Britain Finds Cancer-Causing Toxin in Organic Corn Meals
October 9, 2003
Great Britain has recalled all six tested brands of organic corn meal from its food stores after they were found to contain dangerous levels of fumonisin, a cancer-causing natural toxin produced by a fungus. The organic cornmeals were found to average nearly 20 times as much fumonisin-9,000 parts per billion-as the European Union’s new fumonisin safety limit of 500 parts per billion.
Recent tests have shown that fumonisins cause cancer in rodents at levels barely higher than those found in the contaminated organic corn meal products. At lower levels of contamination, moreover, fumonisins may contribute to birth defects and to liver and kidney diseases. Such diseases are widespread in developing countries where the food is virtually all organic.
Britain’s organic corn meal would also have flunked America’s slightly higher fumonisin limit of 2000 parts per billion, and much of it would even have been barred from livestock feeds. However, no U.S. testing of organic corn meals has been reported.
Twenty UK non-organic corn meals averaged well under both fumonisin safety limits at only 130 parts per billion. Conventional farmers protect their corn fields from insects and fungi with modern pesticides. Organic farmers tend to leave their corn fields unprotected, because of the organic pesticides (mainly toxic copper compounds) tend to be more expensive and less effective in protecting the grain.
Fumonisin is produced by Fusarium molds, usually when hot, dry weather is followed by high humidity. Some rural Mexican families, who grow their corn without fungicides and hang the ears in their rafters where the mold spores can proliferate, exhibit clinical symptoms of fumonisin poisoning.
Ironically, biotech corn produces the safest corn meal of all. The U.S. Agricultural Research Service has found that fumonisin levels in Bt corn (genetically engineered to contain a natural insecticide) are 30 to 40 times lower than in pesticide-protected conventional corn.
The Bt corn is far more effective at killing chewing insects before they damage the corn kernel than insecticide sprays, because the insects start ingesting poison the moment they start eating. Once chewing insects have broken the outer coating of the kernel, mold spores can infest the grain unimpeded.
Why haven’t the high levels of toxins in organic corn been revealed earlier? This is apparently the first time they’ve even been tested! Experts have speculated for decades about higher levels of natural toxins in unprotected organic grain fields, but government “watchdogs” have previously let the small volumes of organic products fly under the radar screen.
The British organic corn meal recall is a massive reality check for consumers who have believed that organic or “natural” farming means safer food. Conventional farmers have long maintained that the real danger in food production is the pests, not the safety-tested pesticides. The high levels of fumonisin in the organic corn meal endorse that judgment.
Imagine the front-page headlines if all the brands of a genetically modified food product had flunked an important government safety test as badly as organic corn meal has just flunked the EU fumonisin standard! The headlines would have flown around the world. Organic activists would have demanded the recall of all genetically-modified foods.
It’s worth remembering that organic farmers have now been claiming their foods were safer, more nutritious and better for the environment for 50 years - but have delivered no proof for any of these claims. The British Food Standards Agency has just, again, denied the latest Soil Association claims of “emerging proof” that organic food is more nutritious. The health implications of the fumonisin tests are obvious, and the International Institute of Food Technology warns that organic food is also more likely to carry manure-borne pathogens. (Composting the manure is an erratic process, not guaranteed to kill all the bugs.)
As for the environmental benefits, UK tests have just shown that organic fields have more spiders and ground beetles than conventional or biotech fields-but so what? An organic farming mandate for America would require the manure from another billion cattle, and we’d have to clear all our forests to plant clover and alfalfa. That would be terrible for the environment and lethal for our water quality.
Posted in Commentary |