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Animal Feeds In Ireland Are Contaminated With GMOs national |
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 Tuesday December 07, 2004 23:39 by Christine Raab-Heine - CLEAN(Cavan Leitrim Environmental Awareness Network)Ltd chheine at iolfree dot ie
 GM Regulations for Labelling of Animal Feed are a Farce
Related Links: Feed mills freely label their feeds as containing GM! They say that the countries of origin cannot give guarantees that their exports are not contaminated with GM, and so they don’t even bother to examine the GM content, or attempt to keep the content below 0.9%, which would mean that the feed would not have to be labelled as containing GM. We are further not told about the actual percentage of GM content. This is one of many flaws in the EU regulations on GMOs. Another flaw is the fact that meat from animals fed on GMOs does not have to be labelled as such. If consumers would have the opportunity to insist on GM free meat, it would not be so easy to infect our farm animals and products with GMOs, and the actual farce of labelling feeds we have at the moment would become an instrument helping to keep GMOs out of the country.
If basically all Irish meat, apart from qualified organic meat, is GM meat, i.e. meat from animals fed on GMOs, this might have, apart from the unforeseeable dangers to animal and human health, serious effects on the Irish farm, food, gastronomic and tourism sectors. Conversely keeping Irish feedstuffs and meat GM free could be a boost to these sectors. Immediate action is needed here as it is now that the bulk of feeding compounds starts. Let us have GM free lambs next year.
 Why do we not want this to happen? Because as GM technology is an invasive technology, there is no co-existence between GMO and "normal" organisms possible. This has the unavoidable and ultimate consequence that if we allow GMO technology now, we will have no other organisms than genetically modified ones living on this planet in the future! We will never have a choice again! As this is the simple and dreary truth, this technology is undemocratic, because it determines the ultimate future of the whole planet and all living things on it, potentially including the human race, without any need or justification! In common with other new technologies, the development of genetic engineering is largely controlled by a few powerful corporations. These corporations exert unprecedented influence over governments and academia, who are both failing in their obligation to adequately monitor and control the development and use of this technology and to safeguard public health and the environment. It is clear that there is too much uncertainty about GMOs, and consequently we cannot accept them! And so:
Further notes:Let us, as citizens, maintain this: In life absolute certainty does not exist. Therefore any risk analysis, also for GMOs, is based on reasoned assumptions. Our assumptions are based on the best available data and knowledge. In case we conclude that there is too much uncertainty about the product with respect to possible adverse effects for human health and the environment, a product will not be accepted. Only some weeks ago a vCJD case was diagnosed in Ireland, which only developed after an incubation period of many years, and which is thought to have been caused from eating meat from cattle fed on meat and bone meal. We all know that it was only disclosed after years that this caused BSE. Feeding meat and bone meal to herbivores was unnatural. Feeding GMOs to animals is also unnatural, as is the production of them in the first instance, which is unfortunately developed globally by big corporations. We take an enormous risk by eating meat or drinking milk from animals fed on GMOs! Only recently the IFA showed concern in respect of a case of contamination of feeds with bones in imported feed ingredients. The ongoing GM contamination, however, was not mentioned in this context! Without going into details regarding all issues of concern with respect to GMOs, we wish to stress, that one of the key findings of a new report by Freese and Schubert on “Safety Testing and Regulation of Genetically Modified Foods” (available on www.foe.org ) was “The failure of companies to test for most possible unintended effects of the unpredictable genetic engineering process; in particular, there is a lack of long-term animal feeding studies”. The kind of safety we are promised by scientific risk assessments in the EU becomes clear in a recent assessment report for GM cotton: “A comment was made by Miep Bos in respect of the notification report: The GMO should not be admitted because the notification states too often, that the product is “highly unlikely to have any adverse effect”. There are no hard facts but only assumptions that the product will not be harmful. That is not sufficient.” The answer from Netherlands CA was: “Within science absolute certainty does not exist. Therefore any scientific risk analysis, also for GMOs, is based on reasoned assumptions. These assumptions are based on the best available scientific data and knowledge. In case it is concluded that there is too much uncertainty about the product with respect to possible adverse effects for human health and the environment, a product will not be admitted.” Science was and is often helpful in explaining what has happened, albeit it has so far failed in explaining with certainty causes and origins of Aids, BSE and vCJD, for example. Science might be successful to develop new