I just found this out about a month ago and I’ve been an organic vegan for over four years, go figure. That just goes to say that we must all remain as students and continue to learn and learn — never stop studying and gaining new information.
Okay, so what did I learn?
I learned that sticker labels (produce codes) on the fruits actually tell you how the fruits have been grown — whether they were organically grown or conventionally grown with pesticides and herbicides; oh, and let’s not forget about the genetically engineered fruits.
Conventional Fruit Labels
Four digits and does not start with 9
** mostly starting with the digit 4
Organic Fruit Labels
Five digits and starts with number 9
Genetically Modified Fruits
Start with the digit 8
** this is good to know because stores aren’t obligated to tell you if a fruit has been genetically modified (grrr….)
Okay, so if you come across an apple in the store and it’s labeled 4922, it’s an conventional apple grown with herbicides and harmful fertilizers. If it has a sticker 99222, it’s organic and safe to eat. If it says 89222, then RUN!!!! It has been genetically modified (GMO).
So next time you go shopping, remember these critical numbers and know how to avoid purchasing inorganic and GMO fruits.
Shop Safe :)
Checke these Related Health Articles:
- Genetically Modified Foods (GM): Do You Really Know What’s in Your Fruits and Vegetables? Even minor tampering with nature is apt to bring serious...
- Where Do You Shop for Your Natural Health Products and Foods? I Trust Trader Joe’s All the Way For a few years now, actually, ever since I became...
- Oh Soy Bad: How We are Misled about the Benefits of Soy Why is Soy Bad for You – The Soy Problems...
- Begin Super Market Recovery Today (Part 3): Prepare to Detox Detoxing is the body’s way of eliminating poisons and by-products...
Do the REsearch and look at the information….
and if you don’t want to read ~ travel into the farms of India where farmers are killing themselves because they can’t replant their GMO Seed and can not afford the Fertilizers and are dying of cancer.
Some Facts……
http://www.amazus.org/2008/05/18/planet-earth-can%e2%80%99t-handle-present-eating-habits/
Well,
It is fairly obvious that the people being rude and abusive or just ignorant and supporting GMO’s and Pesticides are all from USA.
GM foods are not used in Europe (ok maybe the odd tomato) due to the concerns that it brings with.
Both health concerns and environmental concerns. If you read up on things, as your GM and Pesticide fans say that you should do (but obviously haven’t done yourself) you will realize that your beloved FDA actually doesn’t care about you the consumer, but sits in the pockets of the big food companies, who’s only objective it is to make profit and make farmers around the worlds dependent on them. to reap more profits. they don’t care about your health the health of the food, or the health of the planet…
Someone said that you had an abundance of food in America, which is true, but you have a void of good nutritious foods, since the nutrience and minerals from the earth has been sucked out due to only planting one thing, and using heavy chemicals on it… oh another little new flash for you, Chemicals or pesticides that have been banned from the US (due to the health hazards, cancer, allergies etc) are being sold (by your chemical companies) to the South Americas where regulations are even worse then in the states, and then you buy the fruit that has been sprayed with the dangerous chemical that you have banned in the states due to the proven health hazards….
Now instead of vigorously defending dangerous food (that you obviously don’t know anything about) why don’t you wake up and smell the flowers (organic once naturally)……
And to be honest, the GM food probably does help with your Obesity, but I would probably pin it more on the Soft Drinks and the Processed fast foods, you eat…
God might of blessed America, but that was a long time ago, before the white man came over and brought the devil with him!
Wow, that’s all I can say about this is ‘wow.’ If you want to give your families organic fruits and veggies, you need to grow them yourself and know where the seeds came from that you are using; or go to a farmers market. Also some how you will want to go back in time and retrieve seeds and soil that have not yet been tainted by man.
Also as a side note, don’t trust the USDA on anything that they say. They have allowed livestock to be mistreated for decades, what makes you think that they give a rats a$$ about fruits and vegetables?
This whole argument was started over a Liberal opening his mouth without knowing what is coming out of it. Think about that, is this really something that you want to be apart of. I’m sorry that I am even chiming in, but I felt I had to. Things will be modified (including humans), it’s called evolution so pull your head out of your hole and see the world the way it is.
