Earlier this week I touched on some of the primary concerns with GMOs (both widespread concerns and personal concerns I have ). Here I'm finishing off the last three areas: corporate dominance, laws, and impacts on third world countries/peoples -- plus a bit on what you can do about it all if you decide you share my fears. As I said in my first post, this barely does justice to any one concern, and simply lays a quick foundation that I hope to build on later.
Corporate dominance -- we are seeing a handful of companies dominate what we eat. As I've talked about before, this is becoming a huge and hidden problem. About 80% of beef in the U.S., for instance, comes from one of five companies. We are moving towards a world where a handful of companies will own the seeds to everything that we grow. They will literally own and control the food supply. We need to stop worrying about the Microsofts and Googles and start focusing on the Monsantos and ConAgra's. Why don't we? As The Future of Food points out, the penetration into our government and revolving door by and with BigAgra is simply amazing. BigAgra is essentially governing themselves. And even believing a handful of companies will control our seeds may be optomistic. Some put Monsanto as controling over 90% of the GMO market.
This brings us to laws. Patent law now allows companies to patent seeds and genes. People can patent life. When a patented GMO seed is accidentally mixed with other seeds, it contaminates the entire "population" and the farmer who accessed the GMO seeds through bad luck when it fell off a truck onto his land, is liable to the patent holder. Really. I can't even talk about this one right now. It defies logic so greatly it is upsetting. What we need is a sense that certain things are too important to be "owned" by any company. But instead of fighting for us, the government is fighting for BigAgra, and in some cases taking ownership interests in certain patents.
Third world countries -- all around the world, people grow food for themselves or buy locally from farmers. People in third world countries don't drive to Wal-Mart nearly as often as they eat what is around them. This last topic maybe sounds a bit boring but get this: GMO seeds have a so called "terminator gene" that makes them sterile. Imagine if from now on men were born sterile. A man could still marry a woman and have a baby with her, but to do so he'd have to BUY sperm from a sperm bank. And 5 companies control every sperm bank in the world. Really, imagine that for a moment. That is what we're moving to in the world of food. GMO seeds produce plants that produce seeds that are useless. A farmer in India (or America) who has always grown plants, planted the seeds from those plants and grown more, is inching towards a world where every single year he has to buy his seeds from BigAgra. Can't he just "opt out" of GMOs? It's not that easy. Countless stories are reported of GMO seeds contaminating seed batches, contaminating fields and so forth. This is marketed as a way for a country to control its product. Sort of like if songs bought of iTunes and if it was downloaded to another computer it would require you to pay a fee everytime you wanted to play it. Reasonable enough. But what if that song would automatically jump to any computer within 100 yards of where it was being played -- and instead of making you pay everytime you wanted to play that song, it infected your whole library, making you pay everytime you wanted to play any song? That is more like what we have here. Something that sounds reasonable in a shiny pamphlet but that is incredibly scary and indefensible. Again, we're talking about food here. This isn't just another product for a company to control like online music. And by the way, the US government owns a large portion of the patent for the terminator gene.
What can you do about it? Well I'll talk more about that later, but for starters, eat organic. Organic food cannot contain GMOs. That means buying organic veggie burgers or soymilk is a better idea than conventional. You can also try and avoid processed foods. While whole foods are increasingly genetically modified, you're more likely to find GMOs today used as fillers in hotdogs, margarine, cookies, etc. You may also want to try and avoid fried foods. We think that eating vegetable oil is healthier, but most vegetable oil is from soy or corn, and most of that is genetically modified. There are some serious health concerns that would not be present with much higher fat oils like olive, nut oils, or even animal-based fats. Finally, to all those out there who try to avoid meat, it is becoming increasingly known that health food's dirty little secret is how much of it contains GMOs. Mostly this is in the form of genetically modified soy. Look for brands that specifically say they contain no GMOs.
