Give me your pitch. Why should I care?
I am not going to bother telling you what you should care about. The reason I care is because I want to know if some synthetic laboratory produced shit is in my food. Like the case of the pink slime. It is not a GMO but it has been being sold as hamburger for 20 years with people being kept in the dark. I have determined that I don't want to eat that shit so I have cut hamburger out of my diet. This article
http://www.distributistreview.com/mag/2011/02/roadside-gmo-corn/ explains my concerns better than I can.
As for reasons that corporations should not be allowed to keep the public in the dark about activities that can directly affect public health I offer the following:
1. Thalidomide was given to pregnant women and was considered safe until it was determined to be a teratogen. By that time a lot of children had been born with severe birth defects.
2. Times Beach Missouri was contaminated with dioxins throughout the 1970s. Evacuated in 1983 and became a superfund cleanup site.
3. Minimata disease resulting from the Chisso Corporation polluting the water with methylmercury.
4. Bhopal India 1984.
The first two examples do not relate to the food supply but mercury accumulating in fish did directly affect the food supply. Methyl mercury was a by product of production of acetaldehyde and related chemicals in Minamata and used to prevent algae growth on logs floated down the rivers elsewhere. Minamata was the most extreme case known to date of mercury as a teratogen and causing brain and nervous system disorders in those already born.
When Genetech produces cancer drugs using recombinant DNA these drugs have been thoroughly tested (we hope) and vetted by the FDA and are used in a monitored setting to try and cure various cancers. When Monsanto puts corn and other GMO products on grocer's shelves there is no way at present for people here in the US to know what they are buying and putting into there bodies.
Do you want to know if your children are eating BT corn?
