HAS YOUR FOOD BEEN GENETICALLY MODIFIED?
Food connects everything.
It connects us to animals. It connects us to the earth. To connect with another person we share a meal with them. So it’s no wonder that food is the biggest business of all, dwarfing oil, pharmaceutical, and transportation.
Food means big money, and as you follow the money (and the control of agriculture), you discover the bitter secret behind food…GMO’s. (Genetically Modified Organisms)
GMO’s are defined by the World Health Organization as “foods derived from organisms whose genetic material has been modified in a way that does not occur naturally”. To accomplish this requires cutting-edge modern science, using a process that involves changing the DNA of a plant or animal.
As we learned in high school, DNA is the blueprint, the software, the building block of our physical self. DNA was only discovered in 1953, yet science is now so powerful that it can purposefully alter these building blocks to great effect.
To some scientists this purposeful alteration represents a powerful and exciting development, while to others, GMOs are “Frankenstein” foods- dangerous and potentially tragic. The vast majority of scientists and consumers feel it is still too early to risk exposing ourselves and the environment to such untested and unpredictable tinkering. GMOs first came to my attention after my daughter developed serious asthma fourteen years ago.
Asthma is an auto-immune disorder which is very often triggered by environmental toxins. So I became a toxin hunter. And this is where I encountered massive amounts of scientific deceit bolstered by public-relations spin, behind which stood huge corporate profits and the centralization and control of our food supply, with the entire process subsidized with taxpayer money!
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A cover-up of all the toxic consequences of eating and growing genetically engineered food was in full swing. And that made me mad.
I kept searching and soon learned that to alter a plant’s DNA, genes are taken from completely different species, or even different kingdoms, and randomly inserted into another living plant’s (or animal’s) DNA: This new living thing takes on new characteristics. An early genetic experiment involved taking genes from a cold-water fish (Winter Flounder) and inserting them into a tomato!
It was thought that this new tomato would be frost-resistant, and that we could then forever after enjoy fresh tomatoes throughout the winter!
Are you seeing the dollar signs yet? This tomato never reached our dinner plates. It was truly a monster, a Frankenstein, a mess.
Despite billions and billions of dollars in research and development, very few advantageous new traits have been created in plants by tinkering with their DNA in laboratories. Despite what you may have heard, GMO plants do not produce higher yields, they are not more nutritious, and pesticide use has gone way up since they were introduced, which is the opposite of what we were told.
The one advantage they really have are government price supports: Uncle Sam will purchase your GMO soy or corn crop for a set price, no matter what. If you plant GMOs you are guaranteed a profit! Now that’s an advantage that has nothing to do with the laboratory.
In just fifteen years since their arrival in our supermarkets, GMO’s have reached a saturation point in the American diet, and the health of the average American is in steep decline. Since that time we have seenskyrocketing numbers of severe food allergies and auto-immune disorders like asthma.
ADHD and mood disorder rates, which many nutritionists link to digestion and gut flora, are increasing. The cancer rate is still climbing and so are nervous disorders like Alzheimer’s. Huge increases in obesity and diabetes can be linked to the ultra-cheap corn and corn syrup supplied by GMO corn.
Many, many studies have consistently shown genetically modified food to be dangerous and unhealthy, and it’s showing up in our health, especially in the health of our children, who are much more vulnerable to the effects of toxic food.
GMO’s have been proven to heighten and cause allergic responses, and a body already fighting one allergy can become susceptible to other allergies- in effect creating an overactive immune system. This is called toxic overload, which can lead to numerous immune disorders like lupus, or chronic fatigue to just name two.
Whether GMOs actually affected my daughter’s asthma is not provable, since no human testing has been done on GMOs. To understand why GMOs have never been tested on humans brings us to the sensitive issue of political corruption.
The Food And Drug Administration is the federal agency tasked with protecting us from dangerous substances. They put warning labels on cigarettes and made the law that keeps them out of reach of children. Yet they refuse to put any warning labels on GMOs.
Internal memos of FDA scientists prior to the approval of GMOs have revealed that many, many warning signals were sounding from the FDA’s own testing procedures. Yet when a major bio-tech corporation (Monsanto) had their own lawyer installed in high places at the FDA, (Michael Taylor) the approval for GMOs was fast-tracked.