Sorry,
Jen
wow! I also agree. wow! to the many interpretations of this little itty bitty article that was designed to teach folks what the labels on fruits mean.Some people see it as their privilege to use the mask of the internet to curse others because of their views on food. Others identify themselves with the knowledge that they have accumulated throughout their lifetimes — and therefore hold themselves above the rest. People will always read and hear what they are capable and ready to understand. For me, there is always more to be learned. Always the possibility to improve. I get something out of each article and comment. A writer, no matter how educated or how liberal can only write what he knows. And, we know that although we research and experience these truths — someone will always prove us wrong. That’s the beauty of constant info. everything is forever changing. Take what you can from what you read and leave whatever doesn’t work for u. I am baffled at people who call names etc. Its not offensive… just useless. I wonder if people who use derogatory comments expect those who they target to change because of insults. I never changed for someone who treated me poorly.
still I would hope that anyone who is reading this gained something positive. It was designed to make u think. Perhaps u already knew better — great for u. Perhaps you will now grow your own food — awesome! or perhaps u have decided that GMs are awesome, but at least you know how they are labeled — great!
I thank all of those who have commented without using obscenities. It takes a lot not to let little things fuel our anger. It takes a little to degrade strangers over the internet. No one is smart or brave because they can call someone a hippy asshole on some health blog.
And for those of you who simply want to educate and help others — do not be frustrated at your critics. There will always be critics. Focus on those who accept your help — then u will be successful and fulfilled.
Peace, Love and Recycle (lol)
Gina, Managing Editor, Skrewtips
Pretty cool stuff – I’ll have to check this out. having grown up in apple country and apple experiment country – I’m kind of curious to see what is on the shelves.
GM foods are not as bad as you make out, it’s more sped up evolution than adding “chemicals”, everything is chemicals, that word gets such a bad wrap I mean, the reason apples taste so sweet and provide energy is because of chemicals.
If there wasn’t GM foods, china would starve, the GM rice that has been introduced has higher yield and is healthier, providing more nutrients for impoverished people. But all that was done from chemical produced naturally in certain plants, not adding some horrible nasty chemical.
I assume you live in a house, and that the house is probably painted, you have probably done some decorating yourself, the paint you used, what do you think that is made of, and when you applied it to the walls it would of released allot of particles, during the time you painted your house you would of absorbed allot more bad chemicals that you could from eating GM foods.
You can’t hate GM foods because some of the companies that produce them are bad, that’s not the genius’ that laboured over an idea would help the worlds vault and it is no reason to slate something. As a vegan and an American you are probably doing allot of damage to the environment. You will probably eat soya and drink soya milk, right? Well do you have any idea how much rainforest is removed every year for soya production, and yes I know allot is for animal feed, but soya is used more than ever for normal daily food, specially when vegans like yourself are drinking soya milk instead of dairy. Also, the soya is a lighter coloured plant than the trees of the rainforest, so the albedo of the area is higher, thus less heat reaches the ground and ultimately will cool the Amazon, less moisture will be evaporated so the rain production in the area will reduce, basically dooming the Amazon. That must make you feel good.
The positive thing about that is at least there are GM foods that are more pest resistant and produce higher yields so that less land is needing to be farmed to compensate for loss due to pests and to cope with the demand. Without GM there would be allot more damage to the Amazon that already caused.
That’s just one example of why your view is daft. And for the whole, “they could be dangerous to us” argument, how would a plant having a natural protein stimulated so that it produces higher yields or more nutrients be bad for you if it was already produced naturally in foods.
The only negative I can see in GM foods is the eradication of weaker plant strains.
But, that would happen naturally through natural selection, it’s just the modern world has bumped that process along a bit, so it’s no tragedy.
These are just my opinions, but they make sense to me.
I have to throw in my two cents here even though all the opinions and mud slinging seems to have been exhausted. I have read with interest all of the comments made by (generally) pro-GMO people regarding hunger and feeding the world’s population. Many of you have portrayed pro-organic types as being thoughtless and inhumane since many people around the world are starving.
