Post 1.18 - Frankenfood
I hope to be back to my recipes for next week's post, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about home gardening, especially in regards to some recent items in the news, namely, the continuing controversy over Monsanto and related companies with respect to genetically-engineered foods. In a nutshell, industrial food interests have continually and successfully lobbied the USFDA and governments in other countries to avoid having to identify which foods have been genetically-engineered, denying consumers any choice in the matter. Foods are modified primarily to make them resistant to pests, but it doesn't end there. Some seeds are modified with a so-called "terminator" gene, which results in the adult plant not producing viable seeds to be replanted, forcing the farmer to repurchase new seeds for a new harvest. However, there is now evidence that some genetic modifications result in damage to benign species. The collapse of honeybee populations has been investigated fo...