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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0385.073 2012-2014 Page 1 of 1 Murashige, Laura From: Jack Adam Weber[jackadamweber @gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2013 12:31 AM To: counciltestimony @co.hawaii.hi.us Subject: Testimony in Support of Bill 109 Attachments: Hawaii GMO Ban testimony 9-2-13.doc Please find attached testimony in SUPPORT of Brenda Ford's heroic bill. Mahalo, o f'7 C-3 _C7 -; rrl w -< f*1 !V — Comm. No. 3 8'5. 73 Ref.To: P/PJ f 7G Ref. Date SEP Q 4 ZU13 9/3/2013 Submitted by: Jack Adam Weber, L.Ac., Dipl, A.C., C.H. P.O. Box 2130 Pahoa HI 96778 jackadarnweber @gmail.com Re: Ban of GMO foods in Hawaii Dear Council Members, September 2, 2013 This testimony is in sSUPPORT of both Bills 109 and 113 by Brenda Ford and Margaret Willie, respectively. I submit this testimony as an author, organic farmer, and primary health care physician (Hawaii) in opposition to GMO foods. I support that GMO cultivation in Hawai'i should be banned, and if not banned, then prohibited for any new GMO varieties being able to be produced on Hawai'I Island. In the absence of GMO labeling in Hawai'I, these inadequately tested foods should be prohibited if not banned from the island. As a first order of concern regarding GMO foods, it is noteworthy that none of the GMO crops currently planted have been adequately tested for their long-tem health effects on mammals, let alone on humans. The emerging body of evidence on the short-term health effects is alarming. In this letter I outline these many health dangers of GMO foods, beginning ith concerns over the GMO Papaya. The Papaya Industry on Big Island claims that no adverse health effects have been recorded for the GMO Papaya, but this is simply false. One, the GMO Papaya cross-pollinate with other non-GMO varieties, contaminating organic papaya and non-GMO papaya fields. Second, this scientific study demonstrates that "Thirty- three transgenic proteins have been screened for identities of at least six contiguous amino acids shared with allergenic proteins. Twenty-two transgenic proteins showed positive results of six- or seven-contiguous amino acids length. Only a limited number of identical stretches shared by transgenic proteins (papaya ringspot virus coat protein, acetolactate synthase GH50, and glyphosate oxidoreductase) and allergenic proteins could be identified as (part of) potential linear epitopes." Study Link: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6807/2/8 Editorial link discussing this study: http://hawaiiseed.org/plenty-papaya- problems/ What this excerpt means is that the protein (of at least six contiguous amino acids) expressed by the GMO papaya is a potential antigen; antigens cause allergies. Allergenicity is not confirmed by this study but it is correlated with the same amino acid structure of other foods that do, but it has a stretch of amino acids that match a known allergen. More studies need to be performed to determine the potential allergenicity of GMO Papaya. Beyond papaya, by far the RoundUp Ready and Bt-toxin GMO food crop varieties pose the most threat to our island ecological and human safety. They should be banned. The scientific evidence is now overwhelmingly demonstrative of the harm GMO foods cause. The list of studies at http://gmoevidence.com/ is comprehensive not only for the GMO foodstuffs themselves but for the scientific evidence showing the pervasive harm of glyphosate (active ingredient in RoundUp)and 2,4-D, the latter used to spray the latest generation of stacked-trait GMO crops because RoundUp is no longer working on the weeds that have developed resistance to Roundup. Note, superbugs are also a major problem because of resistance developed to the Bt-toxin,just as super-bacteria germs are bred through the overuse of antibiotics. Furthermore, the following information was collected by author and GMO researcher, Jeffrey Smith. The footnotes refer to page numbers in his book,Seeds of Deception. "The biotech industry claims that the FDA has thoroughly evaluated GM foods and found them safe. This is untrue. Internal FDA documents made public from a lawsuit, reveal that agency scientists warned that GM foods might create toxins, allergies, nutritional problems, and new diseases that might be difficult to identify.131-140 Although they urged their superiors to require long-term tests on each GM variety prior to approval, the political appointees at the agency, including a former attorney for Monsanto, ignored the scientists. Official policy claims that the foods are no different130 and do NOT require safety testing. A manufacturer can introduce a GM food without even informing the government or consumers.146 A January 2001 report from an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada said it was "scientifically unjustifiable"136 to presume that GM foods are safe. Likewise, a 2002 report by the UK's Royal Society said that genetic modification "could lead to unpredicted harmful changes in the nutritional state of foods," and recommended that potential health effects of GM foods be rigorously researched before being fed to pregnant or breast-feeding women, elderly people, those suffering from chronic disease, and babies.263 How could the government approve dangerous foods?A close examination reveals that industry manipulation and political collusion-not sound science-was the driving force. • Government employees who complained were harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired. • Scientists were threatened. Evidence was stolen. Data was omitted or distorted. Some regulators even claimed they were offered bribes to approve a GM product." Next, most of the countries