You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘GMOs’ tag.
Here is all the information from my poster if anyone is interested:
The Problem:
The US Food System:
The way we eat food in this country has changed drastically in the last 50 years. We can now grow 200 bushel per acre when we could only grow 20 a hundred years ago. This is due to genetically modifying seeds as well as pesticides and herbicides.
We can now also “grow” chickens twice as fast as 50 years ago. And since white meat is what is in demand chickens now grow with larger breasts, so large in fact they can’t take more than 2 or 3 steps with out plopping down. With pork and ground beef we can feed them subsides corn very cheap which makes them fat and the meat prices go down. The average American eats 200lbs of meat a year. And a few companies control the beef, pork, and poultry industries. Four companies control 80% of the beef market. Tyson is the largest meat company in the world.
As a result of feeding cows corn a harmful strain of E coli has developed. Studies show that if a corn fed cow is allowed to eat grass for 5 days they can lose 80% of the E coli in their stomachs. But this is not done, they find new ways to “wash” the meat with chlorine to kill the E coli. So we get cheap beef from corn fed cows. Now the more than 12,000 McDonald’s and 7,500 Burger Kings can sell food extremely cheap which then leads to health problems.
The biggest predictor of obesity is income level. Today, 10% of income spent of food in the US, half the amount that was spent 50 years ago. More than sixty-six percent of all Americans are considered overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Body Mass Index over 25 = obese). One in three children born in the 2000s will have early onset diabetes, 1 out of 2 in minority children. Twenty-five years ago, the average American consumed about 1,850 calories each day, now over 2,150.
What is the government doing?
Between 1995 and 2004 the US government paid $144 billion in agriculture subsidies. So they are spending money on agriculture practices that produce surplus grain that we feed to cows that could make us sick. If a plant is sending out contaminated products whether it is E coli or salmonella, the FDA does not have the right to shut them down, even if they repeatedly make people sick.
The government also gave companies the right to patent seeds, which is essentially patenting life. Over 90% of the soybeans grown in the US are Monsanto soybeans, which contain a patented gene. In 1996, it was only 2%. Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, was a Monsanto attorney. He also helped with the passing of the bill that said a company could patent a seed. Now if a farmer plants his own, non-Monsanto seeds, and those crops become pollinated by his neighbors Monsanto seeds, Monsanto can sure him for seed stealing. And Monsanto has millions of dollars and powerful attorney’s and more often than not win these battles or force the farmers to settle out of court. They then can blacklist the farm from using their products, which are basically the only products left to buy in the market. So they take his money in court then his livelihood by not allowing him to purchase seeds needed to farm.
Both the Bush and Clinton administrations had close ties to Monsanto, whether it was donations or former high up employees. Our government is filled with those who used to work for companies which they now should be regulating.
The Solution:
Edible Schoolyards
In 1995 chef Alice Walker had the same idea and applied it in Berkley, California. As she walked past the same school everyday she began to think it was abandoned, the principle of this school then asked her to come and try a garden there. Two years later most of the asphalt was gone and in it’s place there was green. It was at King Middle School in Berkeley that the first Edible Schoolyard (ESY) was started, on one acre or land. Middle school students were not only taught about gardening but about history behind gardening and the science of cooking food. In the early years of this project there were after school cooking classes as well as cooking meals twice a month for their class. A summer class was offered in the Edible Schoolyard. From interviews you will find that the kids in this school want to take this class. They also find they like the food that is being made with fresh, organic produce that they themselves labored for.
ESY NOLA
Edible Schoolyard New Orleans, was created using the original schoolyard in Berkely, CA. ESY NOLA came about after Hurricane Katrina. The students at two public schools, Kindergarten – 8th grade, learn cooking and gardening by hands on weekly classes. The foods cooked there are specifically meant to teach the traditional style of New Orleans.
REAL School Gardens
REAL School Gardens based in Fort Worth, Texas, serves more than 40,000 children and 2,300 educators in 66 North Texas schools and 15,000 more teachers and students in the San Francisco area. REAL stands for The Rainwater Environmental Alliance for Learning. Their website states “Our goals are to create safe outdoor spaces to engage young children, to use nature to enhance student learning, encourage family and community involvement in schools, and to create vibrant, sharing networks of educators and partners who commit to putting school gardens at the heart of urban neighborhoods.” Founded in 1996 REAL gardens not only teach students how to grow and eat healthy foods, it helps build a since of community with the families of the students as well as the community.
