Green Living
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Help With the GMO Acronym
Pardon my ignorance. I finally figured out that EF is ecofriendly. What is GMO? Thanks.
Re: Help With the GMO Acronym
Oh gosh, no pardoning needed! Ask anything, there are no dumb questions! Well ok, there are, but you can ask those too!
GMO = genetically-modified organisms
related GE = genetically-engineered and GM = genetically modified, although we tend to just use GMO on this board.
The Future of Food is a good documentary you can watch online that talks about a lot of the issues and the website has additional resources http://www.thefutureoffood.com/
LOL! That one is new to me!
Well, not so much cloning sheep as taking a 'host' organism, like e.coli (seriously) and genetically modifiying it so that its not going to cause disease in you (hopefully) and instead carries a desired trait, generally being immune to Roundup. Then they splice that into something like corn, so that then farmers can then just indiscriminately spray the heck out of their fields. Yay.
So the company that owns Roundup, sells a lot of these seeds to encourage people spraying the hell out of it all over.
There are a lot of concerns with GMOs, beyond increased pesticides. They are creating superweeds, like supergerms in hospitals (like MRSA), they have shown to have serious health effects, they don't stay contained, they wipe out native species, and Monsanto, the company who owns Roundup, also patented (I believe) the terminator gene, which would allow them to make it so the seeds they make don't produce fertile seeds, meaning that you have to buy new seeds. The problem is that these spread to other plants, so this could have a horrible outcome if ever loosed.
Like Alisha said, please ask! We're happy to answer any questions you have.
Genetic engineering or genetic modification (GM) of food involves the laboratory process of artificially inserting genes into the DNA of food crops or animals. The result is called a genetically modified organism, or GMO. GMOs can be engineering with genes from bacteria, viruses, insetcs, animals, or even humans. For example, conventional tomatoes are genetically engineered with fish genes that prevent the tomato from bruising during transport.
A little background on what GM food actually is: GM corn, soy, canola, cotton, and sugar are engineered to produce their own built-in pesticide in every cell. When bugs bite the plant, the poison splits open their stomach and kills them. Biotech companies (like Monsanto) claim that the pesticide, called Bt?produced from soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis?has a history of safe use, since organic farmers and others use Bt bacteria spray for natural insect control. Genetic engineers insert Bt genes into corn and cotton, so the plants do the killing. There's also a second kind of GM food that are genetically engineering to tolerate the weedkiller Roundup, so the farmer can spray their entire crop with Roundup, killing the weeds but not the crop.
The Bt-toxin produced in GM plants, however, is thousands of times more concentrated than natural Bt spray, is designed to be more toxic, has properties of an allergen, and unlike the spray, cannot be washed off the plant. Same goes for the Roundup genes in "Roundup Ready" GMO crops.
Moreover, studies confirm that even the less toxic natural bacterial spray is harmful. When dispersed by plane to kill gypsy moths in the Pacific Northwest, about 500 people reported allergy or flu-like symptoms. Some had to go to the emergency room.
The exact same symptoms are now being reported by farm workers throughout India, from handling Bt cotton. In 2008, based on medical records, the Sunday India reported, ?Victims of itching have increased massively this year . . . related to BT cotton farming.?
Farmers have been tricked by Monsanto into thinking GMO crops are the way to go. Corn and soy are heavily subsidized by the government, this allows farmers to produce these crops at below the cost of production. They then send the GMO corn to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to feed cows, chickens, and pigs.
However, GMO crops like corn are patented by Monsanto, so farmers cannot keep their own seeds to use the following year, they must buy more from Monsanto. GMO pollen also blows in the wind and gets transferred to non-GMO farms. Monsanto comes in and says "you have our property on your farm" and sue the farmer for patent infringement. Monsanto has been ruining farmers who don't buy their products this way for years.
So not only are GMOs harmful to your health, they also ruin crop diversity and Monsanto is putting the very few remaining farmers (97% of soybeans in the US are GMO) out of business.
PLEASE read this article, some of the things that have happened worldwide from GMO food is just disgusting, and I can't believe we're eating this stuff!
http://blogs.healthfreedomalliance.org/blog/2009/07/01/doctors-warn-avoid-genetically-modified-food-2/
Here's a whole bunch of articles on GM food concerns from the Organic and Non-GMO Report
http://www.non-gmoreport.com/genetically_modified_food_news/gm_food_concerns.php
Hence my siggie pic, HELL NO GMOs!