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Genetically Modified Food Pt. 1 (merged)

Human Gene gets put into Rice

Unread postby BILL_THA_PHARMACIZT » Wed 11 May 2005, 21:58:18

people are going to persue whatever they percieve to be in their own interests and thats always changing because everything in life is in constant motion
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Life imitates art?

Unread postby UIUCstudent01 » Wed 11 May 2005, 23:30:00

Life imitates art?

Artists are scientists without the technical training, I'm beggining to believe.

Biotech is scary stuff. But, it has great potential in preventing or mitigating a die-off.
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Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Legislation

Unread postby savethehumans » Wed 01 Jun 2005, 23:51:57

They're systematically trying to roadblock relocalization, folks--just when it's crucial that we do so!
Industry Aims to Strip Local Control of Food Supply
By Britt Bailey, Environmental Commons and Brian Tokar, Institute for Social Ecology, Environmental Commons.org, Tuesday May 24, 2005:

New laws being pushed by industry prevent local decisions about plants and seeds.

Legislation aiming to prevent counties, towns and cities from making local decisions about our food supply is being introduced in states across the nation. Fifteen states recently have introduced legislation removing local control of plants and seeds. Twelve of these states have already passed the provisions into law.

These highly orchestrated industry actions are in response to recent local decisions to safeguard sustainable food systems. To date, initiatives in three California counties have restricted the cultivation of genetically modified crops, livestock, and other organisms and nearly 100 New England towns have passed various resolutions in support of limits on genetically engineered crops.

"These laws are industry's stealth response to a growing effort by people to protect their communities at the local level," said Britt Bailey of Environmental Commons. "Given the impacts of known ecological contamination from genetic modification, local governments need to retain the power to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens. Local restrictions against genetically modified crops have provided a positive and hopeful solution and allowed citizens to take meaningful action in their hometown or county."

"Over the past several years in Iowa, we've seen local control taken away for the benefit of the corporate hog industry," said George Naylor, an Iowa farmer and President of the National Family Farm Coalition. "With these pre-emption bills signed into law, we are now losing our ability to protect ourselves from irresponsible corporations aiming to control the agricultural seeds and plants planted throughout the state."

According to Kristy Meyer of the Ohio Environmental Council, "The amendment to our House Bill 66 would strip cities and villages of their authority to implement safeguards and standards concerning seeds. Supporting local control is quintessentially American, clearly reasonable, and represents the standards our country was founded upon."
The entire story is currently over at truthout. But this is the gist of it. All you people trying to set up a sustainable community, take note! They are out to stop you! They're so blind to anything but the profits they can make from GMOs, they don't see what's coming is going to DESTROY industrial agriculture, anyway! This is suicide, and they're gonna take us down with them, if we don't fight back!

You'll probably want to check out this Environmental Commons.org to see what you can do about this. This CANNOT HAPPEN; it is literally a life-and-death struggle, as we PO'ers well know. Just wanted to pass this news on to you, before you get blindsided. . . .
Last edited by Ferretlover on Mon 08 Feb 2010, 17:20:13, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Title clarified.
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Unread postby Colorado-Valley » Thu 02 Jun 2005, 01:10:47

Thanks, Save, this is a crucial issue. I'm collecting and growing heirloom seeds, myself.

Colorado did something similar to this for the oil and gas industry. The industry got legislation passed that prohibits local towns and counties from regulating gas and oil wells.

The legislature is controlled by the fossil-fuel industry, and the governor is the former chief lobbyist for the oil and gas industry. Their attitude is, if your water table is polluted by coalbed methane drilling, "tough."

Remember when the Republicans used to be for small government and local control? That's now been reversed 180 degrees.

This is why I think the French voted down the European Constitution; they didn't want their lives and farms and food completely under the control of global corporations.

They just looked at America and saw what happened.
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Another interesting thing..

Unread postby UIUCstudent01 » Thu 02 Jun 2005, 01:42:17

Another interesting happening that is very similar to this is happening on community WiFi areas. (Basically, the philosophy is that access to broadband internet is a basic municipal right. And as important as water and electricity in the 21st Century... who, as one absolutely hooked on broadband, I would agree.) Basically, there are bills prohibiting this being passed in Wisconsin, Texas, and at the Federal level... Although so far they haven't been passed yet I think.. Two Such Examples here

These are pretty cool programs to provide broadband to all!
Chicago Area Wifi to Rural, low income, and suburban areas
CuWiN Urbana-Champaign Area - Interesting Note: It got a grant to do this and be a testing ground for WiFi for all over the world!

I wouldn't be surprised if those Bills were influenced by big broadband companies or such.

Just a heads up that local-control really is being attacked by all fronts... (Even if broadband isn't 'sustainable', it's still a local community action.)

*I'm in no way connected with any of these things. I think they're cool; that's all.
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Unread postby RG73 » Thu 02 Jun 2005, 21:51:59

Given that GMO foods are petro-reliant, they don't have much of a future. So they can try to ban local agriculture all they want. Fuel price increases are going to spell doom for the GMO industry. Grocery stores are not making huge margins and consumers are not going to accept all fuel price increases in their food if the option of locally grown, cheaper food is available. And if communities are forced to grow more and more food closer to home and with less energy, GMO crops are not an attractive option for that. Monsanto and company can cry about it all they want, they're a dinosaur on the even of the KT boundary.

