource that seeks to assess the state of agricultural innovations - what works and what doesn’t. While some of the efforts are high tech, most are not. We must fight for food democracy and a sustainable food “system” is one that is diverse. Strength and resiliency come from diversity; history is a great teacher of this. Unfortunately, everything from farm to plate - seed, inputs, purchasing, processing, refining, transportation, retail, etc. - is becoming increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer very large multi-national corporations. This is a threat to local food security; a threat to farmers; and a threat to all eaters. As economist E.F. Schumacher wrote: Small is Beautiful. Small, local solutions offer the greatest hope at creating a sustainable food system! We must not be tempted by silver bullets. The world is not that uniform and to treat it as such is a great insult.

On February 18, 2011, kaslo said:

@Agronomist Exactly, you work in the Ag. industry, so you’re trained to think a certain way, that understandable. Everything is relative though. We are educated in a very compartmentalized way and the majority of people can’t seem to connect the dots, even as the global financial systems cannibalize on Wall Street. Do you even follow Monsanto, Mr Agronomist? Their stock plummeted last year, after all a lot of their patents were expiring, they had lawsuits coming out of every corner and Wal-Mart banned their rbST milk because of consumer backlash. Now this year, we see them lobbying the government to ensure their Roundup Ready alfalfa passed deregulation and is rammed down our throats; this for a crop that doesn’t suffer from serious weed problems. In fact, ninety-three percent of alfalfa fields receive no herbicide at all in the US. It’s obvious their push here is to get their stock levels back up, a lose on GMO alfalfa would have had Wall Street scrambling. Don’t think Wall Street is really a problem? Then you obviously are living under a rock, because this isn’t something being spun from the Alex Jones channel on YouTube, this is right in plain sight from most mainstream news sources, although the best news is still coming from organizations such as Wikileaks, which has stated they have an “eco-system” of corruption data on several US banks from insiders, from many of these multi-nationals that evade paying any US tax, all the while getting bailed out for being “too big to fail”. Time to wake-up.

On February 18, 2011, Agronomist said:

@kaslo - It sounds like YOU have been trained to think “a certain way” after reading your one-sided rant. On the other hand, I have been trained to consider situations objectively due to the complexities of growing a crop under ever-changing environmental, technological and economic times. Now, what would you like to know about Monsanto, Alfalfa?

On February 20, 2011, Jessica said:

This debate seems to have broken off into an argument of crop yields, when this article is entirely about the safety of GMO’ed crops and how to avoid them in the event that that is what you believe. I think it’s fair to say that we will not see eye to eye on this issue, and no amount of fact spewing and research referencing will amend that, but I hope we can all agree that Canadians have a RIGHT to know what is in their food. That regardless of whether we feel there is a concern surrounding GMO’s, we should have the option of knowing when they are being used and the ability to decide whether or not we want to consume them.

On March 15, 2011, ashleylubyk said:

Here’s the press release from last week from the UN on global food production: http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/press_releases/20110308_agroecology-report-pr_en.pdf

From the author: “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

There is a link to the full report in the news release. Definitely a good read.

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