Ignorance is bliss. Those words might be "true" for countless life situations...but never when it comes to food and anything else you may put in or on your body, or what we do to the environment, for that matter.
I may not want to know what goes on behind the closed doors of upper management at my job. I might be happier not knowing some of my family history and scandals. And I might be happy handing my car over for service and saying "whatever it takes." BUT, I must say that I am completely fed up with companies, corporations, lobbyists and government officials making decisions (or should I say taking decisions away) that affect food sources of millions of humans and animals, not to mention those decisions that fail to take the environment and our collective health into consideration. The fact that these "powers that be" make these decisions--decisions that have long-term and irrevocable impact on our health and that of local ecosystems--and are able to do so without consulting the voting public is completely beyond me and is one of the few situations in life that really make my blood boil.
In most urban environments, and even in a lot of suburban neighborhoods, people are often limited or prohibited from growing their own food, weather it be gardens for vegetables or chickens for eggs. (God forbid the neighbors be woken up by a crowing rooster.) But, get a bunch of industry leaders, lobbyists, and policy-makers together in one room, and they're likely to cause more damage to the environment (environments that they themselves have rarely, if ever, had the pleasure of experiencing) than an entire city full of backyard chickens and gardens.
The recent decision by President Obama to allow for the UN-regulated use of genetically modified alfalfa is cause for alarm and action. Speak about change all you want, I think it's about time we change the fact that it's lobbyists and corporations who are directly influencing our health in a negative way. It would be one thing if they were "up there" deciding to do away with harmful pesticides, keeping our water and air free from pollution, and keeping only pure healthy food on our grocers' shelves. But the fact is, they're not. Are they truly ignorant of the long-reaching effects of GM alfalfa on our entire ecosystem? The fact that it renders the term "organic" meaningless for anything that's come in contact with the stuff?
The day I find out Monsanto is contributing to Obama's re-election campaign fund, I seriously might flip out.
The more globalized our world becomes, the more obvious it is that everything is connected. It might come as a surprise to some folks that GM alfalfa would have any impact on their lives whatsoever. But, tell that to the scientists studying the connection between Monsanto's genetically engineered "roundup ready" corn and soybeans:
A plant pathologist experienced in protecting against biological warfare recently warned the USDA of a new, self-replicating, micro-fungal virus-sized organism which may be causing spontaneous abortions in livestock, sudden death syndrome in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, and wilt in Monsanto’s RR corn.
I'm sorry, but that paragraph alone gave me chills to think about even continuing reading the article--you mean there's more?
Basically, what it all boils down to on this Earth Day is that consumers need to start educating themselves (and allowing themselves to be educated); we need to start acting on the information as we learn from it, making decisions to not buy and not tolerate harmful, toxic foods and organisms in our grocery stores and restaurants--and we need to let Uncle Sam know that we know and we won't tolerate decisions made that are not in the interest of the greater good of all living things.
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