(ECNS) -- Officials and experts with the Ministry of Agriculture in China said at a press conference Wednesday that GM products that have passed safety reviews and received approvals are safe.
The Internet is fraught with claims that eating GM corn and soybeans can cause cancer, that GM corn has damaged sperm motility in college students in Guangxi, caused mouse infertility, and that European and Americans never eat GM foods.
Wu Kongming, an academician at the China Academy of Engineering, said it's natural for the public to take time to accept something new, and that it's also normal for them to have safety concerns about GM foods.
The online hearsay is neither true nor scientific, just groundless rumors that have been rejected by scientific circles, Gong added.
Addressing the claim that people in the United States don't use GM products, Liao Xiyuan, director of the Science and Technology Education Bureau at the Ministry of Agriculture, said the U.S. consumes 35 million tons of GM soybeans and exports about 65 million tons to other countries.
Wu also said commercial cultivation of GM soybeans has been underway since 1996 in the U.S., and that no single health problem related to GM food has been found in the past 20 years.