in the European Union (EU) and countries around the world have mandatory labeling laws for GMO foods, despite having had GMO foods essentially forced into them by pressure from the office of then president George W. Bush. President Bush's office warned the EU that "some harm" would be done to the EU if they refused GMO foods. Despite this, currently over 30 countries ban or propose to ban GMO foods. There is a reason for these widespread bans. Of primary concern is that no long- term studies have been made on the health effects of GMO foods. In fact, GMO crops were insubstantially and essentially illegally approved for implementation in the American food supply because initial safety tests were not performed with the actual GM proteins in GM crops but on approximations to those proteins. This sad reality was posted by the Institute of Science in Society: "...the evaluations of mammalian safety and environmental impacts (particularly the impact on non-target organisms) have been done using a bacterial surrogate for the proteins produced in GM crops. Consequently, GM crops produced in the United States, Canada and other countries are untested and unknown for toxicities, and the failure to label the GM foods produced from the GM crops has obscured any impact on humans and animals. Apparently, this makes the approval of the GM crops illegal." Contrary to what the biotech companies purported as a means to end world hunger, in reality the majority of GMO crops are not going towards feeding people, but rather to feeding animals for meat production. Additionally, Contrary to industry contention, GMOs have increased pesticide use and produced significantly lower yields than natural varieties. GMO crops have increased the use of herbicides and pesticides. The very purpose of RoundUp Ready GMO crops is to withstand large amounts of herbicide spraying, and each year farmers are now having to use more and more pounds of herbicide to combat resistant weeds, called superweeds. Super-bugs resistant to the Bt- toxin, another form of GMO modification that causes plants to produce endogenous pesticides as modifications of that produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, are also on the rise. In several Midwest states whole crops of corn are being decimated by the Western rootworm beetle, Diabrotica virgifera viryifera, which has developed resistance to the Bt protein, Cry3Bb1. Scientific evidence is mounting for the severe adverse health effects of GMO foods. In one study, the RoundUp Ready gene from GMO foods was found to have transferred to the intestinal bacterial flora of the people tested, and were still active. This means that strange RoundUp Ready proteins, those that confer resistance to the same herbicide, are being produced in our intestines by the beneficial bacteria in our guts. Yuck. What may be even scarier is that no tests have been performed to see if the Bt- toxin(which is the GM insecticide from Bacillus thuringiensis in concentrated and modified form from that naturally occurring) can be transferred to the symbiotic bacteria in our digestive tracts. If it is transferred this means that these bacteria would be continually secreting this pesticide in our intestines. In another incident, Bt-toxin was also found in the bloodstream of fetuses and in pregnant and non-pregnant women. Upon taking blood samples, researchers detected the Bt CrylAb toxin (one form of the Bt-toxin) in a shocking 93 percent of maternal and 80 percent of fetal blood samples. And 69 percent of non-pregnant women tested positive for the toxin in their blood. Here is more verifiable and documented information on the effects of GMO compiled by The Institute for Responsible Technology: There are only about two dozen published, peer-reviewed animal feeding studies on the health effects of GM foods. • One study showed evidence of damage to the immune system and vital organs, and a potentially pre-cancerous condition. When the scientist tried to alert the public about these alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit. • Two other studies also showed evidence of a potentially pre-cancerous condition. The other seven studies, which were superficial in their design, were not designed to identify these details. • In an unpublished study, laboratory rats fed a GM crop developed stomach lesions and seven of the forty died within two weeks. The crop was approved without further tests. Many industry studies appear to be rigged to find no problems. In the case of a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH), for example, researchers injected cows with only one forty-seventh the normal dosage before reporting hormone residues in milk. They heated the milk 120 times longer than standard, to report that pasteurization destroys the hormone. They added cows to their study that were pregnant before treatment, to claim that rbGH didn't impede fertility. Cows that fell sick were dropped from studies altogether. With soybeans, serious nutritional differences between GM and natural soy were omitted from a published paper. Feeding studies masked any problems by using mature animals instead of developing ones and by diluting their GM soy 10 to 1 with non-GM protein. There are no adequate tests to verify that GM food will not create dangerous allergic reactions. While an international organization developed testing standards to minimize the possibility of allowing allergenic GM varieties on the market, GM corn currently sold in the U.S. has not been subjected to those tests and would most certainly fail them. One of these tests, for example, uses a test tube simulation to evaluate how long a potential GM allergen can last inside the digestive system before being broken down. Compared