GMO’s…scary, scary stuff.

As a Libertarian I want an informed public, a free public, a public who have the right to choose what they do and do not put into their bodies so I want to say that I am all for labeling foods if they have content that is based on GMO products. I really do…but I can’t. The reason I can’t is that the reason that all of the anti-GMO groups want labeling IS NOT to create an informed public. No, the anti-GMO groups want a scared-to-death public so that when they see a GMO label they do not buy the product. They want to destroy companies like Monsanto, like Archer Daniels Midland, etc. because they are philosophically against corporations growing food. Period. They want us to return to a largely agrarian society without thinking that with the size and makeup of our world, this is simply impossible. I repeat, this cannot be done and if we try we are sentences billions of people to injury and death.

GMO’s, Genetically Modified Organisms, sound scary, even to someone like me who reads and researches stuff like this. I wonder how utterly terrifying it sounds to someone who barely made it out of our magnificent school systems. To people who cannot place Iraq on a world map or who cannot tell you their state senators or congressmen. To people who believe that vaccines cause autism because some TV celebrity with a great rack told them it was true versus the hundreds of scientific studies that say otherwise. I’m sure it sounds like Frankenstein food or the Blob growing out of control destroying life as we know it on this planet.

It is not either of those.

GMO’s increase food yields and decrease the amounts of pesticides required…sometimes they work really well and sometimes they don’t work at all but it is science, food science, that is attempting to help feed a planet of almost 7 billion where fully two thirds live in places where food just doesn’t grow well. Where access to an adequate amount of daily protein is simply not a reality. Where people lose their sight or are severely debilitated due to the lack of adequate protein or key vitamins and minerals in their diets. Places where people who do not have the wherewithal to just pick up and move places where adequate food exists.

These food science organizations, Monsanto, Archer Denials Midland, etc., are not angels and are not in their businesses to be charitable but they do provide a necessary and needed service to the planet and that is that they have the capitol and experience and expertise to try to figure out how to wring one more ton per acre, how to add a lifesaving element to an existing crop…how to allow people to continue to live in their lands and not die out from lack of adequate foods. They are corporations, yes, huge corporations making billions and billions of dollars a year but they have found that their expertise is to grow, package and deliver shit loads of food. Period.

Without them, you’d pay $10 for a gallon of milk, $8 for a dozen eggs, $40 a pound for hamburger and on and on because they have invested billions of dollars to create the manufacturing and delivery infrastructure that puts food in the supermarkets and grocery stores and allows people to eat food where they live versus having to travel to where it is grown. We pay so little at the store now—and yes, we pay very little compared to the past—simply because those huge conglomerates invested their money in order for us to do so. They invested with the hope that they would make a profit. That’s called business.

On the other hand there are organizations on this planet who don’t really care about feeding people here and on the other side of the world and whether they get an adequate amount of protein daily or if they go blind from lack of certain vitamins. Their political agenda makes it so that they just don’t care, they are blinded to reality by their fervent belief that GMO’s are wrong, in any and all forms. Anti GMO groups who want those labels are not doing it because they truly want an informed public, they are doing it to forward their agenda which is the complete banishment of any GMO or hybridized food product. Without the profit derived from these foods, the corporations will fail so these groups literally want us all to deconstruct our cities and move and live in the country in small agrarian enclaves where sustainable foods are grown for local only use.

It’s a fairytale but the only way they can get you to join them is to scare the living fuck out of you.