In My Food?
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What Is Monsanto?
Monsanto is a corporation who owns most of the production of soybeans and other crops in North America.
Monsanto’s seeds are Genetically Modified, and make Genetically Modified Foods which have unknown side effects are are known to be harmful to our health. There are things in your food that may be hurting you, without any signs or warnings.
Monsanto also creates problems to animals, farmers, and indigenous people.
How? Read about it below!What can you do? It’s important to be informed and inform others! You can do this by doing your own researching and reading some of the information on this website.
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“We call on States not to promote commercial monoculture practices, nor to introduce or promote genetically-modified and exotic crops, because according to our people’s wisdom, these species aggravate the degradation of jungles, forests and soils, contributing to the increase in global warming. Likewise, megaprojects under the search for alternative energy sources that affect Indigenous Peoples’ lands, territories, and natural habitats should not be implemented, including nuclear, bio-engineering, hydroelectric, wind-power and others.”
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Did you know?
That Genetically Modified Foods are illegal in many countries, such as countries in Europe?
That in many other countries, companies must clearly label all Genetically Modified Foods on the packaging?Then how come this isn’t the case here? Most people don’t even know that this is a problem and something that they are putting into their bodies.
This must be changed. -
This affects the farmers too?
“To avoid the need for monitoring, and to gain 100 percent control over farmers, the GE corporations have developed a new technology —terminator genes. Terminator genes prevent a crop from reproducing itself unless certain “protector” chemicals are applied to the crop.”
Terminator genes and the process of saving seeds is a very negative thing for farmers. Saving seeds was a process that had been practiced for years — Seeds from one harvest one year would be collected and used in the next year. Because of Monsanto, this cannot be practiced anymore. If it is, Monsanto will sue.
Monsanto has a secret police who looks for farmers saving seeds. Sometimes a “friend” calls in, sometimes Monsanto seems to claim they saw it happen and sometimes Monsanto just “knows.” But when Monsanto does find a farmer saving seeds, they are sued, black listed, and ultimately lose substantial amounts of money when no one will associate with them, in fear of being blacklisted themselves.
The number of farmers commiting suicide is on the rise. Could this be one of the reasons?
It is Monsanto’s complete control over the market which has left many farmers without jobs or money and leaves them unable to work again. Sometimes just for having a neighbour’s crop blown onto their field and grown and spread.
Is this fair? Is this a company you want to support by eating the food grown by their crops? You Choose. -
Will this affect the indigenous people of North America?
“ Any farmer using terminator seeds must buy the “protector” chemicals each year. As terminator technology spreads around the world, it will end indigenous agriculture, and much biodiversity as well. An estimated 1.4 billion indigenous people currently grow their own crops for subsistence, worldwide. In many instances, their land is being eyed for corporate “development” and GE crop technology offers a legal way to separate indigenous people from their land.”
Monsanto’s control of the market affects not only farmers, but native people as well. It can cost them money and it doesn’t allow them to practice something that has been practiced for years.
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“In September, 2001, scientists discovered genetically engineered (GE) corn at 15 locations in the state of Oaxaca, deep in southern Mexico, a country that has outlawed the commercial use of all genetically engineered crops. No one knows how it got there.”
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“Scientists had hoped to keep Oaxaca’s rich diversity of corn uncontaminated by GE strains because Oaxaca retains the wealth of genetic varieties developed during 5500 years of indigenous corn cultivation. Scientists now say that aggressive forms of GE corn, let loose in Oaxaca, may drive native species to extinction, causing the loss of irreplaceable cultivars.”
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Most ominously, the report points out, Monsanto Corporation acknowledged in 2000 that its genetically modified soybeans contained some extra fragments of a transferred gene. Despite this, the company announced that it expected “no new proteins” to appear in the GE soybeans. Then during 2001, Belgian researchers announced that the soybean’s own DNA had been scrambled during the insertion of the new gene. “The abnormal DNA was large enough to produce a new protein, a potentially harmful protein,” Dr. Commoner concludes.
Thus genetically engineered crops threaten not only the agricultural systems and the cultural survival of all indigenous people, but also the food security and safety of all people everywhere
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