My daughter (bless her veagan heart) made me aware of something of late and I find it noteworthy.  Although when growing up she really didn’t have a say in what was shoved down her throat for meals, now being a mother of 2 has changed how she sees things done for her own .  Makes you wonder where it will all end.  I am talking about genetic engineering of food stuff.

“Why should you be concerned about GMOs and labeling of GE foods:

It’s a simple conflict of interest.  Pesticide companies like Monsanto have developed Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) spliced corn, that is resistant to it’s own Round Up herbicide product.  This starts a vicious cycle where farmers must use both products to grow anything.

Biodiversity is a big deal.  There are 20,000 varieties of corn in Mexico alone.  If heavily introduced in Mexico, GE seed stands to decimate the assortment through cross pollination/contamination.  In 1970 the US experienced a corn crisis.  Southern corn leaf blight destroyed 15%-50% of the total US corn harvest, resulting in the loss of over $1 billion.  The US turned to Mexico’s seed biodiversty and cultivated several varieties of corn that were resistant to Southern corn blight, thus saving billions of dollars in losses the next year.

Bt corn is engineered to punch holes in the intestines of the insects that eat it and kill them.  What effect does Bt have on human organs and immune systems?  What effect does it have on our livestock that eat it and also become our food?  What effect does it have on beneficial insects?  It’s a good question.  It’s also a question that cannot be answered without GE labeling.  There is no way to link or trace illnesses back to GE foods if they are not labeled, thus the effects have never been studied.

 A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto. 

According to the USDA in 2007, adoption of biotech corn reached 73% while GE soy is at a staggering 91%.  This means most soy on the market is genetically engineered.  This is very frightening indeed.  Soy is the first alternative infant formula for babies with milk sensitivities and allergies.  What effects will this GE soy have on infants exclusively fed this formula?  We just don’t know and there should be proper labeling.  We DO know what it does to rats, however:

 Over half of the rats born to mothers who ate GM-soy (55-56%) were dead in three weeks, as opposed to a 9% mortality rate in rats whose mothers ate normal soy.What is happening here is that genetic seed is being manufactured.  The seed can pollunate with other seed but by the same token NULLIFYS (sterilize if you will) that seed so that it cannot be anything but GE used for future crops.  In essence, terminator seed wipes out the competition.  All that is left for each years crops are genetically manufactured seed from Monsanto.  We are talking about cornering the WORLD market literally.  It takes decades to manipulate nature into producing changes that are good for us and it takes science a short time in the lab to ruin it forever.  This isn’t comforting.

http://www.thecampaign.org/index.php

http://www.thecampaign.org/states/virginia.php

I would say that this is definately worth consideration.  Make your voice heard.  Do some research.  Watch what you eat and never, never eat grain from a crop circle! (Just thought I’d throw that in).