According to the Just Label It campaign, more than 900,000 people have signed the petition to the FDA to label foods containing GMOs, and 92 percent of Americans support the labeling of genetically engineered foods as well. But while the non-GMO movement is certainly heating up, massive biotech companies such as Dow Chemical and Monsanto have filed concerning petitions with the FDA to deregulate their patented crops.
Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety—the nonprofit leading legal and scientific battles against GMOs—shares his views with Organic Connections magazine.
Dow is now seeking approval for a corn seed resistant to the highly toxic herbicide 2,4-D. “It’s associated with a number of diseases such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is cancer of the immune system,” says Freese. “2,4-D is also an endocrine disrupter. [It’s] very volatile and it drifts a lot,” he explained. “When you spray a herbicide it can drift hundreds of yards, and in some cases even more, to land on a neighbor’s crops. In the end 2,4-D is going to kill a large number of crops that aren’t resistant to it.”
Read more in Organic Connections.
