Wednesday, February 23, 2011

What Every Rancher Needs

The USDA recently deregulated Roundup Ready Alfalfa, created and patented by Monsanto. Lynda over at The Wisdom of the Radish wrote a great post about why there is absolutely no need for RR Alfalfa other than pure, unadulterated greed.

The USDA has once again bowed down to corporations and began allowing something that hasn't been thoroughly studied for safety.

A couple of years ago I had heard that ranchers in the midwest had been complaining that their cattle and hogs were having issues with fertility. The issues hadn't started until they started feeding their livestock GMO feed. Then a Russian biologist did a study on hamster and possibly found a link to infertility from ingesting GMO feed.

It just came out this week that scientists have found a previously unknown microorganism that could be responsible for the infertility and spontaneous abortions that ranchers were concerned about. And this microorganism is in a much higher concentration on crops that have been sprayed with Roundup compared to those that haven't.

So this begs the question: What are GM crops doing to us? After all, nearly all non-organic processed food products are made from one or more GM crops - corn, soy, cotton, canola, peanuts, sugar beets, Hawaiian papaya, sugar cane, rice, zucchini and sweet peppers.

Vote with your fork. Only buy organic food. If you can't afford it then buy whole foods that haven't yet been genetically modified and process your own.

3 comments:

  1. I just received a notice from Food and Water Watch, that in the proposed federal budget, that they are going to push imports from China for their chicken into our food system and the meat inspections will be going out the door.
    Like you put it, we need to vote with our fork and if you can't support it, buy whole foods and do your own, and support your farmer's market and farmers and ranchers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ugh, all the more reason to buy heirloom seeds and make space for a garden.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well...look on the bright side. We won't have such a population issue or teen pregnancies anymore. Personally I am waiting for the GMO crops to fail en masse and see how the US handles that. Here's an interesting article http://www.shtfplan.com/emergency-preparedness/the-post-shtf-die-off-will-start-immediately_02232011

    ReplyDelete