"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food" ~ Hippocrates
We'll explore the Pro and Cons of GMO foods which are genetically modified by introducing organisms DNA from other species. There are a multitude of opinions from PhDs, Environmentalists, and farmers now up in arms and the producers like Monsanto and their close alliance with the government and the Food and Drug Administration who tell us that GMO foods are so safe, there is no reason to even disclose GMO foods on the packaging of the foods we buy and consume on a daily basis.
Estimates are that 60% to 70% of processed foods on U.S. grocery shelves have genetically modified ingredients. The most common GMO foods are soybeans, maize, cotton and rapeseed oil which includes most of the packaged foods containing corn and/or high-fructose corn syrup found in almost all of the breakfast cereals, most snacks, and even the sodas we drink. It also includes foods from GMO soybeans which include some baby foods and many foods made from cottonseed and canola oils are likely to have genetically modified ingredients.
America is the Only Country does Not require GMO Foods Labeling
The real question is why is America is the only country in the world that doesn't require the labeling of GMO foods or better, why it is even necessary for the chemical company Monsanto to genetically modify foods that are the very life blood of our existence, and most importantly will they then be safe to consume?
The Engineering Procedure in the GMO Foods Genetic Engineering
Genetic Engineering starts with some thought to take a cold water flounder gene and insert it into a tomato crop so the crop could withstand colder temperatures. If this sounds like Frankenstein it is, but even worse because Frankenstein was all one species, but what the heck, if it works, what could the problem be?
The next step is even scarier because of the only way to get the DNA of the flounder gene into the tomato gene is what? What is good at invading cells? Bacteria and Viruses are masters at it. It took Monsanto 12 years, but they finally found a soil bacterium that was naturally resistant to Monsanto's pesticide Roundup, a chemical poison which is a slight variation of their WW ll lethal nerve gas and Vietnam's Agent Orange.
Once they recombine the bacterial DNAs, this recombined bacterial DNA is able to penetrate the cell walls. The other two options of inserting this recombined DNA into the plant's genes uses electric shock to crack open up cell walls with tiny holes to pass through and then there's the Gene Gun which blasts the recombined DNA into the cells on minute particles of gold.
The Frankenstein GMO Foods Crop
This creation of the Frankenstein crop with their cells implanted with recombined DNA leads us to the component that is so terrifying that its approval by the government of Washington DC could be nothing more than irresponsibly self-serving.
Bit, it gets even more threatening because in order to activate the recombined DNA, a separate promoter gene is also implanted to use like an ignition switch for the target gene. This promoter gene which is typically a Cauliflower Mosaic Virus may not always limit itself to just affecting the intended recombined gene. Because of the Mosaic Virus' strong promoting influence, there could be unintended genes switched on with unintended disastrous consequences, like cancer cells or other disfiguring life threatening growths or illnesses.
GMO Foods Safety Relies on a Wait and See Approach
There is a real possibility that the introduction of foreign virus' and bacteria DNA in plants and animals could turn against us because this GMO foods technology is at such a nanoscopic size that most of the technology relies on a wait and see approach. Absolutely no one yet knows the long range effects of using bacteria and virus DNA to genetically engineer plants so that they could tolerate the deadly poison Roundup. There is also a wait and see approach to the effects of this poison falling to the ground entering the groundwater and environment as runoff, especially now that farmers are realizing that the more they use Roundup, the more they have to use it in ever increasing amounts.
Could GMO Foods become even More Terrifying?
Are you thinking how could anything you've just read get any more terrifying? It's because these Frankenstein staple GMO foods crop seeds are patented and owned by the Monsanto Corporation, therefore each planting season, the farmers must buy these "patented" seeds from Monsanto, and the mega gallons of Roundup they need to spray the Monsanto crops as they grow. The Monsanto Corporation strictly forbids the saving of seeds as farmers have always done and tracks down and sues the farmers who attempt to. In fact, Monsanto sets an annual budget of $10 million and a staffs 75 farm detectives devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers. There are many cases each year of harassment against farmers over alleged unauthorized use of their GMO seed products even if they blew in on the wind from another farm.
This is Not the First Time the Government has Lied to Us
We've been told since the middle of the last century that adding Fluoride to our drinking water would prevent tooth decay and it was not harmful to humans. It has taken us seventy plus years to realize that we've been lied to. There is in fact, no improvement in preventing tooth decay and there is accumulating data of its harmful and devastating effects on humans. Fluoride is not technically a GMO Food because it does not genetically modify the water we drink, but it is an added process making many wealthy. It does nothing of what they promised and is destroying the lives of so many living in areas of fluoridated waters compared to those areas and countries that have refused to fluoridate their waters.
Are you Familiar with Today's Experts Disclaimers on Fluoridation?
