As to be expected, there was a scientist in the field of genomics aggressively speaking out against one of my TEDx talks.  It sparked an outcry that hit a resurgence again this week.

It’s not the first time that my work has come under fire, nor will it be the last as the information that I present is disruptive.  To many, it creates a cognitive dissonance - a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas, beliefs or values and can often elicit a strong emotional reaction.

And it did just that earlier this year, whena scientist at the University of Florida which houses the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences questioned one of my presentations.

So when I looked into the work of the person making the accusations, I was not surprised that he had dedicated his life to plant research and genetic engineering.  His commitment is remarkable.  I understand it, because it is that same dedication that I have to my research and work into the financial engineering and the role it can play in the integrity of science. 

That dedication, that level of commitment, is something to be honored, not slandered, as it is not without sacrifice.  And we actually went on to speak, sharing our concerns over barriers to entry that can hinder innovation, the impact that climate change is having on food supplies and other topics.  

But his criticism was that of a subject that continues to raise itself as to whether or not genetically engineered crops are safe. 

The scientific debate tends to center around whether genetically engineered crops have been “thoroughly tested,” while a debate around the financial engineering of the science continues to grow.

And with deep respect for the scientist with whom I eventually spoke and his research and dedication to his students, it is important to look at the independent science, because as the Union for Concerned Scientists states:

“Political interference in federal government science is weakening our nation's ability to respond to the complex challenges we face. Because policy makers depend on impartial research to make informed decisions, we are mobilizing scientists and citizens alike to push for reforms that will enable our leaders to fully protect our health, safety, and environment.”

In a Science Magazine in 2000, a Spanish researcher named Jose L. Domingo who later went on to write a 2007 paper, “Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants: A Review of the Published Literature,” found only seven peer reviewed papers on genetically engineered crop safety as of 2000, most of them dealing with short-term nutritional effects.  

According to Dr. Charles Benbrook, who worked in Washington, D.C. on agricultural policy, science and regulatory issues from 1979 through 1997, served for 1.5 years as the agricultural staff expert on the Council for Environmental Quality at the end of the Carter Administration, and following the election of Ronald Reagan, moved to Capitol Hill in early 1981 and was the Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture with jurisdiction over pesticide regulation, research, trade and foreign agricultural issues, what that means is that at the time that two genetically engineered products were approved for the food supply, there were no studies in the open scientific literature.

Let’s stop and think about that for a minute in the context of something that is more familiar. 

Can you imagine if a medical device or a new pharmaceutical drug were introduced with no studies in the open scientific literature for public review?  Or if a car was introduced onto the highway in the same manner?

The concern is shared by the National Academy of Sciences in the paper, Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Consequences, "As with all other technologies for genetic modification, they also carry the potential for introducing unintended compositional changes that may have adverse effects on human health."

Furthermore, according to Benbook, as of 2007 and Domingo's more recent and comprehensive review, a “Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants: A Review of the Published Literature", there are still no more than about ten studies assessing the toxicological impact of genetically engineered ingredients in our food supply, almost all are limited in scope (there is a review of 24 studies focusing on nutritional equivalency), and short term, with most of them dealing with genetically engineered foods other than corn and soybeans.  

Which means that the bottom line is that there are no published, peer reviewed studies on the toxicological impacts of today's commercial genetically engineered ingredients now found in our food supply, and almost none on older genetically engineered ingredients, that provide evidence that show that these foods are toxicologically safe.  

At the conclusion of the abstract for the paper, the author himself poses the question: “where is the scientific evidence showing that GM plants/food are toxicologically safe?”

To me, that is a question so important that it was unequivocally an “Idea Worth Spreading,” a question worth asking, a dialogue worth having.   

Correlation is not causation but with the Centers for Disease Control now reporting that cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of fifteen, that there has been a 265% increase in the rates of hostpiatlizations related to food allergic reaction, it is worth noting that “no evidence of harm” is not the same as “evidence of no harm.” 

What we are witnessing, through 55 members of Congress that have called for the labeling of these ingredients, the over one million Americans who have sent comments to the FDA asking for the same, interest in a TEDx talk given by a former financial analyst, author and mother of four, is a movement, perhaps begun by the Spanish researcher with his ask for the scientific evidence showing that genetically engineered foods are toxicologically safe, and a call for the labeling of these foods, as they are labeled in over 40 countries around the world, until we have more science.

