I make food products for my livelihood. I don't exactly create new things, but new and unique versions of already standard staples. Salsa, spice blends, goat cheeses. And they are truly unique. I'm actually pretty good at that. Many of my products are unlike anything else in the marketplace, and in my little place in the farmers market world, I rule.
Let's talk about Genetically Modified Organisms. Food. A lot of our food nowadays is based on GMO technology. Big biotech companies (Monsanto, Novartis, DuPont, Eli Lily, Dow et al) justify their drive to take over the world food production capabilities with several basic lies. The biggest, and the one that is designed to tug at the hearts of the masses to the exclusion of reason and reality is that GMO foods are REQUIRED to produce enough staples in order to feed the world now, and in an ever increasing population. Elanco, the biotech giant, just last month released a huge new report about how their participation in the GMO lie is needed for just this very reason. You can read it here (Elanco) It is a slick twenty page report that targets what the biotech industry claims is THE food concern of the future, Food Security. The Elanco claim is that in order to maximize food production, and to ensure that growing populations in the world have enough of the middle class staples dairy, eggs and meat; then GMO technology is a requirement. The report also has a small paragraph about how increasing protein intake in schoolchildren increases their test scores. There is also the overall pervasive conclusion that they give the readers, without the Elanco vision of a GMO world, people will die.
Modern American food production of dairy, eggs and meat is almost exclusively genetically engineered. From the chemical use of rBGH growth hormones in cows to increase milk production to the ractopamine and other beta0agonists that force animals to put on muscle mass in response to the toxin injected into them to the feeding of pesticide laden untested Genetically Modified grains. An estimate of from 76 to 92 percent of all the dairy, eggs and meat in the US is sourced using Genetically Modified methodology. And here is the really big thing, it does cut costs in the production of all of these food products. Is that a good thing? Well, the safety of GMO products is not today's discussion, it's been done here many times, search in the upper right hand search box for GMO and read some of the stuff. Today is about security
For better or worse, we have a food system in America that is working. Americans are lucky, we have a plethora of food choices and ample supplies to feed our population. We can pretty much all eat what we want. I eat a lot of brown rice, and I also eat A LOT of salsa. A large portion of the population eats at the Gilded Arches and other purveyors of products that in a minimalist way resemble food, and they seem to be happy eating there. I mean those places are making record sales. But, let's look at a new paradigm. A new food. Let's call it Fleedle. Fleedle is a mixture of algae, bone meal, canola oil, dirt and salt and probably tastes like all that as well. Our government, Hillary and others all tell us that we need to start to eat Fleedle for our basic food needs because it is the food of the future and as our population increases it will be the primary source of food in the near future. Fleedle isn't bad tasting, it is just different. It is cheap though, and our government has told us all that based on the research done by the manufacturer that it is indeed, wondrous to behold. Well, their profit is anyway.
Fleedle, The FOOD of the FUTURE!!!
So, do you eat the stuff? There of course are huge assurances that the stuff is not in anyway like Soylent Green. So how do you give up the traditional foods that you, your family and all of your ancestors have lived with and become accustomed to in order to have something new, strange and not necessarily unpleasant become the main staple in your diet? And of course the big one, does the biotech industry have the right to force their profit making products onto the world solely to insure their bottom line profit capabilities?
The biotech industry is not in anyway interested in feeding the world population, they are interested in feeding the growing MIDDLE class world population. Those humans that live in countries that have healthy economies and are progressing at a rate where it will soon be, or already is, feasible to be markets for GMO food products at a profit. And to eliminate the sustainable food production methods that are a huge part of the CURRENT methodology of local sustainable farming practices that currently provide food for most of the world population. Biotech companies want the populations of countries with growing economies to forgo traditional food and switch over to the American style of food that is high in meat and processed low quality foods while being high in fat, salt and residual pesticides. Fleedle.
Those are my thought on the matter, and I leave you with one more thought, and it is a big one. Instead of working to make more less nutritious food for a growing population, I believe it would be in the best interests of the ENTIRE WORLD if we started to think differently about the problem. The real solution is we need to work on limiting population growth so that it doesn't exceed the ability of current healthy methods of food production. For my Christian friends I think we need to look at the mandate from the bible to go forth and multiply as having been achieved and instead to now interpret the bible mandate as going forth and creating paradise for us all that already exist and improving our environment for the limited numbers of our offspring that follow in the footsteps that we lay today for them.
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