Early in her son’s life, Amie Wozniak discovered that Sullivan, now 4, has significant medical issues that keep his body from detoxing properly. The Dallas mom and her husband immediately started identifying toxic sources in their home, including candles, cleaning products and soaps, in an effort to reduce his exposure.
They also quickly transitioned to buying as much organic food as possible. The more she immersed herself in the “natural world,” the more Wozniak heard about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. “Since we had transitioned to buying mostly organic, I knew we had drastically reduced our consumption of modified foods,” she says, “but the fact that these ‘Frankenfoods’ have touched almost every aspect of our food supply didn’t sit well.”
Sullivan’s health issues are complicated, and Wozniak is reluctant to attribute his improvement to diet alone. But she is confident that without his organic-focused, non-GMO diet, he would be in worse shape than he is today.
The down-low on GMOs
Plants normally reproduce through sexual reproduction. In the late 1980s, however, scientists developed a new technique called genetic modification. This process takes a gene from one species and forces it onto the DNA of another species in order to change the characteristics of the offspring. Companies began to use this technique to develop corn that essentially generates its own insecticide and makes it resistant to weedkillers such as Roundup, says Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, an organization dedicated to educating policymakers and the public about GMOs.
In the late 1990s, genetically modified foods made their way into the human food supply. Corn, soy, cottonseed and canola oils are most often GMOs, but sugar from sugar beets; alfalfa; papaya from Hawaii and China; zucchini; and yellow-neck squash are too. Companies such as Monsanto (which helped produce Agent Orange in the 1960s and 1970s) use GMOs to help farmers increase crop yields, allowing them to feed a larger number of people.
Genetic engineering techniques have led to crops that use resources more efficiently; are tolerant of heat, cold and drought; are resistant to disease and insect attack; and produce higher yields and more nutritious harvests, says Mike Gould, center director of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Dallas. GMOs are “expanding the food supply much more rapidly than conventional breeding technologies,” he says. “This technology will play a key role in helping the planet deal with a population that will increase to nearly 10 billion within the next 35 years.”
A growing number of GMO opponents, however, claim the technology is harming the earth and is linked to numerous health problems.
Regulation? What regulation?
In 1999, the European Union banned GMOs from the human food supply because there wasn’t enough evidence that GMOs are safe, Smith says. Sixty-two countries have labeling requirements regarding GMOs, he adds. The United States is not among them.
“Dozens of other countries have either banned GMOs entirely or required product labeling,” Wozniak says. “Yet in America, we do not have the right to know what is in our food. It is a scary state of affairs.”
The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require testing or labeling on products containing GMOs, Smith says. In fact, the FDA’s 1992 policy on GMOs stated, “The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way.”
Seven years later, a lawsuit required that the FDA turn over its research on GMOs. The research revealed that FDA scientists did not agree that genetically modified crops were the same as their ancestors, Smith says. The findings also showed that the scientists urged further testing, citing fears of toxins in the environment and a rise in food allergies.
Gould acknowledges that there is some level of risk, as with all new technologies. For example, a gene that allows a food crop such as corn to resist the effects of a particular herbicide would be very undesirable in a weed. He says, however, that the government has GMOs under tight controls. “There are strict governmental controls for working with these technologies worldwide, and special government permits are required to carry out the research,” he says. “Rigorous testing is required before any GMO plant can be grown outside of a laboratory. These tight controls make the process of developing GM crops very expensive but also very safe.”
Living in a genetically modified world
Because of the FDA’s acceptance of GMOs, there are few independent studies regarding GMOs, Smith says. Industry-sponsored studies are often rigged and distort evidence, he contends. Several studies, however, prove that GMOs are not all they’re cracked up to be. American and European studies have linked GMOs to an increase in food allergies, leaky gut syndrome, asthma, attention deficit disorder, cancer and nutrient deficiency. Children are most at risk because their bodies are still developing, Smith says.
“While the FDA insists there is no evidence supporting that these pesticides [which are literally engineered into our food] can cause damage to the human body, the reality is the rise of gastrointestinal disease has skyrocketed since the introduction of GMOs to our food supply in the late Nineties,” says Wozniak, who’s also mom to 6-year-old Sloan. “I don’t believe this is a coincidence.”
One could argue that a multitude of factors in humans’ lives contribute to those problems. But studies on animals without these co-factors have yielded disturbing results. In 2009, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine conducted a study on animals that were being fed GMO feed. The animals, Smith says, were exhibiting problems with their reproductive, gastrointestinal, immune and organ systems. When the animals were switched to feed that didn’t contain GMOs, their conditions quickly improved.
Smith says the sickness in animals is likely because GMO plants are often nutrient-deficient. When animals eat these plants, they aren’t getting the nutrition their bodies require. The Center for Veterinary Medicine – a branch of the FDA – has warned against human consumption of these animals, he adds.
And in 2012, a study (“Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize”) reported in Food and Chemical Toxicology examined the effect of Roundup-tolerant corn on rats. The researchers discovered that female rats exposed to Roundup-tolerant corn had a death rate that was two to three times higher than the control group, says Stasha Kucel, a North Texas dietitian with New Day Nutrition Services.
GMOs are also harming the environment, Smith says. The plant genes that produce toxic insecticides and make crops resistant to herbicides will be part of the plants’ genetic heritage as long as they’re on earth. They contribute to the degradation of the soil, cause the death of non-target insects and lead to an overuse of herbicides.
Gould disagrees. “After more than two decades of widespread use and very close scrutiny, there is no scientific evidence that foods produced using GM technology are any less safe than their non-GM counterparts,” he says. “Although consumer groups in some countries have expressed concerns, the scientific community worldwide is in agreement that GM foods are completely safe for humans.”
Because of the lack of labeling requirements, the burden is on the consumer to avoid GMOs. Wozniak does her best to buy 100 percent organic produce, avoids packaged goods unless they’re labeled 100 percent organic and purchases meat from a trusted rancher who uses non-GMO feed.
