Say the phrase GMO to many in the English speaking world and they instantly say, "Monsanto" and yet we've been producing mutagenic GMOs since the early 20th century (Monsanto was formed then) but it didn't start transgenic GMO until the mid 1980s. When a film contains interviews from Dr. Vandana Shiva (unless she's being shredded by an actual scientist, which never happens because she won't consent to that sort of interview) you know that's it's either 100% propaganda or a product of sloppy research.
"Industrialised agriculture is a war against the Earth because it's a war against all species. Because you're bring more chemicals into food production and all they're doing is Killing" says Shiva.
She's preaching a false narrative that hasn't been the case for over 10,000 years. The only reason you're able to read this is because of industrialised farming. From the clothes on your back to the fact you have electricity and heat in your home. Everything, and I mean everything, in our world can only be achieved with farming: it's literally the bedrock of humanity; the single most important development mankind has ever created; more even than fire. More chemicals she says? Water, sugar and salt are chemicals - so this sort of non-specific terminology is a deliberate red-herring. Lead and arsenic are chemical elements and not just toxic heavy metals, but they are also allowed in organic agriculture.
Rosario Dawson is a wonderful human being, I'm sure, but in Executive Producing and narrating this propaganda she's doing herself and everyone a disservice with this stunning ignorance. The problem is that if we follow this advice (and many are) we're accelerating toward our own demise. We don't have time to run this experiment, it's already been producing results for centuries, and we know from those results that it doesn't work well enough; but Dawson keeps pushing this false narrative. It's like the (well-meaning people) in the 1980s who protested nuclear power are now the parents and grandparents to people who are protesting GMO and "big Ag.".
Nuclear has its problems, I'd be a fool not to admit that, but the fact we didn't invest heavily in when we had the chance, we're in an extant fight for our energy future. Renewables are often ugly, not that efficient and don't work 100% of the time. Coal, oil, gas and nuclear do - but only one of those doesn't push billions of tonnes of CO2 and other crud into the atmosphere - tens of thousands (albeit in poorer nations) every year and causing the Earth to warm up. So no, global warming isn't a hoax and the well-meaning of yesteryear are indirectly responsible for it.
We're deeply divided between what people want to believe, that everything organic is naturally healthy, and what's actually true that science is an evolving process but without it we are in trouble. If words like mutagenic and transgenic go over your educational level, then you're precisely the sort of person that this documentary is aimed at. If you don't know the difference, which is crucial by the way; and just two examples of how GMO is performed, you'll easily fall into the quicksand that is "organic".
Organic farmers make many claims but the reality is that most cannot be verified by scientists - because if they were, farmers the world over would be using them. In fact, this already happens, not from organic farmers, but from actual scientists and engineers who test their ideas until they deliver or break. Rinse and repeat. When Sri Lanka went 100% organic in 2021, its entire food crop failed leaving the population at risk of starvation and the country left begging from the IMF.
Dr. Shiva holds a doctorate, but it's not a science doctorate. The distinction here is clouded with phraseology behind "philosophy" but there are detailed explanations if you look with an open mind. People who call out Dr. Shiva aren't always scientists, though many are academics and the bottom line is that she isn't qualified to opine in the fields that she does. In fact, she's so ignorant (or at least hopes her audiences will be) that she suggested that so-called "terminator" GMOs, which are sterile by design, could somehow jump to other species through cross pollination. You can't fertilise a living organism with sterile gametes: the clue is in the word.
The film also features another infamous talking head, Jeffery "Jeffery's fine" Smith. This seems like an odd phrase, but Smith doesn't have a doctorate, or any formal education in biology or a related field that I've been able to divine. So when Smith was asked during a fairly heated GMO debate, "Do I call you Dr. Smith?" He smiled and replied, "Jeffery is fine."
Of course it's fine but why didn't Smith admit right there and then (like any honest person would do) that he didn't hold a PhD? Be honest, if someone put you under oath and phrased a similar question, you'd happily admit that you weren't a doctor. We call this lying by omission but it's still lying and it calls into question Smith's entire narrative which I won't bore you with here.
The claim that GMOs are somehow dangerous is writ many different ways, but in each case it's invariably fallacy of the argument from emotion. "GMOs will kill us", "GMO will give you cancer", "GMO are drenched in glyphosate (Roundup) which gives you cancer" and so on.
But as I've already stated, we've been eating GMOs all of our lives - or at least have been exposed to them. In fact, transgenic GMO happens in nature all of the time, a bacteria called "agrobacterium" is nature's microscopic genetic surgeon, we just harnessed it and used it by design rather than the haphazard "take gene X from plant A and put into plant B" we've said, take the gene that produces Bt Toxin (a naturally occurring insecticide) and put it into maize for example.
