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Resolve to Keep Science Experiments off Your Dinner Table in 2012
Engineered crops have steadily increased over the past 15 years, despite the lack of independent research on their long-term effects on human health and the environment.
'Tis the season to reflect on the past year and hold high expectations for the blank slate that awaits in January.
Engineered Foods, an OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib.
Here's one resolution for all you consumers hoping to improve your health and the environment: Starting in 2012, avoid genetically engineered foods.
It won't be easy. By some estimates, 70 percent of processed food contains engineered ingredients. That's why we need lawmakers and grocery retailers to turn over a new leaf in the coming year and support our right to know what we're eating.
The variety and volume of engineered crops have steadily increased over the past 15 years, despite the lack of independent research on their long-term effects on human health and the environment. Extolled for their potential to boost nutrients and increase yields to feed a hungry planet, in reality the vast majority of genetically engineered crops are designed solely to resist insects and weeds. In fact, 94 percent of soybeans, 88 percent of corn, and 90 percent of cotton are genetically engineered solely for that purpose.
But this widespread experiment isn't working. So-called "super weeds" and hardy pests like the rootworm have evolved to resist the herbicides and pesticides that are used with engineered crops. As a result, even more toxic chemicals are needed to keep these mutated pests at bay.
These chemicals poison our waterways, soil, and ultimately our bodies. Some have been associated with endocrine disruption and developmental abnormalities. Yet more risks are still being discovered.
Not only are genetically engineered foods risky to our environmental and physical health, they also hinder the financial well being of family farmers who must depend on just a few companies for seeds and their affiliated agrochemicals. They face the threat of lawsuits if their crops get contaminated by genetic material from engineered crops planted by someone else.
Opinion polls show that many people don't want to eat these foods, and nearly everyone asked wants them labeled. While most of the developed world has either banned engineered food or required that it be labeled, most U.S. consumers unwittingly eat and drink engineered ingredients every day.
This is particularly true with cereal, cookies, soft drinks, and processed foods that contain soy protein and corn syrup. But engineered ingredients also hide in some fruits and vegetables. Dairy products and meat that come from animals fed those crops are also considered genetically engineered foods.
This fall, the biotech and pesticide giant Monsanto introduced a new variety of genetically modified sweet corn. Sweet corn is the stuff we eat right off the cob, or that we buy frozen or canned. This new sweet corn "stacks" three genetically modified traits that are intended to resist weed-killing chemicals and fight off pests. Although the traits were approved individually, no tests have been performed to determine their health and environmental effects when combined in one product.
Regardless, this engineered sweet corn is set to hit grocery stores in 2012. As the largest grocery retailer in the country, Walmart has considerable influence over which foods are available to the public, the methods used to produce them, and the prices paid to food producers. Walmart should set an example for other retailers by listening to customer preferences and choosing not to sell engineered sweet corn in its stores.
Ultimately, our government and food retailers should respect the right of Americans to know what's on our plate and how it's produced.
In 2012, let's resolve to make sure they get that message.
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33 Comments so far
Show AllA couple of points: For those many who are concerned by gm food please get together, kick in the money, and do those independent studies. What's stopping you? If you truly care then put your money where your mouths are. Put in the time. General whining and bitchiness doesn't cut it. Personally I say to hell with the new gm sweet corn seed that is overly expensive. While I'm sure some large growers will use it, small (very small) sweetcorn growers like myself will stick with the tremendous varieties we already have gotten through conventional breeding programs. Varieties like Incredible and Ambrosia (my chosen 2) and so amazing that my mouth is watering just imagining.
I don't get your logic, Greg. Why exactly should the people who don't want to eat GMOs pay for the studies? As far as I'm concerned, you can eat as much frankenfood as you like. I don't want any, and polls say that 9 out of 10 people in the US don't want any either. We should have the right to know what we buy, so food should be labeled. It's as simple as that.
Of course it may seem simple, but it is not. It is extremely clear that powerful interests will not allow this kind of labeling. Now if government or industry does a study, anti-gm people will not believe a result that is not highly critical. That leaves one choice: a study funded by those who truly care.
