Organic products are at risk. Action Alert!
When consumers purchase organic produce, they expect to avoid vegetables and fruits that have been genetically modified or sprayed with dangerous pesticides. The unsettling reality, however, is that cross-contamination between GM plants and conventional or organic plants is not only possible—it is already happening.
Take the example of rapeseed (Brassica napus). Millions of acres of GM rapeseed, which is used to make canola oil, the most popular cooking oil in North America, are being grown—in Canada and Australia in particular, but also in the US. This GM rapeseed has spread across the world, growing wild in ports, railway beds, along highways, and other areas where it has “escaped” during transport. This has been documented particularly in Japan but has been found growing wild in North Dakota as well.
Not only is it growing wild—it has contaminated another Brassica, the parent of cruciferous vegetables known as Brassica rapa. Organic broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Napa cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and more are now under threat. Keep in mind that when one type of GM plant crosses with another plant, it keeps all the GM mutations.
What is particularly alarming is that GM plants and non-GM plants do not need to be close together for cross-pollination to occur. GM rapeseed is spread thousands of miles along places where it’s spilled. Its pollen can also travel thousands of miles. Cross-pollination is likely to occur in weedy relatives of cruciferous vegetables growing in and around cultivated areas. It’s not known whether contamination of organic vegetables has already occurred. The US government isn’t monitoring GM canola and isn’t interested in finding out what is happening.
If you listen to Monsanto—or their allies in government—you’d think everything is just fine. Monsanto informs us that GM crops can coexist perfectly well with organic crops—sometimes even on the same farm!
More to the point, the organic seal cannot provide complete protection. It refers almost exclusively to the processes used by a farmer to make sure the crops are not genetically modified. This includes some measures that must be taken to avoid contact with GMOs, but the point is that food can still be labeled “organic” even if it ends up containing some unknown percentage of GM material.
Nor is testing vegetables a solution, since it would make already expensive organic food astronomically expensive. Large companies might even like this, because they could use such a regulation to shut down smaller competitors, including family farms.
There is an additional worry. Following the passage of the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Act—that is, the phony GMO labeling bill that was approved by Congress in July—the USDA has to set a threshold for how much GM material can be in a food in order to qualify it for the GMO label. Given the biotech industry’s clout in Washington, it’s a safe bet that the USDA’s proposal will be written by those companies.
The issue here is not only one of cross-contamination—not only between GM and non-GM plants of the same species, but also between different species. This is all part of the Pandora’s Box of GM food that has corrupted our government as well as our good supply.
Action Alert! Write to the USDA and tell them to stop ignoring and covering up GM cross-pollination and contamination. Also urge the agency to protect consumers by keeping organic food truly organic. Please send your message immediately.
Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health
EPA Scientists Are Not Dumb
FDA Tries to Run Out Clock on Bill to Help Dying Patients
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The most effective thing would be to quit using canola oil and margarine. If you are using them in your kitchen, then you along with Monsanto/Bayer are part of the problem.
Agree – if everybody stopped buying margarine (can hardly believe there are people who still do use it ) and Canola oil – and there are plenty of alternatives that would send a very powerful message. Perhaps the writers of these emails could add that to their emails next time they send one out, as well as writing or ringing their senators.
I’m so so so sick of these emails….. quick stop look what they are doing send a message to your senator blah blah blah…….. they are not our senator they work for the giant biotec companys….. hello they own the senators……. don’t bother….. its happening and you can’t stop it!!!!!!! grow your own food while you can!!!!!!
But don’t give up. As someone who has been in the mode of, “Grow your own food while you still can,” for going on half a century, I’d suggest to you that contacting legislative representatives is a great tactic.
But of course only in proportion to the extent that, “Everybody’s doing it.” So…don’t fall short of due diligence on your part. One phone call of signature won’t move the needle. But ten thousand will.
Yeah I get that didn’t just fall off the turnip truck…… people don’t care start asking people…… they are a bunch of fat drug addicted idiots all of them….. I don’t know one person that “gets” it…… my husband does….. that is it!!!!!! No one wants to wake up………… its too horrific, actually!!!!!! Don’t blame them really but they discust me have to be honest!!!!! All people discust me.. lol
I feel very similar to you, so I completely understand. I’m disgusted how ignorant people can be about the food they eat, the environment, etc., but I keep trying. However Biotech wants you to believe that there is no sense in fighting them; they just want you to accept what they have to say and eat their toxic products. They hope people will feel they are too powerful to fight. The reality is we have been gaining ground over the past few years … by sharing information; educating the public (and yes, writing our senators for what it’s worth) and not buying their products, we can make a difference. If everyone stopped fighting, they would win without a doubt. Let’s not give these nasty dishonest, greedy corporations a chance. The power is definitely with the people: the only way they will stay in business is if we keep purchasing their products. Let’s get the word out and not let that happen.
Dear b c: how long have you been awake luv?????? Impossibly still “hopeful”
well isn’t that nice? I’ve been awake a bit longer than you, and in this time i’ve seen “the good organic guys” sell out to the “big bad guys” over and over, and I’ve seen the nasty greedy ones take positions on the boards that supposedly oversee such as the nosb (you know what that is right); so you see its hard to remain childlike and positive when you get the picture…….. Good day
One of the major issues I see with people who feel that GE food is okay is that they don’t understand there is a difference between Genetically Engineered plants/food and Hybridized plants/food.
All of the brassica vegetables were selectively bred from one or another species of wild mustard and interbreed to some extent. For that reason. most growers buy new pure seed each season rather than save seed that might be crossed with wild mustard. Accidental crossing with Canola hardly matters in comparison.
Canola was selectively bred from rapeseed to virtually eliminate the toxic erucic acid. which was 50% of rapeseed oil. Canola itself is not GM. The seed is small and difficult to harvest if the field contains any significant percentage of weeds. Several GM varieties of Canola have been released which are herbicide (most commonly glyco-phosphate) resistant.
That makes so much difference in the effective yield and therefore profitability of Canola that perhaps 90% of Canola grown worldwide is GM. No small protest is going to change that. Between the meal that is used for animal feed, bio-diesel and use of Canola as an alternative to lard and tallow in processed foods, the oil and margarine in grocery stores hardly matters.
Protesting the use of Canola in processed food could increase the use of high-oleic sunflower oil for frying but would further increase palm and coconut oil for baking purposes. Those have their own probably worse environmental effects.
I don’t understand why people would prefer using Canola Oil over pure
cold pressed organic Coconut Oil or Virgin Virgin Olive Oil. The taste
of Canola is disgusting. It ruins good food, causing a dirty, yucky
taste in foods. And the odor smells like dirty socks.
I love
good Italian food, but, when I walked into an Olive Garden Restaurant, I
immediately smelled the Canola oil they use, in place of Olive Oil, and
refused to eat there. There new name should be Canola Garden
Restaurant.
Even if the Rape plant wasn’t one of the top most
pesticide sprayed crops in the world, it’s poisonous to animals, who
won’t eat it. Therefore, logic tells us, it’s poisonous to humans too.
THIS GMO thing is seems to bringing RUIN genetically to many plants and animals. It looks like it is already OUT OF CONTROL and with GMO out of the bag.
We should start holding companies CRIMINALLY responsible for being careless.