Genetically Engineered Food: Human Health Risks

Despite the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of many genetically engineered foods, questions persist about the safety of eating them. Safety concerns should result in a halt to all sales of genetically engineered foods until these questions are addressed. At the very least, consumers should have the right to know if the foods they are buying and eating have been genetically engineered.

GMO crops are engineered by transferring genetic material from one organism into another to create specific traits, such as making a plant resistant to treatment with herbicides, or enabling a a plant to produce its own pesticide to repel insects. Currently, most GMO food crops are genetically engineered to produce a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which repels insects or allows the crop to withstand treatment with an herbicide, such as glyphosate (often sold as Roundup). Although the FDA contends that there is not sufficient scientific evidence demonstrating that eating GMO foods leads to chronic harm, the agency's process for evaluating the safety of these controversial new foods is completely inadequate.