How Safe Is GM Food?

http://www.biotech-info.net/how_safe.html

while researching, i came across this information about how exactly is GM food safe??

According to the article, "In southern Africa, hunger now affects some 14 million people. The USA has donated GM maize to help alleviate the crisis, but in Zambia the food rots in warehouses because the government believes it unsafe. President Levy Mwanawasa has even called GM maize "poison", saying he is not prepared to "use our people as guinea pigs". In some areas, citizens have rioted and looted to get to the food." 


But, what made them think that way?? Was it the lack of safety?? This reason was used as an excuse according to officials in USA as the donated food was they type of food the Americans have been eating for years, however, there are debates over this fact that the US, which is promoting biotechnology building is now using the UN to do its protectionist bidding.


Again, the topic of the safety of GM brings back to its advantages and disadvantages that most consumer worries. "The advantages, achieved through improved crop protection, include insect and virus resistance, and herbicide tolerance. Public health might be improved through a greater supply of hardier strains or through products that have been enriched with vitamins and minerals, such as "golden rice", to which vitamin A has been added.
Disadvantages, though, are that GM crops may threaten biodiversity, decrease the richness and variety of foods, and make farmers dependent on chemical and biotech companies, through the use of sterile seed or chemical products that would have to be purchased yearly. Health concerns include: allergenicity; gene transfer, especially of antibiotic-resistant genes, from GM foods to cells or bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract; and "out-crossing", or the movement of genes from GM plants into conventional crops, posing indirect threats to food safety and security."


However, is it really the disadvantages that stops the consumer from consuming GM food, or is it the politics behind that restricted most GM food being imported thus causing a misunderstanding in consumers that the government thinks that GM food is unsafe??

-FM