Posted on 06/04/2013 4:55:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Memorial Day weekend, 2 million people marched in protests against seed giant Monsanto for the purpose of bringing awareness to hazards from genetically modified food, which it and other companies manufacture. Organizer Tami Canal said protests were held in 436 cities in 52 countries.
Genetically modified plants are grown from genetically modified, or engineered, seeds, which are created to resist insecticides and herbicides so that crops can be grown to withstand a weed-killing pesticide or integrate a bacterial toxin that can ward off pests.
The Chicago Tribune reported that because genetically modified organisms are not listed on food or ingredient labels, few Americans realize they're eating GMO foods every day. Genetically modified crops constitute 93 percent of soy, 86 percent of corn and 93 percent of canola seeds planted in the U.S., and are used in about 70 percent of American processed food.
The Tribune reported that the Food and Drug Administration has permitted the sale and planting of genetically modified foods for 15 years and that the Obama administration has approved an "unprecedented number of genetically modified crops," such as ethanol corn, alfalfa and sugar beets. The Alliance for Natural Health USA added that the U.S. Department of Agriculture now wants to eliminate any regulatory controls from genetically altered corn and cotton.
And Monsanto, the world's largest seed-maker and a publicly traded American multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, is leading the pro-GMO march and moving full steam ahead in being the No. 1 U.S. and global farm supplier.
CEO Hugh Grant said this past week, "We're in a growth mode, and with the combination of momentum in our core businesses and new layers of growth coming online from an increasingly global portfolio, we have the strategic drivers in place to continue our growth trajectory next year and beyond."
However, Europe's resistance against GMOs paid off, as Reuters reported last Friday that Monsanto is "not pushing for expansion of genetically modified crops in most of Europe, as opposition to its biotech seeds in many countries remains high."
And The Washington Post also reported the same day that South Korea recently joined Japan in suspending imports of U.S. wheat after an experimental and unapproved strain of GM wheat, designed to resist the deadly effects of Monsanto's most popular herbicide and weed killer, Roundup, was discovered growing on an Oregon farm. (Just this last Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found the rogue Monsanto wheat sprouts in the Beaver State, when a farmer who was attempting to wipe out a field by spraying Roundup couldn't kill the wheat crops.)
There's good reason that most European countries, Japan, and South Korea are resisting GMO crops. Business columnist Al Lewis summarized the dilemma Monsanto faces in his column for Dow Jones Newswires: "For Monsanto, it comes down to saving the 9 billion people expected to populate the planet by 2050. Monsanto is the company that allows farmers to grow more food with less land, water and energy. But it is also the company that brought us products we now know were far more dangerous than advertised, including the insecticide DDT, the toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs and the Vietnam-Era defoliant Agent Orange, which poisoned our own soldiers with dioxins. Monsanto also brought us saccharine -- sweet, yet artificial, and known to cause cancer in laboratory rats."
The Alliance for Natural Health USA cited the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and one of the first scientists to speak out about the dangers of genetically engineered foods: "Recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering) faces our society with problems unprecedented, not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. ... Now whole new proteins will be transposed overnight into wholly new associations, with consequences no one can foretell, either for the host organism or their neighbors. ... For going ahead in this direction may not only be unwise but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics."
So instead of eradicating the need for insecticides and herbicides, genetically modified plants eventually could warrant stronger and more intense pesticides in order to outwit and overcome superbugs and greater strains of diseases. And who's to say what GMOs will do -- now or in generations -- inside our bodies as we consume them on a greater scale and they become a part of the bacteria in our digestive tracts?
With more and more U.S. foods being grown, manufactured and imported from places like South America and Eastern Europe -- the precise areas outside the U.S. where Monsanto's biotech seeds are gaining their greatest foothold, food imports are quickly becoming a recipe for disaster. Remember, too, much of the GM crop grown around the world is used for livestock feed, so there's more than one way for GMOs to be ingested in your diet, such as from meat and dairy products.
Equally alarming is a study that was just published in the journal Neurology. According to Medical Daily, a review of 104 studies conducted around the world revealed that exposure to pesticides, insecticides, weed-killers, fungicides, solvents, etc., increased the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 30 to 80 percent.
