We Must Insist On Labeling GMO Substances

I contend genetically-altered plants are not foods, but are altered substances. Their DNA has been hacked into and altered with unlike substances that CAN transfer to human tissue when consumed by humans. In the U.S. normal wide-spread testing of many of these, some would say, has been suppressed. For too long the FDA has turned a blind eye. That's why we (the people) can't sit around and hope that fatherly government regulators will "take care of" us, and instead we have to take action proactively ourselves to insure our own food safety.

I question the intentions of companies that alter and market GM substances without any form of labeling them so that consumers can have a choice in knowing what they're eating. (If you're new to this issue, this link might be a good place to begin reading.)

Case in point...soy...one of the highest altered crops. What is one of the most well-known products utilizing soy? (there are innumerable ones...it's in nearly everything processed...read a label and you'll see)

Answer: Baby formula

I'm no fan of baby formula, but I'm using this as an example. NO testing to see if this is safe for human consumption, yet it is THE most consumed food product for babies worldwide not breastfed.

Here's a good talk on this subject...think about it. By simply labeling a product, we have control over our own choices. Why would the U.S. even balk at doing so? Answer: $$$$$

Well, things, they must change... this video by the author of Seeds of Deception...

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

Transgenics: The Economics of Putting Mouse in Pig

Another email digest from the OCA in my In Box, and I just have to share...

Ugh. It gets more and more chilling.

Let me back up a second. Tonight we went out shortly before dark to run some errands. There on the side of the highway was a fairly large wild boar, snacking on seedheads or other finds just at the edge of (what's left of) the woods...a big but not fat black boar with a long narrow snout, rooting around for nature's leavings.

I'm not a huge pig fan because pigs don't figure in largely into my sphere. We don't eat them, don't plan to raise them, and I just smile and wish them well when I see them elsewhere. They're not much on my radar. I'm actually ambivalent to them, pretty much, but even so, I would not take one and mess around with its DNA and decide that Pig is better when mixed with Mouse because of some perceived convenience or monetary benefit I might receive. Is this doing new things by breeding for certain characteristics? that's not new...selective breeding animals has been done for millenia. Have at it...breed for a straight tail rather than a crooked, cross-eyed pigs or pigs with spots or with a bigger carcass or pigs that fit in the palm of your hand or have no bristles or that oink at strangers...whatever. But they're still pigs, with their DNA intact.

Not so with the "progress" of the bio-tecchies. Ugh. Why are our governments playing with this stuff, so so cozy with the huge producers and corporations?

Now they are trying to get around the Big Ag dilemmas rather than solving them, by fiddling with DNA. Case in point, putting mouse DNA into hog DNA in order to (now get this, how to say delicately?) to have more environmentally-friendly poop...to create an "Enviropig." The FDA will be trying to bring it to you really soon. I kid you not. Here's a quote:

These are Enviropigs, developed by researchers at the University of Guelph to poop out more environmentally friendly waste. The trademarked pigs are just one of dozens of genetically engineered animals at research institutions around the world whose genes have been altered for human benefit. (<-----Robbyn's interjection: What the heck???)And, due to a recent move in the U.S., the Enviropig may be the first to arrive on your dinner plate.

And of course there's no consumer labeling, so we don't get to decide whether we especially WANT mouse DNA in pig meat.

For me, this is hardly a dilemma, since I'm Jewish and eat neither pig nor mouse. But it's a moral dilemma because in my faith, the Bible is very specific that in both the plant and the animal worlds, living things are delineated into things "of their own type." That does not forbid hybridization but it does forbid what creation itself cannot achieve without human forcefulness and mad science, the forcible mixing of unlike things. You just won't see a lion mating with a hyena, or a giraffe with a water buffalo in nature.

I believe there's a good reason for that.

And what business do we have fiddling with ANY living thing so that it fulfills the propaganda of being crafted and edited "for human benefit"??? This is not the same thing as deciding between a pony and a draft horse depending on its best use. It's not the same thing as breeding a dog to hunt or to herd or to retrieve. This is putting part of other animal and plant DNA INSIDE existing DNA from another species altogether to freaking "play God" and it's the ultimate insult to the universe.

