USDA Admits GMO Contamination is Inevitable
* USDA: "GMO contamination happens"
By Ken Roseboro
The Organic & Non-GMO Report, February 22, 2009
Straight to the Source
Since 2000, there have been six known incidents of unapproved genetically
modified corn and rice entering the US food supply or exports.
Common sense would seem to dictate that the US Department of Agriculture's
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) would want to tighten its
oversight of GM crops and force biotechnology companies to make sure their
unapproved GMOs stay out of Americans' corn flakes.
This is exactly what the Government Accounting Office (GAO) called for.
Following the most recent contamination incident involving an unapproved GM
cotton from Monsanto mixing with conventional cotton, GAO called for more
oversight and coordination among federal agencies‹attention USDA‹to prevent
unapproved GMOs from getting into the food supply.
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said, "When unapproved genetically engineered crops
are detected in the food and feed supply, food safety concerns rise, markets
are disrupted and consumer confidence falls."
"Lessen the regulatory burden"
Unbelievably, USDA¹s has been to propose less oversight, wanting to "lessen
the regulatory burden" on biotechnology companies, to quote APHIS
spokeswoman, Rachel Iadicicco.
Unfortunately, the government's track record of lessening the regulatory
burden does not inspire much confidence, as demonstrated by the recent
collapse of major Wall Street banks.
This has not dissuaded the USDA. In fact, USDA states that in some cases it
doesn't want to do anything when unapproved GMOs end up in our food.
APHIS's plan states that "a low level presence of [GM] plant materials in
seeds or grain may not be cause for agency remedial action," saying such
incidents will be evaluated on a "case-by-case basis" and may be
"non-actionable."
Basically, USDA is saying that GMO contamination happens, so we might as
well let it happen.
Does that mean that when some GM corn, which contains genes from some
unclassified organism found 20,000 leagues beneath the sea (see Syngenta¹s
new GM ethanol corn), gets into someone¹s taco shell and causes anaphylactic
shock that USDA will consider it "non-actionable?" I would hope not.
"Serious abdication of responsibility"
The Union of Concerned Scientists lambasted the USDA¹s proposed rulemaking
as "a serious abdication of its responsibility."
Biotechnology companies are obviously pleased that USDA wants to lessen
their regulatory burden, allowing them to avoid responsibility for
contaminating the food supply. Monsanto, whose unapproved GM cotton recently
got mixed with conventional cotton, expressed its full support of the new
rules. A spokesman for Syngenta, which in March 2005 revealed that it had
"inadvertently" sold an unapproved GM corn for three years, said that it was
"appropriate to establish science-based criteria by which regulated material
would be considered 'not-actionable' by the agency."
I'm sure the USDA and the GMO "in crowd" will get all the hall passes they want from SOA Tom Villsack. This is bio-terrorism. This is a terrible mistake waiting to happen and these idiots don't even care because the payoff from their corporate handlers is too large. The USDA much like most of the current federal U.S. government is lagress and corrupt and in need of a serious overhaul. I fear that we are slowly loosing our rights, liberties, health, and heritage, and this is just as important as any of the other issues in the news these days. It's time to fight back against the system. The system works for us, we are not slaves to the system and it's getting high time to prove that.
5 comments:
I love blogs, they are so full of rhtoric that they are actully used in law school to identify the differant types of rhtoric.
Ok, lets see what we have here, you say ...
"Does that mean that when some GM corn, which contains genes from some unclassified organism found 20,000 leagues beneath the sea (see Syngenta¹s new GM ethanol corn), gets into someone¹s taco shell and causes anaphylactic shock that USDA will consider it "non-actionable?" I would hope not."
The USDA do not use unclassified genes from any source in any experiments. Come on, if it is unclassified, how will they know how to use it?
Moving along ...
"APHIS's plan states that "a low level presence of [GM] plant materials in
seeds or grain may not be cause for agency remedial action," saying such incidents will be evaluated on a "case-by-case basis" and may be
"non-actionable.""
Yep, that is the plan of attack and yes it works very well. The amount of cross contamination is so small that those times it was caught (small scale) it was by pure luck. The amount of cross contamination is less then the PPM's of animal and fowl waste that enters the food chain naturally, but I don't hear anybody screaming about that.
