Hey. Hey. Hey. Anti-gmo activism is bullshit that kills people.
Greenpeace has been connected to attacks on farms raising GMO crops in Bangladesh and the Philippines. Anti-gmo protesters have destroyed whole crops that were being grown by small family farmers.
What were these GMO crops going to offer in comparison to non-GMO crops? Well the eggplants destroyed in Bangladesh were supposed to be pest resistant, which would have meant that farmers wouldnât have to use expensive and potentially harmful pesticides. The pest-resistance would have led to a higher yield per plant which would have meant greater food security for people using the GMO eggplants. And, oh, hey, this isnât an area where industrial agriculture is a huge thing like it is in the US; the farmers growing the GMO eggplants were small farmers testing it in the region (the plants had already been heavily tested for edibility and safety for human consumption and allergens and stuff) to make sure it would grow well in the local climate - the plan after that was to share seeds with individual families so that people could grow their own food at home and have a greater yield so they could, yâknow, feed their fucking families.
The plants destroyed in the Philippines? That was golden rice. Anti-GMO activists like to say that golden rice was a)poisonous and b) pointless, that even if it wouldnât make you sick it wouldnât help the way that it was supposed to. Well. I mean you can test obviously if something is poisonous by eating it, which plenty of people (scientists with full knowledge of what they were eating) DID do. That shit wasnât poisonous. âBut it was ineffective!â Bullcrap. Golden rice was developed to provide more available vitamin A in the diets of people who normally have a vitamin A deficiency due to not being able to afford vitamin rich foods. This was supposed to be a staple food that increased vitamin levels instead of an expensive luxury food (because, yes, vegetables can be luxuries when youâre talking about poor populations and organic anti-gmo folks would do well to remember that). The first couple of generations of testing DIDNâT increase available A enough so food scientists kept working on it until there WAS enough vitamin A in the rice. Oh, also please note that Vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness and oh yeah also fucking DEATH. So. The plan WAS to get vitamin A to a wider segment of the population through a staple food that everyone could afford. Instead these populations STILL have to depend on quarterly supplement distribution that, well, doesnât always work out since theyâre too busy fucking subsisting to make it to the every-three-months-maybe-if-everything-goes-well-thereâs-no-corruption-or-mistakes-or-simple-shortage supplement distribution.
In fact if I may be a bit conspiracy-minded for a moment Iâll point out that THIS IS MIGHTY CONVENIENT FOR THE SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY, A GROUP WITH STRONG ANTI-GMO TIES, HMM, WHAT IS THE SECRET THAT BIG SUPPLEMENT DOESNâT WANT YOU TO KNOW?!?!?! But I donât think the supplement industry is attacking GMOs to get more sales, I think that greenpeace and other anti-gmo, pro-organic groups are tied up in their own privilege and using scare-mongering to convince vulnerable populations to fear the foods that could save the lives of their children.
Absolutely, 100% I will agree that Monsanto is a piece of shit and industrial agriculture in the US has MASSIVE problems.
But you know what I, a person with food allergies, am really stoked about? THE POSSIBILITY OF EATING SESAME SEEDS IâM NOT ALLERGIC TO. THE POTENTIAL TO INTRODUCE PEANUTS THAT WONâT KILL CHILDREN. EATING SOME GODDAMNED REAL BREAD BECAUSE I HAVE CELIAC AND DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO BUY RICE AND OAT AND NUT FLOURS COMPARED TO WHEAT?
As a person interested in feeding the planet Iâm also stoked about drought-resistant crops because, friend, bad times are coming for water availability (also I live in California, where bad times are already here for water availability). Iâm stoked about pest-resistant crops so we donât have to use sprays that might kill all the goddamned bees if we donât knock this shit off. Iâm excited about creating enough variation that we donât have to worry about monocrop blights (read up on the Gros Michel sometime, then look at the way the banana industry is STILL fucked and might be aided by greater variety and more sturdy plants) (also please note that in the GMO view the Gros Michel and Cavendish are held up as examples of over engineering food). I like the idea that individual families may be, at some point, able to supplement or supply their entire diet through home farming and NOT have it be a full-time job for every person in the household. I am concerned about how much of a resource load is dedicated to supporting livestock, so Iâm very excited about things like high-protein grains or increasing the fats available in fruits and veggies.
