GMO Author Reponds to Food For Thought

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on my article. As I discussed in the article, from all of the studies conducted to look at the safety of GM crops, there is no evidence that they are any different, in terms of public or animal health, from crops developed by conventional breeding practices. I refer you to Nicolia et al. (reference 24) and the reports of the NRC and European Commission that address these claims directly for both livestock and humans. As a scientist, and as I am sure you are aware, one has to be very careful in how you interpret or act upon simple correlations and until one applies scientific rigor and methods to obtain reliable data to gain objective insight they remain hypothetical. There has been an equally strong increase in organic food sales since 1996 that tracks the increase in the production of GM crops. The independent variables that lay between any of these comparisons are numerous and would require specific studies to address any cause and effect relationships. Many such studies have been conducted by numerous agencies and researchers, as I document in my article, and there is no substantiated link between adverse health issues and GM crops. As for scientific consensus, I think I have documented that extensively in the article (for more information, see reports on GMOs by the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Science, The Royal Society of London, European Plant Science Organization, and the American Society of Plant Biologists among others). From a scientific perspective, it is difficult to comment on the 1998 lawsuit without having scientific data and information that might have factored into any deliberations that led to its dismissal.