Laverne and I were wandering through the ecology section of Barne’s and Noble with our $25 gift card when we saw it. Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin.
(“By whom?” says everyone. “By the farmer dude in Food Inc,” I say. “Oohhh!” say half the people. “Let me google Food Inc.” says the other half.)
Joel Salatin is one of our favorite authors, combining an entertaining writing style with provoking ideas, out-side the box thinking and great stories. We bought the book.
It was great! One chapter that really got us talking was about GMO’s (short for genetically modified organisms.) Joel attacked them from the side of “normal.” Since when, he asked, does a pig cross with a tomato? That's not normal. The equipment just doesn’t work that way. You can light all the candles you want, and play romantic music, but it just doesn’t work. Folks, this ain’t normal. Then he proceeded to the abnormal politics. Since when, he asked, is it normal for it to be illegal for farmers to save their own seed? Since when can a multi-billion dollar corporation tell a farmer that he can’t save the seed he raised because it was polluted with some of the corporation’s pollen? Since when can they put a seed-cleaning business under for supposedly encouraging others to break the law? Joel also mentioned several health risks, but Joel is a storyteller, not a statistician and he didn’t include any studies to back up what he said.
We really enjoyed the book, so it was only natural that when we ran into our organic-loving friend, Sharon, Laverne would tell her all about it.
The next time we saw Sharon was a totally random meeting at a school program. “Hey!” she told us, “I just bought that book for my dad for Christmas.” Then she grinned. “I couldn’t remember the title or the author, so I walked up to an employee and said, ‘I don’t know the title or the author, but I’m looking for a book about a farmer and it has a chicken on the front. . .’ We looked in the homesteading section, and couldn’t find it, so then we looked in the ecology section, and there it was!”
A few months later, when Sharon visited us she told me, “Guess what? My dad’s been reading that book. At first he didn’t really get into it, because he couldn’t see how it would relate to him, but just the other day he told us that he’s not raising GMO this year! He’s raised it for years, but after he read that chapter in Folks, This Ain’t Normal, he decided to quit.”
We were impressed. GMO’s really do make things easier for farmers in some ways. For instance, Roundup Ready corn will survive doses of Round-up that destroy all other plants, making it easy to control weeds with spraying. (At least most of them. The few weeds that do survive will propagate and in a few years we’ll have Round-up Ready weeds too, but that’s another story.) Bt corn doesn’t need to be sprayed at all, because the corn-plant becomes an insecticide manufacturer itself. Every cell produces insecticide, so the bugs don’t bother it. (Yes, you’re right, that does mean that if you eat the plant, even just the seed-head, you are eating insecticide as well. ) For a farmer to decide not to plant GMO corn requires a significant change of mindset and practices.
We still didn’t know much about GMOs though, until someone recently told us that her family might be interested in our chicken if it were GMO-free. Really? People don’t want to eat it for health reasons? Are there any studies that show that this is dangerous? We decided to check it out.
What we found startled us. The most telling was this video. It was full of studies, stories and concerns from respected scientists and researchers all over the world that pointed to major health problems with GMOs. These problems have caused most European nations to ban GMOs entirely.
So. . . why didn’t we hear about this before? Let me tell one story almost verbatim from this video that explains a lot of things.
The U.K. government wanted to prove to the public that GMO's were safe. Dr. Pusztai was selected from the group of 28 scientists who applied. He was one of the world's leading researchers in his field, working in a world-renowned nutritional research institute. He fed GMO potatoes to rats for this experiment. The potatoes were engineered to produce an insecticide. He knew this insecticide was harmless to rats. He'd done previous experiments feeding huge doses of it with no ill results. Still, just to make sure, he fed one group of rats the GMO potato, one group unmodified potatoes, (making this the control group) and one group unmodified potatoes with the insecticide added directly to the diet.
Ready for this? Only those eating the GM potatoes got sick. That's right. The damage included potentially pre-cancerous cells in their digestive tract, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partial atrophy of the liver, and damaged immune systems after only ten days.