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution:
Jamie Oliver is a well known British chef who, at age 34, has done some pretty remarkable things. Jamie was born in England and started working with food at a young age at his father’s pub. At age 16 went to Westminster Catering College and spent time in Frances honing his culinary skills. After working under many chefs his first big brake was a TV series where he was known as The Naked Chef. Oliver then channeled his fame and cooking skills into working for the greater good. In 2005 Jamie made a four part documentary called Jamie’s School Dinner’s where he worked to improve the quality of Britain’s school lunches. This was part of a larger program in the UK called Feed Me Better. This program was successful in getting government money to improve school kitchens, more culinary lessons for cooks, and overall better school lunches. Oliver is very passionate about food and about teaching kids where it comes from and getting them to cook and love fresh nutritious food.
Now he is taking on America. His television show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution takes him to Huntington, West Virginia to try and change with way this town eats and he focuses on school meals. The series is over now but he had some success in changing the way that community looks at food.
The Project:
Bern, KS
This small community would be ideal for a edible schoolyard project. It is a small farming community and there is no shortage of land for this project. I have spoke with some members of the community who show interest in this project. Since the other schoolyards I have researched are in warmer climates there would need to be activities to fill up the fall and winter that would have to do with the garden. Students could then learn about preserving food and cooking with the preserved food. Also they could research fruits and vegetables they are interested in growing and then be able to plant them in the spring. This is a basic outline of what this project would entail.
The cons to this project is that it is a farming community and they could show resistance to organic farming practices. Budgets are another con, this school is in the process of consolidating with another school in the area. This is because of state budget cuts and that takes up the majority of there meetings. They do not have a lot of time to think about projects like this. The seed has been planted in the minds of the community now, hopefully in the next year this idea will build steam and hopefully we will see a garden in the Bern, KS school in the next few years.
Over five years ago, while I was still in high school, my sister and I discovered, in our grocery store’s produce section, a product called a grapple. It looked like an apple but the taste was something of a whole other fruit… it tasted like a grape. Well, artificial grape flavor. Everyone seemed to be curious about this new “fruit” and eager to try it. It was especially popular with teens and young children. Isn’t science great? (sarcasm) A grapple is an apple infused with grape flavor, it’s not a hybrid or a GMO but it does kind of freak you out what people are doing with foods.
What is a GMO? It is a Genetically Modified Organism whose genetic material has been changed using genetic engineering. According to Food, Inc., 70% of supermarket foods contain some GMOs. But in some places this is not the case. Some countries who have banned GMOs in some form include New Zealand, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, Luxemburg, Germany, France, and parts of Canada. What about the United States? One county in California have successfully banned the production of GMOs, others have tried and failed. Once again it feels as if our government does not really care what we eat.
In Food, Inc. there is a quote that says “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than it had the previous 10,000. ” New sciences and technologies are the reason for this change.Throughout out the semester we have read a lot about Monsanto and their GM products as well as pesticides and herbicides. Since we all know who they are I won’t go into it but I did want to share this site with you: Millions Against Monsanto. Check it out, it is good documentation of Monsanto’s many injustices.
And one last side note, I was very please to find out this past weekend that Ben and Jerry’s ice cream does not use cows who have been given rBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone, a Monsanto product, that we read about in The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. And they are working on using cage free eggs as well. Yay! Less guilt free ice cream 
And I’ll stick to eating apples that taste like apples and grapes that look like grapes.
Now unfortunately Food, Inc. did not win the Oscar for best documentary but it was nominated this past year. In this film you get a look into the beef, pork, and chicken industry. Also it informs about government policies that regulate what is and isn’t safe for us. They also talk some about Monsanto and how they have patented seeds and are going after anyone who saves their own seeds.
The documentary also follows the story of a mother who lost her two year old son to E coli after eating contaminated ground beef. The documentary tells us that some strains of E coli are a product of the beef industry, packing animals close together and feeding them corn. The company responsible for the beef did not recall the meet until 16 days after the son had passed away and it took the family three years to find out that they matched the recall from that company. Her son died in August of 2001 and she is still continuing to fight for plants to be held accountable for contaminated products. The law states that the FDA cannot shut down a plant even if they are continually sending out contaminated products. Does that seem right to anyone??
