Monsanto Modifies Soy beans To Grow ‘Fish Oil’

COMMENT: These articles are so busy being gleeful about the health benefits of Omega-3 fatty oils and the potential for not overfishing, etc., that they neglect the very real dangers posed by genetically-modified food sources. GMO experts like Jeffrey Smith have warned that not only have some genetically-modified foods proved to have risks of cancer and sterility, but that many genes do not work the way scientists expect once transferred to foreign dna sources (i.e. gene “A” in an animal may behave like gene “X” once spliced into a plant sources, or other animal source, etc.) Can the public be confident in the FDA’s ability to protect public safety when the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner of Foods is former Monsanto-exec and Monsanto-lobbyist Michael Taylor? Are potential conflicts of interest important anymore? Have GMO products undergone sufficient long-term studies?

Jeff McMahon
Forbes
April 13, 2011

The biotechnology firm Monsanto stands just one FDA approval away from growing soybeans that have been genetically modified to produce those omega-3 fatty acids that doctors are always recommending.

That FDA approval is expected this year, according to Science News.

Monsanto is so despised by environmentalists that Google’s first suggested search term for the St. Louis company is “Monsanto evil.” Readers of Natural News voted Monsanto the world’s most evil corporation in a January poll, giving the corporation a whopping 51 percent of the vote.

But there may be reasons for even health-loving greens to love “stearidonic acid soybean oil,” as Monsanto’s new product is called. Among them: depleted fisheries, environmental toxins in fish oil, and a new threat, the scope of which has not yet been fully realized: millions of gallons of radioactive water dumped into the ocean at the Fukushima-Daichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

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Fishy fat from soy is headed for U.S. dinner tables

Janet Raloff
Science News
April 13, 2011

WASHINGTON, D.C. Most people have heard about omega-3 fatty acids, the primary constituents of fish oil. Stearidonic acid, one of those omega-3s, is hardly a household term. But it should become one, researchers argued this week at the 2011 Experimental Biology meeting.

In any case, stearidonic acid should at least become a welcome constituent of kitchen larders. The scientists’ reasoning: This fatty acid can provide fish oil’s heart and other health benefits – without the fishy taste or high cost of finned fare. Beginning next year, it also can be supplied without harming a single fish.

Numerous health organizations advocate that Americans down at least two fish meals a week, notes Eileen Kennedy, dean of Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston. This emphasis on seafood is not because nutritionists prize fish, per se, she says, so much their wanting to see consumers get more of two long-chain omega-3’s in the animals’ oil: eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

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This article was posted: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 2:19 pm

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