"Farming In A Polluted World"

"Due to unavoidable, worldwide cross-pollination, no crop that has a GMO variant, no matter how regulated by the government can be guaranteed to be 100% GMO free."
"If you are going to stop eating all those things, you will be able to be GMO free [avoidance of beet sugar, canola and corn]. But if you eat any of those products, and all of us do, you cannot. It doesn't matter how philosophically pure you want to be, it isn't going to happen... There is no such thing as 0% of anything."
Dag Falck, Nature's Path

Genetically modified foods of any kind are the stuff surely, that Frankenstein himself - that poor tormented creature given life where none should have existed, wanting little but to be loved for himself, and preferring in the final analysis to be returned to the worm-eaten soil from whence his parts were wrenched - might have recognized as fit for consumption by all but humans.

Unnatural, sinister, threatening of normalcy. Representing hybridism of a type that nature herself never, ever intended. But then, those are the unintended consequences of curiosity, and scientific interference with the natural order of things. Wait! What about those theories of natural selection and organisms altering themselves over great periods of time to better take advantage of conditions in which they exist.

For growing things like grains might that not be soil conditions, the threats to existence contained in the maleficent effects of viral organisms inimical to their survival, and insect pests that eat the vital portions, and how about evolving climatic conditions...? So if a mind consumed with the wish to solve those problems in a hugely shortened time contrives a manner in which it can be accomplished?

Scientific curiosity has given us recombinant DNA, methods by which subtle but life-affirming alterations can be achieved; cloning and other methods of reproduction. In fact, since time immemorial, since humankind first began experimenting tentatively with the realization that seeds would beget crops, agronomists have fiddled with nature to complement her complexities.

And wouldn't all those complacent, defiant, self-congratulatory consumers of 'wholesome' and 'natural' food stuffs be surprised to learn that the 'organic' crops they cling to for optimum good health and a long future, are contaminated, after all? That message brought to them through an organic conference at the University of Guelph.

Delivered by none other than an organic food producer, and how much more appealing can someone name their product delivery system, than Nature's Path. And here, for heaven's sake, some honest disclosure: Dag Falck, who operates the North American breakfast cereal and snack-bar products has dislodged a bombshell of reality.

The organic industry must be more open about its labelling. For pollen and seeds from genetically modified crops are carried by the wind, by insects, and by any kind of misadventure from which organic crops cannot be protected, to meld with one another. No tests have been conducted for cross-contamination, or barely traceable amounts of GMOs in organic food products.

The purpose of genetic engineering is to increase crop yields and to make crops more resistant to disease. In so doing, fewer pesticide products are required to protect growing food stuffs. The term "organic" applies to food grown using natural fertilizers like manure. Meat too is considered organic, grown sans hormones or antibiotics; organic feed must be used to certify meat genuinely 'organic'.

A recent study by Stanford University concluded that organic vegetables were no more nutritious than non-organic. Slightly fewer pesticide traces are found in organically grown foods; no levels found in non-organically grown vegetables approach any levels that might be considered harmful. Dangerous levels of bacteria were found to be rare in both conventional and organic meat.

There is no evidence that genetically modified organisms present a danger to human health. On the other hand, the organic industry has deliberately enhanced its brand by continually intimating to consumers that conventionally grown foods contain harmful contaminants.

"It would appear that [Mr. Falck] is finally coming to realize the corner he and others at the helm of the multibillion-dollar organic sector have painted themselves into. Most people won't care about this, except for the fact that the leaders of the organic sector have been trumpeting a self-serving '100% GMO-free' marketing message for more than a decade now."
Mischa Popoff, Frontier Centre of Public Policy