Lambs to the GMO Slaughter

Townhall.com ^ | July 29, 2014 | Chuck Norris

[Veto!]

I avoid all the GMO food that I can. Buy organic, but that’s no guarantee of being GMO-free.

Had a big argument with self yesterday while buying sheets. Gorgeous, wonderful high thread count sheets. Across the aisle, organic cotton sheets. Not so gorgeous. Not so expensive. Gorgeous won, but I’m still staring at them in their wrapping.

A lot of people are in this boat with me. Wanting to do the healthiest thing for themselves, not really knowing how to measure the risks.

[roamer_1]

Nor I - nor would I in a world without GMOs (although many in other parts of that world might). I referred to starving to highlight the significance of the “there’s lots of food” argument that LearsFool so lightly dismissed.

We used to send boatloads of grain to the world - to Africa- we had so much. It was rotting in the elevators. We used to have feet of topsoil in the heartland, which is now measured in inches... No, this method being used is certainly the wrong way. It is starting to fail.

How is it that my methood produces MORE soil every year? How is it that I can produce beautiful produce without any insecticide whatsoever? How is it that I can produce that beautiful produce without water, and with very little weeding? The answer to that is the key. Without the need to control pests and weeds, there is no need for GMO. I had strawberries almost the size of tennis balls this year. *HUGE and delicious* produce, way better... Way, WAY better. For FREE.

but living in the suburbs I'm not in a position to try it

Have you never heard of victory gardens? Your suburban lot would feed your whole family, and teach your kids invaluable life lessons. A mere generation ago, most of this nation gardened.

And while I am not 'suburban', my property is just under 1/2 acre... and whatever is garden is just that much more I don't have to mow. ; )

[Mase]

Others simply don’t want to see.

We'd like to see your evidence, based on sound science, that GMO's are deleterious to the health of those who consume them. I won't hold my breath, however, because that evidence doesn't exist.

Every agricultural product has been genetically modified, and we are living longer today than at any other time in our history. Go figure.

[Black Agnes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IbODJiEM5A

Check that one out.

[HereInTheHeartland]

“I have no problem eating GMO foods but I have a huge problem with the thuggish business practices of Monsanto backed by jack-booted FedMob agencies and courts.”

Pretty much my feelings. GMO’s are a AWESOME technology that has saved many lives with increased food production.

[HereInTheHeartland]

“Meanwhile, our deteriorating health ought to stir up our thinking a bit.”

Statistics of course would show that we have greatly increased life spans.
Give an example with data of “our deteriorating health “.

[Black Agnes]

Here’s a better, more doable, one.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2177717/Couple-Michel-Beauchamp-Josee-Landry-petition-stop-council-ripping-illegal-vegetable-garden.html

The beef is that it’s in the front yard. In your backyard, no one would be the wiser if you have some sort of privacy fence.

[RipSawyer]

“A big after-affect is that many of these GMO plants cannot reproduce-potentially resulting in monopoly of food production....”
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The small family farmer has been almost eliminated but the survival of humanity may depend on his resurrection. Current methods make everyone dependent not just on a very few plants but on a very tiny number of varieties of those plants. We are courting disaster and it does not take a degree in horticulture or anything else to see it, only an interest in what is happening.

[Veto!]

Congrats, roamer_1. I really like your thinking on this topic. I live in a city apartment so cannot grow my own stuff, but shop very carefully. Costs me a lot, but not as much as sickness would.

[RipSawyer]

I need a neighbor like you. Having grown up on forty acres and living now on eight or a little better I can’t seem to get the hang of thinking small. I do know that a tiny plot that is cared for correctly will produce as much or more than an acre or two that is haphazardly worked.

[CodeToad]

Nothing but an article written by a Luddite. Typical motional hysteria that brought us the Ozone Hole (which, BTW, has not closed even though we were assured it would if we would just ban CFCs), glowbull warming, the “Population Bomb” that claimed we’d all be dead by the year 1994 from starvation, etc, etc, etc. All garbage written by mental midgets.

[roamer_1]

Having grown up on forty acres and living now on eight or a little better I can’t seem to get the hang of thinking small. I do know that a tiny plot that is cared for correctly will produce as much or more than an acre or two that is haphazardly worked.

Watch this guy - As a farmer, he will BLOW YOUR MIND. It works. There is truth here.

Back to Eden - Official Film

[roamer_1]

Congrats, roamer_1. I really like your thinking on this topic. I live in a city apartment so cannot grow my own stuff, but shop very carefully. Costs me a lot, but not as much as sickness would.

