My post on the how to keep Monsanto out of your home garden seems to have really hit a nerve with supporters of GM foods.
This morning, I received an email from the CEO/President of a large soybean seed company in the Midwest who writes:
I just read your article “The Four Steps Required To Keep Monsanto Out of Your Garden”. I favor choice when it comes to the food you eat and agree with you on that part . I do not agree that it is right to attack Monsanto and all the good work that they are doing to increase yields for farmers to keep the price of food low enough so the poorest of the poor can afford to eat. If we all had to eat organic many people in this world would starve due to the higher cost of food and lower production.
I respect your views but attacking Monsanto is not in the interest of poor people and world food production. GMO’s are not bad and have passed all the standards set by regulatory systems around the world and are proven safe. Thanks for listening.
My word for word email response?
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid my friend.
GMOs are far from “proven safe” as this CEO claims and the sob story that Monsanto is somehow helping the poor and starving people of the world is nothing but a PR stunt that while effective, has no basis in truth or reality.
As Mark Twain once said, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”
There are many highly capable and obviously intelligent people that have completely bought the scam that GMOs are safe and going to feed the world baloney.
Perhaps this most recent news out of Europe will give them a much need kick in the pants to wake them up to the reality of the situation.
Independent Experts Find GM Foods Contain Dangerous Gene
The European Union’s official, independent food watchdog group, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), is reporting that the approval process for GM crops failed to identify a poisonous gene discovered in 54 of 86 GM plants.
Most alarmingly, this viral gene known as “GENE VI” was discovered in the most widespread GM crops, notably corn and soy, which are heavily used in animal feed for livestock producing meat, milk, and eggs.
How did the viral gene get into the GM crops in the first place?
The problem starts right in the laboratory where GM foods are synthesized by an army of scientists playing God with millions of unsuspecting guinea pigs blithely buying unlabeled GM laced products at the supermarket.
These scientists insert foreign genes from other organisms (plant or animal) into a target plant using a technique which allows these foreign genes to “piggyback” on common soil or plant based viruses.
Assumption is the Mother of Error it seems as these scientists had expected that the virus genes transporting the foreign genes into the target plant would not be present once the GM plant was actually grown in the field.
The EFSA research (Independent Science News) has now conclusively shown that this major assumption upon which the supposed “safety” of GMOs is based is not the case.
Not. Even. Close.
How the presence of this viral gene could have been missed by the biotech companies, government regulators, and even university scientists is beyond comprehension.
The EFSA research indicated the following:
This situation represents a complete and catastrophic system failure.
There are clear indications that this viral gene might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.
A reasonable concern is that the protein produced by Gene VI might be a human toxin. This is a question that can only be answered by future experiments.
Dr. Julian Little, chairman of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC) which represents the biotech companies, had this to say in response:
... nearly three trillion meals containing GM ingredients have been eaten without a single substantiated case of ill-health. The combination of these two facts can give consumers a huge amount of confidence in the safety of GM crops.
I guess Dr. Little isn’t really paying attention to the skyrocketing cases of food allergies and digestive complaints in the past decade or so, particularly allergies to corn and soy, the top two GM crops.
It’s always easier to just continue with business as usual and hide behind PR campaigns focusing on starving children and fudged reports about the “safety” of frankenfoods when the corporate bottom line (and the McMansion mortgage payment) is at stake, isn’t it Mr. CEO?
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources
Uncovered, the “toxic” gene hiding in GM crops: Revelation throws new doubt over the safety of foods
I hope you don’t listen to anyone telling you to tone down your rhetoric regarding this most important evil rush for power and control by Monsanto. People need to be shocked. People need to be informed. People must stop supporting Monsanto. Knowing how to do that is of the utmost importance. Thank you for being brave and telling the truth.
Rodale describes and has written wonderful articles regarding how Organic would be better at feeding the world – that would have been the best route to take. More people need to understand that
A fun scientific debate for those of you who are interested by some scientists on this topic: http://alandove.com/content/2013/01/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-orf/
One of the last paragraphs in this post leaves me feeling a bit mixed… “I guess Dr. Little isn’t really paying attention to the skyrocketing cases of food allergies and digestive complaints in the past decade or so, particularly allergies to corn and soy, the top two GM crops.” I do not see how GM and soy/corn have anything to do with each other. If I read this correctly, the assumption is that because soy and corn are GM this is the reason why people have allergies to those particular foods? It has been pretty well documented that folks who relied on corn as a staple like the Native Americans in the southwest US had horrible dental carries and died at younger ages than their meat eating neighbors who avoided grains. We can’t really speak on their allergies, but I would suspect that if these folks had diseases such as these then we might safely assume immune function problems as well. I think this post is conflating issues a bit. Now, I would be more convinced if people were having issues to apples and lettuce that are GM, but that is not mentioned in this article really. Naturally allergenic foods are being held culpable for some physiological problems, but Sarah seems to point the finger at GM being the problem here rather than the nature of the food itself. I am not in favor of GM either, however, it is important to not confuse variables.
Watch Genetic Roulette by Jeffrey Smith. It shows how GMOs damage the body. One problem that they cause is called leaky gut. Leaky gut leads to allergies, inflamation and a ton of other problems.
Does anyone else see red flags when they read over the “email”? I’m just not feeling it. It doesn’t sound very professional, and is not nearly as well written as one would expect for a so called CEO/president of a large midwestern soybean company. The whole thing just sounds too contrived. And then there’s the popular but fake Mark Twain quote. Now I dislike GMOs just as much as most other people on here, but how about we take EVERYTHING with a grain of sea salt. Never stop thinking, people.
Obviously the CEO has not done his research or he would know that only 5 or 6 countries around the world still have GMO foods in their supermarkets – everywhere else it is banned!! Lets think about that for a while… If everyone was taught proper nutrition, with community gardens, and we had more local markets – organic food would be a lot cheaper. Not only that but no cost added for pesticides and added cost for genetic engineering of plants. Also – the cost of cancer?? anyone??? That is much more expensive. Cannot believe someone that could be that high up in a company actually not know ANYTHING about this stuff.
GMOs feeding the world makes no sense to me – now that it is proven that yields are not higher with GMO crops. (And they need more chemicals.) They are just a patented annual money making replacement for established, working farmable land. If they really wanted to feed the world, Monsanto and the like would help plant their seeds on land not already being farmed and producing crops. They would help build irrigation to dry areas. GMOS feeding the world is nonsense. They have zero reason for selling their seed aside from controlling the food supply for profit and power.
Hi Sarah,
I’ve been taking Bio-Kult probiotics for about 6 months now…love them. However, I just re-read the ingredients list and noticed that soy (soya) is included in trace amounts. Since I know you do your research, do you have any information about whether the soy in Bio-Kult is GMO free?
Heather, you could easily contact the company and ask. I’m sure they have an email, phone number or other means of contacting with questions on their website.
Wow, has he never heard of the scores of Indian farmers committing suicide thanks to the ‘help’ they’ve received from Monsanto?
I love how you set this pompous jackass straight!