Monsanto spokeswoman Lori Fisher said the company decided several months ago to shelve the NewLeaf potato in order to focus its research and marketing funds on four far bigger markets for genetically modified seed: oilseeds, cotton, corn and wheat. In 2000, U.S. farmers grew on 45 million acres soybean plants genetically modified to tolerate exposure to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. Four GMO crops account for 99% of worldwide: soy, corn, cotton and canola. Half of all the GM O acreage in the world is planted in GMO soybeans.2 GMO corn accounts for 30% of the total global GM O acres, and GMO cotton accounts for another 14%.
The US was the first adopter of GMO crops and till the largest cultivator, accounting for 40.3% (73.1 million hectares) of the global area under GMO crops in 2014.12 Brazil grows 23.3% (42.2 million hectares), and Argentina 13.4%.13 Together, these top three countries grow over three quarters -- 77% -- of the world's GMO crops. India and Canada account for approximately 6% of the total global GM acreage each. China and Paraguay account for 2% each, and South Africa, Pakistan and Uruguay account for less than 2% each.14 Together, these top ten countries accounted for 98% of the total global GMO acreage in 2014.
Adding to the GMO concerns for French Fries and other potato products, you cannot ignore the acrylamide factor.
When you heat the starch in French fried potatoes to 425 degrees, the temperature level in most deep fat fryers, the starch turn to acrylamide, a known carcinogen. Below is the label presently required on fries in California, largely the result of efforts by the courageous Deputy Attorney General of California at that time, Edward G. Weil, who was quoted in a New York Times article by Melanie Warner September 21, 2005 that he was
"not trying to ban French fries," but that he needed to take action in the absence of regulatory decisions by either the F.D.A. or the California E.P.A.
The controversy started when Swedish scientists accidentally discovered acrylamide in food in 2002. The chemical had long been used in the manufacture of things like grout and adhesives and to perform tasks like separating solid sewage from water. Its discovery in food sent the international scientific community into a tailspin and ignited a debate over how chemicals in food should be regulated.
Under the Delaney Clause, which amended the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1958, no substance that causes cancer in either humans or animals can be added to food. But that law is normally applied to substances introduced to food, like dyes and preservatives, not those, like acrylamide, created by cooking. Frying and baking potatoes at home create acrylamide as well.
Here is a photo of the acrylamide warning on French Fries in California:
http://www.truthin7minutes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/McDonalds-FDA-warning-french-fries.jpeg
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Dated January 4, 2015, California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment on acrylamide in French Fries:
Acrylamide is on the Proposition 65 list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity (such as birth defects and other reproductive harm).
Acrylamide is formed in some baked, fried and roasted foods. It is also present in tobacco smoke. Smokers are exposed to particularly high levels of acrylamide.
Acrylamide is a carcinogen. It was added to the Proposition 65 list in 1990 because studies showed it produced cancer in laboratory rats and mice. In February 2011, acrylamide was added to the Proposition 65 list as causing reproductive and developmental effects because, in studies of laboratory animals, acrylamide affected the growth of offspring exposed in the womb and caused genetic damage that resulted in the death of mouse and rat embryos.
Plant-based foods that are rich in carbohydrates can form acrylamide when baked, fried or roasted -- whether they are cooked at home, in restaurants or by commercial food processors and manufacturers. French fries, potato chips, other fried and baked snack foods, coffee, roasted grain-based coffee substitutes, roasted asparagus, canned sweet potatoes and pumpkin, canned black olives, roasted nuts, prune juice, breakfast cereals, crackers, cookies, breads, and toast all may contain varying amounts of acrylamide. Foods that have been boiled or steamed do not contain acrylamide.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other health and scientific organizations continue to study the health effects of acrylamide in food. The FDA has not advised people at this time to stop eating products that contain acrylamide. The FDA does advise people to quit smoking.,
Normally, this level of convoluted Byzantine language would be an absolutely serious and scary warning for anyone with any sense of health sense or fear and concern over the proven medical effects of what you eat, thanks to the all-out efforts of then-California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and his Deputy, Edward Weil, but even this warning must have been hammered out through intense negotiations by the fast food corporations who wanted it watered and kept as vague as possible, under the circumstances, which in truth and in medical statistics are not at all vague.
This is the same kind of carcinogen label that we believe will soon come on all aspartame products, going further by warning that aspartame is not only a cause of cancer, but also a cause of birth defects.
For reasons only discernible to the Creator (and probably to the Emperor of Japan), the Japanese manufacturer Ajinomoto is not fighting such labeling at all in California, and only the American Beverage Association (formerly the National Soft Drink Association) and the Calorie Control Council (a lobbying group for the aspartame industry in the US) spoke out against such a label in the hearings in Sacramento in mid-November 2016, with specious arguments that since aspartame was approved for human consumption in 120 nations that somehow made ingesting formaldehyde harmless.
Has Ajinomoto given up on defending its interests in the US and particularly in the crown jewel of American states, California? After all, their market share is seemingly assured and unaffected by labels, a very few truthful news articles on aspartame, a few global activists like me, some old fuddy-duddy biochemists, oncologists, and internists, all minor actors in the context of the general ignorance and indifference of a sad majority of the American public, wolfing down those 12,000 food products and 6,000 medical products with aspartame, oblivious to its being metabolized as formaldehyde.
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