Joel Salatin who we read about in The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved makes many appearances throughout the film. You get to see how he ruins his farm and how his animals live. They also show how they butcher their chickens out in the open air which we are told is not sanitary. He says he had is chickens tested at a microbiology lab and they came back 133 cfu while those that had gone through chlorine baths averaged 3600cfu.
You can actually intern at his farm which is something I would love to be able to do. You can find out more at his farm’s website: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
I don’t want to tell you too much about the film because I cannot do it justice in this review but I do encourage you all to see it, it has great information about the US food system. Some of these things we touched on in class and some we did not but it never hurts to hear things more than once, I’ve seen Food, Inc. three times and still find it informative. It just blows my mind to see how companies are more protected in this country than the people.
WATCH FOOD, INC I think it is a documentary that everyone should see and I recommend it to all
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/11/boxoffice.ap/index.html
Bloggie VI. As with all things natural, bloggies too must come to an end. I’ve learned more than I had intended to. I began this semester with such little knowledge of Genetically Modified Seeds, but have realized that this form of genetic engineering is a field that still requires much needed research. Knowledge of GMS is still limited, with many new updates arising daily. Corporate lobbying successfully granted Monsanto special priority when it came to promoting their modified seeds by offering a cut in federal crop insurance for farmers. These farmers are required to sign a five to seven year lease agreement and are sued for violating copyrights after the lease expires if they continue to grow the GMS. But in April 2008, Swedish researchers discovered that some of these modified seeds are found ten years after they had been last grown, meaning that a lease expiration does not stop the soil from growing some GMS. The farmers that had been found guilty and forced to pay restitution should be pissed. But what can we do? What should we all learn from this? The answer lies within the new “Speed Racer” movie.
They tried to make a number one hit. They spent $120 million producing and marketing it, but it failed to meet expectations. Monsanto and other genetic engineering corporations should take a lesson from this. You can’t simply redo something that has already been done once and expect it to be some great success. Besides, mixing CGI and real-life is lame. I mean, is this a muppet movie? Does Roger Rabbit do a cameo? Are the Looney Toons characters participating also?
All in all, sometimes people need to step back and recognize that somethings should only be done once, whether they be fruits and vegetables or crappy shows and movies. For the sake of society and it’s members, stop.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19425983.700-billions-at-risk-from-wheat-superblight.html
Hello? Hello? This is Bloggie entry number five. It is April 28, 2008. If you’re reading this, then hopefully we found a way to save each other. Three days ago, earth was reminded of an ancient Roman god. What we commonly referred to as a myth, god Robigus returned to prove his presence and demand our worship. Because of our complacency, the fertility god (who gave protection to crops from various diseases) was pissed that the population once again ignored his festival day of April 25. One man tried to warn us. One man who we all ignored back in April 2007. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug warned that this thing had immense potential for social and human destruction. . . and he was right.
The disease was Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus that destroys wheat fields. In 1954, North America suffered a 40 per cent wheat crop loss. Since the Green Revolution in the 1960s, farmers everywhere had grown wheat varieties that resisted stem rust. But Ug99 evolved to take advantage of those varieties, and almost no wheat crops anywhere were resistant to it.
The strain spread slowly at first, across east Africa, but in January 2007 spores blew across to Yemen, and north into Sudan. Our first line of defense was fungicide, but the impoverished farmers generally couldn’t afford it, or didn’t have the equipment and know-how to prevent the spread. Governments ignored Dr. Borlaug’s solution that funding was necessary to produce new, resistant varieties of wheat. Eventually, it was too late, and earth’s populations suffered severe food shortages. Much of the human race turned to vampirism, voluntarily or not.
Although a fictional depiction, this could very well be the result of a real wheat seed that was modified to resist a particular fungus. It worked for forty years, aiding in higher wheat yields and ending chronic hunger in much of the world. But the fungus evolved. It’s currently destroying wheat crops in Africa and in the Middle East. We have two options, have governments fund research towards a better Ug99 resistant wheat seed, or make offerings to Robigus in the form of the color red (red wine or the ancient sacrificing of red dogs). Actually, I guess we have a third option of vampirism.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7324654.stm
Bloggie IV. An article, written by journalist Richard Black with BBC News. Apparently, the Swedes have constantly been on top of their seeds, because they planted genetically modified canola seeds ten years ago to see what it would do to the soil. “The Swedish Board of Agriculture has been spraying the field intensively with chemicals that should kill all the remaining plants,” wrote Black. But the GM canola seed said, “No, thank you,” and it decided that 15 plants should spring up 10 years later and carry the genes that scientists had originally inserted into their experimental canola variety to make them resistant to the herbicide glufosinate. But wait! What does this mean, Clare Oxborrow, GM campaigner with Friends of the Earth (FoE) UK?
