I've probably watched this documentary at least five times. At one point in my life, I was very interested in how the food we eat was made. It was a shock, to say the least. My grandfather was a dairy farmer, and so I always had a sense that livestock farms were these picturesque locales on the side of the road, with red barns. I was naive, to say the least. I had some disposition to the material because of my experience in business.
I used to work for the Monsanto Company. **but BEFORE I'm burned at the stake, I need to make some things clear!**
I was totally on board with their genetically modified foods program, without which, many people would not have the same amount of food available. Having said that, there are dangers in performing the types of modifications that they were attempting. I never liked the thought of assuming these foods were automatically safe. Testing, neither in the short or long term, was ever done to establish these practices. The type of genes that are being explored are not conducive to diverse plant life. A simple search of the Gene Use Restriction Technology or GURT will explain these issues in full detail. They are basically genes which "turn off" the natural reproductive cycle in a given crop. While Monsanto has publicly denounced research and funding for this project since 1999 (see link below), it has become one more issue to get around. Instead of modifying their patented seeds to turn off, they have rewired the seeds to essentially do the same thing once activated by their RoundUp counterpart. This means that plant genetics are being mutated at an alarming rate.
"How?" you ask... This gets very technical, but basically the only way to genetically alter some plants is through the spreading of a virus. So the plant's genetics are being infiltrated by various strains of E. coli. This ensures that genetic mutation is happening and producing the results they desire. This goes beyond a question of ethics for me. I don't agree with their practice, but more importantly, the almost blatant disregard for any kind of safety testing. We may not fully understand the ramifications of what this could do to our bodies, let alone the ecological system upon which we are dependent. For this reason, the media has dubbed this genetic modification as the Terminator Gene (in the case of modified seeds themselves, not post-treated). Once a seed has been treated, it will no longer reproduce. But much like the once diverse plant life that covered the Earth for millions of years, we now face the possibility that these man-made mutations could spread naturally through the pollination process, and through other means. This is all public information, so this is nothing new, but few people actually explore the methods used to accomplish the ends of "more food."
To me, this is one of the few issues that I do advocate government intervention for. The problem is, we already have an agency for this. If you trace the revolving door of the Food and Drug Administration, you will find that many of them either were or are Monsanto executives/vice versa. This is alarming for a number of reasons, but my rationale is this: we have a military who is sworn to protect us from all enemies, foreign AND domestic. The question becomes, does this constitute a domestic threat? As long as the scientists whose work is being funded, in part, by the same companies making these GMO's, how will policy ever be effective? If you go to the FDA website, you will see that they are much more interested in what types of technology will be available to us in the future to combat failures of the body, rather than a proactive stance that might prevent these failures in the first place. It always comes down to money, and whether or not replacing a system is cheaper than inventing (and selling) the solution.
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/terminator-seeds.aspx
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