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GMOs = Increased Headaches

By Theodora Filis


Today, developed nations do not consider GMOs to be safe. In nearly 50 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs.

In the US the government has approved GMOs based on studies conducted by the same corporations that created them and profit from their sale. Increasingly, Americans are taking matters into their own hands and choosing to opt out of the GMO experiment.

Polls consistently show that a significant majority of North Americans would like to be able to tell if the food they’re purchasing contains GMOs (a 2008 CBS News Poll found that 87% of consumers wanted GMOs labeled). And, according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll, 53% of consumers said they would not buy food that has been genetically modified.

In the US, GMOs are in as much as 80% of the conventional processed food.

Many people don’t know what a GMO is, let alone which crops and processed ingredients are high-risk.  As such, labeling only products that contain high-risk ingredients could give an unfair competitive advantage to products that contain ingredients containing corn, soy, etc.

Over 80% of all GMOs grown worldwide are engineered for herbicide tolerance. As a result, the use of toxic herbicides like Roundup has increased 15 times since GMOs were introduced. GMO crops are also responsible for the emergence of “superweeds” and “superbugs:’ which can only be killed with ever more toxic poisons like 2,4-D (a major ingredient in Agent Orange). GMOs are a direct extension of chemical agriculture and are developed and sold by the world’s biggest chemical companies.

The long-term impacts of GMOs are unknown, and once released into the environment these novel organisms cannot be recalled.


Turing the tables on Monsanto, Lauren McCauley, staff writer at Common Dreams writes, "75-year-old Indiana soybean farmer, Vernon Hugh Bowman, is taking agriculture giant Monsanto to the supreme court over one of the most “systemic crisis” in modern farming: who controls the rights to the seeds planted in the ground."

Last week, the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) and a group of British and Polish supporters rallied in front of the Polish Embassy in central London, against the sale of Polish farmland to foreign multinationals.

Supporters conveyed the messages 'No to GMO' ' Local Food, not Global Food' and 'Stop Land Grabs.'

The ongoing saga of Bt cotton in India continues to be one of the most interesting and important. Bt cotton yields have recently dropped to a 5-year low in India, which Monsanto is blamed on the farmers.

Virtually all commercial GMOs are engineered to withstand the direct application of herbicide and/or to produce an insecticide. Despite biotech industry promises, none of the GMO traits currently on the market offer increased yield, drought tolerance, enhanced nutrition, or any other consumer benefit.

A growing body of evidence connects GMOs with health problems, environmental damage, and violation of farmers’ and consumers’ rights.

Unfortunately, even though polls consistently show that a significant majority of Americans want to know if the food they’re purchasing contains GMOs, the powerful biotech lobby has succeeded in keeping this information from the public.

GMOs pose a serious threat to farmer sovereignty and to the national food security of any country where they are grown --- including the US.





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