According to Natural News, the rise in
food allergies and gluten sensitivities are evidence that GM foods have
impacted the global food chain in negative and dangerous ways.
As such, millions of Americans
agree that, at the very minimum, GM foods ought to carry labeling designating
them as such -- just like the labeling requirements for ingredients in other
foods.
Some states are beginning to get
the message and are responding to demands by their citizens to require such
labeling. As reported by Prevention magazine, Connecticut and Maine are
two states that are moving in that direction.
So far, the federal government
has resisted requiring GM foods to be labeled, no doubt in part due to intense
lobbying by the food industry (as happened in the defeat of a California
labeling initiative), which does not want to label GM foods, for some reason.
But such resistance to labeling means that Americans who want to avoid GM foods
are basically on their own to figure out what to avoid.
As reported by Prevention:
To the rescue: the
Environmental Working Group (EWG), a pro-GMO-labeling environmental nonprofit,
has just released a Shopper's Guide to Avoiding GE Foods to make it a little
easier for people to avoid GMOs (GMO and genetically engineered, or GE, are
used interchangeably to describe these crops).
The reason why it is so important
to require GMO labeling is because of their potential to cause ill effects in
those who consume them. Besides the fact that such crops have never been
adequately tested for safety, the EWG says that GM foods are increasing the
amount of herbicide-resistant weeds that no longer die when they are sprayed
with Monsanto's Roundup, which the seeds were bred to resist.
As such, farmers are increasingly
being forced to use more and more potent and toxic herbicides in order to
compensate. Also, the widespread adoption of GM crops by American farmers has
endangered organic farming due to unintended contamination of organic crops
(mostly through agricultural run-off and cross-pollination, when pollen blows
from a GMO farm to an organic one).
For more information, log onto:
American farmers are going public
in what, to date, has been a back-room battle with two big agricultural giants
over the kinds of herbicides that can be sprayed on certain crops. The details
might sound like a chemistry lesson to some, but the farmers believe that what’s
at stake is not only their livelihoods but possibly the social fabric of
America’s farming communities.
The problem: One agricultural
company has agreed with the farmers’ concerns and changed its plans. Another,
though, is resisting, and the farmers are not happy.
This group of Midwest vegetable
farmers has failed to convince Monsanto to reformulate an herbicide that could
become one of the most widely used in the nation. But they were able to get
another company, Dow AgroSciences, to agree to changes to an herbicide it has
on the market. Those changes will protect their fields, the farmers say.
Monsanto officials “have just dug
their feet in,” said Steve Smith, chairman of the Save Our Crops group.
“I’m not here to be a salesman
for Dow, but I’m here to stand up when people do the right thing,” he said.
“Dow did.”
The trouble concerns two herbicides,
2,4-D and dicamba. Both have been used for more than 40 years in small amounts,
but are about to get a lot more popular.
New corn and soybean varieties
genetically modified to withstand these herbicides are expected to be approved
in the next few years. The federal comment period for one, 2, 4-D, ended on
March 11.
These vegetable farmers have no
problems with GM crops. Rather, the veggie farmers are concerned about a much
older problem with the herbicides — something called drift.
Learn more:
To see some fascinating and
interesting clips regarding the horrifying truth about GMO issue and more, one
can easily log onto:
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