When he went public, he was first a hero, for about two days. Then, his institute got a call from the prime minister's office. Two calls. The next day, Dr. Pusztai was fired from his job after 35 years, and silenced with threats of a law-suit. The institute and the government launched a campaign to destroy his reputation, and to protect biotechnology. (GMOs). After 7 months, the gag order was lifted by order of Parliament, and Dr. Pusztai got his data back and went public with it.
Although the results were published in newspapers in the U.K. and Europe, somehow it never got over to the U.S.
Why?
Good question.
Any ideas?
We aren't finished learning about GMOs. We recently ordered several books from the library including Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette. I can't recommend either one, since I haven't read them, but they look like interesting reads.
In the meanwhile, here are things you can do to support natural and normal foods and to protect yourself from potential harm due to GMOs.
1. Eat vegetables. Since veggies are more likely to be planted by home gardeners who just don't like the idea of GMOs, the chemical and biotechnology companies have backed off on GMO veggies for the moment. Having said that, there are still probably lots of GM veggies on the market today because commercial growers won't care as much as back-yard growers. So also. . .
2. Eat local. When you eat local, you can get to know your farmer and ask him or her if they use any genetically modified seeds. You can't do that if your asparagus comes from Peru. (Unless you live in Peru.) Along with this. . .
3. Eat fresh. This is important, because corn and soybean is in almost every processed food you buy at the grocery store. And a huge percentage of the corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. is genetically modified.
4. Eat heirloom. Heirlooms are not genetically modified. Often they're the plants your great-great grandma raised and saved seeds from. They often have amazing taste and textures and shapes and colors. Just check out Baker Creek Seeds.
5. If after learning more about GMOs, you are upset that people make and sell them, remember, you give them the power to do what they do when you pay for their food. You can change this. Even small changes make a big difference. For example, if every person in America ate just one local, organic meal a week, America would use 1.1 million fewer barrels (not gallons, barrels) of oil a week. Small change, big difference.
In the end, I have to think of a cartoon I saw years ago and never forgot. I couldn't find it on-line, so I recreated it as I remembered it. (Apologies to the original artist.)
(“By whom?” says everyone. “By the farmer dude in Food Inc,” I say. “Oohhh!” say half the people. “Let me google Food Inc.” says the other half.)
Joel Salatin is one of our favorite authors, combining an entertaining writing style with provoking ideas, out-side the box thinking and great stories. We bought the book.
It was great! One chapter that really got us talking was about GMO’s (short for genetically modified organisms.) Joel attacked them from the side of “normal.” Since when, he asked, does a pig cross with a tomato? That's not normal. The equipment just doesn’t work that way. You can light all the candles you want, and play romantic music, but it just doesn’t work. Folks, this ain’t normal. Then he proceeded to the abnormal politics. Since when, he asked, is it normal for it to be illegal for farmers to save their own seed? Since when can a multi-billion dollar corporation tell a farmer that he can’t save the seed he raised because it was polluted with some of the corporation’s pollen? Since when can they put a seed-cleaning business under for supposedly encouraging others to break the law? Joel also mentioned several health risks, but Joel is a storyteller, not a statistician and he didn’t include any studies to back up what he said.
We really enjoyed the book, so it was only natural that when we ran into our organic-loving friend, Sharon, Laverne would tell her all about it.
The next time we saw Sharon was a totally random meeting at a school program. “Hey!” she told us, “I just bought that book for my dad for Christmas.” Then she grinned. “I couldn’t remember the title or the author, so I walked up to an employee and said, ‘I don’t know the title or the author, but I’m looking for a book about a farmer and it has a chicken on the front. . .’ We looked in the homesteading section, and couldn’t find it, so then we looked in the ecology section, and there it was!”
A few months later, when Sharon visited us she told me, “Guess what? My dad’s been reading that book. At first he didn’t really get into it, because he couldn’t see how it would relate to him, but just the other day he told us that he’s not raising GMO this year! He’s raised it for years, but after he read that chapter in Folks, This Ain’t Normal, he decided to quit.”
