GMO Foods: Why Doesn’t Monsanto Want Them Labeled?
If GMO’s are so safe, why doesn’t Monsanto want them labeled?
Last week I talked about Monsanto and the dirty tricks they used to get rbST approved for use in the United States (read it here if you missed it). This week’s post is about Monsanto’s supposedly safe GMO foods.
GMO (which stands for Genetically Modified Organism) foods are a very serious concern. They should not be confused with hybridized foods. Hybridized foods are foods that are created by breeding to two different types of the same species. GMO foods, however, are created by inserting genes from one species into a completely different species.
This type of gene splicing is done in a lab and is never a natural process. Combinations can be as wide as inserting fish genes into a tomato to give it a longer shelf life. Obviously one of the biggest concerns with such food modification is the possibility of food allergies. While a specific person may not be allergic to tomatoes, they could be allergic to fish. If a fish gene were inserted to give the tomato longer shelf life and it did not appear on the label, a person could suffer a serious, even fatal reaction.
Despite the obvious food allergy dangers of GMO foods, the Monsanto company maintains that GMO foods are safe for human consumption. If such is true, then why is Monsanto spending millions of dollars to ensure that GMO foods are not labeled?
For starters Monsanto knows that, given the choice, most people will choose non-GMO foods. The only way for Monsanto to get people to eat their GMO foods (and therefore make more money) is to force the GMO’s on an unsuspecting public by not telling them what’s in their food.
The other reason Monsanto is against having labels on GMO foods is that they don’t want to be held responsible for the consequences of GMO foods. No labeling means no liability for Monsanto. If people don’t know they’re eating GMO foods, they can’t blame Monsanto when they have bad reaction to GMO ingredients they didn’t even know were in their food.
Let us not forget, this is the same company who tried to bribe Canadian officials to approve rbST, despite the evidence that it was unsafe. Perhaps GMO’s are not as safe as Monsanto claims either.
GMO crops are believed to be responsible for tumors in mice, respiratory reactions in people living near GMO crops, sterility in animals eating high amounts of GMO corn, and even the death of sheep eating GMO pasture.
In addition to spending millions to keep GMO foods unlabeled, Monsanto has also been hiring “spies.” Monsanto hired a firm called Total Intellegence, reportedly paying the firm $127,000 in 2008 and $105,000 in 2009. And who did Monsanto hire them to spy on? Animal rights activists. Monsanto was concerned that animals rights activists might present a problem to their company. So they hired Total Intellegence to become part of animal rights organizations and gather information about the groups.
As a farmer myself, I don’t trust food that wasn’t created by nature – (Monsanto keep your spider proteins out of my salad!) – but even if GMO’s turned out to be safe, we as consumers still have a right to know what is in our food. It is up to us to make the choice about whether we eat GMO foods. It should not be the decision of Monsanto, a corrupt money-grubbing company that will say anything is safe is order to put more money in their own pockets.
Monsanto uses its government ties to get unsafe GMO’s passed and then uses its money to ensure they remain unlabeled (you can find a list of Monsanto’s government ties here), forcing consumers to eat them without knowing it. We have a choice to decide what is in our bodies. We have a right to know what it is in our food!
And the question still stands, if GMO foods are as safe as Monsanto claims, then why doesn’t Monsanto want them labeled?
For those of you in NY state, click here to tell your lawmakers to support the labeling of GMO foods; to support our right to know.
Copyright © Amber Reifsteck ~ The Woodland Elf
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