What’s up with our food?
Published 6 months, 2 weeks ago in My life.When you become a parent you always become a bit more conscious about the food we eat and what you’re putting into our kids. So I was dismayed to find out that the Victorian Government is allowing genetically modified food to be planted and let into our environment with such minimal testing and safety regulations.
It appears to me (and I’ve done a lot of personal research on these issues) that the government is relying on research results from the industry to say that this food is safe to eat. There has been no independent research in Australia about the effects of GMOs in our environment, none! And the only research that has been done about the safety of GMOs as a food has been short food trials on rats and none of these have been intergenerational.
Given that the bottom line of the industry is profit and not the safety of our public and our environment, surely we shouldn’t be relying on their word?
Our politicians seem to be remarkably eager to support this industry but they don’t seem to be asking any of the questions that we would expect them to be asking. Like, who’s accountable if GMO crops spread into non-GMO areas? In America, non-GMO farmers have been sued by big agro-companies like Monsanto because GM crops have appeared on their farms. Which means these small farmers go bust. What are our politicians doing to protect our farmers who chose not to plant GM crops?
And what happens if there are major health effects? Who’s going to pay for it? The companies? I doubt it.
I think it’s incredible that we have such rigorous independent safety testing for pharmaceuticals yet when it comes to our food, we have limited regulations and mostly rely on industry-sponsored research.
I’m not anti-technology, far from it. I love the fact that Victoria is producing world leading scientists and research on organic food and sustainable energy. I am just against using our children as guinea pigs for unproven technology.
3 Responses to “What's up with our food?”
Leave a Reply
Your reply will not appear on the site until it has been approved
Just had to comment: “we have such rigorous independent safety testing for pharmaceuticals” hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa - yeah right. Pretty much all the testing done is funded by the pharmaceutical companies themselves. And gee, what a surprise, its pretty biaised. I was just listening to a review of a book about this on Radio National a couple of weeks ago. No small wonder that the same applies to GM foods. And with all the world-wide panic about food shortages at the moment, pro-GM farmers have an easy argument. What you can do is collect signatures for a protest petition, lobby your local MP, see if you can convince all the local parents of your argument and get a grassroots protest going. There might even be one mobilised already somewhere. Let us know if there is!
Its been happening for quite a while………where have you been?
yeah the grassroots movement of mothers is called MAdGE or Mothers (and others) Against Genetic Modification. You can visit their website at www.madge.org.au Madge works hard amongst many communities to educate ourselves on these issues and to lobby the politicians. MAdGE members also do some great work putting pressure on companies to keep our food GE Free. There’s no money in GM farming if there’s no customers to buy it.
And yes, I was being a bit generous when calling pharmaceutical testing independent and rigorous. But at least they do research. Some of the GM food recently approved by FSANZ has had NO feeding trials what so ever. Craziness.
Thanks for your comments. Nice to know I’m not alone in this community!