To GM or Not To GM
By nonny mouse Sunday Mar 22, 2009 5:00pm
There’s been quite a bit of contention erupt over a bill being proposed in the House, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, HR 875: This bill is purportedly to establish a ‘Food Safety Administration’ within the DHHS to regulate food safety, labelling, and regulating the processing, storing, and transport of food from ‘food establishments’, promote food safety research by academic and State institutions. On the face of it, after the recent poison peanut fiasco, that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, does it…?
… Except there’s a few problems, as it is a very rare bill that can ever be accepted ‘on the face of it’. The first problem with this bill was that is was introduced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D – CT), whose husband, Stanley Greenburg, works for Monsanto. This may not violate any specific legalities (or maybe it does) but this is the kind of ethical conflict of interest that stinks like a three day old dead genetically modified mackerel. That alone has been enough to raise hackles and suspicions, generating accusations that this bill would in effect criminalize seed banking, impose prison sentences and fines on farmers, require GPS tracking of animals, warrantless government entry onto farm easements, and even allegations of a massive police state plot to incorporate farmland into the hands of industrial giants like Monsanto in a planned elimination of independent farmers altogether.
This bill, its detractors assert, would give the government the authority to monitor every family farm, ranch, vineyard, fishing hole, farmer’s market veggie patch, kiddie lemonade stand on the sidewalk, and demand paperwork and records relating to food production under penalty of fine or imprisonment, even seizure of goods and property without warrants in violation of the Fourth Amendment. That the term ‘food establishment’ could even conceivably mean your own kitchen or back yard garden, thus if you don’t adhere to strict government standards (strict only in enforcement, not in the vagueness of the language defining said standards), you risk being fined or imprisoned for that really dreadful home grown carrot and coriander soup you served up to the Church fundraising potluck last weekend.
Not everyone, however, is in lockstep with this ‘first they came for the Jews’ line of emotive reasoning, including a few organic farmers themselves. But there are definitely a whole lot of things wrong with this bill, and it quite rightly should be kicked back to its designers immediately for a thorough rewrite, free of any involvement or influence by Monsanto or those married to its employees.
But beyond the accusations that Monsanto is manoeuvring to impose ‘standardized’ agricultural practices that would allow Monsanto and other GM agribusinesses to control and regulate seeds, pesticides and fertilizer that would, in effect, prohibit organic farming and open the way for unregulated GM food production, there is an underlying question:
Why are we so afraid of genetic modification? We on the left all cheered wildly when Obama lifted the Bush ban on embryonic stem cell research, and genetic modification in medicine has already offered thousands of patients genuine hope for treatment and cures for a variety of deadly illnesses. So just what is it about the science of genetically modified food that makes us so wary? Why is one ‘good science’ and the other ‘bad science’?
It isn’t as if humans haven’t been practicing genetic modification for centuries – farm animals themselves are largely the most obvious result of ‘natural’ selection for certain traits. A domestic pig bears as much resemblance to the wild boar it descended from as a Chihuahua resembles a wolf. Is it ethical to breed pigs that put on meat weight so quickly that they must be slaughtered at eighteen months because beyond that age their bones simply aren’t strong enough to support their own weight and they end up crippled? That has nothing to do with scientists artificially slicing DNA in a test tube somewhere – it’s been going on for the past 9,000 years, all quite ‘naturally’.
Speaking of Chihuahuas, ever seen a Crufts dog show? This ‘natural’ genetic engineering has produced English bulldogs with heads so heavy and legs so short they can’t support their own weight or even breed and give birth without artificial assistance, Pekinese with deformed skulls flattening the face severely enough to cause breathing problems and require cooling pads to sit on in order not to overheat and die, Boxers suffering from epilepsy, Alsatians crippled by deformed hip joints, and King Charles Spaniels with painful and debilitating syringomylia; too small skulls squeezing on the brain. It has become so bad that this year, after a BBC expose on Kennel Club show dog breeding practices, Pedigree Dog Food and the RSPCA have withdrawn sponsorship, and the BBC has refused to air the annual show on television. This expose has led to some changes to breed conformation, but it will still take at least three generations before the English bulldog even begins to resemble its original – and much healthier – ancestor.
But we’re talking about agribusiness, meaning plants, not dogs and pigs. In an age where famine, drought and starvation is rampant in the third world, and elsewhere, isn’t research into producing more and better harvests a good thing? Mexico established an agricultural research station to cultivate strains of wheat to feed its hungry population in the 1940’s, and within a dozen years was self-sufficient; a dozen more, and the country was exporting half a million tonnes of wheat a year. With all our modern technology and science, surely we should welcome a second ‘Green Revolution?’
When I started researching for this post, I contacted Jill Richardson, founder of La Vida Locavore, and author of the upcoming Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and How We Can Fix It for some background material. Instead of offering a bit of cursory advice, she was kind enough to send me the following detailed and erudite email, which is enough in itself as a post on its own:
I think there are a few issues at stake. One is safety of course and to that I say we need to ask on a case by case basis: Does benefit outweigh risk? And benefit to whom, and risk to whom? In most cases it seems like its benefit to Monsanto (profit) and risk to humanity and planet earth. That's not a good deal. But in the case of a life saving pharmaceutical perhaps the benefit to the people who need that drug makes it worth the risk, especially if we've done a good job testing up front. As for the process of testing before a GMO is approved, it doesn't seem they do a good job - they are on a mission to just fast track everything to legalization. And nature has so many variables and things we don't know or can't account for in the laboratory that there's just no way to ensure 100% something is safe. Or safe for a human to eat for a lifetime without getting sick. On some level the people who eat the food are going to be the guinea pigs no matter what. If the only benefit is profit to Monsanto, then I'm not for that. That goes for all GMO companes - Syngenta, Bayer, etc, not just Monsanto.
The example people bring up for a GMO that is beneficial beyond just corporate profit is golden rice. I'd direct you to Greenpeace's research on that - and a very good description of that can be found in Safe Food by Marion Nestle. Golden rice is rice that was genetically modified to add in beta-carotene to help the developed world get enough vitamin A. In short, someone would have to eat something like 12 lbs of rice PER DAY to get enough vitamin A from it. So it's not an actual solution - it was a PR stunt.
All that said, what truly changed my perspective on GMOs was reading a book called Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web (and I've since confirmed a lot of the info with the Rodale Institute). About a year ago I visited a farmer on her farm in Austin, TX and I was absolutely blown away by what she told me about organics. I didn't believe it, really. I was kind of just withholding disbelief to be polite but I took what she said with a grain of salt until I could back it up with facts. She said that organics did better compared to conventional in heat, drought, cold, flood, AND against pests. She said it all had to do with soil microbiology. She told me that an experiment had been done where you plant 2 tomato plants in pots - one in rich compost and one in regular potting soil. You can intertwine the two plants and release aphids on them (or some pest, I think aphids) and the pests would all go for the tomato plant in potting soil.
I wrote up what I learned on DailyKos, but the short version is summed up in something I heard once "No one ever fertilized an old growth forest." If you think about some very rich environments where plants thrived, like forests or prairie, no one ever tilled the soil, fertilized, or used herbicide or pesticide there. No one had to. And the plants didn't get eaten up by bugs and die. Obviously plants have some mechanism of their own to survive without human intervention. Yet we have this idea that if we don't spray the plants they are defenceless against pests. And if you think of it that way, then creating GMO Bt corn that makes its own pesticide makes quite a bit of sense. But that entire mindset is wrong. Now, just because I'm saying that Bt corn is a bad idea isn't an indictment of all GMOs. But it is a totally new idea to introduce when you are considering risk vs. benefit.
When you have living soil and sustainable farming you get a few things. The soil stores water better and absorbs it better so plants are more tolerant of drought and floods. The plants have better access to nutrients in the soil and are more able to fend off disease & pests. The plants are also very good at using beneficial microorganisms against the pest species, surrounding themselves with those that are either helpful to the plant or neutral, and keeping away the ones that might harm the plant (preying upon them or just competing for resources). The same happens on a larger scale with bugs - yes you'll have a few pests around but you'll also have the species that compete with or prey on those pests so you aren't overwhelmed.
That brings me to where I was as I sat in the BIO 2008 convention last year. They were talking about drought resistant plants that they were engineering (which are now a reality). And I thought: wouldn't it be more efficient to use the soil to help plants resist drought? Because it's zero risk, free, time-tested, available without R&D expenses or the time it takes to invent it, and legal. Plus there's no risk to biodiversity.
