In the first of three articles, Charles W. Elliot writes, “Potential human health risks have driven much of the concern over the production and consumption of GMO food. But a singular focus on health risks obscures more fundamental questions: Who shall control our food supply? Should our food supply become hostage to an ever-more technologically complex and industrialized system? Do GMO crops offer the potential to reduce hunger in a growing global population?”
After reading the first article in the series, readers may be interested in the second, “GMOs: Food, Money & Control: Part II,” published on December 21, 2012. In the second article, he writes, “This loss of seed diversity caused by extinction of crop varieties and the reduction in commercial availability of seed varieties, is being coupled with takeovers of seed companies by so-called ‘agrochemical’ companies, corporate mergers, and market power concentration in the seed market. This has resulted in an overall integration of biotechnology, agrochemicals, and crop seed.”
In the third article published on March 11, 2013, “GMOs: Food, Money & Control: Part III,” Charles W. Elliot points out, “Transgenic contamination cannot be recalled. Genetically modified plants continue to reproduce where the seeds are sown or blown and where plants are pollinated. Their traits are passed on to subsequent generations of crops. They also reproduce in nature where genetically modified varieties can forever alter wild relatives, native plants, and ecosystems.”
Charles W. Elliott
The recent battle over California’s Proposition 37, a ballot initiative to require consumer labeling of genetically modified organism (“GMO”) food[1], has shone a harsh spotlight on the impacts of biotechnology on agriculture and our food supply, and on corporate influence over the political process and the public’s right to information. As corporate efforts to expand the use of genetic engineering in agriculture march onward, we see a counterweight in the movements for sustainable food production and support for organic and small scale farming. We’ll be taking a look at some of the issues surrounding use of genetic engineering in food production in a series of blog posts on GMOs: Food, Money & Control.
Consumers Kept in the Dark: Big Push to Label Genetically-Modified Food Fails
Proposition 37 — the ballot initiative that would have required GMO food labeling in California, the world’s ninth largest economy…
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