Genetic Engineering and Increased Food Allergies

Genetically Engineered Foods May Be Causing Increased Food Allergies. We have seen more food allergies and increased complications in treating patients since genetic engineering has become so common.

Charles Sheehan wrote an article, "Scientists See Spike in Kids' Food Allergies", Chicago Tribune, June 9, 2006. He stated there has been a huge jump in childhood food allergies in the US since the change in American's diet beginning in 1996 when bacteria, virus and other genes have been artificially inserted to the DNA of soy, corn, cottonseed and canola plants. These unlabeled genetically modified (GM) foods carry a risk of triggering life-threatening allergic reactions, and evidence collected over the past decade now suggests that they are contributing to higher allergy rates.

Usually people aren't allergic to a geneticly altered food until they have eaten it several times. So the testing that is being done is inadequate for long term effects. The only real test stated by a former FDA microbiologist, Louis Pribyl, "is human consumption by affected peoples, which can have ethical considerations. And it is the ethical considerations of feeding unlabeled, high-risk GM crops to unknowing consumers that has many people up in arms."

The UK is one of the few countries that conduct a yearly evaluation of food allergies. In March 1999, researchers at the York Laboratory were alarmed to discover that reactions to soy had skyrocketed by 50% over the previous year. Genetically modified soy had recently entered the UK from US imports and soy used in the study was largely GM. John Graham, spokesman for the York laboratory, said, "We believe this raises serious new questions about the safety of GM foods."

Critics of GM foods often say that the US population is being used as guinea pigs in an experiment. But experiments have the benefit of controls and measurement. In this case, there is neither. How could the potential allergen be identified? The Canadian government announcd in 2002 that they would "keep a careful eye on the health of Canadians" to see if GM foods had any adverse reactions, they abandoned their plans within a year, saying that such a study was too difficult. This was reported in "Genetically modified foods, who knows how safe they are?" CBC News and Current Affairs, September 25, 2006.

One postulated understanding of why a GM crop might create new allergies is that the imported genes produce a new protein, which has never before been present. This new protein may trigger reactions. This was demonstrated in the mid 1990s when soybeans were outfitted with a gene from the Brazil nut. While the scientists had attempted to produce a healthier soybean, they ended up with a potentially deadly one. Blood tests from people who were allergic to Brazil nuts showed reactions to the beans. This study was reported by J. Ordlee, et al, "Identification of a Brazil-Nut Allergen in Transgenic Soybeans," The New England Journal of Medicine, March 14, 1996. It was fortunately never put on the market.

If a protein in GM foods is causing allergies, then the situation may be made much worse by something called horizontal gene transfer (HGT). That's when genes spontaneously transfer from one species' DNA to another. While this happens often among bacteria, it is rare in plants and mammals. But the method used to construct and insert foreign genes into GM crops eliminates many of the natural barriers that stop HGT from occurring.

Remember the advertising on TV years ago that said it's not nice to fool Mother Nature. Never has this been so true than with GM foods.