(That's my decidedly objective opinion...) ;-)

Aside from what I believe on those scores, I believe what drives this bio-tech frankenscience is the not-so-almighty dollar/yen/euro.

Here's a quote from the article where you can find the detailed report:

Despite ethical concerns, Ronald Stotish, the CEO and president of Aqua Bounty Technologies, based in Waltham, Mass., is confident genetically engineered animals will make the leap from the lab to the farm - and soon.
"It's the way of the future," he says. "This technology has the capability of making beneficial changes in production agriculture."

Let's demystify this quote.

It's like a house For Sale in the classifieds listed as a "cozy handyman special..." there are more to those words than you might bargain for.

"Production agriculture" is Big Ag, and Big Ag is no friend of the consumer, nor even of your mainstream farmers. Big Ag does whatever it takes to force more into less for fewer dollars into the shortest amount of time for the biggest projected return. It's controlled by large corporations whose interest in money overrides concerns about truthful labeling, plant and animal health, humaneness, consumer health and protections, and other consumer interests. Now they're playing nastier by changing the living things themselves...not by hybridizing, which is how their propaganda would suggest nature does things anyway, but rather by forcing different TYPES of living things into creations that cannot even be created by mating...rather the DNA has to be forced into the DNA of something else...by man.

What arrogance. What foolishness and shortsightedness!

Please read the article by Megan Ogilvie of the Toronto Star, and you'll see what I mean.

Genetically modified and engineered animals and plants MUST be labeled, as there has been no adequate long-term testing on humans.
It must be labeled, so that consumers have a choice.
It must be truthfully spoken about...the misinformation campaign on the part of the big corporations is staggering. Things done in the name of "health" and "environmentally-friendly" are NOT being truthful with their advertising campaigns...changing animal DNA to FURTHER industrial large-scale production has NOTHING to do with REAL CHANGE needed to heal the disconnect and bring production back to smaller local producers, which is more environmentally-concious AND healthy.
Do NOT believe that the FDA is the Benevolent Big Daddy who will handle "all those confusing concerns" for a trusting public...no way. Choice and responsibility lie FIRST with the CONSUMER (that's us) and WE should decide what we eat...and should have the benefit of labels not intended to deceive us in that decision-making process.

I INSIST this MUST be OUR choice...no one else's.

Here is their contact link if you'd like to add your two cents to others voicing their concerns:

In Canada, please write to Health Canada to voice your strong opposition to the approval of this and other genetically engineered animals. They can be reached at novelfood_alimentnouveau@hc-sc.gc.ca
In the US, let the FDA know how you feel via their contact page http://www.fda.gov/comments.html or by writing toFood and Drug Administration 5600 Fishers Lane Rockville, Maryland 20857

Monsanto's 125,000 Suicide Farmers

It's being termed GM (genetically modified) Genocide, and the UK's Prince Charles has been advocating against it. Test case, India...where farmers are taking their own lives after the real impact of their growing GM crops has come to light...gruesomely.

Excerpt from full article, here:

(farmer named in article), like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.

Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds.

But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts - and no income.

So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.

The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.

Monsanto's Genetic Conspiracy: European 3 Video Series

This is a thoughtful documentary that speaks to concerns about Monsanto's culpability in obscuring, falsifying, and manipulating data in regards to GM food safety research...worldwide.

Unlabled GM Sugar Now Here

This is sobering.

Sugar Company American Crystal Now Sourcing from GM Sugarbeets

Here is a clip from Organic Consumers Association website. This site is full of important information we all need in order to stay abreast of these developments.



"GE Sugar Beets to Hit Stores in 2008!

American Crystal, a large Wyoming-based sugar company and several other leading U.S. sugar providers have announced they will be sourcing their sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets beginning this year and arriving in stores in 2008. Like GE corn and GE soy, products containing GE sugar will not be labeled as such.

