"Secret Ingredient" Revisited

“Secret Ingredient” Revisited

If you fed something to an animal and the animal became ill, would you feel comfortable eating the same thing?

If you answered “no” to that question, then you probably won’t feel very comfortable about recent research that tested genetically modified (GM) foods on rats.

In the e-alert “Secret Ingredient” (3/29/07), I told you about a study in which GM corn produced liver and kidney toxicity in rats. Now another new study has emerged, but it’s not really new at all because the results were withheld from the public for eight years.

And why would results be withheld? Because the results were not the desired results, of course.

According to a report in the UK newspaper The Independent, Greenpeace activists waged and finally won a court battle with the biotech industry to release the results of a 1998 Russian trial in which GM potatoes produced tumors and cell damage in the stomachs and intestines of rats.

Greenpeace actually won a 2004 case in which a Russian court ruled that information about GM food safety should be available to the public, but the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences – the source of the rat study – refused to release the report. Earlier this year, another court ruling specifically stated that the report must be released.

When research institutes begin withholding damaging information about the safety of GM foods, I think it’s safe to say that the future of our food supply may be in jeopardy.