So this happened today... what do you think? I hate to debate, that is not my thing but woah. I couldnt turn a blind eye to this: Jim to Leah : Why try to force the entire industry to change when it is voluntary for companies to label their products non GMO? You could simply only buy Products that choose to label their products GMO free. Frankly, it seems selfish to me. I dont try and force American companies to label in any personally appealing way, I either buy the product or not. Leah to Jim: OH Jim, how I have missed you. First off, selfish? Ouch. Secondly I dare say that labeling products that contain GMO’s is a much larger issue than my consumerism concerns of what to buy when standing in the chip isle at Market of Choice. (I do want to clarify & perhaps help others understand before I begin that I understand the difference between a genetically modified object vs. a genetically selected object take for example a tomato; a tomato that has been selected & kept for seed due to its ability to be big, robust, & ripe without rotting on a counter within 12 hours of being picked to make more tomatoes in the future is WAY different than a tomato gene that has been selected to be replaced by a gene only naturally found in a large fresh water fish that helps create a tomato that will engorge that tomatoes “shelf life.” ) Everybody should be able to make that choice of whether or not they want to eat GMO corn chips but it is not that simple. Of course I go for the bag of chips with the green dot on the label indicating Non-GMO Project Verified, but do other people? Does the average person know what they are eating? Maybe. Maybe not. Is it my responsibility to help them be informed? YES. As a human being I want others to have the option to have the knowledge of what is in their food. I want to have the option of knowing what I am putting into my body. Thirdly with the “Non-GMO Project Verified” seal, don’t you think that’s a terrible title? Why not just “GMO FREE”? Because of all the cross-contamination there is no way the product can be guaranteed to not have come in contact with a GMO-carrying honeybee therefore voiding the claim of being gmo-free. The “Non-GMO Project Verified” seal is a non-profit grass roots organization that is not interested in sale of their corn chips, unlike the corporations who lobby & fight to ensure the GMO labeling does not happen. Why? Monsanto = $4,834,000.DuPont = $3,420,000.PepsiCo Inc. = $1,600,000.Coca-Cola = $1,047,000.Nestle USA = $1,052,000.General Mills = $598,800.Bayer CropScience = $592,000.Dow Agrosciences = $592,000.BASF Plant Science = $500,000.ConAgra Foods = $286,000.Campbell Soup Co. = $265,000.Hershey Company = $248,000.Kellogg Co. = $222,000.Land O’ Lakes = $100,000.Cargill & Co. = $99,000.Bimbo Bakeries (Sara Lee and Ball Park) = $94,000.Del Monte = $86,000.Ocean Spray Cranberries = $55,000.Hormel Foods = $53,000. These are just the numbers for the companies that lobbied against GMO labeling in Washington State in 2013 alone. Weird… Lastly, only because I know your mind wont change & I really don’t like debating but truly found your “selfish” comment distasteful I will leave you with this. Genetically modified crops have a nasty little problem of being able to withstand copious amounts of pesticides. When pesticides are sprayed they don’t just kill weeds, they kill everything except those resilient little MON180 corn plants uncle bob planted last month. Pesticides don’t just vanish, they are absorbed into the soil, are flushed into ground water, are blown to neighboring farms & people, they travel far beyond uncle bobs corn fields. Not only is the pesticide use a problem, the way in which most GM crops are grown is a problem. The most common GM crops are corn, soy, cotton, & beets (for sugar), all of which are grown mostly by large mono-crop type farms. This is where thousands of acres are growing one single crop that depletes all the carbon nutrients from the ground & is replaced with chemical fertilizers & oh yeah, pesticides. Again, causing great environmental concerns; all dirt leads to water, all water leads to larger bodies of water, all bodies of water lead to weather, all weather leads to our daily lives. Everything is connected. I didn’t even mention the people who work to pick these crops that have pesticides not only sprayed on them, but grown within them…. That is a whole other cause for concern. I hope I have convinced you that this issue is not one of selfishness, it is one of personal concern for myself, my friends & family, my neighbors, your neighbors, the farmers in Oklahoma, the farmers in India, the bees & butterflies, the fresh & sea waters… I think you get what I am saying. Corporations that serve to make money from GM crops & animals are the ones who are being, dare I say it, selfish. Being able to have a choice is what is really at stake here. The right to knowledge. The right to choose based off of that knowledge, do with it what we may, so long as we have that choice. XOXO Goodnight! Grow, Build, Care!
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 08:06:27 +0000
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