Is GE Food Risky to Eat?

Humans share enormous numbers of genes with plants and animals, so this
particular eample may or may not be problematic! "h e #uestion, howe$er, gets to
the second important aspect of GE food! %ith GE, you can put genes from any
species into a plant, which means that each new GE trait needs to be e$aluated on
a caseby&case basis! I reply! I eplain that although there has ne$er been a GE crop
on the market that has harmed humans, there are cases of unepected
conse#uences in laboratory eperiments! For instance, when a gene encoding a
common bean protein was epressed in peas, a modi' ed form was present that
induced an immune response in mice!
For most humans, all the essentials of life(food, family, and work ha$e associated
risks! %e choose our risks consciously or unconsciously! "h e greatest ha)ards
usually arise from known high&risk beha$iors such as smoking or o$ereating, but
sometimes they arise from some randomness we could not ha$e foreseen! In the
case of pregnancy and childbirth, the de$elopment of modern medical technologies
ha$e greatly reduced the risk of stillborns but not eliminated them! In the case of
food, there is always some risk when we eat, whether the food was generated
through breeding or genetic engineering!
"he science is clear! "he current GE crops are safe to eat! "he fact is that there is
not a shred of anye$idence of risk to human health from G* crops! E$ery academy
of science, representing the $iews of the world+s leading eperts(the Indian,
,hinese, *eican, -ra)ilian, French and .merican academies as well as the Royal
/ociety, which has published four separate reports on the issue(has con'rmed this!
Independent in#uiries ha$e found that the risk from G* crops is no greater than
that from con$entionally grown crops that do not ha$e to undergo such testing!