Big Business's Bastard Baby

Hello, Internet!
Sorry I haven't gotten much time to post non-academia stuff, but I've been kinda crazy lately. Whoo. So here, for your entertainment, is a little ranting and raving about genetically altered food:



I am a fairly liberal person. OK, maybe I'm a little more than fairly liberal. Maybe I border on socialist, I don't know. I've never thought too much about it.

I have pretty strong opinions about gay marriage, the war in Iraq, gun control, global warming, etc. So when it came time to plop down a few hundred words about Genetically Manipulated food (GM for short), I thought this would be a a walk in the park. Now I see I was wrong.

The reason for this is that I don't have "one" opinion on GM foods. I can't say I hate anything genetically altered and I can't say Let's all give our babies super-powers. Therefore, I can't say that GM foods are bad, and I can't say they're good. Let me explain...

I like to think of America as the land of notification. I get a text message when my car is low on gas. I get an email when my mortgage rates change. I get a phone call when my brother gets a good grade on his homework. Driving to school I get notified about how Subway has $5 Foot Longs, how I can get a vasectomy for less than a tank of gas, and how someone lost their labradoodle and misses him terribly. People who are against notifying consumers that they're eating Genetically Manipulated food argue that it would be too expensive to add a tiny ticker to the bottom of the box saying "May Contain Genetically Augmented Tofu". They usually cite some figure in the phone number regions as the cost. It's not that I disbelieve them, but that number really isn't all that huge. For instance, American Airlines saved around $40,000 in the eighties when they removed one olive from their In Flight Meal Salads. Don't believe me? Check it out.

But that's not the real reason why I have difficulty figuring out my opinion on GM food. Now, in America, I'm totally against it. I don't really care about all of the "this test showed this, that one was inconclusive" stuff that most people argue about. Let's worry about more pressing issues, like E. Coli in our happy meals. Or what about salmonella poisoning? Or obesity?... The list goes on and on.

I'm not justifying using GM foods, but I do think that it's kinda rediculous to be pushing for GM foods to be labeled when milk with added hormones isn't. (By the way, sorry for all the links. I'll try to back off)

I guess here's what I really think: We, here in america, are debating whether or not WE should be using GM foods. But countries in Africa are having the same debate. Zambia has outlawed drought resistant grain plants while in the middle of a famine. Starving children could be eating right now, but they can't, because their government would rather them die now than them die in 45 years from frog genes in their bread.

Food for thought. Ah, the irony.