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
Go Sarah go!
The other thing that the mis-informed CEO has closed his ears to is the fact that thousands of poor farmers are committing suicide after using GM crops. So much for how Monsanto is helping the poor.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html
Sarah, I have posted on my website http://www.damseeds.com the following rebuttle against your blog ‘The four steps required to keep monsanto out of your garden’ Please read it and respond – You owe it to your readers to print truthful informatiion.
William A Dam – President of William Dam Seeds Ltd
Here is part of the rebuttle – Read the full version on http://www.damseeds.com
In the past years, we as a seed company and an industry have been quiet. Many bloggers and individuals on the internet have been spreading rumours and falsehoods about our industry and Monsanto. Today this changes.
First of all: I assure our customers: We are not owned by Monsanto — we are a family business — four generations working currently. I personally am saddened that people would come to this conclusion despite what we note in our catalogue about our family values. Besides, I’m sure Monsanto would not want to purchase us — we work way too many hours to be profitable for a multi-national.
I was raised in a time before Social Media — but by no means am I naive of the technology. But I was raised that when you attack a person’s reputation you better have your facts straight. You cannot slander others — this is just wrong and causes pain to others. I call on all bloggers, tweeters etc — check for facts — build each other up, don’t knock each other down — this is Bullying!
On January 23, Sarah from “The Healthy Home Economist” wrote a blog published as “The Four Steps Required to Keep Monsanto OUT of your Garden”. The problem is she does not check her facts and she seems to back facts up from other bloggers.
Here is what Sarah said:
Surprise!
In addition, Monsanto has quietly been gobbling up many of the organic seed companies
This is my response:
This is the worst lie of all! Sarah — you have to be ashamed of yourself for not getting facts. Where do you get this from? You are not a seed professional and do not know anything about our industry. Monsanto does not own any organic seed companies — Period!!!
Great response Sarah!
Sarah, you ROCK! I am constantly sending people to your blog for excellent articles and incredibly helpful videos. Thanks for being a warrior for healthy and traditional foods! Love ya, sister!
You know what Mr. President/CEO? My family is large. I have 6 children. Four boys, two girls. The boys eat like horses! We live on a tiny, one income paycheck. We are considered very low income. We eat only organic. We “poor people” made a choice to cut out expensive junk food and we ONLY EAT ORGANIC! And we can afford to do this. hmmmm. If we can do this…. ANYONE can!!! Like Sarah said… “Stop drinking the Kool-Aid”! This kind of Monsanto stunt is only making you into a foolish fool. And that is just sad.
So proud of you Sarah! Love how you take off the gloves and let them have it. Maybe it will wake them up to the real moral disaster…instead of feeding the poor, we poison them and cause sickness & disease then destroy land in the process.
I pray ignorant people get wisdom.
URGENT!!!! everyone else, look on the facebook page, you dont have to have facebook to view it.. raw milk is under attack right now.. it is going on right now in south carolina but looks to be a nation wide push…..
sarah, look in to the meetings.. according to the lady this is a nationwide push.. the states are given an option to opt out but they are listening to the advice of their national dairy board.. worth a look!!!
-jason and lisa-
That kool-aid is some good stuff, ain’t it? Let’s keep on burning our food (for ethanol) while prices for food keep going up and is there a reason GMO foods are not served in Monsanto’s plant lunch rooms?