GMO Protest a Resounding Success
Saturday, May 25, 2013 @ 12:48 PM
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(GMO protesters gathered at City Hall before marching on George Street. Photos – 250NEWS)
Prince George, B.C. – Anyone who might have the impression that people in Prince George are not acutely aware of, and seriously concerned about what is being done to North America’s food supplies would be sadly mistaken.
At the risk of dating oneself, the March Against Monsanto, the world’s largest producer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), was totally reminiscent of the protest rallies and marches of the ‘60s. There was the lady at the megaphone drawing attention to the reason for the protest. Protest songs, including some great Bob Marley stuff, emanating from the speakers in the van, welcoming those who chose to turn out.
They at first gathered slowly on the grounds of Prince George City Hall, but as the 11 am starting time of the March drew near, the pace of arrivals increased significantly as young people, old people, singles, couples, grandparents with their grandkids, a few old soldiers from the hippie days and interested bystanders congregated at the Hall.
But by far the “group” most heavily represented was that of young families, mothers, fathers and young children. It was very apparent that Ma and Pop have great concerns about the foods that will be available for their children to eat as they make their way through the 21st century.
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By the time the March began there were several hundred people who had come out to join the global protest against Monsanto, a protest that stretches to 64 countries where GMOs are either banned or labelled. Neither Canada nor the United States, however, has taken those steps. The protesters carried signs with all sorts of slogans including “Stop Poisoning Me”, “Say No To GMO” and “Stop Monsanto”. They marched to halt GM food approvals, stop GM contamination, to call for long-term health testing on GM food, demand GM labeling on all GM-derived food, for farmer protection legislation, for the right to save seeds, and to demand transparency and accountability. As the anti-Monsanto movement says, “We are not a science experiment.”
The Prince George March Against Monsanto proceeded from City Hall along George Street, with participants covering a full city block, went to the Farmer’s Market, community garden and wound up at Millennium Park on 1st Avenue. Organizer Karmjeet Manhas had expected about 300 people to take part in the march, but his expectations were, no doubt pleasantly, under-estimated. A sure indication that people in Prince George want to have a say in the issues that directly impact their lives.
Comments
I guess this is a good reason to buy from local farmers, like the Northern farms, which is just outside of P.G. and of coarse buying organic is safe, and I have noticed it tastes my better!!
Say no to GMO and Enbridge :) Hey… if I’m going to protest it may as well be for a couple of causes :D
Is Outrage Over the Monsanto Protection Act a Turning Point for the Food Movement?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-simon/monsanto-protection-act_b_3327270.html
More coverage of the worldwide event:
http://rt.com/news/march-against-monsanto-gmo-776/
Posted by: BCRacer on May 25 2013 1:46 PM
It is easy, if you don’t like it… don’t eat it…. some protests leave a lot to be desired…. it is all about choices….
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That’s the point BCRacer, with Monsanto there is NO choice, NO accountability to the public, the environment or human health.
BCRacer@The problem is that you don’t know if you are eating GMO foods if they aren’t labelled. Unlike some of the protesters, it appears to me that the evidence that there is anything dangerous about GMO foods is very weak. There’s really no reason to think that they are any more likely to be unhealthy than naturally bred varieties. My concerns about GMOs have more to do with the excessive control that they give companies like Monsanto and with the loss of crop variety, which in the long run poses terrible risks for our overall food production and economy.
People should, however, be able to choose what foods they eat, whether for health-based reasons or for other reasons, sound or ill-founded. That means that foods should be labelled as to whether they contain GMOs, and that our food production system can’t be allowed to mix foods from different sources willy-nilly, without making it possible for the consumer to make intelligent choices and for public health experts to trace the source of problems.
And despite GMO foods, people are living longer than they ever have. It can’t be all that bad.
“was totally reminiscent of the protest rallies and marches of the â60s.”
…….with one major difference the Frankenherbs in the pockets of today’s protesters are nothing like the mild varieties carried by the hippies of the 60’s ,Maui Wowie:)
Now that the Mark Emery is in jail has Monsanto gone into that seed business too?
Cancer rates are rising JB, we already know that environmental conditions can contribute to cancer, just ask anyone who worked in an asbestos mine.
Is it that impossible to think it may be in something that we eat? BPA, HMO who knows?
