Genetically Modified crops kill man and beast.

[nordskoven]

forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=72385.0

GM crops from Monsanto are implicated in mass deaths of livestock in India and a wave of suicides in India’s cotton farmers. Bacillus Thuringiensis/Bt has been gene spliced into cotton where it destroys the GI tract of bugs attacking the cotton. Bt has been used a tablet to dunk into ponds to kill mosquitoes. It has been considered harmless in this application. Now Genetically Modified cotton and cottonseed oil carrying the Bt is recombining with gut bacteria and thinning and ulcerating the intestinal tract of man and beast. Monsanto is the chief culprit in disseminating GM crops. Any Catholic response on how to stop this?

Blessed Virgin Mary, pierced with a sword of sorrow “that the thoughts of all may be revealed,” expose all thoughts and cleanse them in the fire of love of your Son, Jesus Christ’s Sacred Heart. AMEN

 

[MugenOne]

Well, that is true. The goats die because the Indians unknowingly let their goats eat the GMO cotton plants. Monsanto is very heavy handed in developing countries with their seeds. They were about to launch a new Indian eggplant crop, but the farmers managed to stop the introduction of it for now. This eggplant contains the same genetic modifications as the cotton plant. The eggplant had been genetically modified by introducing a gene called cry1Ac from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. The gene instructs the plant to produce a protein toxic to certain insects, so the GM eggplants would have been able to fend off common borer pests. The Bt was sourced from Monsanto, which already sells Bt corn and Bt cotton seeds in the United States. In the 1990s, Monsanto triggered a huge debate in India by introducing genetically modified cotton.

forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=72385.0

GM crops from Monsanto are implicated in mass deaths of livestock in India and a wave of suicides in India’s cotton farmers. Bacillus Thuringiensis/Bt has been gene spliced into cotton where it destroys the GI tract of bugs attacking the cotton. Bt has been used a tablet to dunk into ponds to kill mosquitoes. It has been considered harmless in this application. Now Genetically Modified cotton and cottonseed oil carrying the Bt is recombining with gut bacteria and thinning and ulcerating the intestinal tract of man and beast. Monsanto is the chief culprit in disseminating GM crops. Any Catholic response on how to stop this?

Blessed Virgin Mary, pierced with a sword of sorrow “that the thoughts of all may be revealed,” expose all thoughts and cleanse them in the fire of love of your Son, Jesus Christ’s Sacred Heart. AMEN

 

[Baer]

There are two issues here. The first is the issue of GMO food. There is nothing intrinsically dangerous about GMO food, pretty much everything you eat was genetically modified by selective breeding. Obviously if you modify a plant to include a pesticide you must be cautious just as if you were applying that pesticide. The second issue is Monsanto itself and moral issues with their monopoly and the making of terminator seeds that fore farmers to buy repeatedly and different ethical problems that they have such as suing a man whose bees took honey with Monsanto GMO pollen in it. These are important issues but they are not due to the nature of GMO food in and of itself.

 

[the_phoenix]

Any Catholic response on how to stop this?

Beyond driving down to Amish country to buy produce fresh from the farm (which I’ve done) and buying organic at the grocery store, what’s an average suburban apartment-dwelling single Catholic to do?

Open to suggestions as well …

 

[Wolseley]

Well, we could always buy heirloom seeds and start growing our own grain, vegetables, etc., and drop out of the system; but I doubt if there are too many Americans who know how, or would even want to, grow their own food any more. Farming is very hard work, and most of us just don’t want to work that hard for a bowl of shredded wheat every morning.

It’s a bad situation, but what worries me more is Monsanto’s desire to be “the” seed source for the planet, meaning that they’ve been trying to develop “annual” seeds, which can produce one crop—but no seeds of their own. This would ensure that Monsanto gets real rich, because everyone would have to buy every year’s future crop from them, or starve to death.

But the problem is, suppose there was, oh, I don’t know----a huge war, or a devastating earthquake that swallowed up the Monsanto factory, or some other massive distruption, and all of Monsanto’s “source seeds” were lost somehow. What do we do for self-replacating seeds then? There will be epidemic starvation and the rest of us will be reduced to eating tree leaves and quack grass.

 

[flyingfish]

The agricultural industry is too powerful to stop this. For a while Europe used to ban all genetically modified crops, but the World Trade Organization said it was illegal.

The scary thing is that these modifications are not tested by independent sources, and you’ll get people who profit from their sale tell you they’re okay. Nobody really knows whether they’re okay.

And that’s not even mentioning how all the GMO stuff is huge and tasteless.

One immediate health concern with eating genetically modified foods is allergens. Opponents point to an incident involving Starlink modified corn. In 2000, StarLink (approved by the EPA for animal feed in 1998 but not for human consumption because of concerns it contained a protein that could cause dangerous allergic reactions) turned up in many Kraft products, including their Taco Bell corn shells. Some corn crops were accidentally contaminated with the StarLink seed. Several people reported severe allergic reactions, and major recalls resulted. In the end, the EPA said federal tests didn’t conclude that genetically modified corn causes allergies, nor did they eliminate the possibility that it could not cause such a reaction.

“Contamination is a very real risk in terms of growing genetically modified crops,” says Lisa Archer, grassroots coordinator for the Safer Foods-Safer Farms campaign and Kraft campaign at the nonprofit organization Friends of the Earth – the group that sparked the StarLink investigation. “[Genetically modified crops] can contaminate neighboring crops relatively easily. Once you get this stuff out into nature it’s very difficult to control where it goes, and StarLink is a great example of that.”

Archer’s group continues to press Kraft – the leading U.S. food supplier – to stop using genetically modified ingredients in their products, hoping if it does, the move will have a domino effect on other food suppliers.

webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/are-biotech-foods-safe-to-eat?page=3

Currently, food companies aren’t required by law to label foods containing genetically modified ingredients, so it’s no surprise that most Americans don’t know they’ve eaten them.

 

[Robert_Bay]

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