What the Experts Say

Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director, Center for Food Safety

"Biological pollution is very different than chemical pollution. Chemical pollution, however horrible, does dilute over time, and it can often be contained. However, once you release an organism into the environment, it cannot be recalled or contained. It will not dilute, but rather will reproduce, disseminate, and mutate. It is unstoppable."

Dr. Miguel Alteiri, University of California, Berkeley
"Unless whole regions are declared GM agriculture free, the development of distinct systems of agriculture (GM and non-GM) will be impossible as GM agriculture emerges at the expense of all other forms of production."

American Corn Growers Association (www.acga.org)
The door seems to be opening for greater opportunities for those agricultural producers who plant non-GMOs. A larger number of grain processors and handlers are offering premiums for non-GMOs. The Aurora Co-op in Nebraska, the state’s largest, recently began offering 7 to 8 cent premiums for non-GMO corn and 10 cents for non-GMO beans.  
Identity preserved loads of non-GMO corn and beans will find increased market demands. As shippers seek to serve overseas customers, non-GMO growers will be required and offered incentives.
If a farmer can certify their crops to be non-GMO, they hold the promise of meeting consumer demand.

National Family Farm Coalition (www.nffc.net)
Shortly after the commercial introduction of genetically engineered (GE) crops in 1996, farmers in the United States began to raise concerns about the impacts of biotechnology in agriculture. To promote the introduction of GE crops, The biotechnology industry spent $500 million to promote the introduction of GE crops, bombarding with advertisements touting the advantages of genetic engineering – lower costs of production, higher yields, greater convenience and reduced pesticide use. Evidence quickly mounted that the reality did not match the representations and farmers began to question the agronomic and economic value of genetic engineering in agriculture and its impact on the environment, food safety and the future of family farming.

Read the Farmers' Declaration on Genetic Engineering in Agriculture
http://www.nffc.net/resources/statements/declare.html

National Farmers Union (nfu.org)
We support a moratorium on the patenting and licensing of new transgenic animals and plants developed through genetic engineering until the broader legal, ethical, and economic questions are resolved. The moratorium should include the introduction, certification and commercialization of genetically engineered crops, including all classes of wheat, until issues of cross-pollination, liability, commodity and seed stock segregation and market acceptance are adequately addressed. Research should be exempt from this moratorium. 
Should commercialization of a new GMO become imminent we encourage the 
appropriate regulatory authority to provide for a public input and review process, including production of economic and environmental impact analysis prior to commercialization; 

Community Alliance with Family Farmers (www.caff.org)
CAFF supports a moratorium on genetically engineered food and crops until:
• long-term testing of impacts of any CMO on human health and the environment has been conducted
• results of such tests have been disseminated to farmers, consumers and any other affected parties
• farmers are assured full indemnification of liability
• all food containing GMOs should be labeled
• the patent holders are held fully liable for any adverse impacts on human health or the environment resulting from GMOs developed with their technology

Organic Farming Research Foundation (www.ofrf.org)
The Organic Farming Research Foundation believes that the profitability of farming and food security would both improve without genetic engineering if farmers and researchers put more effort toward developing ecologically sustainable systems. Therefore we generally oppose the use of genetic engineering in agriculture. Our specific positions are as follows:

1. A moratorium on genetically modified organism (GMO) releases should be imposed unless and until the regulatory regime has been greatly strengthened to include, at least, extensive evaluation of environmental consequences and secondary ecological effects, and pre-market safety testing of genetically modified foods and ingredients.

2. The manufacturers and distributors of genetically engineered products must bear liability for any external costs to individuals and the environment caused by physical spillover effects.

3. At such time that adequate regulatory conditions have been put in place to warrant the release of some GMOs for use in non-organic agriculture, then the products, byproducts, and derivatives of genetic engineering should be explicitly labeled as such at every stage of manufacture, production, and sale, to allow growers and consumers to freely decide if they want to use or consume GMOs. The costs of such labeling and verification should be borne
totally by the manufacturers of genetically engineered products.

4. As determined by international norms, U.S. consumer demand, and as codified by the U.S. National Organic Standards Board and the USDA National Organic Program regulations, the products, byproducts, and derivatives of genetic engineering should continue to be excluded from organic production and handling systems.

Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org)

"Genetically modified crops pose six kinds of potential environmental risks:

1. The engineered crops themselves could become weeds;
2. The crops might serve as conduits through which new genes move to wild plants, which could then become weeds;
3. Crops engineered to produce viruses could facilitate the creation of new, more virulent or more widely spread viruses;
4. Plants engineered to express potentially toxic substances could present risks to other organisms like birds or deer;
5. Crops may initiate a perturbation that may have effects that ripple through an ecosystem in ways that are difficult to predict;
6. The crops might threaten centers of crop diversity."

Jeffrey Smith, Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and author of Seeds of Deception:Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating

"Americans eat genetically modified foods everyday. Although the GE tomato has been taken off the market, millions of acres of soy, corn, canola, and cotton have had foreign genes inserted into their DNA. While there are only a handful of published animal safety studies, mounting evidence, which needs to be followed up, suggests that these foods are not safe."

Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet and founder of Food First, Seeds of Doubt

"Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of democracy. Thus it can never be solved by new technologies, even if they were to be proved "safe." It can only be solved as citizens build democracies in which government is accountable to them, not private corporate entities."