Stacking GMO traits causes unpredictable, dangerous gene expressions ignored by regulators

Monday, January 11, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: GMO traits, gene expressions, herbicide

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(NaturalNews) The World Health Organization (WHO) is getting real about GMOs and coming out about the dangers of the world's most popular herbicide chemical -- glyphosate. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which reports to WHO, is finally reporting that Monsanto's glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans." It's about time!

Two of the most genetically modified crops, corn and soybeans, are specifically designed to withstand glyphosate. This collusion allows for widespread use of glyphosate on the foods that most of the population eats. The same chemicals that sprayers wear protective suits for are the same chemicals that the biotech industry pretends are safe for everyone to eat. Since glyphosate works as an antibiotic in the guts of humans, crops sprayed with it are really foods bathed in drugs. The population is practically being mass-medicated through their food supply by chemical drugs. The consequences are real today and include the depletion of good gut microbes that facilitate nutrient absorption and protect the whole body from toxins.

What hardly anyone is looking at is how these herbicides do more damage when mixed with the insecticidal properties of genetically modified food.

European food safety regulators don't test stacked GM traits, liken them to parent varieties, despite stark differences

A new scientific paper is challenging regulators around the world to assess the risks associated with stacked traits in genetically modified crops. For places like Europe, regulations have consistently been used to ensure full risk assessment of new GMO traits regardless of whether the parent variety had already been approved. In contrast, a country like Brazil does not look at safety of secondary GMO traits. If a parent variety has been approved, variants in crop DNA changes can slip through unregulated.

As the rush to approve new GMOs increases, regulators in Europe have become hasty in their regulatory approach. In November 2013, a stacked trait for genetically modified maize was hastily approved for both food and feed in Europe. The new GM maize, SmartStax, was not formally investigated for underlying synergistic effects that can occur by combining the crop's insecticidal toxins with residues that come from herbicide spraying. The European Food Safety Authority doesn't require animal feeding studies on GM crops with stacked traits. Experts from EU member states, including Belgium, Germany and Austria, are calling out for feeding studies that investigate synergistic effects between the insecticidal properties produced by GMOs and the weed killer properties expressed by herbicides.

Austrian experts are speaking out that the safety of "all newly expressed proteins in animal models" is not being assessed, including combined, simultaneous applications. "Insecticidal Cry proteins produced by GM plants as well as transproteins conferring tolerance to herbicides constitute a sum of new plant constituents possibly interacting within the organism. So far, there is absolutely no scientific knowledge about such those in the respective new combinations and possibly resulting additive and/or synergistic effects."

Stacking GMO traits changes protein expression which may lead to crops with less nutritional value

Just because a single-trait GMO is approved for widespread use does not mean that stacked GMO traits are going to be function the same as the parent variety. However, the industry and regulators often overlook this. Entire metabolic pathways can be changed in a stacked-trait GM crop, compromising safety. This can introduce new toxins, allergens or altered nutritional values without anyone ever noticing.

According to new studies, stacked GMO traits (in GM maize) have 34 percent less expression of transgenes when compared to single-trait GM maize. The synergistic effects of insecticidal transgenes and herbicides changes the expression of proteins in an antagonizing way. These changes effect metabolic pathways such as energy/carbohydrate and detoxification metabolism.

Sources for this article include:

http://gmwatch.org

http://www.biomedcentral.com

http://www.foxnews.com