Friday, December 7, 2012

Not book related, but important food info

I apologize for posting something not book related, and I'll try to keep this short. I grew up surrounded by corn and soy fields in mid-Illinois and now live surrounded by cattle (raised for meat) and chicken or turkey houses in northern Arkansas. I live on a farm and graduated from college as a BS in Animal Science. Since around 1996, corn and soy (and some other crops) have been genetically engineered to allow farmers to spray herbicides (kills plants) directly on their crops without the crops dying. Another variety are genetically engineered to produce a toxin deadly to insects directly in the food part of the crop so the insects die when they eat it. There are a lot of harmful side-effects from this whole scheme, but now one of the companies making these genetically modified crops wants to sell a variety that will withstand very, very serious poisons because the weeds have become resistant to previous herbicides used with genetically modified crops. This is not the answer to the problem, and it could lead to serious health problems to the farmers spraying the herbicides, to crops nearby on other farms that aren't resistant, and to consumers eating the foods. To learn more, visit this site.

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