For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Genetic Engineering page and our Millions Against Monsanto page.

From a regulatory perspective, GM crops are considered to be “substantially equivalent” to their non-GM counterparts. This means, that they are essentially the same, with no meaningful differences for your health or the environment.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has (so far)
not required labeling of GM foods because they are deemed to be “substantially equivalent” to non-GM foods. It is also due to substantial equivalence that no oversight or long-term safety testing has been required of GM crops.

Even experimental GM crops are being grown right alongside traditional crops, with little or no oversight and not enough protection to prevent cross contamination.

The term “experimental” GM crops is redundant, since
all GM crops (not just those that have yet to be approved) are an experiment of unforeseen magnitude  but as far as the US government is concerned, even “experimental” GM crops are not getting the oversight necessary to prevent environmental catastrophe.

GM Corn Modified with Hepatitis B Vaccine Grown with Little Oversight

GM “pharmaceutical” corn that is being used in an experimental trial for hepatitis B vaccine is being grown in an environmentally sensitive area along California’s central coast, just 100 feet from a critical habitat for threatened wildlife species.

According to data obtained by Hearst Newspapers under Freedom of Information laws, already two “incidents” have been reported. SF Gate reported:1

“At a secret location among the vineyards of California’s Central Coast, a plot of genetically engineered corn is producing proteins for industrial and pharmaceutical uses, including an experimental vaccine for hepatitis B.

The altered corn is growing with federal approval 100 feet from a steelhead stream in San Luis Obispo County, in designated critical habitat for the threatened California red-legged frog.

Agriculture Department inspectors have reported two ‘incidents’ at the site, including conventional corn sprouting in a 50-foot fallow zone, but the findings did not rise to the level of a fine or even to a formal notice of noncompliance for the company that planted it, Applied Biotechnology Institute Inc.”

The founder and president of Applied Biotechnology, John Howard, had previously founded another biotech company that has been banned from GMO trials because of contaminations in the Midwest that required a half-million bushels of soybeans and 150 acres of corn to be destroyed.2

But this didn’t stop the US Department of Agriculture for allowing Applied Biotechnology to carry out their outdoor testing of GM plants with altered genes never-before grown on the face of the planet.