ISIS: Transgenic Meat Scandal

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ISIS ReportTransgenic Meat Scandal

Prof. Joe Cummins jcumminsA gives a prompt account of how the United

States regulatory agencies allowed its universities to pass potentially

poisonous transgenic meat to the millions, thus reflecting badly on both the

regulatory agencies and the university scientists.

 

A fully referenced version of this document is available in the ISIS members

site. Full details here

 

The inability of the US regulatory agencies to prevent contamination of the food

chain with potentially poisonous transgenic plant and animal products has

reached scandalous heights.

 

Within recent months, we’ve learned that transgenic pharm crops have

contaminated food crops, and a transgenic papaya was approved for commercial

production even though it contained a transgenic protein whose amino acid

sequence is identical to a known allergen.

 

Now, the US Food and Drug administration (FDA) reports that the University of

Illinois has marketed 386 pigs that were the progeny of transgenic animals. The

FDA report indicates that the marketed animals had not been adequately tested

for the presence of transgenes, and fails to give details of the transgenes in

the experimental animals. It states its belief that the incident was an isolated

one, and that the transgenic products posed no health risks. The FDA report is

not entirely forthcoming or truthful; indeed, it reads more like a public

relations text on behalf of the corporations than a serious public information

document.

 

Andrew Pollack reported in the New York Times that some of the transgenic

animals had the gene for insulin-like growth factor, but that the FDA still

believed such genetic modifications posed no health concerns to those who have

consumed meat from the transgenic animals. Pollack also contradicted the FDA’s

claim that the present case was an " isolated incident " . In 2001, transgenic

animals had been butchered and turned into sausage.

 

The FDA’s claim that there is no health concern associated with consumption of

transgenic animals containing insulin-like growth factor is truly bizarre.

Insulin-like growth hormone is a wellknown cancer promoter, as is documented in

an editorial report published in the British Medical Journal in 2000. The

cancers associated with high insulin-like growth factor include colorectal and

breast cancer. The transgenic pork poses a real and immediate danger of cancer

promotion for consumers.

 

Let’s now turn to the famous earlier sale of transgenic pork that was ignored by

FDA. In 2001, carcasses from transgenic pigs created at the University of

Florida were sold for human consumption rather than being incinerated even

though they had, in addition, been treated with barbiturate drugs and

chloroform. Some meat was turned into sausage and consumed by a number of

people.

 

A report from Agence France Presse English Reuters treated the episode with

dismissive levity, calling it the " Wurst-case Scenario " and quoted a lady, who

ate five pounds of the transgenic sausage, pronouncing that it " tasted real

good " .

 

A more professional Gainsville Sun reported that the pigs had been injected with

barbiturates to kill them, before the carcasses were sold to a local butcher who

made sausages from the meat. The butcher was quoted as saying that, " we only ate

a little bit of it, we threw it out because it did not taste right " . But then,

the butcher also said he took the remainder of the sausage to the home of a

friend whose funeral was in progress, and it was consumed by the friends of the

deceased.

 

Neither government regulators nor journalists have come to grips with the

hazards of transgenic foods. As is clear in the present case, many of the

transgene products themselves could be dangerous.

 

But a more insidious danger is the exposure of the public to transgenic DNA,

which has the potential to cause cancer by jumping into the genomes of cells.

The first two cancer victims among the handful of successes of gene therapy,

identified within months of each other, ought to serve as a warning. As we have

repeatedly stressed, the transgenic constructs used in gene therapy are

essentially the same as those used in making transgenic plants and animals, and

carry the same risks.

 

Our government regulators have not been doing their job. But the worst offenders

are the scientists in universities who should have known better than to have

allowed the transgenic animals and carcasses to be sold as food.

 

A fully referenced version of this document is available in the ISIS members

site. Full details here

 

 

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