When groups like greenpeace talk about cross-pollination and a lack of rigor theyâre holding up a bundle of logical fallacies, fears, and a hissing contempt for and misunderstanding of science. Yes, GMOs can interbreed with non-GMOs. No, thatâs not going to lead to a horrifying uniformity of all crops everywhere. And where the fuck are these natural populations greenpeace is so worried about? Philippine rice farmers were growing modified strains of rice anyway, in areas that had been cleared specifically for rice growth - itâs not like the Golden Rice pollen was going to systemically hunt down and breed with every wild rice plant on the entire archipelago - GMOs are basically only being grown in areas where the environment is already âunnaturalâ simply through a history of human cultivation. And they claim to worry about biodiversity - something that acceptance of GMOs would increase, not decrease. Again, Iâll say it, Monsanto is clearly a corporation made up of cartoon bad guys but monsanto isnât the only game in town when it comes to the creation, cultivation, and extensive testing of GMO crops. Also, fucking hell, greenpeaceâs mission statement when it comes to food is wholly crafted for what must be the most food-secure people on the goddamned planet. âPledge to reduce meat and dairyâ - guess it must be nice not to have to live off the mcdonaldâs dollar menu. âKnow how many food miles your food has traveledâ - fuck you I have two jobs and a family, nobodyâs got time to figure out where all of their food has come from unless they can afford to make sure it all comes from a single place, which, newsflash, most of us fucking canât. âPush your local supermarket to include more organic/local foodsâ - that doesnât exactly help the Bangladeshi farmers whose eggplants you torched, does it? Since itâs not like rural subsistence farmers can bring a lot of pressure to bear on fucking safeway. âBuy local!â - I hope you either REALLY like acorn squash or can deal with midwinter scurvy, New Englanders, because tomatoes and oranges wonât survive the frost.
I just get so exhausted by this. So tired. Itâs easy to read malicious intent in things that are difficult to understand but most people arenât actually evil. Food scientists working on GMOs arenât trying to create a world where everyone has to eat their trademarked, docility-inducing, high-priced, mutation-causing hydrolized yeast product because itâs the only thing that still grows on the wasted and barren planet. Thatâs not what this is about. Food scientists are trying to develop foods that take longer to go bad so we have less food wasted. Theyâre developing crops that need less water or less fertilizer or less sunlight so we can feed more people more cheaply with less effort invested and less harm to the environment. And, YES, these sorts of changes are absolutely potentially problematic which is why there are research farms and isolated labs where these sorts of plants are tested for years and in some cases decades before being let loose in the world.
People LOOOOOOOOOVE to bring in the Ian Malcom âyou were so busy seeing if you could that you didnât even consider if you shouldâ thing when talking about GMOs but those people donât seem to realize that the folks working on these crops considered the possible consequences for YEARS. And the answer was, yes, we should grow golden rice because it might prevent the deaths of half a million children a year. Yes, we should allow subsistence farmers to grow GMO eggplants and tomatoes that last months after picking instead of only days so that those people can feed their children. Yes, we should allow the use of dwarf wheat because it kept a billion people from starving.
Stop painting scientists as the evil capitalists out to poison the world, holy shit they killed smallpox and have done more to feed people than food aid programs ever could. AND FOR FUCKâS SAKE EVERYTHING IS CHEMICALS, YOUâRE CHEMICALS IâM CHEMICALS OUR FOOD IS CHEMICALS YOUR DOG IS CHEMICALS - TO QUOTE GODDAMNED SAGAN âWEâRE ALL STARSTUFFâ AND IT TURNS OUT STARS ARE MADE OF FUCKING CHEMICALS.
