Thursday, February 18, 2016

Journal Four

Omar Shehadeh
English 2367 at 3
February 17, 2016


GMO OMG Review

Gilles-Eric Séralini examining a rat which developed huge tumors
      While gathering primary research on peoples everyday knowledge of GMOs I found  shocking evidence that peoples whose lives are being affected everyday by them have little to no knowledge of what they really are or the affects they can have on our body. My sister was one of these people. This really struck home for me since she is a breast cancer survivor and picked up this terrible disease at the age of thirty. Gilles-Eric Séralini, a scientist featured in the film GMO OMG stated that by the age of thirty humans can start to fall prey to the ill effects of GMO consumption, one of those being cancer. I would recommend this movie for every American to watch and learn about our consumption habits.
GMO OMG is full of statistics and shocking information about our food industry. For instance Atrazine, a chemical used to suppress weeds has become the biggest containment of ground water in the United States and yet it is continually used daily. Or the fact that organic crops can grow at least a 30% more yield than Genetically modified seed crops in times of stress such as during a flood or a drought. With statistics such as these two its clear to see that capitalistic greed is simply the driving force behind the continued use of GMOs and their non-regulation in the United States food markets. Before I watched this movie, I had no idea how wide spread GMOs were in my daily consumption. In my secondary research I found out that as much as 80% of all processed foods contain GMOs according to Nongmoproject.org. What is more surprising is that the companies who are selling these products do not even know the majority of the time whether or not they contain GMOs as GMO OMG often found as they questioned companies about their products.
This movie opened my eyes to the world of GMOs and the affects they have on each and every human being. I agree with the Haitians in this film that “seeds of life are the common inheritance of humanity” and that three companies that control the seed market, flooding them with GMOs are masking their goals as “feeding the world” when in reality they are damaging the world, killing people and focused solely on profits. This movie was an excellently informing documentary that I think every person should watch to become more informed on what we are ingesting.


4 comments:

  1. I was really shocked by the discovery with the rats. It really makes you wonder to what extent breast cancer in our society is caused by these genetically modified organisms. I'm very sorry about your sister, but happy that she survived such a terrible thing! I hope that eventually we will be more educated on what we are eating, so that we can prevent any illnesses that could be caused by our consumption of these things.

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  2. It's crazy how we can connect the bigger picture to our everyday lives. Why haven't we as a society connected that maybe the stuff that we put into our food is the reason for many diseases and sicknesses in our world. It definitely drives me as a person to be more educated on the things that we don't see that we are ingesting into our bodies, because it could affect me, my friends or my family. Hopefully, we will come together and make a point to look past the money making of this product and actually look into what it does to us and our bodies.

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  3. I am glad you pointed out the pseudo monopoly that exist in the seed business. I also thought that there was a lot of "feed the world" propaganda surrounding the push for modified seeds. I think that there a lot of farmers and food manufacturers that are scared to use normal seeds because they do not want to have a bad season, which is understandable, but what I found so unsettling was the possible health issues that may occur from GMOs conjoined with this money making campaign of buying super seeds to feed the starving world. The whole situation just seems super shady, and it seems that farmers are being forced into a corner.

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  4. The rat study opened my eyes up immensely. It so crazy to think that things we do on a daily basis could ultimately be hurting us, including the food we eat. What else are humans doing that could be harming our bodies that we do not know about? Its all insane to think about to me.

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