There have already been enough studies that put safety of GMOs into question. If, despite that, GMOs are still approved for human and animal consumption, the least we should demand is clear labeling of GM "foods." Sadly, you are right - there will be no labeling, for exactly the reason you state.
Greg R is an actual farmer of the stuff. Don't you think you should consider his points?
Bea is right that there are "questions" about gm safety. However I have seen nothing that causes me particular concern. Gm has been mostly a benefit to farmers by making life easier and lowering our exposure to pesticides. I have little doubt that gm will ultimately benefit consumers in various ways, hopefully with few or no ill effects.
" Gm has been mostly a benefit to farmers by making life easier and lowering our exposure to pesticides. "
How do they limit exposure to pesticides? The GM corn that Monsanto has come out with allows farmers to spray more on the crops. So our exposure has been expanded, not lowered.
Sorry if I don't want to risk my health so that corporate farmers can have it easier. I remember the Farm Aid concerts and fund raisers, there are very few small farms left. The huge multinational farm syndicates have it easy enough.
The livestock fed on GM feed is so inferior in many ways that excessive antibiotics and fillers have to be used so they live long enough and grow big enough to make it to market.
There's a reason for the increases in Alzheimers, cancer and autism and I am guessing it's tied to the things we are ingesting.
Here in the north country (Minnesota), before gm, we farmers had a very short time frame to kill perennial weeds such as quackgrass (a notorious yield robber) prior to planting. In corn, our control of foxtail was accomplished by either spraying an expensive acetoclor (sp?) or similar chemistry before planting or spraying an expensive post-emerge product (Accent) after planting (which had a nasty habit of damaging the corn). Then to control tougher broadleaves we had to spray again with another product. An alternative to this was to use a HEAVY dose of atrazine. These products often needed precise timing that weather conditions did not always allow. Soybean weed control was equally problematic. One of the problems was the need to apply a double dose of grass killer when tank mixed with a broadleaf weed killer due to chemical antagonism. And then there were the really nasty chemicals with the skull and crossbones warnings that were needed to kill insects. Believe me farmers are so glad to leave this shit in the past. Do remember that things that touch your skin and things you breathe are also "ingested." Millions of chemical combinations assault us every day. Did you remember your deodorant today? The chemicals enter your bloodstream extremely quickly.
Greg, have you ever heard of Masanobu Fukuoka? I found myself completely intrigued by his work. Living in an apartment, I can't apply it myself but he seems to have been highly respected, perhaps because his method is the antithesis of monocrop factory farming.
Ruth Stout also practiced a similar technique in Connecticut. She was a gardener, rather than a farmer, but she had a large garden. I think she grew all the food she and her husband ate. She didn't plow, didn't weed, she mulched heavily and basically let the garden take care of itself. She wrote several books about her gardening method. I've read "The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book: Secrets of the year-round mulch method" that she co-wrote with Richard Clemence. It's a great read, even if you are not that much into gardening. Her book, "Gardening Without Work" has been republished recently, so it should be easy to get. There is also an interview with Ruth Stout on YouTube, where she talks about her garden and her life. It's very interesting. She was quite an original.
She started gardening conventionally with plowing, chemical sprays, weeding, etc., but it turned out to be too much work, so she decided to start doing things her own way. She said: "At the age of 87 I grow vegetables for two people the year-round, doing all the work myself and freezing the surplus. I tend several flower beds, write a column every week, answer an awful lot of mail, do the housework and cooking; and never do any of these things after 11 o'clock in the morning!" Try that, Greg R, with your franken-farming!
Mairead and Bea, other than my 235 acres of no-til gm corn and beans, my wife and I have many large gardens of vegetables and flowers and some fruit. On these we rarely use herbicides and not a lot of fertilizer. Our apple trees get some insecticide. Our gardens also are more or less no-til. Why make extra work out of it? I feel like I live in a paradise with wonderful tasting food. I've worked hard for what I have, but without my ancestors I might have had little or nothing. Sometimes luck of birth is worth a lot. With my native grass filter strips along my creek I feel that my soil, fertilizer and chemicals are mostly staying here instead of heading downstream. I'm proud of my efforts although I do understand that gm has not been proven 100% positively, certainly safe. I can live with that. Pretty much nothing in life is certain.
