A report to be released
tomorrow by the National Academy of Sciences that was obtained by the U.S. Public
Interest Research Group today calls for important improvements in the oversight
of genetically engineered crops, including improvements in post-market surveillance,
but fails to fully address consumer concerns about these controversial products.
The NAS report—Safety
of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects—acknowledges
that "our ability to interpret the consequences to human health of changes
in food composition is limited." It calls post-market surveillance an approach
that "holds promise" while acknowledging that it "has not been
used to evaluate any of the GE crops that are currently on the market."
However, U.S. PIRG Food Safety Advocate Richard Caplan points out that the report
falls short of offering such basic recommendations as improving the current
voluntary oversight at the Food and Drug Administration to a mandatory system.
"While NAS has offered
some improvements, they fall far short of recommendations that would offer consumers
assurance about the safety of genetically engineered food crops," said
U.S. PIRG's Caplan. "That NAS is offering important suggestions to improve
the system when these foods are already on our dinner tables gives us cause
for concern."
Caplan cites as a major
weakness in the report its discussion of the potential allergenicity of genetically
engineered crops. While the report authors agree that allergenicity should be
evaluated "in every case" and that improvements to the current system
are known and have been thoroughly discussed, it fails to call on the FDA to
institute a mandatory pre-market assessment according to commonly accepted protocols
like the one laid out by the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health
Organization.
U.S. PIRG has long supported
a system that requires foods to be labeled if they contain genetically engineered
ingredients, which would help to accomplish a recommendation of the report that
the government should require that food labels include "relevant nutritional
attributes so that consumers can receive more complete information about the
nutritional components in GM foods introduced to the marketplace." The
report also calls for a significant increase in transparency of data submissions,
which would help remove the large cloud of secrecy surrounding whatever testing
is done on genetically engineered crops. For example, a Monsanto study recently
reported in Le Monde appears to show deleterious effects on rats in a
feeding study of genetically engineered crops, but the company has failed to
release it, claiming it as confidential business information.
"The fact is these
foods are on our dinner tables right now," concluded Caplan. "Unfortunately
there remains much work to be done to improve the system of oversight for genetically
engineered food crops, and it starts by changing the current voluntary system
at FDA to a mandatory one."
