A recent post from CoPirg, Colorado Public Interest Research Group, is a strong reminder of why it's so important to buy only organic food. Incorrectly-termed "conventionally grown" food is poisoning us and poisoning the environment. When toxic herbicides like Roundup are applied to land, they do not break down, instead remaining on the land and running into waterways, where they poison the wildlife that must eat, drink and swim in order to survive, with no choice.
Our poison is one of the many ways we have managed to reduce wildlife by more tha 50% in just the past 3 decades. And, it turns out, we are also poisoning ourselves, because studies are showing that Roundup causes cancer. So, if you don't care much about the wildlife, I would hope you would at least care about yourself and your family enough to buy organic foods. If you think this is yet another conspiracy theory, it's not. In this case, Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup, has been ordered to pay $80 million in a Roundup cancer case, and Bayer, which owns Monsanto, has agreed to pay $10 billion to settle thousands of claims that Roundup weed killer causes cancer. The science is coming from the World Health Organization's cancer research agency, while the EPA under the current administration, which prefers to "say no to science", denies any links to cancer, evidently preferring to keep us marching morons under Big Corp's thumb.
Why did I say "incorrectly termed" in front of "conventionally grown"? The main reason is that I fail to understand the labelling in stores, such as Whole Foods, where the produce is labelled "conventional" or "organic". I find it ironic that the term "conventional" refers to food that is grown with poisonous pesticides and herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers, when the historical reality is that we've only been growing our food this way for less than a century. Prior to that, we managed to feed ourselves for thousands of years using organic methods. So, why wouldn't we be using terms like "conventional" to refer to the organic farming methods we've always used, and something like "chemically produced", or "produced with toxins", or "toxically produced" for the big ag poisonous growing practices? While something like that would certainly be more honest and realistic, I imagine the industry lobbying that we pay dearly for whenever we buy products that are produced by big corporations would step up and put a stop to that level of in-your-face honesty, in order to keep the buying public as clueless and uninformed as possible. This way, we'll keep buying food that poisons us and the planet, without realizing the damage we are causing, and possibly even feeling good about ourselves as we say "No" to the organic conspiracy and "Yes" to "conventional" poisonous methods. This way, we'll basically keep the Monsanto and Bayer CEO's rich, while poisoning our planet for our kids and grandkids. Once again, our consumer choices are driving our planet one way or the other, to continued destruction or supporting a move toward a better and more sustainable world. Anyway. Just saying.
Here are three ways we can all help:
Only buy organic. If we refuse to buy conventionally grown food, we'll put the poisoning corporations out of business, or at least force them to use more environmentally friendly means of production. Yes, it will cost more, but, given that we tend to waste a large portion of the food we buy in the U.S., the added cost of organic can easily be offset by simply only buying what we will actually eat, and avoiding waste.
If you have a home garden or farm, grow organically. There are many organic products out there that are safe to use, and work just fine. We've been growing organically for decades, with no problems. Yes, there will be some loss to insects and wildlife, but, it's trivial compared to the damage we do to them when we poison their environment.
Use this link to CoPirg to get on their action site and send a note to our state leaders, asking them to ban Roundup in the state. It would be a great start to eliminating at least one of the ways we are poisoning our world.
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