[4Canada]

<strong>Written By:</strong> 4Canada
<strong>Date:</strong> 2006-02-25 14:54:33
<a href="/article/2017335-are-there-human-genes-in-your-food">Article Link</a>

On its Web site, SemBioSys declares its plan to inject safflower with human genes to produce experimental insulin and a drug for heart attacks and strokes. WSU confirms that it plans to grow barley, injected with human genes, to produce artificial proteins with pharmaceutical properties. Where these fields will be is secret; nearby farmers and residents won't be notified.

Proponents say that injecting human genes into plants (or animals) will provide cheaper drugs -- someday. But this so-called "biopharming" has met with considerable opposition.

In California and Missouri, farmers protested and effectively stopped outdoor cultivation of "pharma rice," concerned that the drug-plants would contaminate their food-grade crops and make them unmarketable. Food companies such as Anheuser-Busch and Kraft Foods, as well as the Grocery Manufacturers of America and the Food Products Association, concur. The risks are more than hypothetical. Several cases of cross-contamination from GE crops have cost farmers and the food industry more than a billion dollars in recalls and lost export markets.

The National Academy of Sciences, a nongovernmental body of scientists and professionals, has warned in two reports that it's virtually impossible to keep biopharms out of the food supply if food crops are used to grow them. Insects, birds, animals, wind, storms, trucks, trains and human error see to that.


<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0224-28.htm">http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0224-28.htm</a>





[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on February 26, 2006]

[Deacon]

Hopefully only I cut my hand while preparing dinner.

[Bee]

All of a sudden I feel like missing my lunch today .

I wonder what Vegans and Vegetarians will have to say about this . We need more public awareness of research which is being done on crops, just like this one. Thanks for putting this posting on the board .

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" There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so ." William Shakespeare