Friday, January 21, 2011

Organic Burgers, Milk and Cheese no More

      (via)

I interrupt the regular schedule Frugal tip Fridays to tell you about something super important! and ask you to get involved! Currently, cows are fed a huge amount of alfalfa sprouts in their feed. The way that you can know you're food is organic, is if the label says so. An organic label shows that the animal was fed with organic feed, not genetically engineered. GE foods have been linked to disease and are manmade foods that the body cannot identify. From RGBH given to cows, to now GE alfalfa given to cows, there seems to be a growing trend in America to produce foods without worrying about the consequences of ingesting food made outside of nature. This new idea to either deregulate or conditionally deregulate alfalfa by the USDA which is a huge part of a cows feed, would prevent Americans from having the very important choice of whether to buy organic red meats, milk, yogurt and cheeses. While some people have the opportunity to go to their local farm and purchase grass fed beef, cheese and milk, many people don't have that chance and so are left with purchasing whats sold in the supermarket.  If there is only one option and that is cows given GE alfalfa, we are stuck with foods that have poorer nutritional content.

Please write to your Congressman about this and let them know you would rather have conditional deregulation than complete deregulation. To read the full article you can go to We Support An Organic Future.   To find your Congressman, you can go to Determining Your Representative. 

"Consequently, integration of GE alfalfa into the food system could compromise organic beef, dairy and honey as well as all other crops. Organic seed purity must be maintained for organic and conventional farmers wanting to farm without GE technology. This is particularly relevant for organics because dairy is often the entry point for consumers who are new to organics. And while USDA’s decision will be specific to GE alfalfa, it will be a precedent setting decision for how or whether other genetically engineered food will be regulated far into the future." (via)

Human Health Risks of GE foods (just a few) -
"Allergenicity- Many children in the US and Europe have developed life-threatening allergies to peanuts and other foods. There is a possibility that introducing a gene into a plant may create a new allergen or cause an allergic reaction in susceptible individuals. A proposal to incorporate a gene from Brazil nuts into soybeans was abandoned because of the fear of causing unexpected allergic reactions31. Extensive testing of GM foods may be required to avoid the possibility of harm to consumers with food allergies. Labeling of GM foods and food products will acquire new importance, which I shall discuss later.

Unknown effects on human health-  There is a growing concern that introducing foreign genes into food plants may have an unexpected and negative impact on human health. A recent article published in Lancet examined the effects of GM potatoes on the digestive tract in rats32, 33. This study claimed that there were appreciable differences in the intestines of rats fed GM potatoes and rats fed unmodified potatoes. Yet critics say that this paper, like the monarch butterfly data, is flawed and does not hold up to scientific scrutiny34. Moreover, the gene introduced into the potatoes was a snowdrop flower lectin, a substance known to be toxic to mammals. The scientists who created this variety of potato chose to use the lectin gene simply to test the methodology, and these potatoes were never intended for human or animal consumption. "

(the gene in above story was still introduced to create a GE/GM food, regardless of whether it was knowingly toxic beforehand, when you start putting genes into foods that shouldn't be there, an inflammation response takes place in the body just because it is a foreign material coming into the body).

Thanks for reading!! Please write to your Congressman!

4 comments:

  1. Hi there!
    I'm loving your Pit Pup on the sidebar.
    Stopping by from the Friday hops to say hi and to follow.
    Come on by and visit- Poshonabudget.com
    POSH

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the info!
    Visiting from the blog hop. I'm so glad I found your blog.
    Enjoy your weekend.
    Nancy
    http://discoverdirectselling.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Nikki,

    Thanks for educating me about this. I will definitely be looking into it more!

    Karla
    Simple Living Family
    www.simplelivingfamily.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. SOmetimes I live my life with my blinders on. I don't think about this. I just buy my meat and go. Now I will have to look at the labels more closely. Thanks for this.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by and dropping some comment love!

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