We were impressed. GMO’s really do make things easier for farmers in some ways. For instance, Roundup Ready corn will survive doses of Round-up that destroy all other plants, making it easy to control weeds with spraying. (At least most of them. The few weeds that do survive will propagate and in a few years we’ll have Round-up Ready weeds too, but that’s another story.) Bt corn doesn’t need to be sprayed at all, because the corn-plant becomes an insecticide manufacturer itself. Every cell produces insecticide, so the bugs don’t bother it. (Yes, you’re right, that does mean that if you eat the plant, even just the seed-head, you are eating insecticide as well. ) For a farmer to decide not to plant GMO corn requires a significant change of mindset and practices.
We still didn’t know much about GMOs though, until someone recently told us that her family might be interested in our chicken if it were GMO-free. Really? People don’t want to eat it for health reasons? Are there any studies that show that this is dangerous? We decided to check it out.
What we found startled us. The most telling was this video. It was full of studies, stories and concerns from respected scientists and researchers all over the world that pointed to major health problems with GMOs. These problems have caused most European nations to ban GMOs entirely.
So. . . why didn’t we hear about this before? Let me tell one story almost verbatim from this video that explains a lot of things.
The U.K. government wanted to prove to the public that GMO's were safe. Dr. Pusztai was selected from the group of 28 scientists who applied. He was one of the world's leading researchers in his field, working in a world-renowned nutritional research institute. He fed GMO potatoes to rats for this experiment. The potatoes were engineered to produce an insecticide. He knew this insecticide was harmless to rats. He'd done previous experiments feeding huge doses of it with no ill results. Still, just to make sure, he fed one group of rats the GMO potato, one group unmodified potatoes, (making this the control group) and one group unmodified potatoes with the insecticide added directly to the diet.
Ready for this? Only those eating the GM potatoes got sick. That's right. The damage included potentially pre-cancerous cells in their digestive tract, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partial atrophy of the liver, and damaged immune systems after only ten days.
When he went public, he was first a hero, for about two days. Then, his institute got a call from the prime minister's office. Two calls. The next day, Dr. Pusztai was fired from his job after 35 years, and silenced with threats of a law-suit. The institute and the government launched a campaign to destroy his reputation, and to protect biotechnology. (GMOs). After 7 months, the gag order was lifted by order of Parliament, and Dr. Pusztai got his data back and went public with it.
Although the results were published in newspapers in the U.K. and Europe, somehow it never got over to the U.S.
Why?
Good question.
Any ideas?
We aren't finished learning about GMOs. We recently ordered several books from the library including Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette. I can't recommend either one, since I haven't read them, but they look like interesting reads.
In the meanwhile, here are things you can do to support natural and normal foods and to protect yourself from potential harm due to GMOs.
1. Eat vegetables. Since veggies are more likely to be planted by home gardeners who just don't like the idea of GMOs, the chemical and biotechnology companies have backed off on GMO veggies for the moment. Having said that, there are still probably lots of GM veggies on the market today because commercial growers won't care as much as back-yard growers. So also. . .
2. Eat local. When you eat local, you can get to know your farmer and ask him or her if they use any genetically modified seeds. You can't do that if your asparagus comes from Peru. (Unless you live in Peru.) Along with this. . .
3. Eat fresh. This is important, because corn and soybean is in almost every processed food you buy at the grocery store. And a huge percentage of the corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. is genetically modified.
4. Eat heirloom. Heirlooms are not genetically modified. Often they're the plants your great-great grandma raised and saved seeds from. They often have amazing taste and textures and shapes and colors. Just check out Baker Creek Seeds.
5. If after learning more about GMOs, you are upset that people make and sell them, remember, you give them the power to do what they do when you pay for their food. You can change this. Even small changes make a big difference. For example, if every person in America ate just one local, organic meal a week, America would use 1.1 million fewer barrels (not gallons, barrels) of oil a week. Small change, big difference.
In the end, I have to think of a cartoon I saw years ago and never forgot. I couldn't find it on-line, so I recreated it as I remembered it. (Apologies to the original artist.)
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