A Congressional panel recently said that Americans are too stupid for GMO labeling, according to the Huffington Post.
But, truth be told, politicians want us to be stupid.
They want us to remain ill informed about the issues so we continue our dependency on them. That helps solidify their future in the political arena.
We have become a nation reliant on the “system.” Politicians profess to protect us, but what they really do is protect their own self-interests. They maintain power by making decisions for us by creating the illusion that they are protecting us. The more dependent we become, the more ill-informed we remain. This, in essence, becomes our stupidity.
But are we really stupid or have we just been manipulated to trust those elected to represent us? Before we begin, let’s first thank President Barack Obama for signing into legislation the Monsanto Protection Act (like it needs protection in the first place).
Let’s take a look at the flagrant actions made by the elitist circles:
- Decisions regarding the safety of GMOs do not come from independent government studies. Instead, the burden of proof comes from Monsanto itself or by the “independent” scientists at colleges and universities who receive large donations from the companies themselves. Granted, decisions are based on research, but when push comes to shove, research can be manipulated and tainted—be it from lobbyists or even from a shortened study or studies lacking data. Research shows results are often biased in favor of the manufacturers especially considering corporations not only sponsor a growing amount of research, they frequently dictate the terms under which the studies are conducted. (What happens to those faculty members with dissenting opinions?) Are our Congressional leaders being mislead, turning a blind eye or just as ignorant as the American population? Ignorance is bliss, as they say…
- Dr. David Just of Cornell University states in his argument before the Congressional panel that Americans lack the proper education regarding GMOs. Nine times out of 10, when questioned, politicians have said they only reviewed the summary of the studies, but did not read the studies in their entirety. Now that’s just plain stupid!
- Are the studies really independent? When many scientists are on the boards of companies (or doing sponsored research) are these manuscripts being manipulated? Is the evidence provided to the politicians accurate or provided with supposed accuracy? Are politicians willfully being misled and in turn misguiding us? I don’t think we, the public, would label our fearless leaders dumb now would we? We’re trusting that they uncover the truth.
- Calestuous Juma, an international development professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, unfortunately stated that in the European Union “political leaders are influenced by the consumer organizations.” The pro-GMO belief is that Europeans are too involved in decision-making, which is why surprisingly GMOs are labeled in almost all European countries. What Europeans do is educate themselves about what they use and remain sensitive to what is safe, in contrast to US consumers who remain supportive and trusting of the FDA governing body and don’t quite know what they’re putting into, let alone onto, their bodies. This trust is regrettably misplaced. Does this mean we are stupid or merely naïve?
- Dr. Just believes we are stupid because we want labeling. We are stupid because we don’t believe with 100% certainty that GMOs are safe for us. We are stupid because we don’t buy into the myth that GMOs will abolish world hunger. He’s quoted in the Huffington Post piece as saying, “I really worry that labeling does more harm than good, that it leads too many people away from it and it diminishes the market for GMOs that are the solution to a lot of the problems we face.” If you actually spend some time doing the research on the tactics of Monsanto you will realize the enormity and scope of the GMO debate and the profound impact GMOs have had on the political, social and environmental landscape—around the globe. To ignore the research only ensures we become blind followers. The need to question is now.
Many of Monsanto’s formerly safe products include the now banned: DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange. Monsanto is a chemical company. Somehow those chemicals once spliced through transgenic manipulation to create a newly designed (and copyrighted seed), no longer remains a chemical nor does it need to be labeled at such? Do you need to be a scientist or politician to question whether that is safe or not? Or are you just that stupid? Politicians would say we’re just that stupid.
Not everyone sees consumers as stupid, though.
Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream co-founder Jerry Greenfield, traveled to Capitol Hill last Thursday from Vermont, the first state to pass a GMO labeling requirement bill, to push back on the potential bill, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who backs labeling.
According to the HuffPost, Greenfield said “labeling is a simple, inexpensive matter of letting people know what’s in their food, and letting them decide what they want to support and eat.”
He said, “This idea that consumers will be scared away—the label will be a very simple thing, a few words on a container saying something like ‘may be produced with genetic engineering.’ It’s not scary.”
What do you think?
Written by Laura Bushey, MAT, Certified Health Educator and Personal Holistic Chef with Kitchen of Life. To find out more helpful tips find us at: www.facebook.com/kitchenoflifewellness.
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