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Too early for GMO industry to claim products safe

Here we go again. In the 1950s, a powerful industry said its product was safe. Back then, not only were people allowed to smoke on planes but the airlines gave out free four-packs of cigarettes.

Even when its own research showed that smoking caused tumors in experimental animals, the industry suspended the research and destroyed the results. The industry prevented the health-risk label on cigarette packaging for many years.

Next came high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). “Sugar is sugar,” so the industry said. Not. The research proved that sugar is not sugar to the brain and that the brain’s hunger center failed to be satiated when HFCS was eaten. When the health care industry said there might be a link with HFCS in our food and childhood obesity, people took notice. Now we see labels stating “No HFCS.”

Today, we have genetically altered foods (GMOs) being touted as safe. “It is the most regulated,” commercials declare. Yet, there is a dramatic unexplainable increase in the incident of autism in this country and cancer risk is now 1 in 8. Associated with GMOs? Who is doing the research? In the future, will we realize the association between GMOs in our food and health risks? Just because no one is dying today does not mean that GMOs are safe. No one ever died the first time they had a cigarette.

Mary Trotto

Kihei

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