Paul Connett, PhD in biochemistry remarked that when historians come to write about this period, they will single out fluoridation as the single biggest mistake in public policy that we've ever had. Of course, that may soon be overshadowed by GMO Foods.
David Kennedy, DDS and President International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology commented that in the history of the planet water fluoridation is the single largest case of scientific fraud, promoted by the government, supported by taxpayer dollars, aided and abetted by the ADA and the AMA, Interesting because now we have the FDA promoting the acceptance of GMO foods.
Charles Gordon Heyd, MD, and President of the AMA was appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. He felt that fluoride is a corrosive poison that would produce serious effects on a long range basis and to use water this way was simply deplorable.
L. Alesen, MD and President of the California Medical Association advocates that no physician in his right mind would ever hand to his patient a bottled filled with some dangerous drug with instructions to take as much or as little of it as he wished. He is concerned as to why the Public Health Service is engaged upon their widespread propaganda program to insist that communities do exactly that? Dr. Alesen was sure that the purpose of administering fluoride was not to render the water supply pure and potable but to contaminate it with a dangerous and toxic drug for the purpose of administering mass medication to the consumer without the slightest regard to their age or physical condition.
Albert Schatz, PhD Nobel Laureate for discovering streptomycin has expressed his concern that fluoridation is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated on people and believes it has been perpetrated on more people than any other fraud has. Of course fluoridation might become a second rate fraud as people can substitute fluoridated water and toothpaste, but not so easily substituted is virtually every GMO food product on the shelves.
Dean Burk, PhD with the National Cancer Institute has shocked us with the statistic that more people have died in the last 30 years from cancer connected with fluoridation than all the military deaths in the entire history of the United States. As amazing as this statistic is, it's nothing compared to the fact that they still fluoridate water, or that virtually everyone in America is becoming ill and obese and that may just be the GMO foods contribution.
An Environmental Protection Agency scientist, Dr. Robert Carton in 1999 discovered that fluoridation was the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century, if not of all time. Dr. Carton now needs to come forth with his opinion on GMO foods.
Monsanto's Defense of Genetically Engineering our Food Crops
GMO companies like Monsanto have claims for GMO Foods which are introduced here, but don't they eerily come across like those "claims" that fluoridated water was not harmful and will prevent dental decay which we now know to be totally deceitful? Monsanto claims that today's global population nearing seven billion people and growing an adequate food supply might become a problem therefore their GMO foods are needed to meet this demand in a number of ways:
In Pest resistance, growing GMO foods such as Bt corn can help eliminate the application of chemical pesticides like Roundup but Bt corn is still a GMO Food with the pesticide on the inside of it. They use a toxin produced by the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium which works like a pesticide. Monsanto started inserting these genes which code for the toxin directly into the genetic code of the corn and must also include a section of promoter gene code which would encourage the corn to produce the toxin. They also insert a marker gene which could be used to track and identify modified corn.
For Herbicide tolerance, Monsanto has a strain of soybeans genetically modified to be unaffected by their herbicide product Roundup, By weakening plants and promoting disease, the chemical glyphosate known as Roundup opens the door to many problems in the environment according to Dr. Don Huber of Purdue University. The use of glyphosate Roundup is reported to develop 40 diseases in crop plants and even this number continues to grow as people come to more recognize the association between glyphosate and disease.
To become Disease resistance against the many viruses, fungi and bacteria that cause plant diseases, therefore it makes sense that Monsanto try and create plants they could genetically engineer to resistance to these diseases. If this were really possible, then they could similarly genetically engineer all of us so that we too become resistant to all of our diseases. How can they expect to genetically engineer plants to resist diseases when the genetic engineering itself is known to introduce diseases?
To develop Cold tolerance using an antifreeze gene from cold water fish that has been introduced into tobacco and potato plants, but this still hasn't addressed the issue that the fish genes are introduced into the transgenic plant genes using the recombined DNA from viruses and bacteria. Any unintended consequences from just this are in addition to possible unintended consequences from the additional necessary promoter "kick-starting" gene that no one is yet sure what else this promoter gene can kick start inside the human consumer of these GMO foods.
Creating Drought tolerance and Salinity tolerance plants that can withstand drought and a high salt content in the soil and groundwater is a great goal but, here too farmers have already been doing this for centuries through selective breeding without genetically engineering them. Most importantly, Monsanto is not claiming here that they've even been able to do this making it part of that blue sky they're painting to have us think they're on some successful path.
To increase Nutrition because malnutrition is common everywhere people aren't eating healthy and especially in poorer countries who primarily rely on a single crop such as rice for their main staple of diet. Monsanto wants to genetically engineer rice for example to contain additional vitamins and minerals to produce a kind of an all-in-one plant that sounds desirable. But again, recombining Virus and bacteria DNA and inserting them with the promoter and marker transgenic genes into plants we eat so that even if they could obtain these doubtful results, will they be safe to digest into human bodies without unintended undesirable side effects?
