The Genetically Modified Foods Choice

What is the problem with genetically modified/engineered/altered (GMO or GE) foods? We’re told there is no evidence that GMO corn, soy, alfalfa and sugar beets are unsafe, and we don’t eat biotech corn for ethanol production anyway?

No one will tell you. There will be no warning or differentiating labels, whether it’s a simple cut of grass fed meat, or a lovely cake, or a bottle of juice, or a can of tomato sauce. You won’t know what contains GMO ingredients and what does not. This is not a concern of the future. It is the current reality.

GMO foods will not be organic, as these GMOs are engineered to require proprietary chemical application to grow.

GMOs cannot be isolated to specific fields, certain farms, or select countries. GMOs will affect the entire food chain.

The farmers you trust to offer you choice will find it harder and harder and eventually impossible to source GMO free grain or hay, or to protect their own fields from cross-pollination and thus genetic contamination. Following on the transition of grains and commodities, GMO technology will spread for use in vegetables, and the same potential for cross-pollination will occur. Vegetable farmers will face the fate of commodity farmers – denied the right or ability to save their own seed and sued by patent-holding corporations when acts of nature bring patented GMO seeds onto their property.

No one predicted that the transition to a faster, more efficient, cheaper way of producing food would lead to the health, environmental and economic crises now directly linked to the transitions brought about by agribusiness and food science. Are you willing to wager our collective future on what the interests promoting GMOs are NOT publically predicting?

In the past month, the USDA has approved three new biotech crops for use in the US: Roundup Ready GMO alfalfa, Roundup Ready GMO sugar beets and a new biotech corn for ethanol production. These crops could go into fields as early as this spring. It is widely acknowledged that these crops will contaminate the genetic make-up of both conventional and organic farmers’ non-GMO crops.

This decision will do more to eliminate our power of choice in what we eat than potentially anything has thus far. If left standing, this decision will further erode the ability of farmers to choose what and how they want to grow on their land. If left standing, this decision will make it increasingly more difficult as a consumer to access organic or sustainably grown food, even as more and more people are demanding improved access to choice.

You can take action to make your voice heard and support the effort to stop our loss of the power to choose. Sign the petition at Food Democracy Now.