Filed under: Commentary
There is an alarming body of evidence pointing to significant health and environmental risks associated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and agriculture. The Organic Center has compiled the following Top 10 latest findings regarding GMO risks, from published, peer-reviewed research in the U.S. and respected institutions around the world. For more information, visit www.organic-center.org, info@organic-center.org.
DID YOU KNOW?
Boulder County, Colorado, is currently considering allowing the farming of genetically engineered (GMO) sugar beets on publicly owned Open Space land. Already, the county allows GMO corn to be grown on open space. There is an alarming body of evidence pointing to significant health and environmental risks associated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and agriculture.
Just say No to GMOs in Boulder County. Let your voice be heard. Contact Tina Nielsen at tnielsen@bouldercounty.org.
Top Ten Reasons to Say NO to GMOs
- The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has called for a moratorium on genetically modified (GM) foods, stating: “Avoid GM foods when possible… Several animal studies indicate serious health (and disease) risks associated with GM food… There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects.”
- Consumption of genetically modified corn may lead to lowered fertility, body weight and immunity, and impaired gene expression, and may be associated with asthma and food allergies in children.
- GMO sugar beets are actually more prone to plant diseases, and pollen from genetically engineered sugar beets can drift into other related crops including edible beets and chard.
- After only one year since its introduction, GMO sugar beets now account for 90% of the U.S. sugar beet crop.
- Exposure to genetically modified corn can alter the learning behavior of honeybees, making it difficult for them to associate odors with nectar sources, and may be linked to Colony Collapse Disorder.
- Rather than reduce the usage of herbicides in farming, as GMO proponents claim, use of GMO crops has actually increased herbicide use in agriculture.
- Roundup Ready GMO soybeans have proven more vulnerable to a range of plant pathogens and soil borne diseases, and field trials have shown that they lag in yield, too.
- Researchers in Mexico found that pollen drifted from genetically modified corn has contaminated the genetics of traditional varieties of maize in Mexico.
- GMOs are now found in more than 80% of non-organic foods sold in conventional grocery stores in the U.S., as well as the majority of animal feed in the E.U. GMO crop production now dominates 90% of conventional soybeans, 70% of conventional cotton, more than 60% of conventional corn, and soon, if GMO wheat is approved, a significant percentage of U.S. wheat production—all of our major grains and fiber products!
- Researchers in July 2009 concluded that E.U. Food Safety officials and the U.S. FDA have used unreliable tests to assess the safety of food and products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
How Do I Avoid GMO Foods? – Since the FDA does not require GMO labeling on food products, be sure to eat and buy Organic. It is the only way to ensure a diet with minimum exposure to GMOs and toxic synthetic pesticides, which are prohibited under federally enforced certified organic standards.
Source: The Organic Center, Boulder, CO, info@organic-center.org; www.organic-center.org
Filed under: Commentary
We felt it important to alert friends of The Organic Center about recent developments in our home base of Boulder, CO, regarding the development of GMO agriculture on public lands.
In early 2009, six farmers leasing public land from Boulder County petitioned the County Commissioners to grow genetically modified “GMO” sugar beets on open space public land. At a study and public comment session hosted by the Boulder County Commissioners on May 28th, the farmers said they “would be at a considerable economic disadvantage” not to be able to use that land to grow Roundup-ready GMO sugar beets. Sugar beets are primarily grown to be processed into refined sugar, and after just one year since the introduction of GMO sugar beets, approximately 95% of the national sugar beet crop is now grown using Roundup-ready GMO seeds.
I was at this County Commissioners “study session-slash-hearing,” testifying on behalf of The Organic Center as an independent, nonprofit research and education institution serving to advance credible, peer-reviewed scientific research behind the health and environmental benefits of organic food and farming, and as a member of the Boulder organic community.
Proponents of GMO agriculture, including the farmers petitioning the county, say that such technology allows them to be more sustainable, as it requires less application of herbicides. Yet, according to data compiled by The Organic Center’s chief scientist Chuck Benbrook, Ph.D., overall herbicide usage has increased since the advent of GMO agriculture in the mid-1990s.
