Our Father created many wonderful things for us to eat. Wonderful meats, eggs, fish, a bounty of veggies, herbs to season with, fruits and so on. My family enjoys a great variety of the bounty of the Lord.
But man, in his wisdom, has decided to improve upon God's holy plan. There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. Proverbs 14.12. Man is, and has been for many years, tampering with the very genetics that make up our food. Check out the link to Scott Terry's site today, Homesteader Life, to learn a little about Genetically Modified Organisms...GMOs (also called Genetically Engineered Food). Those 3 letters should cause your heart to tremble!
Let me give you an example....rats happen to produce their own Vitamin C in their bodies. Because our soil is so nutritionally defunct from poor stewardship, our food does not contain the vitamin and mineral content that it did 70 years ago. Soooo....man has begun to cross the gene's of rats with the genes of broccoli to produce a broccoli with higher Vitamin C. I am not kidding!
Now, I don't know about you....but I don't want to eat broccoli that happens to have been crossed with rats. Scott Terry mentioned the human liver genes being crossed with rice. The list is lengthy. They are also experimenting with breeding plants that actually have medicines in them. Oh, you didn't want that flu shot? You might not have a choice! Most likely you will not have the knowledge either!
They were working on crossing some nasty things with salmon....trouble is the salmon
flesh kept turning green....not much of a market for green meat! Our ability to play with the molecular genetics of certain organisms goes way beyond our knowledge of the consequences of such actions....both in the end product and in the impact on human lives. Genes from plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria are being merged! Essentially right now the entire population is involved in a strange science experiment only we weren't given the choice to opt out!
Why are they doing this? Because when they modify a plant they have created a "new" food and they can patent it....bottom line...same as always....worshipping the dollar. Monsanto is, of course, heavily involved in this as are a small handful of other multi-national companies.
The worst part of all of this is that YOU DON'T KNOW....THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!! Every survey ever done proves that if given a choice people do not want to eat food with GMOs....so the industry continues to lobby Congress hard (translate that to contributes much) so that they are not required by law to label food with GMOs.
From what I have been reading over the last few years it appears that up to 80% of what is in the grocery store now, unless labeled organic, is genetically modified.
This is especially true in pre-prepared food....all those "meals" that they call food that come out of boxes and cans.
So....what's a person to do? Write letters to your Senators and Representatives and tell them you want GMO food labeled as such. You have a right to know what you are eating. Buy local....buy organic (GMOs are not allowed to be labeled organic, at least for now)...buy from someone you trust...and the best choice....grow it yourself. You may not have a farm but do you have a small space that you can grow at least some of your food? If you are in an apartment, could you grow a few things in pots on your balcony? I read of a woman who grew most of her own food on the balcony of her apartment in pots and with trellises. Every little bit you can do is a step towards health.
When you grow, use only open-pollinated seeds - better flavor and no danger of GMOs.
Save your seed. Our seed is being drastically altered also....we must be diligent to preserve safe seed.
Finally, get informed and inform other people! This is a big topic in all of my classes and when I speak. People are shocked...Monsanto has done a good job of keeping the lid on things...they threaten lawsuits when you speak the truth about what they are doing.
Read books...I recommend the following: Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature; What you Need to Know to Protect Yourself, Your Family and Our Planet by Martin Teitel, Ph.D. and Kimberly A. Wilson. Also, Genetically Engineered Food, A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers by Ronnie Cummins and Ben Lilliston.
With GMO crops being grown on millions of acres, we must be diligent with the small part of creation that God has entrusted to us.
Tomorrow, we take a walk through my GMO free garden!
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What worries me the most is cross pollination. Wide spread use of GMOs will mean pollin traveling down the road to your heirloom garden. We need to think about the long term effects this will have on genetic diversity.
ReplyDeleteScott,
ReplyDeleteThis is so true. Monsanto has planted fields next to farmers who save seed, then cross pollination has taken place and
Monsanto has sued the farmers, SUCCESSFULLY, because the seed they saved and used the next year contained some of Mosanto's GMO properties.
Of course the multi-nationals are not interested in genetic diversity....they just want you to be forced to buy their products!
I am not sure what the answer is....education of the people is a lot of it....hammering Congress to let them know this is important (and might affect their re-election).....
I am open to suggestions. We need to discuss the terminator seed also....dangerous stuff!
tnfarmgirl,
ReplyDeleteThanks for blogging about these subjects lately. It's such a huge problem with the results that are coming down the road likely to be catastophic, in more ways than one.It's been one of my strongest beleifs that farmers and homestaeders should make seed saving one of their highest priorities, even with the contamination issue, it's so important that we don't give these companies our money. Everything we do should be to get away from them. One doesn't want to be dependent on them when the time comes in the future to be a people apart.We'll be slaves to the dark culture if we let them in our lives.
Keep on preaching the truth!
Tom
This is all really scarey stuff. And unnecessary. The worst of it is that 1) the GMOs may crowd out other organisms both in the environment and in the available seed stock for farming and gardening; and 2) the killer genes that they are introducing which make it so you can not save seeds. These killer genes could move to other organisms. Imagine if all the grass could not go beyond one generation.
ReplyDeleteThat's right Walter! They CAN cross pollinate - and carry that to bushes, flowers, trees....do these corporations think about the fact that we need these plants to survive, for air, shade, shelter and food? It is truly frightening and more acres each year are being planted into genetically modified crops. The big push now is to get medicines into plants.
ReplyDeleteThere have been 15 certified deaths from people eating GMO food. It is banned in Japan and most of Europe - at least it was a few years ago when I was doing a lot of research on this.
I'm the kind of agrarian with a homestead/garden and a big row-crop farm at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThis year I am harvesting 950 acres of Roundup Ready soybeans which have been "genetically modified." The beans produced are fertile. I must sign that I will not infringe their patent by growing more from seed.
Practically all your fried foods are prepared in this soybean oil: chips, fries, onion rings, etc. Cosmetics are made from them. Soy meal is in feed for chickens, dogs, cattle, etc.
People are not harmed by eating from soybeans that have been genetically modified. I don't know much about all the other new uses of genetic modification, except that few, if any, are commercially available.
And a word about chemicals sprayed on the foliage of fruit bearing plants... no chemical that I use according to label shows up in labratory tests of the corn or soybeans.
What are the cases of these supposed deaths from eating GMO food?