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20111124/Harmful-BPA-found-in-canned-foods.aspx
Doh! GMO not HMO, what the hell is HMO? LOL… hey what the hell is LOL?
If you search around the interwebs, everything ‘may’ have some harmful effect. You can wear a tinfoil hat and hide under the covers, or live your life with common sense and moderation.
Oh I don’t know JB, if scientific studies are undertaken, and control study tests, with rats result in high cancer rates when given the chemical BPA, what would the logical conclusion be? If BPA kills rats, should we be feeding it to our babies, or using it to line the cans of food we give to our babies?
I am glad some people care about what corporations, in pursuit of the almighty dollar, are trying to “spoon feeding” us!
Gregor Mendel started GMO. Think about it before you light your hair on fire.
I guess the key is being able to filter what you see and hear. Every week it seems, the media is trotting out some new threat to humanity.
” Every week it seems, the media is trotting out some new threat to humanity.”
The media is entrusted to report to the public on issues that affect humanity. Putting your head in the sand and mimicking an ostrich doesn’t RESOLVE problems. You, JB, may ignore and filter whatever you choose but there are those of us who like the idea of freedom and human sovereignty and WE stand up to those who desire to infringe upon those human freedoms and rights.
One is free to do nothing of course but don’t criticise those that stand up for what they believe in. It is people like those who marched today, that not only envision a better world for all but also ACT.
Change doesn’t occur by blind acceptance of the status quo. Change takes courage.
BCRacer, it is scary. Monsanto is the same company the developed Agent Orange. Move through the fear and recognize that this company is preventing natural food sources. There is a difference between hybrids and GMO. There is a reason other countries BANNED GMO.
Genetic modification has not been proven safe for human consumption. RNA modifications are highly unstable and can change your DNA by ingestion. Biotechnology itself needs regulation and stringent studies – independent studies. All food must be labelled.
Research people. This conglomerate isn’t going away. The public deserves protection from corporate interests. Monsanto has a poor track record on being a socially and environmentally responsible company.
“…..a resounding success”? In what way? Be specific. Snappy headline anyway.
It’s the combinations of food additives that kill people. What one persons physiology can handle, another can’t. That’s the main reason a lot more people have cancer. Fast food, frozen food in a microwave, convenience. Humans are stupid when it comes to checking out their own maps to determine what’s right and wrong for them.
There’s a documentary out called Food Inc. take a watch & see what the big deal about GMO’s, processed foods, monster feedlots & Monsanto is all about.
If BPA kills rats
Just about anything will kill ya if used at the levels used in BPA tests.
“After rising for nearly three decades, deaths due to cancer fell in Canada and in most peer countries in the 1990s. The number has continued to decrease, but not as quickly in Canada as in some other countries. In 1997, for example, the U.S. and Canada experienced an almost equal number of deaths due to cancer, at 178 and 177 per 100,000 people, respectively. But the U.S. rate has since decreased much more quickly, resulting in a considerable gap between Canadian and U.S. cancer mortality rates.”
Life style folks, life style.
seamutt; yes deaths due to cancer are falling in Canada, but that is because of new and better treatments being available, and education awareness programs.
The incidents of cancer is rising for some forms of cancer, such as kidney cancer, etc. More people are getting cancer, but less are dying because of better and more effective treatments.
When kidney cancer rates start increasing as much as they have been, maybe it’s in something that we are drinking or eating?
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cd-mc/cancer/ccs-scc-2012-eng.php
There are several reasons beyond health risk that some countries have restricted gmo foods. Some are purely trade orientated. European restrictions have a basis in protecting there own industries. Not unlike labeling oilsands as “dirty”, thereby favoring other suppliers. Monsanto is a bully, but food genetics has been a huge boon to global food supplies. Going forward, this needs to occur to feed the explosive global population growth.
This stuff is scary….. a new pattern baldness though GMO cucumbers!!!!
http://www.thelapine.ca/monsanto-cucumbers-cause-genital-baldness-immediately-banned-nova-scotia
Seen written on another blog on Monsanto genetically modified seeds:
“I wonder, wouldnât swallowing RNA that would then produce a permanent, inheritable change to human DNA be just about the biggest medical breakthrough of the century?
The fact that GMO wheat will kill you and all of your ancestors would be insignificant in comparison to the potential benefit of such a technology.”
everythings a poison, nothings a poison, its the dosage that counts.
