Lab Rats at Halloween?

By Robyn O’Brien
(Prevention.com)

Lab rats are probably the last costume any kid would come up with for Halloween.  But a new video suggests that our kids, practically all of them, are just that.  A live, ongoing experiment.

Not what any parent wants to hear.

But in light of the fact that we have recently introduced new ingredients into our food supply, ingredients accompanied by labeling laws in 61 countries around the world for being genetically engineered to withstand increasing doses of synthetic chemicals, it means that as hard as it is to hear, our children are essentially a live trial.  Or in not so kind terms, they are “lab rats.”

Introduced in the 1990s, these ingredients have not been tested for their long-term impact on the developing immune system, gastrointestinal system or nervous system of a child.

And while correlation is not causation, today, cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of fifteen, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and food allergies are skyrocketing.

That’s tough information to hear, but you also can’t unlearn it, especially in light of a generation of children who have earned the title “Generation Rx” due to the number of conditions and diseases that now affect them.

So do these foods have anything to do with the health of our children?  The answer is we simply don’t know, because without any long-term trials, there is no evidence that proves that they are safe. In other words, our children are the experiment.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, we don’t have to remain in the dark about what is causing this sudden surge in childhood conditions like food allergies, autism, ADHD or asthma, because once we learn this information, that as recently as in the last 15 years, these new ingredients were introduced into our foods without any pre-market safety testing, without any prenatal studies, toxicological safety studies or pediatric studies examining what the long-term impact might be of a child ingesting them, we can do something.

And once we learn that our soy was genetically engineered to withstand weedkillers or our corn was genetically engineered to produce its own insecticidal toxin internally within the plant and that these ingredients were introduced into our food supply, into our baby formulas, our snack packs and our processed foods without so much as a label, despite the fact that countries around the world either did not allow these ingredients to be introduced into their foods or they labeled, so that consumers could make an informed choice, we can do something. We can call for the labeling of these ingredients here in the United States, the way that they are labeled around the world.

We can call for the right to make an informed choice.

We are not “lab rats.”  And sometimes, it takes the voice of a child to make that clear.  So take a minute, watch this short video and learn what you can do to protect the health of your loved ones by visiting Right to Know or Just Label It.  Because very few of us are interested in being a “lab rat” for Halloween or any other part of the year.

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