1. SEEDS OF DECEPTION - Now Jeffrey Smith's launch tour is over it's time you bought the book.
2. About Allergies (USA) explains why genetically modified foods should be a concern for those who suffer from food allergies
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SEEDS OF DECEPTION
Exposing Corporate and Government Lies about the Safety of Genetically Engineered Food
Jeffrey M. Smith
UK edition NOW IN STOCK
Green Books
www.greenbooks.co.uk
ISBN 1 903998 41 7
234 x 156mm / 256 pages / £9.95 pb
“This is a brilliant book . . . it positively fizzes with the human drama of the cabals and conspiracies behind the scenes which have littered the history of Big Biotech in its frantic efforts to get itself accepted. It is meticulously documented and powerfully written, somewhere between a documentary and a thriller.”””from the Foreword by Michael Meacher MP
"Some books””The Jungle, Silent Spring, Our Stolen Future””start revolutions. Jeffrey M. Smith's Seeds of Deception, an expose on genetically engineered foods, should join these ranks. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you don't know as much about the genetic engineering of foods crops as you should."””Diane Olson Rutter, Catalyst magazine (US)
Worldwide industry manipulation and political collusion, rather than sound science, are trying to force genetically engineered food into our daily diet. But Seeds of Deception reveals that alarming evidence of health dangers is covered up, that company research is rigged, and that intense political and corporate pressure is applied to accelerate the spread of GM crops.
Seeds of Deception shows that:
Ӣ Scientists have been offered bribes or threatened. Evidence has been stolen, and critical data has been omitted from research reports or distorted.
Ӣ Government employees who complained have been harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired.
Ӣ Laboratory rats fed a GM crop developed stomach lesions, and seven of the forty rats died within two weeks. The crop was approved without further tests.
Ӣ When a top British scientist tried to alert the public about his alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit.
Seeds of Deception includes the internal memos by US Food & Drug Administration scientists which warn of toxins, allergies, and new diseases; all these memos were ignored by their superiors, who included a former lawyer for Monsanto. The book also reveals how industry studies are designed to avoid finding problems; and that the FDA withheld information from Congress after a genetically modified supplement killed nearly a hundred people and disabled thousands. If you think that GM food is safe, this book will change your mind.
Jeffrey M. Smith has been involved with genetically modified (GM) foods for nearly a decade. He worked for non-profit and political groups on the issue and in 1998, ran for US Congress to raise public awareness of the health and environmental impacts. He is the founding director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, a member of the Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Committee, the steering committee of the Genetic Engineering Action Network (GEAN), and the advisory board of the Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods.
On February 22, 2002, Monsanto was found guilty of negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass and outrage. “Under Alabama law,” the Washington Post article explained, “the rare claim of outrage typically requires conduct ‘so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.’” The Washington Post, Saturday, February 23, 2002
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FOREWORD by Michael Meacher MP
This is a brilliant book which combines shrewd dissection of the true nature of GM technology, a devastating critique of the health and environmental hazards of GM crops, and scarifying examples of the manipulation of both science and the media by the biotech industry.
Despite the British Government’s GM Nation Debate in mid-2003, the level of understanding of GM remains alarmingly low in the UK. This book should be compulsory reading, not only for the general public, but even more so for the decision-makers who have never been exposed to systematic analysis of the problems created by GM.
What is so exciting about this book is that it is no dry text of scientific exegesis””it positively fizzes with the human drama of the cabals and conspiracies behind the scenes which have littered the history of Big Biotech in its frantic efforts to get itself accepted. It is meticulously documented and powerfully written, somewhere between a documentary and a thriller. It reveals above all that GM is not some arcane issue about science or technology””it is ultimately about power. There are no consumer benefits from GM crops, the alleged benefits to farmers are deeply disputed, environmental and health testing has never been carried out, non-GM farmers are being put seriously at risk. So why is GM being pressed at all? The answer, set out painstakingly and frighteningly in this book, tells us a great deal about how power is exercised today””funding political parties and key individuals, networking around opinion-formers and decision-makers, and fixing strategic job swaps between the biotech industry and Government. And this is not just conjecture; plenty of examples are given which illustrate how secretive and malign these influences are.