But it's toxic right? Not unless you're an insect with an alkaline digestive system. Bt toxins are used widely in organic agriculture and no one bats an eyelid. Even if it were toxic to humans, the amount to have any effect on us would be immense compared to the target organisms (typically invasive, crop destroying moths).
Mutagenesis, the first human form of direct gene manipulation, occurred back in the 1900s and we have many results of that today, with the canonical example being the ruby-red grapefruit. At the time, no one knew what the mutagenic effect had changed in the plant's genome, only that the flesh changed from a yellow to a deep, appealing red that customer's wanted on their plates and were willing to pay for.
The cancer claim is another red herring. Most farmers use pesticides, those that do not are very limited to what they can grow and the production levels are poor. Put simply, this system does not scale with the technology we have today although it does show promise. Cancer is an umbrella term for a huge number of related diseases (over 200) but the mechanisms and causes are different for each one. Roundup also called glyphosate due to the active ingredient has taken a pounding in the American civil courts after the French-based IARC (part of the WHO that operates independently) declared it to be probably carcinogenic. But the IARC does not assess risk and even if it did, there's no risk from the almost immeasurable amount we're exposed to.
Ms. Dawson is rich and thanks to her looks has enjoyed a fairly charmed life. She can afford to pay the extra 20-30% demanded by organic produce. But this is supply and demand, as demand goes up, supply will go down (organic isn't that efficient) and so the price will rise.
This prices people out of the nutritious food they need and the result is horrifying. In the West we're already facing a crisis of obesity that's exploded since the 1980s and obesity causes many cancers. But malnutrition is far worse than cancer. Children born to malnourished parents suffer a horrific laundry list of life-long conditions and can only pass those on to their own offspring, continuing that downward spiral.
I've seen this in the children born to the poor farmers in the tobacco-growing regions of Argentina to the impoverished families in drought-ridden Ethiopia. Other documentaries have blamed GMO, while ignoring the albeit more complex issues of poverty, consanguineous marriage and limited diets. The factors that are really at play here are nowhere near as simple as this travesty of a documentary, written and directed by actor, Rob Herring tries to portray.
From now on I'll be calling him "Red" because this is full of them but they fly so thick and so fast, most viewers (and this is clear from the reviews] won't even spot them as they whistle past their heads. Don't be one of them, ask a qualified scientist - many lurk on Twitter and aren't funded by Big Ag. But they all have one thing in common, they will tell you the scientific facts, not cosy untruths that you might want to hear.
"Industrialised agriculture is a war against the Earth because it's a war against all species. Because you're bring more chemicals into food production and all they're doing is Killing" says Shiva.
She's preaching a false narrative that hasn't been the case for over 10,000 years. The only reason you're able to read this is because of industrialised farming. From the clothes on your back to the fact you have electricity and heat in your home. Everything, and I mean everything, in our world can only be achieved with farming: it's literally the bedrock of humanity; the single most important development mankind has ever created; more even than fire. More chemicals she says? Water, sugar and salt are chemicals - so this sort of non-specific terminology is a deliberate red-herring. Lead and arsenic are chemical elements and not just toxic heavy metals, but they are also allowed in organic agriculture.
Rosario Dawson is a wonderful human being, I'm sure, but in Executive Producing and narrating this propaganda she's doing herself and everyone a disservice with this stunning ignorance. The problem is that if we follow this advice (and many are) we're accelerating toward our own demise. We don't have time to run this experiment, it's already been producing results for centuries, and we know from those results that it doesn't work well enough; but Dawson keeps pushing this false narrative. It's like the (well-meaning people) in the 1980s who protested nuclear power are now the parents and grandparents to people who are protesting GMO and "big Ag.".
Nuclear has its problems, I'd be a fool not to admit that, but the fact we didn't invest heavily in when we had the chance, we're in an extant fight for our energy future. Renewables are often ugly, not that efficient and don't work 100% of the time. Coal, oil, gas and nuclear do - but only one of those doesn't push billions of tonnes of CO2 and other crud into the atmosphere - tens of thousands (albeit in poorer nations) every year and causing the Earth to warm up. So no, global warming isn't a hoax and the well-meaning of yesteryear are indirectly responsible for it.
We're deeply divided between what people want to believe, that everything organic is naturally healthy, and what's actually true that science is an evolving process but without it we are in trouble. If words like mutagenic and transgenic go over your educational level, then you're precisely the sort of person that this documentary is aimed at. If you don't know the difference, which is crucial by the way; and just two examples of how GMO is performed, you'll easily fall into the quicksand that is "organic".