Everything in moderation except sex?
commoner: “The media is entrusted to report to the public on issues that affect humanity. Putting your head in the sand and mimicking an ostrich doesn’t RESOLVE problems. You, JB, may ignore and filter whatever you choose but there are those of us who like the idea of freedom and human sovereignty and WE stand up to those who desire to infringe upon those human freedoms and rights. “
I’m not sure how running around like chicken little solves anything either. The media wants to get your attention, and if scare tactics are the only way, so be it.
I seem to recall a controversy over tax dollars and a greenhouse in Nova Scotia. I did not realize that they were producing a Brazilian wax variety of cucumber, i will avoid that one on supermarket shelves.
It is scarey when plants have genes inserted to make them immune to chemicals such as Round-up, absorb them without harm and pass them on to those consuming them.
“It is scarey when plants have genes inserted to make them immune to chemicals such as Round-up, absorb them without harm and pass them on to those consuming them.”
Sort of like altering the genes of grasses which, when fed to cattle will allow the growth hormones to do their work but be rendered neutral when the meat from the slaughtered cattle is eaten by humans.
I need an altered grass seed which is immune to an herbicide that kills all other plants in my lawn. Wonder if there is such a seed. The City may be interested in it too. :-)
As someone has already said, the old fashioned way of altering genes was through trial and error in the field to arrive at the wheats, for instance, which are more resitant to drought, etc.
The end resulted in change in the gene pool for something which was observable ….. however, we did not know what effect it had on human health, if anything. We simply assumed it did not have a different effect. I doubt anyone ever traced it.
” The media wants to get your attention..”
JB: LOL you have just demonstrated how out of touch with this issue you are. The media has not been reporting on this issue in the way it should have been. Citizen journalists, bullied scientists, farmers, and fired journalists – aka whistle blowers – have been the ones bringing public awareness.
As for scare tactics, no, but sometimes the truth is scary JB. Maybe you trust a company that produces poisons to also have a monopoly on your food and a history of political bribery and convenient science but most don’t.
Not only are we placing our own health at risk using GMOs, we are also messing with our environment and nature.
GMO plants require pollination when they flower, how will these mutant plants affect honey bees? How will GMO affect the honey?
Look at the picture attached, even birds and squirrels are smart than we are when it comes to eating organic or GMO food!
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=SyBSlcPs-J4jxM&tbnid=S7FtHgzX6yPAWM:&ved=&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FGreenCollaboration&ei=Y5CiUaXWMoGQiQL04YEY&psig=AFQjCNEIvQwswmgqRZLBAVv-FOUpvu6QuQ&ust=1369694691856678
Scroll down the facebook page until you get to the picture of the two cobs of corn outside, the barely uneaten one on the left is GMO corn, the one on the right is organic. Even birds and squirrels know the difference!
“Maybe you trust a company that produces poisons to also have a monopoly on your food and a history of political bribery and convenient science but most don’t.”
Yawn. More empty rhetoric. As others have noted, this has been going on for hundreds of years in one form or another. Try your scare tactics on someone else.
What is happening to engineered food products is nothing like cross pollination to produce specific trait or new breed of say apples that has been done in the past.
When they are doing things like splicing genes from a completely different plant they are doing thing that would never happen in a million years in nature. It would be next to impossible to get the genie back in the bottle if there are side effects from this lab developed food that they have not foreseen.
If a bad side effect of a medicine is found after it has been on the market for a while no problem pull it off the shelves. Not quite as simple with GMO plants as this bad trait could have moved far past the fields where the seeds were planted.
Diversity in the food supply is a good thing. An example of this is bananas, almost 100% of commercially produced bananas are all of one variety, Cavendish if i remember correctly. Right now there is a fungus that is running rampant across the world wiping out all the plants and it is possible that in a few years it will be next to impossible to find them in stores if a solution cannot be found.
The reason producers went to this one variety was that it had a lot of properties that they liked, lots of fruit, resistant to bruising, packed and stored well, etc that made the most profit. Problem is that without diversity the whole lot can be wiped out in short order from a single cause. There are labs working overtime to figure how to deal with this fungus or find another variety that has similar traits to Cavendish and has natural resistance to the fungus.
Saw a sign today that I agree with …Don’t frack my food.
