permaculture

[Scott Pittman <pci@permaculture-inst.org>]

HI Gene,
My understanding is if you are eating U.S. grown soy it is GMO.  The only 
major growing country of soy without GMO, so far, is Brazil and they sell 
most of their soy to Europe because of the EU ban on GMO.  There is intense 
pressure from the U.S. on the Brazilian gov. to force them to use GMO.  So 
far Brazil has hung tough - primarily because they have had large and 
aggressive pressure put on them by environmentalists.

Scott

At 10:12 AM 4/24/02 -0400, you wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> I'm trying to figure out something related to GMO foods.  I've been hearing
> that 60% of the US-based food supply contains GMOs in some sort or fashion,
> including a lot you get at health food stores.  Moreover, 80% of the soy
> crop is a GMO, because the seeds are controlled by goliath ag-chem
> interests, which I'm sure is true, but I don't have any direct experience
> with this.
>
> When purchasing soy products, how can one tell?  The labels don't say one
> way or the other.  I posed this question to an agent of Nature's Sunshine
> Products in Spanish Fork, Utah.  NSP has the most advanced  lab in the
> supplement industry, and they have the toughest specs in the industry for
> growers to meet: thngs like species consistency (only that herb), color
> variation, active ingredient levels, plant parts (tops vs. seeds and
> stems), organic, and no pesticides.  They say that even with these specs
> growers still ship in material that doesn't meet them so they end up
> rejecting 6%, which they say goes back to the supplier (and is usually
> shipped to another manufacturer.)
>
> When it comes to soy, their labs can't detect a GMO if it was grown
> organic, so they send reps out to the fields and .... that's where they
> lost me.  I know they're concerned about GMOs, but I don't understand how
> they can tell?  Does anybody know what they can do?  And what we can do on
> a local level?  I know my local food coop doesn't have a lab or go to this
> trouble.  We trust our local growers but where do they get their seeds?
> This affects a ton of products, found in health food stores, like Tofu,
> TVP, all kinds of stuff.
>
> The GMOs are designed to be pesticied-resistant so farmers can use even
> more chemicals (which they do) to knock out everything else but the GMO.
> The only way to stop this is to not buy the stuff.  But it's coming in
> under the radar (they're not stupid).  Europe has risen up against this (so
> I hear, is it really true?) but American agri-business political forces are
> too powerful to sway the USDA.   What's an organic consumer to do?
>
> Gene Monaco
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