Reasons to sign

Why sign the Open Letter demanding withdrawal of GE foods?

Some common doubts and brief answers with links to more information.

Doubt 1:

Answer:
1. The issue is very simple and does not require any specialist competence to understand. It takes only a few minutes of study of the facts to realize why withdrawal is necessary.


a) It is very obvious that "substantial equivalence" is an invalid unscientific safety criterion (actually being a judical invention to facilitate rapid GE food approval), see "Substantial equivalence versus scientific food safety assessment".

This is not just a technical matter of food safety assessment. It is a matter of principle of general societal importance. The application of a Substantial Equivalence represents an unaccepable attempt to bypass sound science in a question of vital importance for public health at a global scale - the approval of a new category foods, the safety of which is very incompletely known.

b) It is a scientifically established fact that artificial insertion of genes may cause completely unexpected metabolic disturbances that may result in harmful substances, see "The safety of GE foods. Reasons to expect hazards and the risk for their appearance", written by an interdisciplinary team of ten experts on all relevant aspects of the issue. Recently unearthed secret documents show that this has been recognized even by FDA and EU experts, see "Inadequate functioning of governmental bodies"

c) It is a fact, recognized by all experts, that it is much more difficult to assess the safety of food than to assess drug safety. Over 10% of drugs that "pass" billion dollar safety assessment programs still turn out to have serious side-effects, see "No safety assessment methods are fully reliable". Only very careful long term studies can detect harmful substances in GE foods. - The very superficial testing, accepted in the case of substantial equivalence, is completely unreliable. Yet, all GE foods on the market have been approved on the basis of such testing.

2. Biotech advocates and PR firms have worked hard to make governements believe that GMO resistance is only an expression of consumer ignorance and irrational fears for new technologies. Our letter disqualifies this key argument and points to scientific reasons for withdrawal.

3. Few specialists can sign without risking their job and career because a large part of the research related to the issue is sponsored by the biotech industry. To back them, we need the participation of a large number of scientists and other persons with qualified academic training.

Doubt 2.

Answer:
This is a dishonest, seriously misleading and irrelevant argument. What is relevant is that it has not been proven that GE foods are harmless. For example DDT caused extensive damage worldwide because it was released although is was not proven that it was harmless. Leading scientists are the prime cooperation targets for biotech companies, and cannot be trusted uncritically in this issue. Go by the facts, not by "authorities", see also "Dysfunctional science - Towards a "pseudoscientific world order?".

Doubt 3:

Answer:
This is not true. Even some biotech advocates now admit that none of the present GE foods are of any significant value to mankind. The biotech propaganda has created confusion in using potential usefulness of future GE foods as arguments for approving present useless foods, see "The GE-foods developed so far are of no significant value for mankind. It is an unproven hypothesis that future GE foods may reduce world hunger.

Doubt 4:

Answer:
This has been a major selling argument, which in practice has not turned out to be true according to recent studies. See for example
a) the recent report of World Wildlife Fund, "WWF Report: GE&Pesticides".
b) "Genetically Engineered Roundup Ready Soy crops less profitable than conventionally bred varieties". - Over 8000 university-based field studies finds lower yields and increased use of herbicide compared to conventionally bred soy.
But most important: Even if the GE crops were more friendly to the environment, this would not justify the exposition of millions of people to unknown health hazards from eating them.

Doubt 5:

Answer:
Our role is to inform governments what is the logical and responsible decision to make on the basis of scientific facts. The feasibility of withdrawal is completely irrelevant in this context. It would give the governments seriously misleading signals if we demanded anything less. Considering that present GE foods are of insignificant value for mankind there is no reasonable justification for delaying withdrawal. Our letter provides important support to increasing worldwide consumer demands for withdrawal. Already, the GE-advocating governments have been forced to change their policy considerably.

Jaan Suurkula M.D.

Convinced? Here you can sign:

Signature form for Students (Collection of signatures started on March 21. A separate students signature list will be created. The open letter text will be modified to accomodate for students)