It is a call for studies that might alert a pregnant woman working on a farm about the impact that her exposure to these crops and the chemicals used to produce them might have on the health of her unborn babies.

It is a call for science and for the research that tells a mother if her child is allergic to conventional soybeans, the kind that has been in our food supply for generations, or if her child is allergic to the genetically engineered components now found in soybeans that were introduced in the late 1990s. 

It is a call for the scientific tests that would enable a father to test his child for those differences at his allergist’s office.

It is a call for science and our right to know about the foods that we are eating and what their impact might be on the health of our families. 

Is correlation causation?  Not at all, but with millions of Americans beginning to wake up to the fact that we have additives in our food supply, from lean beef trimmings, to artificial growth hormones to genetically engineered ingredients, additives that were not in our foods a generation ago, we are asking for more science, integrity in science, full disclosure of the financial engineering behind the science, and for labels and the right to make an informed choice about what we are feeding our families. 

We have learned what can happen otherwise, from the tobacco industry to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, so I hope that the TED team will continue the conversation with consumers, genetic engineers as well as financial ones, economists and the medical community in a forum in which attendees can express their opinions and one that requires full disclosure of any institutional ties, research grants or patents of those involved to preserve the dialogue and the scientific integrity of the discussion.  

Because as Carl Sagan once said, "We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology."

An idea worth spreading?  A dialogue worth having? Absolutely. 

And while we talk about it, let's label these ingredients as they are labeled in countries around the world - like England, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, China, Russia and India, so that Americans have the same liberty to know that these new ingredients have been introduced into our food, too. 

 

Additional Resources: 

Scientific Integrity: Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/
Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants: http://www.biosafety.ru/ftp/domingo.pdf
Faculty Endowments: http://www.uff.ufl.edu/FacultyEndowments/ProfessorshipInfo.asp?ProfessorshipFund=007489
Kevin Folta's Blog: http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2012/03/complete-insanity-in-theater-built-by.html
UF Scientists Collaborate with Monsanto: http://news.ifas.ufl.edu/2011/10/14/uf-scientists-collaborate-with-monsanto-to-develop-improved-computer-model-for-corn-production/
The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster: A Study in Organizational Ethics http://pirate.shu.edu/~mckenndo/pdfs/The%20Space%20Shuttle%20Challenger%20Disaster.pdf
Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Consequences http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309092094

Most people that follow food issues had their eyes on California last night.  Voters in the state were going to the polls to determine if the United States would finally join countries around the world and label ingredients recently introduced into our food that have been genetically engineered to produce their own insecticidal toxins, ingredients that are now regulated by the EPA as pesticides.

The legislation had the opportunity to impact all of us.  California recently voted on labeling an ingredient found in sodas, due to its potential link to cancer.  But rather than label it, soda companies decided to reformulate their products and they removed the ingredient in products around the country.  The same fate could happen with these genetically engineered ingredients if they were labeled - companies might simply want to opt out rather than carry any liability that a label might cause.

So the question put to California voters was essentially: should ingredients, now regulated as pesticides, be labeled in our food?

But it wasn't exactly framed that way.  And in the months leading up to the election, a tsunami of money poured into the state from chemical and pesticide companies from around the world.  These corporations selling the products, both the genetically engineered ingredients and the chemicals used on them, didn't feel it was neccessary to label these ingredients, they didn't want to cause alarm.

And with polling results in, they won in the California voting booth.

But did they win on the national stage?

Because rather than consider this "the end" of the issue, perhaps it should be seen as the beginning of a long-overdue dialogue in the United States, a dialogue that the industry spent $45 million dollars to try to keep from having.

Any grocery store shopper knows that a lot gets labeled: orange juice has to be labeled if it comes from concentrate, allergens are labeled, fat content, too.  But we have not yet joined over 50 countries around the world and called for the labeling of ingredients that have been engineered by the chemical companies to withstand increasing doses of their chemicals.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll asked: Do you think genetically engineered foods should be labeled?  87% said yes.

This is not a party issue, it is an American one.

