The Current Food Regulations and Monitoring
The government guidelines and procedures are not firm enough on their rules to protect the care of the public.
The Center for Food safety has an article that discusses the health and animal welfare standards related to trans-genes in agriculture. Essentially, federal agencies have not addressed how -or even if- they intend to regulate GE animals. GE animals are animals that have been genetically engineered and had a direct manipulation of the organism’s genes.This can be done for many different reasons which could include making the animals disease resistant, parasite resistant, and withstand stress. However, these manipulations of the animals genes can and do cause other side affects that can affect the consumers when we eat the food that has been altered and no longer is natural.
The Center for Food safety directly states, “the U.S. no labeling requirements for GE foods or animals, leaving consumers in the dark as to whether the meat or milk they purchase is from a GE animal.” This proves the current human health effects of using pharmaceutical produced GE animals are disturbing and yet not adequately assessed. Despite widespread concern about the risks of GE meat and milk entering human food supply, regulations fail to ensure the separation of transgenic animal products. The same article also clarifies, “This lack of labeling also makes it all but impossible to track potential health impacts from consuming such products”. Likewise, there are no laws regarding the fate of unused products.
The point is posed that the dead animals from these genetic operations could end up being rendered for cosmetics, animal feed, and even pet food. There is some authority regarding GE animals, but the law is riddled with shortcomings when applied to the GE animals specifically due to its being developed with conventional drugs in mind. All of this combined can cause foodborne illnesses, which according to the Centers for Disease Control, “every year 47.8 million people (one in six Americans) are sickened as a result of foodborne illness.” This is not only unacceptable, but the situation worsens when the article also explains “Tragically, three thousand die annually and nearly 128,000 are hospitalized. Among all age groups, children under five are most likely to become ill, most likely to be hospitalized, and most likely to die. Those that recover often suffer severe long‑term effects, such as kidney failure, chronic arthritis, and brain and nerve damage.” It is far too obvious that the lack of regulations is causing an epidemic in the country. There are risks such as assessment problems, lack of criteria for assuring human food safety, and difficulty monitoring and regulating the offspring of GE animals.
