Let’s get personal: my opposition to genetic modification of the world’s food supply is motivated more by political concerns than by concerns about health. Most GMOs are seeds which Monsanto has altered to make them tolerate large doses of glyphosate, an herbicide they produce and sell under the RoundUp trademark. They’ve created a cycle, in other words: buy these seeds from us, and then soak your fields in glyphosate so that nothing will grow there except the seeds you buy from us, which by the way we have patented, along with the glyphosate, so you can’t buy either of them from anyone else or we’ll sue you. And then next year buy more seeds and glyphosate from us! Doesn’t that deserve a smiley-face emoticon?
The perpetuation of that cycle under the guise of flag-waving benevolence makes me angry, regardless of whether eating corn with that gene will hurt me or not. On that issue, the jury is still out, and may continue to be out for a couple of generations, but the politics are present-day.
Because the jury is still out, we don’t use GMOs at Great Country Farms, but that doesn’t mean we’re reflexively opposed to them. We like to learn as much as we can about genetic modification, and we like to pass information on to you. So please read this excellent article in Modern Farmer. It looks at genetic modification from the vegan perspective.
Still Life with Mass Hysteria: Are GMOs Really That Bad?
Photographs by Plamen Petkov; Styled by Richard Alfredo
On a recent Saturday afternoon in Chicago, a handful of vegans gathered for a potluck lunch. Between bites of soy nuggets, tofu steaks, and baked pasta blanketed in faux cheese, the friends compared notes about a recent animal-rights demonstration and discussed the merits of a raw-food diet. For dessert, they chose among dairy-free brownies, eggless pumpkin pie, and two bowls of sliced apples—one labeled “Golden Delicious (conventional)”; the other, “Arctic Golden Delicious (non-browning GMO).”
Read more here.