And as more of us are waking up to the fact that the United States remains one of the only developed countries in the world to have failed to label these ingredients in our food supply, the question now seems to be: Is now the time to label genetically engineered foods, foods whose genetic makeup has been hardwired to withstand increasing doses of toxic chemicals or to produce insecticides within the plant itself.

The chemical companies that are both making the foods and selling the chemicals required to grow them often claim that their products are needed to feed the world.

It's an emotional argument.  Powerful, too, and does a lot to drive shareholder return.  But in light of the fact that 2 billion people are overweight or obese and 1 billion are hungry, according to the USDA, 40 percent of the food we produce is never eaten.

Is a food shortage really the problem?  Or is it a shortage in earnings visibility that has these companies quietly pushing their products on us, spending $45 million to make sure that they don't have to label them for fear that labels might lead Americans to join eaters in other countries and  opt out?

"The world is hungry because of politics and economics, not because we can't grow food" a farmer from Australia recently said.  And if you go wide, beyond the consumers and farmers, and dig into the politics of food, you realize how complicated and politically, economically and finanicially loaded the issue has become.

The companies engineering these crops to withstand their chemicals  say they are safe.  They've conducted their own research because the FDA has not.

It's not the first time that ingredients with the potential to cause harm have been marketed this way.  Doctors marketed cigarettes to our grandmothers.  Like the tobacco industry, the pesticide and chemical industries fund research, protected under intellectual property law that is not subject to peer review, and then present it as evidence that their products are safe.  That's their job, to market their products so that they can drive shareholder return.  But what about the rest of us, the world's 7 billion stakeholders in the food supply - those of us, not known by the names given to our portfolios, but those of us simply called "eaters"?

A researcher with the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and director of the Molecular Embryology Laboratory said,"The noteworthy thing is that there are no studies of embryos on the world level and none where (the chemical routinely doused on these genetically engineered crops) glyphosate is injected into embryos.”

We don't know what these foods are doing to our children.  And while correlation is not causation, from 1992-2007, there was a9.4% increase in childhood cancers in the United States.  Children in the United States where cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease in kids under the age of fifteen also have skyrocketing rates of food allergies and have earned the title "Generation Rx".

Is it the new, genetically engineered ingredients in the food?  We'd have no idea, since there are no labels.

That's hard to hear, especially for those of us that dismissed concerns around genetically engineered foods as some hippy, fringy, purist thing.  It can be so hard to hear that when industry claims there is "no evidence of harm", you almost want to believe them.  But if you think about it, without labels, there simply is no evidence.  And "no evidence of harm" is not the same as "evidence of no harm."

Labels are needed to prove a direct cause and effect. And while we don't yet have them, mounting hospitalization records, record drug sales and an increasingly allergic, diabetic, cancer-stricken and obese population in which 46 children are diagnosed with cancer every day might suggest that we should take a closer look and introduce labeling here in the United States as a conservative measure to protect the heath of our citizens, the way the health of citizens in every country in the European Union, Australia, Japan, Russia and China are protected (to name a few).

And while in the face of record amounts of campaign spending money by the chemical, pesticide and junk food companies, the labeling initiative was defeated in California, what that campaign started was a long-overdue national dialogue.  This is not "the end" of anything but the beginning of a national discussion.

It brought an awareness to the fact that the FDA does not require pre-market safety testing of these foods, that no long-term human, prenatal or pediatric studies have been conducted and that Americans remain one of the only developed countries in the world whose citizens have not been give the liberty of labels in order to make an informed choice about the foods that we are eating.

States matter.  To get a feel for just how much take a look at the first seat belt law which was introduced by a state in 1984, in no time, others followed.  And today, in the absence of any federal seat belt law, it speaks to the important role that states play in protecting the health of their populations by using preventative measures to protect citizens from potential harm.

So what can Americans do next?  Keep up the pressure at the state level.  Begin a dialogue.  Find a friend who cares about this as much as you do.  Join the national movement that is calling on the FDA to address the issue on behalf of all Americans.  A 53 to 47% loss is not something to bury heads over given that the opposition flooded the campaign with $45 million in marketing, but rather something for which to keep heads up, looking forward, as we focus on the FDA and work to address this at the national level.