The entire GMO model requires getting bang for your buck. Ideally you'd want to invent one variety that gets planted all over. It'd be much less efficient to put your R&D into 3000 varieties and sell a little bit of each of them. It's not about Monsanto being evil in this way, but about them wanting profit like any company would. It's no shock that 50% of all U.S. crop land is in corn and soy and two of the few GMOs that are legally planted are corn & soy. Monsanto isn't coming up with GMO drought resistant heirloom tomato varieties because the bang for the buck isn't there. But if you use living soil to help plants resist drought instead of GMOs, you instantly have a solution that works for every single variety of every single plant - no R&D needed, and no loss of biodiversity too.
I mentioned Rodale Institute earlier and they've done a farm systems trial study (.pdf) twenty years where they plant conventional crops side by side with two systems of organic (one with manure, one without) to compare yields. In the first four years, conventional wins. The soil for the organic isn't healthy enough yet at that point. In year 5 they are equal. In most years after that, organic gets better yields. And the methods they used for doing this aren't inconsistent with large scale agriculture. It's a change we could make now. The past few years they have compared organic vs. GMOs - they use corn and soy for these experiments. When I visited, they had corn planted (they alternate by year). The GMO corn was shorter than the organic. Much shorter – by a few feet. When they picked an ear of each, the GMO corn was about 60% of the size of the organic ear. And they said from their research organic no-till farming used 2/3 less oil than conventional.
Obviously this is just saying that perhaps the risks of drought resistant GMOs or Bt GMOs or herbicide tolerant GMOs are not worth the benefits because better benefits are available at less risk. Less profit to Monsanto too, but less risk and more benefit to humanity. If they came up with a different type of GMO that was going to do something great that couldn't be achieved with sustainable agriculture, then I'd be willing to assess those risks against those benefits and perhaps I might fall on the side of GMOs. But so far that hasn't been the case.
Another interesting point that Rodale noted was about nitrogen. There's a standard equation used that an acre of corn requires X amount of nitrogen from petroleum-based fertilizers. Rodale used cover crops to provide nitrogen and prevent weeds from growing. They found that using their methods, they only needed about half as much nitrogen in the soil to grow their corn. This shocked scientists whose first reaction was simply, "that's not possible." It'd be like saying you froze water at 50 degrees F. You can't do it. It's breaking a known law of science. But then they figured it out. Using fertilizer, about half the nitrogen leaches out of the soil, into waterways, leading to dead zones like in the Gulf of Mexico or the Chesapeake. Using cover crops, the nitrogen stays right near the roots of the plants and so the plants can use all of it.
Last, there's an argument that Monsanto, etc, makes again and again that we need to feed the world and therefore we need new technology to boost yields. They also threaten that if we don't boost yields, we'll need more land to grow enough food and that means cutting down forests. This is a load of bull for five good reasons:
1. As food productivity & food per capita has gone up, hunger has gone up.
2. A recent study found that if we switched over to organic, using only currently cultivated land, we could feed the world even with a growing population.
3. We feed a large percent of what we grow to livestock and then eat an unhealthy amount of meat. If push comes to shove we'd be healthier and better off decreasing per capita meat consumption and using the extra food that used to go to livestock to feed people.
4. It's not about having enough food but having the desire to feed all people. Right now we'd rather feed cars with our corn than feed it to starving people. We also have plastic made out of plants (like potatoes or corn) now too, yet we have hungry people.
5. Right now we throw away a large percent of food - I've heard numbers like 1/3 to 1/2. We grow about 3900 calories of food per person per day in the U.S. currently and there's no way we eat that much. It's nearly twice what we need.
I’d like to thank Jill for this information, and encourage C&L readers to buy her book.
And in the interest of journalistic fairness, I contacted Monsanto and offered them the opportunity to present their side of the issue. At the present time of writing this post, no one has responded to my request.
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I have a friend who works for Monsanto, and he claims they make soylent green.
No, just Agent Orange in the RoundUp.
Monsanto's Claim to Fame
a danger to humanity. I dare them prove otherwise.
Remember this?
In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
Back in December of 1996, Jane Akre and her husband, Steve Wilson, were hired by FOX as a part of the Fox “Investigators” team at WTVT in Tampa Bay, Florida. In 1997 the team began work on a story about bovine growth hormone (BGH), a controversial substance manufactured by Monsanto Corporation.
http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html
Like we didn't know this about this company (FOX) anyway.
I wouldn't mind trying GM foods, as long as I know that I'm trying them. Labels. People have the right to choose what they take into their bodies, as true in sex as in food and drink.
I'm not opposed to GM foods, and though I strongly support organic farming because it's kinder on the land, I have not yet been convinced we can feed the whole world with it.
On the other hand, I don't trust Monsanto, huge factory farms, or monoculture. We're setting ourselves up for potential disaster.
Should we list all the ways it is stupid?
Besides the fact that Organic Agriculture is NOW achieving yields on par with the Conventional Frankenfoods... There is no need for them to tinker with anything... unless we want to be held hostage to a company to grow food that we have been able to harvest for thousands of years.
So why should we let companies develop and produce seeds that grow crops that cannot create more seeds?..
That seriously does not have to be answered...does it???
Another Claim to Monsanto's fame is cancer, 10 year old girls with DD breasts..etc..etc..etc
Monsanto is a sick company.. The Black Water of Agriculture.
If we wish to survive another 1000 years we would outlaw the shit they do...
Engineering our own sustenance. There are no words.
There is no reason to use pesticides. Yields do not increase, but risks do.
That is a fact.
NO, it's not.
A truer statement was never made. I wouldn't 'trust' Monsanto for half a second!!, and stay the F**K away from MY food!!! I ex-patriated to a third world country, and one reason was being forced to use MONSANTO monkey food!!
Food safety is always an issue. Sometimes we can't avoid eating canned products.
http://www.digitalcameraphotographynews.com
I've often pondered on that question.
Because the thought of a 'fish scale' gene in my peas makes me want to gag.
>>> "So just what is it about the science of genetically modified food that makes us so wary? Why is one ‘good science’ and the other ‘bad science’?" <<<
Why, because those 9000 years of agriculture have weeded out the mistakes (no pun intended). Because it's too soon to know the ramifications of the results of food from a gene lab.
And the thought of seeds that are patented and owned by a chemical company and not the not allowed to be owned by family farmers is just WRONG.
monsanto is well known amongst engineers and scientists who work in connecticut. they can do amazing things. they're also a bit of a pandora's box at times. bucking them can be a scary proposition. there are stories told in hushed tones late night in bars that just plain scare you. it's like having a local version of area 51.
tell us a story ..pleeeease I don't want to sleep for a week
The canadian farmer who was growing Canola? The neighboring farmer was growing Monsanto Canola and the pollen from the GM fields blew across the road onto his fields. Monsanto sued the farmer for patent violations!
Just as Starbucks' goal is the total control of all retail coffee sales everywhere, Monsanto's goal is total control over the world's entire food supply. Both are evil and must be stopped.
Here's what Monsanto and other seed corporations did to the seed culture in Iraq.
It's not surprising they're aiming for the same statutes in the US.
When you're talking about embryonic stem cells or dog breeding, you're talking about intraspecies modification.
Much of the genetic modification is the more Moreau-like interspecies hybrid.
There's a big, scary difference there. Animal husbandry is a very old science. The frailties of show dogs should be expected- not that those frailties, or the actions of breeders should be accepted.
But when you start splicing a foreign gene into seed corn to protect it from, say, corn earworm, and you end up killing off the plants natural pollinators like bees and butterflies, you're in dangerous territory- god territory.
We've been making ourselves gods- arbiters of the life and death of the world around us- since we settled down and started farming. We began by pushing animals off of grazing land so we could farm it, and those grazing animals began to die off, followed shortly by their predators. We push other cultures, pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, off the land so we can farm it. We , agriculturally-based civilization, see ourselves, our surpluses of food, our growth, as more important than all other life, human, other animals, insects, plants....the vast majority of life on the planet.
And in the approximately 10,000 years since we started down this path, we've seen our population go from a static 1 million to over 6 billion. At the rate we're going that number will double before the end of the century, and double again in half the time. Soon enough we will have cut down all the forests and overworked the soil, at which point it will take only the slightest bit of climate change to cause a famine so vast that it will take a miracle for humanity to survive.
Ethically speaking, I think we need to be back-tracking on this trend, rather than gunning the engine while we keep on course toward the cliff ahead of us.
However, when you start talking about the difference between intraspecies modification and interspecies hybridization, you presuppose a sort of human genetic 'purity' (or purity of any particular species) that may not actually exist. The Human Genome Project had some very interesting, and unexpected, results. One of the major discoveries is that the majority of genes in our human chromosomes are composed of useless evolutionary 'junk', leftovers from millions of years of now obsolete modifications, as well as 'cross-contamination' by other species.
