Five Crazy and New Genetically Modified Foods
Five Crazy and New Genetically Modified Foods
December 19, 2010Planet Green - Who would have known 20 years ago that so many of the foods that we eat would be produced in a lab rather than nature? Scientifically designed seeds are becoming a larger than ever portion of our diet and for the most part, it’s difficult for the consumer to even realize it because of a lack of labeling.
According to Sustainable Table, about 200 million acres of farmland worldwide are now used to grow genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The most common GMO crops are soybeans, which represent 63 percent of all GMO crops, corn at 19 percent, cotton at 13 percent, and canola at 5 percent.
The list of seeds, and later foods, that have already been modified also include alfalfa, tomatoes, chicory, flax, papaya, potato, rice, sugar beets, and squash. The future of our global food supply is laden with seeds, and most recently animals, modified for human consumption. You may be surprised to see what’s on the horizon.
None of these have been approved yet by the FDA, but with what we’ve seen so far, who’s to say that they won’t be in the future.
1. Super Chicken Eggs
New biotechnology is being used to develop genetically modified chickens that produce compounds that can be harvested from the eggs. The compounds in the eggs can be used to fight a range of diseases from diabetes, to viruses to tooth decay, according to Jacqueline Jacob and Richard Miles – Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. According to the BBC, UK scientists have developed genetically modified chickens capable of laying eggs containing proteins needed to make cancer-fighting drugs. While these additives may be beneficial on their own, I think most of us would prefer to know what medications and drugs we were taking, rather than getting them in the form of an egg. Let alone all the side effects from feeding people all these extra additives.
2. Non-Browning Apples
According to Food Safety News, Okanagan Specialty Fruits of Summerland, British Columbia, a biotechnology company, has submitted an application to the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for market approval for a GMO apple that doesn’t brown after being sliced. The apple doesn’t brown because the gene that produces the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (what actually turns the apple brown) is silenced. The apples still brown but just not as quickly. What’s next, avocados that never go bad and pears that never get brown spots? Crazy stuff.
3. Fast-Growing Salmon
Unless you’ve been hibernating for the past few months, you’ve heard about this one and with good reason because salmon would be the first GMO animal approved by the FDA for human consumption.
According to Ars Technica:
These genetically modified Atlantic salmon have two foreign DNA sequences inserted into their genomes. One encodes a growth hormone from Chinook salmon. The other is the on-switch used by an antifreeze gene from ocean pout, an eel-like fish found in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. When placed alongside the growth hormone, this on-switch makes the salmon produce the growth hormone in cold weather when they otherwise wouldn’t. Importantly, the GM salmon do not grow larger than regular salmon; they just achieve their size in sixteen to eighteen months rather than three years.
The FDA isn’t evaluating the environmental concerns including pollution, waste, mating, and concentration of disease that go along with Aqua Bounty’s approval, just whether it’s safe for human consumption and it’s way too early to know that either.
4. Hyper-Producing Seeds
Scientists are working to manipulate DNA to create hyper-producing seeds, specifically plum tomato seeds that increase the yield by half. Zachary Lippman and his team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, produced a strain of hyper-productive tomato seeds by altering the command gene that tells plants when and how many flowers to generate, according to the New York Times. He’s also thinking about the modification in melons and soybeans.
5. Enviro-Pigs
- Are You Eating Genetically Modified Foods?
- 7 Foods Banned in Europe and Still Available in the U.S.
- Are you Ready for the Genetically Modified “Frankenapple”
- Frankenfish
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation & Genetically Modified Foods
Monsanto developed terminator seeds, forcing farmers to buy new seeds because they cannot be recycled after first harvest. Monsanto is the world's leading GMO producer. And they sue farmers for violating patent laws when non-GMO farms' crops are inadvertently infested by neighboring GMO crops. Monsanto is making sure they own patents on almost all other non-GMO seeds as well. Their stated goal is to own the world's food production. Think food mafia! Under the guise of philanthropy, Gates is constantly funding vaccine development and distribution; this includes GM crops containing vaccines and mosquitoes to deliver vaccines. The targets of these developments are usually developing countries. Vaccines have been exposed as carriers for sterilization agents in developing countries over the past two decades. Perhaps Bill Gates' comment on reducing the population by ten to fifteen percent with vaccines was not a slip of the tongue or taken out of context. Gates is also funding the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The Gates Foundation hired Robert Horsh in 2006 when he was a director at Monsanto! The AGRA is a front for stripping African farmers of their traditional seed use and force selling them GM seeds. This type of operation has had tragic results for poor cotton farmers in India. - Behold the Four Horsemen of the Looming Food Apocalypse, Salem-News.com , November 9, 2010Read More...
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation purchased 500,000 shares of Monsanto for more than $23 million — with this action the outing of the mask of "philanthropy" was completed. Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing, and Monsanto controls about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of "market competition" of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies. Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really "donating" anything. Instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their "donations" finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation. Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source. - Three Sides of the Same Figure: Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates, Pravda October 14, 2010
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