LA Paper Sounds GMO Warning

I’ve been back and forth with #1 Daughter-in-Law down in Florida about grandson’s upcoming graduation from high school (Yea, Mikey!) and their plans to visit us here in the mountains the week of the 4th of July. It’s a little tricky, since we’ll be in Oklahoma to visit Great-Grandma until the 3rd, so we’ll both be converging on the homestead the afternoon of Independence Day. The good news is we’ll all be traveling through fireworks states, so should have some nice sparklies for the evening!

My DiL is an organic gardener like me (I’m so proud!), we often go back and forth about different cultivars, particular techniques for (trying to) beat bugs, etc. She linked me to a story from the LA Environmental Health Examiner this morning that I’m making the subject of this post.

Jon Stewart spoofs and doctors warn: avoid GMOs

Seems that on the 8th of May this year the American Academy of Environmental Medicine [AAEM] officially called on doctors to educate their patients and their local medical communities as well as the public to “avoid GM foods when possible.” Why? Well, it seems that the results of those long-term feeding studies that Monsanto, et al. were NOT required by the FDA to do before they introduced poisons disguised as staple food crops are finally coming in, and they aren’t good…

“There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,” according to the AAEM’s resolution to its membership.
“The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.” A review of more than 600 papers in scientific journals led biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava to conclude that GMOs are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans. Worse, pregnant women and their babies are at the greatest risk for harm. What is known from experience with GMOs as animal feed so far:

• Female rats fed GM soy suffered a greater than 50% loss of their litters, compared with a 10% death rate for the natural soy control group.

• Surviving females in those rat litters experienced problems becoming pregnant when they matured.

• Male rates fed GM soy had their testicles change color. Their sperm was altered to produce fewer offspring and those offspring were smaller than normal.

• Indian buffalos that grazed on GM cotton plants after harvest had reproductive problems or became infertile. Pigs fed GM corn also became sterile.

• In the US, the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility and infant mortality are all rising dramatically since the introduction of GM foods in the human foodstream.

Serious food allergies are rising epidemically, immune dysfunction is also becoming endemic in the US population. Multiple animal studies of GMO diets indicate that these too are attributable to the new staple foods. The various Bt crops – engineered to produce bacterial toxins in every cell of the plants – have been implicated in the mass deaths of buffalo, cows, horses and chickens.

Bottom line is that no matter how convenient these genetically modified crops are for farmers, seed purveyors and agricultural chemical conglomerates, they are not good for what we humans use them for at our end of the production chain – food. AAEM’s resolution contains advice to doctors to inform their patients to avoid GM foods. This means staying away from anything with soy or corn derivatives, cottonseed and canola oil, and sugar from genetically modified beets.

Those products are okay if they are labeled “organic” or “non-GMO,” so read those labels carefully. Growing season is upon us, so local farmers will be selling produce at farmer’s markets in bulk, and are usually on hand (or a family member is) to tell you whether or not the produce came from GM seeds. Eat as fresh and close to local as possible, avoid highly processed foods – most contain GM soy, high fructose corn syrup from GM corn, and possibly other GMO ingredients.

Your family’s health is on the line, so do what you must. And don’t let Monsanto’s strong-arm tactics get in your way, don’t believe a word of the pro-GMO advertisements they’re paying a fortune to brainwash you with. I’ve found that the best thing is to not buy any food you see advertised on TV. But then again, we quit paying to be brainwashed by TV way back in the mid-1970s, so that hasn’t been difficult!

Please go to the above link and read the article. It’s highly informative, and should help make up a lot of people’s minds about this issue. There is plenty of information about GMOs out on the wide web, easily accessed through OCA or a Google search on “GMO.” Educate yourself, save your family from the health effects of industrial foods.

Related Ads:

Filed under Diet, Green Choices, Healthy Babies, Marketing to Kids, Nutrition, Pregnancy, Research | Comment (0)