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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

GMO? No but thanx, not in Europe!


Recently there has been a lot of debate on the right of each EU state to ban GMO crops or products made from them. Good arguments are being presented from both sides, but what must European policy makers do?

 We should not be negatively against every effort made by scientists, to better the conditions of living of the human race. But on the other hand can they totally be trusted when large corporate companies are also involved? Our food and health is not something to be experimenting with. It has been happening a lot until now, but do we know the consequences in our health?

In a common market like EU if some nations allow GMOs, then the whole market is flooded with them. If Spain starts growing GMOs, how can we stop them from spreading in the rest of the market? Either we must accept them unanimously, or rejected them the same way.

Knowing that the 27 members states, soon to be 28, argue over the smallest policies and some debates have been going on for decades, how long it will be until we make up our minds on this issue? With different nations having different agendas and interests, it is almost impossible to reach to an agreement.

Our main concern should focus on the welfare of the people. It will take decades perhaps of GMO consumption to witness any real benefits, disadvantages, or hazards.  Have we done any tests on how our current diet affects our health? It is doubtful that it is only down to smoking or stress, the rise of cancer cases of all kinds in humans.

Do we know what the food industry is putting on our table and what chemicals do we consume? If with the current practices of the food industry we have such effects in our health, I suggest instead of exploring new mutated foods, it is best to explore better, cleaner, safer food. Of course some will say the population growth can not sustain a more organic approach in our food production.

Our grand parents ate less food, yet cleaner, fresher and they are living longer and healthier. If only they had better medication perhaps they would have even better quality of life. We on the other hand, with all the junk, plastic, and mass produced food, all the chemicals involved and injected, what quality of life and health we will have when we are 80 or 90?

One has to only taste a tomato that has been grown in a hothouse, injected with so many chemicals and one that has been organically grown. Just taste butter, eggs or the meat of animals that were grown with no or minimum chemicals injected in their bodies, and you will understand the difference.

The supporters of GMO production use as an argument that we already eat modified food, developed in labs. That the breeds are crossbred to create better, faster producing animals and we already feeding plants with so much chemicals to grow faster. But what we got is tasteless food in the best case and no one knows its effect on our health. Is that really a reason to open the doors to GMOs food as well?

Another argument is the same that is being used against the CAP, the main obstacle to allow GMOs in Europe: poverty in the third world, and how Europe’s policies affect their economies. This is supported by the multinational corporate organizations of America, that have an equal share of blame for their own practices of subsidizing their farming industry.

We play the fortunes of our future generations in the stock markets. We “commodify” everything from fish, animals, water, trees and land, even people. That is the true cause of poverty and hunger in the world. We produce way too much, more than we need, yet there is still hunger in this World.

Can we really trust “created” food and the companies that make them or promote them? We do not need to eat beef burgers, chips, chicken breasts and tomato ketchup everyday, or deep fried food in oil of questionable source, such as palm oils.

Why industrialize our food in such scale, while we could eat less meat and produce less waste? Most of the food we produce goes to waste, and it is proven that fast foods are the worse kind that we can eat. There is a growing obesity crisis that hits all developed nations. Yet they want to create modified food “to feed the world,” when the reality is that they want to make more money.

Stop the growing trend of fast food eating around the world, and we won’t need as much beef, potatoes, wheat or tomatoes to create them. Keep our food “real." Why have fast food chains in every country of the world, in every neighborhood of any country, which require tonnes of beef and potatoes to keep them going?

There is only few who will benefit from all this and it is the corporate multinationals. They want to introduce GMOs, with the pretense that we need to feed the world, so they can produce faster, cheaper, more and everywhere. But with what cost to our already in danger health?

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