In other words, if GMOs don't kill us, chemicals will.
It's my understanding that, contrary to what you are saying (?) GM crops reduce the use of some insecticides, but they require higher use of herbicides. None of that stuff is good for you, tough some chemicals are less lethal than others.
Have you ever heard of organic farming, Greg?
No, they do not require more herbicides. My no-til farming does mean a bit more herbicide to deal with perennials. I'm fine with that. Saving soil is precious.
It is all about farmers having to work less. The most important thing is to decrease the number of people employed so that landowners can make as much money as possible - often at the expense of the rest of the economy and of course much more importantly at the expense of foreign people, especially third world peasantry. No one doubts that GMO based industrial agriculture makes farmers' lives more convenient, but what you do not seem to understand that the problem is exactly agriculture organised in an industrial fashion.
It is a problem for several reasons, the two most important of them being biological and social: first, on a biological level, it is without doubt extremely destructive ecologically and relies on finite and non-renewable resources (so it's completely unsustainable); second, on the social level, it concentrates productive work and thus effective power into a relatively few hands and destroys the remaining organic robustness of society and increases individual's dependence on its top-down structure. Farmers of the American type are now much farther from being peasants and much closer to pure landowner rentiers, and everything that's happening, including GMOs, pushes in that direction. Of course that sounds good to you, but your small gain is everyone else's big loss. GMO based health concerns are very much a secondary issue compared to these two things, even though they're still extremely important.
I dislike that you couple a constant shilling for GMO based agriculture with Democratic partisanship but still keep posing as someone who actually cares about society and ecology. At least don't deny which side you're really on: you're making your living off of socially and ecologically destructive practices and you obviously do not give a shit.
Great post, Atomsk. I appreciate that you considered both key prongs of the argument. GM constitutes an insidious betrayal of Nature, and since scientists regard what they can control as real, what they can't control are all the adaptations Nature will make to try to get things back to Her Norm/al. The ensuing perturbations are not what science, product placement, or the outright commdifiation of the natural world involves... or anticipates.
I assume you are joking, pjd. In case you are not: I don't think farmers are qualified to evaluate the safety of GMOs. I'd rather scientists did it.
By the way, to Greg's point about independent studies, here is a nice article about how companies like Monsanto block independent research on their genetically modified seeds:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/13/opinion/la-oe-guriansherman-seeds-20110213
I wonder why they do it? Just kidding - it's a rhetorical question.
While having Christmas dinner with a couple yesterday, and another invited guest, a 93 year old woman, I noticed a strange pattern developing as we talked. The hostess had mentioned how foods, and drinks she'd been used to were now causing stomach distress in various ways. Later in the day, the older woman mentioned that she'd started having to take Tums a lot because it seemed like every time she ate she'd end up burping a lot and having heartburn. I had to wonder what the odds were of the three of us starting to have similar reactions to foods we've eaten for years, around the same time, because for the first time in probably ten or fifteen years, I bought a bottle of tums, because I was having the same problems as the others were, with foods I'd eaten most of my life.
I'd been thinking it was my hiatal hernia kicking up again. Now I'm wondering what poisons we're all getting in the foods we're eating, and where they're coming from. Be interesting to learn if there's been a lot of stomach distress in the past couple of months.
I've been getting a pain in the pit of my stomach lately whenever someone at this site says there's no difference between republicans and democrats. I think it's a conspiracy to silence my voice.
Well, Greg R:
Nobody's on a conspiracy to silence your voice, but I have to disagree with the idea that there's a difference between the GOP and the Democratic Party, at large. There's almost none, if any. Both parties are a disgrace.
Disgraces, yes, but with enough difference to matter. Third parties can not work in the US as our winner take all system effectively shuts them out. Force the dems to do better. Vote out the worst. Get involved in primaries.
