Why Genetically Engineered Foods Should be Labeled: Gary Hirshberg at TEDxManhattan 2013

it feels preposterous and maybe even embarrassing to stand here twenty thirteen to say to you that we have the right to know what's in our food that's exactly what i want to talk about tonight and i want to speak about the fact that the U.S. does not mandate labelling of genetically engineered organisms you would know GE organisms they are otherwise known as GMOs these are plants or animals that have had their genetic makeup altered to exhibit traits that are not naturally theirs and this is actually accomplished by the transfer of genetic material from one species to another in a way that could never happen in nature or frankly through traditional breeding the leading biotech firms will go to great lengths on their websites to distinguish between genetically-engineered crops patented crop to pay on and those that they have developed through traditional breeding method and so they really are quite different and i wanna argued to you today that our federal government's failure to mandate transparency to mandate labeling of these new life forms is a complete breach of its responsibility to we the people and and i want to argue that we have a role in making that happen and argue also that the federal government's failure to be actively engaged in the science of long-term risk assessment of these new life forms is also a breach now interestingly one aspect of our one part of a federal government absolutely recognizes these crops as completely unique but U.S. patent office has given out hundreds of patents identifying these as absolutely distinctive new form that can be in fact owned and as you know these patents have been very successfully defended with tens of millions of dollars farmers who saved crops who saved seeds when their farms have been inadvertently contaminated with genetic uh... material or transgenic crops from nearby farms of accident successfully prosecuted for patent infringement now at the FDA on the other hand we have the exact opposite point of view the FDA's point of view for twenty years since nineteen ninety two keep in mind of these cops were introduced in nineteen ninety-six commercially but since nineteen ninety two the FDAs policy has been that these crops are substantially equivalent they are materially the same because they exhibit similar organ elliptic taste or smell characteristics or similar nutritional uh... characteristics and therefore it is determined that we should not be uh... they're not material to us to know and it's important to understand that this voluntary guidelines opted by the FDA in nineteen ninety two was not a result of input by the people are represented as this did not come out of congress this is actually a result of a process led by the council on competitiveness council competitiveness chaired by then Dan Quayle who you might recall and they it was actually a very brilliant move on the part of industry to enlist vice president quayle in creating this effort because this is in fact in the law of the land today even though there have been enormous changes over that time for example ninety percent of selling now out there is genetically engineered eighty five percent of corn is now genetically-engineered what this means is that over seventy five percent of the processed foods we're eating now contains genetically-engineered materials been incredibly successful but the data as overwhelmingly clear but the average citizen knows nothing about this now interestingly in fifty five nations around the world actually take the exact opposite view that when these crops are approved for commercialization labeling is absolutely required really progressive countries like well first of all of the EU and most of our trading partners but really progressive countries like russia china even syria have mandated labeling now you may wonder why did these countries offer liberties to their status is that we in the land of the free don't have that I assure you is beyond the scope of my discussion today but it has something to do with corporate influence in washington i'm pretty sure uh... the reality is...the question that you must we must ask is are they safe and that's a very important question but it's actually not material to whether they should be labelled this has become a kind of a smokescreen when these companies say well they're materially the same and a perfectly safe if a crop or an additive or process is found to be unsafe it's not just put on the label it's banned this is not about whether it's safer not this is about the fact that under the federal food drug and cosmetic act the FDA is required is accountable to we the people to make us aware of processes or ingredients that alter or materially change the food in a way that is not obvious to us so in the case of irradiation where we have mandatory labeling of irradiation nobody has proven irradiated foods are harmful or not uh... but there is a recognition in DC that this process is of concern to our citizens it is therefore material and therefore labeling is required and it's important note that the irradiation companies have not five takes there actually proud of their technology and it's interesting to contrast that with the chemical companies who own these GE crops the reality is is that we have lots of examples like this we have farm raised versus wild, we have orange juice from concentrate we have country of origin these are processes where you can say it's safe or unsafe and you can say that they're materially uh... similar but these are processes that concern people what i'm arguing is that we shouldn't be labeling we don't need to be labeling because they're proven to be safe or unsafe although there is something that i want to say about that in just a moment but rather because we are introducing new bacteria, new genetic material we are introducing new proteins that have never before been in these foods that is material to us now i do want to raise the concern because it's widely held out there that the lack of independent testing to determine substantial equivalence or material similarity is is a problem nearly all of the conclusions of substantial equivalence have resulted from studies either conducted by the patent holders or funded by the patent holders and indeed this is important because many of the promises by these very same patent holders have in fact gone unfulfilled for example we have a corn out there that's widely used that has an insecticide built into it called bt a formerly effective insecticide that has done a nice job of controlling root worms but we were told that this...at the time that this crop was being... was filing for approval that this bt insecticide would never survive in the human digestive system in fact that it would be destroyed by our saliva