Your recent opinion piece expressing a pro-GMO stance and inferring that all who don”t support the GMO industry are akin to the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages Church is ignorantly misleading at best. There is no better analogy to the oppression wreaked by the Church in the Middle Ages than the current GMO industry led by Monsanto.
Over the past few decades Monsanto has slowly tried to gain a monopoly over access to seeds much the same way the early church did over access to alternative approaches to understanding the universe. Monsanto has done this by bullying and intimidating anyone who has gotten in its way of making its patented seeds the only source of seeds for the farming industry. Monsanto is known by many farmers in this country as the secret “seed police.” This seed police watches for opportunities to sue farmers for things that farmers have historically always done, like harvesting seeds from their current crops for next season”s planting.
Monsanto has a track record of harassing independent-minded farmers in order to try to gain complete control over the use of seeds so that no one (Monsanto hopes) will be able to plant crops without first buying Monsanto”s patented seeds. They have even sued farmers for unauthorized use of their patented seeds when Monsanto seeds have been blown by the wind or carried by small animals into a farmer”s fields. We wouldn”t characterize giant, profit-driven corporations such as Monsanto as progress-oriented benefactors of the human race.
Not only do GMO seeds put the sources of our food into a very small number of hands, they have a detrimental effect on our environment by encouraging the use of herbicides and pesticides. GMO plants often raise an herbicide or pesticide threshold limit, leaving native plants and animals at risk from herbicide- and pesticide-laden fields. Lastly, the health effects of using GMO crops has not been well studied and may be subtle, taking years of clinical studies to observe increases in cancer populations and other such heath risks. True progress is coming from the organic and biodynamic farming industry, where protecting native plants, animals, and soils is an important goal.
True progress lies in expanding native diversity, not imposing mono-culture “from above,” which decimates the healthy diversity of the earth. So rather than likening GMO opponents to the anti-progress and stake-burning Church hierarchy of the Middle Ages, the Record Bee should take a look in the mirror.
Stacie and Clifford Lucas
Upper Lake
Editor”s Note: The Lake County Board of Supervisors approved a ban on GMO 3-2 in its Tuesday meeting. See story on the Record-Bee”s home page.
