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Re: remarkable address
BE AWARE when a remarkable address starts out with a completely wrongheaded
assumption: That we have to increase PRODUCTION.
For years it has been known that it is use and distribution that are the real
problems. We produce enough food to feed everyone - Just not enough cheap food
to please the greedy global distributors, and not enough animal products to clog
everyone's arteries.
The man from NOVARTIS, which when it was just CIBA, sold twice as many
pesticides as any other company in the world in order to increase production,
has much to gain from a high profile speach that makes production the problem.
Many of his pesticides probably actually decreased the food that was available
in parts of the world. Certainly, the number of hungry has been rising.
If we do want to increase production, how about using some of those acres and
acres of well-fertilized and watered lawn which surround houses, office
buildings and government facilities just about everywhere in this country.
If we are really interested in feeding people, we may have to eliminate greedy,
polluting and anti-life corporate sector from the food system.
We also need to face the possibility that it may not be possible to feed
everyone in the world the way Americans eat. A spreading American diet would
certainly generate a lot of additional health care costs for heart disease,
obesity and cancer.
See the following report from the Politics of Food news for another take on
labeling GMOs.
Earth First, in Brighton England, claims that labeling of genetically-modified
organisms or GMOs is pointless. They note that GMOs cannot be kept apart from
their wild and cultivated relatives, that there are unexpected consequences
from some of novel organisms that have been developed, and that the process
itself has inherent dangers. Earth First maintains that the campaign for
labeling makes the issue of a life threatening technology appear to be merely an
issue of civil rights. Earth First campaigns wholeheartly for a ban on the
further release of genetically-modified organisms.
Bill Duesing