Since half of the granulated sugar in the U.S. comes from sugar beets, a move towards biotech beets marks a dramatic alteration of the U.S. food supply. These sugars, along with GE corn and soy, are found in many conventional food products, so consumers will be exposed to genetically engineered ingredients in just about every non-organic multiple-ingredient product they purchase...." read rest of article here

The dangers of unlabeled GM sugar in our food supply has prompted a boycott of Kelloggs and other companies that will not agree to acknowledge the public's concern and fears about GE sugar, which is a primary ingredient in many of their products. Read here for more information about taking action to reverse this rhetoric and to urge these companies that the public does NOT want GE sugar used.

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The BioTech and Corporate Agribusiness Efforts to Pass "Pre-Emption" Laws to Remove Community Resistant to GMOs

Also on the same site is the mention of consumers who are effectively inacting city, county, and local ordinances banning GE crops. As you can imagine, the response from the big GM powers-that-be has been swift and ugly. According to the article,

"15 states have recently passed 'Monsanto laws' taking away the rights of cities and counties to ban GE crops. Now legislators in California, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Carolina are facing the lobbying power of the biotech industry and are threatening to pass controversial "preemption" laws that would take away local rights to regulate GMOs. " read rest of article here

Where does your state stand?

A look at the US map and your state's standing

Debunking the Propaganda: Genetically-Modified Crops No Answer to World Food Crisis

To hear it as told by some folks, genetically-modified foods are the ultimate solution to the world food crisis.

As long as you turn your brains off.

Seriously. This is the best thing since sliced Frankenbread...right?? In fact, it might get so "improved" someday that all we'll have to do is pop open a tube of Engineered Foodpaste, and voila...no thought processes required whatsoever!

The hype is no accident...it takes marketing efforts of monumental proportions to pull off this sort of snow job. I'm sure it took some think tank a while to come up with "hey, I know! We can tout this as the solution to the world's hunger problem...that should help play down the whole GMOs-as-plague-and-pestilence angle, don'tcha think?"

Any worldwide "solution" should examine the power machines, special interests, and political fishhooks associated with anything with that big a marketing budget to back it up.



You just have to see this article at the Millions Against Monsanto site http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_13589.cfm

Genetically modified foods have been a hotly-debated subject of much controversy for some years now. Below are some of the claims widely used to manipulate the world markets towards full acceptance of GM crops -- but research is showing that the claims are quite a different story than reality--

The Propaganda states these things:

1. GM crops are becoming the norm.
However, the evidence is to the contrary.

2. GM crops produce increased yields.
Again, the evidence is to the contrary. In fact, there is proof they are decreased.

3. GM crops require the use of less pesticide.
Wrong. "Although there may have been some initial reductions, recent U.S. data suggest that herbicide use in GE crops is now significantly higher than it was prior to their introduction. Weeds that have developed resistance to the herbicide used with GE crops now infest several million acres, forcing greater herbicide use. Insect-resistant GE crops have reduced overall insecticide use somewhat, but on balance GE crops have not reduced our dependence on pesticides. "http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080618/news_lz1e18gurian.html

4. GM animal feed is more cost-effective/cheaper.
Nope. It's rocketing skyward.

5. It is futile to try to enforce a European "zero-tolerance" policy for non-approved GMOs.
Wrong. The GM conglomerates want that to be the assumption, but it is far from reality.

6. GM crops are more drought-resistant.
False. There is no alternative to good land management. Genetic modification has so far not produced a commercial drought tolerant variety in any type of crop.

The article cited (above) contains the links to the different points above.

Aside from the horrific and irresponsibly-dodged health issues at the heart of GM seeds and crops, has no one considered the absurdity of the argument for****complete reliance on a few GM mega-conglomerates as the controlling forces to world wide food supplies??****

Um...hello?

Makes a person realize just what they have at stake here and why the claims that lack supporting evidence are simply bypassed by the propaganda machines. The GM companies represent big money worldwide. There has been much invested, so they stand to have much to lose...if anyone dares touch them. So far, they have painted themselves as the Providers of the People, the Innovators of the Global Solutions, blah blah blah. Their marketing alone is its own machine.