Dr. Emanuele Cereda -- author of the study, by researchers from the IRCCS University Hospital San Matteo Foundation in Pavia, Italy -- told the British newspaper Daily Mail: "We didn't study whether the type of exposure, such as whether the compound was inhaled or absorbed through the skin and the method of application, such as spraying or mixing, affected Parkinson's risk. However, our study suggests that the risk increases in a dose response manner as the length of exposure to these chemicals increases."
Eat local and organic, period. And fight GMOs invading U.S. food industries and American homes.
There are 280 COMMON bird diseases ~ all may be found in nature. Chicken discovered to have even one of those diseases is rejected by meat inspectors.
The 1934 Securities Exchange Act requires all public corporations to list all officers, directors and major shareholders. None of your suspects hold any interest in Monsanto.
I think the reason that is happening is because there is soy in almost everything! Plant based Estrogen up the ying yang. But that isn’t science, just my opinion.
In general no paleo foods of any kind are even for sale anywhere.
I used to grow apples.
I’m not saying that apples cannot be grown organically, but to attempt to do so would take a highly labor intensive crop and make it even more so. And you would have to accept a high rejection rate.
I have experience, and you ask me to seek out commonsense. You speak from a viewpoint of ignorance.
In an earlier post, you attributed endemic medical problems to a change in diet. What is the basis for this statement?
Perhaps you need to do a little research before you reach a baseless conclusion. For example:
- have you taken into account the increase in lifespan (lifespan has increased 10 years since 1960, from 67 to 77)? As we have gained greater knowledge about life risks, things like herat disease kill less people, allowing us to live longer and become more susceptible to diseases that primarily afflict older people, such as Parkinson’s disease.
- Or possibly that medical science has greatly increased its ability to detect medical issues and label them, whereas before they were attributed to natural causes?
- In 1960, food represented 30% of an average American family’s budget. Now it is 12%.
Seriously, could you point me in some directions with some links?
Good for you.
In the meantime, why won’t your busybody buddies leave me and others alone? I’m sure if I had the time and inclination I could find many studies that would point to the safety of GMOs. And there is no doubt that GMO crops can be grown faster, using less water, land and pesticides.
So, to turn the argument around, what are ya’ll trying to do? Starve the little chill’ren?
When my kids were still at home, and they needed chores to keep them occupied, we raised a lot of “free range” chickens. I wonder how many of the folks singing the praises of these birds have any idea as to what a chicken eats when left to its own devices.
Then, I hold off on all milk fresh from the cow, or even if it's been irradiated. Can't digest that stuff so it must be processed as acidophilous or cheese aged at least 9 months or yoghurt. The penalties for drinking fresh, whole milk are too numerous to mention!
My favorite starch additive for making wheat-gluten free bread is TAPIOCA ~ it's stretchy, just like wheat, but you have to process it to eat it since it comes with a couple of poisons ~ but they are easily removed unlike the poisonous gluten in wheat ~ which simply cannot be removed easily enough.
Someday I hope to see a wheat-gluten free wheat product on the market ~ it'll have to come about through some serious GMO of course.
Then there's beef ~ those poor animals have been bred and rebred so many times they're as far removed from an Aurochs as a tadpole. Better to hunt down your own wild pigs. They eat a natural diet!
One day a stupid neighbor stole my white rocks ~ they were old but they laid well ~ I'd imagine that after they cooked them for two days you could get a knife through the meat ~ but seriously, who'd want to risk handling a really old free range chicken?
All one has do to do, is look who was behind the California proposition to label GM crops, i.e., Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Greens and the far left Democrats, to see where the movement comes from and who puts all the money behind this movement. Also the big organic business, which has become “Big Organic”, is putting big money behind this movement, as they believe they will make big money if GM food is labelled. Actually, Greenpeace wants GM crops to be banned, not just labelled...so they are also dishonest when talking about labelling.
I raised my own chickens for years and years. And your credentials?
The Indians never mated cornfields with bacterium. There’s a difference between selecting the ‘best’ plant or plants and saving seeds from those, and introducing genetic material from a bacterium into those corn plants.
I’m hardly a greenpeace supporter. The choice we are going to be ultimately given is this: Eat GMO food and risk subsequent sterilization (I double dog dare you to read some of the grant proposals on the gates foundation web site for this very thing!) or just plain starve.
Ultimately, the population control wackjobs (Gates, Buffet, Soros, others) just want you out of the gene pool. Either directly via starvation or indirectly via failure to reproduce.
You can’t reason with these people.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.