Controlling Our Food

As I learn more and more about the food system in the United States, the more I become afraid of it. Doing research for a paper recently, I found out that about 70% of all packaged foods sold in America have at least some genetically engineered components. For those of you unfamiliar with GM (genetically modified) crops, they are crops that have been altered at the DNA level to have some “desirable” trait. These crops have been banned in several countries such as Japan, Norway, Germany, and Spain because of their dangerous qualities. In the 1980s, a supplement of L-tryptophan which was genetically engineered killed nearly 100 people in the United States, and caused 10,000 to fall sick. In India, the introduction of GM cotton has caused untold miseries for farmers who have suffered crop failures and are drowning in the debt involved with the cultivation of GM crops. Just last year, over 30,000 farmers committed suicide as a result of these debts. For Ro and I, the importance of this issue can not be stresesd enough. The documentary below gives an amazing run down of the development of biotechnology in the last 50 years, and the dangers of the unregulated and immoral use of such technologies. I encourage all of you to watch the whole video and share it with as many people as you can.