However, some food for thought: Perhaps it is not the amount of food that currently exists but it’s distribution. It’s clear that North America and Europe consume far more resources than is proportionate to their percentage of the world’s population, regardless of whether those are organic or not. Many people starve in areas that are more than capable of producing food. In fact they do produce food, and then they are forced into exporting it for sickeningly low prices because the only way their countries can get loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank is to focus on export-agriculture. It’s called conditional aid.
So for those of you who suggest that GMOs are some magical cure for hunger, remember that economics and politics are ALWAYS inextricable from science, and the companies that produce (and own) GMO foods are among those lobbying their governments to push for more unfavourable conditions for farmers in the developing world (and in North America and Europe, for that matter). Companies that breed GMO crops in labs have no interest in giving farmers control over the means of production; they talk about feeding the world’s poor but leave out the fact that patented GMO crops will make farmers even more dependent on corporatization and volatile markets.
I know this getting away from the main point of this article (which was helpful, thank you David!) but it seems warranted after such a collection of strong opinions regarding science more generally. For a great book on the topic, see Jack Kloppenburg’s ‘First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology’.
Cheers,
Hayley
All domesticated species are genetically modified. The difference between a GMO crop and a hybrid is really pure semantics (introduction of genetic material from two or more species).
There are real problems, dangers, and causes to champion in the world, there’s no need to make any up, particularly those based on misunderstandings and ignorance.
I still haven’t really gotten a chance to understand why “organic” is better than “local.” Congratulations, you saved yourself from those nasty fruit flies, but you dumped how much pollution into the air on its way from Cali? Good call.
Here’s some evidence for health hazards from genetically-engineered food.
http://www.psrast.org/cthealth.htm
Hayley,
Sometimes someone says something that makes a whole lot of sense out of a whole lot of chaos. That’s what you have done here. Yeah, there’s been a lot of misinterpretation/mudslinging. and that doesn’t really do good. But, your words have left an impression on me. I agree with you. I also think that many of us, or dare I say — most of us care . That’s why people took the time to leave comments. We just get our info from different sources, experience different things. Those of us who don’t try to make enemies over things like this can actually learn from others. I appreciate your feedback.
Gina
Organic fruits and vegetables have been demonstrated by Ames tests to contain stronger carcinogens than GM, and pesticide grown crops, not to mention the fact that GM crops are actually easier on the environment, because they reduce need for fertilizer, and therefore reduce phosphor contamination of freshwater bodies (overfertilization leads to algae blooms that can kill virtually all the fish in a lake).
If you eat organic foods, do it because you prefer the taste, as supposed health and environment benefits are absolute bullshit.
“Purchasing a an apple that is not labeled “organic” does not make it inorganic as it is still biologically derived and it contains carbon.”
You are making a linguistic confusion here. “Organic” as applied to chemistry is not the same as “organic” applied to agriculture.
“Organic fruits and vegetables have been demonstrated by Ames tests to contain stronger carcinogens than GM, and pesticide grown crops, not to mention the fact that GM crops are actually easier on the environment, because they reduce need for fertilizer, and therefore reduce phosphor contamination of freshwater bodies (overfertilization leads to algae blooms that can kill virtually all the fish in a lake).”
Yes, the word “bullshit” does come to mind. Care to cite a peer-reviewed source for that and tell us who paid for the research?
I have NO problem with GM-food. As long as its controlled what is done and why, its peachy. Genetic modification has been done for thousands of years. The only difference is the method. There are many exciting fields of use opening thanks to gene-research. Gene therapy is one. I firmly believe that it is for the better. Ask yourself why it would be dangerous. Are you maby controlled by your fears of what you dont really understand? If you are concerned it could alter YOUR genes? Is it poisonous? Will it give you new allergies? Tomatoes are still tomatoes. I assure that most people that has eaten the Romanesco, is quite safe. Its a cross-breed of Cauliflower and broccoli. Delicious. The red carrot is the result of genetic modification. Worry about something important, like poor and starving people that can possibly get vegetables that can endure rough conditions.
