Revisiting Canola Crapola

I thought now would be a good time to look at Canola again.  It seems that the State of Oregon legislature passed a bill that banned the commercial planting of Canola in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.  Kudos to the Oregon legislature for protecting the interests of seed producing farmers in the area. The possible contamination of related plant species grown for seed in the area would be threatened by the planting of Canola, which is a Genetically Modified Organism. 

Despite what the Canadian Canola Council states on their website about Canola having been developed  "....in the 1970s, using traditional plant breeding techniques" (from (Canola Council)), it's kind of a lie.  If you read the Rape of Canola book, (Yes, there is an actual book written by the guys that did it) Canola scientists actually took the unprecedented move of using gas chromatography to identify the genes that controlled erucic levels in the rapeseed, and then they split seeds mechanically to germinate a half seed.  It wasn’t like they planted two plants and cross-pollinated the species over time as in traditional plant breeding.  They developed a new procedure known as seed-splitting to accomplish the genetic determinism and the scientists who invented Canola were one of the first to use the technology.  The plants they used represented an international patchwork of trial and error for combining of plant parts.  That might seem a bit like the task of assembling Frankenstein, as opposed to gardening in the backyard, and it is.  The techniques indeed quite obviously paved the way for the total genetic engineering processes that form the basics of Genetic Engineering today.  In fact, Monsanto’s GE crops were built on the back of the Canola plant, by the very scientists who created the Canola out of nothing but gas chromatography, split seeds and a desire to reduce the erucic content.

Aaahhhh, the erucic acid content of the rapeseed.  It is here that the stuff causes problems.  The US for once, is above the Europeans by limiting the erucic acid level to just 2% while they for some weird reason have limited the content to a much higher 5%.  I don't know, maybe they all saw the movie "Lorenzo's Oil" and cried a few tears and thought for some weird reason that ALL humanity would benefit from the stuff.  Just isn't so.  The erucic acid is the stuff that makes Canola toxic.  Although the Canadian Canola Council tells us that at 2%, the level is safe for humans.   (Monsanto claims Glyphosate, Roundup, to also be completely non-toxic and totally safe) (EU Limits)  (US Limit)   The Brits have done a bit of research on Canola, especially since the mad cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis -BSE) scare in the eighties.  What?  Why?  BSE mimics the damage caused by animals eating Canola plants, oil, and the meal.  Pretty much no one wants to blame a 100 billion dollar world wide crop, so they, the agribusiness people, invented the "Mad Cow Disease" to take the crap out of the spotlight as scientists everywhere searched for a solution to the problem. 

Anyway, the Brits first determined that native animals were, "..becoming unwell/dying after eating oilseed rape foliage and/or seeds. These anecdotal reports have been supported by a number of studies which have confirmed the oilseed rape crops are extremely toxic to animals both when grown in the field and after crushing into animal feed."  Glucosinolates, what erucic acid is, in rape is, ".... undesirable because of the toxicological effects of their breakdown products.  – Breakdown products include nitriles, isothiocyanates, thiocyanates, epithionitriles and vinyl oxazolidinethiones (Naturally Occurring Toxicants  as Etiologic Agents of  Foodborne Disease)."  None of these compounds are good.  NONE!  If you have a minute, read the rest of this report to see how cooking with canola gives off carcinogenic fumes, how Canada banned rapeseed for humans in 1954 and how animals show horrific problems when they eat rape.  (Canola)    And I know how everyone loves to be completely grossed out at how our food is processed, if you can take a few minutes and watch how canola is processed  here. (How It's Made)

Let's go back up a bit to the BSE problem of the eighties.  People everywhere were scared to death to eat beef when in Europe, especially Britain.  And the big scare was that this new disease, would spread to the Americas and infect the cattle industry here.  Turns out that it didn't take a lot of research to figure out what the problem was, it was simply the use of canola meal to feed cattle.  Researchers doing other projects found that rats, chickens and mice fed untreated canola meal had degenerative problems in their internal organs and their hearts, liver and brains began to take on a Swiss cheese like consistency.  Their research found that processing the canola meal by baking it in lye reduced the problem.  So, how do you tell the world that cows fed unprocessed canola caused the animals to act crazy, make them unable to walk, snort, and be overly aggressive.  Yikes, back in the eighties, the canola crop wasn't worth a hundred billion dollars, but it was still pretty large.  Large enough that the if the truth about how eating the stuff caused all those horrific problems in cows, what might it be doing to humans that consume the refined product. 