to the recommended international standards, however, one biotech company used a far stronger acid concentration and more than 1,250 times the recommended amount of a digestive enzyme to make the claim that their protein degrades too quickly to cause a reaction. The only human feeding trial ever conducted confirmed that genetically engineered genes from soy transferred to the bacteria inside the digestive tract. (The biotech industry had previously said that such a transfer was impossible.) The World Health Organization, the British and American Medical Associations, and several other groups have expressed concern that if the "antibiotic resistant marker genes" used in GM foods got transferred to bacteria, it could create super-diseases that are immune to antibiotics.59-6° More worrisome is that the "promoter" used inside GM foods could get transferred to bacteria or internal organs. Promoters act like a light switches, permanently turning on genes that might otherwise be switched off. Scientists believe that this might create unpredictable health effects, including the potentially pre-cancerous cell growth found in the animal feeding studies mentioned above. The biotech industry says that millions have been eating GM foods without ill effect. This is misleading. • About 100 people died and 5-10,000 fell seriously ill when they consumed the food supplement L-tryptophan. Only those who consumed the variety that was genetically modified became ill. That brand had minute, but deadly contaminants that would easily pass through current regulations today. If the disease it created had not been rare and acute, with crippling and deadly symptoms, the GM supplement might never have been traced as the cause. Once discovered, however, industry and government covered up facts and diverted the blame. Even the FDA testimony before Congress withheld vital information. For a summary of the L-tryptophan issue, click here. For an in-depth presentation of the issue, see Toxic L-tryptophan: Shedding Light on a Mysterious Epidemic, by William E. Crist. • Milk from rbGH-treated cows contains an increased amount of the hormone IGF-1, which is one of the highest risk factors associated with breast and prostate cancer, among others. • Soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% in the UK, coinciding with the introduction of GM soy imports from the U.S. According to a March 2001 report, the Center for Disease Control says that food is responsible for twice the number of illnesses in the U.S. compared to estimates just seven years earlier. This increase roughly corresponds to the period when Americans have been eating GM food. Could that be contributing to the 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 76 million illnesses related to food each year? Might it play in role in our national epidemic of obesity or the rise in diabetes or lymphatic cancers? We have no way of knowing if there is a connection because no one has looked for one. One of the most dangerous aspects of genetic engineering is the closed thinking and consistent effort to silence those with contrary evidence or concerns. Just before stepping down from office, former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman admitted the following: "What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good, and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn't good, because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked... And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you're against it, you're Luddites, you're stupid. That, frankly, was the side our government was on... You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view" Contrast this with the warning by the editors of Nature Biotechnology: "The risks in biotechnology are undeniable, and they stem from the unknowable in science and commerce. It is prudent to recognize and address those risks, not compound them by overly optimistic or foolhardy behavior." The biotech industry and the government have been foolhardy indeed. Blinded, perhaps by the baseless myth that GM foods are needed to feed the world, they gamble with our health and support their safety claims on obsolete or unproven assumptions. Accepting their vacuous assurances by eating these dangerous foods or serving them to your customers may likewise be overly optimistic or foolhardy." In summary, here is a concise list of the primary dangers and problems with GMO foods: 1) GM foods have not been adequately tested for safety, both for preliminary safety and long-term safety 2) FDA cautions for the safety of GMO foods was ignored by political appointees when GMO foods were approved 3) GMO foods such as corn, soybean, cottonseed , and canola have genes from non-plant species forced into them which do not occur in nature. This is dangerous tampering with natural order. 4) Genetic engineering creates extensive mutations in hundreds of thousands of sites in plant's DNA which can lead to aberrant protein production leading to allergies and other auto-immune disorders. 5) Studies document that more herbicides and pesticides are used on GMO crops, which places dangerous poisons into our environment and food supply. 6) GM soy has been shown to cause allergies in greater frequency than natural soy, as cooked GM soy has 7 times the amount of a known soy allergen. 7) GM crops of soy, corn, and papaya contain proteins of known allergens. Bt-toxin corn and cotton cause allergic reactions in farm workers, as it is thousands of times more concentrated than natural bacteria version. 8) GMOs can make you allergic to non-GMO foods by impairing digestive function, as tests on rats has demonstrated. 