The health of our country and our economy are dependent on the heath of Americans.  41% of Americans are now expected to get cancer and there is a growing burden that disease is placing on our economy.  Labeling these new ingredients in our food supply, ingredients that are now regulated by the EPA as "pesticides,"  just might prove to be one of the smartest economic measures of our time.

To learn more about genetically engineered foods and the pesticides being routinely applied to them, please visit one of the following sites, known for their independent research:

• Just Label It
  
• Our Right to Know

 

As the United States wrestles over whether or not genetically engineered foods should be labeled (as they have been in other countries since their introduction in the 1990s), a new report shows that 73% of those polled think that the planting of these same ingredients should be banned altogether in the European Union.

So what gives?  Why would some countries want to ban food crops and the ingredients derived from them while eaters in the United States haven't even been told these things were going into our food supply in the first place?  

Introduced into our food in the 1990s, genetically engineered ingredients were the product of a new technology used in our food and agricultural systems, a technology that allows crops to withstand increasing doses of toxic and controversial weedkillers or to actually enable crops like corn to synthesize (and make internally within the plant) their very own insecticides.

Technology can be pretty amazing, right?  So instead of spraying insecticides across corn fields, biotech scientists working for big chemical companies figured out how to engineer those insecticides straight into the plant itself, so that it can release them as it grows.  Great business model if you're a chemical company.  But what about the consumer?  And why didn't we label these things here?

Well, if the countries in Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, about 40 countries around the world, are any indicator, the consumers, when they saw these things on the label, decided to opt out.  So much so that France doesn't really even want them planted in their soil.  And now a poll shows 73% don't want them planted in the European Union.

So how did we miss this dialogue here in the United States?  Why weren't we given this same right when this new technology and these ingredients were introduced without labels.  There was no "Intel Inside" kind of label.  We simply weren't given the right to know or the right to choose the way consumers in other developed countries were.

So why are the chemical companies urging farmers to grow crops that other countries don't want?  You don't have to look far to find the answer.  With shareholders to report to, the buck stops here.  In the United States, on our farms.  It's where the bottom line hits.

But what's fascinating is that in conversations with farmers (and if you've never sat down with one, you should, as most of them have families that have been feeding our families and country for generations), you will quickly learn that this new operating system introduced on the farm, which enable the use of these toxic weedkillers, doesn't seem to be working out as planned.  Weeds have supersized themselves, building immunity to these chemicals, and now farmers are looking for other options.

If the recent poll is any indicator, it looks like that might be a smart business move as a growing number of countries around the world continue to opt out of these genetically engineered crops.  Sure, the chemical companies pushing these products don't want that to happen, they'd sell discounted seeds to show a successful adoption rate just the way a tech start up gives away its product in the early stages, too.  But if this poll is any indicator, the 'opt-out' might be happening anyway.

Want to learn more, please visit Just Label It.

The landscape of food has changed.  Not only is it available 24/7 and  marketed to us using mobile apps and Internet games, but it is also full of lots of ingredients that just didn't exist when we were kids.   So while our food may look the same, it now contains  artificial, engineered and genetically altered ingredients that are so new that patents have been filed on them in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Not something any busy eater wants to hear.  Especially a busy parent who is doing his or her best to simply get the kids to eat.

But we are quickly learning that the ingredients in our foods - the good ones that include vitamins and minerals and the ones that have the potential to cause harm - have a lot to do with the health of our families.

And if you are just getting started on trying to eat a little cleaner or reduce your families exposure to artificial ingredients, you may be hearing about something called "genetically engineered foods."  If you haven't heard about them, you're not alone.  While countries around the world labeled these ingredients when they were introduced in the 1990s, we didn't here.

So a lot has changed in our food in the last decade, and given the juggling act that most of us perform on a daily basis, coupled with the fact that these new ingredients were never labeled, it's no surprise that we are only just beginning to have this dialogue around the labeling of these ingredients here in the United States.  States like California, North Carolina and other have taken a lead on it.  But the dialogue is now being held at the national level, with millions of citizens calling on the FDA to do the same.  So we put together a short Q&A, working  with researchers who have not accepted funding from or developed patents for the corporations developing these new products, to pull together this information for you.

FACT SHEET: GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS

Over the last few years, so many people have reached out to share their stories and their passion to protect the health of our country and have asked, "What did it take to get started?"

