While corn-based ethanol has been all the rage in alternative fuels in recent years, the tide seems to be turning. From 2002 to 2007, data from the Renewable Fuels Association shows demand for ethanol more than tripled between 2002 and 2007, growing from about 2 billion gallons per year in 2002 to over 6.5 billion gallons per year in 2007.

Growth continued in 2008, however there has been a backlash from scientists and environmental groups who say biofuels like corn ethanol actually increase greenhouse gas emissions while threatening global stocks of food grains and edible oils. Even the recent stimulus plan slashed $200 million that was meant to help retrofit cornstarch ethanol facilities to produce fuel from other inedible plants.

And now, in comes Syngenta, a giant agribusiness, with a new GM corn product to the rescue. Their “Corn Amylase” contains a protein derived from organisms living near hot sea vents that is supposed to break down cornstarch under high temperatures and help reduce the cost of ethanol production.

Why might this be a disaster in the making?

Two Major Reasons Why Scientists Oppose GM Corn for Biofuel

On the one hand, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) points out efforts should be made to move away from using corn for ethanol in the first place, and toward plants that produce fewer greenhouse gases and don’t use up valuable crop land needed for food production. Said Dr. Jane Rissler, a plant pathologist with the UCS:

Meanwhile, there is an even bigger issue at hand with Syngenta’s Corn Amylase, and that is its potential to contaminate food crops with a strange new protein never intended for use in the food supply.

Syngenta, of course, states their GM corn will be “produced and managed in such a way as to avoid the product entering the broad commodity grain streams.”

Oh really?

History would say otherwise. Here is just a short list of the many instances experimental GM crops -- crops never intended to be in the food supply -- ended up cross-contaminating non-GM crops and entered the food chain:

Contamination between GM and non-GM crops is generally acknowledged to be unavoidable, as really what can stop wind, tornadoes or other weather from blowing or transporting GM pollen or seeds over onto non-GM crops?

Not a whole lot.

So the fact that Syngenta’s Corn Amylase has not been approved for human consumption should be a major red flag that it should NOT be planted at all. As Rissler said:

Are You Aware of the Health Risks of GM Foods?

Even if it Corn Amylase HAD been approved for food use, I still wouldn’t want any part of it. The risks of GM components in your food, whether they got their via cross-contamination or by scientists in a lab, are just too high.

There have been no safety studies conducted that prove GM foods are safe. To the contrary, dicing and splicing the components of your food supply into never-before-introduced combinations has been found to:

Why are these products still on the market (and in the United States, making up the vast majority -- 75 percent -- of processed foods)? Because there’s money to be made with them, and because it’s difficult to link health problems directly to them, in large part because many of the side effects happen over time.

This is not to say that no links have been made. It’s been proven, for instance, that bacteria in your gut can take up DNA from GM food, that GM peas caused lung damage in mice, and GM potatoes lead to cancer in rats.

Only time will reveal, as Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, points out in this excellent video, the extent of the unforeseen and surprising illnesses caused by GM foods.

So let’s hope the USDA makes the smart move and decides to ban the production of GM corn for the industrial purpose of making biofuel. A decision is expected to be reached this summer.

In the meantime, you can browse through tips to reduce your and your family’s exposure to GM foods in this past article.