Humans have, for example, the genetic blueprint within our own DNA for making fruit fly wings. I don't quite understand all the mechanisms for how the hell all this genetic junk got in our DNA, but so far, I'm pretty sure I haven't seen too many people walking around growing fruit fly wings. So I'm not too afraid of what I eat, genetically speaking - fish genes in tomatoes makes no difference to my stomach; it all gets broken down into molecules and metabolised. I am, however, more concerned with the level of pesticide poison (and other chemicals) on my food that have possible carcinogenic properties.
And I'm actually worried about the amount of hormones being flushed, literally, into our water system that is 'feminizing' fish species into near extinction from absorption of chemicals found in the Pill and HRT...
I do agree with you that the human population is reaching a critical mass of how much this planet can bear. But I'm not so sure that 'back-tracking' is a feasible solution, even if it were possible.
You're right, or, at least we've read some of the same material dealing with the human genome.
I see your point about inter- and intraspecies breeding, but the former seems to involve less chance than the latter. And I don't like the idea of playing god in either case.
As for the feasibility of back-tracking...Sure we can. It's a matter of having the will to do so, no different than- and actually intertwined with- controlling pollution.
How many of your own genes originated in viruses and bacteria? A lot. Retroviruses have inserted themselves into the human genome to the extent that we need them to survive. The examples of naturally transmitted genes from one species to another, totally different kingdom are legion and we are constantly finding new examples.
The "natural pollinator" of corn is the wind, not any insect, bird, bat or anything else. Bt did not kill anything despite the scare talk not too long ago. Remember that Bt is approved for organic use.
Talking about "god territory" as if it were somehow sacrosanct is what progress has been struggling against for eons. It wasn't that long ago that grafting was regarded as the work of the devil. Without grafting, the French wine industry would be gone. Also, forget seedless grapes, navel oranges and any apples.
I'm not talking about specific agricultural advances, I'm talking about agriculture itself.
Homo sapiens spent millions of years leaving in harmony with the enviroment, but when a few groups of the species began practicing agriculture, their populations began to grow, and other species, as well as other homo sapiens, who didn't accept the lifestyle brought about by agriculture, were killed off. Agricultural society continued to grow and the process intensified. Now we're cutting down the Amazon rainforest for the sake of agriculture, and we're killing off the last vestiges of the millions-of-years-old hunter-gatherer (non-agricultural) societies left on the planet, as well as thousands if not millions of other life forms.
Agricultural society has taken on the role of gods, deciding what does and what does not deserve to live.
But we don't make good gods. As much as we like to think that we're the smartest things that have ever been, we're pushing up against the limits of sustainability, and most of us don't give a thought to it, because the culture- agriculture- gave birth to the religions, the laws, the language and the science which it uses to justify itself.
Eating foods who's genetic structure has been modified and tampered with?
DUHHHHHHHHHHHH
Edibility is the top concern to the Monsantos of the world. If people start dying off, their seeds are no good.
It's the way these modifications effect the rest of the enviroment that worries me.
That has Zero to do with good nutrition.
You, below, pointed out Morgellon's disease, and I, in my first post, touched upon the die-offs of the bee and butterfly populations...These are the types of oversights we've seen in the early days of GMO.
Nutrition or edibility...the market for the end product dies off, Monsanto makes no money. Poor nutrition means that children don't even live to procreate. It's in the best interest of Monsanto to make sure their seeds produce nutritious food. Think about it.
Monsanto?
Do you realize what these people are doing?
Attempting to corner a market and get even more filthy wealth.
On edit: Evet, I'm against this stuff as much- if not more- than you are.
If it could be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that genetically modified food is safe, I suspect you might just resign yourself to it.
I think that, healthy or not, genetically modified food accelerates us towards unsustainability.
It would take tens of thousands of years to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that GM crops are "safe." I don't need to worry about resigning myself to acceptance.
Again, my concern is:
Food surplus=population growth=/=sustainability
Cut out the "food surplus" bit. You get population growth even without it, it just doesn't last quite as long and it's equally unsustainable.
...Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn?
Watched An Inconvenient Truth?
Throw in Peak Oil theory (and its effects on shipping), neo-Malthusian theory and the deterioration of soil through over-farming as we need to produce more food for more people, and watch it all dovetail.
Very interesting theory on "Cain & Abel," and how moving from hunter and gatherer to agricultural society allowed us to produce more food than we needed, and this has caused the population explosion and along with it most of society's problems.
Worth a read.
Human Population Numbers As A Function of Food Supply (pdf.)
Hopfenberg and Pimentel, 2000
(It's linked through www.ishmael.org , a great little site if you've never been there)
...The Fall of Man in Genesis is very insightful, too.
Ever read The Story of B and My Ishmael? I think they're much easier reads, and they're basically just going over the points from the first book.
A researcher in Germany found that exposing bees to GM pollen had no direct effect on them. But when he introduced bee-pests, they no longer had any resistance and died off. That test was an afterthought and not part of his sanctioned research, so he was unable to follow up on that. And he noted that no one was about to fund a study on that, either, since there is no profit in protecting bees.
"Edibility is the top concern to the Monsantos of the world. If people start dying off, their seeds are no good."
They could kill off a number of people before it was noticed and linked back to the change.
Our bodies don't have enzymes for digestion of these weird FRANKEN-FOODS!!, of course Monsanto has 'proved' differently, I'm sure!!! DUUUUUHHHHHHH!!
Since I've been doing it all my life as did my parents, and their parents before them and so on back to the first agricultors, I see no problem with it.
Preliminary findings suggest a link between Morgellons Disease and Agrobacterium, a soil bacterium extensively manipulated and used in making GM crops; has genetic engineering created a new epidemic?
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States announced the launch of an investigation on ‘Morgellons Disease’ in January 2008 [1], after receiving thousands of complaints from people with this bewildering condition, which it describes as follows [2]: “Persons who suffer from this unexplained skin condition report a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms including crawling, biting and stinging sensations; granules, threads, fibers, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin, and/or skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in visions.”
I'm all for keeping Monsanto away from patenting our seed banks and screwing the American agribusiness any further, but
"Morgellons'" is delusional parasitosis. It has not been found to be anything more. It IS "real" in a very physcial sense, however it is not what pseudoscientists are making it out to be.
This bill (taking over seeds, taking animals, running the remaining small farms out of business) has been talked about on Art Bell for years. It feeds right into all the right-wing scared-of-gubmint-takin'-yer-prop'ty talk.
What's with Democrats not protecting small farmers and small business owners? . . . it's freaking me out, too.
Can we replace this woman with a good progressive?
Transgenic plants can be very powerful tools. I make plenty of them for research purposes. The Golden Rice was not a "PR stunt". It was a technical tour de force, and the second generation of it contains much more vitamin A. Nobody claims to solve the problem of hunger on Earth with a single solution anyway. Take it any way you want, rice with more vitamin is a good thing.
You may want to discuss with Pamela Ronald also. She is a plant biologist at UC Davis (http://indica.ucdavis.edu/ ), and her group designed an impressive flood-tolerant transgenic rice. She wrote the book "Tomorrow's table" with her husband (an organic farmer), and argues that the combination of transgenic plants and organic farming is an extremely promising approach, and I tend to agree with that.
There are also several efforts that, for lack of a better word, I would call "Open source transgenic tech", that try to bring transgenesis to everybody, without infringing on anybody's intellectual property. See cambia.org for example.
Look,nature provided everything a human being needs without our help.
No disrespect, but that's a very naive thing to say. In fact, what is generally considered as a prerequisite for the beginning of civilization itself is the start of agriculture. In other words, helping a bit Mother Nature.
Mother Nature hasn't required or requested any help in many tens of millions of years.
She also doesn't give a flip if humans survive or not or whether they survive in comfort or in misery.
There's another commenter at the site who has taught me a little about GMO, and I hope miss_kitty shows up, but I seem to recall a conversation about how there's an aversion to non-white rice in some pretty major Asian populations. They pick the yellow rice out. Good luck on changing the psyches of billions of people.
On a whole, food in general doesn't even taste good anymore.
Landshire sandwiches that I ate as a high school student taste totally like crap now.Same as Pringle potato chips, they have this "after taste" to them that was never there before.
The hamburger you buy in the grocery store doesn't even taste like it use to taste, totally bland.
Then you have all these fruits and vegetables that are maybe twice or three times their normal size and taste like total crap as well.
Half of the time I get sick from eating this CRAP they want to try to call food.
People deserve better.