It is not difficult to remember a lesson from history...that propaganda is not quite the same thing as advertising...it's far more exaggerated and unaccountable; propaganda utilizes (often politically) a selective manipulation (or manufacture) of information, rife with ommissions of full disclosure, typically casting a dictator in a benevolent light as being the author of a "solution for the masses." Look at history's dictators..the benevolent fathers of their people...Stalin, Lenin, Castro, H--ler, Chairman Mao.

Show me where these benevolent dictators have solved the problems they claimed to address historically (other than by wiping out the population so history could be rewritten by their own revisionists)...and maybe then I'll be more willing to trust "Good Father Monsanto"

Until then, I'll just continue thinking for myself and forgoing the communal Koolaid and the microchip implant.

RoundUp Ready Sugar Beets

One thing that is appalling is how those who are genetically altering our food plants (or any plant, for that matter) are currently NOT held to those same Truth-in-Labeling standards that have been hard-fought and hard-won on other fronts.

Do I smell a Monsanto...???

They fight to protect their "right" to NOT label products that include their genetically modified substances right there in our supermarkets. So honestly, there's really no way of knowing if that can of veg is GM or not.....or the taco shells....or nearly anything, truly.

Why would there be such a vested interest on GM corporations (such as...oh, Monsanto...) to keep from labeling these things?

Easy...so the effects cannot be tracked and there would be no liability. Why should liability and tracking be any concern?? BECAUSE THE HEALTH EFFECTS ON HUMANS HAVE NEVER BEEN THOROUGHLY TESTED. What you don't label, you don't know is there...

Now Monsanto is trying to corner the market by genetically modifying another vegetable of world-wide consumption...sugar beets. The European market is more vulnerable to this development, since they traditionally utilize sugar beets on a greater scale than Americans.

Please read Pat and Steph's post at Bifurcated Carrots on this development, as they note that potential contamination could be imminent on a world-wide scale.

Another excellent post is at the Seven Trees blog post, where you can read about this in depth. Here is a brief quote from the article:

"The sugar produced will be mixed in with other types of sugar, unlabeled and untraceable. You couldn't avoid sugar from Roundup Ready beets even if you tried.But David Berg, president of American Crystal Sugar Co., the country’s largest beet sugar manufacturer, is confident that food processors will accept GM sugar. “We have not run into resistance...”


There must be a way to get the laws changed SOON to make EVERYONE subject to the SAME truth-in-labeling laws, ESPECIALLY in the experimental and un-tested field of Genetically-Modified Foods and Feeds.

There MUST.....

Reposting Monsanto Song

From Seize the Day :)

http://www.seizetheday.org/standAlone.cfm?trackID=67

Terminator Seeds the Next Global Weapon?

I just heard this today...called "'The Monsanto Song"



So, here we are...the subject of Terminator Seeds. I'm just now becoming educated about it somewhat.

So where have I been? Why have I had no idea about this issue?

Probably because for most of my life, I've not been gardening to raise my own food.

If it had not been for doing further Monsanto research, I'd never have known about this...the Terminator seeds, or V-GURTs. Supposedly, V-GURTs are a "protection" for the patent-holders of genetically-modified seeds...you know, so all those greedy small farmers won't save their seeds...or "benefit" from inadvertent cross-pollination?? (Said with sarcasm)

Hmmmph.

What I just learned is that a Terminator seed is an engineered seed that has a "suicide" mechanism built in that makes it impotent beyond a single crop. It destroys itself after one crop.

Why is that a big deal?

Well, it may not seem like much to those who grow only hybrids. Hybrids never breed true a second time around anyway. But it's a death sentence to non-hybrid, or "true" seeds. It's these non-hybrid seeds that are the foundation of all the seeds we have on earth, because they produce seed after each crop that will produce repetitive crops ...as has been done throughout the history of human agriculture. Well, until our mad science began "improving" things.

What's so wrong with a Terminator seed anyway?

First, it's engineered...not as a hybrid...crossing one variety with another, say a white geranium with a red geranium, to produce a specific trait. No, this means altering the actual gene of a plant and putting non-species genetic material...from some other species...into its code to create not a hybrid but a trans-genic.