Moving right along ...
"Basically, USDA is saying that GMO contamination happens, so we might as
well let it happen."
The USDA never said that. More rhtoric to try and scare people of something that is not true.
Fact, except for fish, fowl, and animals there is no food that had not been altered. Yes, we know of the organic farms that raise all natural food. However, the rain and soil do have the chemicals that have been and are still being used and are desposited into the food through the root system or watering from rain.
Finally, the GM food is unapproved only because it has not been submitted to the FDA for approval to market. All strains used by the USDA are subject to testing on animals and humans in labs prior to large scale planting.
RJ
Researcher
ARS
Wow Richard, let's unwind our panties for a minuite and step into the real world here.
First of all, I didn't write the article, just commented on it.
Second of all Genetic Modification is a very big issue.
Third, Organic Produce, Non GMO food, and the right to FMO free food are all things worth striving for. We can only do the best we can do with what we have and for you to make the jump between natural contamination from fowl and GMO contamination is flat out uneducated and ill informed of why we have the stance we do on GMO's
If you haven't noticed there is a growing sentiment against GMO's and there is a growing revolution in this country, the two belong together and our day is coming.
In closing.......Move along child.
By the way Mr. "Researcher" what are you guys going to do when what happened in Europe with GMO crops happens here? When the farmers and consumers have had enough?
Apparently RJ is not familiar with the Percy Schmeiser case in Canada or the stories about GMO contamination in Mexico's "Cradle of Corn".
Dozens of US and Candian farmers have been forced into settlement or litigation by Monsanto for "illegally" growing GM crops, when the apparent truth is that those farmers fields have been contaminated by pollen from nearby GM crop planted fields or escaped GM seeds that have germinated in or near their fields.
And in Mexico, studies conducted by Mexican, American, and Dutch researchers demonstrates the presence of genes from genetically modified organisms (GMO) among the varieties of traditional corn cultivated in the remote regions of Oaxaca State in the southern part of the country, even though the Mexican government has always maintained a moratorium on the use of transgenic seed. You can find published versions of those studies in the scientific journals "Nature" and "Molecular Ecology" if you want the nitty-gritty.
I'm willing to accept that RJ may be among the millions of people who have willingly swallowed the pill that fosters the belief that GM crops can feed the world. It's easy to get caught up in the idea that some good may come from development of GM crops...and perhaps some day that will be true.
To the best of my knowledge, the process of development and cultivation of GM crops is done totally without any method of preventing cross-pollination or contamination of other people's fields. There are no mandatory labeling laws for products containing GM ingredients, no mandatory process for preventing contamination of non-GM cultivating farmers crops, and no mandatory testing for presence of GM in food products. In my humble opinion this is essentially the same thing as the USDA or FDA saying "GMO contamination happens, so we might as well let it happen."
You can mince words and call this blog "rhtoric" until you're blue in the face, but all of the spinning in the world can't put this beast back into Pandora's Box.
I am not an absolute opponent of the concept of gene based research. However, I am against doing such research and allowing the products of that research to be introduced into the world at large in an unmanageable and unstoppable way. (I was going to add unpredictable to the preceding sentence, but there are plenty of people who predicted the current situation long before it occurred.)
The very idea of winning over the support of those of us who are skeptical about the motives and motivation of companies like Monsanto by trying to defend their irresponsible practices and the devastating fallout that is occurring from their engineered genetic material escaping into the "wild" is, at the very least, insulting.
And RJ, please don't insult us further by claiming that self-admittedly negligent and overburdened government agencies like the FDA or USDA (that are often staffed by former GM producing company employees) are our watchdogs against the increasingly complex and dangerous issues facing our nation's food supply and food security.
I love blogs too. They make you think and can often times lead you to the truth if you just dig a little deeper than the "rhtoric".
You know what the worst part of this whole thing is? Mr. Richard (dick for short? Or more apropriately Mr. Short Dick?) actually does work for the USDA! He freaking left this comment from the USDA office of operations IP address. That should say something to American consumers, farmers and gardeners about just how the USDA feels about this. We might want to pass this one around to other self sustainable gardening/farming blogs!
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