Anti-GMO Arguments Based on Fact After reading the recent column outlying a quite foreign view on the safety of GMO foods, it became clear that the invite to continue this conversation needed to be taken. First of all, children are not starving to death because there aren’t GMOs, here or there. Please, don’t continue perpetuating the myth that we need GMOs to save starving children, because I am sure we can agree there is enough food to feed closer to 12 billion people on this Earth. It’s politics, politics as usual that kills children of malnutrition, defined usually by lack of distribution. Your genetically engineered pesticide producing/resisting patented crops are not saving any lives. So project your guilt elsewhere. Furthermore, GMO crops have not been found to increase yield, this has never been independently confirmed. Pesticide poisoning is real and you might claim that no one has died of long term consumption of GMOs, if that is what your trying to say, but while the verdict is out on that and the FDA continues to conduct NO studies on the safety of GMO crops, and the self reported data continues to roll in; The long term intestinal issues associated with eating residual levels of pesticides plays out on the US population. Only time will truly tell. Due to politics and patenting rights we have had very few independent studies conducted in this area, so any claims of safety are empty. The chemical corporations we are dealing with are responsible for most of the around 2.5 million tons (2,500,000 tons = 5 billion pounds) of pesticide used annually around the world (College of Agriculture, Cornell University). In 2002, an estimated 69,000 children, in the US alone, were diagnosed with pesticide poisoning (EPA fact sheet). The World Health Organization reports that 220,000 people die each year around the world because of pesticide poisoning. That would likely be made up of acute poisoning cases, as long term is rarely correlated, acknowledged or counted. And lets not forget that farmers who use pesticides have a significantly higher rate of cancer, than those that do not (College of Agriculture, Cornell University). In the US alone, nearly one tenth of the roughly 6.6 billion pounds of toxic chemicals (mostly made by these very chemical corporations) released every year, is already known and proven capable of causing cancer (College of Agriculture, Cornell University). These would be conservative numbers. One of the most common misleading statistics that are spoon fed to people to encourage support for GMO crops is that they use less pesticide. The assertion is simply wrong. GMOs are associated with farmers buying and using more pesticides, not less. A study in 2012 found that the use of roundup resistant GMO crops and the resulting creation of ‘superweeds’ because of them have increased the use of pesticides by 402 million pounds, in the last 15 years. Also, for those plants that produce pesticides in every cell of their being and require less application of that form of pesticide, they are still producing pesticides, which enter into the environment. This simply isn’t counted. Enough with the justification of all this, the justification for the money and justifications for patents that result in frivolous lawsuits against small-scale farmers, for violations they never made. In fact, organic farming practices are far less degrading to the soil and surrounding environment and communities, in comparison to large-scale mono-crop pesticide dependent crops. The use of our agricultural lands for GMO experimental test sites, naturally results in large un-vegetated areas that are leaving soil open and subject to erosion. Only in the last year have we seen any incorporation of cover crops at all. While the attempt to start planting these is encouraged, it does not negate all of the erosion and sedimentation that has occurred, and is still occurring, because of this poor land management conducted by chemical GMO experimentation. Even glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup), which is the least of our worries here in the GMO experimental hub we call home, is continuously being shown to be more toxic and persistent that we previously thought. The real outrage is that we suspect we are actually being dosed with pesticides at a level higher than that of any other state in the nation (per pound per acre). The toxic cocktail of pesticides being applied are the very heart of community concern here. With two ‘pesticide experimental permits’ for Kaua’i (that we are currently aware of) we are greatly and rightfully concerned about what pesticide cocktail is being used in our backyards, up to the boundaries of our schools, homes and hospitals. _______ Fern Rosenstiel was born and raised on Kaua’i and closely involved with Bill 2491, its development and passing. She read T.J. Menn’s recent post and his vising opinion and was called to respond to some of the accusations and misrepresentations she felt like were being made in his article, ‘Anti-GMO arguments based on fear not fact’. The views expressed here are her own.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 07:23:16 +0000