I am not a specialist in human biology or biochemistry, and I see the debate on GM crops and human health in somewhat simplistic terms. However, I have noticed that there appears to be an assumption within the FSA and other bodies that GM crops and GM foods are safe simply because they are assumed to be substantially equivalent to other crops and foods that are known, by long experience, to be safe. This assumption is arrogant and dangerous, and it is also demonstrates a cavalier disregard for the precautionary principle.

If you take the view that the concept of substantial equivalence has no scientific meaning, as I do, then you have to ask "Where are the comprehensive feeding studies, on real human beings eating real GM foods, which demonstrate the safety of GM products?" So far as I can gather, such studies have simply not been done. In the USA, the FDA has now admitted that it has never undertaken its own independent studies of the health impacts of GM foods, and that it has simply taken on board the assurances of the biotech multinationals that there is nothing to worry about. At the same time, over the last five years or so (roughly equivalent to the time which has elapsed since the introduction of GM foods there), there has apparently been a ten-fold increase in the occurrence of food-related ailments. Anecdotal evidence, and therefore worthless, on the grounds that there are no hard figures and that no causal link can be established? That may be, but somewhere alarm bells should be ringing, and somebody should be getting down to the task of turning anecdotal evidence into hard science. And while they are about it, they should also be investing in some serious studies of the health of populations who eat large quantities of GM foods, every day, year after year. Will it be done? Like hell it will, because on the other side of the Atlantic they are stuck with GM foods and it is in nobody's interest to examine what they are doing to the nation's health. "Liability" is a very unhealthy word in corporate circles.

Well, in this country we have not yet demonstrated quite the same instinct for idiotic behaviour as the Americans, and we still have a chance to undertake comparative studies of various populations before it is too late. The "Newcastle feeding study" commissioned by the FSA appeared to show that GM DNA could pass from GM food (just one small meal of GM soya) into the human gut. One would have thought that this would have caused the FSA to commission an immediate study of the effects of everyday ingestion of GM foods on the guts and intestines of much larger samples of human beings. I have begged them to do this, as have many others. And their response? To belittle the importance of the Newcastle University results, to refuse to enter any meaningful dialogue with those who see the results as having serious implications, and to refuse to extend the studies.

Background:

Brian John MA. D Phil Specialisms: Geomorphology / environmental science