I receive a lot of action alerts in my inbox related to food and farmers and laws that affect them, but one caught my attention recently that I almost overlooked. It’s all about something that I don’t eat anyway so why would I care? Whatever side of the food politics fence you’re on, I think we can agree that we all must eat. The important thing is to know more about how the food you eat is grown and whether or not it is safe. Now, I don’t eat alfalfa sprouts so I almost hit delete on this news until I figured out that many things that I eat, eat alfalfa. This is true especially if you consume meat or dairy products.
What grabs me is that even if I buy things from farmers who don’t use genetically engineered (GE) seeds such as Monsanto’s Round Up Ready alfalfa seeds, the likelihood that these same farmers will end up with the GE seed through cross pollination is high. Farmers are concerned that this cross pollination could lead to new “super” weeds that would be even more herbicide resistant requiring harsher chemicals to eradicate. Furthermore, if an organic farms’ crops are affected by cross pollination of GE crops, the farm could lose its organic certification.
Small farmers, consumer and environmental groups contend that opening the door to GE alfalfa could lead to many other GE crop approvals and the safety data on GE crops is not good. Furthermore, there is no requirement in the US to label products that contain GE foods as is required in European countries.
I’m no expert, but if you’d like to do your own research or see what you can do to help, here are a couple links to some informative articles to get you started:
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