Monsanto doesn't want you to read this book. They know you will be angry. And you will be totally right to be angry.
First of all, let's examine closely what a corporation like Monsanto is. Big corporations always try to get hold on a monopoly. The advantage of a monopoly is that the free market is eliminated. Think oil, central banks, patented drugs, patented pesticides, etc. More recently genetically modified seeds were developed, 75 % of which are engineered to withstand the otherwise deadly application of an herbicide - naturally : the brand the same corporation produces ("Roundup Ready"). Excellent news for stockholders of Monsanto, but what's in it for us, poor consumers ? Well, actually, as this book explains very well : absolutely nothing.
This was a huge challenge for the marketing department of Monsanto to start with. They try to sell us the idea that GM crops will "eliminate hunger in the Third World". This is absurd : hunger is not caused by lack of food, but by its unequal distribution. Therefore, the Rockefeller Foundation came up with another strategy. They funded the development of "golden rice", which would "prevent blindness and infection in millions of children' suffering from vitamin-A deficiency". Or how to complicate a simple problem. Why not educate poor people to grow vegetables on the margins of their rice fields ? Or why not considering distributing vitamin A tablets ? "At a cost of only $.05 per tablet, only $25,000 is needed to prevent 500,000 children from going blind per year. Contrast this with golden rice, which has cost more than $100 million dollars so far, and is not yet ready", the author says. On top of this, the "golden rice" provides so little vitamin A a two-year-old child would need to eat seven pounds per day. Likewise, an adult would need to eat nearly twenty pounds to get the daily recommended dose.
On top of that, the scarce investigation available shows that GM crops have *less nutritional value* than natural crops. Dr. Arpad Pusztai discovered that GM potatoes provide 20 % less proteins than natural species. Roundup Ready soy has also significantly lower levels of protein and other important nutrients, but higher levels of a potentially damaging lectin.
Animals sense the potential danger of GM crops. If cows, hogs, mice, squirrels, elk, deer and raccoons can choose, they leave the GM crops alone. This is a huge problem when experiments are performed on GM crops. Rats didn't want to eat the "immortal" tomato - still fresh, red and ripe... 150 days after picking... They had to be force-fed this artificial "food". The rodents knew something was wrong, and they were right. Seven of forty animals died within two weeks. Consequently, the tomato was approved. Huh ? Yeah, I am sorry. If you still believe the FDA was there to protect your health, time to wake up ! The FDA considers GM crops "substantially equivalent" to natural crops, and no experiment whatsoever will change its view on this matter. The FDA has in fact turned into the Washington branch office of Monsanto and Big Pharma.
Probably, you won't be aware that GM crops are abundant in the current diet, in *your* current diet. "GM foods are a regular part of the U.S. diet. Approximately 80 percent of the soy and 38 percent of the corn planted in the U.S. in 2003 is genetically engineered. Derivatives from these two crops are found in about 70 percent of processed foods. In addition, 70 percent of the cotton crop and more than 60 percent of the canola crop, both used for cooking oil, are also genetically modified".
Scientists like Dr. Arpad Pusztai are astonished : "I find that it is very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs. We have to find the guinea pigs in the laboratory." But the FDA prefers to use the whole US-population for this purpose. The record so far is the following : "According to a March 2001 article in the New York Times, "The CDC (Center for Disease Control) now says that food is responsible for twice the number of illnesses in the United States as scientists thought just seven years ago... At least 80 percent of food-related illnesses are caused by viruses or other pathogens that scientists cannot even identify." The reported cases include 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 76 million illnesses per year. This increase roughly corresponds to the period when Americans have been eating GM food."
Digestion problems, irritable bowel syndrome, acne, eczema, headaches, chronic fatigue syndrome and lethargy are all possible complaints when eating genetically modified Roundup Ready soy, following John Graham of the York Laboratory.
The last chapter of this book deals with how to avoid GM crops in your menu. This book is highly recommended. Buy it, read it, and distribute it amongst your family members and friends.