We don't get the same bananas that we used to, because of the die-off of the primary variety used in monoculture. It's been substituted with another, inferior, much less tasty variety. Ships well, though.
Our garden is thriving, organic (we have horses so great compost) and mostly heirloom seeds. My husband has scattered Azomite, Medina, and Agnihotra ash all over these two acres which includes a couple of small horse pastures.
when Pringles first came out, they were horrible then, too!
What you say is true enough, but thank the food processors. When I was working in MacDonalds back when they'd only sold a couple billion burgers, we used to get potatoes that we peeled and ran through a screen to make the fries. Now my kid was selling some sort of smashed together mush made of potato flour. The taste of the food nowadays has little to do (and no animal products come from GM animals yet) with GM.
Here I thought the Christo-fascists were insisting that God is in charge of all things great and small - now we need Monsanto?
And, aren't these scientists, who are no doubt good right-wingers, afraid of bringing the wrath of said God down upon themselves - or a the very least the wrath of Dobson or Haggard or the creepy Joel guy from Texas.??!
I have serious doubts about the motives of the chemical companies - they're not trying to feed the world - they're just trying to get control of whatever cash is to be made from the venture. Period.
This bill needs to get dumped and soon.
Ummm...no. Maybe the people making the business decisions. The scientists are highly educated people who believe they're helping people. That's a standard left-leaning population.
people. Wonderful. We believe!
It's silly to start the argument with a faulty assumption that the scientists behind the work are the standard B-movie variety evil right winger type. Feel free to argue against the merits of GMOs (I won't take issue w/ much of it), but keep the ill-informed political branding out of it.
it's a reasonably considered political Rant! Discernment is a wonderful thing....
And I discern that you are being sarcastic and ironic.
But the CEOs and other executives at Monsanto are.
Monsanto is frequently described by farmers as "Gestapo" and "Mafia" both because of these lawsuits and because of the questionable means they use to collect evidence of patent infringement.[74]
Monsanto is responsible for more than 50 United States Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites, dating back to the era in which the company was called "Monsanto Chemical."[75]
As of May, 2008, Monsanto is currently engaged in a campaign to prohibit dairies which do not inject their cows with artificial bovine growth hormone from advertising this fact on their milk cartons.[76] When the Federal Trade Commission did not side with Monsanto on this issue, the company started lobbying state lawmakers to implement a similar ban. Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolfe attempted to prohibit dairies from using labels stating that their milk does not contain artificial bovine growth hormone, but public outcry led Governor Edward Rendell to reverse this ban.
and even scary at times... it's time to get serious about learning more...
recently on thom hartmann, a caller talked about some of the conspiracies involved in some coming legistlation... he admitted he wasn't familiar with many specifics, but that the "GPS tracking of animals" made sense to him considering that tainted meet scares of late - it would be much easier to track down the source...
that's something positive... and he opined that the cost would be relatively minor in actuality...
My friends and I keep chickens for eggs. I have 6 layers and a rooster, and thats a small number.
This bill would force me to RFID every single animal, at my own expense, and if I don't, the Fed would have the authority to steal my animals and kill them.
If I wanted to take a chicken to a neighbor's house, under this bill, I would have to inform the Feds ahead of time and get their permission.
My dad keeps a pair of horses for riding. Under this bill, he would have to ask the Fed for permission every time he wanted to go riding (off his property which is every single time). And if he doesn't get permission and the Fed fins out he left his property, they would have the authority to steal his horses and kill them too!
How is that keeping the food supply safe?
This bill MUST be stopped!
You can go ride your horse wherever you want. Taking it to an exhibition or selling it is another thing altogether. The idea of the tracking, and it is NOT GPS, is to be able to identify where the next cow with BSE came from, or the next pig with African Swine Fever, or the next sheep with aftosa.
The chips that you would have to insert into your animal are similar to the ones that people stick into their pets so that someone at an animal shelter can tell from a reader who the animal belongs to.
I wish people could disinguish between corporatized food production and all the horrible issues this entails from all the other non-sense spewed here. Please the boogie man isn't in the DNA, or the agrobacterium toxin, or all the other stuff. It is the destruction of our way of life (real farms where families grow-up), loss of local food production (that's why most store bought food tastes like crap, it's not picked at the proper time because juicey fruits and vegetables don't ship well and they are not many decent butchers left in the US), and global distribution scale food production (your nieghbor is less likely to poison you when HE/SHE is poisoning their own children or friends). Moreover the issue is, this bill is trying to place as disproportionate burden on the small producers than the global, larger producers. Typical Washington lobby dirty pool where they can say, see all regulation is bad.
I live in St. Louis , the world headquarters of Monsanto, and I've met quite a few people who have worked at Monsanto - affectionately and ironically known by some around here as 'Monsatan'. The issues with GM food have been covered pretty well in the above comments and I'm pretty much in agreement:
1. Label GM and I'll decide if I want to eat it.
2. Eliminating the ability to use seeds from this year's plants for next years is the same warped uber-capitalist thinking that brought down the financial markets - greed, just plain greed.
3. Creating plant monocultures offers a big fat ecological niche that bacteria, fungi and insects will rush in to tap into. Think Ireland and potatos.
4. The disease mentioned above Margellon disease? - does not exhibit any verifiable disease vector - nor are the symptoms objectively measurable. The people who complain of the symptoms are travelers from 3rd world countries. That it is associated with GM is news to me - do you have a current citation? I'd like to look into it.
5. Stem cell research is not 'good' science anymore than GM research is 'bad' science. The problem is applying the results of the research willy-nilly into the food supply with protections not for the populace but legal outs for the company.
6. No, the researchers aren't right-wingers. Get a grip.
7. The description of the agriculture bill sounds completely hysterical.
8. A good intention - feeding the world - is implemented into a business plan and just like a well-intentioned law, it goes awry in the process. GM is the latest in a series.
9. Read "The Omnivore's dilemma for a well-written note on these issues.
10. Me, I'm going to put in a garden.
Milo
Very well put.
You did an excellent job. Keep it up and we'll have you expelled from this board. /snark
I have literally hundreds of thousands of heirloom seeds from hundreds of different varieties of fruits & vegetables. And I save more & more from my garden every year.
From my cold dead hands Monsanto!
Any criticism of GM food is often met with the charge that the critics are anti-science, hysterical Luddites, and their criticisms are dismissed out of hand. I object, not to the science, but to the ultimate end for which the science is used. Monsanto and their ilk are in the business of making money, as much as they can, as quick as they can. They rarely concern themselves with the LONG TERM consequences, because money must be made NOW. By LONG TERM I don't mean 5 or 10 years, but 50, 100 or more years. When they alter food by tweaking one (often minor)characteristic, they patent it, and then ban farmers from doing what farmers have done for millennia: save seed for the future. This way the Monsantos of the world gain control of the food sources and therefore of the people. Why shouldn't people be rightly concerned about this? What is unreasonable about their concern? GM food usually requires much more pesticide use, and that has LONG TERM consequences, too. What is irrational in being concerned about this? GM food tends toward monoculture. Wasn't the "Irish potato famine" at least partly the result of there being only one kind of potato being planted which was susceptible to disease? Why should Monsanto or any other company be allowed to (re)colonise whole countries through control of their food resources?
You are confusing business model with science. Monoculture was a major problem long before GM came along. You mentioned the Irish potato famine yourself. Then there is the problem of wheat rust that comes along every few years and puts a damper on wheat production. That has nothing to do with GM.
The big problem is the business model, not the particular product.
United Natural Foods Incorporated
UNFI is the largest publicly traded wholesale distributor to the natural and organic products industry.
Corporate Offices
UNFI's corporate offices are located in Dayville, CT.
Contact information:
260 Lake Road
Dayville, CT 06241
[ https://www.unfi.com/Default.aspx ]
Snip - "In 2002, UNFI became the first coast-to-coast natural products company certified in organic distribution. Our certification by Quality Assurance International, a USDA accredited organic certification organization, means that we meet the stringent standards of the USDA National Organic Program and that we have all the required systems in place to verify and maintain the organic integrity of product through entire supply chain. UNFI is the largest wholesale trader of organic goods, nationally, with over 6,000 SKU’s of organic products."
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Monsanto is a huge monolithic corporation that uses its power to squeeze small farmers by making their seeds very expensive and forcing growers to re-buy them every year and by lobbying congress for it's own profit.
However, genetic modification of food is something people have been doing for thousands of years. In the last century we sped the process up a bit by using chemicals and radiation to produce new varieties. Plant varieties that were created that way were not regulated or tested to anywhere near the degree required for today's GM crops.
