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A Month Without Monsanto

April Dávila wondered what it would take to cut the GMO giant out of her family's life. She found that it was far more entrenched than she'd ever realized.

by April Dávila

posted Aug 24, 2010

Photo by Roger Smith

In January of this year, while procrastinating on Facebook, I followed a link to an article reporting on evidence that there may be health effects associated with consuming Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) corn. Clicking on that link was one of those moments on which I look back and laugh. I had no idea how my life was about to change.

Monsanto’s Reach

The article I stumbled onto concerned a study done in 2009 by a group of French scientists investigating the safety of genetically modified food. Their results, as published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences, pointed toward kidney and liver damage in rats fed GM corn.
I began to research where exactly Monsanto corn appeared in my family’s diet. With a little online sleuthing, I learned that in addition to producing the genetically modified corn, Monsanto produces several other genetically modified crops such as soy, sugar beets, and cotton. Many of these crops form the foundation of our diets: 70 to 80 percent of American processed foods contain genetically engineered ingredients, according to the Grocery Manufacturers of America. A large percentage of the cotton in our clothes and homes begins in Monsanto's labs.

By day two of my attempt to remove Monsanto from my life, I realized I was in way over my head.

Probing a little deeper, I was surprised to learn that a company specializing in genetically modified plant crops also had an enormous influence on America’s meat industry. Sixty percent of genetically modified corn goes to feed America’s beef cattle. Additionally, Monsanto’s recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is used to increase milk production in many dairy cows.

Tracing Foods Back to their Source

I decided to see if I could go the entire month of March without consuming any Monsanto products. I committed to an all organic, vegan diet, and reluctantly invested in a small organic cotton wardrobe. It was an experiment born of curiosity: I wanted to know just how deeply my life was influenced by Monsanto, a company I knew little about before that click of my mouse in January.

The City That Ended Hunger
Belo Horizonte, Brazil did—and it wasn't that hard.

By day two of my attempt to remove Monsanto from my life, I realized I was in way over my head. For the past 10 years Monsanto has bought up seed companies around the globe. They now own a majority of the seed lines in America, including a large percentage of organic seeds. For everyday purposes, a Monsanto seed that is grown organically is still organic, but in my attempt to avoid Monsanto, I was left without any easy way of knowing what foods fit my experiment. I retreated to subsisting on wild-caught fish while I dug deep to try to figure out where exactly my foods came from.
With the help of sustainable food advocate Cassie Gruenstein, I got in touch with dozens of health food stores and manufacturers to ask where they sourced their products. I spent hours at the farmers’ market asking farmers what seed companies they bought from, googling on my iPhone before making purchases. It took several weeks, but I slowly built a somewhat normal Monsanto-free existence.

There is no easy way to avoid Monsanto. It requires talking with the person who grew your food—every ingredient of every bite.

Unfortunately, with the exception of a few national brands (check out Annie’s, Inc. Massa Organics, and Lundberg Farms for a good start), there is no easy way to avoid Monsanto. It requires talking with the person who grew your food—every ingredient of every bite.

Good First Steps

While it’s extremely difficult to entirely avoid Monsanto, there are some basic guidelines that anyone can use to minimize the genetically modified organisms in their lives.

1. Avoid processed foods. In particular, eliminate High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) from your diet and be sure to read labels. HFCS appears in everything from sodas to wheat bread.
2. Consider going vegetarian, limiting your meat consumption, or buying grass-fed varieties. Over 60 percent of genetically modified corn goes to feed cattle on polluting concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in America.  
3. Buy organic dairy products to make sure animals weren't given Monsanto’s recombinant bovine growth hormone.
4. Buy organic cotton when you can. Monsanto is a major player in the cotton industry. Even though cotton makes up only 2.5 percent of the world’s crops, it is doused with 16 percent of the world’s pesticides. Cotton pesticides, most of which are listed as “extremely hazardous” by the World Health Organization, turn up regularly in water sources around the globe.

What most amazed me during my month without Monsanto was the influence that one corporation had in my daily life—without me knowing anything about it. Once I started looking, Monsanto was everywhere. Once I started making the effort to avoid it, I found something else that surprised me: the confidence that comes from really knowing what I’m eating.

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April Dávila wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. April is a freelance writer living and working in Los Angeles. Find out more about her at AprilDavila.com.
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YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. Dávila, A. (2010, August 24). A Month Without Monsanto. Retrieved August 26, 2010, from YES! Magazine Web site: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/a-month-without-monsanto. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Right To Know Bill Introduced

Image via Wikipedia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 24, 2010 2:17 PM

CONTACT: Congressman Dennis Kucinich  Nathan White (202)225-5871

Kucinich Introduces Right to Know Legislation; Bills Create Regulatory Framework for Genetically Engineered Organisms

