Say No to Genetically Modified Foods

There is much to be done to sensitise consumers about their purchasing habits and the repercussions of those habits. This year Consumer International, the world consumer body has as its theme for World Consumer Day ( March 15 th 2005 ), "Say no to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)". These GMOs are used to genetically modify foods.

Most crucial is the question of whom we are empowering with the responsibility to produce the world's food. Unfortunately, we have taken comfort in trusting processed foods rather than natural foods. We have become accustomed to finding the easy way out and this has not done much for the health of the nation.

As it is now, nearly everything we ingest has been tampered with. Even if you decide that you want to plant crops the seeds you buy are still genetically modified or treated in some way to resist diseases or attack by pests. We have no guarantee that the animal feeds are not full of artificial boosters or GMOs.

The principle here is that by relying on GMOs and supporting GMO foods we effectively create a monopoly on food production as this technology is in the hands of a few. This has implications for the agricultural producing countries finding a market already flooded by the use of technology to increase agricultural production in advanced countries.

Like anything else there is good and there is bad about GMOs. What Consumer International is asking is whether or not we have stopped to calculate the effects of GMOs on our countries. What is the cost to the health of our nation? What is the cost to agriculture?

Also, what are the overall economic costs and what are the social costs? While there is good and bad, there are also too many unknowns about GMOs. Yet we are caught up in the frenzy of GMO foods. We follow trends to keep up with the Joneses and pay the ultimate price.

For us in Barbados we should stop and reflect and try to understand why there is so much asthma, heart disease, diabetes, sickle cell, lupus, cancer, etc. surfacing with such intensity. Are our bodies reacting to this new technology? Has anybody stopped to separate out the good, the bad or the unknowns?

The unknowns are probably our worst nightmare. We complain of the behaviour of our youth because we can't explain it. We may be able to see the obvious but what about the not-so-obvious such as mental health? Are these foods interfering with our body chemistry or our psychological health? These must be among the unknowns.

We have gone so far with this trend that organic foods, foods without chemicals, traditionally prepared foods, etc are now becoming a niche market. Natural foods which were previously cheap and reserved for poor people are now the basis of a niche market that only the rich can fully exploit.

Anything branded vegetarian or organic is now the reserve of the rich or those who can afford it. Ordinary herbs which our fore-parents produced now sell for an arm and a leg.

Consumer International's campaign against GMOs is much broader than the GMOs themselves but the fact that we are being manipulated by the developed countries, causing us much harm in the process.

As a people Consumer International is asking us to wake up. Invest in our own research and find the value of our own foods. This may very well be the answer to reducing our health bill, curbing unsociable behaviour and losing our loved ones so early.

Furthermore, if we have any faith in the saying that we are what we eat, a valid concern would be that after eating all these organisms found in genetically modified foods that we may wake up one day to find that we are no longer human beings but genetically modified organisms ourselves.

Roosevelt O. King
Secretary General - BANGO
admin@bango.org.bb