Organic farmers make many claims but the reality is that most cannot be verified by scientists - because if they were, farmers the world over would be using them. In fact, this already happens, not from organic farmers, but from actual scientists and engineers who test their ideas until they deliver or break. Rinse and repeat. When Sri Lanka went 100% organic in 2021, its entire food crop failed leaving the population at risk of starvation and the country left begging from the IMF.
Dr. Shiva holds a doctorate, but it's not a science doctorate. The distinction here is clouded with phraseology behind "philosophy" but there are detailed explanations if you look with an open mind. People who call out Dr. Shiva aren't always scientists, though many are academics and the bottom line is that she isn't qualified to opine in the fields that she does. In fact, she's so ignorant (or at least hopes her audiences will be) that she suggested that so-called "terminator" GMOs, which are sterile by design, could somehow jump to other species through cross pollination. You can't fertilise a living organism with sterile gametes: the clue is in the word.
The film also features another infamous talking head, Jeffery "Jeffery's fine" Smith. This seems like an odd phrase, but Smith doesn't have a doctorate, or any formal education in biology or a related field that I've been able to divine. So when Smith was asked during a fairly heated GMO debate, "Do I call you Dr. Smith?" He smiled and replied, "Jeffery is fine."
Of course it's fine but why didn't Smith admit right there and then (like any honest person would do) that he didn't hold a PhD? Be honest, if someone put you under oath and phrased a similar question, you'd happily admit that you weren't a doctor. We call this lying by omission but it's still lying and it calls into question Smith's entire narrative which I won't bore you with here.
The claim that GMOs are somehow dangerous is writ many different ways, but in each case it's invariably fallacy of the argument from emotion. "GMOs will kill us", "GMO will give you cancer", "GMO are drenched in glyphosate (Roundup) which gives you cancer" and so on.
But as I've already stated, we've been eating GMOs all of our lives - or at least have been exposed to them. In fact, transgenic GMO happens in nature all of the time, a bacteria called "agrobacterium" is nature's microscopic genetic surgeon, we just harnessed it and used it by design rather than the haphazard "take gene X from plant A and put into plant B" we've said, take the gene that produces Bt Toxin (a naturally occurring insecticide) and put it into maize for example.
But it's toxic right? Not unless you're an insect with an alkaline digestive system. Bt toxins are used widely in organic agriculture and no one bats an eyelid. Even if it were toxic to humans, the amount to have any effect on us would be immense compared to the target organisms (typically invasive, crop destroying moths).
Mutagenesis, the first human form of direct gene manipulation, occurred back in the 1900s and we have many results of that today, with the canonical example being the ruby-red grapefruit. At the time, no one knew what the mutagenic effect had changed in the plant's genome, only that the flesh changed from a yellow to a deep, appealing red that customer's wanted on their plates and were willing to pay for.
The cancer claim is another red herring. Most farmers use pesticides, those that do not are very limited to what they can grow and the production levels are poor. Put simply, this system does not scale with the technology we have today although it does show promise. Cancer is an umbrella term for a huge number of related diseases (over 200) but the mechanisms and causes are different for each one. Roundup also called glyphosate due to the active ingredient has taken a pounding in the American civil courts after the French-based IARC (part of the WHO that operates independently) declared it to be probably carcinogenic. But the IARC does not assess risk and even if it did, there's no risk from the almost immeasurable amount we're exposed to.
Ms. Dawson is rich and thanks to her looks has enjoyed a fairly charmed life. She can afford to pay the extra 20-30% demanded by organic produce. But this is supply and demand, as demand goes up, supply will go down (organic isn't that efficient) and so the price will rise.
This prices people out of the nutritious food they need and the result is horrifying. In the West we're already facing a crisis of obesity that's exploded since the 1980s and obesity causes many cancers. But malnutrition is far worse than cancer. Children born to malnourished parents suffer a horrific laundry list of life-long conditions and can only pass those on to their own offspring, continuing that downward spiral.
I've seen this in the children born to the poor farmers in the tobacco-growing regions of Argentina to the impoverished families in drought-ridden Ethiopia. Other documentaries have blamed GMO, while ignoring the albeit more complex issues of poverty, consanguineous marriage and limited diets. The factors that are really at play here are nowhere near as simple as this travesty of a documentary, written and directed by actor, Rob Herring tries to portray.
From now on I'll be calling him "Red" because this is full of them but they fly so thick and so fast, most viewers (and this is clear from the reviews] won't even spot them as they whistle past their heads. Don't be one of them, ask a qualified scientist - many lurk on Twitter and aren't funded by Big Ag. But they all have one thing in common, they will tell you the scientific facts, not cosy untruths that you might want to hear.