If you really want to know brand by brand, check out this useful guide here. It will tell you what doesn't contain GMOs, what does (though in more PC terms it claims they "might"). By way of example -- want to know what brands of infant formula are for sure GMO free? It's right there (Gerber, for instance, is one of them). Energy bars (which contain a lot of often GMO soy)? Clif, Luna and Odwalla are all clear. Be careful of Balance Bars, Nature Valley and PowerBars.
Showing posts with label GMOs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GMOs. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
GMOs
I know this blog has been entirely neglected as of late. I apologize for that and appreciate any readers who have bared with me and continue to view this blog. Here I've kicked things off again with a topic that's become pretty important to me.
I used to think the genetically modified organism (GMO) "scare" I hear and read about was just a bunch of people paranoid about innovation. I've since realized I was falling for BigAgra's marketing campaigns and there is actually quite a bit to be scared of. GMOs are incredibly scary and shockingly evil in really every way. I hope to touch on these issues separately more in depth but just to run through some of them here, the issues come down to secrecy, health, environment, corporate dominance, laws, and third world countries. I'll talk briefly about secrecy, health and the environment here, and cover the rest later this week.
Before I go through them, them, I wanted to note that an amazing but scary movie that runs through the issues of GMOs is "The Future of Food" -- as recently recommended by a friend of mine and available off Netflix. This film touches on the scariest aspects of GMOs. I highly recommend it.
Let's start with secrecy -- genetically modified foods are all over the place. You probably had no idea. Soybeans, which have increased their presence both prominantly in foods that try to capitalize on the belief that soy is healthy (partly true) and as a cheap protein filler in everything from animal feed, to processed packaged foods to Arby's roast beef. Reports from articles a few years ago claimed that US soy production was 80% dominated by GMOs. Now reports put it at more like 95%. At least 1/4 of U.S. corn is genetically engineered, as well as most of our cotton. What makes the U.S. so crazy, though, even more then the dominance of GMOs in some of our major crops, is that we don't require disclosure. You can find products that actively disclose they are "GMO-free" but the government does not require any disclosure of GMO in ingredients. Most developed countries either ban GMOs or require disclosure.
Health -- this is a big one and I'll only touch on it briefly here. The health implications of GMOs are massive. Altering the genes requires companies to essentially insert bacteria and/or viruses into other organisms. We are only beginning to understand the implications of this, and the possible negative effects of random, out of place genes (such as a flounder gene in a tomato). Studies are few and far between as they are opposed with massive funding from BigAgra, but they have shown incredible mortality rates from bugs eating such crops (studies with Monarch butterflies showed massive mortality rates), very disturbing health issues on rats fed genetically modified produce, and so forth. To ensure that the genetic modification "takes," companies will insert an "antibiotic resistance marker" into the food. Some scientists have been incredibly concerned of the implications this has on already troubling antibiotic resistance in our lives. Further, genetically modified foods have been shown to cause allergic reactions in some people -- sometimes as severe as potential death. One theory of why companies like to keep the presence of GMOs secret in food is so that it becomes very difficult to track allergic reactions and so forth back to GMOs. Pretty scary stuff.
Environment -- crops grown from GMO seeds have some serious issues not fully tested and publicized by the companies that market them. Some of these include shorter root systems that can cause flooding issues and other problems. But more importantly, our environment benefits from diversity. We already -- as I have blogged about before -- seen a terrible reduction in diversity, with most fruits and vegetables being grown from one or two varieties. GMOs threaten to further destroy biodiversity and turn every corn seed in the world, for instance, into the one marketed by Monsanto, for instance. This can lead to the development of so called superweeds that destroy such crops with efficiency, and no fallback. Ireland's potato famine is an interesting example of what happens with less biodiversity. A further problem for the environment (and certainly our health) is pesticides. The companies who make the pesticides, are now the main companies that market GMO seeds. These are marketed to go hand in hand. The most famous being the "Round Up Ready" seeds, that are designed so as not to die when sprayed with Round Up. This is a chemical that kills everything living. But now it won't kill your GMO plant. Sound healthy to you? Companies are even developing seeds that won't germinate unless they come in contact with a certain external agent -- so for instance a soybean seed would be worthless unless sprayed with Round Up. We need less pesticide, not more.
