No one is saying you have to be vegan or a saint. But as you said it, people should have a choice. And that's the key. People should be able to know what is in their food and what dangers they are being exposed to so they are empowered to make a choice. If people are ok with eating some herbicides laced food and are ok that the workers there are getting exposed to unsafe levels of these chemicals (as it is showing up in their blood and urine) than that's ok. Really it is. But some people would like to be able to make informed choices, and I don't see what's wrong with that at all or why people argue against people having that choice.
How is it an agenda with one post up about herbicides? All of a sudden I am an ATW with his 5,432 threads about how Islam is evil or Basso with his Liberals are evil thread. I am in favor of labeling foods as GMO and people think that's ridiculous and equate it to being anti-vax! Here is an example why labeling is important. I actually don't have a problem with GMO as a technology, it's companies like Monsanto that I don't trust. If you want to know why it's because of things like this: http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-lawsuits-gmo-wheat-603/ When they f'd American farmers with their recklessness or for even worse crazy stuff: from wikipedia. This company is a very dark corporate entity. And you can trust them if you choose to. That's fine.
Yup. That makes it okay to keep consuming them. Of course it's true that you can't force people to change their choices...but at the same time a lot of the masses just don't know any better. They are only concerned about cost. How we can make a change is by changing the environment of food around us. Honest labeling, subsidies on food that actually is healthy..less advertisement about sh***y food every time I turn on the TV. One of my Australian buddies came to visit the US and after being here for a week he goes...man there's a LOT OF advertisements about food here. I am being exposed to a lot more junk food at work now that I am back at a cubicle based job. It's very hard to resist not grabbing a cookie or some snack when you see it. You think anyone wants to be obese? They just don't realize how they are getting obese.
The carbon on toasted bread is carcinogenic. So basically unless you eat toast with no brown at all, you are eating carcinogens. Same is true for dairy products. Milk, butter, cheese... all carcinogenic. Basically unless you subsist on raw nuts and berries gathered in the wild, you are eating carcinogens. As soon as you are born, you are going to die. Oh, oxygen and sunlight are both carcinogenic as well..
This is not true. It's not the carbon on toasted bread, it's the amount of acrylamide created. The more you heat food the more acrylamide you create after a certain point. Toast isn't likely to have much acrylamide. But if you char it, it will. Milk products are shown to fight cancer overall. This is just an incorrect statement. I see what you are doing here. You are saying people are overly paranoid about eating unhealthy things and you can't avoid them. That's not the point that is being made. The point is in avoiding additional unnecessary carcinogens and realizing that it's good to be aware of what you are putting in your body. Cancer is rarely caused by one exposure to one toxin, they are finding it is a cumulative effect. Enough mutations in cells will eventually overwhelm your bodies ability to prevent cancer. No one is saying live in paranoia but just be aware of what's going on here and the relationships between chemicals and the impact they have on your body.
Ottomaton is a smart dude, but the old "where all going to die one day" argument is way too simple of a statement. Most use it because they refuse to take responsibility of their own health, same statement as saying "When our time has come our time has come" type thing. There's a big difference in peacefully dying of old age at 90, and dying a painful disease ridden death in your late 50's. And yes, there's no promise of which way we will die, no matter what life style you choose. But chance is real.
I can provide links to all the statements I made if necessary. From personal experience, glyphosate breaks down incredibly fast in water. You can kill a bunch of **** one day, and literally two or three days later it is inactive and you can grow stuff in that soil with no problems. My point was more about qualitative vs quantitative statements and confirmation bias. The world is full of things that damage DNA. Another example would be gasoline fumes every time you fill up the tank. But I evaluate the relative risk based on my need for fuel, and my limited exposure. Monsanto + carcinogens is an easy button to push to cause people to freak out. What I would like, instead, is a relative risk assessment placing normal exposure to glyphosate on a relative scale somewhere between painting radium paint on glow in the dark watch dials, working in a building with asbestos insulation, being around smokers in public, and eating burnt toast every couple of weeks. I don't think you can provide me that data, but it seems your post assumes the risk are more towards the dire doom and gloom end of the scale, but I think you are skipping a billion steps between "material x can be dangerous" and... <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aCbfMkh940Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> My guess is that most people should probably worry about eating less fast food and more fresh vegetables in reasonably sized portions before worrying about this. The guy smoking a cigarette before entering a health food store always cracks me up.
The workers who are spraying that stuff are absorbing it through their skin and it's being found in their blood and urine. So it's not breaking down fast enough for them. I would think that the risk to them is probably greater than that of eating burnt toast every few weeks. Maybe the risk to us an individuals is incredibly small but I do think we should be informed if only to understand the impact our decisions have on others. Call me insane but I was one of those guys who didn't buy Nikes when they used child labor. And I think the company made changes because of it and I went back to buying Air Jordans. It's not that it negatively impacts myself but that I don't want to support a company that exploits others. And therefore there is a reason I want to know if my food is from a GMO company like Monsanto.
From Norman Borlaug: [rquoter] some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels...If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things. [/rquoter] Your criticism of danger to workers applies to pretty much every pesticide ever. That is the tradeoff farm workers make so that we are almost able to produce enough food to feed the world. But we absolutely can eliminate any pesticide ever. Your just going to reduce crop yield by about 50% and maybe 1/3 of the current world population will starve to death. But for that small price you won't ever have to eat anything touched by evil Monsanto again. I tell you what, you go around, look them in the eyes, and explain to those 2 billion, 400 million people that they are going to get to starve to death so you can have pristine, un-Monsanto'ed food and I'll throw my support behind you 100%. Personally, I have a hard time even visualizing how many people that would be, but I'm sure it is that important that evil corporations don't increase crop yield.
Except hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. There is already enough food to feed 10+ billion people, yet a billion people out of 7 billion people starve every year. While at the same time, there are also over 2 billion obese people as of today. What needs to be fixed to me, is the farming techniques. Starving nations with infertile land need to be educated on how to grow sustainable food organically, which is free. Not become hooked and dependent on gmo's, chemical pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers which will all cost the poor money they certainty do not have, while at the same time destroys the soil and biodiversity. Here is a video talking about land restoration, it's pretty amazing. Hope you, and others have time to watch. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YBLZmwlPa8A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Woops, I didn't mean to embed it from the midpoint. If anybody has time to watch (Its worth the time) start from beginning.
Why not simply mark it as it is ... why the fuss about labeling it what it is? If it is GMO . . why not label it as such and LET THE CONSUMER DECIDE? Rocket River
Simple question: why do you believe farmers use GMO crops? Do they save money? Do they increase yield? Are they just stupid?
Lack of education on how to grow a sustainable crop, garden and farm is certainly an issue, lack of education about the importance of soil and biodiversity, and lack of education on valuable farming techniques and technologies. If they are unaware of any of these solutions, and have miserable crops due to poor farming techniques, what other options do they have but perhaps sign contracts with Monsanto to grow some magic crops that unnaturally squeeze a little bit more out of their dead lands. It's a band aid fix that destroys the land and puts farmers in debt.
Food production levels are a direct result of green revolution technologies. 100 years ago, people were starving because yields were fractional of what they are now and much as I hate it, there is more efficiency in industrial farming. Seriously, do some reading about Norman Borlaug and the green revolution and how completely the world was changed by these evil technologies. The man won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work. And actually the biggest cause of waste is logistics, which, of course isn't as sexy as blaming poverty. The real sin with GM'S has nothing to do with cancer. It is the fact that these ass holes use patents to try and take a toll on every plant grown. They plan to try and do the same with drinking water, btw.
