Food Safety - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 586

consumers purchase organic foods in the belief that they are safer than conventional
food offerings. Recalling that organic food is often cultivated with composted manure,
it should come as no surprise that at least 51 people died and over 3,000 were made ill as
result of consumption of E. coli -contaminated organic sprouts across the EU in 2012.2
As this is being written, a multistate outbreak of Hepatitis A has sickened 113 people who
consumed an organic berry-pomegranate mixture. As a result of such misunderstand-
ings, consumers often do not take proper steps to avoid eating contaminated foods and
are frequently responsible for acquiring food-borne disease by malpractice in their own
homes.3 A quick scan of a food label provides a revealing insight into issues that manu-
facturers believe is of interest to consumers. Labels often declare that the product con-
tains no MSG although scientific studies show that mono-sodium-glutamate, an amino
acid that occurs naturally in food, is highly unlikely to cause an adverse reaction upon
ingestion. In this regard, most consumers are unaware that a fresh tomato can have as
much MSG as a Chinese meal and that food producers have replaced MSG with hydro-
lyzed vegetable protein (HVP) that contains as much MSG as was added when MSG
was an ingredient that consumers would accept. The label would also probably indi-
cate that the product contained nothing artificial and was all natural . hese statements
seem to imply that consumers should avoid human-made ingredients since their safety
is suspect, and should instead consume only all natural products. Consumer belief in
the superiority of things that are natural has been carefully nurtured by marketers, how-
ever, it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny. Human-made food ingredients are sub-
jected to years of research and careful review by government regulators before they are
approved for use in foods and thus represent the least hazardous and best-understood
components of foods. In contrast, some of the most toxic substances known to science
are natural products and the state of being natural does not inform a food-safety assess-
ment in any meaningful way.
Another statement that may be found on food-product labels is that the product
does or does not contain GM or GMO ingredients. In some countries a label dec-
laration of this kind is required by law. At the present time, mandatory labeling is
not required in the United States; however, mandatory labeling legislation has been
introduced in the U.S. Senate and in numerous state legislatures. Connecticut has
recently passed a somewhat limited mandatory GM labeling requirement; among the
limitations are that the law does not take effect until 5 additional states pass similar
legislation. One implication of mandatory GM food product labeling is that there
is some difference in safety between conventional products and those that contain
GM ingredients. This chapter examines the safety of GM or GMO foods that contain
ingredients that have been isolated from plants produced using the tools of modern
biotechnology. Many consumers have heard, and believe, claims about the dangers
of consuming GM foods (Sato, this volume). A considerable number of consumers
think that there exists significant doubt and an active scientific debate about foods
produced using biotechnology. This chapter briefly outlines the factors that lead to the
conclusions that GM crops, and the foods and feeds produced from them, are as safe
as any other.