A friend of mine came up to me all excited the other day to tell me that millions of people worldwide are protesting against Monsanto, because Monsanto is making billions of dollars growing genetically modified crops. I listened to him respectfully, then asked him if he realized that he was being manipulated by socialists who hate capitalism. Our Food and Drug Administration says that genetically modified foods are safe, and the foods are much more abundant and available to feed the people of the world.
I don't doubt that Monsanto probably has undo power in the political world, just like the pharmaceutical companies have undo power in the medical world. I applauded my friend for keeping vigilant and being skeptical. But there are many other issues of known malfeasance crying out to be addressed, before we speculate on unproven allegations.
Someone has made this You Tube video to help you tell whether foods are organic or genetically modified. Supposedly, you can identify genetically modified foods, because there is an 8 in front of the food's barcode numbers. However, producers in the U.S. are not required to put the 8 in front of the other numbers, because there is no scientific evidence proving a difference in the safety of foods grown one way or the other, and the foods are not more expensive, as in the case of organics.
1 comment:
Monsanto is a dirty word among farmers - not because of their GMO engineering, but rather their strong arm tactics over zealously "protecting" their patents. For generations, farmers have held back part of their crop for seed, but Monsanto says that's ripping them off because the farmers ought to be buying seed every year from them. They hire thugs to search farms and threaten farmers.
They don't do that so much around here in wheat country, because the wheat strains are generally university extension grown. Different story in corn and soybean areas.
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