Recommendations from Consumers Union on Genetically Engineered Foods

Recommendations from Consumers Union on Genetically Engineered Foods

Yonkers, NY- The article, "Seeds of Change" in the September 1999 issue of Consumer Reports reported that American consumers are already eating genetically engineered foods in common products from infant formula to taco chips to muffin mix. While there is no evidence that genetically engineered food now on the market is unsafe to eat, current safeguards are not sufficient. Consumers Union recommends:

Genetically engineered foods should be subject to a mandatory federal human-safety review before they hit the market. Today, U.S. companies can choose whether or not they want federal review. Food and Drug Administration guidelines say that genetically engineered foods must be thoroughly tested. However, biotech firms themselves determine whether they are safe, and whether they should submit their product for regulatory approval.
No special regulations apply to imported genetically engineered food. Regulators should be notified when genetically engineered foods are imported and be sure that these foods are safe.
The government must conduct thorough, mandatory safety reviews of genetically engineered plants and animals before they are released in the environment. As of now such reviews have been inadequate. In the case of crops genetically engineered to express the Bt toxin for example, the EPA's plans failed to guard against the potential of these crops to induce widespread insect resistance. The agency should require more-rigorous resistance-management plans.
Innovations like "terminator" technology, which produces sterile seeds, should not be used until society has found a way to carefully consider their profound environmental and societal implications.
Consumers have a fundamental right to know what they eat and federal officials should require that all foods containing genetically engineered ingredients be labeled as such, including milk with recombinant bovine growth hormone. Regulatory precedent favors labeling: when the FDA required that irradiated food be labeled, the agency said that consumers might misperceive that the product had been conventionally processed if it weren't labeled. And if the agency says that consumers should know whether their orange juice is fresh or from concentrate, why shouldn't they know about genetically engineered food?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture should set a single, national standard for certified-organic food that excludes genetically engineered food from the definition.
Industry should be held liable for economic or biological damage resulting from genetically engineered crops. Genetic pollution from modified crops---such as the inadvertent creation of "superweeds" ---would not be easy to remedy. Such accountability would go far to ease concerns overseas.
Industry should cease using antibiotic "marker" genes in the manufacture of genetically modified crops. The FDA says that risks that the marker genes may hasten antibiotic resistance are "vanishingly small," but other experts disagree. Another method to identify modified cells can and should be found.

For information on this topic on the Internet, see http://www.biotech-info.net, a site co-sponsored by a diverse consortium of consumer and environmental organizations that include the Consumer Policy Institute of Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports), based in New York, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, headquartered in Minnesota, the Science and Environmental Health Network, the Committee for Responsible Genetics based in Boston, and the Consumers and Biotechnology Foundation of the Netherlands. The site is being developed and maintained by Ecologic, Inc, a Sandpoint, Idaho based company, in cooperation with Benbrook Consulting Services. Development of the site was funded by the Wallace Genetic Foundation through a grant to the Consumer Policy Institute of Consumers Union.

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