George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama are all complicit in this, as they all were responsible for FDA appointees. Even Al Gore is a huge supporter of GM foods.
Monsanto, which has a terrible history of corporate criminality, and is primarily a chemical making company, was effectively allowed to run the safety and approval division of the Food And Drug Administration! GMOs are now in 75% of all packaged and processed food in America.
And it is not mentioned on the label. Terrible allergies are only one concern about GMOs.
Farmer Jerry Rosman describes the infertility he and twenty five farmers in his area experienced in their breeding sows that ere fed GMO corn. Other concerns relate to the pesticides that are used in conjunction with GMOs.
The single advantage resulting from laboratory genetic manipulation has been making certain plants like soy and canola to be able to withstand huge dosing of chemical herbicides. These are broad-spectrum herbicides, like Agent Orange (a Monsanto product) that kill everything- every plant- except the GMO plant. As a result herbicide use has greatly increased, even though we were told it would decrease.
And the main GMO herbicide, glyphosate, is now implicated in numerous human and animal illnesses, diseases and death.
Purdue University Professor Emeritus Don Huber explains his concernsabout new pathogenic soil organisms that he believes are generated by GMOs and their herbicides, as well as the infertility issue. A recent studyshowed that everyone now has glyphosate in their urine! And the pollen from GMO plants can cross breed with pollen from natural plants and contaminate them.
Believe it or not there are even other serious concerns about GMO plants and animals. A different “advantage” conferred on GMO crops is the insertion of a pesticide toxin, called Bt, into every cell of the plant- the idea being that when a pest eats the plant it will die. The idea worked, except we too eat that toxin with every bite. The bacteria in our gut can even potentially incorporate that toxin making DNA into their DNA, making our stomachs pesticide factories.
The idea also backfired as predicted by many scientists. Because of over-planting, some pests are no longer affected by the toxin- they are now officially classified as super-bugs. Super weeds have been reported as well.
All the while, gastroenterological disorders are on the rise. Unhealthy intestinal bacteria are linked to numerous disorders. This Bt GMO toxin is now found in the breast milk of almost every nursing woman in the USA! It is in almost all of us. It has even been found in fetuses.
Peru recently called for a 10 year moratorium on the planting of genetically modified food crops. France just upheld a ban on the planting of genetically modified maize. All GMOs are outlawed in Japan and Ireland.
One of the world’s leading bio-tech companies has completely abandoned the European market due to public and farmer opposition. That company is Bayer, the same company that made cyanide gas for the concentration camps under Hitler. Bayer’s GMO division has relocated to the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, finding a more favorable business climate here.
GMOs are viewed with extreme hostility in all of the European Union. If a product contains even a trace amount of GMO material it must be labeled as such. China and Russia have severely limited them, China having just announced that after a seven year long study they will not develop genetically engineered rice.
Not so in the United States, where the vast majority of GMO research, development and production occurs.
GMO alfalfa was just approved, a new strain of GMO sweet corn for humanconsumption was just approved, and many think that approval of GMO salmon will soon be announced. The FDA has never said no to Monsanto!
Furthermore, Monsanto has been aggressively buying smaller conventional seed companies. And since GMO seeds are patentable, Monsanto can sue farmers when their GMO seeds blow on to a conventional farmer’s fields. With a huge budget for litigation, these small farmers often just start growing GMOs to avoid the hassle.
Organic farming increases yields, but the plants cannot be patented, so there is no possibility for control.
I could go on and on. It is a complicated story with a lot of history and, as you can see, it is taking place all over the world.
The good news is that we as consumers hold the winning cards in this battle. We must refuse to purchase and eat GMO food. If we don’t buy it, they can’t sell it.
This isn’t easy right now because currently, GMOs aren’t labeled.
Boycott GMOs, especially for your children. The simplest way is to cook as much of your own food as possible.
75% of all packaged food contains GMOs. Most of the GMOs are used for animal feed, so try to eat only organically raised meat.
GMO crops are also used for making cooking oil. So avoid cottonseed oil, canola oil, corn oil and soy oil, as these are the four main GMO crops. Since corn and soy are in almost all processed foods, stay away from packaged foods that contain these ingredients.
GMO ingredients are not allowed in certified organic products either. Oh and by the way- my daughter is 17 now, takes no medication, and she hasn’t had an asthma attack in many years.
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