New GMO Studies Demonstrate 'Substantial Non-Equivalence'

"... numerous differences demonstrated between GM varieties and their non-GM counterpart may well impact consumer health and biodiversity, and clearly exposes the substantial equivalence principle as pseudoscience. In reality, genetic modification causes very real and substantial, unpredictable and uncontrollable changes in the host genome including mutations, and rearrangements as well as new transcripts and proteins. Further, glyphosate and GM crops have already been shown to cause damage to both health and the environment in many independent studies (see [14] Ban GMOs Now, ISIS special report). This is now fully confirmed in the new studies...

...In practice, the principle allows the comparison of a GM line to any existing variety within the same species, and even to an abstract entity made up of ingredients from a collection of species. This means that a GM variety can have all the worst traits of many different varieties and still be deemed substantially equivalent [1, 2]. Traits used for comparisons are also based solely on gross and insensitive chemical compositional tests such as levels of carbohydrate, protein and sugars. This process cannot even begin to tackle safety issues. Ironically, for the GMOs to be patentable as they are, a clear novelty, i.e., a difference or non-substantial equivalence is indeed required.
Independent assessments of substantial equivalence have shown how this ill-defined practice is not only inadequate but untrustworthy [3- 5], and the new studies most clearly confirm this."

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Substantial_Non-Equivalence.php