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ANALOGY. "Over 99% of GMO acreage is engineered by chemical companies to tolerate heavy herbicide (glyphosate) use and/or produce insecticide (Bt) ... Predictably, just like overuse of antibiotics in confined factory farms has created resistant "supergerms" ... we now have huge swaths of the country infested with "superweeds" and "superbugs." http://lnkd.in/dv-C3TS View in LinkedIn

EUROPEAN LABELING MANDATE. "All food (including processed food) or feed which contains greater than 0.9% of approved GMOs must be labelled. Twice GMOs unapproved by the EC have arrived in the EU and been forced to return to their port of origin. It was reported in 2012 that the EU imports about 30 million tons a year of GM crops for animal consumption." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union View in LinkedIn

GMOs IN EUROPEAN ANIMAL FEED. "As of August 2012, the European Union had authorised 48 GMOs. Most of these were for animal feed imports or for feed and food processing. There is also a safeguard clause that Member States may invoke to temporarily restrict or prohibit the use of GMOs ... By 2012, seven countries had submitted safeguard clauses." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union View in LinkedIn

EUROPE RESISTS GMOs. "The European Union (EU) may have the most stringent GMO regulations in the world. All GMOs, along with irradiated food, are considered "new food" and are subject to extensive, case-by-case, science-based food evaluation by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union View in LinkedIn

US VS EU GMO REGULATION. "From the 1960s through the mid 1980s, the regulation of health, safety and environmental risks was generally stricter in the United States than in Europe. Since the mid 1980s, the obverse has often been the case: a wide array of European consumer and environmental regulations, including those governing GMOs, are now more restrictive than in the United States." http://lnkd.in/dksQZJa View in LinkedIn

TRADE TALKS ON FOOD simply have heightened this perfect storm of the GMO debate. GMOs have been added to the long list of contentious issues on food regulation that hamper the free trade talks, and are poster children for very different philosophical approaches to food. View in LinkedIn

A PERFECT STORM has brewed, where the public distrust (warranted or not), of GMOs meets the willful introduction of antibiotic marker genes in GMOs into an environment where bacteria are known to promiscuously exchange genes through horizontal transfer. Add to this the issue of corporate bullying and issues of transparency in food labeling. This acute confluence skews an otherwise possibly rational discussion. Now all bets are off View in LinkedIn

WASHING OFF ANTIBIOTICS. "For highly processed plants such as corn, the drugs would most likely be removed ... But many food crops such as spinach and lettuce are not processed, only washed, allowing antibiotics to remain. One finding that particularly worries food scientists is the accumulation of antibiotics within potato tubers." (In the US). http://lnkd.in/duVnACR View in LinkedIn

TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT. "Vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota. People have long been exposed to antibiotics in meat and milk. Now, the new research shows that they also may be ingesting them from vegetables, perhaps even ones grown on organic farms." http://lnkd.in/dtwQkMM View in LinkedIn

ANTIBIOTIC MANURE USED AS FERTILIZER IN US. "Around 90 percent of these drugs that are administered to animals end up being excreted either as urine or manure. A vast majority of that manure is then used as an important input for 9.2 million hectares of (U.S.) agricultural land." http://lnkd.in/dtwQkMM View in LinkedIn