Rep. Kucinich proposes legislation to ban open-air cultivation of pharmaceutical-producing GE crops

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: Kucinich, GMOs, crops

(NaturalNews) A long-time advocate of protecting the food supply from the detrimental, and most-likely irreversible, effects of genetically-engineered (GE) crops on the environment and humans, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has proposed new legislation to ban the open-air cultivation of GE crops programmed to produce experimental pharmaceutical drugs and various other industrial chemicals and additives.

House Resolution (HR) 3554, also known as The Genetically Engineered Safety Act, will prohibit biotechnology companies like Monsanto from planting GE crops engineered to produce experimental drugs, industrial enzymes, and "novel proteins," in open-air fields. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has already allowed more than 300 outdoor field trials of such GE crops without ever requiring proper safety studies, and the threat of widespread food supply contamination is extreme.

"Under pressure from profit-minded industry, we have already allowed the spread of genetically modified crops into our agriculture at great cost to our economy and with unknown effects on our bodies," said Kucinich. "Many Americans are unaware that crops that are genetically engineered to produce experimental pharmaceutical drugs are being grown in this country in the open, allowing them to contaminate conventional crops without detection. We cannot rely on industry to prevent the unintended spread of genetically engineered organisms."

Besides the cultivation of GM crops like corn and soy for use in the food supply, Big Biotech has been busy cultivating GE crops that literally produce drugs and chemicals right on the plants. According to reports, the industry has already created corn, soybeans, rice, safflower, barley, alfalfa, mustard greens, peas, sugar cane, tomatoes, wheat, and a variety of other GE crops that perform this heinous function.

None of these crops has ever been proven to be safe -- and that is, of course, because they are not safe -- and yet the USDA has given the green light to the industry to plant them in fields near food crops where cross-contamination is inevitable. And once contaminated, there is really no reversing the damage done, which has the potential to completely and permanently alter the food supply for the worst.

"This commonsense legislation would simply ensure that our experimentation with genetic engineering and cloning do not disrupt our traditional food supply," added Kucinich. "When you are talking about the safety and stability of the food supply, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Rep. Kucinich has also authored several other GM crop bills that push for proper labeling of GMO foods, increased regulatory approval requirements for GMOs, and increased farmer protections against GM crop systems (http://kucinich.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=1459).

Sources for this article include:

http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=271932