Transgenic

Of, relating to, or being an organism whose genome has been altered by the transfer of a gene or genes from another species or breed: transgenic mice; transgenic plants.


It's monumental that the Terminator seeds are seeds of global foodstuffs...corn, rice, wheat, grains. We're not talking about geraniums here. These seeds have been genetically altered to include non-species genetic materials...transgenically...in order to select for a trait of self-impotence. What's monumental is that this is not the natural process of any plant in nature. It's not a part of the natural workings of any plant. It's the seed vasectomy of the 21st century.

Secondly, you cannot save the seeds...they are all infertile and cannot be used to grow a further crop...at ALL.

Why is that a big deal?

After all, that's the case with hybrids anyway, right?

Transgenics are made with big investor money, money made to benefit from patenting the transgenics. Because in patenting a living thing at all, whether with altered genetics or not, you control its accessibility.

But hybrids, while sometimes "belonging" to the hybridizer (is that a word?) in a proprietary way, did not ALTER the genome of the species. Anyone could come along and cross this sort of geranium with that sort of geranium and get a hybrid GERANIUM...because they were crossing
geranium with geranium. Transgenic is a...thing...altered.

If you put genetic code from a lobster into the DNA of a geranium, in a sense you've mated two unrelated species. It would be like breeding a human with any animal, or an orangutan with a starfish...except this is real and not just some Frankenstein story. What you GET when you cross a transgenic with a true species is anyone's guess. What the natural predators are (you know...the things that keep something balanced in population naturally) for transgenics are anyone's guess. What the effects of EATING something transgenic, or perpetuating its existence, or ALLOWING IT TO REPRODUCE...IS ANYONE'S GUESS.

There are NOT enough statistics, and NEVER WILL BE, to track the PERMANENT implications of altering our world in this way. Or to justify that natural boundary's ever having been transgressed in the first place.

If free to use Terminator seeds, Monsanto would have no more worries about farmers "stealing" their patented seeds. There's no risk of their being stolen because they simply self-destruct, and cannot be used as a source for further seeds.

It goes against what all agriculture in history has striven to produce...fertility, reproduction. It goes against the cycle of eating what we need and saving the excess seed for the next year's harvest.

What are the world wide implications? The implications are DEPENDENCE.

Whoever plants with Terminator seeds, seeds whose fertility beyond the initial planting have been terminated, are DEPENDENT upon an outside supplier for yearly new supplies of seeds...a supplier such as MONSANTO...for there is no seed that can be collected from that crop with which to plant next the next season's crop.

Furthermore, the Terminator seeds were developed and then protected by a patent, in this case a patent held by a corporation ...Monsanto or one of its subsidiaries. That means that the farmers who use these Terminator seeds MUST pay to USE the seeds, beyond the price of the seeds. That means that Monsanto controls who can have the seeds, who can plant, who can eat the harvest.

From http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20060827&articleId=3082 dated 2006

The United States Government has been financing research on a genetic engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or regions. The Government has been working quietly on this technology since 1983. Now, the little-known company that has been working in this genetic research with the Government’s US Department of Agriculture-- Delta & Pine Land-- is about to become part of the world’s largest supplier of patented genetically-modified seeds (GMO), Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri.

Here's the kicker. It's not just Monsanto who is ultimately the engineer of this sort of thing so much as the U.S. government. The U.S. government has been working for decades to HELP DEVELOP TERMINATOR SEEDS.

Why?

National Interests.

Or in clearer terms,
THE ONE WHO CONTROLS THE FOOD SUPPLIES HAS THE ADVANTAGE.

Food has historically been used as a screw to turn by governments as a "tool of co-operation." The facts are that every government's business is "national interests," and this equates to money or a commodity that has worth. What has greater worth than fertility...the ability for a population to continue to live and reproduce? To eat?

That is why I find all talk of over-population suspect, but that's another issue.

Don't think it's just the US that has this capability and has done this research. Rest assured that if food can wield this much power, it is an international race.

When I read that the U.S. government is the CO-ENGINEER of Terminator seeds, a lot of things began to make sense as to why corporations such as Monsanto have had such a carte-blanche power party since the 1970s. The U.S. government FUNDED the research and development of Terminator seeds in PARTNERSHIP with these corporations, through its US DEPT of AGRICULTURE.

