Dear House committee members,

Thank you for the opportunity to present testimony in support of I-522, the legislative initiative to label genetically engineered seeds and food. My name is Michael Hansen and I am a senior scientist at Consumers Union (CU), the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports. I have worked on the issue of genetically engineered (GE) foods for more than 20 years and have been involved in the decisions/debate about these foods at the state, national and international levels.

There is global agreement that genetic engineering is different than conventional breeding and that safety assessments should be completed for all GE foods, including crops and animals, prior to marketing. The definition of genetic engineering used in I-522 is the same definition that has been used internationally and refers to in vitro nucleic acid technologies, which have developed in the last 40 years or so. Genetic engineering is a new technology. Humans have not been genetically engineering plants an animals for thousands of years as some might claim. With genetic engineering you can move cow genes into pigs, flounder gene into tomato, scorpion gene into corn, mouse gene into pigs, spider gene into goats, human genes into rice, barley, and safflower, and jellyfish genes into rabbits and dogs. All these examples of new life forms that have been created using GE could never be created using conventional breeding or even new techniques like irradiation breeding or mutation breeding. GE has also been used to move genes for resistance to the antibiotics kanamycin, streptomycin and amoxicillin into plants; again a feat that cannot be accomplished by conventional, mutation or irradiation breeding. Genetic engineering is a relatively new technology that raises unique safety issues and should be subject to mandatory premarket safety assessment for all GE foods.

For the full testimony, click here.