If worse comes to worse, it wouldn't take a whole lot to engineer the appropriate viruses to take out the GMO fields, or engineer the insects to resist the pesticides and the like. Not that I want to see anyone starve if the only option is GMO food. But if they want to do this frankenfood crap, the tools are out there to fight back. Hell, GMO foods are, I think, one of the reasons for the EU constitution debacle. The French, at least, don't want anything to do with them, even if a free trading European Union wants to open all borders to them. People don't want to eat this crap. It isn't more efficient, it isn't higher yielding, and these crops generally taste like crap. So they can push all the legislation they want--when push comes to shove, and when oil has peaked, they're done. Of course we have the deal with the legacy of genetic transfer from these GMO crops to natural species, but at least these companies will go down the toilet.
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Unread postby katkinkate » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 08:12:49

Hear, hear..., but what worries me is, how much damage will they be able to accomplish before they lose their power?
Kind regards, Katkinkate

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."
Masanobu Fukuoka
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Unread postby Ludi » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 13:56:34

It's very important for all of us to purchase heirloom and traditional seeds as long as we are able to. I'll be placing some more seed orders today.

Very frightening this. 8O

edit - I went to look up the legislation in my state (TX) and I'm ok with it. It just says no political subdivision can make a provision to ban any noxious or invasive plant. Which is good, because otherwise someone might say our native cedar trees are noxious and invasive (which they are, but still beautiful, useful, and important for wildlife) and force us to cut them all down. Or say some food plant we're growing is noxious and force us to stop growing it.
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Unread postby PhilBiker » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 15:09:10

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Unread postby oowolf » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 16:05:47

My gawd! I just ordered another $100 worth of seeds. (This is getting to be my stock response to bad news.)
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Unread postby Ludi » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 16:09:10

Mine too, oowolf. When I start getting scared, I buy some seeds....
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Unread postby Raxozanne » Fri 03 Jun 2005, 17:10:15

I hate big business. It scares me.
Hello, my name is Rax. I live in the Amazon jungle with a bunch of women. We are super eco feminists and our favourite passtimes are dangling men by their ankles and discussing peak oil. - apparently
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Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Unread postby Graeme » Fri 18 Aug 2006, 00:48:38

Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Behold NatureWorks: the largest lactic-acid plant in the world. Into one end of the complex goes corn; out the other come white pellets, an industrial resin poised to become—if you can believe all the hype—the future of plastic in a post-petroleum world.

The resin, known as polylactic acid (PLA), will be formed into containers and packaging for food and consumer goods. The trendy plastic has several things going for it. It’s made from a renewable resource, which means it has a big leg up—both politically and environmentally—on conventional plastic packaging, which uses an estimated 200,000 barrels of oil a day in the United States. Also, PLA is in principle compostable, meaning that it will break down under certain conditions into harmless natural compounds. That could take pressure off the nation’s mounting landfills, since plastics already take up 25 percent of dumps by volume. And corn-based plastics are starting to look cheap, now that oil prices are so high.


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Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
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Re: Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Unread postby rwwff » Fri 18 Aug 2006, 00:54:41

Great... yet more ways to take stuff that we eat.. and make it inedible.

At least the plastic thing sorta has the benefit of being used to keep the remaining food fresher, longer.
abundance fleeting
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Re: Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Unread postby Zardoz » Fri 18 Aug 2006, 01:01:26

Corn is going to get really expensive isn't it? Give ADM credit. They're good at what they do.
"Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
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Re: Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Unread postby rwwff » Fri 18 Aug 2006, 01:11:16

Zardoz wrote:Corn is going to get really expensive isn't it? Give ADM credit. They're good at what they do.


Look at their stock chart, they've gone from 20.57 -> 39.7 in a year.
They've engineered the perfect storm.
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Re: Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Unread postby rwwff » Fri 18 Aug 2006, 01:16:07

pstarr wrote:you two have crummy attitudes. Jesus himself could come down from the mount (or where ever it is he is hold up?) and give your free pixie dust and you'd have some smart-ass comment.

what is wrong with sustainable eco-groovy forks and spoons? the better to eat your tofu with!


I guess I'm supposed to eat my Miso Soup with Tofu, some boutique short grain rice, and a overly large sardine that travelled half way around the world to meet me for breakfast with my eco-groovy plastic chopstick, while I sit down and watch CNN showing pictures of starving Africans who'd likely cut off a finger to have the corn for their dieing child that was instead used to make those utensils for me to use once and throw away.

Yeah. Good plan.
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Re: Corn Plastic to the Rescue

Unread postby Zardoz » Fri 18 Aug 2006, 01:43:19

rwwff wrote:...They've engineered the perfect storm.

Well, yeah, they did that, but hey, they sponsor a lot of stuff on NPR, so they must be an enlightened, socially-responsible organization, right?
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