From - Mon Dec 30 08:51:40 1996
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Consumer Alert 00101-A BLINDSIDING DR. FRANKENFOOD,
Part 1 of 3
BLINDSIDING DR. FRANKENFOOD
You bite into what you perceive to be a carefully prepared, lovingly seasoned,
perfectly cooked potato dish tonight during your evening meal. You assumed
the food to be safe. You had no idea that the bio-tech industry had used
a radical new technology to artificially mutate the DNA in your potatoes.
The genetically altered potatoes were sold unlabeled, as if they were normal,
natural potatoes.
In this three-part communication, you will learn about genetically engineered
food and the fictional Dr. Frankenfood, about how the bio-tech industry
has done exactly the same things that Dr. Frankenfood would have done.
You will learn about the immediate dangers of genetically engineered foods,
and why the bio-tech companies are now releasing untested genetically engineered
foods on the world population. You will also learn how to shop to avoid
these foods, and finally, how we can stop the proliferation of these experimental
foods.
Let's imagine that the fictional Dr. Frankenstein had a modern day descendent,
the evil Dr. Frankenfood. For those people in various parts of the world
who do not know the horror story, Dr. Frankenstein created a monster using
electricity and various dead body parts. The evil Dr. Frankenfood, like
his famous forefather, might also want to do bizzare technical research.
But let us imagine that Dr. Frankenfood has a great personal fondness for
the food industry. Let us imagine Dr. Frankenfood's mad experimentations.
Being in the food industry, and following in his ancestor's recombinant
footsteps, he might want to make strange, bizzare food products combining
vastly different species. He might combine species that could never exist
in nature. If he did so, let us imagine what he would do. He would go deep
with electon microscopes and sever nature's potato DNA, for example. He
would cut the DNA, the precious twirling genetic nucleotide staircase guiding
nature's potato with complete instructions of how to build itself and how
to interact in any environment millions of generations hence. He would
cut the genetic code formed through millions of years of reproductive natural
evolution, natural selection, and reproductive crossbreeding and hybridization.
With a radical experimental technology utilizing a new instrument known
as a gene gun, Dr. Frankenfood would replace natural selection with his
own unnatural personal selection. He would create a Frankenfood potato
by splicing wax moth insect DNA and the DNA of genetically engineered bacterium
onto the severed natural potato DNA. He would also use his gene gun to
dice and splice the DNA of fish with tomato, pig with human, bacteria with
soy, virus with corn.
What if Dr. Frankenfood was also in charge of the USDA (the United
States Department of Agriculture), the FDA (the Food and Drug Administration);
and what if he was also in charge of giant multi-national chemical companies
such as Monsanto, DuPont, Calgene, and Ciba-Geigy that have become major
players in the new bio-tech global food business? He would then have access
to immense capital resources for his strange experimentations. He would
wield nearly limitless power, and he could learn how to manipulate the
rest of the government, the laws, and even the courts with his influence.
He would give grant money to labs in the USDA and to university labs and
technicians all over the world. He would have universities, the USDA and
the FDA under his control. They would carry out his recombination experiments
with the DNA of different species as he directed, and then he would feed
these experimental foods to the population unlabeled and without testing.
He would stealthfully export his mad experimental products to other countries,
and if they refused his products, Dr. Frankenfood would use his money,
power, influence and connections to threaten them with trade war.
Of course Monsanto, DuPont, Calgene, Ciba-Geigy, the bio-tech corporations,
the USDA, and the FDA cannot really be this bad. They are doing their best
to do their jobs. Dr. Frankenfood is a mere dramatization. But the bio-tech
companies, the USDA, the FDA, and all of their hardworking food technicians
are doing the exact same things that the evil Dr. Frankenfood would do
if he was in charge. The multi-national bio-tech companies, the USDA and
the FDA, although well-meaning, operate based on short-range vision and
greed. As scientific technicians, they appear to have minimal ability to
see long-range consequences. The bio-tech industry and the USDA recombine
the DNA of vastly different species. The bio-tech industry lobbies for
regulatory loopholes that allow them to rush their experimental foods to
market. Due to large PAC money payments (legalized bribes), good-ole-boy
networks, and continuing conflicts of interest between the USDA, FDA and
multi-national bio-tech companies, the U.S. and many other governments
have encouraged and approved these synthetic foods. The bio-tech industries
sell these products untested and unlabeled. And finally, the U.S. government
representatives threaten with trade war if countries do not accept their
mutant foods.
We as global consumers have the right to know what we are eating. We have
the right to decide whether we want to eat these foods. We have the right
to decide whether our children should eat these foods. Wherever you may
live in the world, food markets sell these unlabeled and untested Frankenfoods.
Beginning back in 1994, the bio-tech industry began to sell genetically
engineered tomatoes and milk laced with genetically engineered bovine growth
hormone (rBGH). Now in 1997, these companies want to quickly earn back
their accelerating reserch costs, and rush approximately 30,000 untested
new genetically engineered food products to market.
SPECIFICALLY WHAT ARE THE DANGERS?
Genetically altered supplements and foods have already caused debilitating
allergies, permanent cripplings, and deaths simply because consumers were
unaware. Thirty-seven people died and 1500 people were permanently disabled
from toxic and deadly bacteria created during the production of genetically
engineered tryptophan. Severe allergies resulted from the introduction
of mutated genetically engineered soy combining DNA from brazil nuts. One
can predict that more deaths and negative side effects will continue to
emerge. Without clear labeling, health problems cannot be avoided or properly
traced back to their source. Genetic damages to the environment and ecosystem
can never be cleaned up, reversed, or recalled. Once released, once the
microorganisms, plants, and living beings in the food chain and ecosystem
become polluted with these mutant foods, destruction of health and virulent,
irreversible, permanent, and incomprehensible living mutations will spiral
wildly into the future. Genetic pollution becomes immediately locked-in
and self-sustaining -- hosted in the very DNA of living organisms. This
contrasts, for example with the threats of hazardous nuclear waste and
the potential destruction of nuclear war, which, although devastating,
can be eventually reversed and cleaned up with the passage of time.
WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS?
Widespread sales of genetically altered foods increase the profitability
of the bio-tech industry. The bio-tech industry wants to quickly recoup
their billions of dollars in accumulated genetic research and investment
costs. Their strategy involves rushing genetically-altered Frankenfoods
to market en masse as quickly as possible. The USDA, FDA and their wealthy
supporters, the bio-tech companies, claim that they intend to solve problems
of world hunger. But careful scrutiny shows their true motives.
Primarily, the U.S. government intends to ensure the continuing success
and prosperity of their wealthy supporters, the bio-tech industry, and
secondly the bio-tech industry intends to dominate the global food markets
with their experimental products. We appreciate that governments want to
support major businesses and industries. We also understand that big business
wants to make money. However, in pursuing these goals, the USDA, FDA, and
bio-tech companies have chosen to disregard the long-range effects of these
products on human life. The bio-tech industries have altered foods for
the following specific traits: to increase profits by artificially increasing
product shelf life; to increase profits by increasing the compatibility
of plants with the bio-tech industry's own chemicals and herbicides; and
to increase profits by creating seeds that cost more but save producers
money because the vegetables or plants create their own herbicide internally.
While taking these actions for immediate short-term profits, the bio-tech
food industry claims that their work represents the cutting edge of science.
TRUE SCIENCE AND FRAUDULENT SCIENCE
If Dr. Frankenfood was in charge, his diabolical scheme would not be true
science, because he would never bother to safety-test his experimental
foods before putting them on our family's plates and serving them up to
the world community. True science uses the "Scientific Method."
The Scientific Method involves alternating between theory and experimentation,
checking carefully at every point to see whether or not theory is correct.
The checking comes in the form of experience, in other words: experimentation.
New technology never gets applied to human life in true science until it
has proven itself beyond a doubt through the test of time to be safe, useful,
beneficial. True science does not make the human race into experimental
animals, into guinea pigs. Again, we look and see that the bio-tech industry
does exactly what our evil Dr. Frankenfood would have done, marketing these
foods to the world population untested and unlabeled. We know Dr. Frankenfood's
history as a descendent of Dr.Frankenstein.
Let us also look at the past, at the track record of one of the major bio-tech
companies, Monsanto. A look at the past may give some indication of what
we can expect from them now and in the future. Monsanto created Agent Orange,
a defoliant tainted with dioxine that killed people. They own and market
Aspartame, the artificial chemical sweetener marketed as Nutra-Sweet, widely
known as a health risk yet pushed through the regulatory loopholes as a
food additive instead of a drug. In recent years Monsanto, the USDA, and
the FDA have worked together to add rBGH, bovine growth hormone, widely
implicated in making cows sick and increasing cancer risk, to consumer's
milk. Now Monsanto and other bio-tech companies want to genetically engineer
the entire global food supply. Can we trust this company with the food
supply?
The bio-tech food companies have now genetically engineered not only potatoes,
but also tomatoes, corn, soy, squash, canola, cotton seed oil, and milk.
The bio-tech industry claims that these practices come as a normal, natural
extension of time-tested reproductive crossbreeding and hybridization techniques.
In reality, this is a new, bizzare, experiment utilizing a radical new
technology. Dr. Frankenfood would be well pleased. Distributors export
these mutant foods all over the world. A global crisis now exists because
many other governments have implicit trust in the U.S. government and its
decision to promote these foods. They have made global consumers out to
be experimental animals, guinea pigs. Although this is a serious crisis,
we can stop the proliferation of these Frankenfoods now.
WHAT CAN I DO?
1. Learn all you can about the dangers of genetically engineered foods.
2. Learn how to shop to avoid these foods. Boycott companies using these
foods.
3. Tell all your friends family and loved ones about this problem, both
on-line and off-line. Your job is not done until they change their eating
habits and they teach their loved one's to do the same.
4. Start or join consumer groups to label and ban genetically engineered
food.
5. Send letters to your political leaders and representatives.
6. Write and send letters to the media, writers, editors, networkers.
7. Forward this communication to influential people all over the world
8. Take a leadership role. Contact the sources at the end of part three
of this communication.
9. Request parts two and three of this three part communication from your
Leader, who should be listed at the beginning of this communication.
Relevant Websites About Genetic Engineering:
(Easily accessible with Netscape mail programs)
http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/cbio/geneng.html
http://www.demon.co.uk/solbaram/articles/clm505.html
http://www.natural-law.org/issues/genetics/ge_hazards.html
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rone/Genetic%20Engineering.htm
http://www.netlink.de/gen/home.html
http://www.fairfield.com/edit/mothers/
http://www.mum.edu/Fagan.html
http://www.mum.edu/PRESS/genetics/ethical_stand.html
http://www.mum.edu/PRESS/genetics/Fagan.html
http://www.bio-integrity.org
http://www.lisco.com/mothersfornaturallaw
http://www.lisco.com/mothers
http://www.greenpeace.org/~usa/reports/biodiversity/roundup
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1527/
http://www.natuurwetpartij.nl/genmanipkampanje
http://www.essential.org/crg/
http://www.peg.apc.org/~acfgenet/
http://www.indians.org/welker/genome.htm
Consumer Alert 00101-A BLINDSIDING DR. FRANKENFOOD,
Part 1 of 3