Eco-Farm: Seeds of Ignorance

[Guest guest]

Eco-Farm: Seeds of Ignorance: Investigative Journalist Reveals Serious Safety

Concerns About GM Food

RELATED ARTICLES

Organic Snack-Food Entrepreneur Nell Newman Chats with Grist

Biotech Food Debate Spices Up U.S. Scientist Meeting

Seed-Savers and Greens Unite to Challenge Monsanto's Latest Cash Cow

New Book Details GMO Dangers, Failures

/top_stories/article/30217

Note: For the next few days I'll be reporting from Eco-Farm, the annual

conference held by the Ecological Farming Association of California. At

Eco-Farm, some 1,400-1,500 organic farmers, Big Organic marketers, and sundry

sustainable-ag enthusiasts pack into a rustic, beautiful seaside conference hall

an hour-and-a-half south of San Francisco to talk farming amid the dunes.

 

 

I've been writing about genetically modified food since I first took up

food-politics writing back in 2005. My lens has always been corporate power and

biodiversity. I saw GM seeds as yet one more way corporations siphon profit out

of the food system, brazenly claiming ownership of a broad chunk of humanity's

seed heritage.

 

I also saw the explosion of a few GM seed varieties -- particularly for cotton,

corn and soy -- as a reckless narrowing of the already razor-thin genetic basis

of modern agriculture.

 

In short, I've been portraying the GM phenomenon as an intensification of an

industrialization process that began a century or so ago; but I haven't written

much about the radical break with the past the technology represents -- and in

particular, its health implications.

 

Honestly, since GM food entered the food supply so suddenly and broadly --

introduced in 1995, GMOs were appearing in 70 percent of U.S. by 2000 -- I

figured it must be just as nutritionally suspect as normal industrial food, but

no more. After all, if GM food actually introduced new dangers, wouldn't we know

it by now? Wouldn't there be some huge outcropping of disease or something?

 

 

 

 

 

After attending an Eco-Farm workshop by Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of

Deception, I see that I may have been hoodwinked. Smith delivers compelling

evidence that GM foods do pose significant health risks -- evidence that the GM

seed industry has managed to suppress.

 

 

Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, and other writers have driven

home the point that our food system can only thrive under a cloak of broad,

industry-generated ignorance. The explosion in GM foods represents a great

triumph in the history of manufactured ignorance. Smith reports that polls show

that 55 percent of Americans believe that GM foods haven't entered the food

supply. Another 15 percent say they're not sure.

 

It's in that context that we have to interpret the recent statement by a

food-industry flack that " most consumers are not concerned about biotech. "

That's a lie. Most consumers don't know that their food supply is shot through

with biotech.

 

And that's no accident. Industry has scotched every effort to require labeling

for GM food.

 

It has also managed to squelch evidence that GM foods cause all manner of health

troubles. In his presentation, Smith pointed to several studies from the 1990s

showing rats fed GM food suffered liver damage, reproductive problems, and more.

 

That evidence was suppressed within the FDA -- and suspect industry-funded

research was accepted in its place. Since then, the further study -- needed, no

doubt -- of the health impacts of GM food has gone unfunded. I don't have time

to tease out particulars of this story now, but will soon, as I feel that it has

been dramatically underreported.

 

How did that happen? Good old crony capitalism, evidently. In 1994, Smith

reports, the Clinton administration created a new position within the FDA for a

man named Michael Taylor: deputy commissioner of policy. His charge was to

oversee safety concerns around GM food. Before taking that portfolio, Taylor had

been a lawyer for Monsanto.

 

He spent much of the rest of the decade breaking down regulatory hurdles to GM

food. For his good work, Monsanto later rewarded him with a lucrative vice

president position. Someone should ask Hillary Clinton how her own view of

Monsanto and GM foods differs from that of her husband.

 

But if GM foods are inherently unhealthy -- even worse than regular industrial

food -- why haven't we seen more health troubles? When I contemplate that

question, I reflect that everyone I know who's over 30 either rigorously avoids

industrial food -- or relies on the pharmaceutical industry to get through their

days. And I think about accelerating obesity and diabetes rates, a seeming

epidemic of allergies and asthma among children, etc., etc.

 

It's a brilliant strategy, really. In a society already beset with chronic

ailments and reliant on pharmaceuticals, you can introduce a whole array of

dangerous foods, and no one would even notice.

 

 

" NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may

have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this

without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse nor

protection save to call for the impeachment of the current President. "