Reply to pro GMO op-ed

In today’s Strib there was an article in the Opnion Exchange about the slippery slope of GMO labeling.  It is part of a campaign to redefine GMOs as the same as traditional plant breeding. I wrote a response that you will never see in the paper. Here it is –

I would thought that you would have been too embarrassed to provide space in your newspaper to a piece so clearly written to deceive as the opinion piece on the slippery slope of GMO labeling.  The claim that  traditional breeding is  the same as genetic engineering is absurd. Selecting and crossing compatible species is not the same as shooting foreign genes into a cell.

Trying to redefining GMOs is a word game. That is not going to help the companies supplying Genetically Engineered ( if you prefer) food avoid the direction the market is moving.  Ask General Mills how their sales in the middle of grocery stores are doing.

GMOs in our food supply have been a very well kept secret since the 1990s. Today word is leaking out and no one likes it.  People are not stupid. They read these articles and see they are being told a lie.  That convinces them that the chemical companies behind GMOs (or Genetic Engineering…)  are trying to hide something.

Not to mention the Strib looks less and less like an unbiased provider of information. Yeah, yeah, I know that not all the copy on the Editorial pages reflects the views of the paper, but any reader paying the least bit of attention can’t help but notice what is selected for publication.

Lets get rid of the corporate speak and the verbal sleight of hand and have some real data. I’m  sure (well, at least hopeful) that long term (more than 90 days)  feeding trials were done to assess the safety of the novel proteins in Genetically Engineered food.  Lets see it.  I have looked for it, talked to a bunch of GMO supporters, and no one has ever seen it.  It is interesting that any research  using GE crops is tightly controlled by the chemical companies  who produce the seed.

I’m not interested in inferences from arguments that ‘people have been eating it for 20 years’… Besides being a totally uncontrolled ( unscientific)  feeding experiment, it is easy to find data that show an increase in the rates of  immunological disease, autism, etc. in the past 20 years.

No more word games, lets see the data.

Greg Reynolds