Consumers Too Dumb to Know the Difference
GMO Ticking Time Bomb is a fantastic fifteen minute video which helps explain why California polls show overwhelming support for Prop 37 on the November ballot. If passed by voters, the citizens initiative would require mandatory labeling for genetically modified foods.
The film starts by briefly explaining how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are created. It goes on to talk about scandalous corporate interference that put a once and future Monsanto executive in charge of a 1992 FDA decision that GMO crops and foods are safe and don’t require testing for potential health hazards.
Filmmakers reveal a recent recommendation by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (medical doctors who specialize in environmental medicine) that all doctors prescribe non-GMO foods for all their patients. This is based on a wealth of private – and government – studies showing that GMO foods interfere with reproductive and immune function; cause accelerating aging, GI distress and organ damage and interfere with cholesterol and insulin regulation.
The US is one of a handful of industrialized countries that don’t require labeling for GMO foods.
Monsanto’s main argument for opposing mandatory labeling: consumers are too dumb to know the difference.
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The same here (as in the next post): The problem isn’t GMO, but GMO for the industrial complex. To think that we can adapt our agriculture fast enough with conventional methods is exactly this delusion I commented earlier. It is fundamentally different if vegetables are changed for transport or changed to be more healthy and resistant to fungi. The same for maize, rice and wheat. If its modified for fast food, there is no value in it – if it is changed to last longer for long term storage or for very random growing seasons, we can avoid global hunger if something like this scenario occurs:
http://9.asset.soup.io/asset/3816/7161_2c5f.png
Or in other words: Just because we can light up a house with 5kW it doesn’t mean we should do that. 50W are enough to work, read or eat. So 100 humans can do the same, not just one rich family.
You make some interesting points. The main problem with GMO crops is that farmers get lower yields with them, rather than the high yields Monsanto promised. Ironically we already have the agricultural technology to improve yields enough to feed 9 billion people (increasing caloric production by 200-400%). It’s called biointensive agriculture and was used extensively in China, Korea and Japan for 4,000 years – until 100 years ago. I reviewed a recent book describing this method at http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2012/07/19/farming-without-machines-a-revolutionary-agricultural-technology/ and one written in 1913 by F.H. King at http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2012/03/22/farmers-of-forty-centuries/
In my mind the problem is demographic because we already have the technology. With the skyrocketing cost of fossil fuels, we will have to return to producing food locally. And reverse the trend of the vast majority living in cities and paving over perfectly good agricultural land. This is what will take time, the enormous population shift that must occur.