Tag Archives: FDA

Why test GE Bananas on U.S. citizens?

According to a recent NPR article, “Somewhere in Iowa, volunteers are earning $900 apiece by providing blood samples after eating” bananas that have been genetically engineered (GE) to produce levels of pro-vitamin A some 5-6 times higher than levels in … Continue reading

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Is FDA “Regulation” of GE Foods Legal?

Today marks twenty years–to the day–since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first pronounced a “whole food produced by biotechnology,” Calgene’s Flavr Savr™ tomato, “as safe as tomatoes bred by conventional means.” FDA’s announcement “was accompanied by a new … Continue reading

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Rebuttal to Statements Against SB 1381, The California GE Labeling Bill

Senator Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) has introduced a bill, SB 1381, which would require genetically engineered (GE) foods in California’s retail grocery stores to be labeled starting in 2016. I’m in favor of this bill because, as stated in its … Continue reading

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A Dearth of Life-Long Animal Studies of GE Foods

I’ve been corresponding with individual email-writers and I’ll occasionally post versions of my responses here because they tend to touch upon multiple issues related to genetically engineered (GE) crops in one piece (whereas I usually focus on fewer issues in … Continue reading

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Science-Based Regulation of GE Crops Requires More Long-Term Rat Feeding Studies with NK603 Corn

Although May 2014 will mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. FDA’s approval for and Calgene’s market launch of the world’s first commercially available genetically engineered (GE) whole food, the Flavr SavrTM tomato, it’s amazing how relevant that GE tomato … Continue reading

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How Slate.com botched a story about genetically modified food

A few days ago, Jon Entine posted a story on Slate.com reporting that Caitlin Shetterly’s feature in Elle magazine on genetically engineered (GE) corn (AKA genetically modified, or GM, corn) “just doesn’t withstand the critical scrutiny of science.” But Entine’s … Continue reading

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Should Monsanto be the Target?

As I read about the protests held against Monsanto worldwide recently, I found myself wondering: is Monsanto the appropriate target for these protests? I know there are reasons people are unhappy with Monsanto. One is that during California’s most recent … Continue reading

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Crop Genetic Engineering, Warts and All

This is a paper I wrote that was published by PBGworks October 26, 2012: Crop genetic engineering is a powerful technology that is helping scientists reveal how genes and genomes function. It could also be used to solve important global … Continue reading

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Corrections to San Francisco Chronicle article

I wrote the following letter in response to an article on California’s Prop 37 written by Stacy Finz  in the San Francisco Chronicle; it was published in The Davis Enterprise on August 24, 2012. First, there are currently no crops … Continue reading

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Open Letter to the American Medical Association

It is striking that nowhere in AMA document H-480.958, amended June 2012, is it mentioned that both of the major methods currently utilized to genetically engineer crop plants are highly mutagenic processes.  Foreign genes transferred from one organism to another … Continue reading

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