WASHINGTON - June 24 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a long-time advocate of family farmers and organic foods, today introduced H.R. 5577, The Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act, as well as supporting legislation that will provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for all Genetically Engineered (GE) plants, animals, bacteria, and other organisms.
"To ensure we can maximize benefits and minimize hazards, Congress must provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for all Genetically Engineered products. Structured as a common-sense precaution to ensure GE foods do no harm, these bills will ensure that consumers are protected, food safety measures are strengthened, farmers' rights are better protected and biotech companies are responsible for their products," said Kucinich.
In addition to the Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act, Kucinich introduced the Genetically Engineered Safety Act, HR 5578, which prohibits the open-air cultivation of GE pharmaceutical and industrial crops and establishes a tracking system to regulate and ensure the safety of GE pharmaceutical and industrial crops.
The third bill is the Genetically Engineered Technology Farmer Protection Act, HR 5579 which would protect farmers and ranchers that may be harmed economically by genetically engineered seeds, plants, or animals, to ensure fairness for farmers and ranchers in their dealings with biotech companies that sell GE products.
Congressman Kucinich has long been a proponent of ‘Right to Know' legislation, and has introduced similar bills in previous sessions of Congress.

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Food For Thought.

Published on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by The Huffington Post

Organic Agriculture Beats Biotech at Its Own Game

by Timothy LaSalle

Organic agriculture's recently recognized benefits for improving food security don't depend on a boost from genetically modified (GM) technology. While the chemically-based systems that GM requires could be cleaned up with organic techniques, there's no clear reason to degrade organic standards to accept the downsides that come with biotech-produced crops as they are currently managed.

Recently, there have been renewed efforts to pressure organic agriculture to abandon one of its foundational principles and accept genetically modified crops. While there may be nothing inherently wrong with contemplating a theoretical overlap between biotech crop genetics and organic farming systems, there's not a compelling set of reasons to do so, either.

Alleging the principled barrier between the two is merely a quirky philosophical sticking point of "hard core resistance" within the organic community diverts attention from real questions as to the net value of this pairing.

Real question #1: Why bother?

To this point, biotech crops have not produced the yield advantages or biological resilience to multiple stressors. If we're looking for reliable, multi-benefit, future-oriented farming options in an input-limited world, biotech is not a player.

The question is rather: Why spend the time, money and scientific ingenuity manipulating a handful of genetic materials to end up with a specific new attribute when we should, and could, be rigorously advancing regionally adapted varieties and building up soils organically to achieve enduring nutrient content cycling and resistance to drought, flood and disease resistance.

This organic activity is sustainable in the long term, improves water-holding capacity in soil for all crops -- not just those that happen to have a gene with drought resistance, leaving the other crops at risk.

Real question #2: Who benefits?

Why have patented seeds good for a single planting when what most farmers in the world need are replicable, open-pollinated varieties that thrive in the particular mix of soil, degree days, weather and pest pressure where they are grown? The patented seed path is entirely under the control of a company and requires substantial chemical inputs to survive. The latter path, relying on finding the optimum fit with natural systems and fluctuation (thanks to climate change) over time, is controlled much more by sustainable farmers and the heroic seed companies dedicated to their service.

Real question #3: Is the stuff safe to eat? And who knows?

There is no data from independent, long-term studies on the human health impacts from eating GM crops. There's lots of research, but it's all tucked within the files of the companies that paid for it. The same companies prevent independent research on the efficacy and health impacts of their crop seeds. Many of the handful of intrepid researchers who do manage to carry out studies and dare to publish results showing problems with the GM approach face amazingly virulent reactions from the biotech community, and the institutional systems that depend on them for funding.

I think this quote from the editorial in the recent issue of Scientific American tells how little we really are allowed to know about GM crops:

Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers.

Dr. Judith Carman of Australia is conducting one of the few long-term, independent animal feeding studies with GM materials. She says recent Australian and Italian studies finding reduced fertility and immune function, respectively, in mice are disturbing. Here she talks about extreme difficulty of doing meaningful research into this area. She is a PhD in medicine in the areas of metabolic regulation, nutritional biochemistry and cancer.

To us, it does not make biological sense that you can create brand-new proteins through genetic engineering in food and expect that our bodies will have the enzymes and capacity to break them down. These novel proteins are foreign to our immune systems because they have never before existed in nature.

Given how much we are not being allowed to know, our scientific, agricultural and food safety leaders need to take the reasonable step of following the precautionary principle until we have the knowledge we need. Organic agriculture proponents are eager for more high-quality research on biological systems, because the promise for improving soils, sequestering carbon and feeding more people with healthier diets is so great all around the world.

Simply, this means that, facing irreversible potential harm, the onus for generating the proof of scientific consensus falls upon those seeking to take the action. With biotech crops and our long-term health and ecological well-being, that's a pretty big onus.

The organic community may eventually be open to biotech crops if long-term, independent studies would some day show there are no ecological or human health impacts. Because there is no research available to prove that yet, who needs them? Why risk it?

Copyright © 2009 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Timothy J. LaSalle is CEO of the Rodale Institute, an internationally recognized leader in regenerative organic agricultural research, advocacy and education. LaSalle is the first CEO of the non-profit organization, located in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1947 by J.I. Rodale to explore the scientific foundation of organic agriculture.