I appreciate your reply... Don't be like me. I had to learn it the hard way. : )

[exDemMom]

This is so utterly silly. Human beings have been changing the genes of our food ever since we started engaging in agriculture and animal husbandry. Some of our foods are so genetically modified that it is difficult to even identify the wild plant or animal we started modifying millenia ago.

Our methods were extremely crude throughout most of history. All we could do was randomly mix up plants or animals and hope that the brand-new (completely unnatural) genomes that we came up with were useful.

Nowadays, we have the ability to target and change just one single gene—instead of tens of thousands at a time as in the past—and the Luddites come crawling out of the woodwork.

In a few years, people will be looking at the fearmongering over targeted, limited gene alteration as being as quaint and silly as we now consider the fearmongering over electric lights.

[MD Expat in PA]

About The Alliance for Natural Health

Link text

ANH-USA is committed to sustainable health, the recognition that our environment and our physical health are inextricably related. If we run out of clean water to drink, pure air to breathe or nutritious and uncontaminated food to eat, or if through our prescription drugs and vaccines we are poisoned by mercury or phthalates, our physical health will suffer.

Sustainable health also applies the environmental ethic of conservation to our bodies. It urges us to live as nature intended us to live. Diet, dietary supplements, exercise, and the avoidance of toxins are especially important tools in building and maintaining health.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Natural_Health

The Alliance for Natural Health is a leftist and quack outfit out of the UK promoting among other things aside from sustainable agriculture as a way to stem “global warming”, promote homeopathy and the use of dietary supplements and high doses of vitamins (which they do not want regulated in any way shape or form) and being against what they deem to be “junk foods” (which they think need to be taxed and regulated like cigarettes) and against vaccinations and so called “GMO” foods which have never been found in any scientific research to be harmful to humans.

The founder and head of The Alliance for Natural Health, Dr Robert Verkerk FWIW also makes paid product endorsements for dietary supplement companies.

About George Wald

George Wald, Nobel Winner, Dies at 90

One of the first academics to speak out against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, he was a hero to many students in the 1960s. He also addressed such issues as the arms race, nuclear power and weapons, and human rights. Wald referred to this activity as "biology with a vengeance" and "survival politics."

Wald wrote “The Case Against Genetic Engineering” in 1979 and if it is anything like his opinions on nuclear weapons and nuclear war, it is likely based more on his political views than on scientific facts. And at the time he wrote that, he wasn’t specifically addressing GMO foods although one could extrapolate that from his writings on genetic engineering, it should be noted that he was not a geneticist and this was not his area of expertise as a scientist.

I will also add that I have a hard time with someone like Chuck Norris, an actor who dyes his hair (or has hair plugs) and obviously has had some “work done” spouting off and lecturing anyone on the benefits “natural” foods and living “naturally”.

http://stars-plastic-surgery.blogspot.com/2013/07/chuck-norris-plastic-surgery-before-and.html

[Elsie]

And worst of all, as the old song goes, it may be "killing you softly."

News FLASH!!

Humans will ALL die of SOMETHING!

[Elsie]

Humans will ALL die of SOMETHING!

Have you made YOUR plans?

[1010RD]

Some of our foods are so genetically modified that it is difficult to even identify the wild plant or animal we started modifying millenia ago.

Can you be more specific as to which foods you mean? I'm not anti-GMO, just curious.

[exDemMom]

Can you be more specific as to which foods you mean? I'm not anti-GMO, just curious.

*Any* food that results from agriculture or ranching is genetically modified.

Examples of foods that are so modified from their wild ancestors that they are almost unrecognizable are corn, tomatoes, and cows. Corn, for example, was derived from teosinte, a wild grass of Central America. Corn and teosinte barely resemble each other; it took in-depth genetic analysis to demonstrate that teosinte is, indeed, the wild ancestor of corn. This article discusses genetic variation in corn, and also mentions my hero, Barbara McClintock.

Cows were bred from aurochs, which no longer exist. However, we have an idea of what they looked like from paintings. Compare the cave paintings in this article to the variety of living cattle breeds.

As far as I can tell, the tomato is a result of breeding of several wild tomato species. Wikipedia has a bit more information, but not a lot. By comparing the many breeds of tomatoes against their wild counterparts, you can see that they express many genes not seen in the wild (the different colors and sizes all result from mutated genes).

These are just a few examples. Any time you look at a domestic food and see differences between it and the wild relatives, you see evidence of genetic manipulation of the species. White chickens, ducks, and turkeys are almost non-existent in the wild...

[1010RD]

Thanks.