Yawn, here is another example of us not learning from our mistakes. What idiots, running a dairy and beef industry in England, thought it was alright to feed cows; remnants and protein from sheep. Cows are herbivores and are suppose to eat vegetation, not meat and protein byproducts from sheep.
Bang, Mad Cow disease explodes killing over 200 people in England! I remember seeing news footage of a young man stricken with Mad Cow disease, shaking like he had Parkinson’s in a hospital bed. I also remember bulldozers piling cow carcasses into huge piles where they were burned. Yeah if there is one thing we can count on; it’s industry / corporations finding new and insane ways of screwing up our food supply!
http://www.umm.edu/features/madcow.htm
“Yeah if there is one thing we can count on; it’s industry / corporations finding new and insane ways of screwing up our food supply!”
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And the ’cause’ of that is? Well, some would put it down to ‘greed’, and that may be, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the main factor.
More likely it’s a quest for ‘survival’ as a food producer in the face of costs that are continually rising faster than the revenues are coming in to meet them.
It’s not unique to the food industry either. It affects every industry, and the way corporate organisations in every business have tried to deal with it is to continually ‘grow’ larger.
The management focuses on the one facet of economics they’re certain is true ~ “unit cost is a function of volume” ~ and look for ways to produce the most ‘units’. They are, in a sense, ‘forced’ to do this. Because the process by which they grow or produce their product is a SEPARATE process entirely from the one that provides the ‘money’ now so vital to their survival. The nexus between the two is the ‘profit’, from which, in accounting, not only what has been ‘borrowed’ will be repaid, but is the determinant of whether any more of what’s needed will be lent.
What is overlooked, however, as they try to find a way of marrying current financial convention to this economic ‘truth’ to ever try to improve the bottom line, is that it is only true so long as ALL the additional ‘units’ actually SELL. For it is the TOTAL cost of ALL the ‘units’ that must be liquidated, and they’ve just increased the volume of them they need to move to do that.
What real good does it do to manufacture a ‘bovine growth hormone’ that causes a dairy cow to give more milk, (at the very real expense of trading the ‘quality’ of that milk for its ‘quantity’), if the farmer can’t SELL all the milk he was able to produce before even using that hormone?
If he’s restricted, as our dairy farmers here in BC, and many other places are, too, to a “quota”? A supply management necessity to prevent overproduction creating a periodic condition of boom and bust.
With too much milk to achieve the price necessary to cover its costs one year, and a skyrocketing price of same the next, when there’s too little milk after a lot of ‘last year’s’ dairy farmers went broke and left the business.
Now “quota” seemed like a good solution at the time it was implemented, back when we had a lot of small dairies trying to make a go of it on a relatively small scale. But it did nothing to prevent the continual rise of other costs, and the small dairy farmer had to continually grow to meet them, or get out. Most got out.
And now even many who did grow large are following them, causing the big who are left try to survive by getting still bigger again. If there were only ‘one’ dairy farm, and it had an absolute monopoly on all milk production, would the problem be solved? Or just made larger, with a real solution still elusive?
You’d think by now we’d begin to clue into asking ourselves if a problem like that can ever really be solved sensibly by continually expanding it. But we don’t seem to. We’re so convinced anything to do with ‘money’ itself is governed by laws set in stone that no one ever dare even question them. We’d sooner risk poisoning ourselves, or others, or unleashing the prospect of all the very real concerns an artificial monoculture might induce. Such is the sanctity of mere ‘figures’ when that ‘$’ sign has been applied to them in their current highly monopolised birthplace.
“a company that produces poisons to also have a monopoly on your food ….”
Companies which manufacture civilian vehicles also manufacture military vehicles.
These are chemical companies which have been moving into bio-chemical companies for some time. Agent orange as a defoliant for warfare …. roundup as a herbicide …. tomato plants resistant to herbicides.
I hear they are working on creating a plant which looks like a dracaena but has the effect of a marijuana plant. ;-)
Monsanto is infamous for squashing the small farmer. They claim intellectual property rights on their seeds and then sue farmers that end of with those genetic strains in their fields. This is nearly impossible to control is crops that spread in the wind.
If you need a visual representation of what Monsanto is doing to farmers large and small, check this out: 200,000 farmers in India have committed suicide since Monsanto introduced its treminator cotton seed in 1997 – a seed genetically modified not to reproduce so that farmers cannot save seed.
http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn2/#seeds
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