Verbatim: Hawaii needs GMO labelling
The following testimony was written by food activist Denise Snyder to Honolulu City Council members last week. The Council had approved to hear a bill in 2012 that would require grocers or wholesale food clubs to post signs or labels signifying that a food product included genetically engineered material.
To read an initial draft of the bill, see Honolulu City Council’s Resolution 11-339 (scroll down)
Honolulu Councilmembers,
Thank you for your willingness to learn more about GMO’s.
Only two forms of genetically engineered plants are being commercially grown, those that enable plants to be sprayed with huge quantities of toxic poison or those that produce poison (the latter are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a pesticide). Biotech companies sell the seed and herbicide as a package deal, and U.S. farmers use hundreds of millions of pounds more toxic herbicide because of these types of GE (genetically engineered) crops. These chemicals pollute our water, land, air, and bodies.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists recommended against the release of GE food into our food supply. Scientific consensus at the FDA was that GE foods were inherently dangerous and might create hard-to-detect allergies, poisons, new “super” diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged their superiors at the FDA to require rigorous long-term tests. However, politics trumped science and GE seeds were allowed, with no labeling.
There were no human trials before GE foods were released into the U.S. food system. After the public rejected the first GE tomato, Flavr Savr, all future GE food releases were done without any labeling or notice (beginning around 1996). Every effort was made to keep the U.S. public unaware that we had, without our knowledge, become participants in unsupervised and undocumented food testing trials.
The American Academy of Environmental Medicine’s position paper, states, based on established scientific criteria, that “there is causation” between GE foods and “adverse health effects.”
Animal studies have been done to reveal problems. GE food is linked to the increase in chronic health problems. Genes inserted into GE crops can transfer into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continue to function. Several years ago, GE tryptophan sickened hundreds and caused the deaths of dozens of people in the United States and our federal government covered up the fact that the tryptophan was genetically modified.
GE crops were widely introduced in 1996. Within nine years, the incidence of people in the United States with three or more chronic diseases nearly doubled from 7 percent to 13 percent. Visits to the emergency room due to allergies doubled from 1997 to 2002. And overall food related illnesses doubled from 1994 to 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Please read the following documents that give additional health and scientific information, including scientific evidence from 114 research studies and other authoritative papers documenting some of the limitations and risks of GM crops.
2. GMO Industry Arguments and Rebuttals
3. Review of Roundup Herbicide Health Effects as reported by Antoniou et al.
We are only asking that you vote for GMO food labeling. We are not asking you to regulate the GE seed industry. Open-air field trials and other practices of the industry have resulted in horrific contamination of our food supply before approval of their seed: flax seed in Canada, rice in California, and corn on the “mainland” to name just a few instances of their reckless disregard for the rights of others.
Thank you,
Denise Snyder