Having created quite a furore in the food manufacturing industry in the US with his ground-breaking book documenting 65 harmful effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), researcher and author Jeffrey M Smith, who is executive director, Institute for Responsible Technology, said India was facing a big threat due to high consumption of GM foods — being pumped into the market with no safety evaluation protocol.

“Even though there have neither been human clinical trials conducted, nor any post marketing surveillance surveys done to record their effects on the health, there are studies done on animals which have shown adverse effects of the GM foods, clearing indicating their toxic nature,” he said.

“Many unexplained buffalo deaths were reported recently in a village in Haryana. When our team went there and investigated the cause, we found that the animals had died after eating oil-seed cake of Bt crop. We discovered in the post-mortem that there was undigested food in rumen even after three days. In another incident in India, as many as 1,865 sheep died in Warangal in Andhra Pradesh, after they grazed on Bt cotton,” he said citing the incidents that he had researched in India.

“About 70 per cent of the food items we purchase from the market today is genetically modified (GM). The hotels and restaurants are using soya oil and it is believed 90 per cent of it is genetically modified and hence potentially harmful too,” says Smith, who is in India till February 6 to participate in a campaign against GM foods.

Smith will make a presentation before the Planning Commission of India tomorrow to press for a ban on the field trials of Bt crops and a safey protocol on GM foods.

“Consumption of GM foods without knowing their safety evaluation is a cause of concern as it is going to reflect on the health of the consumers who are using the food items without any knowledge of their potentially harmful effects,” he said while speaking during a talk delivered to the students of Dayanand Medical College and Hospital (DMCH).

He said that most of the research was confined to the industry-sponsored studies which avoided listing the harmful effects for obvious reasons.

“The industry claims GM foods are safe for the health on the basis of certain assumptions, which have now been proven false. Since they are only looking at the profits and are ignoring the comprehensive safety evaluation or developing a safety protocol. But we have sufficient evidence to prove the ill effects of GMOs as we have seen them on the animals like rats, mice, buffaloes and sheep.”