The one thing I really care about when it comes to organic food
I am an outlier when it comes to the organic food movement, in that I support it, but I think the anti-GMO dogma that characterizes it is wildly misplaced. For one thing, we've been genetically modifying food for thousands of years; those heirloom veggies you're paying top dollar for at the farmers market aren't any closer to their wild ancestors than the ones you'll find on the shelf at any grocery store. They also aren't bad for you. Study after study has confirmed that they are not poisoned, they will not give you cancer, they will not give you autism, they will not turn you purple. While I don't always trust the government, I sure as hell trust scientists over the kind of quacks that have people convinced that vaccines are bad for you, because they two groups seem to go hand in hand.
Not an accurate depiction of GMOs.
For the record, Monsanto is the worst. The things that they do to farmers who don't want to buy their products are atrocious, and it's criminal that they can get away with it. That's something that is wrong with them as a company, though, and needs to be dealt with through patent law reform, not anti-GMO activism. Monsanto is not the only company that creates GMOs, and lumping all of them together only stifles progress. When activists burn down fields of enriched wheat that's being developed by scientists in Australia, who have no affiliation with Monsanto and can help improve the nutrition of children in the developing world, it is immensely frustrating.
So, why do I care about organic food? Because there is something about factory farming that is really dangerous, and could potentially kill millions, if not billions.
Antibiotics.
The World Health Organization recently released a report that said, in a nutshell, that we really need to stop fucking around with antibiotics or they aren't going to work anymore. Play nicely with your lifesaving medicines or you'll break them and then you won't have them anymore.
Most people living today don't remember what the world was like before antibiotics. Syphilis, meningitis, pneumonia, gonorrhea, even minor flesh wounds could be deadly, and will be again if antibiotic resistant strains keep proliferating the way they have been in the past few decades.
Currently, most factory farmed livestock are regularly dosed with antibiotics, which help them to put on more weight than they would without them. The doses are sub-theraputic, so they don't actually keep them from getting sick from things, but they do create antibiotic resistance in the bacteria. This practice is banned in the EU and in Canada, but not here in the US. Given how strong the meat lobby is here, I don't know what the chances are of that happening any time soon.
Chipotle is one company that uses only antibiotic free meat.
I'm not always as conscientious about where I get my meat from as I should be, but making sure that it's antibiotic free, or skipping it entirely, is an important goal for me. Even if you don't care much for the "liberal agenda," not reverting to a pre-antibiotic society is a goal that everyone should be able to get behind.
Not an accurate depiction of GMOs.
For the record, Monsanto is the worst. The things that they do to farmers who don't want to buy their products are atrocious, and it's criminal that they can get away with it. That's something that is wrong with them as a company, though, and needs to be dealt with through patent law reform, not anti-GMO activism. Monsanto is not the only company that creates GMOs, and lumping all of them together only stifles progress. When activists burn down fields of enriched wheat that's being developed by scientists in Australia, who have no affiliation with Monsanto and can help improve the nutrition of children in the developing world, it is immensely frustrating.
So, why do I care about organic food? Because there is something about factory farming that is really dangerous, and could potentially kill millions, if not billions.
Antibiotics.
The World Health Organization recently released a report that said, in a nutshell, that we really need to stop fucking around with antibiotics or they aren't going to work anymore. Play nicely with your lifesaving medicines or you'll break them and then you won't have them anymore.
Most people living today don't remember what the world was like before antibiotics. Syphilis, meningitis, pneumonia, gonorrhea, even minor flesh wounds could be deadly, and will be again if antibiotic resistant strains keep proliferating the way they have been in the past few decades.
Currently, most factory farmed livestock are regularly dosed with antibiotics, which help them to put on more weight than they would without them. The doses are sub-theraputic, so they don't actually keep them from getting sick from things, but they do create antibiotic resistance in the bacteria. This practice is banned in the EU and in Canada, but not here in the US. Given how strong the meat lobby is here, I don't know what the chances are of that happening any time soon.
Chipotle is one company that uses only antibiotic free meat.
I'm not always as conscientious about where I get my meat from as I should be, but making sure that it's antibiotic free, or skipping it entirely, is an important goal for me. Even if you don't care much for the "liberal agenda," not reverting to a pre-antibiotic society is a goal that everyone should be able to get behind.
Jessica