The jury also is out on the health and environmental effects of GMO food and agriculture, say critics of genetically engineered food and farming. A growing number of studies have shown that animal health may be compromised, and that GMO foods have been associated in laboratory studies with food allergies, lower fertility and immunity, and decreased body weight.
GMO’s threat to the environment includes the potential creation of “super weeds” resistant to such widespread use of Roundup herbicide. Also, this herbicide can remain for some time in the soil. Additional research has shown that GMO sugar beets may be more prone to root rot diseases, and that genetic drift may occur into related species such as table beets and chard. Researchers in Mexico have definitive evidence that GMO corn has contaminated the seed stock of traditional maize varieties, grown for thousands of years.
It’s hard to put this GMO stuff back into the box, so to speak. In fact, if it’s not organic and it’s got soy or corn, it’s likely to be GMO—the vast majority of all conventional soy and conventionally farmed corn is now genetically engineered—mainly to be Roundup resistant! And GMO wheat and veggies are being cued up next by the biotech industry for wide-scale commercialization.
Back to the Boulder County Commissioners, there’s more. Another study session was called for June 12 and yours truly was invited back to the table to offer input. Further hearings are set for July 23 (Parks and Open Space Advisory Council), July 30 (Food and Agriculture Policy Committee), and August 25 with the Board of County Commissioners. Check the website at www.bouldercounty.org/openspace/Sugarbeets.htm for updated information. Also, you can send comments to Tina Nielsen, Special Projects Manager, Boulder County Parks and Open Space, tnielsen@bouldercounty.org.
The Boulder region is a hotbed for organic farming and leading organic businesses—and if any farming is to be encouraged on publicly owned open space, organic agriculture surely ought to be considered for the truly environmentally friendly farming system that it is—saving energy inputs and costs, tying up more carbon in healthy organic soils, promoting biodiversity, and further contributing to Boulder’s healthy brand image.
The good news is the county is considering organic farming on open space land. With your comments, you can help sway their decision.
Organically yours,
Steve Hoffman, Managing Director
The Organic Center
www.organic-center.org
Note: This letter was originally published in the Summer 2009 Edition of Edible Front Range magazine (www.ediblefrontrange.com)
Filed under: Commentary
FoodNavigator.com in its Aug. 19, 2008, daily newsletter, posed the question to its readers, “Organics – fad or the future?” The Organic Center’s Chief Scientist Dr. Chuck Benbrook posted a response from his Oregon office, which we have excerpted on our blog for your review.
Organic food was once seen as a niche market but now major multinationals are offering organic products. In fact it has been one of the biggest trends in the food sector in recent years but do organics have staying power, or will consumers lose interest over time?
The scientific evidence linking organic production methods to enhanced nutrient density and lower food safety risks is growing more compelling. Two factors will define the future trajectory for organic food sales. First, whether and to what extent organic farmers and food companies focus on sustaining and expanding the inherent benefits in organic systems, e.g., by foregoing the temptation to push organic crop yields and animals beyond physiological limits where health is sacrificed to production. Second, whether and to what extent the rest of the food industry moves toward production systems and technologies that produce safer and higher quality foods.
Dr. Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, The Organic Center
Filed under: Commentary
A new study published in the latest issue of the Society of Chemical Industry’s (SCI) Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture claims that there is no evidence to support the argument that organic food is better than food grown with the use of pesticides and chemicals. However, The Organic Center’s Chief Scientist Chuck Benbrook, Ph.D., has the following to say about the study.
A study just out in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture is entitled “Effect of plant cultivation methods on content of major and trace elements in foodstuffs and retention in rats.” The Danish research team compared the retention of nutrients in rats fed a diet composed of organic and conventional dried fruits and vegetables. Only trace mineral levels were compared; no results were reported on vitamins, polyphenols, and antioxidants (nutrients that routinely are present at higher concentrations in organic food).
No differences were found in nutrient levels, leading the authors to suggest that such findings might dampen consumer demand for organic food. Some media outlets have picked up this finding, and have dramatically broadened it to support headlines and statements like “Organic food no more nutritious than conventional.” A review of the study’s experimental design, however, raises serious questions about whether this study’s results actually support the more narrow conclusions stated by the authors.