GM is a much more precise process of changing genes in plants and requires lots of testing. Admittedly it might not be enough. However the only difference in the end product is that the GM scientists know exactly what they've changed whereas the ones using radiation and chemicals don't. The resulting food is just food. plant genes don't do anything to us because we digest them like any protein and break them down into their constituent molecules to use as building blocks for the proteins that our own genes build.
I highly recommend reading "Mendel in the Kitchen" by Nina Federoff and Nancy Marie Brown. The subtitle is "A scientist's view of genetically modified foods". That is, it's written from a scientists point of view, not from a pseudoscientific, political, or corporate advertising point of view.
I disagree.
There is a universe of difference.
You need a good reason to disagree. Otherwise it doesn't count. Mendel in the Kitchen does an excellent job of showing how some of the techniques used in the past were not anymore natural than GM and a lot less controllable.
"genetic modification of food is something people have been doing for thousands of years"
Natural genetic modification is something people have been doing for thousands of years. Producing gradual variations of plant genes. Mixing plant and animal genes is something new. It may be completely harmless but there may also be unknown side effects that we won't notice for decades when the fish people start growing into adulthood. And there has to be a cost benefit analysis. There is certainly some risk and what is the benefit? So that Monsanto and a few other corporations can completely destroy the way we have been doing farming for thousands of years and turn it into something that they have patents on? Why is that a good thing?
Just more productivity under harsher conditions with less input. Growing wheat in saline ground, alfalfa that produces more leaf and less stem and grows longer before it starts to lignify, cotton that requires less than half the insecticide to protect from boll weevils, millet that is more drought resistant than standard varieties, rice that resists flooding...
Even if its heart is in the right place..
The patented GENES are out side... They can and will hybridize with "normal" crops..
Then Monsanto will sue you for copyright theft.. and so forth.. plus your "normal" crop is now officially a Frankenfood.. and will never be "normal" again.
Yes, you are correct. I have been a home gardener for many years, and more and more of us are rejecting "engineered" vegetables for the older varieties that are considered to be heirloom or open-pollinated. This does not mean there are not some excellent hybrids available, and we plant those, too.
But there is a wonderful diversity of taste, nutrition, and production in the older varieties.
Perhaps the most alarming characteristic of GM crops is that they DO readily hybridize or cross-pollinate with other crops at considerable distances, creating fruits/vegetables that are changed genetically from their centuries-old characteristics. You don't have that heirloom or open-pollinated vegetable anymore when that happens. You cannot keep your seed pure to collect and use the next year when it has been contaminated this way. It will have those artificially-introduced genes (with engineered insecticides, or maybe to grow in different ways) and be ruined.
Mexico's local varieties of vegetables are being altered by GM crops just this way, so it's no wonder that other countries are vehemently rejecting introduction of them. Mexico's situation has grown worse since that 2001 report. The cross-pollination occurred even though the crops were 60 miles apart.
A 2009 report verifies the original research.
And yes, as Rduke mentions, if one of Monsanto's crops cross-pollinates with something you are growing (usually a problem with non-GM crop commercial growers) because of proximity, and against your will!, Monsanto can sue you. It has already happened.
So far it's only GM soy, canola, cotton, and corn that are legally grown in the US, but if legislation opens the door to other genetically-modified crops, it would be disastrous for agriculture and our food supply.
Seed companies have developed patented hybrids (check out Burpee's "Brandy Boy" tomato, for instance -- it's delicious and the seed is very expensive), and that's as far as I want any seed company to go. Hybrids don't cross-pollinate with your other open-pollinated varieties to make growing the original plant again impossible, you just have to buy new seeds of the hybrid when you run out of them.
Do you really think that GM crops are somehow different in their ability to send their pollen long distances? Do you really think that if you plant two heirloom varieties of tomatoes in the same garden that their seeds won't be the results of cross pollination? Do you really think that somehow GM crops are different from the ones you are planting in their ability to crossbreed, except that some of them have "suicide genes" added to prevent their seeds from being fertile so that their other genes don't spread?
What I don't like about all this is monsanto's attempt to be if not thefood source in America then one of the top sources. Remember for a corperation it's all about profits, and how does a corperation keeps making profits? By locking in the customers into that particular corps brand of goods and services. And the best way for that is to get rid of any competition. That way the corperation doesn't have to spend money trying to keep up with it's rivals. Same thing happened in the late 1800 with Standard Oil company. Hopefully Monsanto will be taken down a peg the same way Standard was.
They can BARELY monitor RAT shit in the food supply...
Who is going to genetically test each field???
Good science and bad science are distinguished by their processes of discovery. Says nothing about the applications of the discovery or their moral consequences.
I guess one personal observation I noted in starting to eat better years ago is that "real" food goes rancid and moldy faster, while you can keep white flour and crystalized sugar on the shelf almost indefinitely. What does it say about something when even mold won't eat it? Similarly, do I really want to consume something daily that produces its own pesticides?
More scientific, though, is the question of genetic transmission across species. There are indications that it is common and we are releasing something that the corporate techs really have no idea what the consequences of which will be to the ecosystem. Ask the Australians how great rabbits were for the country.
it's corporate control.
I'm suspicious of anything any large corporation has control of, and for very good reason. They have always and will always put profit before human beings.
Now, when the food supply is designed by small local producers for local consumption, I'll be all for GM foods. But when it's a massive corporation that's modifying foods to increase their profits--be it by GMing foods to resist going bad or being damaged by insects, to be more damage proof for transport, to grow bigger and generate more income, or whatever reason--they can suck my titty.
Organic produce tastes better for a reason. It's natural. It's local. It hasn't been modified for convenience purposes. Supermarket produce is waxy tasteless crap. I'll never go back.
I agree, after all if the corperations gradually have absolute control over our food supply...well you know the old saying absolute power leads to absolute corruption.
I agree, too. Good post.
There have been articles which have stated that GM's modified seeds caused the honey bees to disappear.. And later there is not a word about it..... Some countries have ban GM seeds..
Corporations started to sink their feet firmly into our soil in Reagan's criminal administration...
As good as Clinton's administration was... Clinton planted the seeds of free trade bill ,, Creating larger monopolies in the news media and other controls for corporations...
For someone that Bush and the republicans kicked in the balls when he was down , Clinton certainly followed close to Bush Sr. a.. after he left office...
Clinton had a lot of policies which our country benefited from , but he also passed legislations which knock the hell out of our country by the manner in which they were used by Bush's administration...
Giving Clinton the benefit of the doubt ,,,because he never used them in that manner...
This report seems to have revealed how GM crops modified to contain the Bt toxin, which is lethal to insects, may have effected bees:
Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
A number of states are reporting that bat populations are also dropping drastically. This report discusses bat population decline in Connecticut.
Some attribute the decline to global warming, some to an uprise in bat diseases, and some to GM crops which poison the insects bats eat.
Part of the problem that the Ludites have not yet come to grips with is that the bee loss in the US has no correlation with the the presence or absence of GM plants in the area. For instance, the loss in the midWest with its massive amount of GM corn and soybeans has a bee loss no different than eastern PA where you would be hard put to find substantial GM plants. But there is a relation with a virus that was introduced with bees imported from Australia.
As for the bats, there was an article in the Scientist today about a disease that has been killing them off that is transported by spelunkers.
Which calls itself a democracy HAS THIS POWER ALREADY....
And Obama stated that he does not plan to change a thing about it..
And the patriot act gives the president all and the same powers as a dictator.... And with the military army we have that is a h... of a lot of power....
[Pete, did you mean to post this on this thread? It doesn't make much sense to me. Site Monitor]
I grew up in the Midwest in a family with a lot of farming history and have studied sustainable farming practices for years. There is a reason why the African nations refused the offers of Monsanto and others of their genetically modified grain to their starving population. While westerners called them selfish and stupid, I knew what their concerns were and how wise their refusal was.
Africans and other third world peoples farm on a small scale in their communities and villages. They depend on being able to save their seed for the next crop. Hybridized and genetically altered seeds cannot reproduce or cannot reproduce with any certainty of the outcome. This is not sustainable practice.
The entire American agricultural system is dependent upon the chemical companies of Dow Corning, Monsanto and others to produce seed that they must buy every year, that is marketed to resist diseases and pests for which they must buy loads of pesticides and herbicides each year. Their farming practices cause regular drought problems throughout the Midwest and southern farming regions, loss of organic topsoil, poisoning of the water supplies and the destruction of the natural balance of living organisms in the land, water and air, many of which we consume or are consumed by other predators that we consume.