``So-called "super weeds" and hardy pests like the rootworm have evolved to resist the herbicides and pesticides that are used with engineered crops.`` Not quite. Biological evolution isn`t happening. It`s never happened. And it doesn`t matter how many people want to believe it, or claim that science proves it`s happening, It isn`t on.
Otherwise, The article is fine.
I believe you because you wrote it. FACT.
Let's hear it for faith-based science! ; )
Wrote what?
You shouldn't believe anything that you don't actually believe. And believing shouldn't be a spiritistic thing. You were given a mind - by the Cause and Master of nature - for a reason. I don't disbelieve in biological evolution just because I joined a group who disbelieved. I studied the subject. (This article deals with an example of adaption, pure and simple.)
I should believe you because... you're easily angered? You've proven nothing to me? You are part of a crowd that is greater in number than the one I belong to? What? There's two ways to teach. 1. You can teach in an authoritative manner or in an 2. authoritarian manner. You can say "Here's how it is and I'll try to explain to you why I think so." The authoritative teacher is a democrat. By going through the steps he (or she) took to learn this or that with his students, those students can then examine those steps (sources etc) for his (or herself). A student might be able to return to the teacher and say "I agree with this but I don't agree with that." That feedback mechanism ensures that collectively, a society will advance intellectually, scientifically and spiritually, since the teacher can be corrected and false knowledge isn't forced on people at the expense of facts.
The authoritarian teaches by saying "Here's how it is because I say so. Period."
The Christian Bible condemns spiritism. It tells us to make our minds over with our power of reason. Of course, the Christianity that most people know, whether they are for or against it, is not the real deal. It doesn't bother me that my Christianity is being automatically attacked. It isn't, actually. It bothers me that people are so dumb that they don't know that they are attacking their own Christianity, by which I mean the Christianity with which they are familiar.
Also, A great man recommends that we don't believe anything. He even tells us to not believe him. It's hyperbole of course. But his point is well taken. Noam Chomsky, who told me that he doesn't believe in God (but otherwise enjoyed my letter), offers that admonition, as does the Christian Bible. Be skeptical about everything. Examine everything. It's a bit of work for sure. But once it's habit, you're going to be better off for it.
I won't say more about this. At least not now.
That great man was right about not beliving anything. If you were to consult a dozen "specialists" individually in the area of GM foods, or anything else for that matter, you'd end up with a dozen differing opinions. You take those dozen opinions, sort through them to find a majority consensus on anything, and that's something you can probably believe might be correct.
Ugh, no, not at all. Majority consensus is at best a bad heuristic in science, not a part of the method in any way. Especially in an area like GM foods where opinion is at least as influenced by material interests as scientific principles.
"Also, A great man recommends that we don't believe anything. He even tells us to not believe him. It's hyperbole of course. But his point is well taken. Noam Chomsky, who told me that he doesn't believe in God (but otherwise enjoyed my letter), offers that admonition, as does the Christian Bible. Be skeptical about everything. Examine everything. It's a bit of work for sure. But once it's habit, you're going to be better off for it."
And Chomsky will also tell you that you aren't allowed to pick and choose your own facts. And while you have a right to privately believe stuff not supported by them, every time you're trying to influence reality (directly or through other people), you have an intellectual duty to be consistent with commonly observed reality - at least if you're talking about science. You are not allowed, if you want to be taken seriously, to just declare reality away. If you say you don't believe in evolution, which is at this moment considered pretty much a fact, you should be able to give your reasons - and your reasons should better measure up to those that support the theory.
First, what part of evolution don't you believe in? The mechanism of natural selection? (Because natural selection is not the only mechanism of change in the neo-darwinian synthesis?) Inheritance through genes? (Are there other mechanisms of inheritance on the same level as biological evolution? (There seem to be higher level (in the sense that they build upon structures that evolved in biological evolution) mechanisms of self-reproduction that seem to be analogous to Darwinian natural selection, eg. cultural evolution.) The idea that the biological world is constantly developing towards higher complexity (which is not necessarily a part of the concept of evolution)? That small scale adaptations can lead to entirely new species? (Micro vs macroevolution?) That species change at all?
