Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

Three Approved Genetically-Modified Foods Linked to Organ Damage

January 3, 2010

dissidentvoice.org - In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.

All three varieties of GM corn, Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603, were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. Made public by European authorities in 2005, Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats that these researchers analyzed is the same data, ironically, that was used to approve them in different parts of the world.

The Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen studied Monsanto’s 90-day feeding trials data of insecticide producing Mon 810, Mon 863 and Roundup® herbicide absorbing NK 603 varieties of GM maize.

The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.

Although different levels of adverse impact on vital organs were noticed between the three GMOs, the 2009 research shows specific effects associated with consumption of each GMO, differentiated by sex and dose...

British Government: The Public Must Accept Genetically-Modified Food

Britain must produce more food to avoid going hungry in the future, the Government will warn this week.

January 2, 2010

Telegraph - A soaring global population, climate change, diminishing energy sources, and depleted fish stocks mean that society can no longer be complacent about its ability to feed itself, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will say.

Setting out a comprehensive food strategy for the next 20 years, ministers will also say that:

* The public must accept genetically-modified food;

* The EU's Common Agricultural Policy adds £52 a year to every Briton's annual food bill; and

* Food should be clearly labelled with its country of origin, to help consumers choose.

The Sunday Telegraph has campaigned for country-of-origin labelling and highlighted cases where consumers are misled as to where their food comes from. However, the Government will stop short of promising compulsory labelling and will instead recommend a voluntary scheme.

The current food production system needs reform because it emits too much greenhouse gas, is overly bureaucratic and does not pay enough attention to soil quality and water use, the report, called Food 2030, will state.

It will also warn that the food industry needs to prepare for "sudden shocks" such as natural disasters, disruption to fuel supplies or transport networks, and commodity price spikes.

In a foreword to the report, Gordon Brown will say that the country faces "big challenges which mean we need to think differently about food," and that food production must increase "without damaging the air, soil, water and marine, resources, biodiversity and climate that we all depend on".

The Prime Minister will add:

"We need to feed more people globally, many of whom want or need to eat a better diet. We need to tackle increasing obesity and encourage healthier diets.

"And we need to do all these things in light of the increasing challenge of climate change and while delivering continuous improvement in food safety."

Farmers' leaders have regularly accused ministers of failing to support British agriculture and allowing the number of farms to decline, along with the acreage of land under cultivation.

The food strategy, set to be launched on Tuesday by Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, will encourage consumers to throw less food away and to adopt leaner and healthier diets. It will promote higher crop yields, urge food producers to reduce the impact they have on the environment, and recommend a move towards accepting GM crops in order to create a "sustainable and secure food system for 2030."

The report will warn:

"It is now clear that we face a big challenge in feeding the world. With a growing population, climate change and the pressure we are putting on land, we will have to produce more food sustainably.

"We also need to provide the right information for people to make more informed choices about what they eat. Diet will have a huge impact not only on our health and our economy, but most importantly on sustainability" ...

In a controversial move the report will urge consumers not to insist on buying locally-produced food, because doing so would reduce the prosperity of farmers in developing countries.

Environmental campaigners have called on shoppers to "buy local" as a way to minimise their carbon footprint. However, the Food 2030 report will dismiss the popular concept of "food miles" as "not a helpful measure." It will argue that so long as UK businesses are find alternative markets for their products, then consumers should feel free to buy imported produce in order to support livelihoods in developing countries...

Take a Food Pill

December 29, 2009

Accelerating Future - Wow, this surprised me. This is the sort of thing that I would write off as nonsense on first glance if it weren’t from Robert Freitas, who is legendary for the rigor of his calculations. Here’s the bit, from a World Future Society update:

The Issue: Hunger

The number of people on the brink of starvation will likely reach 1.02 billion — or one-sixth of the global population — in 2009, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In the United States, 36.2 million adults and children struggled with hunger at some point during 2007.

The Future: The earth’s population is projected to increase by 2.5 billion people in the next four decades, most of these people will be born in the countries that are least able to grow food. Research indicates that these trends could be offset by improved global education among the world’s developing populations. Population declines sharply in countries where almost all women can read and where GDP is high.

As many as 2/3 of the earth’s inhabitants will live in water-stressed area by 2030 and decreasing water supplies will have a direct effect on hunger. Nearly 200 million Africans are facing serious water shortages. That number will climb to 230 million by 2025, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Finding fresh water in Africa is often a huge task, requiring people (mostly women and children) to trek miles to public wells. While the average human requires only about 4 liters of drinking water a day, as much as 5,000 liters of water is needed to produce a person’s daily food requirements.

Futurist Fixes

1. The Food Pill. In the future, we may see a type of pill for replacing food, but experts say it likely would not be a simple compound of chemicals. A pill-sized food replacement system would have to be extremely complex because of the sheer difficulty of the task it was being asked to perform, more complex than any simple chemical reaction could be. The most viable solution, according to many futurists, would be a nanorobot food replacement system.

Dr. Robert Freitas, author of the Nanomedicine series and senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing spoke with FUTURIST magazine senior editor Patrick Tucker about it.

In his books and various writings, Freitas has described several potential food replacement technologies that are somewhat pill-like. The key difference, however, is that instead of containing drug compounds, the capsules would contain thousands of microscopic robots called nanorobots. These would be in the range of a billionth of a meter in size so they could easily fit into a large capsule, though a capsule would not necessarily be the best way to administer them to the body. Also, while these microscopic entities would be called “robots,” they would not necessarily be composed of metal or possess circuitry. They would be robotic in that they would be programmed to carry out complex and specific functions in three-dimensional space.

One food replacement Dr. Freitas has described is nuclear powered nanorobots. Here’s how these would work: the only reason people eat is to replace the energy they expend walking around, breathing, living life, etc. Like all creatures, we take energy stored in plant or animal matter. Freitas points out that the isotope gadolinium-148 could provide much of the fuel the body needs. But a person can’t just eat a radioactive chemical and hope to be healthy, instead he or she would ingest the gadolinium in the form of nanorobots. The gadolinium-powered robots would make sure that the person’s body was absorbing the energy safely and consistently. Freitas says the person might still have to take some vitamin or protein supplements but because gadolinium has a half life of 75 years, the person might be able to go for a century or longer without a square meal.

For people who really like eating but don’t like what a food-indulgent lifestyle does to their body, Freitas has two other nanobot solutions.

“Nutribots” floating through the bloodstream would allow people to eat virtually anything, a big fatty steak for instance, and experience very limited weight or cholesterol gain. The nutribots would take the fat, excess iron, and anything else that the eater in question did not want absorbed into his or her body and hold onto it. The body would pass the nurtibots, and the excess fat, normally out of the body in the restroom.

A nanobot Dr. Freitas calls a “lipovore” would act like a microscopic cosmetic surgeon, sucking fat cells out of your body and giving off heat, which the body could convert to energy to eat a bit less.

Where can you read more about Robert Freitas’s ideas? In the January-February 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, Freitas lays out his ideas for improving human health through nanotechnology...