GMO column sows dissent

I retired 10 years ago after a long career as a research scientist for Agriculture Canada. When I was on the payroll, I was the designated scientist of my Institute to address public groups and reassure them that genetically engineered crops and foods were safe.

I don’t know if I was passionate about it but I was knowledgeable. I defended the side of technological advance, of science and progress.

I have in the last 10 years changed my position. I started paying attention to the flow of published studies coming from Europe, some from prestigious labs and published in prestigious scientific journals, that questioned the impact and safety of engineered food.

I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat.

There are a number of scientific studies that have been done for Monsanto by universities in the U.S., Canada, and abroad. Most of these studies are concerned with the field performance of the engineered crops, and of course they find GMOs safe for the environment and therefore safe to eat.

There is however a growing body of scientific research — done mostly in Europe, Russia, and other countries — showing that diets containing engineered corn or soya cause serious health problems in laboratory mice and rats.

We should all take these studies seriously and demand that the government agencies replicate them rather than rely on studies paid for by the biotech companies.

The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment, are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.

There are no long term feeding studies performed in these countries to demonstrate the claims that engineered corn and soya are safe. All we have are scientific studies out of Europe and Russia, showing that rats fed engineered food die prematurely.

These studies show that proteins produced by engineered plants are different than what they should be. Inserting a gene in a genome using this technology can and does result in damaged proteins. The scientific literature is full of studies showing that engineered corn and soya contain toxic or allergenic proteins.
Genetic engineering is 40 years old. It is based on the naive understanding of the genome based on the One Gene – one Protein hypothesis of 70 years ago, that each gene codes for a single protein. The Human Genome project completed in 2002 showed that this hypothesis is wrong.

The whole paradigm of the genetic engineering technology is based on a misunderstanding. Every scientist now learns that any gene can give more than one protein and that inserting a gene anywhere in a plant eventually creates rogue proteins. Some of these proteins are obviously allergenic or toxic.

Letter To the Editor By Dr. Thierry Vrain

Thierry Vrain is the co-owner (with his wife Chanchal Cabrera) of Innisfree Farm in Courtenay. Since he retired from his career as a soil biologist and a genetic engineer with the federal government he has become a passionate advocate of organic farming. He grows vegetables and fruit, culinary and medicinal herbs (Chanchal is a practicing medical herbalist) and seeds, to supply their CSA weekly box program and local restaurants. Find Innisfree Farm on the web at http://innisfreefarm.ca.

GMO column sows dissent