If you liked the books Catch-22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you’re going to really appreciate a story by  Globe and Mail Reporter Martin Mittelstaedt.

USDA photo

He writes that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has approved the use of “the most complicated genetically engineered plants ever designed.”

Each corn seed contains eight foreign genes.

However, Health Canada told the reporter that it never tested the safety of the seeds and didn’t have to because it relied on agriculture giants Monsanto Co. and Dow AgroSciences LLC, “to flag any safety concerns.”

Monsanto told the Canadian national newspaper that it has tested each of the individual genes, but never all together.

Mittelstaedt interviewed Michael Hansen, senior scientist at the U.S. advocacy group Consumers Union.  The scientist said he’s worried that combining a large number of foreign genes could lead to the creation of allergens or other deleterious substances in food that don’t occur when only one gene is involved.

Here’s a link to the story.