US lawyer Steven Druker was given access to 40,000 pages of US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) files under public disclosure legislation and discovered that the FDA had suppressed fears from its own scientists that GM plants could produce unexpected new toxic substances. It ignored the views of 11 out of 17 FDA scientists (requiring mandatory testing and a freeze on sales until rigorous tests had been done) when it drew up lax rules on GM food safety, facilitating the US boom in GM crops in the early ’90s.

Ed.- The lawsuit launched against the FDA by a coalition of scientists and religious leaders uncovered numerous internal documents from the FDA, in which its scientists expressed concerns about the safety of GM crops and the advisability of classifying GM foods as “substantially equivalent” to conventional foods. Stephen Druker J.D. said in a paper: “No genetically engineered food has yet satisfied the criteria mandated by US law.”

Examples of internal FDA statements uncovered by the lawsuit included: “The processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different, and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks.” (Dr. Linda Kahl), and “There is a profound difference between the types of unexpected effects from traditional breeding and genetic engineering ...” (Dr. Louis Pribyl).

A selection of these documents may be viewed on the Alliance for Bio-Integrity website: www.biointegrity.org