The above article written in 2006, is something I just ran across as I try to wrap my head around this issue...well, this FAMILY of issues. It was instrumental in opening my eyes...it's worth a full read. There are more articles than can even be read. It's been an issue now for some time, and has met with sizeable protests on different fronts.

It should.

I see this as a bigger threat than nuclear annihilation. I see Terminator type genetic alterations of the main foods of the world to be bigger because of the risk we run that they will inadvertently threaten the existence of UNALTERED i.e. "true" seeds the world over...from something as simple as cross-pollination. To alter the genome FOR the trait of infertility by inserting non-species genetic materials has UNKNOWN RESULTS, but PREDICTABLE DANGERS. The danger is the infection of the entire world's major food crops...once that pollen gets accidentally shared, such as in cross pollination, with unaltered crops, it's like sex...something's gonna happen. You've just shared an altered crop with an unaltered, and the result will be a SHARED GENETICS...the genetically-altered crop will produce a cross-bred with ALTERED GENETICS.

Not to get all shouty or anything, but...THIS IS BIGGER THAN A NUCLEAR THREAT.

You sterilize the world's food seeds, you have a Doomsday scenario.

To me, at least.

Please explain it to me if I'm wrong. Yes, I know some scientist has tried to offset the dangers of transgenic seeds by further altering the gene codes to include an "exploder" that would return a sterile seed to a fertile one. Uh, yeah. Like you know when you plant it if your seed is altered...unless of course, you're further BUYING some more of that patented stuff??

Please show me where there are protections built in that can't be exploited by force.

Yet this is all touted as being a necessary control...a PROTECTION. Beware of corporations bearing patents for our "protection"...

I have to ask this question:

If the Terminator seeds cross-pollinate other crops...(because as we know "bees will be bees" and the pollination range is miles and miles for adjacent or nearby crops)...then what's stopping us from "accidentally" polluting our entire food supply of crop seeds with Monsanto's frankenstein genetically-altered suicide Terminator seeds, thereby wiping out the world food supply ENTIRELY???

Or not accidentally.
This very thing has provoked actions worldwide, things such as the burning of GMO crops in India and elsewhere across the Globe. "Protection" looks very different depending upon which side of the fence a person lives.

Yes, I can see how any government can use this as a "tool" in underdeveloped nations to manipulate "national interests," and I'm ... aghast.

Isn't this bio-terrorism masquerading as "progress"??

Monsanto's not off the hook in my mind just because the U.S. government is in bed with them. Monsanto has been buying up water supplies...did you know that?? With the patents to the GMO seeds, they have control of food supplies.

Owning the "right" to the major foods of the world, and buying up water sources...

What the flipping heck??

Now that the law now exists opening Pandora's box on the patenting of living creatures, what is to stop this?

What are we going to do to defend our world food supply from becoming a government-controlled weapon, or worse yet, in becoming nearly extinct unless birthed in a petri dish??

I'm very suspicious about the current world food shortage being the result of anything but OPEC and some behind-the-door government manipulation. And I'm getting pretty sick of the farmers being the ones blamed. Please read Phelan's recent post here. I so agree.

I have a hard time wrapping my brain around politics and getting a grasp of history in the making. I'm ok in other areas, but in those and algebra, I struggle for perspective and understanding.

It's never pretty when you find out innocence was really naivete. It's my own fault for not having followed these things in the news better during these past decades. A journey is made in inches, and this has been going on a long, long time. I'm only now beginning to understand that the destination might be disaster for many.

I'm late to the answer for the question "what can we do?"

I'd like to know where to begin...

More About Monsanto

Inspired by the great folks at Path to Freedom's recent article, I'm really really worried and am now looking online for news about Monsanto. There is an awful lot. I'm going to be putting clips here as I educate myself on these issues, to share as my eyes are opened.

These are HUGE issues that CANNOT be ignored. These stories tell like a crime novel...but they are documented.

And these are the people suing small farmers and bullying anyone who investigates or demands accountability.