I used to think the genetically modified organism (GMO) "scare" I hear and read about was just a bunch of people paranoid about innovation. I've since realized I was falling for BigAgra's marketing campaigns and there is actually quite a bit to be scared of. GMOs are incredibly scary and shockingly evil in really every way. I hope to touch on these issues separately more in depth but just to run through some of them here, the issues come down to secrecy, health, environment, corporate dominance, laws, and third world countries. I'll talk briefly about secrecy, health and the environment here, and cover the rest later this week.
Before I go through them, them, I wanted to note that an amazing but scary movie that runs through the issues of GMOs is "The Future of Food" -- as recently recommended by a friend of mine and available off Netflix. This film touches on the scariest aspects of GMOs. I highly recommend it.
Let's start with secrecy -- genetically modified foods are all over the place. You probably had no idea. Soybeans, which have increased their presence both prominantly in foods that try to capitalize on the belief that soy is healthy (partly true) and as a cheap protein filler in everything from animal feed, to processed packaged foods to Arby's roast beef. Reports from articles a few years ago claimed that US soy production was 80% dominated by GMOs. Now reports put it at more like 95%. At least 1/4 of U.S. corn is genetically engineered, as well as most of our cotton. What makes the U.S. so crazy, though, even more then the dominance of GMOs in some of our major crops, is that we don't require disclosure. You can find products that actively disclose they are "GMO-free" but the government does not require any disclosure of GMO in ingredients. Most developed countries either ban GMOs or require disclosure.
Health -- this is a big one and I'll only touch on it briefly here. The health implications of GMOs are massive. Altering the genes requires companies to essentially insert bacteria and/or viruses into other organisms. We are only beginning to understand the implications of this, and the possible negative effects of random, out of place genes (such as a flounder gene in a tomato). Studies are few and far between as they are opposed with massive funding from BigAgra, but they have shown incredible mortality rates from bugs eating such crops (studies with Monarch butterflies showed massive mortality rates), very disturbing health issues on rats fed genetically modified produce, and so forth. To ensure that the genetic modification "takes," companies will insert an "antibiotic resistance marker" into the food. Some scientists have been incredibly concerned of the implications this has on already troubling antibiotic resistance in our lives. Further, genetically modified foods have been shown to cause allergic reactions in some people -- sometimes as severe as potential death. One theory of why companies like to keep the presence of GMOs secret in food is so that it becomes very difficult to track allergic reactions and so forth back to GMOs. Pretty scary stuff.
Environment -- crops grown from GMO seeds have some serious issues not fully tested and publicized by the companies that market them. Some of these include shorter root systems that can cause flooding issues and other problems. But more importantly, our environment benefits from diversity. We already -- as I have blogged about before -- seen a terrible reduction in diversity, with most fruits and vegetables being grown from one or two varieties. GMOs threaten to further destroy biodiversity and turn every corn seed in the world, for instance, into the one marketed by Monsanto, for instance. This can lead to the development of so called superweeds that destroy such crops with efficiency, and no fallback. Ireland's potato famine is an interesting example of what happens with less biodiversity. A further problem for the environment (and certainly our health) is pesticides. The companies who make the pesticides, are now the main companies that market GMO seeds. These are marketed to go hand in hand. The most famous being the "Round Up Ready" seeds, that are designed so as not to die when sprayed with Round Up. This is a chemical that kills everything living. But now it won't kill your GMO plant. Sound healthy to you? Companies are even developing seeds that won't germinate unless they come in contact with a certain external agent -- so for instance a soybean seed would be worthless unless sprayed with Round Up. We need less pesticide, not more.
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