Green Options

Bill Gates supports biotechnology. Is the “bug”-free Apple to blame?

Leeds University has resumed field trials of genetically modified potatoes just a year after protesters tore up the previous crop.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has recently reported a link between genetically modified (GM) foods and adverse health effects. The AAEM is advising precaution because GM foods have not been properly tested for human consumption and because there is significant evidence of probable harm. Therefore they advise:

Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.

Physicians to consider the possible role of GM foods in the disease processes of the patients they treat and to document any changes in patient health when changing from GM food to non-GM food.

Our members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health.

For a moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term independent safety testing, and labeling of GM foods, which is necessary for the health and safety of consumers.

But why should GM producers like Monsanto be concerned with this? One Monsanto official told the New York Times that the corporation should not have to take responsibility for the safety of its food products.

In much of Europe, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are not used in food production and are not grown as crops. In pretty well the rest of the world, they are both widely grown and widely utilised. Why is there such a division?

Monsanto is one of the most damaging corporations around today. Therefore, they decided to curb any criticism with their very own blogger.

In a huge break for the United States’ anti-GMO movement, a federal judge ruled that the US Fish & Wildlife Service should not have allowed genetically modified crops to be planted within a Prime Hook, a national wildlife refuge in Delaware.

The suit, filed by the Center for Food Safety, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and the Audubon Society in Delaware, challenged that the US Fish & Wildlife Service knowingly put habitat at risk when it allowed farmers to plant GMO’s inside the 10,000-acre wildlife refuge. The results were better than anyone expected.

All of the European Union nations, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries require the mandatory labeling of foods that contain genetically modified ingredients–the U.S. does not.

As a result, food manufacturers in all those countries choose to use non-genetically engineered ingredients–the U.S. did not.

However, there is atleast one way to tell whether or not the fruit you eat is a GMO (Genetically Modified Organism)–the sticker. Yes, those colorful stickers we proudly wore on our shirts as kids actually serve a purpose–but you need to know how to decipher their code.

Don’t worry, it’s easy.

Got a pencil?

As we pointed out in an earlier posting, one of the problems with biofuels such as corn-based ethanol is that they are diverting food crops from food source to fuel source. Miriam Sticklen, a crop and soil scientist from Michigan State University, announced this week that she has used an enzyme from a cow’s stomach to create a new strain of corn.

This new kind of corn, in an ideal scenario, would allow the kernels to be used as food, while the (formerly) wasted part of the corn plant could be converted to biofuel. A gene from a cow’s stomach, one of the most effective digesters of plant sugars in the world, is implanted into a corn cell using genetic engineering, fundamentally changing the corn plant. As reported in Biofuels Journal: