Synopsis: I am a scientist who once made and used GMO crops for research. Twenty years of experience has taught me important lessons about them. One concerns the lack of scientific integrity of GMO risk assessments. Careful study of the documents shows that applicants (mostly companies) are gaming the system in numerous ways; at the same time, government regulators are allowing them to do so. None of this would matter if GMOs were inherently safe, but they are not. They even have dangers that are rarely discussed, even by their critics, but which should be more widely known. These two understandings have led me to conclude that no GMO currently on the market would pass an honest risk assessment, even by the rather low standards that most national regulations and laws require.

Jonathan Latham, PhD

Executive Director

The Bioscience Resource Project

www.independentsciencenews.org

www.bioscienceresource.org

USDA has approved the Russet Burbank, the second generation genetically-modified Innate potato from J.R. Simplot Co.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc's new GMO-free menu claims have lured diners and boosted the burrito chain's stock price, but it has some consumers crying foul.

GMO — Never have three letters caused such an uproar from those for and against genetically modified organisms (and/or labeling them). From companies and politicians to celebrities and mom bloggers, all chime in when it comes to GMO and non-GMO foods and beverages.

A food safety advocacy group sued an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday, saying it illegally withheld public information on genetically engineered crops.

Five years ago, Dan Beyers took his farm in a new direction. Or, rather, back in an old direction. The Pana, Ill.-area farmer had been using corn and soybean seeds genetically modified to work with glyphosate – the generic name for Monsanto’s signature Roundup herbicide. But he reached a point at which he said it no longer made sense from a dollars standpoint.

Local doctors are in the eye of a storm swirling for the past three years over whether corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides is a source of prosperity, as companies claim, or of birth defects and illnesses

Pesticides in paradise: Hawaii's spike in birth defects puts focus on GM crops

Local doctors are in the eye of a storm swirling for the past three years over whether corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides is a source of prosperity, as companies claim, or of birth defects and illnesses

(.....)

Today, about 90% of industrial GMO corn grown in the US was originally developed in Hawaii, with the island of Kauai hosting the biggest area. The balmy weather yields three crops a year instead of one, allowing the companies to bring a new strain to market in a third of the time.

Once it’s ready, the same fields are used to raise seed corn, which is sent to contract farms on the mainland. It is their output, called by critics a pesticide delivery system, that is sold to the US farmers, along with the pesticides manufactured by the breeder that each strain has been modified to tolerate.

Corn’s uses are as industrial as its cultivation: less than 1% is eaten. About 40% is turned into ethanol for cars, 36% becomes cattle feed, 10% is used by the food industry and the rest is exported.

‘We just want to gather information’

Growers returning to unaltered crops

High sale prices of non-GMO yields have many buying conventional seeds

ST. LOUIS -- Five years ago, Dan Beyers took his farm in a new direction. Or, rather, back in an old direction. The Pana, Ill.-area farmer had been using corn and soybean seeds genetically modified to work with glyphosate -- the generic name for Monsanto's signature Roundup herbicide. But he reached a point at which he said it no longer made sense from a dollars standpoint.

So he turned his back on GMO crops.

"As they added more traits, we didn't really see a yield advantage. And every time they added a trait, they added cost," said Beyers, who said he also worries that GMO seeds could be damaging his soil.

Perspective: GMOs, Herbicides, and Public Health

Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., and Charles Benbrook, Ph.D.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not high on most physicians' worry lists. If we think at all about biotechnology, most of us probably focus on direct threats to human health, such as prospects for converting pathogens to biologic weapons or the implications of new technologies for editing the human germline. But while those debates simmer, the application of biotechnology to agriculture has been rapid and aggressive. The vast majority of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States are now genetically engineered. Foods produced from GM crops have become ubiquitous. And unlike regulatory bodies in 64 other countries, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require labeling of GM foods.

Two recent developments are dramatically changing the GMO landscape. First, there have been sharp increases in the amounts and numbers of chemical herbicides applied to GM crops, and still further increases — the largest in a generation — are scheduled to occur in the next few years. Second, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified glyphosate, the herbicide most widely used on GM crops, as a “probable human carcinogen” and classified a second herbicide, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), as a “possible human carcinogen.”