As I've reflected on this, it took me back to the beginning of my story.  And in all candor, that is not a place that I like to visit much.  Because in the beginning, it was isolating.   Organizations that were supposed to be looking out for the best interests of our children were having allergic reactions to me, I had been absolutely buried in the research, not sleeping, not eating, consumed by concern for the health of the American children and the health of our food supply,  and any pictures of me taken from that time reflect it.  I looked like a skeleton, as I'd been swallowed by the work and what seemed like everything that I'd believed in was stripped bare. 

But along the way, I learned one of the most valuable lessons in all of this.  You can not go it alone.  

You have to find a friend to stand beside you to cheer you on.  And about a year into my work, I connected with a bestselling author and film producer.  In February 2007, he filmed my story.  A few months later, I connected with an extraordinary woman, Deborah Koons Garcia, who produced the predecessor to Food Inc., a ground-breaking and life-changing film called The Future of Food.  To this day, both remain friends.  And then, because of these friendships, I appeared on the CBS Early Show before a national audience. And suddenly people knew my story.  

Because in that appearance in the fall of 2007 that I found the courage to share my work, my concerns over the rate at which we had introduced artificial colors, preservatives and genetically engineered ingredients into our food supply while other countries around the world were preserving theirs for the sake of their children. To love more and to fear less and to put my face on on an issue, not knowing what people might say.  My husband stood beside me in that first broadcast, and you could literally see the toll it the work had taken on me physically. To watch some of those early interviews or to look at some of the pictures almost hurts, as I was a skeletal version of the person that I am today.

And as that appearance hit, I began to hear from countless others whose stories were the same.  Those whose children suffered from food allergies, those writing books, those battling cancer.  And I realized that there is far more that unites us than divides us, and that together, we can create the changes we want to see in the health of our families and food systems.

And as I reflected on the stripping away of old beliefs and the building of new ones, it reminded me that despite what can seem like insurmountable odds, we have more strength and courage that we are ever aware of, and love that can serve as a rocket fuel. But that we need friends standing beside us.  

So for those of you who have asked, "Where do I start?" "How do I begin to make changes in my community, school, state...?" The first thing that you must do is to find a friend.  If your spouse is on board, take it for the gift that it is.  If not, look (and don't stop) until you find someone who shares your passion and concern.  

Food is an intimate and loaded issue, and people can become incredibly defensive and say extraordinary things (I've been accused of just about everything!).

But the love that you have for your friends and family will serve as a rocket fuel.  And as you begin to express your concern over the state of the health of our families (on Facebook, on a blog, in your community, to your local Congressmen), you will quickly learn that your concern is shared by countless others (like the 900,000 Americans that have sent comments to the FDA), and it is together, that we can change the dialogue and create a food system that will define our families, farmers and future in a way that makes all of us, every American, both healthy and proud.

Sometimes it feels as if the world we grew up knowing has been thrown into a cuisinart and spun into something new.  And in some ways, it has.  With innovation and technology providing all kinds of never-before-seen solutions, this progress has been both awe-inducing and stomach-churning.  

Pick your headline and decide for yourself which way you want to go: from technology that enables us to connect with each other in ways never imagined to agrichemical ingredients being fed to the animals we eat, innovation is driving rapid change, as seen in these recent headlines:

• Last week Apple customers visited stores on four continents to deliver 250,000 petition signatures demanding better working conditions at factories making iPads and iPhones. (The delivery made news on CNN).  Just this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced immediate factory inspections, showing that the pressure is working
• McDonald's responded to the 100,000 people (and groups like the Humane Society of the United States) who told the fast food giant to stop sourcing pork from factory farms using inhumane "gestation crates," (cages so small that pigs can’t move or turn around).McDonald's told all of its suppliers yesterday to start phasing out the cages -- an earthquake for the food industry.

And as this change continues to happen, often at warp-speed, it is important to lend your voice.  If you don't think that one person matters, think again.  One person can make an enormous difference.  You can affect the change you want to see.  So start where you stand, with what you have, where you are.  Leverage the unique skills and talents that you possess with something that you are passionate about and create the change you want to see in this world of ours.  We've only got one shot at this, so be brave, be kind and be the change.