In response to Washington State’s rejection of I-522 to label genetically engineered foods, Guardian’s environmental writer Richard Schiffman believes that the energy and resources being used to fight GMOs should be repurposed to address the “real problems” that confront our planet. He writes:
Food activists have been focused for a long time on the Boogeyman of GMOs, and their poster boy Monsanto, which have served as easy-to-identify focal points for our fears and angers. I know where they are coming from; I, too, think that Monsanto is a corporate bully that has put its own bottom line above the good of the planet.
But having said that, I also believe that trying to eliminate genetic engineering is a fool’s errand – this genie is not going back into the bottle anytime soon. Furthermore, the struggle against GMOs is at best fighting the symptom, while ignoring the disease. The disease is humanity’s abuse of nature. The disease is the factory farming on steroids that is poisoning and exhausting the natural systems that we humans depend on for our survival. The problem with genetically modified foods is not that they are genetically modified; it is that they have been designed to become cogs in the machine of this destructive system. It is the system that needs to change, not the seeds.
So I have a small request for my food activist and environmentalist friends: let’s take yesterday’s Washington vote as a signal to move on.
Read the full, original story here: “GMOs aren’t the problem. Our industrial food system is“
