No 'Organic' Labels on Genetically Engineered Products

By Mae-Wan Ho, Ph. D.
Geneticist and Biophysicist, Open University and Scientific Advisor, TWN

The USDA proposal to allow genetically engineered products to pass as "organic" is a travesty. There are sound scientific grounds to exclude all genetically engineered products.

Genetic engineering is a completely new departure from conventional breeding and artificial selection. Insertion of foreign genes into the host cell genome in genetic engineering is a random process, not under the control of the genetic engineer. This gives rise to correspondingly random genetic effects, including cancer. Furthermore, the foreign genes are most often equipped with very strong signals from viruses, called promoters or enhancers, that force the organism to express the foreign genes at rates 10 to 100 times greater than its own genes. This has two important consequences.

First, the products of these foreign genes have never been eaten by human beings in such quantities, and their long-term effects cannot be predicted. Secondly, the genetic engineering process effectively place the foreign genes outside normal control of the organism, so both by design and otherwise, it completely upsets the genome and the physiology with many "unintended effects". Genetically engineered foods are unwholesome in the real sense that they are produced by methods which stress the metabolic and developmental system of organisms out of balance. This is graphically demonstrated in animal experiments.

The superpig engineered with human growth hormone gene turned out arthritic, ulcerous, blind and impotent. The supersalmon engineered, again, to grow as fast as possible ended up with big monstrous heads and died from not being able to breathe or feed properly. The latest clones of the sheep Polly are abnormal and 8 times as likely to die at birth compared with ordinary lambs. I note that carcasses of failed transgenic experiments and xenotransplant pigs, according to your current policy, are already being sold as ordinary meat without labeling, which is a grave mistake. Meat from these animals and products derived therefrom, may contain not only products of the foreign genes, but also toxic or allergenic metabolites and proteins, as well as genetically engineered DNA which may prove infectious to animal and human cells, according to recent scientific findings. But current risk assessment methods offer no protection for consumers in those respects (see Fatal Flaws in Food Safety Assessment, Ho and Steinbrecher, Third World Network, Penang, 1998).

The same arguments apply to genetically engineered plants and microorganisms, and products derived from them. The organic label is therefore all the more important in allowing consumers continued confidence in the safety of their food. Your new organic standards will put the health of your citizens at risk.