technologies, but science has not shown so far to be in a position to predict, determine or evaluate with certainty possible outcomes of such inventions. As econexus puts it: “The application of new technologies has historically been problematic. Though they are often proposed as a solution to a current problem they themselves may create new ones which were not predicted in time and others that were predicted only by specialists who were ignored. Additionally, the hope of a simple technical solution to a complex problem may distract attention and divert resources from essential political and social responses to the initial or underlying problem. (../www.econexus.info) One of the findings of Freese/Schubert and also of Wilson, Latham, Steinbrecher: Genome Scrambling – Myth or Reality? (available on the econexus website) was that their is a huge lack of independent “available” tests for long term effects of GMOs. At the same time when the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2004 has passed a moratorium on the further release of genetically modified organisms until such time that they can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, to be safe for biodiversity, human health and animal health, the US plans to allow contamination of food crops with GM experimental crops. As two thirds of US experimental GM crops contain genes classified as confidential, there are no possibilities to detect them. (www.foe.co.uk) According to the ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications), the US was growing 42.8 million hectares of the global transgenic crop area (63% of global total) in 2003. (Global Status of Commercialized Transgenic Crops:2003)
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Are you aware that all compound feeds commonly fed to farm animals contain GM maize and other GM meal?
Given the state of information and discussion in this country on GMOs,
many a farmer won't know this. But worse: it is virtually impossible
for conventional farmers, especially small farmers, to get GM free
compound feeds from their local suppliers. We are pretty sure that the
presence of GMOs in animal feedstuffs is well known to the Department
of Agriculture and other officials, but did they properly inform small
farmers and consumers? Farmers and consumers: please check the small print on feed bags and food labels.
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Comments (14 of 14)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14In 2001, Sainsbury's promised to "phase out the use of GM feed to the animals which produce their meat and dairy products" They have still not given a deadline by which this will happen and do not label their dairy products as coming from GM-fed animals.
Endless Stories on actions in the UK
Please join the GM-free Ireland Network (free of charge) and sign our petition asking the government to keep Ireland free of GM animal feed, seeds, crops, livestock and food. We have 20,000 members so far and need your support. Visit us at http://www.gmfreeireland.org
I wish to respond to Christina Heine's article on GM animal food.I think it is a national disgrace that David Byrne and the Irish gov. have sold the Irish people out re gm crops.
Corrib lake is going to be dead in a matter of a couple of months too. Its a SAM as the fingers would put it. Time for the little green men plan we talked about on the evening of s26 to kick into high gear.
I fed gm crops to fat cattle in US. and even eaten my owned meat that I raised. Plus I sell to people in town.
No one has died or gotten sick. So what is the problem? Where is the residue in the meats.
I don't have a problem with eating GM foods - I don't think they contain any 'unsafe residue'. I have a problem with the growing of GM crops, because of the possibility of gene crossing, and because of the way GM companies are trying to prevent farmers from keeping their own seeds.
This story is running on/at the usual suspect sites - BBC/CNN - so it must be true.
Tryptophan is an essential amino acid sold as an over-the-counter food supplement used for treating insomnia and depression. During 1989 in the USA a new disease appeared called EMS, whose main chacteristics were raised numbers of a type of white blood cell and sever muscle pain. In November that year the US FDA issued a nation-wide warning, advising consumers to discontinue use of the tryptophan food supplements. By then so many people had been affected by EMS that it caused over 36 deaths and thousands of disabilities, some estimates placing this as high as 10,000. The problem was linked to a contaminated batch of tryptophan coming from the Japanese company Showa Denko, which had been using a newly modified strain of genetically engineered bacteria; the new modification being intended to boost the concentrations of an intermediate chemical, and ultimately the output, in tryptophan synthesis. It is unclear as to whether the genetic engineering or change to the post-production filtration process was responsible for the damaging contaminants getting into the marketed tryptophan. Although a casual agent (or agents) for the medical problems has not been identified, as one review commented: "all the analytical studies revealed the contaminants’ low concentration in L-tryptophan and this means that the casual contaminate(s) must be very potent indeed". Because there was such a low concentration of the contaminant, L-trytophan could be said to have remained "substantially equivalent" after the production process was modified, yet it clearly was more deadly.
