Gene-edited foods

 

threaten your family's health

 

Support the AFFP campaign for effective safety screening and labelling of gene-edited foods

What is the problem?

Frankenfoods = health risk



⭕️ The UK Government has recently removed safety assessments and labelling from gene-edited foods. You and your family’s health is likely to suffer.


⭕️ The Genetic Technology (precision breeding) bill that was passed into law in March 2023 was founded on a MYTH that gene-edited plants and farm animals pose no more risk to our health and environment than conventionally bred ones.


Why should you care?


100 leading scientists and policy experts have made a joint statement that gene editing is not “precision breeding”. The term precision breeding is "technically and scientifically inaccurate and therefore misleads Parliament, regulators, and the public." They have raised concerns about health risks from gene-edited foods.³⁵

The New Global Threat

from GMOS

The video explains the serious, wide-ranging, long-term dangers from new genetic engineering processes.

Watch the Video

What is the solution?

✅ AWARENESS CAMPAIGN to inform politicians, the public and other environmental organisations of the dangers of gene-edited foods.


✅ SAFETY CHECKS. The scientific research overwhelmingly supports the need for stringent safety assessments. 


✅ GMO LABELLING and traceability. This is essential so that the crops and products can be recalled if something goes wrong. It will allow consumers to choose what they eat.


✅ JUDICIAL REVIEW if necessary, to challenge the Government to rethink its legislation and base it on sound scientific research and prevention of dangerous, unintended genetic mutations in the food supply.

We need your help

Together we can stop this

Support the campaign

You can help us by donating towards a public awareness campaign to inform politicians of the risks of gene editing and toward legal action against the recent passed bill. They need to know why safety checks and GMO labelling on gene-edited foods are essential and must be required by law. 

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Please follow us and share the Alliance for Food Purity campaign across all social media platforms. Ask your friends to write to their MPs also. We need to spread the word about the dangerous new Bill.

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References

  • (1a) New Bill

    1a) Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3167


    The Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/347/made/data.pdf

  • (1b-5) New GM plants do not have a history of safe use and should not be exempted from biosafety assessments

    1b) Eckerstorfer MF et al (2021). Biosafety of genome editing applications in plant breeding: Considerations for a focused case-specific risk assessment in the EU. BioTech 2021, 10(3), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/biotech10030010

    2) Kawall K (2021). The generic risks and the potential of SDN-1 applications in crop plants. Plants 10(11). 10.3390/plants10112259 https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/10/11/2259/html

    3) Eckerstorfer MF et al (2019). An EU perspective on biosafety considerations for plants developed by genome editing and other new genetic modification techniques (nGMs). Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2019.00031

    4) Gelinksky E and Hilbeck A (2018). Environ Sci Europe 30(1):52. https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-018-0182-9

    5) Kawall K et al (2020). Broadening the GMO risk assessment in the EU for genome editing technologies in agriculture. Environmental Sciences Europe volume 32, Article number: 106 (2020) https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-020-00361-2

  • (6) Gene editing makes the whole genome accessible for changes – unlike naturally occurring genetic changes

    6) Kawall K (2019). New possibilities on the horizon: Genome editing makes the whole genome accessible for changes. Frontiers in Plant Science, 10:525. doi: fron­tiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.00525/full

  • (7-10) Unintended mutations

    7) Wolt JD et al (2016). Achieving plant CRISPR targeting that limits off-target effects. The Plant Genome 9: doi: 10.3835/plantgenome2016.05.0047. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27902801

    8) Zhu C et al (2017). Characteristics of genome editing mutations in cereal crops. Trends in Plant Science 22:38–52. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27645899

    9) Biswas S et al (2020). Investigation of CRISPR/Cas9-induced SD1 rice mutants highlights the importance of molecular characterization in plant molecular breeding. Journal of Genetics and Genomics. May 21. doi:10.1016/j.jgg.2020.04.004 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1673852720300916 COMMENT: The study confirmed that the types of mutations seen in gene-edited animal and human cells also occur in plants.

