Arly you wrote:

"The National Academy of Sciences states that "most nutrients are not
considered to be carcinogenic in humans," but this may turn out to be
one of
the exceptions, once other possible variables have been excluded.  As an
example of a confounding variable in supplement risk assessment, several
years ago tryptophan supplements were taken off the market, not because
of
any intrinsic problem with tryptophan (although this first appeared to
be
the case), but because of an impurity in the product caused by a certain
manufacturing process."

That certain manufacturing process was in all liklihood genetic engineering.
The tryptophan incident caused the death of 37 people and caused 1500 more to
be permanently disabled.  EMS (eosinophilia myalgia syndrome) is the disease
caused by this toxicity.  It is considered highly probable that the cause was
the genetic engineering of tryptophan by the Showa Denko K.K. company. The
fermentation process is often used to manufacture food supplements (bacteria is
grown in tanks and the supplement is extracted from the bacteria).  This
company used genetic engineering techniques to speed the process up. John Fagan,
PhD, has written quite a bit about this incident. see:
http://www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm

DHA and AA are manufactured by the fermentation process and while Martek
disputes that it  uses genetic engineering.  The patents they have at the US
Patent & Trademark Office suggest otherwise. Since the patents were filed in 1992,
one would assume that there would be a need to speed the process up because
the demand for this product has increased (FDA accepting company's determination
that their product is GRAS).  Speeding the process up would probably mean
that gene techniques have been used.

Our food & supplement industry has embraced biotechnology without fully
informing the consumer of the technology used to create these foods and or
supplements. The biotech industry has created a whole new microbial world.  Obviously,
scientists believe they have this world under their control (products made
through gene technology have been on the market since 1985) but one might
suspect from the levels of antibiotic resistance and the new virulence of some
diseases that maybe the scientists don't have this under control.  Of course the
problem is that this new technology is part of the infant formula package and
the ramifications could be tragic.
Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC



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