Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job – Philip Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications. 'Playing God in the Garden' New York Times Magazine.
Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety – FDA, 'Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties' (GMO Policy), Federal Register, Vol. 57, No. 104, p. 229.
The scope of the fraud, if you will – I know that’s a harsh word – the scope of the fraud that’s being sold to the American public about this technology is almost unprecedented.
They have no control over where in that cell or where in that plant’s genome the new genetic material gets lodged and expressed. Because they don’t have control over that, they have absolutely no basis to predict how that trans-gene, the new genetic material, is going to behave in the future as that plant deals with stresses in its environment – whether it’s drought, too much water, pest pressures,imbalances in the soil, or any other source of stress.
They just don’t know how it’s going to behave. They don’t know how stable that expression is going to be, or whether the third generation of the plant is going to behave just like other generations. They don’t know whether the promoter gene, which has been moved into the plant to turn on the new piece of genetic material, will influence some other biosynthetic pathway that’s in the plant, turning on some natural process of the plant when it shouldn’t be turned on, or turning it off too soon.