The safety of GMO foods is questionable

Letter to the editor

I am writing in response to the second "GMO-friendly" article sponsored by the Missouri Farm Bureau to appear in the Daily Mail in the past two weeks, "Planting the seeds for smart corporate policy" by Bob Stallman. Too often "smart corporate policy" does not represent that which is favorable to the average citizen, but that which helps fatten the corporate bottom line.

Mr. Stallman begins, "it seems as much policy comes from the corporate boardroom as from Congress" and how true this is! Major corporations and Congress have a cozy back-scratching relationship that can be traced by following the money trail. The foremost financial supporters of members of Congress are....corporations! (We'll show in an upcoming column why public opinion has "near zero" influence on the decisions of Congress)

What about the question as to whether GM foods are safe to eat? Suppose that pharmaceutical company "DrugsRUs" submits an application to the Food and Drug Administration for its new drug Barfitol, designed to aid bulimics. The FDA asks, "How do we know that Barfitol is safe to take?" The company replies, "Because we say so!"

Shouldn't the drug be subjected to human testing to make sure? Well, that's how GMO-containing foods were declared to be safe for consumers -- because Monsanto said they were. The "extensive human testing" called for by the FDA's own scientists was rejected in favor of fast-tracking GMOs into our food supply. (These same FDA scientists also thought that GMOs were "likely to be dangerous.")

Mr. Stallman goes on to say that the use of science and technology allows food to be grown with "little or no pesticide." This sounds good until you realize that the Bt corn produced by Monsanto has the pesticide in the corn itself! That's right, each kernel contains the Bt toxin and this very toxin has been found in the bloodstreams of over 90 percent of people tested.

What will this cause? We don't know yet. It often takes many years for diseases to become manifest.

I would like nothing better than for GM foods to actually be proven safe for all of us to eat. But there is much scientific evidence pointing to the likelihood that they are not. Until such time as they are, I would like to see them banned from production, and at the very least labeled so that we know what's in our food.

Monsanto continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that you never know.

Dr. Ron Jones

Nevada