And do you believe we need more Pharmaceuticals? Medicines and vaccines are costly to produce but even more costly to market as seen by the countless number of pharmaceutical ads on TV twenty-four-seven. Monsanto is working to develop tomatoes and potatoes as another one dose fits all, whether you need it or not delivery system in the same way we poison ourselves with that one dose of fluoride fits all in every drop of water and toothpaste. The same GMO food plant dosage would forced upon infants, toddlers, teenagers, adults and grandparents alike who all happen to eat a tomato or have pasta for dinner, and what pharmaceutical company doesn't want this?
We could start with the use of engineered plants and trees to remove or neutralize contaminants in polluted soil or groundwater known as Phytoremediation. Soil and groundwater pollution is certainly a problem everywhere in the world. Poplar trees have been genetically engineered to help clean up heavy metal pollution from contaminated soil and here is one place if it works, would be applauded because we don't normally ingest trees.
GMO Foods History
The first commercially grown genetically modified GMO foods crop came about in the early 1990s with a tomato named the FlavrSavr by Calgene, which is a California company with Monsanto ownership since 1996. The genetic engineering altered the tomato so that it took longer to decompose except it did not sell well therefore last long on the supermarket shelves as it was unacceptably bland.
Many of our Government's own scientific advisers were concerned over possible negative health effects, but this did not prevent or even delay the government from approving the GMO tomato and further decided that GMO foods in general would not require pre-market approval even though Dr Arpad Pusztai of the Rowett Research Institute in 1996 published his research suggesting that GMO potatoes modified with a snowdrop plant insecticide gene were toxic to rats in feeding trials.
A Personal Perspective on GMO Foods
From a personal perspective aren't we shocked, appalled and angry that this information has been purposely concealed from us by those government agencies charged with protecting us?
On the positive note is the awaking awareness to the dangers of GMO foods as witnessed by the vast growing number of documentaries which are found on all of the free and paid video networks like Netflix for example. Our food supply and what we eat is today probably the number one subject for documentaries, each one a different perspective on just how dangerous the Genetic Engineering of our crops are. Much of them are on the complete lack of any real justification other than for the Monsanto Corporation to patent and own our food seeds thereby forcing farmers to buy from them each planting season which now also comes to require more and more of its toxic chemical Roundup to make them grow.
GMO Foods do not have to be labeled in the USA because Monsanto has fought hard to prevent labeling laws. This is especially alarming since most of the processed foods on the grocery shelves and freezers either are or contain GMO ingredients. And we're the bad parents in this country because many nations like the European Union, Japan, China, Korea, Australia and New Zealand all have mandatory GMO Foods labeling so that they won't unknowingly serve GMO foods to their children.
Monsanto's GMO Foods Perspective
A revolving door exists between Monsanto and our government regulatory and judicial bodies making their self-serving fraudulent decisions. In 1992, then Vice President Dan Quayle announced the FDA's anti consumer right-to-know policy which stated that GMO foods need NOT be labeled nor safety-tested. This was over the objections of many prominent scientists like Arpad Pusztai and Gilles-Eric Seralini who publicized their alarming research revealing the severe damage to monkeys and lab rats fed GMO foods including: sterilization, cancer, miscarriages, allergies, seizures, and death.
Monsanto also had strong ties to the George W. Bush administration including John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Ann Veneman, Tommy Thompson and Justice Clarence Thomas who was a Monsanto Corporation attorney in the 1970s appointed to the Supreme Court by George Bush Sr. in 1990 where he wrote the majority opinion in the 2001 Supreme Court decision that paved the way for Monsanto to patent and own seeds
In another example, Monsanto lobbyist Michael R. Taylor left Monsanto to work for a law firm gaining FDA approval of Monsanto's artificial growth hormone in the 1980s. He then became the deputy commissioner of the FDA from 1991 to 1994 when rBGH was granted approval. He was appointed Senior Adviser to the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner on food safety in 2009 by President Barack Obama.
Dr. Michael A. Friedman was a deputy commissioner of the FDA before he was hired as a senior vice president of Monsanto. Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before becoming a vice president at Monsanto from 1995-2000. Fisher then became the Deputy Administrator of the EPA in 2001.
The most devious of these intertwining relationships might be the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld under both President Ford and President George Bush. He was the chairman and chief executive officer of G. D. Searle & Co. a pharmaceutical company which Monsanto purchased in 1985 like some ghoulish plan to generate profits first by sickening us with GMO Foods and then reaping the pharmaceutical profits on the back side.
In July 2008, Monsanto announced its plans to raise the average price of their GMO corn varieties $95-100 per bag, a staggering 35%, to top $300 per bag even though a 1999 review of Roundup Ready soybean crops found that compared to the top conventional varieties, they actually had a 6.7% lower yield.