“It appears that once it is planted, it is virtually impossible to prevent GM contamination of future crops,” she said. “The government must now tear up its weak proposals for the ‘coexistence’ of GM with organic and conventional crops, and put in place tough rules that protect GM-free food and farming.”
Let’s see what Professor Mark Westoby, a plant ecologist from Macquarie University in Australia, had to say. “This study confirms that GM crops are difficult to confine,” he said. “We should assume that GM organisms cannot be confined, and ask instead what will become of them when they escape.”
I wonder what another world renowned escape artist would do. How could you possibly confine something or someone that always found a way out? Reported eyewitness accounts say that Harry Houdini (who said that he could take any blow to the stomach) was unexpectedly punched multiple times in the stomach by a challenger in Montreal, Canada. Several days later Houdini’s appendix burst and he died. Although he probably had a bad appendix, he still died, so what I’m thinking is using brute force against the GM canola seed.
Bloggie: The Third. An interesting article dating February 8, 2008 about an all natural biopirate who has literally stolen the life from dozens of cotton fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 to 2006. These cotton fields were planted with “genetically modified cotton that was designed to make the Bt (that’s short for Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium) toxins that kill boll weevils has been thwarted by the bugs,” according to new research to be published in Nature Biotechnology. Researchers from the University of Arizona have classified this species of bollworm as the the first to evolve a resistance to the Bt crops.
Now, that’s interesting. But before we get carried away and think that all these Bt crops are going to fail, lead researcher Bruce Tabashnik reminds us that the resistance occurred in one particular pest in one part of the U.S. The other major pests attacking Bt crops have not evolved resistance. And even most bollworm populations have not evolved resistance.
Regardless, the extent of this article should serve as a constant reminder of our underlying prejudices. I hate to admit it, but I was the number one advocate for the bollworm to be thwarted by the Bt crops, but I had no idea that the thwarting would be reversed. I was prejudice against them from the start. I was wrong, but it didn’t take this article for me to realize my faults. It took an event that I’m sure the bollworm could identify with 110%. Revenge of the Nerds was released July 20, 1984. This fine work depicted the adaptation of a group of nerds (Bollworms), and how they overcame the taunts of the Alpha Beta fraternity (Bt crops). Just when you counted the nerds (Bollworms) out of the social game, they form their own fraternity (resistance) and get the girl. It’s as if director Jeff Kanew envisioned the thwarting of the Bt crop all those years ago and made a movie to capture the events. Tagged as, “They’ve been laughed at, picked on and put down. But now it’s time for the odd to get even! Their time has come!” Mr. Kanew has surely made the bollworm proud.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/monsanto-herbicides-corn-seeds-47010403
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/genetically-modified-47122604
For my second bloggie, I found the first article from Investor’s Business Daily by Marilyn Much, regarding Monsanto and their share increase. Up 188% from last year, with sales growing to $2.1 billion within the past four years, Monsanto’s Roundup and corn seed sales in Brazil and Argentina brought particularly high returns. But of course Monsanto estimates an 88-million-acre U.S. corn market in 2008, with most of it being spurred by ethanol subsidies. “The U.S. corn business is still their biggest driver in fiscal 2008,” said Mark Gulley, senior specialty chemical analyst at Soleil Securities.
I stumbled upon the second article which described how the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and Monsanto wheeled and dealed an agreement to give farmers a cut on federal crop insurance if they planted crops that resisted pests and were able to produce higher yields in 2000.
Apparently Monsanto is doing pretty well, and they project a steady growth into 2012. But I’m afraid that Monsanto has overlooked a lesson that history taught us back in 1984. Written by Stephen King, Children of the Corn instilled the fear of corn fields and communities in tens of thousands of United States citizens. I sincerely hope that Monsanto remembers how that ole’ saying goes of history repeating itself. Since 1984 history has repeated itself seven times with the latest tragedy occurring in 2001, that being Children of the Corn: Revelation. With such a steady growth of corn fields, it’s only a matter of time before we are all Children of the Corn.