I also am aware of the gruesome, ugly history of Monsanto tied in with the gross racism of this country. In East St. Louis, next to the river lies a "town" in and of itself that was formed legally with the help of state legislators (lobbied heavily) which is surrounded by a high reinforced, ugly chain-link fence. It is a Monsanto chemical factory. They produce their products without any "interference" from the local people of East St. Louis. They pollute freely into the river, into the local land areas and the air. They run their operation continuously, 24-7, pumping their effluence into the lungs, eyes, mouths and skin of the local population.
But the people in East St. Louis are helpless against them as the "township" has created its own sovereignty that is free from any efforts at ordinances or control or accountability to the people in the area. It is a fine example of the priorities of Monsanto and the rest of those companies. You should see this "township" that exploits the poverty of the people of the area, never trains or employs one citizen in the area and offers absolutely zero in the way of give back to the community it continuously harms.
Farmers in this country produce foods that are altered and dependent on corporate chemical development, western farmers depend on artificial and expensive irrigation systems and have even proposed draining the Great Lakes to help them continue their outdated and resource hogging "truck" farming methods.
Smithfield pork is about the only national pork producer left in America and it regularly pollutes the communities in which it operates. The pork industry, in an effort to get rid of its millions of tons of pork effluence attempted a few years back to allow state governments to ease the restrictions of spreading pork waste on farm lands as fertilizer. I don't know if the practice still goes on, but even the human sewage industries tried to jump on the wagon until some communities raised a stink (yes, pun intended).
Our food supply is threatened by globally traded food that comes from countries that cannot afford to police for environmental and safety concerns. Without a locally grown, sustainable agricultural system, we surrender control of the very sustenance of our lives. We also become dependent on the rules and regulations of countries whose governments are not competent to serve as our safety police.
Monsanto and the rest would like to ensure that they have their tentacles firmly rooted in our food production to ensure their profits long into the future. They continue to market their products internationally where regulation is lax.
This bill is just another broad step in their historic grab at strangling any breath of independence and sustainability of the American food supply. The bill also indicates how Monsanto and others fear the small, independent farmer, knowing full well that if the free market were truly free, people would chose their health even if it cost a little bit more.
Believe me, just like our fine bankers, the executives at Monsanto and their corporate lobbyists earn enough money to not have to give a damn about what happens to the rest of us. There's a lot of us to suffer and die off before the struggle hits them.
This bill should be killed and all people should write or call their representative and tell them to throw it to the trash heap immediately!
To scream incoherently about the bill without knowing what it actually says doesn't strike me as a rational approach.
One doesn't become opposed to genetically modified plants because of gut-level anti-science attitudes. After all, science means observation of the natural world as much as it means human manipulation of that natural world (technology).
One becomes opposed to genetically modified plants because one learns that plants are being genetically modified not to increase production but to survive for only one season via the introduction of so-called "terminator genes", that plants are being genetically modified not to increase production but to produce crops that can survive only if used with certain man-made pesticides or fertilizers, that plants are being genetically modified not to increase production but to force growers of traditional crops out of their livelihoods by forcing them into debt with the purchase of corporate-owned seed.
Plants with terminator genes are rendered infertile after a single growing season and are designed to force farmers to buy new seed every year rather than saving it for the next planting, as they'd done for centuries. And when non-genetically modified crops of the same species are growing nearby and are pollinated by insects who have just been on the flowers of the genetically-modified crops, the terminator genes can be spread to other fields, endangering other populations. And Monsanto and other predatory seed companies have patented some of their GMOs and have been prosecuting farmers whose land is found to contain plants with patented GMO genes, something that can happen inadvertently because of natural cross-pollination (look up Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser for more on that).
And that's only one issue. Another is something the article above alludes to, the fact that community-supporting crops have been grown for centuries, millennia even, without needing genetic modification or man-made fertilizers, and they don't need those things today. Hunger isn't a problem because of inadequate food-producing capacity. Hunger is a problem caused by lack of access to food, a problem that has arisen largely only since the spread of European/white ideas of private property and private profit around the world. See Vandana Shiva for more on those topics.
I'm glad that Jill Richardson took the effort to learn that claims made for traditional agriculture, meaning organic agriculture, are true, but it's sad that she knew so little about the natural world that she was at first incredulous. At least Europeans are more knowledgeable about these topics and thus oppose GMOs more strongly.
Amen! Why can't we get any of this information and views on the MSM?
Nah. There's always been hunger and starvation, even before there was agriculture. People still starve, even when they've got access to food, because of parasites and disease zapping all of their caloric intake...but I digress.
You don't think there was starvation in India and China before Western Europeans began their rise to dominance in the middle of the 14th century? You don't think there were droughts in ancient Egypt? Plagues of black rats in the east of what is now India, eating through crops after the regular 48-year bamboo die-off in the 9th century? You don't think that silos made of straw, full of millet, in east Africa didn't get struck by lightning and burn to the ground in the 8th century?
Do you really think that a farmer is going to buy a seed whose only special quality is that it doesn't produce a second generation? No. A farmer is going to buy a seed that has some special quality that benefits him through increased production. The terminator genes were first added at the insistence of people who didn't want GM plants interbreeding with other plants.
And you go through all the "reasons" not to do GM and not a single one of them has anything to do with GM. All of them refer to corporate business models.
GMO's are one of the prime suspects in the exponential increase in food allergies. We're up to one in every twenty school age kids, and my son's one of them.
In the nineties, there was a case in which a Brazil nut gene was inserted into soybeans, which caused reactions in individuals allergic to tree nuts. Since then, the companies creating GMO's have supposedly avoided using DNA from the top eight allergens which are responsible for 90% of food allergies. (Tough luck if you're in the other ten percent.)
The food labeling laws in this country are a disgrace. That GMO food can be sold without being labeled as such is terrifying. Under FALCPA manufacturers are only required to list any of the Big 8 allergens in plain language on the ingredient label. They habitually refuse to reveal other ingredients, listing them as "flavors" or "spices," while claiming they are proprietary trade secrets.
FALCPA doesn't even apply to medications or health and beauty products. My son was once prescribed a medication with milk protein in it, which fortunately we caught in time. Last week, after going almost a year without a single incident, he had an allergic reaction to my hair conditioner! We need improved food safety and labeling laws, but I'm not optimistic about the odds when agribusiness and food manufacturers have such deep pockets.
Particularly since I have suffered from asthma and food allergies most of my life, myself.
But.
I don't necessarily blame GMOs for anyone's allergies. It is an unfortunate law of nature that those animals with health problems generally don't survive long enough to breed... all but the human animal. Medical science has enabled people with what would normally have taken them out of the gene pool not only to survive, but to then pass on those genetic traits to their offspring... and theirs... and theirs... to the point, I believe, where we are now seeing the result in the exponential number of children with allergies, asthma, and any number of other medical complaints. The problems were always there.
This is not to say I believe in eugenics, far from it. Were it my child, I too would probably be fighting tooth and nail for anything that could keep him safe and well, and you would have my support in responsible food labelling. But it is, in large part, why I made the deeply personal choice not to have children of my own; I don't want to pass on my truly crappy genes, thank you. In the meantime, I look forward to the day when genetic engineering reaches the point where children with allergies or other medical problems can be treated to permanently correct their immune system deficiencies.
GMO's are a suspect in the rise in food allergies, but I think you are correct in labeling heredity as another one. (The EpiPen was introduced in the eighties, and it's kept a lot of allergic kids alive to have kids of their own.)
Food allergies occur when the body responds to specific proteins in food as if they were toxins. That is, it fails to identify the proteins correctly. I think that we need to look closely at GMO's as a source for that confusion. Unfortunately, no one's exactly rushing to do that kind of research.
And once again, consumers don't even have accurate labeling to make it easier for them choose whether or not to eat them.
It isn't that the body responds as if the allergens were toxins. The immune system just overreacts with a deficient shut down control by the suppressor T cells (to grossly summarize a complex process.)
At the moment the most likely responsible candidate for the increase in allergies is the lack of antigenic challenge during childhood years in modern societies that have become so clean that a kid's immune system hardly ever gets a workout. The negative correlation between parasite diseases and allergic people is very strong. And furthermore, allergies are relatively rare in societies that lack many of the sanitary conveniences of "advanced" societies. This obviously isn't the whole story since inner city kids in the US who are exposed to lots of chemical pollutants of numerous kinds along with particulate matter in the air suffer greatly from asthma.
I knew you could.
As a currently practicing applied biologist (farmer to you non-politically correct types) allow me to assure you of this fact.
"The stability and sustainability of a biological system is directly dependent on it's diversity."