within seconds of consuming it now we have absolute input evidence and and published studies from two years ago that show the bt toxins are present in the core blood of pregnant women we literally have ingested these insecticides and they continue inside us numerous national academy of science studies revealed that well there are all kinds of reasons to believe that we may be introducing new toxins and new allergens in these cops but unlike with drugs where we have mandatory testing on animals mandatory human clinical trials mandatory trials of carcinogenicity of fetal impact, neurological impact and at least some limited allergy testing none of that is required believe it or not for these crops so there may be chronic problems happening across the country there may be links to the explosion of allergies that everyone of us is seeing around us but we have, epidemiologists have absolutely no way of knowing because without labeling we don't know if we're eating this stuff now there are lots of reasons to label there are allergen concerns there are concerns about independent testing their religious concerns my friends in the the religious community refer to GMOs as god moving over, they just don't like messing with god's work and i will tell you that the mellman group has done research showing that ninety two percent of americans when given the choice say that they prefer to know whether these crops or ingredients are in our food or not actually what they said there's no statistical difference between republicans democrats or independents and in fact what they also said that ninety two percent of americans don't agree on anything so this is a very meaningful meaningful statistic now let me say what is material from my vantage point we were told by these very same chemical companies on these crops when herbicide tolerant crops were that which is the primary gene available in these cops when they were first introduced we were told that they would actually result in a reduction of herbicide usage but here's actually what's happened we have seen since nineteen ninety six since these crops were introduced a 527 million pound increase and herbicides in 1996 we used 14 million pounds of herbicides on the three leading commodity crops, last year we use over 300 million pounds of these herbicides and the single dependence on these herbicides is creating all kinds of issues and never before really seen out there but for example the USGS, the united states geological survey reports that we are now finding glyphosate herbicide in the air in the spring in the summer throughout our rural communities and of course through drift everybody uh... downwind from this is breathing this stuff so we're literally breathing herbicides now and drinking it in our water with insecticides where again we've seen the second leading trait that's been developed is insecticide tolerance uh... we have seen a decrease actually this is good news, of 123 million pounds in the same period since these crops were introduced but we have this problem now which is that new studies have come out in the last year and a half, two years, that the corn borer, the corn root worm is now becoming resistant to what was used to be a very effective insecticide and again as i mentioned this insecticide is now present literally in our bodies and we're carrying it around with us and this indeed is uh... not uh... at all what was promised with these crops now i wish i could tell you that this was the end of the problem it's actually in fact the beginning because going along with the overuse of these herbicides has been an explosion of herbicide resistance out there twenty three different weeds are growing in more than half the states in this country on millions of acres that are now resistant they're no longer affected by herbicides which in smaller doses dosages used to affect them and so what the chemical companies have said is well farmers need to use stronger herbicides 2,4D, Dicamba, you may understand the last time you heard 2,4D is that it was fifty percent of agent orange and we're now using this widely across the country and in fact now new crops are being introduced that are genetically bred to be resistant to 2,4D and Dicamba in fact the weed science society of america is meeting later this month for a major uh... discussion and debate on this exact issue that we have essentially sentenced ourselves to chemical inflation, kind of an environmental and health train wreck and we're becoming more and more depending on these chemicals so this is a very brilliant brilliant business model the crop, the companies that own seeds make money by selling the seeds, they are patented and then they make money selling the chemicals that we are now becoming addicted to and required and we need stronger and stronger chemicals and indeed uh... in 2010 the President's cancer panel came out and reported that forty one percent of americans are going to be diagnosed with cancers in our lifetime and the smoking gun that this prestigious panel referred to in this study is chemicals, primarily herbicides and pesticides, in our air, water, soil and food months after this study came out out we had a study, a peer reviewed study reporting an absolute correlation between pesticide exposure and ADHD which is really an epidemic in our society so what we have here is a very simple situation let me summarize it we have no clarity yet on whether these crops themselves are inherently safe or not and we're not going to have that clarity for probably a generation yet at the same time we absolutely know that there's a direct relationship between using these cops and increasing chemical use- I would call that material to the average consumer This is no longer 1992 the twenty-year-old regulation that was the law of the land before these crops were introduced it's time to review them, we now know that this is chemical armageddon We have americans want to know, we are using more chemicals, the FDA can label, it's time for us to simply label very simply this is more than a fight for labeling, this is a fight about whether our government is of, for and by the people or of, for and by a handful of chemical companies and I invite you to learn more and join us at justlabelit.org Thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 89,801

Rating: 4.3075271 out of 5

Keywords: labeling, United States (Country), just label it, Activism, Technology, Sustainability, Design, ted, ted x, english, tedx talks, chemical companies, Education, Dance, changing the way we eat, Health, Food, Social Change, food labeling, insecticides, ted talk, tedx, pesticides, tedx talk, genetically engineered food, Science, ted talks, GMOs, tedxmanhattan, Entertainment, Business, Community, Global Issues, GE food

Id: pGyOwnqpCKk

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2013