Suck it up and eat it! God you know what I’m all for the whole organic food and all but the god dam pesticides will not kill or even harm you, and the genetically altered food is better then 90% of the organic stuff. GOD I HATE YOU PEOPLE. Suck it up and just eat it. If genetically altered food is so bad for you then why are we all on average living longer then ever even if we are eating this heinous terrible scary food. It’s food. Just eat it and be happy you have the money to buy a $50 loaf of “organic” bread even though it’s riddled with more harmful NATURAL mold and fungus then the disgusting safely grown mold free cheaper tastier stuff, ya your right.
to Frohergeist :
GM foods are not under and sort of scrutiny from ANY of the organizations you listed off. In fact, they are NOT EVEN REQUIRED TO TEST GM FOODS FOR SAFETY. the only testing they undergo is on the market. in your mouth. The Japanese taskforce evaluating GM foods for consumption have said that they will “monitor the Americans for the next ten years” first. we are fucking guinea pigs. and it’s not healthy for our eco-system either to be growing crops in such a heinous manner. good vegetables come from good soil, the end. spraying otherwise okay vegetables with insecticide, pesticide, and herbicidal products is HARMFUL. look at case studies of Monsanto’s impact on other countries like India, where the native neem tree (AND OTHERS) are being patented by monsanto as their “inventions,” and the farmers are peddled into product upon product of worthless, overrated value. Farmer suicides are up at an astronomical rate. Do some fucking research before you say something isn’t bad instead of just spewing some propaganda shit from a movie or biased biology teacher at the rest of us. Be intelligent! YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT, SO YOU BETTER FIND OUT WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE EATING FAST.
“Organic fruits and vegetables have been demonstrated by Ames tests to contain stronger carcinogens than GM, and pesticide grown crops, not to mention the fact that GM crops are actually easier on the environment, because they reduce need for fertilizer, and therefore reduce phosphor contamination of freshwater bodies (overfertilization leads to algae blooms that can kill virtually all the fish in a lake).”
This is a lie. GM crops require much heavier fertilizing and pesticides than any organic crop. You think ROUND UP is easier on the environment than good ‘ole lawn clippings, manure, and mulch? Are you retarded, or just celebrating backwards day a little to hard?
So if GMO foods are so safe why does most of Europe resist them?
I haaaaaate vegans…They sure know what’s best for humanity. Just like the couple that fed their newborn soy milk until it died of malnourishment.
While I understand that this is important information for organic vegans to have, it seems to me (and I am not a vegan, organic or otherwise) that the stores would not benefit from telling anyone how the fruits are produced. The reason being: money. To train and hire employees to learn this system costs money and time also, because of the extra expense in making genetically modified OR organic fruits and vegetables, they are more expensive. The average consumer goes for the lowest price and thus would avoid more expensive fruits.
On another note, in response to alex, many populations in Europe are traditionalists and seem to be afraid of change which explains their resistance to genetically modified fruits.
The whole organic food movement disgusts me. It’s the epitome of the American way: being simultaneously destructively altruistic and phenomenally misinformed. Douglas, we could all come up with dozens of citations to support any cause. Further, several of your citations in fact come from a single paper, and two of the papers you mention are listed directly on organic-food supporting sites, websites that are supported by organic-food corporations; thus none of your sources are even close to unbiased.
Others have not been so forgiving towards organics: in a world on the verge of a food crisis due to the convergence of many factors (not to mention the formerly “green” ethanol movement), we don’t have the luxury to grow organic foods. The man who STARTED the so-called “green movement,” Nobel-laureate Norman Borlaug has criticized organic foods as being well below the carrying capacity of the world, at about 4,000,000,000 humans vs. the 6,000,000,000 that we have currently living on our planet. But apparently that doesn’t faze you, so long as you can get fresh oranges who cares if someone in a distant country starves to death, right? Further, organic foods are shipped enormous distances. New Zealand is the leading exporter of organic milks, and they stuff it on a tanker and ship it thirteen thousand miles on a diesel powered boat to get it to your mouth.
Next time, when looking for a “cause” pick one that is actually virtuous, not just ANOTHER fad concocted by a different set of money-hungry corporate execs.