When you allow anything or anyone to reduce the genetic variability of "staff of life" crops from thousands to less than one hundred you have written a sure fire recipe for famine on a scale beyond anything seen on the planet. Reducing the number of strains of soybeans, corn, rice, and wheat to a mere handful and then planting thousands of acres using monoculture techniques is a GUARANTEE of massive crop failures from changing climatic conditions and mutating/evolving pathogens both macro and micro.
It wouldn't matter if Monsanto was a non-profit with the highest wishes for the welfare of mankind as opposed to the foul, profit driven, power hunger monstrosity it is. What the Monsanto, Cargills, Syngenta, Bunge and Borns of the world are currently attempting to do to the world's agriculture makes the current economic crises look like a tempest in a teapot.
Let me put it to you simply. Combine dramatic climatic fluctuations with increasingly depleted soils, toss in the global water crisis and dependence on a nere handful of seed strains and you have close to a guarantee of a global food disaster within the very near future.
The battle between small decentralized agriculture and huge industrialized agribusiness could well be the one for all the marbles. I could go on and on but suffice it to say that if you enjoy eating on a regular basis this might be a good time to take a little time and get educated as to what's going on in the world of food.
Momentous times my brothers and sisters, momentous times. If the Monsantos of the world are allowed to prevail, we ALL lose.
It's why I do not trust Monsanto or any of the other GM companies. They aren't run to help the world, they are only run to make money.
Monocropping is disaster waiting to happen. The bananas from the 60's were a monocrop. All the those plants caught a fungus and died. So they picked another banana plant and everyone planted cuttings from that one. The banana you eat now. Which has caught a fungus and the plants are all dying and they are in the process of picking another banana to monocrop.
Yeah, labeling would be nice, but Congress waas bribed to make sure that never happened. Research testing showed that test subjects avoided GM food when they were told what it was. And that would interfere with profits, therefore: no labels.
Frito Lay uses ONLY GM corn and potatoes, so all of their snacks such as potato and corn chips are artificially modified. For example, Lays potato chips were among the first GM foods on the market. They spliced Wax Moth genes into the potatoes to prevent the cut chips from sticking together.
Nonny Mouse's 'it's not so bad' argument doesn't make a distinction between selective breeding and direct genetic modification. No matter how many decades of selective breeding, you will never get the genes of a moth into a potato!
EVAR...
"No matter how many decades of selective breeding, you will never get the genes of a moth into a potato!"
Exactamundo, amigo...If moth genes were meant for potatoes, you wouldn't HAVE to "engineer" the change. It would already have happened somewhere...
I have trouble believing that one food processing company that buys its potatoes wherever they're cheapest has managed to stick a wax moth gene in the whole US potato crop.
It reminds me of the BS that was going around a few years ago that Kentucky Fried Chicken had somehow managed to engineer chickens to have six legs. The dopes pushing this bit of BS never explained the fact that each franchise bought its chickens on the open market and that all KFC supplied was the spices. There are some people that never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
the top of the thread, too here. I admire your reasoned retort likewise and wish to add some input regarding the afformentioned "Frito Lay" a subsidy of "PepsiCo, Inc."
I worked for them awhile back and will say that the bulk of their potatoes, used at their northeast manufacturing facility are grown and retrieved from the state of ME. It's a long standing allegation that they provide the farmers with the seed and or at least the requirement that a specific type be used?
What relation this may have to the issue I do not know?
Pepsi Is 70% Frito-Lay > http://www.fool.com/dripport/2000/dripport000...
PS. Noticing your "ID" (Texas Aggie), with Frito's corporate headquarters being (Dallas, TX), you may know more?
[ http://www.fritolay.com/about-us/contact-us.html ]
that when you're breeding new stock and patenting it, you have created the situation where you need a concentration camp equivalent around your fields, which no on has. Impracticable, at best. And, they're making stock that is intended to breed. They aren't doing that in stem cell research. At the very least, not yet.
Two of my pet peeves are Roundup ready plants and plants containing Bacillus thuringiensis toxin. Roundup ready plants encourage overuse of herbicides and have already caused problems due to cross-pollination with neighboring fields, causing lawsuits against neighboring farmers. I am also afraid that introducing BT toxin into plants wholesale will essentially cause wholesale adaptation against the toxin, rendering a whole group of natural pesticides ineffective. I really don't see the need for most GM foods. We need better regulation of GM foods - I would like to see the regulation of GM foods be at least as tough as the regulation of biotechnology derived drugs.
The problem you cite is real and is being addressed. Researchers are studying how much nontreated crop there has to be to raise enough nonchallenged pests to maintain a reasonable level of susceptibility in the pest population. There are several programs where X rows of nonGM corn are grown between SX rows of GM corn in order to prevent the production of insecticide resistance in the bugs that eat corn plants. Some of them have had pretty good results, but using pesticides of any kind, GM or sprayed, will eventually result in resistance.
There is a reason that there are some areas where mosquitoes are still resistant to DDT. They developed the resistance decades ago and there hasn't been much reversion because the resistance gene doesn't seem to cause a detriment in the absence of DDT. Similar things will happen with other insects and weeds.
How anxious are you to see the financial stock market melt-down move into the planet's food supply? What makes anyone confident that the people who are shilling for this aren't just the agricultural equivalent of Bernie Madoff? I am morally certain that there is not a siongle altruistic blood-cell anywhere in the consolidated hearts of the food industry execs. They claim it, when they extol the 'world-wide benefits' of frankenseed, but it's just a sham and a ploy to control the food supply of the world...
Diversity is a biological and evolutionary necessity.
Unless people believe that evolution has stopped and, having achieved the peak of perfection, humans now have the knowledge, wisdom, foresight, restraint, and sense to MANAGE it?
Leaving me with the question: Who does "nonnyMouse" work for?
Leave the fucking food chain alone, Monsanto, ADM, ConAgra...
YOU may be 'morally certain', but I prefer to keep an open mind on everything. I have opinions, usually backed by some decent amount of reliable information, but 'morally certain' I'd rather NOT be, as too many 'morally certain' folks have had an historical tendency to burn those they are 'morally certain' don't meet their exacting standards at the stake, a la Savonarola.
So you can take your thinly disguised insult about who I 'work' for and... modify it.
My wife is also very good at using a gentle reply that stings and it's a talent I admire.
nonny mouse, I don't know if you'll read this, but there's a lot in this article that raises my eyebrows. I'll address only the following quotation from the email you cite:
First of all, quoting an email in which someone tells you that someone told them that someone said an experiment done is patently unreliable.
Second, if the experiment were indeed conducted, then it marks a monumental discovery! Where are the repeated, peer-reviewed studies that confirm this experiment? Until you see such studies, I'd regard the above quote as a classic urban (organic) internet legend.
Third, I've been growing my own tomatoes "organically"--in soil prepared only with organic matter--and I can tell you every July my plants are infested with hornworms that need to be hand removed before they eat everything. I also work part-time at an organic farm that has the same problem.
There is simply no evidence that pests will avoid "healthy" plants. If we human like the healthiest plants, why wouldn't the predators?
I'm an organic farmer who is very interested in debunking the excessive anti-science/pseudo-science claims of the organics movement. I'm currently gathering data for an article I'm writing. I would love to discuss this if you wish. I can be reached at mikeb "at" foxhill DOT com.
The emotional reactions on this thread also raise red flags. I'm not saying there aren't issues to be addressed with big businesses like Monsanto, but there is an overall knee-jerk opposition to anything like "genetically modified" or "conventional agriculture."
Maybe there's room for every kind of agricultural technology in this world which swells with over 200,000 net new people every day.
don't know much about GM foods if you claim that the opposition to it is "knee jerk". I suggest you educate yourself. The opposition isn't JUST about the way "big business" wants to make a claim on the global seed culture, though that's certainly part of it. More alarming, it's about what the seed companies are doing to the human food supply and by extension to human beings and all other life that depends on seed-grown food.
Damseldistress made her statement and then you reinforced it to the point that she doesn't need to say anymore.
Non-relevant example. Almost all tomato plants get hornworms, healthy or not. The gorgeous moths fly and lay their eggs where they will. But it's certain that plant fungal and bacterial diseases do not overwhelm and kill healthy vegetable plants the way unhealthy plants collapse in their presence.
I am NOT a 100% organic gardener, though I aim for organic standards. Furthermore, much of public and scientific alarm about GM crops does not originate in the organic movement.
The person said "pests." Why should hornworm be excluded?
And when you say, "it's certain that fungal and bacterial diseases do not overwhelm and kill healthy plants," I want to know if organic ones fare better than non-organic.
I want repeated, peer-reviewed studies, not anecdotes.
