Frankenfoods

[Guest guest]

Frankenfoods

June 2004

By Jim Hightower,

Utne.com

 

Corporate bioengineers tinker merrily and dangerously with the

DNA of food. Jim Hightower's newest book, Let's Stop Beating Around The

Bush,is scheduled for release next month. Until then, Utne will be

running a series of excerpts from the title.

 

As you're flipping through the back sections of your morning

paper, do you sometimes come across a story that strikes you as the real

news of the day? I'm talking about stories that are somewhere between

reeeaaally important and jawdropping, and you ask yourself: Why did they

bury this back here... Why isn't this the front-page lead with a

screaming two-inch headline?

 

I had one of these moments recently when I came across this

deceptively bland headline: " Modified Seeds Found Amid Unmodified

Crops. " Most people scanning the February 24, 2004, issue of the New

York Times would either have missed this story entirely, since it was

stuck down at the bottom of page 6, section C, or they would have not

bothered to read beyond the boring headline, which made it seem like a

farmer story.

 

A more appropriate headline would have been:

 

BIOENGINEERED FRANKENFOODS

CONTAMINATING U.S. FOOD SUPPLY!

 

Yes, it needs that exclamation point, for this is a truly

alarming story tha should be the subject of ongoing reporting by every

media source, perhaps matching the in-depth analysis the media

establishment gives to such stories of national import as, say, Michael

Jackson.

 

[A LITTLE BACKGROUND: For some time, the likes of Monsanto have

had their white-smocked engineers tinkering merrily and dangerously with

the very DNA of food, genetically modifying the natural composition of

things like potatoes so they contain a pesticide in every one of their

cells, or altering rice so it contains a diarrhea drug in every bite.

 

This is no mere lab experiment, for unbeknownst to the vast

majority of Americans, Monsanto and a handful of other global biotech

giantshave quietly spread the seeds of these genetically altered

Frankenfoods to so many farms over the past decade that about a third of

the foods on U.S.supermarket shelves now

contain organisms with tampered DNA -- everything from baby food

and milk to products made with soybean and corn.

 

Thanks to well-placed campaign donations and powerhouse lobbying, this

infiltration of our food supply has been done with practically no

consumer awareness, since both Bill Clinton's and George W's

administrations have let these foodstuffs be sold in America without so

much as a label on them to tell us that we're buying something that our

families might prefer to avoid.

 

WE NOW RETURN YOU TO THE PRESENT.

 

FRANKENPIG

 

As anyone living around a corporate hog factory knows, hog stuff

stinks. Mightily. Should the corporations have to clean up their act

and drastically cut the massive number of hogs it jams into each

factory?

 

No need, because here comes: The Biotech Stink Busters! By splicing

some genes from mice and E.coli bacteria into pig

genes, a less stinky critter has been created, which is now trademarked

under the sweet name of " Enviropig. "

 

It still contaminates the air and water with its excretions, but

you don't notice as much. No report on what happens to those of

us who might eat ham with mice genes and E.coli bacteria in it.

 

The industry and our so-called " regulators " keep saying that they have

these GMOs -- genetically modified organisms -- under tight control so

the altered plants won't spread (through their pollen or through mixing

of seed into the fields of unaltered crops. This is what you might call

" IMPORTANT " -- since no one knows the longterm impact of Monsanto's lab

creations on human health and on the earth's ecology.

 

It would be beyond stupid, Biblical-level stupidity, to let

this stuff escape and taint our entire food supply.

 

 

In the last few years, however, there have been unsettling

" incidents " : a shipment of organic corn from Texas was rejected by

France (GMO foods are banned in Europe, Japan, Brazil, and other

nations) because it contained the altered genes, apparently the result

of pollen drifting from farms

growing altered corn onto the fields of the organic farmers; a load of

GMO corn not approved for human consumption ended up unannounced in Taco

Bell's corn products; scientists found that Monarch butterflies were

sickened and dying from

exposure in the Midwest to GMO grain;

Mexico, which does not allow GMO corn it its country, has found

native varieties deep in the country's interior to be tainted by

Monsanto's corn pollen, which had drifted hundreds of miles, much

farther and in a much quicker time than the industry and our government

thought possible.

Knowing this is why the small article in the Times caught my

eye. It reported on new findings by the widely-respected Union of

Concerned Scientists, which had just run a series of systematic tests on

36 batches of corn, canola, and soybean seeds. All of the seeds

supposedly were nature's own, free of any genetic manipulation.

