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NE Colorado | Typically the government's regulatory agencies do not do studies or tests on GMOs, chemicals, or drugs for that matter. There merely rely on data furnished to them by the makers of GMOs, chemicals, or drugs.
Probably what guarantees the safety of these things more than anything is the fact that the biotech, chemical, and drug companies know that there are hordes of law firms wanting to sue them into oblivion should there be any problem with their products.
In any case, there truly is a lack of independent unbiased research and to further muddle things up, there is a revolving door between industry and government. For example, the people in charge at he FDA or USDA or EPA may have once worked for or otherwise been influenced by Monsanto. How else can one explain the fact that the US is alone among industrialized nations for having approved Bovine Growth Hormone? Just ask attorney Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto then the FDA and then back for Monsanto.
Or how does one explain how Monsanto's chemical sweetener aspartame aka "nutrasweet" suddenly gets FDA approval once Donald Rumsfeld got on President's Reagan's transition team? Rumsfeld was, by he way, previously the CEO of a Searle which would become a Monsanto subsidiary.
Not that other companies don't buy politicians and government officials, but Monsanto does it far better than others in this sense. They even got their ex employee Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, who just happened to write the Supreme Court opinion approving patents on seed, thereby conveniently taking the issue out of the hands of the politicians, who don't have the guts to look farmers in the eye and do away with a 10,000 year old tradition of saving seed for one's own use.
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Why does Monsanto have such a negative public image compared to the other seed companies?