    10) Höijer I et al (2021). CRISPR-Cas9 induces large structural variants at on-target and off-target sites in vivo that segregate across generations. bioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.05.463186. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.05.463186v1

  • (11-13) CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing can cause greater genetic damage than was previously thought

    11) Kosicki M et al (2018). Repair of double-strand breaks induced by CRISPR–Cas9 leads to large deletions and complex rearrangements. Nature Biotechnology 36:765–771. https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4192 COMMENT: The CRISPR/Cas9 technique as used in plants is the same. In the case of food plants, the cancer finding is not relevant, but the types of changes seen in this study could result in unexpected toxicity or allergenicity.

    12) Mou H et al. (2017). CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing induces exon skipping by alternative splicing or exon deletion. Genome Biology 18:108. DOI: 10.1186/s13059-017-1237-8. https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1237-8

    13) Shin HY et al. (2017). CRISPR/Cas9 targeting events cause complex deletions and insertions at 17 sites in the mouse genome. Nature Communications 8, Article num­ber: 15464. doi:10.1038/ncomms15464. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28561021

  • (14) CRISPR gene editing for gene therapy applications can lead to massive damage to chromosomes. While this finding was in the con­text of medical gene therapy research, it also has important implications for gene-edited foods

    14) Leibowitz ML et al (2021). Chromothripsis as an on-target consequence of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing. Nat Genet. 2021 Jun;53(6):895-905. doi: 10.1038/s41588-021-00838-7. Epub 2021 Apr 12. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33846636/

  • (15-16) Creation of new gene sequences leads to new RNA and protein products

    15) Mou H et al. (2017). Genome Biology 18:108. https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1237-8

    16) Tuladhar R et al (2019). CRISPR-Cas9-based mutagenesis frequently provokes on-target mRNA misregulation. Nature Communications vol 10, Article number: 4056, 6 Sept. https://nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12028-5

  • (17) CRISPR edits intended to knock-out the function of a gene failed to do so – instead, proteins were still produced from the damaged genes

    17) Smits AH et al (2019). Biological plasticity rescues target activity in CRISPR knock outs. Nat Methods 16, 1087–1093. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31659326 Smits AH et al (2019)

  • (18) Gene editing process induced mutations

    18) Tang X et al (2018). A large-scale whole-genome sequencing analysis reveals highly specific genome editing by both Cas9 and Cpf1 (Cas12a) nucleases in rice. Genome Biology 19:84. https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-018-1458-5

  • (19-21b) Unintended insertion of foreign and contaminating DNA into genome at editing sites e.g. antibiotic resistance genes in gene-edited cattle

    19) Norris AL et al (2020). Template plasmid integration in germline genome-edited cattle. Nat Biotech 38(2): 163-164. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-019-0394-6

    20) https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/fda-finds-unexpected-antibiotic-resistance-genes-in-gene-edited-dehorned-cattle

    21(a) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0413-7

    (b) https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-expertise-advancing-understanding-intentional-genomic-alterations-animals

  • (22) Insertions of multiple copies of the DNA molecules used as a template for bringing about the desired gene modification

    22) Skryabin BV et al. (2020). Pervasive head-to-tail insertions of DNA templates mask desired CRISPR-Cas9–mediated genome editing events. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32095517/

  • (23-24) Unintended integration of foreign, contaminating DNA into the edited genome

    23) Ono R et al (2019). Exosome-mediated horizontal gene transfer occurs in double-strand break repair during genome editing. Communications Biology 2: 57 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-019-0300-2.pdf?origin=ppub

    24) https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/gene-editing-unintentionally-adds-bovine-dna-goat-dna-and-bacterial-dna-mouse-researchers-find/

