Nutrition and Health

GM sugarbeets not a sweet proposition, and citizens are fighting back

Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-- Anthropologist Margaret Mead

Even if you've heard the above quote many times before, the sentiment expressed is so powerful that I think it's worth repeating. All around the world, small groups of people are organizing public support for improved food safety and successfully challenging large corporations to change their behavior.

That's exactly what Flint Michigan residents Kathleen Kirby and Mark Fisher are banking on: their power to influence change. They're participating in a nationwide consumer boycott of Kellogg's Co. instigated by the Organic Consumers Association. By boycotting the world's largest cereal company, they hope to pressure Kellogg's into rejecting the use of sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets and to spark widespread market rejection in products ranging from cereal to baby food to candy.

As you may know, Roundup Ready sugar beets are genetically altered to resist Monsanto's toxic weed killer, Roundup, and its active ingredient, glyphosate. But here's the scary truth about these beets:

When the USDA first approved GE sugar beets for commercial planting in 1998, the EPA also increased the maximum allowable residues of glyphosate on sugar beet roots from just 0.2 parts per million to 10ppm. That's a staggering 5,000 percent increase of allowable toxins on beet roots. And, it's little surprise that EPA made this policy change at the request of Monsanto.

Sugar beet roots contain sucrose that's extracted, refined, and processed into the sugar used in the foods we eat. What this means is that the more GE ingredients that find their way into our food, the greater the likelihood that we are ingesting more toxic chemicals.

Thankfully, GE sugar beets have never been grown in the U.S. for sale to food manufacturers -- that is, until this year, when Western farmers planted their first crop of Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beets. Right now, over half of the sugar used in U.S. processed foods comes from sugar beets, with beet and cane sugars combined in those products. What's most disturbing is that once GE sugar beets hit the market, which could be as early as next year, there will be no way to know if we're eating GE sugar because GE ingredients are not labeled.

Currently, only four major GE crops are sold commercially -- corn, cotton, soy, and canola. Most of these are engineered to withstand repeated, large doses of herbicides. For the most part, these crops and their byproducts are largely fed to animals with the exception of some minor food ingredients and oils. GE beet sugar breaks with this tradition in that it could become the first major GE ingredient added to almost all processed foods on our grocery store shelves.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our food supply is systematically being taken over and poisoned by Monsanto.There is no other way to state it now. If sugarbeets are allowed to continue to become a part of our food supply, then you can expect that EVERYTHING you touch will be genetically modified, and it has NOT been proven to be safe for human consumption or our environment. Please, I have been writing on this for months along with others who have been trying to make people understand how URGENT it is that you get involved in pushing state legislatures to require proper labelling of GM sources in foods. Read up on this at the Monsanto tag and take action.

Citizen activism is the only way to make companies like Monsanto back down. Consumers did it regarding POSILAC, and we can do it with this. Current TV is the only place I have been able to get exposure to this so far aside from my own blog, and it is also because of people here voting the information up so more can see it. So thank you to those who fight the good fight here everyday over those who would do anything in their power to keep this down. Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." ... more

JanforGore

added this