Organic vs. GM
Organic foods are often considered the “gold standard” of safety and healthfulness to which all other foods should aspire. This carefully crafted perception is used by the organic food industry to justify the higher price of organic produce. This industry has also campaigned against genetically-modified crops, using terms like “Frankenfoods” - claiming that they are unnatural creations of technology, dangerous for human health and bad for the environment. An increasing number of scientific studies have established that these claims have little merit.
For example, Bt-type GM corn, which resists insect infestation, has been demonstrated to be safer for people than traditionally and organically grown corn. Bt-corn has been discovered to contain on average 900 percent less cancer-causing mycotoxins than the non-GM corn varieties grown by organic and traditional farmers. Pathogenic fungi, such as Fusarium molds, make mycotoxins when they infect grain crops. In laboratory experiments, the fungal mycotoxins cause a variety of cancers (brain, liver, kidney) and other illnesses. In 1989, high levels of mycotoxins in the U.S. corn crop resulted in large-scale field outbreaks of brain tumors in horses and lethal lung edemas in pigs. The most recent research has found truly dangerous levels of fumonisin-type mycotoxins in organic corn products, 
and fumonisins have now also been shown to produce spina bifida birth defects in humans and liver toxicity in mice and humans. Sadly, most food processing treatments do not reduce the toxic affect. Fusarium-derived mycotoxins have been found in food products as diverse as corn flakes and beer. Three large international studies have reported on the mycotoxin content of hundreds of corn samples collected in eighteen countries. In one study, the average content of just one type of mycotoxin in non-GM corn samples was about 12 micrograms per gram of seed, whereas the content in GM corn samples was only 1.3 micrograms per gram of seed.
Why does Bt-corn contain far lower levels of mycotoxins? Fusarium molds primarily enter corn plants through holes and tunnels produced by insects known as corn borers. Higher corn borer infection rates lead to greater potential for fungal infections. Because Bt-corn is equipped to fight corn borers directly, corn borers that attack Bt-plants are quickly killed and do not replicate and bore significant holes, which means fewer Fusarium infections and lower mycotoxin production.
Close to six million farmers around the world plant GM crops and nearly three quarters of them are in developing countries. The advantage of GM crops for resource-poor farmers is illustrated by a study of Bt-cotton-growing farmers in the Lang Fang Prefecture in Hebei, China. During the five years in which they have grown Bt-cotton, their incomes have risen 30 percent due to spending less on pesticides. Their health and the health of their families have improved due to the reduced exposure to pesticides. Finally, the quality of their drinking water has improved due to the decreased contamination of their wells from pesticide runoff. (American Council on Science and Health, 5/9/07).