The main area of cover-up is undoubtedly the GM effects on health. It is a staggering fact that there have been virtually no clinical or biochemical tests of the impacts of eating GM foods on human health. Jeffrey Smith sets out, like a detective story, the unravelling of the L-tryptophan fiasco, the StarLink corn allergy mishap, and the cauliflower mosaic virus promoter hazard, as well as a host of other health risks, both predicted and unpredictable.
But the kernel of the book is the commercialization of politics and the politicization of science. For those who still believe the constitutional fantasy that governments act in accordance with their manifesto in the general interests of society, this book will come as a shocker. The exercise of power today is much more hard-nosed and ruthless, and the power-brokers are not the electorate, but Big Business. As a case study of this suborning of democratic accountability, Jeffrey Smith’s account is an eye-opener. But most of all it is a call to arms, not only to prevent the contamination of the nation’s food supply, but even more to tackle the poisoning of the nation’s decision-making system by the undercover wielding of economic and financial muscle and PR manipulativeness of Big Biotech.
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Genetically Modified Foods: A Concern for the Allergic
From Judy Tidwell, Your Guide to Allergies.
Do They Cause Allergic Reactions?
http://allergies.about.com/cs/gmfoods/a/aa103000a.htm
Genetically modified (GM) foods should be a concern for those who suffer from food allergies because they are not tested, regulated, or required to be labeled.
What Are GM Foods?
When gene technology is used to alter the genetic make up of any food crop, food ingredient or animal product it is considered to be genetically modified. Foreign proteins are spliced into common foods products making them genetically modified.
Other names used in describing these products include: Genetically Engineered (GE) and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
Soy beans, corn, canola (rapeseed) and cotton are the most widely grown GMO crops. Almost all of these crops are either "insect resistant" or "herbicide tolerant". The list also includes: peppers, peanuts, potatoes, sugar beets, sunflowers, and tomatoes.
Why Should We Be Concerned?
There is concern that GM foods pose an allergy risk. Currently the list of GM food products intersect with the eight most common food allergens: eggs, milk, fish, peanuts, shellfish, soy, tree nuts, and wheat.
Proteins in food are what trigger most allergic reactions in people. Most of the foreign proteins being gene-spliced into foods have never been eaten by humans before or tested for their safety.
There also is no mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods. Those who suffer from food allergies have no way of knowing if the food they purchase contains GM foods.
StarLink Found in Human Food Supply
A genetically engineered corn, Starlink, contains a special protein that takes longer than normal to break down in the digestive system. For this reason, it has NOT been approved for human consumption. However, it was discovered in the human food chain in the year 2000.
Scientists believe a protein's ability to withstand heat and gastric juices may cause an allergic reaction. Some allergy producing foods, such as peanuts, have this same characteristic.
BMJ.com quoted Representative Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, who has sponsored bills requiring labeling and safety testing of all genetically engineered food, as saying, "It concerns me, and should concern American consumers, that this is a glimpse of things to come as genetically engineered products are rushed to store shelves without real mandatory safety testing and labeling programs in place."
What Visitors Have to Say
GM foods have been a topic on the Allergies Forum. Here is a sampling of what is being discussed:
DONNIEJ: "These GM foods have been dumped on the market, untested, unregulated, and unlabeled. I feel that I've been used as a lab rat! Now that I've eliminated almost all traces of GM foods, I feel better then I had in several years. I still encounter allergens, once in awhile, but I'm not reacting constantly, like I was before."
JRANDERSON30: "My name is John Anderson. I am an activist for the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Greenpeace against GE foods. Our groups are totally against GE foods as well as GE anything (i.e. trees, cotton, fish, etc.). The "safeness" of GE foods as per the U.S. Regulatory Agencies are not accurate and not to be trusted."
What are your feelings about GM foods? To read the entire discussion or share your thoughts visit the Allergies Forum: http://forums.about.com/ab-allergies/messages?lgnF=y&msg=321.1