(A related (and imo pretty interesting) question may be this (well, it's the same question posed from the other direction): if you do not believe in evolution, what is your opinion about the *observed* phenomena and relatively well understood mechanisms that seem to make some form of evolution *inevitable*? How do you explain the mechanism of natural selection *away*? For example, how do you explain the fact that artificial selection works?)
Second, what is the factual basis for your disbelief? Are there new facts, new biological mechanisms, or alternative interpretations of existing ones?
Third, do you have an alternative theory? I don't think it's necessary to have one of course, but it'd be interesting. Does that theory have the same explanatory power as the theory of evolution?
"The Christian Bible condemns spiritism. It tells us to make our minds over with our power of reason. Of course, the Christianity that most people know, whether they are for or against it, is not the real deal. It doesn't bother me that my Christianity is being automatically attacked. It isn't, actually. It bothers me that people are so dumb that they don't know that they are attacking their own Christianity, by which I mean the Christianity with which they are familiar."
How do you know this? I mean, what are your reasons for declaring that most people's Christianity is not the "real deal"? Shouldn't that scepticism you seem to cherish be applied to this issue also? So shouldn't you easily be able to give a reason or two to substantiate this statement?
Bitter Things for Bitter Living...Through Chemistry, eh?
There has been at least one animal study that raises serious questions. Three groups of rats are fed an identical diet except one is GMO and two are GMO free. One of the GMO free diets has the pesticide added to it that is in the GMO. Only the rats fed the GMO died an early death. The GMO free food with the pesticide added did not kill the rats, so clearly there are other things going on in the genetically modified organism that is unexpected and unhealthy. A professor emeritus of Genetics at Cal said that these effects are called "cryptic and uncharacterized". In other words they are not sure of whats going on. This particular professor is in favor of GMO's but agrees that the process would be better left to the scientists and kept out of the hands of corporations. So as of now it is a technologie that although it could be beneficial to humans is being used by corporations so that it improves their profits regardless of the public.
Great anecdote!
Remember the hype around the genome project? They would map all the genes in the human body and then have all the answers to everything. I don't know why mapping genes would have any effect on the power of multinationals whose capitalists, and scientist tools, experiment on us daily, with impunity now that corporations have captured governments pretty much everwhere and can have those governments make the rules they want. But never mind that.
It developed that mapping the genes (or whatever it was that they set out to do exactly) didn't deliver the payload they were expecting. They discovered along the way that various genes, in various combinations, produce effects that we have no way, at present, of predicting.
There's lots of complexity here.
The HGP finished in 2006, about five years ago. Aren't your short term expectations unrealistic? In fact, it seems to me that they're intentionally unrealistic :-/ Anyway, I think the HGP was much more about the ability to patent human genes and thus to concentrate power and not really about genuine scientific research, regardless of individual motivations of scientists.
That illustrates the point that it's not just the direct consumption of GM crops that are a risk, but we also have to examine the effects of GM crops fed as feed to livestock that is eventually consumed to really understand the true risks. Labeling just the plant derived foods we eat isn't going to be enough, if we eat meat we also have to ask: What have the livestock eaten.
I am concerned about GM foods... however, not nearly as much as about our addiction to processed foods. Every processed food has additives to enhance, to preserve, and usually to color and flavor the food. Most of these foods have long shelf lives, prepare quickly, and cost less than raw fruits, vegetables, and fresh meats. Their flavor and texture is more consistent and work involved in preparation as well as clean up is greatly reduced. Eating fast food out... as well as consuming almost all upscale restaurant foods is far less healthy than a planed and disciplined approach to home nutrition. Slow food, (including those vegetables you plant, tend, harvest and consume) are far more flavorful and nutritious. Have some space in the country, and add your own chicken/eggs/perhaps a shared milk supply with several neighbors and you are now eating healthy nutritious food. It's difficult to avoid the chemicals, toxins, and preservatives even in the fresh foods sections of supermarkets. For your health and future, do the work, spend the money, grow and care for as much of your food as possible. Note... the on-line recipe services offer wonderful new ideas on how to prepare nutritious and flavor filled meals.