 

Yet, UCS found that more than two-thirds of the batches had traces

of GMOs in their DNA. This means that Monsanto's engineered demon is

loose on the

land. As one of the scientists put it " The door to seed contamination is

wide open. "

 

 

A LITTLE STATE MAKES A BIG STATEMENT

 

While Washington is asleep at the switch, the state of Vermont is

doing something. In March, by a stunning 28-0 vote, the Vermont senate

passed the Farmer Protection Act, to hold the biotech giants legally

accountable for the contamination of any farmer's crops by a

corporation's GMOs.

 

This is our food supply we're talking about.

Shouldn't this story be way up front in the papers, the lead

item on the nightly news, a topic of talk-radio heat, the subject of

congressional investigations, a story worthy of comment by presidential

candidates?

 

But, Nothing. Just a small article on page C6.

 

Even more alarming than the findings by the scientists was the

disdainful attitude of the contaminators. Did we get an " Oops, sorry

about that, " or an " Oh my gosh, we've gotta do something to fix this,

starting with not planting any more of these seeds until we figure out

the problems " ?

 

No, we did not. What we got was a demand from an industry lobbying group

that other countries stop banning GMO Frankenfoods and simply learn to

live with

 

[Feel the love in this statement] " acceptable levels of contamination. "

 

 

Did I mention that it's our food supply we're talking about?

 

UCS was not the first group of scientists to hit the alarm

button on this willy-nilly, corporate splicing of assorted pesticides,

bacteria, sex hormones, drugs, and animal genes into the foods we're

eating.

 

In January of 2002, the National Academy of Sciences, more

establishment than which you cannot get, stepped forward to say: Hold

your horses, buckaroos!

 

In 2000, the NAS convened a panel of biologists and ag

scientists to conduct a study of the process by which the Monsantos are

rushing these genetically-altered plants into production, into the

environment, onto our grocery shelves, and into our bodies.

 

Their study finds that there should be " significantly more transparent

and rigorous " review of the

testing, monitoring, and assessment of these genetic manipulations

before they're unleashed on an unsuspecting and vulnerable world.

 

As one critic of the current regulatory system noted in welcoming the

NAS findings: " It has been a cakewalk for the industry in terms of

getting products approved. "

 

It has indeed.

 

NAS's scientific panel pointed out that the Agriculture Department

presently allows the corporations to plant unlimited acreages to test

their experimental plants, with no independent evaluation of the danger

this poses to our environment and food supply.

 

The NAS wants this slipshod process to end, calling for independent

reviews of all tests, less secrecy by the corporations, more involvement

of the public before these experimental foods are approved, and

long-term regulatory monitoring of any approved crops.

 

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

Linda Fisher spent five years as Monsanto's top Washington

lobbyist. She also managed Monsanto's political money.

 

In 2001, George W chose her to be deputy administrator of the EPA, the

agency's second-highest post. The

EPA has regulatory authority over plants genetically altered to contain

pesticides.

 

Monsanto is the leading producer of those altered plants.

 

 

Science has spoken, but money shouts.

 

Monsanto and the other food contaminators have poured more than $100

million into Washington lobbying in

the past six years and they are major campaign donors to Bush, the GOP,

and

the Democrats in congress, so the essentially unregulated, let-'er-fly

policy

toward these dangerous organisms was written by them. The scathing NAS

report

was only a one-day story. If Bush even saw the report, neither he nor

anyone in his administration lifted a finger to implement any of its

recommendations, nor have the congressional leaders of either party.

 

 

 

" Virtually all participants said that bioengineered foods should

 

be labeled as such... Most participants expressed great surprise that

food

biotechnology has become so pervasive in the U.S. food supply... [and]

outrage that such a change in the food supply could happen without them

knowing about it. " -- The " Well, duh! " findings from a series of 12

focus groups

convened by the FDA, 2001

 

When informed about the genetic tampering with our dinner, a

good 80 percent of people polled say,

 

" Hell No! " to being Monsanto's guinea pigs.

 

 

But it's the old tree-falling-in-the-woods question: " If the people

shout their opposition, but congress and the White House have Monsanto

checks stuffed in their ears, do the people make a sound. "

_________________

 

JoAnn Guest

mrsjoguest

DietaryTipsForHBP

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Genes

 

 

 

 

 

AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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