http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/Home/index.cfm

I've been reading this book this week. I'm about a chapter and a half into it, and it's already down right horrifying.

I really had no idea the extent to which GMO food is rolling the dice with our health. Nor did I realize the extent to which this stuff is integrated into the food we eat everyday, without any warning at all.

Nydia, do you have any rolling thunder on this topic? This book is obviously written with a particular agenda, but it seems to have overwhelming evidence in its favor.

Details... Details...?

Read Peta offered a million dollars to someone who could make passable test tube meat. Was quite the controversy bieng peta and all but they decided it was better than killing an animal.

Test tube meat?

http://www.peta.org/feat_in_vitro_contest.asp

Thanks Sanchek for starting this subject, it's one of the sensitive that I wanted to talk about here, along with euthanasia, there were some big stories here about it, and I *think* we had a post running some (long?) time ago, it could be interesting.

But I digress, back on subject.
Nor did I realize the extent to which this stuff is integrated into the food we eat everyday, without any warning at all.
Last week I watched a show on TV regarding food and "where it comes from".

There was a subject about fishes running very low in mediterranean sea, with the main idea being that a "fishfarm" produces everyday what a average fisher gets in the wild every year (not to mention species no longer "available" in open sea), quite troubling about the bio-diversity of "my" coasts.

The second subject was about eggs, and how they are "mainly" produced.
Main ideas there were that 1st 95% of eggs we eat (in any form) come from chicken that lives 12 per m² and that will never see daylight, and 2nd that nutriments wise eggs made by "open air" chicken and eggs made my "crowded and in cage" chicken were the same, the price difference was mostly about the living condition of our chicken.

The third subject was about GMO, and especially, hence my quote, how they "get their way" in our meat.
As usual we had this guy claiming that it couldn't be bad for us, because, afterall, it was just "accelerating" what mankind was doing with crops for thousand years, mixing and selecting the best (even if I always wondered how long you have to criss cross species to get a pesticide producting corn).

And then the "paradox" of GMO legislation in France. First the "bio" farmer that was rebucked his bio label for his corn because they found 0.1% of GM corn in his production, even if he strictly followed rules about this label, it was hard to control wind and other polinisation (sp) ways.
And then we can see that at least 60% of the animal food crop (mainly coming from Argentina) is GM corn (corn again huh?), and there is basically nothing we can do about it and yet there is no mention of what fed these cows and pigs that will turn to tasty meat sooner or later.

I have the gut feeling that we don't really know if GM food is bad or "the same" for us, but that's my main concern. We don't know! But yet we eat some every day, every meal... Scary.

Anterak beat me to it. It's amazing that it has been going on for thousands years. Wild potatos, for example, are mostly poisonous (member of the nightshade family). Thousands of years ago, however, the early Peruvians and Chileans (and other South American tribes) figured out how to selectively cultivate the potato to grow an edible variety.

It's hard to think of a food we eat that hasn't been modified in some way to make it produce more or be "hardier" against weather and pests.

Crossbred seeds are not the same as GMO. Not even remotely in the same ballpark.

Corn is vastly better than it used to be too Furt.. In the 1600's it was all different colors and puny. Now's big and all yellow, the best part. But it's not the same as GMO I don't think.

edit - Damn San beat me to it.

Solyent green is people!!!

The longer we live, the less are killed by war/disease the greater this problem is going to be...

We have to do something to produce greater yield with less space. If we're going to continue to allow surburban spawl instead of force people to live in greater confine we're going to lose more croplands ;(

Is it the lack of testing behind such genetic manipulation you take umbrage with Sanchek or just the general idea behind it?

I'm in class atm (snuck a peek at the boards) but I'll post something today on this, I promise!

I only have time for one sentence atm but I will say that as far as immediate threats to *human* health, we need to be more concerned about genetic manipulation of *animals* than we do of crop *plants* (for example genes for growth hormone being engineered into farmed salmon causing them to grow to triple size at the same age as their wild counterparts), but there are plenty of disturbing things going on all over the map in terms of what we are splicing into things these days.

See you guys this afternoon!

Regards,
Nydia

The crop yield argument may or may not be a gigantic hoodwinking of all us laymen: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html

I don't have any moral qualm with genetic engineering, or anything like that.

My problem (so far in my reading) is not the lack of testing either. It is the research that is being ignored, in favor of incomplete, paid-off studies that avoid looking too closely at known dangers of GMO food.

Along the lines of what Nydia said, we're propagating changes out into the ecosystem that we don't even begin to understand.

For example, cows that eat GMO soybeans produce milk with higher fat content, even long after they stop eating the soybeans. The chain reaction of consequences for each new mutation probably won't even be fully understand for years, if ever. Meanwhile, we're spreading thousands of ever increasing variations.

I'll try to summarize the chapters of this book as I go. It's just a bit intimidating, because there is so much information in each chapter that all seems equally urgent and outrageous.

/nods Sanchek I understand your fears.

How linked are the companies pushing these changes to our livestock/foodstocks to the big drug companies? Sounds like the same testing methods and denial of results to get $$.

I don't think they're directly linked, but they certainly do use the exact same tactics of massive lobbying, buying research, etc.

And then the "paradox" of GMO legislation in France. First the "bio" farmer that was rebucked his bio label for his corn because they found 0.1% of GM corn in his production, even if he strictly followed rules about this label, it was hard to control wind and other polinisation (sp) ways.
They hire private investigators, bribe neighboring farmers, etc to sue non-Monsanto farms for IP violations, even if the farms want nothing to do with Monsanto. The GMO crops are like a virus, to the organic farmer.

One of the examples I read about was in India. Monsanto convinced a lot of the Indian rice farmers to use their GMO rice, but it failed miserably, leaving them with no harvest. Not only that, but they couldn't replant since those seeds were patented and they'd have to re-buy the dud seeds to even try again.

Unable to recover, many of them killed themselves.

I have the gut feeling that we don't really know if GM food is bad or "the same" for us, but that's my main concern. We don't know! But yet we eat some every day, every meal... Scary.
It appears to be far worse than that.

Numerous damning reports have been squelched because they would hurt the companies paying for the research, while barely cursory research is paraded as proof that GMO food is safe. The whistle blowers are fired or otherwise censored.

I always had this underlying suspicion that Monsanto was pure evil, but seeing it all laid out like this is absolutely harrowing.

You guys should read this book.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3912

I'm beginning to suspect that some of these corporations aren't looking out for us.

I think you may be onto something there.