  • (25-26b) New legislation

    25) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/347/made

    26(a) Article about House of Lords report: https://beyond-gm.org/house-of-lords-says-gmo-amendment-lacks-clarity-beyond-gm-responds/

    (b) House of Lords report: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/8865/documents/89203/default/

  • (27-30) Environmental problems resulting from GM crops

    27) Landscape-scale distribution and persistence of genetically modified oilseed rape (Brassica napus) in Manitoba, Canada. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19588180/

    28) Long-term persistence of GM oilseed rape in the seedbank https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610060/

    29) Modified genes can distort wild cotton’s interactions with insects. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/modified-genes-distort-wild-cotton-plant-insect-interactions

    30) Gene-edited hornless cattle: Flaws in the genome overlooked https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/19084

  • (31-31a) Conflict of interest for UK Government’s scientific advisors

    31) See GM Watch’s report on the ACRE members’ declarations of interest:

    https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/19999

    31a) Food & Water Watch. Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence over University Agricultural Research. Food & Water Watch; 2012. http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/news/public-research-private-gain-corporate-influence-over-university-agricultural-research 

  • (32) Evidence that natural breeding leaves parts of the genome protected from changes

    32) J. Grey Monroe et al. Mutation bias reflects natural selection in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature. 12 Jan 2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04269-6

  • (33) Warning from 61 leading international scientists

    33) https://ensser.org/publications/ngmt-statement

  • (34) Mutations from unintended action of the gene editing tool itself

    34) Hahn F, Nekrasov V (2018) CRISPR/Cas precision: do we need to worry about off-targeting in plants? Plant Cell Reports 38:437–441. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00299-018-2355-9

  • (35) Gene editing is not “precision breeding” and the term is misleading

    35)https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bTXTWZwwDHfReRaiA4Kt25Jfrqab4iNyAlLAsEGTPR4/edit?usp=sharing


    https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20092


  • (36) Animal welfare concerns

    36) Guo R et al (2016). Generation and evaluation of Myostatin knock-out rabbits and goats using CRISPR/Cas9 system. Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 29855. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep29855/ ; Farming UK (2022). Gene-editing bill 'a serious setback' for animal welfare, RSPCA warns. 26 May. https://www.farminguk.com/news/gene-editing-bill-a-serious-setback-for-animal-welfare-rspca-warns_60462.html ; Rana P, Craymer L (2018). Big tongues and extra vertebrae: The unintended consequences of animal gene editing. Wall St Journal, 14 Dec. https://www.wsj.com/articles/deformities-alarm-scientists-racing-to-rewrite-animal-dna-11544808779?mod=e2tw

  • (37-41) Glyphosate health hazards

    37) Guyton KZ et al. International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group, IARC, Lyon, France. Carcinogenicity of tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate. Lancet Oncol. 2015 May;16(5):490-1 https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(15)70134-8

    38) (132) Portier CJ, Armstrong BK, Baguley BC, et al. Differences in the carcinogenic evaluation of glyphosate between the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). J Epidemiol Community Health. 2016;70(8). doi:10.1136/jech-2015-207005 

    39) (133) Portier CJ, Clausing P. Re: Tarazona et al. (2017): Glyphosate toxicity and carcinogenicity: a review of the scientific basis of the European Union assessment and its differences with IARC. Arch Toxicol. 2017;91(9):3195-3197. doi:10.1007/s00204-017-2009-7 

    40) (134) Robinson C, Portier CJ, Čavoški A, et al. Achieving a high level of protection from pesticides in Europe: Problems with the current risk assessment procedure and solutions. Eur J Risk Regul. Published online 2020:1-31. doi:10.1017/err.2020.18

    41) (135) Antoniou M, Habib MEM, Leifert C, et al. Teratogenic effects of glyphosate-based herbicides: Divergence of regulatory decisions from scientific evidence. J Env Anal Toxicol. 2012;S4:006. doi:10.4172/2161-0525.S4-006 


  • (42-65) Damaging health effects of GMOs

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