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In what could easily be classified as one of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) worst decisions yet, a final rule released by the EPA earlier this month creates an exemption for residue tolerance levels of genetically modified (GM) Bt toxin in GM soy foods and feed.

Essentially, the Agency has approved unlimited residues of GM Bt toxin in your food! Generally, one of the EPA’s regular responsibilities is to set a tolerance, or maximum residue limit, for pesticide residues on food, which are designed to protect you from harmful levels of pesticides.

By exempting Bt toxin residues from this, it “eliminates the need to establish a maximum permissible level for residues” of this pesticide when it’s incorporated into the plant. In other words, pesticide companies like Monsanto can incorporate as much as they want into your food  and that’s all right with the EPA.

How Can the EPA Claim Bt Residues Are Safe?

According to the EPA, they are “reasonably certain” that no harm will result from Americans consuming copious amounts of Bt-tainted foods (while this final rule relates to soy, similar exemptions for corn, cotton, and other foods have already been approved). The Agency stated:

“…there is a reasonable certainty that no harm will result from aggregate exposure to the pesticide chemical residue, including all anticipated dietary exposures and all other exposures [including drinking water] for which there is reliable information.”

However, the EPA’s assurances do little to quell the fact that in 2011, doctors at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec found Bt-toxin in the blood of:3

•  93 percent of pregnant women tested     
•  80 percent of umbilical blood in their babies     
•  67 percent of non-pregnant women

The study authors speculated that the Bt toxin was likely consumed in the normal diet of the Canadian middle class-which makes sense when you consider that GM corn is present in the vast majority of all processed foods and drinks in the form of high fructose corn syrup, corn oil, and other corn products.

They also suggested that the toxin may have come from eating meat from animals fed Bt corn, which most livestock raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are.

These shocking results also raise the frightening possibility that eating Bt corn might actually turn your intestinal flora into a sort of “living pesticide factory,” essentially manufacturing Bt toxin

from within your digestive system on a continuing basis through the transference of the Bt-producing gene to your gut bacteria.

What makes this all the more relevant is that Monsanto and the EPA swore that the Bt toxin produced inside the plant would be completely destroyed in the human digestive system and would not have

any impact at all on consumers. Turns out they were wrong