What Is Going On With Our Food? by Bill White
BIG GMOs
Between ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Ebola and the southern border crisis, it seems to me like the world doesnt need any more problems. But weve got a surfeit of them going on. In fact, there is so much going on and weve received so many false platitudes from our government that it seems like nobody believes anything coming out of Washington anymore.
The noise level of all these problems is making it so that some problems just seem to disappear. When was the last time you heard a story about Obamacare? Or, how about the drought problems in Southern California? Those are real problems, but due to the bigger, fresher problems going on, were not hearing much about them.
Heres another one for you; one that youre probably not hearing anything about; GMO (genetically modified organism) foods. It seems that more than half of the crops being grown right now in the United States are GMO. 88 percent of the corn grown in the country is GMO; 90 percent of the canola and 54 percent of the sugar beets.
This sampling shows us that GMO foods are becoming the mainstream here in the United States, whether we want them to or not.
Now, Im not one to get alarmed about things without reason. Theres plenty of stuff going on right now to get alarmed about, without going around looking for things. But I think theres something going on with these GMOs that we dont know about, which maybe we should.
Many countries around the world have outlawed GMOs, due to the risks that exist with them. A couple of years ago, some of these countries suspended shipments of U.S. grown wheat, because the growers couldnt guarantee that there was no GMO content in the wheat.
Some would say that those countries were acting a bit extreme in their actions, but I wonder; maybe they know something that you and I dont know.
Man has looked for ways to crossbreed crops for centuries, trying to increase their harvests and develop strains of crops that were more resistant to damage by bugs. I get that. But for most of mankinds history, weve done so by combining the pollen from one species with another, allowing the natural genetic mix to make the difference. Thats much different than whats happening now.
GMOs differ from these other efforts in that they mix DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) from bacteria or viruses to the DNA of the plant (or animal), trying to create these new strains. Its an unnatural mix, which leads to unnatural results. Some of the results might be beneficial, but we dont know what other results might exist.
Thats the rub. GMOs havent been properly tested. The testing that has been done is to determine if the new GMO organism does what they wanted it to. In other words, if they developed the new one to be resistant to some type of bug, all they test it for is to see if it is in fact resistant to that bug.
GMO fruits
They dont test it for anything else. They dont test it to see if it has the same nutritional value. They dont test it to see if the new organism has any new chemical compounds in it, which could build up in the body to be poisonous. They dont test to see if the new organism will kill the bees that are supposed to pollinate it. All they test for is the results they want.
I guess that wouldnt be all that bad, if the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was doing their job, but theyre not. Rather than insisting that the developers of these GMOs run tests to make sure that they arent dangerous, theyre certifying them for use, without any further testing at all. You and I are the test subjects. Well know that they arent safe if it starts affecting us.
The first GMO foods which appeared in our supermarkets arrived 20 years ago. In all that time, the government and the food producers have been keeping things secret from us. More than anything, theyve kept it a secret as to which foods are GMO and which ones arent. We could be eating something harmful or that doesnt provide the nutrition that our bodies need and not even know it.
Other countries are requiring that GMO foods be labeled, even animal feed. Yet the U.S. FDA lets the companies that are producing these GMOs get away with just about anything they want, while keeping it a secret from the American people, the people who are consuming those products. I guess were more useful to them as guinea pigs than we are as productive citizens.
Supposedly, GMO plants cant reproduce. Once they are harvested, they have to be re-seeded every year. Thats good, because it means that if there really is something harmful with them, itll be easy to kill them off and start planting real plants once again
at least, in theory.
Recently, some GMO wheat was discovered growing in a test site in Montana. The only problem was, the last time that Monsanto used that test facility was in 2003. Here we are, more than ten years later, and plants which supposedly cant reproduce have reproduced.
Not only that, but if Im reading things right, theyve reproduced over ten times, once for each year. So, in other words, we have no control over these plants.
This isnt the first time this has happened either; but rather, the second. I mentioned a moment ago that some overseas wheat shipments were suspended a few years ago. That was caused by the same thing happening in Oregon.
These plants that are supposed to die out may just be mutating into something that wont die out. Worse than that, something that wont die out and that we dont know the full risks of having in our environment.
There is no real proof that GMOs are harmful; but there is no real proof that they arent either. Thats the problem. Nobody is really looking to see if they cause problems. We could all start dying off and theyd probably say its from global warming or some such hogwash.
Im really not trying to raise an alarm here, Im just saying that theres something suspicious about all this. I dont trust the answers were being given and would much rather see some independent studies to prove if these foods are safe or not.
But until that happens, Im glad Ive got my vegetable garden. You wont find any GMOs in there.