Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Corn Fields
naturalsociety.comHungary has taken a stand against biotech giant Monsanto and genetic modification by destroying 1000 acres of maize grown with genetically modified seeds.
New ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ Could Give Monsanto Power Over US Government
action.fooddemocracynow.orgMonsanto lobbyists have successfully pushed a last minute change into the Continuing Resolution spending bill which was approved by U.S. Congress recently. If not vetoed by President Obama, this will give Monsanto immunity from U.S. government action regarding the safety of any and all new GMO crops and will take away the Judiciary system’s constitutional mandate to review GMO crops to ensure the safety of both consumers and the environment.
Again, this has already been passed by congress so if you are against this, the only way to stop it now is to get President Obama to veto this bill when it reaches his desk.
Food Democracy Now has a petition currently organized to tell President Obama to veto it at fooddemocracynow.org.
SHUT UP AND EAT YOUR GMO'S.
There are some legitimate complaints about genetically modified foods - certainly, there is potential to modify crops in ways that could cause brand new problems for natural food webs, and potential for the technology to give some corporations unfair advantage over competitors.
Neither of these issues, however, affect your actual dietary health. If the thought of actually eating something genetically modified bothers you in itself you are probably an idiot.
Here’s an important question: have you ever eaten food at all, in your entire life? Congratulations! First for not being an android, and second for having consumed tens of millions of different organisms and their by-products since you were born. When not destroyed by a cooking process, this could have included the genetic information of innumerable animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms.
Every time you swallow you ingest at least a hundred species of bacteria that reproduce between your filthy, disgusting teeth.
All that DNA, in every bite of every meal, all mixed together in your digestive system. Every day.
Quick, are you growing any tentacles yet? No? Yeah, that makes me sad too. Every day.
The point is, eating a tomato with fish genes in it does literally nothing whatsoever to your body that eating a tuna sub with tomato on it doesn’t already do. If it bothers you because it’s “not natural,” then you should probably stop eating altogether, because vegetables and fruits have been routinely hybridized for centuries. Domestic cattle, swine and poultry are nearly unrecognizable mutant sub-breeds of their wild ancestors.
The shit they do to corn syrup alone is a bigger assault on biology than just mashing some genomes together.
Even the negative points I began with are far, far outweighed by the potential benefits of genetic technology. Crops that resist the cold, grow larger and faster, thrive in harsher environments, taste gross to boll weevils…these things could completely end world hunger, end the need for far more harmful pesticides, end the need to clear tropical forest and who knows how many other problems, if there weren’t clueless assholes fighting tooth and nail to stop progress for literally no actual reason.
Before you worry about the “ethics” and “risks” of genetically modified foods, please look up what “genetic” and “modified” mean. Then look up what “dna” means. You might also want to look up “food” for good measure. Or go back to kindergarten. You know what? Just re-read the title.
World's first GM babies born
dailymail.co.ukThe world’s first geneticallymodified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.
The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.
So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three ‘parents’.
Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-43767/Worlds-GM-babies-born.html#ixzz1z0ZJp1gb
Can GM mosquitoes rid the world of a major killer?
guardian.co.uk
Behind an unmarked door at the side of an anonymous second world war Nissen hut in the middle of Oxfordshire, a group of scientists are attending to the needs of hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes. They provide horse blood for the females to feed on, moist beds for them to lay their eggs, and add genes that transform the mosquitoes into what could be the most decisive tool yet invented to combat mosquito-borne disease.
The mosquitoes developed and raised here at the laboratories of Oxitec, a British biotech company based near Didcot, have already infiltrated wild populations in Brazil, Malaysia and the Cayman Islands, and will soon be unleashed in Panama and India. The company hopes that it will reduce populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes by 80% but public opposition to anything “genetically modified” remains a significant obstacle to the possibility of saving thousands of lives.
Mosquito-borne diseases are one of the major barriers preventing economic progress in the developing world. According to the World Health Organisation, 200 million people were victims of malaria in 2010 and 655,000, mostly children, died from it. Dengue fever is believed to affect 50-100 million people per year and results in around 20,000 deaths.
“From a scientific point of view and an environmental sustainability point of view, we think we have a really good solution to the problem,” says Hadyn Parry, the CEO of Oxitec.
…
Unlike GM crops, Oxitec’s mosquitoes are not designed to spread their genes down the line or to other species. “We are not putting an advantage into these mosquitoes; we are putting in a disadvantage, sterility, which is the biggest disadvantage you can have,” says Parry. “You are not spreading your gene down generations because each one is sterile – it dies out. They do not out cross and mate with other species. So you are not spreading your gene laterally or downward.”
Critics of Oxitec say that the company is rushing to commercialise its products to provide a return on investment, massaging research while leaving key questions unanswered. Dr Helen Wallace, the director of GeneWatch, says she has several problems with Oxitec’s findings from its trials. One major issue, she says, is the occurrence of the tetracycline – the antibiotic that the young mosquitoes need to survive – in livestock and meat. Theoretically, if a female mosquito, daughter to a modified one, bit meat or an animal that contained tetracycline, she could survive. Oxitec says that the chance of this happening is very slim and in its most recent trial in the Caymans, it did not find a single mosquito that had survived.
Kenya Bans Importation of GMO Foods
nationofchange.orgPublic Health minister Beth Mugo subsequently directed all Public Health Officers at all ports of entry and all other government regulators to enforce the ban on importation of Genetically Modified Foods in the country.
This she says was following the decision made by the cabinet to ban the importation of GMO foods into the country due to inadequate research done on GMOs and scientific evidence provided to prove the safety of the foods until such a time that the country will certify that they have no negative impacts on the health of consumers.
“Consequently, the government has decided that until such an informed policy decision is made, all GMO food imports are completely banned. All relevant government agencies have according been instructed to immediately comply with this directive and enforce the ban on importation of all GMO foods.”
She urged stakeholders to verify the custom entry documents of food consignments to ascertain that their GMO certificate.
“The protection of the consumer and assurance to the public on the safety of food is extremely important in making decisions about food importation, distribution and consumption. Where there is apprehension and uncertainty with regard to the safety of food products, precautionary measure to protect the health of the people must be undertaken.”
She threatened legal action against those who do not comply with the directive.
” I am therefore, calling upon all stakeholders and government regulators involved in importation of GMO foods to take note of this directive that no importation of GMO foods will be allowed into the country until further advice by the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation.”
