Trump's new Health & Human Services Department, which includes the Food & Drug Administration, is expected to be very different from his last. Since the George H.W. Bush Administration, the FDA has treated genetically engineered synthetics the same as normal foods, allowing them to be approved without safety-testing or post-market monitoring through the "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) loophole.
There are five GMOs Trump's new FDA could take off the market (four his old FDA put on the market): Monsanto (now Eli Lilly)'s Posilac GMO growth hormone for dairy cows; AquaBounty's AquAdvantage GMO salmon; Impossible Food's synbio burger made with fake blood; Bored Cow's synbio milk, made with Perfect Day's fake whey protein; and lab-grown chicken made by UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat.
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Here are five GMOs Trump’s new team should take off the market (four are GMOs his old team put on the market):
POSILAC - The genetically engineered growth hormone (aka rbGH/rbST) that makes cows produce so much milk their udders painfully swell, causing ulcers that ooze pus into the milk that’s also contaminated with a growth factor (IGF-1) linked to cancer.
In 1993, the Bill Clinton Administration declared Posilac “Generally Recognized as Safe,” the first use of a regulatory loophole the George W. Bush Administration had created for GMOs. Posilac’s GRAS status should be revoked. Will President Donald Trump do this? He didn’t when he first had the chance, maybe because he owns stock in both Monsanto which developed Posilac and Eli Lilly which bought it in 2008 and markets it today. Also, his Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was the former president of Lilly USA. Azar was the company's top lobbyist and spokesman as its senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications when Eli Lilly acquired Posilac from Monsanto.
AQUADVANTAGE SALMON - Salmon that’s genetically engineered to grow unnaturally fast by producing growth hormone year-round. GMO salmon has increased levels of IGF-1, a hormone linked to cancer. It has less of the healthy omega-3 fats than normal salmon and it is more likely to trigger an allergy.
Engineered by AquaBounty Technologies, AquAdvantage salmon contains genes from an Atlantic salmon, an unrelated Pacific salmon, and an Arctic eelpout. There are considerable animal welfare concerns related to GMO salmon; it grows so fast that it becomes deformed. If this trait were to contaminate wild salmon populations it would endanger their survival. For this reason, after the GMO salmon was first approved by the Barack Obama Administration in 2015, it was limited to two production facilities, one on Prince Edward Island in Canada where the eggs were grown and one in Panama where the fish were grown out and processed before being shipped for commercial sale. In 2019, President Trump’s Food & Drug Administrator Scott Gottlieb completely deregulated GMO salmon and it is now grown in Indiana.
IMPOSSIBLE BURGER - Impossible Food’s “bleeding” veggie burger made with synthetic blood that’s spit out of genetically engineered yeast. Preliminary animal lab data submitted by Impossible Foods indicated potential health risks including blood clot issues, anemia, and kidney damage.
In 2018, President Trump’s FDA, led by Scott Gottlieb, sent the company a “no questions” letter regarding its assertion that the Impossible Burger’s fake blood should be considered “generally recognized as safe.” The next year, Gottlieb approved the synthetic blood as a novel color additive. Now, Gottlieb is invested in Impossible Foods as a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates.
BORED COW - Perfect Day's synthetic whey protein, made from genetically engineered microbes. It's the single ingredient in Bored Cow's "milk." Trump's FDA gave it GRAS status in 2020 even though the whey was contaminated with heavy metals and GMO fungal proteins that are similar to known allergens.
According to the information submitted by Perfect Day to the FDA, the level of T. reesei (the genetically engineered fungus that produces the synthetic protein) in the product is up to 6.7%. Three T. reesei proteins showed some similarity (ranging from 35-42%) to known allergens (Cryptomeria, Juniperus; Penicillium chrysogenum; House dust mites). The product also contains arsenic at 16.8 ppb. (There is no safe level of arsenic. The EPA takes action when water samples are over 10 ppb.) And, lead at 59.3 ppb. (There is no safe level of lead. The EPA takes action when water samples are over 15 ppb.) That’s according to Perfect Day. Independent testing conducted by scientist John Fagan of the Health Research Institute found that there was very little bio-identical whey protein in the Perfect Day product. In fact, most of the product was composed of genetically engineered fungal proteins. These proteins have never been part of the human diet before, and some (at least 92) are unidentifiable, being unknown to science. They may be waste products of, or contamination from, the GMO fungus or its feedstocks. Whatever they are, they haven’t been submitted to the FDA for GRAS status.
LAB-GROWN “CHICKEN” - The Biden Administration FDA made two approvals of what they call “Human Food Made with Cultured Animal Cells,” one in 2022 for UPSIDE Foods and the other in 2023 for GOOD Meat. No one’s eating it yet, because neither company can figure out a cost-effective way to grow the chicken without antimicrobials we shouldn’t eat.
They haven’t been able to commercialize their products because of the exorbitant cost of growing cell cultures in the lab. It is a slow, laborious process with highly skilled labor costs and a miniscule success rate. It’s very easy for the cells to become contaminated with bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and molds, and very difficult to control those without using antimicrobial medicines that shouldn’t be in a finished food product.
