I would like to hear from those who are deeply concerned about what exactly is in their food.

I am interested in starting a ballot initiative against genetically engineered (GMO) food in Somerville for 2007. This will be a nonpartisan, anti-corporate effort. I would suggest an initiative where farms, restaurants, and markets all have certificates that they do not use GMO food or seeds, or cloned animals.

Background

Food is genetically engineered or genetically modified by artificially changing the DNA in a plant or animal species. The usual method is inserting a gene from one species into the cells of a completely different species. Corporations like Monsanto say that this improves the yield or increases resistance to disease, pests or weeds. Inserting a gene into DNA can be dangerous, since the ultimate results are unpredictable. The outcome can be different depending on where the gene was inserted.Why should people want to eat bland tomatoes that have a longer shelf life when you can eat home grown tomatoes that may have less risk of cancer? GMO food could also cause immunities to penicillin.

Why do we not become independent of the machine-the industrial system? What is wrong with us? It comes down to greed for more. We have enough food. Famines are caused by humans. A lot of food goes to waste.Overpopulation is a legitimate worry among both ecologists and environmentalists though, because we do not know how many of us the earth can take.

Some governments are so corrupt they won’t release the food; it rots somewhere. Some governments are so corrupt they put in nasty chemicals and artificially changed DNA. Some governments are so corrupt they teach monoculture and force people to grow sugar cane rather than beans and maize.

An anti GMO initiative campaign would touch upon many issues such as patents, violation of culture, organic permaculture as an answer to GM food, and other efforts around the country and the world. Agribusiness takes patents out on traditional food, full of hubris about how much they can improve on nature and hundreds of generations of farmers.

And then they actually sue farmers for accidentally having GMO seeds. This happens because seeds drift in the air from one farm to another. Maize, soybean, rapeseed, and now possibly rice crops have already been contaminated by this drift.

We should have permaculture (a practice in which even weeds are helpful and certain plants grow better when they are planted with certain other plants) instead of GMO cornfields, instead of monocultures, instead of planting crops on the same acres every year.

NOFA (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) has helped to pass anti GMO initiatives in Western Massachusetts towns. I see no reason not to do the same in Somerville.

contact:

Jennifer Mazer

jmmazer@gmail.com