I get real aggravated by mindless criticism based on extraneous associations. Criticizing the food safety bill before anyone even knew what it said just on the basis that one of its sponsors is married to an employee of Monsanto strikes me as rightwing nuttiness.
There were several points in this article where the mistakes were not obvious to someone without an agriculture background, but they were still important.
First let's talk about comparing the prairie with cultivated crops, organic or conventional. The point was made that prairie grass grows well without pesticides, but you didn't realize that prairie grass isn't a monocrop like both organic and conventional crops are. Also, they aren't nearly as productive as varieties that have been bred for production. My garden has never seen chemicals of anykind, but the tomatoes never get to the productive size before fungus and aphids wipe them out. Neither do the squash. The cabbage butterflies do a real number on the collards.
While no one ever fertilized an old growth forest, no one ever removed most of the vegetation on an annual basis either. Try that and see how long forests last. Slash and burning forests works only a few years before too much of the nutrition is removed from the soil. When you remove vegetation (grain, vegetables, fruit), you have to replace the nutrients you took or the soil loses its productivity. And there are lots of forests dying right now from moth infestations, and when was the last time you saw an elm tree?
I would have to see the Rodale results myself to believe everything you are saying. There was an experiment in Italy that purported to show that rats died when eating GM potatoes but did ok when eating a nonGM strain. It turned out that the nonGM strain was selected for having more nutrition than the GM strain. They would have gotten different results if they had used the same strain with GM being the only difference. The main reason I question the results that show that organic is so much more productive than conventional is that organic vegetables are so much more expensive than conventional and they have a lot more insect damage.
Then, producing "drought resistant" soil isn't quite as simple as you make it sound. In hot, dry climates with strong sunlight the organic material is oxidized rapidly and just doesn't hang around. I tried for two years in Botswana and it just didn't happen. Even if you go to places where only native pasture has grown forever with no cultivation, there still isn't any significant organic material build-up.
Ms. Richardson's observation that nothing is 100% safe is true in spades for conventionally bred plants because when crossbreeding them, you change most of the genome with a multitude of unanticipated genetic interactions. And golden rice was NOT a publicity stunt. It was developed by a researcher in the Philippines with the express purpose of alleviating a severe problem of vit A deficiency. To dump on it just because it won't give you 100% of your vitamin A is like dumping on stawberries because you can't get all your vitamin C from strawberries. You'll notice that she couldn't come up with any actual problem with the golden rice.
"standard equation used that an acre of corn requires X amount of nitrogen" No, there isn't. What does exist is that corn needs a certain level of nitrogen in the soil to produce well. The reason for doing annual soil sampling is to see if there are adequate levels of nitrogen. The quantity of fertilizer applied is based on the results of the tests. That some people think that since a little is good, more is better, applies here as well. Farmers aren't immune from the same attitudes so common in nonfarmers. And cover crops don't somehow magically prevent the nitrogen from leaching out in the rain.
And production per person has not gone up. The reason that so much hunger still exists is partly because population growth has outstripped crop production and partly because poor people can't afford to buy even locally produced food.
Monsanto is not at all good for our society, NOT because it produces GM seeds, but because of its business model. Just like Microsoft has squelched innovation by running any better product out of business, so Monsanto is trying to dominate agriculture. You need to keep the two concepts separate. GM can be used to improve production or reduce costs or grow certain crops where it was impossible before. That has nothing to do with Monsanto's business model. The way to get the benefits is to enable public interest groups to produce GM plants.
Another point to make is that the resistance to "Frankenfoods" is so similar to the mindset that rejects evolution because it isn't in accord with certain people's innate religious feelings. The types of arguments by the antiGM's and the creationists are so similar. The objections are the same.
A second point is that in order to produce soil with lots of organic material, we will need a lot of manure. That also results in runoff into the rivers not just of nitrogen, but also phosphate (a bigger problem with manure) and coliform bacteria.
The article about HR875 and the Monsanto link should have been fact-checked.
It's full of major errors!
Below is from an email from a staffer at CCOF, the premier organic ag org in the USA...
I just got your voice mail message about the food safety bills. Thanks for sharing your concerns. For whatever reason, activists are spreading myths like wildfire. Claudia has spent numerous hours on this issue trying to quiet down the rumors that are totally UNTRUE. Please see the email below for specifics. Apparently, the husband of one of the legislators involved has the same name as someone on Monsanto’s board, which is fueling the fire. So, rest assured that the organic organizations, including CCOF, are watching this, and we are confident that this bill, in its current version, will not negatively impact organic.
Thanks,
Peggy Miars
Executive Director/CEO
CCOF
2155 Delaware Avenue, Suite 150
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
(831) 423-2263, ext. 12
www.ccof.org
From: Ferd Hoefner [mailto:fhoefner@sustainableagriculture.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 6:46 AM
Subject: Re: HR 875 quick analysis
FYI, this just out from Food and Water Watch folks
Myths and Facts
H.R. 875 – The Food Safety Modernization Act
· MYTH: H.R. 875 “makes it illegal to grow your own garden”
and would result in the “criminalization of the backyard gardner.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would regulate,
penalize, or shut down backyard gardens. This bill is focused on
ensuring the safety of foods sold in supermarkets.
· MYTH: H.R. 875 would mean a “goodbye to farmers markets”
because the bill would “require such a burdensome complexity of rules,
inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes
to sell locally - a fruit stand, at a farmers market.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would result in
farmers markets being regulated, penalized any fines, or shut down.
Farmers markets would be able to continue to flourish under the bill.
In fact, the bill would insist that imported foods meet strict safety
standards to ensure that unsafe imported foods are not competing with
locally-grown foods.
· MYTH: H.R. 875 would result in the “death of organic
farming.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would stop organic
farming. The National Organic Program (NOP) is under the jurisdiction
of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Food
Safety Modernization Act only addresses food safety issues under the
jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
· MYTH: The bill would implement a national animal ID system.
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would implement a
national animal ID system. Animal identification issues are under the
jurisdiction of the USDA. The Food Safety Modernization Act addresses
issues under the jurisdiction of the FDA.
· MYTH: The bill is supported by the large agribusiness
industry.
FACT: No large agribusiness companies have expressed support for
this bill. This bill is being supported by several Members of
Congress who have strong progressive records on issues involving
farmers markets, organic farming, and locally-grown foods. Also, H.R.
875 is the only food safety legislation that has been supported by all
the major consumer and food safety groups, including:
-- Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention
-- Center for Science in the Public Interest
-- Consumer Federation of America
-- Consumers Union
-- Food & Water Watch
-- The Pew Charitable Trusts
-- Safe Tables Our Priority
-- Trust for America’s Health
· MYTH: The bill will pass the Congress next week without
amendments or debate.
FACT: Food safety legislation has yet to be considered by any
Congressional committee.
It is always nice that occasionally a voice of reason rises above the tumult. Thank you for at least quieting somewhat the Chicken Littles for the moment.
Thank you for reminding me that the conservatives don't have a monopoly on anti-science denialist kookery. The ridiculous propaganda runs hot and steamy in the quoted letter, and it's nice to see such irrational fear in response. Just when I thought it was safe to breathe easy for evolution and reproductive health, I had to be reminded that my side is the one against food technology and evidence-based medicine. It's always nice to get that cold slap in the face.
A more sincere thanks goes to the scientists and skeptics in the comments. That gives me somewhat more hope.
Monsanto and other ag-products companies are quite reticent about side-effects of their products already. A Knoxville, TN TV news report some years back profiled the problems Mexican workers were having with pesticide-sprayed tomato fields. Pregnant women work in these fields, or become pregnant while picking crops, and the women bear babies with birth defects. Farmers, as a class, have more cancer than any other occupational group. These are cell changes that ag-supply companies would prefer you never hear about.
Ever been to Monroe, Louisiana? You can smell the city limits long before you ever find the sign. Monsanto is its dominant industry. The sulfur pollution is intense and noxious.
The monovore (?) is a modern phenomenon--the spoiled adult or brat who only eats one food or one veggie. We're designed to reap nutrition from many sources, not just hot dogs, hamburgers, and french fries. We need informed choices about whether we are eating GM produce or not. And, yes, I am an allergy sufferer who can testify that non-GM corn pollen may be spiritual to the Navajo, but it's a sneeze-inducing pest to many of us.
Organic soil conditioning is based on the idea that disease organisms, including insects, attack the weak and not the strong. As an old gardener, I can assure you that the well-fertilized organic garden is relatively, though not completely, immune to pests and diseases.
I'd personally welcome more disease-resistant and pest-resistant veggies, but prefer that these be developed through intelligent breeding and hybridization, as they are now, while still allowing the choices of GM and open-pollinated, un-GM contaminated seed.
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