Though I’m no Luddite, science is not something to that should be anthropomorphised as being “good”. Science is a tool, like a hammer, and you can use that hammer to splice navel orange (a natural fluke) branches to a normal tree and make plastics that save lives. We use it to solve problems and we’ve gotten really good at solving problems in a certain way. But “when all you have is hammers then every problem looks like a nail” and the problem with a mono-culture crop is being especially susceptible to pest devastation has been solved with our mega-science hammer instead of just going back to small farms.
Right now the problem is that profit margins haven’t increased sufficiently, so genetic modifications are made. This has some obvious effects, such as Roundup-Ready plants that are specially resistant to Roundup and are ever-more delicious and satisfying looking while rotting in the locked dumpsters of grocery stores, in the back of deep refrigerators, or half eaten on top of kitchen garbage heaps across America. This is certainly a victory for science but has other less desirable effects; some obvious effects like the infamous terminating gene spreading to other farms and driving up seed purchases, some less obvious such as the precedence set by suing a farmer for accidentally raising and selling a plant that acquired a proprietary gene, and some not yet known such as the effects of a genetically modified food over the course of 60 years.
While we don’t know for sure if a GMO will be bad for us down the line, we do know that small, local, and organic farming is more resource efficient (animals provide free fertilization and biodiversity promotes crop health), provides more jobs than a giant mono-crop farm, pollutes far less (properly rotated crops prevent erosion and maintain soil health, meat from a biodiverse farm produces fertilizer that can be used as opposed to factory-farm meat which produces pollution which contains way more hormones, antibiotics, heavy metals, and is so nitrate rich that it can’t be used for anything so it’s sent down the river and creates a growing dead-zone of oxygen starvation that is ruining local fishing industries in the Gulf of Mexico), and on and on. My frustration with GMOs is less the possibility that future generations will have to naturally de-select a gene that science got into me via some fruit, though this is a viable concern given the nature of our codependant and gene-swapping stomache-microbe buddies. My frustration, and the reason why we should be deeply afraid and anxious is that the greatest minds of our generation are being payed to circumvent millions of years of evolution to make things resistant to pesticides when we could work on how to avoid using them in the first place, but the money making system is already in place. Capitalism is supposed to be about competing on the market, not competition based on subsidies, and right now organic and biodiverse growing has nothing on the subsidies that go to massive single crop agri-businesses.
Off the top of my head I suggest reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” a fascinating in depth look at our modern food industry, from the perspective of corn.
And while I’m still awake, the pro-Monsanto people are dear to my heart as I was once one of them, being a lifelong lover of the sciences and believing that science, like a loyal friend, could do no wrong. I believed that people in power probably were smart and were chosen based on merit almost every time and that the people running the administrations meant to protect consumers were staffed and managed by defenders of a higher moral code. Armed with these basic assumptions that these giant entities were at least lawful-neutral, I too always thought that vegetarians and their ilk were misguided hyper-moralists that were quaintly unaware of their hypocrisy. In my naivety I assumed it was they who were naive and tried to help them to realize that the meats and TV dinners they deprived themselves of were so delicious and convenient that it was crazy to be so “picky”. A little after that I started reading books other than sci-fi. But anyway, while I understand the confusion that the Monsantoans have is based in a lack of information born from a refusal to question the wisdom of the system, the outright anger is not something I “get”. It may be simple frustration that boils when it can’t be release from reasonable discussion and mutual learning, but a friend suggested that it has a lot to do with the cultural associations with food. On a deep level, to refuse a pork-chop is like insultingly refusing one’s mother’s pork chop, the association between our food and home is so strong. Another suggestion was that being told that something they did every day could be “wrong” was a cause for a deep anxiety that could either cause a guilt that is violently rejected or make them feel like they were part of some ideological battle.
Thanks for the produce/number info.
You have to realize… Companies don’t do things for better or safer products for consumers. They do things to cut waste, and lower costs. Granted eating an apple packed full of pesticieds might not kill you. But the cancer you develop after years of ingesting these chemicals along with all the other artificial chemicals packed into everything else we eat designed to lower cost for manufactures might. Rule of thumb.. If you cant read the ingredients on the package in plain english, We were never ment to consume it. If you care about yourself, or your family. Stop pumping them full of deadly chemicals.
