I'll be honest, I haven't really thought a lot about genetically modified foods and I have a feeling it's because I was never really educated about the subject. Well, until now. After watching the movie, I'm extremely angry at how our government treats small family farmers. I felt really bad for all the farmers that lost their court cases. It seems so unfair and I wish big companies didn't have so much power. Eventually, all the small family farmers (that produce AMAZING, DELICIOUS food) will be wiped out. I really think supporting local farmers is extremely important. If all the local family farms are wiped out because they can't compete with the "big boy" companies, than we may be stuck eating a lot more genetically modified food that we'd like to be eating in the very near future.
That brings me to my next idea. Genetically modified food (GMF). In my opinion, it's really gross to think that some food travels thousands of miles before getting to the consumer and on top of it, it may be genetically modified too. When I saw that during the video, I got slightly grossed out. That's a lot of time/distance for many unmentionable things to come in contact with that food, not to mention the lack of freshness. I'm sorry, but any food that travels over a thousand miles isn't fresh, and I won't let anyone else tell me otherwise. And lets talk about the possible horrible long term effects of eating GMF, shall we? Way back in the 20's, everyone smoked tobacco because apparently no one thought it was bad for them. Now, we are all well aware that smoking tobacco has very fatal long term effects on various vital organs in the body. Well, how about GMF? They tell us that eating food that's been altered to being a certain color, to be bigger (like my strawberries, ick!), etc is ok to do, but do we REALLY know the effects of eating a bunch of that stuff.?
No, we don't. And that's a really, really big problem. We don't know the long term effects of eating GMF because it's such a new and recent thing, we haven't gotten a chance to see any bad effects. Give it 25 years or so, and I have a feeling there's going to be bad news with regards to eating food that's been modified.
SO, moral of this story is that GMF is sketchy and companies should be required to label food that has been genetically modified. I'm sure most people aren't really educated about the issue, so at this point if someone saw a little sticker on their box of strawberries at Freddie's that said GMF, they would be like "whatever." But if they do start to see negative effects on the human body, I would hope to God that companies would have to label GMF. Just like cigarettes, they come with a warning label (or at least, they're supposed to, even if it is ridiculously small print.) But hey, family farmers are awesome. Let's support them! Buy their food because they grow food the way it should be grown; all natural. And like the movie said, if all the third world countries started farming again, people wouldn't be starving. I'm optimistic that big corporations won't take over the food world.
And as for my strawberries, well let's just call that a learning curve....
A good read:
Ellen, Pam Scholder and Paula Fitzgerald Bone. "Stained by the Label? Stigma and the Case of Genetically Modified Foods." Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 27 (2008): 69-82. ebsco reserach library. Ebsco. Western Libraries, Bellingham 4 May 2008.
2 comments:
Although I think that supporting local farmers is very important in a city like Bellingham, that is not the case everywhere. There are many areas in just the US that have land that simply can not be farmed on. These people still need to eat and may not have a choice but to buy GMO's because that is all their local stores offer. As a local problem it can be fixed by purchasing directly from the farmers, however on a global scale i think that we may need to focus more on the problem of regulation of GMO's.
Hmm... I can understand how watching this movie would make your strawberries look unappetizing. I just remember being told to look for smaller strawberries, because the larger ones were so big from extra watering, and they didn't taste like much. So are your strawberries GMed, or are they just full of water? I guess that highlights the need for labels on food. While most people may not read the labels habitually, it's good to have that information available if someone wants to read it.
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