The team grew the fruits and vegetables in both the “conventional” and organic plots on soils that were previously managed organically. Accordingly, the conventional crops enjoyed all the nutrient-enhancing and plant-health benefits of heightened soil quality from prior organic soil management. Given the series of studies published in the U.S. in the last three years pointing to soil quality enhancement in organic systems as the major cause, or explanation of observed differences in nutritional quality, it is not surprising that this Danish study found no statistically significant difference in mineral levels in the organic and “conventional” crops that were harvested and fed to the rats.
In addition, the organic plots were grown under limited nitrogen, whereas the conventional crop was not. On the basis of the criteria the Center developed to judge the scientific validity of comparison studies, and used in completing our March 2008 report on the nutrient content of organic food, this Danish study is clearly “invalid” for purposes of comparing the nutrient content of conventional and organic foods.
The study was carefully conducted and valid for testing the impacts of the production conditions embedded in its experimental design, but by virtue of this design, little weight should be placed on its findings in terms of the differences in conventional and organic management on crop nutritional quality.
Source: Mette Kristensen, Lars Ostengaard, Ulrich Halekoh, Henry Jorgensen, Charlotte Lauridsen, Kirsten Brandt, and Suzanne Bugel. “Effect of plant cultivation methods on content of major and trace elements in foodstuffs and retention in rats,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 2008
Filed under: Commentary
In mid-July, the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH), an industry-funded organization that works on behalf of the pesticide, biotechnology and drug industries, issued a critique of the Center’s March 2008 report “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.“ The ACSH report was written by Dr. Joseph Rosen of Rutgers University.
On July 23, Barry Estabrook of Gourmet Magazine posted a story on the critique, which provides a concise summary of Rosen’s comments. His piece is entitled “Politics of the Plate — Fighting Words”.
The response by the five co-authors of the Center’s report covers the major points of the ACSH critique, and has been posted on the Center’s website. Excerpts appear below.
“The American Council for Science and Health (ACSH) report by Dr. Joseph Rosen seems to accept, and does not argue with the factors we identified to screen published nutrient content studies for scientific validity. “
“But as he goes through the various sections of our report, he criticizes us for ‘cherry-picking’ results, excluding matched pairs where the results favor conventional food. That is not what we did. He misrepresents our methodology and offers inconsistent and illogical suggestions to correct what he perceives as ‘bias’ in our selection of the matched pairs of foods that were then used to compare nutrient concentrations. ”
“We applied the screening method and selection criteria consistently, and in fact eliminated more results favoring the organic food in a matched pair than the conventional food. Without our screening methods and criteria, the nutritional advantage of organic food would have been greater.”
Filed under: Commentary
By: Dr. Charles Benbrook, Chief Scientist, The Organic Center
Over 950 people have now gotten sick from Salmonella-tainted tomatoes, or peppers, or salsa, or who knows what. The media have been so focused, and maybe weary of the tomato story, that a huge outbreak of E. coli O157 in processed beef products has gone largely unnoticed.
What started out in early June as a modest recall of 531,707 pounds of beef processed by Nebraska Beef Ltd., has become a 5.3 million pound recall. Over 40 confirmed cases of illness in Michigan and Ohio have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Twenty-two people have been hospitalized, and one person has contracted the sometimes deadly complication hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS).
The number of sick people associated with the Nebraska Beef contamination episode is sure to grow much larger because of the extraordinarily high current ratio of people hospitalized to total number of cases – 22 out of 41, or nearly 50%.
Despite intense scientific focus on understanding the genesis of E. coli O157 and Salmonella, the many amazing steps and major investments by companies to keep these pathogens out of meat and produce, and the near constant red-alert status from FDA and CDC, the problem seems to be getting worse. The tomatoes-or-whatever-Salmonella outbreak may prove to be the worst such outbreak in history by virtually every measure.
Perhaps changes are afoot in the food system that have fundamentally tilted the playing field in favor of these bacterial pathogens, and we had better look under some forbidden rocks if we want to reduce the frequency of illness, and human suffering associated with these major contamination episodes.
Mixing fresh produce from multiple locations in repacking sheds makes disease outbreak epidemiology extremely difficult. Maybe it also makes disease outbreak prevention more difficult? Is it time to rethink how produce moves from the farm to consumers, with the interests of public health driving the outcome, instead of shaving a few cents off of the way we move a case of tomatoes from Mexico, through Florida, to Boston?