To this day, the USDA claims that there is no known specific antigen, virus, bacteria or common factor that causes BSE.  Their claim is that proteins in misshapen form, called prions, are the cause.  Once prions are consumed, they invade the spinal fluid and cause degeneration of the brain and spinal cord.  It is a real disease, (NCBI on prions)  ((BORING))  But then again, the same symptoms of BSE are displayed by animals that eat canola in the wild, and domesticated animals fed untreated canola.  Now, here is part of the problem behind all of this, the NCBI and the USDA both claim that heating the prions that cause BSE do not destroy them, thus if you eat the meat, especially the meat around the brain or spinal tissues, even if cooked, you run the risk of consuming viable prions and take the risk of contracting BSE.  In order to stop the spread of BSE the USDA has instituted a policy wherein any steer that is over 30 months old, the brains and spines cannot be used for human food.  Okay, here is the problem, chickens are routinely fed the ground up brains and spinal columns of slaughtered cattle.  It's a cheap source of calcium and protein for the chickens.  The chickens then crap this stuff out onto straw which it is all then swept up and fed to cows again.  According to the NCBI and USDA, the prions would remain active, and according to the USDA rules to prevent BSE, this practice is outlawed.  Yet the USDA has guidelines for the processing of cattle parts, including brains and spines, for chicken feed.  Why would they allow this unless they knew BSE was a dietary issue and not a problem associated with prions.

Does that mean they are lying to us?

Well, I don't know who they is.  And the fact is that any sort of conspiracy is nearly impossible to keep as a secret because any time there are more than one person in on a secret, it gets told.  I'm just saying that it is possible that as research was taking place, some one decided to just halt any questions about feed with the findings about the prion stuff.  But then again, is sure seems like we as the peons in society, we get lied to on a regular basis.  One of the things we get told, is that erucic acid is a major constituent of all members of the Brassica family of plants.  Mustard, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, etc.  They even tell us this on the Canadian Canola Council website.  What they don't tell us is that the erucic acid is found in the SEEDS of the plants, not anywhere else in the plant, like the parts we eat.  

Well then, there you have it.  That's not really LYING to us now is it?  It is giving us a VERSION of the truth that THEY (meaning the Canadian Canola Council) believe we need to know.  I personally am someone that has a hard time seeing the lies that we are told everyday.  That's why I have to research what I am told.  Wish I had done that when I was married.  Some fun examples of that, 1, lie from wife - I'm sorry, I know we had all this work to do, but I was having lunch with YOUR niece - the truth - I was out fucking my new boyfriend.  2. Lie from wife - I had some car problems on my drive home from Dallas. that's why I'm six hours late - truth - I was out fucking my new boyfriend.  3. Lie from wife - I think you counted the product inventory wrong, I know I sold some pasta, but not that much - the truth - I'm skimming money from the business and then I go and fuck my new boyfriend.   I am just gullible, I mean I never thought she would steal from me.  Shows you how much I know.  Anyway, I do look stuff up now days. 

One last thought before I end this, and that is from the FDA GRAS status of Canola oil for use in baby food.  (US GRAS baby food see page 6)  GRAS status is something that should be granted to additives and ingredients that do not have any sort of controversy surrounding them.  Things that don't have huge amounts of research showing the detrimental effects.  Aspartame should never be on the GRAS list, in 1965 it was banned by the FDA.  Some fancy finagling by some very powerful and rich people put it on the list.  And it remains there to this day, slowly poisoning people.  And of course now, there are petitions before the FDA to allow it to be added to products without having to place it on the ingredient list.  Canola should at least have a FEW feeding studies done on it.  There have been a few, and those were not promising.  But to feed the stuff to babies is just irresponsible. 

Not with a bang, but a whimper.