All this stuff about Gm&CJD and asking farmers not to use it wont have any effect as most other people are served by their immediate needs ie profit.The gm that is coming into the country and stored in the
border regions for distribution is to service the fat cats need for profit above all else.
Prof Feymann the great physist remarked that the weekend expert had arrived&simply hadnt done the work nescessary to know something.someone else will have to pick up the consequences, that is if there is anyone around to do so.Some of the responses mention VCJD and we all have a right to be concerned .the Fore tribe in New Guinea had a similair disease almost a century ago ,caused by eating their enemies & chiefs.The moral of all this was not recognised by the learned scientists who then along with others passed the buck to farmers.They who must be obeyed still say humans can get this disease from eating infected meat yet the amount of clinical cases suggest otherwise .my own view is that yes ,under certain circumstances ie if you had say a tooth pulled and infected meat was to "direct"injection to blood stream then almost certainally be at risk.What is not publicised is that almost certainly infected material that was used to culture vaccines that may pose a more serious risk but is lobbied out of the public domain by the pharmacutical industry interests.
Its the same old story with GM crops,The only reason GM IS possible is that there are genetic links with the past going back millions of years.Natures software has taken us where we are today by balancing the trillions of combinations possible to all living matter that has taken us to the present day.Gm circumvents millions of years of balancing and we simply do not know if there are runnaway affects that could not be checked in a catastrophical situation.
What we do know is that GM is not required as there is plenty of food for the forseeable future.
All you people must be congratulated on your efforts and i commend you for trying to protect the future,especially the Irish agriculture scene.
i saw data whilst working in a piggery in my mid teens which said 1 kilo of pig weight was being produced for every 8 kilos of meal. my father who worked in piggerys for over thirty years as a manager was satisfied he doing a good job at this. this led to serious doubt on my part about the validity of my work and eating practices ultimately leading to my rejecting both of them. ps a local piggery has taken to employing an east european staff in recent years
I am for choice. The choice to use or the choice not to use GM food. And I am oppsed to the fact that it seems that farmers do not have a choice. I also oppose GM foods but for a different reason. My reasons are against those that say that diseases hamper food production and food prices are high and peolpe go hungry for this reason. This argument is ridiculous - people go hungry because of the inequalities that exist in our world. GM foods exist because the few (companies) want to make profit from the many (farmers, producers).
But I disagree with the argument that GM foods present a risk to health. My reasoning is the following:
1. Genes are natural products and digested naturally in the body.
2. Science is never certain. But statistically confident yes.
The genes that get inserted into plants code for proteins which give resistance to pesticides. These proteins get digested as all other proteins do. The pesticides that get sprayed well thats another argument but demand for pesticide free products and not GMO free. Other GMO may be resitant to disease but this doesn't matter the proteins will not harm you. What happens on an ecological stand point is another argument and for this reason I oppose GM.
Scientific research is always based on confidence not certainty. It can be logically argued that just because the sun rose today it doesn't mean that, with certainty, it will rise tomorrow. But you are 99% confident that it will. Most scientific studies work on a 95% confidence that something exists. I would would say that as a scientist from the evidence and from the knowledge I have of GM that I am more than 95% sure that GM is safe to eat. But that is a personal opinion. Studies must be done. Again scientists carry out studies when they have a hypothesis. What is the hypothesis that GM foods are bad for you? How are they bad for you? How do I test this? You cannot prove that something doesn't exist i.e. that something is NOT bad for you.
I believe that we must debate logically and not reactionary to this situation.
5/7 live today
LIFEFORCE, a chain of products like packed nuts and dried fruit, states their food is for a healthy life style, yet some of its products also state, at the back, in tiny lettering: "genetically modified"!!!!
Check it the next time you do your shopping! It's amazing what you find out when you start reading everything in the packaging.
25/05/2005 - Published details of a Monsanto report are at the center of a new storm over whether genetically modified (GM) food could be harmful to human health, writes Anthony Fletcher.
Details of the report, published by the Independent on Sunday in the UK, are alleged to show that rats fed the genetically modified (GM) corn MON 863 developed internal abnormalities, while these health problems were absent from another batch of rodents fed non-GM food as part of the research project.