People will argue.. “Well.. These are safe, Your nuts, they have been approved by the FDA” and I would reply with. Sure.. in small dosages, in a controled envroment, no one died from it. But that does not take into account how many hundreds of these chemicals we ingest on a daily basis from a countless supply of different consumer products.
Take this fact for example. Each year more people die from legal prescription medication complications than all the other Illegal drugs. But wait? Those are FDA approved.. there supposed to be safe! FDA Approved Products are not supposed to kill.. But guess what they do.
That is the biggest load of **** I have ever heard.
Do you not think, that farmers, chemical manufacturers and the government have your best interests at heart? They do. Think about it. What do you have? Money. What do they want? Money! They are charging you for fruit, and if it is a bad fruit, you will not purchase it anymore. Therefore, they mnake sure the levels of pesticide/insecticide/whatever are well below volumes that even if you ate 100 of the fruit, you would experience no ill effect (Other than the negative effects associated with eating 100 of that fruit!).
Genetically modified varieties of foods are everywhere, even in organic food. Heres how: Humans SELECTIVELY breed plants and animals, therefore the fruit you eat has been selectively breeded over several generations to provide you (the customer) with the best possible fruit eating experience.
GM foods are shied away from, due to a negative stimulus encouraged by the media and Organic farmers. Think: What is the price difference between organic and normal? It is large, with the organic fruit being more expensive. They are charging you extra, an extra which they do not deserve!
Richard Fontaine.
The latest – just out today, though I know people opposed to evidence don’t want to see it:
Thank you Doug Barnes for bringing evidence-based truths and common sense to this discussion. The level of ignorance here caught me off-guard. So many have opinions but so little knowledge of the subject. Too many participants in this discussion don’t even know what GM is. Selective breeding is NOT at all the same as GM; not even close. Some genetic modifications (GM) allow applications of chemicals that could not otherwise be used. And just because pesticides and herbicides don’t kill you immediately, that does not mean they don’t kill you. It is very difficult to study, much less prove, the millions of cumulative and interactive effects of the more than 200 man-made chemicals inside us. If you don’t worry about the complex and unknown interactions of all those chemicals inside you, fine; eat the chemical-laden foods, and I hope you remember this conversation when you or a loved one is diagnosed with cancer. For the rest of us it’s a basic human right to be able to chose foods with the smallest amount of man-made hazards.
Douglas,
You are obviously well educated, open minded and thorough in your research. I appreciate that you took time to spell things out for us in way that was not self serving. Thanks for adding to the facts. you have taught me more!!!
Wow, rough crowd. I consider myself a moderate environmentalist in that I try not to make more of an impact than I have to, but I don’t stay awake nights worrying about global warming either.
Granted, genetically modified foods are probably safe, but we all know the modifications we’re talking about are fundamentally different from the modifications mother nature has made with farmers’ help over the last 10,000 years.
My real concern is with cross-pollination and other forms of contamination of the non-modified seed stock. The fact is, once GM crops are introduced, just through wind, insects, accident etc., the modified genes will enter the non-GM seeds within just a few years.
What if then, after the non-GM seed stock has ceased to exist (which absolutely will happen), we discover that there was a problem with GM seeds? Then what to we do? There will be no going back and even those who wish to avoid GM foods will not be able to.
This is why, despite the liklihood of GM’s safety, we need to be very careful about moving forward with it.
Question: I read your article and tries out my new found knowledge and I ran into 3′s, red and yellow bell peppers as well as broccoli started with the # 3, where do we stand with 3′s?
Jason,
I will look into this further but it is my belief that the 3 may be an heirloom variety. I saw this with my tomatoes that were also clearly marked heirloom.
where did u see this? store? what state are u in?
Wow…such hate. I love how people think they can be so terrible to an author just because they are anonymous. At any rate, I found this educational and useful. Although I do not have a stand against GMO (other than the fact that they are less nutritious than organically grown foods…I don’t care to argue it as you have your opinion and I have mine and that won’t change from a comment) I despise the use of inorganic pesticides and herbicides, and that is definitely something I will watch for. Keep up the good work, regardless of how nasty people can be.
Two things. Plant breeding is not GM or GE,early seedless grapes are a product of plant breeding, and two, if you are concerned about your health, then run very far away from the “Western Diet”. and processed foods.
