[onoway]

just read this http://grist.org/foo...our-microbiome/
I don't know about the USDA rulings but scientists at least 8 years ago knew that RoundUp wasn't safe, in fact they called for a worldwide ban after seeing the results of their studies where RoundUp was used extensively in southern Ontario.

A few years ago I read a Scottish study which showed that feeding GMO food to rats changed the flora in the gut. Recently there was another one which showed that changes to some of the gut bacteria was a precursor to diabetes and possibly other health issues as well.

It's also interesting that GMOs have recently shown up in non GMO wheat and it has NOT (yet) been approved for human use (escaped? who knows). Now Japan and possibly other countries as well are apparently shying away from American wheat because of fears of GMO contamination.

SO, next stop is to make anything but GMO's illegal..There is a government warning in a farm newspaper here that seeds which come from a crop which has certified varieties available now have to be identified as one of those varieties, they can no longer be sold even as "common seed" of that species. Since virtually all food crops - certainly all big ag food crops - fit in the category of having an "approved" or certified list, it takes control of what he grows away from the farmer, since he cannot then legally even find a market outside big ag for such seed. Even if other people want to buy it. Ah yes, freedom, you say?

Better living through chemicals. Not.

[barmar]

I'll bet our gut bacteria also changed when humans domesticated livestock and plants for food purposes. It seems natural that as the food we eat changes, the gut bacteria will evolve to accomodate it. Change is not necessarily bad.

And our own genome also changes. As I mentioned in another thread, when we started milking cattle, a mutation that allows adults to digest milk spread through many European communities (prior to this, most children developed lactose intolerance after being weened).

[chasetb]

What I love is how everybody made a huge fuss over BPA (to some degree rightfully so), so companies stopped using it. HOWEVER, all of them just moved on to BPS, which the few studies done show that it has a very similar effect; the best part is many of the products have 5+ times the amount of BPS than when they used BPA...

[onoway]

It's hard to keep up with everything, like which plastics leach and so forth. It seems a bit pathetic though that the Environmental people should approve a higher dosage of a known poison in virtually ALL our food at the same time as they burble on about fat in fast food and tobacco.

The reason, of course, is because RoundUp and other poisons have led to resistant weeds and insects so this is only going to spiral out of control just as antibiotic resistent bacteria have evolved from overuse of antibiotics....largely in the food chain through feedlots and such.

And just as whole societies did not successfully evolve to manage milk, lots of people are not going to manage dealing with introduced weirdness in the food they eat very well.

That speaks to the concerns of health care costs when ag practices are causing people to get ill. A lot of the illnesses are not short term, either, they are long term and often hard to diagnose (read expensive). A lot of people think it isn't coincidental that the astronomic rise in the incidence of asthma, allergies and indeed autism started to spiral with the advent of such practices.

Some farmers maintain there is a link between pesticide use and the incidence of colony collapse disorder in bees. This is somewhat supported by the general freedom of CCD in organic orchards and fields. If we lose bees, the rest of it is academic.

The sad thing about it all is that it's not only both entirely unsustainable and less productive in the long run but that such practices will make recovering from the effects take longer and be more difficult. We will never be able to get rid of GMO plants now as they have infiltrated the environment but we could stop messing it up more and more.

[blackshoe]

There's fat in tobacco? Darn! Good think I quit smoking 45 years ago!

[dwar0123]

 blackshoe, on 2013-June-03, 13:15, said:

There's fat in tobacco? Darn! Good think I quit smoking 45 years ago!

A good think indeed!

[blackshoe]

And folks say I have no sense of humor.