Without a livestock market for the byproducts of ethanol production, the economics of corn-based ethanol goes up in smoke, and the net energy contribution goes from maybe barely positive to unspeakably disastrous, given how much taxpayers have invested in this “solution.” But what about emerging evidence that E. coli O157 and mycotoxins are finding ways into the distillers grain byproducts of ethanol production that are fed to livestock? Has anyone factored those costs into the net “benefit” assessment of corn-based ethanol?
The next time you see one of those sickening videos of a spent dairy cow being lifted with a front end loader, or shocked with electricity, or worse, so she can stagger onto the kill floor, think about what put her there.
This can be, and sometimes is, one of the costs of pushing a dairy herd to produce 28,000 pounds of milk per year or more by feeding a ration so high in grain and energy, and lacking in forages and fiber, that the acid in her digestive system eats through her gut wall, creating an inside passage for bacteria that will then, in turn, challenge the best food safety systems.
That cow gets into such run-down condition in part because of the effectiveness of the drugs that keep her producing, and bacterial counts down in her milk, despite the stresses she is under and the gradual breakdown of her body and organ systems.
And last, think E. coli O157. The increase in risk of E. coli O157 shedding by stressed out, sick dairy animals is well proven and may explain much of the recent increase in human cases. The more E.coli O157 shed by stressed cattle, the more pressure on all our preventive systems and food safety technologies, from the spinach and tomato and pepper fields of the Salinas Valley and Florida, to the slaughterhouses of Nebraska.
One of the unrecognized benefits of a growing organic farming and food industry in America is that there is now close to a critical mass of people working to prevent the conditions that give rise to food safety problems. The conventional food system and conventional farmers have accomplished much in increasing production and lowering food costs, but they have sometimes not paid enough attention to the food safety costs of doing business.
Organic farmers and food companies do not have all the answers, and face some unique food safety problems of their own, but at least they are consciously pursuing a fundamentally different path where plant and animal health comes first, and higher production second.
I am not alone among scientists who are convinced this is inherently the right approach to produce safe, nutritious food. My gut sense is the big breakthroughs in advancing food safety are going to come from prevention, not better detection or more powerful chemical washes, or radiation.
For this reason, the forces pushing and pulling organic production systems and approaches into the mainstream of the food system may do so at a pace and to a degree unimaginable a few years ago.
Note: Originally published in the July 2008 edition of The Scoop, a free monthly e-newsletter published by The Organic Center. To subscribe, visit www.organic-center.org.
Filed under: Commentary
The Organic Center’s chief scientist, Dr. Chuck Benbrook, along with Dr. Don Davis and Dr. Preston Andrews, have written a strong response questioning the methodology and challenging the findings of this controversial study. Click here to see their full response: http://www.organic-center.org/science.nutri.php?action=view&report_id=157.
According to Dr. Benbrook, the U.K. research team reported finding statistically significant differences between organically and conventionally grown crops in only three of thirteen categories of nutrients. Significant differences cited by the team included nitrogen, which was higher in conventional crops, and phosphorus and titratable acids, both of which were higher in the organic crops. As most scientists regard elevated levels of nitrogen in food as a potential cancer-causing agent, this finding of higher nitrogen in conventional food favors organic crops, as do the other two differences.
Despite the fact that these three categories of nutrients favored organic foods, and none favored conventionally grown foods, the London-based team concluded that there are no nutritional differences between organically and conventionally grown crops.
However, a team of scientists convened by The Organic Center (TOC) carried out a similar, but more rigorous, review of the same literature. The TOC team analyzed published research just on plant-based foods. Results differ significantly from the more narrow FSA review and are reported in the study “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods,” which is freely accessible on the TOC website (http://www.organic-center.org/science.nutri.php?action=view&report_id=126).
The TOC findings are similar for some of the nutrients analyzed by the FSA team, but differ significantly for two critical classes of nutrients of great importance in promoting human health – total polyphenols, and total antioxidant content. The FSA team did not include total antioxidant capacity among the nutrients studied, and it found no differences in the phenolic content in 80 comparisons across 13 studies.
For more information, visit http://www.organic-center.org/science.nutri.php?action=view&report_id=157.