I don’t get it. How will genetically modifying an apple hurt a person???
Well, my main issue with your position on GMO food is that…well…there is much more significant scientific evidence that a computer screen (or cell phone, or car exhaust, or any number of other things I’m sure you use on a regular basis) can give you cancer, or a host of other health issues, then any evidence that GMO foods will harm you.
I would suggest you stop using technology if you are that concerned over your health.
Gizmo, is that a trick question? There are currently no genetically modified apples on the market in North America today. Are you asking what potential health risks could arise from one? Also your question is worded to sound like what potential accidents might happen in the lab. You’ll have to clarify and you’ll have to expect a very general answer if you ask about a hypothetical crop.
Please tell me where you got your Organic computer. I’m very interested…
i picked my mac off the Apple tree and it tastes grreeatt!!…
Well whether we eat the fruit or not- we are all gonna gonna cancer from something somwhere. I just want to support the local growers and not the big industry/government
APPLE VS APPLE
Hey Ktosh,
There IS a slight difference between my Apple computer (which no, isn’t organic) and a non organic apple. I don’t EAT my computer. Also, despite the fact that it isn’t the healthiest thing made in the world I am able to connect with other people and use it for work school etc. Whereas an apple sprayed with pesticides really is not good. Especially compared to one grown organically by local farmers YOU can support right here in the USA instead of buying pesticide laden fruit from some foreign country.
Be patriotic for God’s sake.
BB
I like to eat the food God made, it is available still, the farmers’ market is the place to buy it. Thanks for the label tip.
What I dislike about GM is that preople in favour will say “Oh we’ve been doing that for hundreds of years” it’s a lie. we’ve been breeding animals naturally… penises and vaginas, with plants, it’s flowers and pollen. We haven’t been splicing bits onto other bits… don’t bring up grafting, that’s different again and isn’t GM.
I want my food to come from the old fashioned way of farming.
If there’s too many people to feed, it’s not natures fault, stop having kids.
I hear you! I don’t think there’s too many people to feed. i think we are Gm-ing the wrong foods. theres a better way to fed the hungry– through high protein, good fat filled superfoods like coconuts, spirulina etc. This would help ease hunger. not wheat, corn, rice and grains that help people become allergic and create intestinal problems. But it requires a paradigm shift that will happen slowly. we don’t need GM to feed th needy. thats a scare tactic used to keep well meaning people blinded.
Thanks,
Gina
I find it ironic that most people railing FOR GM foods work in the same labs that produce them. They go on and on about how “safe” they are, yet obviously have a financial interest in seeing them succeed.
This article was informative until you took a political stance and it became biased. You don’t seem to have a problem with genetically modified food, you seem to have a problem with corporations. You also seem to have some sort of Promethean condition with regards to technology and agriculture. The process that we use today are just expedited forms of growing and genetic manipulation from the past. Oh and BTW Kiwi and Brocolli are GM foods so you can “run away” from those whenever you feel like it(look it up).
For whatever reason, the webmaster saw fit to delete nearly all my past posts – including all the ones that provided links to peer-reviewed scientific journals that supported the author’s argument. This is beyond bizarre…
At any rate, I’ll repeat something that I’m pretty sure I said here already: At no point in mankind’s agricultural past did we isolate genes from one species, and insert them in a hap-hazard fashion (or any other fashion for that matterr) into the genome of some host crop with the aid of either Agrobacterium tumefaciens or a “gene gun”. In other words, the process of genetic modification is radically different than the selective breeding of the past or even the hybridization developed in the 20th century.
As for members of the genus Actinidia, no they did not come about with the aid of transgenes. They were around long before the time of Watson and Crick. Same goes for brassicas.
If you ever want to hear a reader’s feedback :) , I rate this post for 4/5. Detailed info, but I have to go to that damn msn to find the missed pieces. Thank you, anyway!
Kiwi and Brocolli are not Genetically Engineered. Altered through artificial selection perhaps, but not a GMO. If you don’t understand the difference, please don’t post up misinformation. Read a book, and then post.
Does anybody else get the feeling that Monsanto hire people to write such rubbish on the web and in letters to newspapers. It would not surprise me.