Mr. Fred Stokes of the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) describes the implications for today's farmers noting how this absurd $100 price increase on a farmer who farms 1,000 acres for example, for a gross increased cost of more than $40,000. And yet, there is the real possibly lower yield so, where is any scientific basis to justify this price hike holding true for other GM crops as well? In just 2 years from 2006 to 2008, the average price for soybean seed, the largest GMO Foods crop in the country has risen by more than 50%, from $32.30 to $49.23 per planted acre.
Just about any food we buy containing oils is either going to be Monsanto GMO soy, Monsanto GMO canola, or Monsanto GMO cottonseed oil. That bottle may read "pure vegetable oil" but is usually 100% GMO soy. Even the "olive oil" mayonnaise lists GMO soy as the second ingredient after water. We already know that organic hemp oil for example, would be a far safer GREENER plant to make these food products out of with a reputation that is actually recognized to promote health as opposed to weakening it.
GMO Soy protein is an unlabeled ingredient in a large variety of the foods you may unknowingly believe safe such as salad dressings, soups, imitation meats, beverage powders, non-dairy creamers, frozen desserts, whipped topping, breads, taco shells, cheeses, breakfast cereals, pastas, and even pet foods and infant formulas.
Conclusion:
If supermarket foods were labeled "GE" or "GMO Foods" they would sit on the shelves forever as has been proven outside the USA where there are labeling laws
Isn't this an easy problem to see?
- The Monsanto attorney Justice Clarence Thomas becomes a Supreme Court Judge and then writes that Monsanto can patent and own our food crops?
- The former Monsanto lobbyist Michael R. Taylor becomes the Senior Adviser to the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner on food safety.
- A deputy commissioner of the FDA, Dr. Michael A. Friedman was hired as a senior vice president of Monsanto. An assistant administrator of the EPA,
- Linda J. Fisher became a vice president at Monsanto from 1995-2000 to then became the Deputy Administrator of the EPA in 2001.
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was the chairman and CEO of G. D. Searle & Co. a pharmaceutical company which Monsanto purchased in 1985.
With just this partial list of top Monsanto executives rotating back and forth between the FDA, the federal government and the Monsanto Corporation, how can we still be expected to believe that they have our best interest over their own in mind? How could there not be overt conflicts of interests?
It is OK to be very Afraid
Doesn't all of this new technology come with questions and fear? What are the real risks of these yet to be known experiments on nature? What forth coming effects will this have on the environment? Aren't there serious health concerns consumers of altered GMO food should be aware of? Is this Frankenstein technology of recombinant DNA really beneficial for humans in any way? Aren't you at all concerned that the runaway obesity and disease growing in this country is in direct proportion to the Frankenstein GMO foods being secretly deceived upon us?
An obvious problem with pest-resistant and herbicide-resistant plants is the strong selective pressure in that habitat which could probably cause an evolution of similarly resistant insects and thereby nullify the effects of the bacteria, plant and animal transgenic food crop. As the spraying of herbicides becomes more frequent as farmers are now experiencing with Roundup, the surrounding weeds could also develop a resistance. This would naturally cause a further increase in the Roundup dosage and frequency or perhaps a change in herbicide to another more hideous toxin surely in development. No one is yet sure whether the pest resistant characteristic of these GMO crops could be adopted into the surrounding weeds causing strains of them to become resistant and even more prolific.
It can even get way more Convoluted and Scary
Since the insect-resistant plants can cause increased death of its familiar pest, couldn't that eliminate competition for the minor pests to then have them become a major problem? Or, perhaps couldn't insect-resistant plants cause their familiar pest population to shift to another plant crop that was once unthreatened by them? These unintended effects could multiply out much further. A study of Bt crops showed that unfortunately beneficial insects who prey on familiar crop pests were also naturally exposed to harmful quantities of Bt. We could now understand realistic possibilities for the effects to continue to reach further up the food web to eventually effect plants and animals consumed by humans.
Further toxicological investigation and scrutiny will determine if residues from herbicides like Roundup or pest resistant plants could harm or mutate vital groups of organisms found in the surrounding soil such as bacteria, the fungi or nematodes, and any other microorganism whose unintended biological change could diminish our food crops.
The potential risks we blindly accept with disease resistant plants deal mostly with viral resistance and can therefore lead to the creation of new viruses which therefore means new untreatable diseases. Naturally occurring viruses that are recombined with viral fragments that are then introduced to create transgenic plants could form new viruses which are then formed into many novel variations of which there is no predictable outcome.
Visit the Nutrition site Live a Life of health here: http://www.livealifeofhealth.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_Vincent_Brown
http://EzineArticles.com/?Could-GMO-Foods-Possibly-End-Our-Lives?&id=6585095
