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2) Independent scientists at publicly funded and operated labs under the jurisdiction of the Federal Minister of Health must conduct exhaustive long-term human health testing on GM foods. The assumption that GM foods are "substantially equivalent" to their non-GM analogs is unproven.
3) The Precautionary Principle must be the basis for assessing the human health effects of GM food. Where human health and safety are concerned, mere "risk assessment" is not acceptable (NFU 2000).
In the meantime, knowing the results or the lack of results of testing on GM foods, how comfortable will you be picking up genetically enhanced milk for your child?
The last issue concerns animals that have been given altered genes or stimulated through injections. This makes us wonder at how ethical is the “animal as just machines” paradigm and what kind of harm comes to the animal in this type of increased production? The prime example of this is the use of bovine somatotropins and recombinant bovine growth hormone. These hormones, injected into cows, are widely used today to stimulate milk production. Dairy cows that have been treated with bovine growth hormones have not only been associated with an increased incidence of disease, especially mastitis/inflammation of the utter, but they also show various knee and foot disorders, reproduction problems and disorders of the ovaries. Another example is the yet to be seen results of the salmon that have been genetically altered into “super-size fish”. “Salmon and other fish are treated with growth hormones or insect genes to make the fish grow faster, larger and more resistant to disease” (Genetically Engineered foods, paragraph 5). These fish, treated as lab animals raises several ethical questions in animal rights. Namely, are animals just here for our scientific discoveries? Are these tests actually necessary? Our stance on this is that animals do have rights and are not simply here for our experimentation. Tests may be, and are, carried out in labs for medical advancements. However, tests that do not serve a particular purpose should not be carried out.
Unfortunately, the call for GMO is riding high in the medias particularly when one looks at the fact that many people around the world are either dying from hunger or from malnutrition. We would like to make it clear that our stance is that every country can produce enough food from its soils to take care of its people. The reason for hunger is political because it is an issue of distribution. We know that our rationalizing to the public that the problem of developing countries is one of distribution rather than the inadequacy of citizens of those countries to produce their own crops would not be believed we would like to recommend some policy guidelines as we make our decisions about GMO. Our policy recommendations are as follows:
1) Look into other alternatives before GMO is introduced.
2) Neutral body that governs the regulations for GM products.
3) Policies that look at the broader environmental or health consequences of GMO.
4) More research is needed into effects of GM products.
5) Making adequate Labeling requirements.
6) Laws that put pressure on larger businesses rather than smaller ones.
7) Ensure that environmental organizations are involved at the policy making table.
8) No arbitrary experimentation, there has to be a clearly defined need for that product.
9) No dumping of GMO rejects in third world nations.
1) Looking into other alternatives before implementing GMO
The earth has been around for millions of years, and as such the earth has its way of taking care of itself. The media is screaming that GMO might be the solution to world hunger and eradicating world hunger might invariably lead to world peace. But this is ridiculous, we believe that there are other natural alternatives to GMO. These alternatives should be researched and maybe implemented.
2) Neutral bodies that govern the regulations of GM products.
Environmental organizations are generally indebted to benefactors that put in money for their favorite causes. As such environmental organizations do not have as much financial backing as many of the GM producers do. Because those who are backing the GM producers are generally corporations that want to make money, they have put implicit pressures on GM producers to forget about the side effects of GMO, and hype up the positive aspects of GMO. As such many GM food companies have claimed that they have done research assessing the risks of GMO but these producers are hardly neutral, in fact they are highly biased because of the economic factors. As a result of this, we are recommending a neutral body that is neither biased towards the environmental organization nor the GMO producers to analyze the effects of GMO.
3) Policies that look at the broader environmental or health consequences.
Since GM and non-GM crops are often mixed together during harvest, transportation, processing and storage, it is difficult to determine the GM status of the respective crops/foods. There is a need for a policy that dictates how to segregate GM and non- GM products at various stages of processing. This would make it easier to observe the broader environmental or health consequences of these food.
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