By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Personally, I'm rather fond of food. I'm not sure where that started, but it goes way back. Of course, one might argue (as my wife is wont to do) that there is food, and then there is, well, food. Or as she would say, “Fooda.” When we first got together in China, she caught me eating corn flakes for breakfast. I'd found them at the local German-run Metro Market. They were Haines, but hey, they were still good. I was enjoying a bowlful when she came in the kitchen, took one look, and said, “What's that?” It was an accusation, more than a question. Feeling defensive, I explained that corn flakes were an American staple, and I being American, well, never mind. She remained incredulous, that I could eat such insubstantial stuff. “Well,” I protested. “What do you eat for breakfast?” She put her hands on her hips and glared. “Fooda!” she retorted, and stalked off.

I have since developed a taste for healthy Chinese food (as opposed to, say, take-out), having little choice other than dine out. But what I have learned from her is that there is a lot to be said for food that comes from a farm, instead of a factory. Which brings me to this week's topic: corporate food control. Which, unfortunately, a great many of us now take along with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for granted.

Small wonder we have become a nation of obese, indolent, inactive couch potatoes who seem quite complacent about the whole sorry state of our dietary affairs. And while we have been propagandized into imagining that Big Macs are actually good for you (never mind the Amazon forests being clear-cut for the beef and how good that is for the planet), we have also allowed the purse strings and apron strings to be seized by global mega-corporations that are now determining almost everything you eat and drink, and what they can get away with putting in it. And they are also deciding whether or not it should be declared as healthy, based on their own profit-driven motives as opposed to, say, its nutritional value, and they have gotten almost complete control over the government that was once entrusted with protecting our health, instead of just their profits. But that was then. This is now.

Recently, Time magazine described current farm policy as "a welfare program for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals; and depopulate rural America." And, as has been recently disclosed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), between 2003 and 2006, millionaire corporate farmers received almost $50 million in crop subsidies, even though they earned more than the $2.5 million cutoff for such subsidies. In a speech given at the end of 2008, President Obama stated that this was a prime example of the kind of waste he intends to end when he takes office. If only.

Unfortunately for the American small farmer, not to mention those of us who, well, eat, our new Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has been a strong supporter of genetically engineered crops, including bio-pharmaceutical corn. The biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, named Iowa Governor Vilsack Governor of the Year prior to Obama's appointment. The 2005 seed preemption bill was Vilsack’s brainchild. The law strips local government’s right to regulate genetically engineered seed (including where GE can be grown, maintaining GE-free buffers or banning pharma corn locally). Vilsack is an ardent supporter of corn and soy-based biofuels, which use as much or more fossil fuel energy to produce them as they generate, while driving up world food prices and literally starving the poor. Vilsack has been a supporter of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), or factory farms, and promoting animal cloning. And worst of all, he has been in the employ and under the thumb of biotech giants like Monsanto, and has been reported to have frequently flown in Monsanto’s corporate jet. But that's not all. Take the new senior advisor to head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Michael Taylor (please!). Taylor is a former vice president of public policy and chief lobbyist at Monsanto Company. He is the person who “oversaw the creation of GMO policy,” according to Seeds of Destruction author Jeffrey Smith (see below). Nice to have friends in high places, no doubt, like Sen. Tom Harkin, prominent on the Senate Finance Committee as of late for his tirades against public healthcare (but then it's not surprising that a supporter of corporate controlled food would also support corporate controlled healthcare).

In addition to pushing GM foods onto Americans’ plates (with no required safety studies), Taylor also oversaw the policy regarding Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH/rbST). This growth hormone has been banned in Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand because of cancer risks and other health concerns, like giving some men bigger breasts than their wives for example, not to mention rendering them impotent. This drug was rubber stamped and approved in the United States while Taylor was in charge at the FDA.

Another Monsanto operative now in a high position in Washington is Sharon Long, former member of Monsanto’s board of directors and part of Obama’s scientific advisory team during the election/campaign. Monsanto is to food what Exxon is to fuel, only more so. Here are some of their recent accomplishments in furthering their goal of global intake control and domination:

a. Leading the world into a new age of potentially hazardous genetic modification of seeds.

b. Patenting not only their own GMO seeds, but also a huge number of crop seeds, patenting life forms for the first time – without a vote of the people or Congress. Not to mention bypassing God.

c. Forbidding at threat of arrest any and all farmers worldwide from saving their seeds to replant the next year – a practice that goes back to ancient Mesopotamia. Instead, they aggressively seek out and sue farmers they suspect of doing so. In other words, they have decided they are more powerful than God.

d. Suing farmers unable to avoid the inevitable drift of Monsanto’s GE pollen or seed onto their land for patent infringement. Maybe the air you breathe is next on their agenda.

e. Producing two of the most toxic substances ever known – polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, and dioxin (Agent Orange).

Worst of all, however, might be Monsanto's absolutely Machiavellian scheme for ultimate control over your food supply with their well-named “terminator technology.” These are patented seeds that have been genetically modified to “self-destruct.” In other words, the seeds (and the forthcoming crops) are sterile, which means farmers must buy the seeds from Monsanto only, again year after year, forever. The implications that terminator seeds could have on the world’s food supply are catastrophic: the traits from genetically engineered crops can get passed on to other crops. Once these terminator seeds are released into an agricultural region, this seed sterility could be passed to other non-genetically-engineered crops, making most or all of the seeds in the region sterile. If this is allowed to continue, every farmer in the world will be forced to rely on Monsanto for their seed supply. And that, of course, is their plan.

So far, so good, as the optimist said, when he fell from the top of the building and watched the ground draw closer...

Sources

Jeffrey Smith, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating became the world’s bestselling and # 1 rated book on GMOs. His second book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, is the authoritative work that presents irrefutable evidence that GMOs are harmful. Excerpts reprinted from Mercola.com

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His latest book is A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China. He can be found at: www.geneayres.org.