9) GMOs proved to injure the livers of rats fed GMO canola, potatoes, and soy. 10) GMOs have been shown to cause sterility, infant mortality, and maligned reproductive organs in rats. 11) Thousands of sheep, buffalo, and goats in India died after grazing on Bt cotton plants after harvest. Others suffered poor health and reproductive problems. 12) Farmers in Europe and Asia say that cows, water buffaloes, chickens, and horses died from eating Bt corn varieties. 13) About two dozen US farmers report that Bt corn varieties caused widespread sterility in pigs or cows. 14) The stomach lining of rats fed GM potatoes showed excessive cell growth, a condition that may lead to cancer. Rats also had damaged organs and immune systems. 15) If GM foods on the market are causing common diseases or if their effects appear only after long-term exposure, we may not be able to identify the source of the problem for decades, if at all. There is no monitoring of GMO-related illnesses and no long-term animal studies. Heavily invested biotech corporations are gambling with the health of our nation for their profit. 16) When the tipping point of consumer concern about GMOs was achieved in Europe in 1999, within a single week virtually all major food manufacturers committed to remove GM ingredients. 17) GMO foods were supposedly created to solve world hunger, but in fact statistics show that yields are often no better and even worse than non- GMO crops. 18) With the relatively recent development of resistant weeds and bugs to RoundUp and engineered Bt-toxin, the promise of GMO crops to benefit starvation are actually creating blight and the scary reality of super- weeds and super-bugs, much the same way that antibiotic-resistant super-bacteria are inadvertently bred even though antibiotic drugs are becoming more and more concentrated and powerful. 19) Bt toxins and Bt crops contain a fundamental flaw in their regulatory assessment—their toxicity testing is not based on the toxins in Bt crops themselves, but on surrogate toxins. This means that no tests have been performed on the actual Bt-toxins produced by the Bt-toxin GM plants. 20) GMO foods were introduced into the food supply not only with inadequate testing but under corrupt pretense by biotech colluding with biased and government officials and policy makers with vested financial interests in overlooking due diligence for the safety of GMO foods. The transnational companies that brought us Agent Orange, DDT, saccharin (i.e., Nutrasweet), Aspartame, PCBs, and dioxins are now foisting GMOs onto the world. We all know the toxic legacy of these substances; their track record speaks volumes. How can we trust the safety of GMO foods given the history of poisonings from the creations of these companies, namely Monsanto? We cannot, especially in light of the voluminous and ever-growing body of scientific evidence both proving and suggesting their severe and long-lasting negative health effects. In five or ten years it is likely that we will look back on this era of genetically engineered foods with the same regret, shame and rue as we do with what we know now about the previous lethal creations cited just above. In my well-researched opinion, GMO foods are nothing less than a virulent cancer spreading across the globe. If GMO foods cannot be labeled, then for all the reasons mentioned in this letter it is imperative that at the very least GMO foods be banned so that consumers can do what we can to safeguard our health in the face of what in a few years will in all likelihood be determined to be one the greatest errors of human invention. I only hope that the destruction of our soils and pollution of our waterways from herbicides and pesticides (also produced by the companies who gift us GMO products) is not beyond the point of repair. I hope that the toxins from GMO foods have not permanently entered the lifecycle of humanity beyond the point of no- return; the scientific evidence suggests that these possibilities are increasingly possible, if not probable. Climate warming, exacerbated by petroleum-based GMO pesticides, exacerbate our global dilemma. I urge you then to support a ban and/or prohibition of GMO foods, if only to begin to turn back the perilous course of inappropriate technology and to save our world from greed, manipulation, and the highly suspect generation of GMO foods. WE have the opportunity now to safeguard what little is left of the Aloha in Hawai'i from being trampled by corporate greed and their dangerous practices. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Jack Adam Weber REFERENCES: http://wakeup-world.com/2011/10/18/our-real-healthcare-crisis-the-devastating-domino- effect-of-gmo-"foods-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/ http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMcropsIncreasedHerbicide.php http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BTTIGMC.php http://www.responsibletechnology.org/health-risks http://www.responsibletechnology.org/gmo-dangers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/31/beetle-monsantos-genetically- modified-corn n 944138.html https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=1340ede2f21b92 77&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3Db2 cl0abcbd%26view%3Datt%26th%3D1340ede2f21b9277%26attid%3D0.1%26dis p%3Dsafe%26zw&sig=AHIEtbTIcFAHVBDHKnqu7HegNgbi2zARZA http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/AboutGeneticallyModifiedFoods/Danger sofGeneticallyEngineeredFoods/index.cfm http://www.naturalnews.com/032407 Bt insecticide GMOs.html http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/AboutGeneticallyModified Foods/Danger sofGeneticallyEngineeredFoods/index.cfm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BTTIGMC.php http://voiceoftheenvironment.org/gmos/