A New Lie About GMO Food (Being Told For Money)

Slate.com has just published a new interview with Ingo Potrykus, who is a co-inventor of golden rice, which is genetically engineered to combat blindness and death in children in poor countries by supplying 60 percent of the daily requirement of Vitamin A in a single serving (basically splicing a beta carotene-producing gene into rice). The interviewer is very kind to Potrykus, as demonstrated by not asking Potrykus any hard questions. The article is an editorial, not a report, based in the online title -- “It’s Wicked to Oppose Genetically Modified Golden Rice” (When you click through to the actual story, the title disingenuously changes to rephrase the online title in the form of a question).

The writer asked Potrykus why Greenpeace and other groups have been so opposed to his project to create a GMO rice. Potrykus replies: “They've realized that it's politically more effective to be radical and not judge things on a case-by-case basis. I've had high-level discussions with Greenpeace over the years, and it becomes clear they cannot tolerate any genetically modified organisms, even those that can be used for the public good. If you encourage them to change their position on golden rice, their response is the same: They're against GMOs. That's the position, and it's very successful.”

Then the interviewer says: “These groups tap into public opposition to GMOs. Why do you think there is such vehement opposition?”

And Potrykus says, “Since the early 1990s, the majority of the media has repeated the mantra that GMOs are highly dangerous for the environment and the consumer. This mantra is fuelled continuously by a well-financed and -organized anti-GMO lobby. One of the cleverest tricks of the anti-GMO movement is to link GMOs so closely to Monsanto and other multinational corporations, because Monsanto has no friends. That strategy guarantees millions of supporters because people are emotionally against multinationals and in favor of organic farming because of the perception that it's run by idealists who protect nature and don't make money from it.”

This is a lie being told for money.

What Potrykus chooses not to say is much more important that what he says. Earlier in the article, the writer points out that there is a project in Uganda and Mozambique that has successfully bred heirloom sweet potatoes to do exactly what this GMO rice does. What no one in the article points out is that heirloom (open-pollinated) food has no owner. Every GMO food does. So the people who developed the improved sweet potato strain have created a food that no one owns -- if you can get some, and you know how to save and grow sweet potatoes (by using slips) then you can have these sweet potatoes, and anyone who wants to can grow them forever -- just like all the heirloom vegetables we have today.

But the GMO rice is owned and patented, and Patrykus will get rich off it, if it is approved in the Philippines (that country is considering it now). And anyone who ever wants to grow the golden rice will have to pay Potrykus’ company, forever. And that is truly wicked.

Not to mention real concerns about the fact that once modified genes are released into nature, humankind cannot ever control them again.

GMO food has one single goal -- to make its owners rich. I know first-hand about the allure. I create vegetable varieties. It has taken years of work to stabilize my two winter lettuces. And I sell the seeds. But once someone has bought the seed from me, they can save it and grow it and have it for the rest of their lives, without ever paying me another dime. They can sell it themselves. They can give it away. (Hopefully they will know what they are doing and know how to keep it pure, which isn’t rocket science but is important.) All of this is as it should be -- because I didn’t invent lettuce. I just created two new and much needed strains for winter growing. I did this hoping to help replace some of the winter varieties that have become extinct because they were carefully and quietly replaced by corporate-owned lettuces.

Owning the food supply is wicked. Improving the food supply is wonderful, but doing it with hybrids or GMOs which are patented and owned will do more to cause starvation and hardship than any other single factor. We give away our ability to feed ourselves for free by forcing farmers and gardeners to pay for seed each year instead of growing their own. This is what Potrykus is not saying in his interview -- sure, he’s created a food that will improve nutrition. But if his rice is approved, he will also force starving nations to pay for his seed forever, just like Monsanto.

There is only one way to support heirloom food, and that is by eating it, whether you grow it yourself and pay for the seed, or you buy it from people who are working hard to keep it from extinction, which has already happened to the majority of heirloom seed. Vote with your mouth, and your money. -Caleb

You can read the whole lie here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/10/golden_rice_inventor_ingo_potrykus_greenpeace_and_others_wicked_for_opposition.html

How to Preserve Onions for Winter

My friend Anji Sandage has some great suggestions for taking advantage of the flood of onions each autumn, like we are experiencing now. I asked her to write a guest blog for me, and she obliged :) I've added a few notes too. Here is Anji:

 If you have an abundance of onions -- and with it being fall you just might if you grew onions in your garden, or bought a bunch from a farmer -- you may have more than you can use right away. Onions can be stored fresh, but will start going moldy after about 2 or 3 months if they are not handled properly, and the sweet varieties do not last as long in storage as other varieties do.

To store onions fresh for up to 3 months without them getting moldy or sprouting , here are a few tips:

-Never store onions and potatoes together
-Do not store onions in plastic bags
-Keep onions in a dark, cool, dry storage area, such as a kitchen drawer or a basement storage room.

Onions just left together in a bin will start to go bad after a month or so, even when stored in a dry, cool, dark place, and storing onions in the refrigerator poses other problems, including the transfer of the onion smell to other produce for one, and a loss of flavor and texture after a while is another.

If you keep your onions in a brown paper bag with holes punched in it, they will last up to 3 months. There is a blog post on the Yummy Life blog that has some great tips for storing onions for up to 3 months here:

But, what if you have, say, three or four 30-lb. bags of onions that you just got for really cheap through a farm co-op or a group buy? [note from Caleb: Where I live, 25-lb. bags of onions are on sale right now for $4 and change!] In this case, 3 months may not be long enough. You may want to freeze them. Onions when frozen will last much longer than 3 months, especially if they are vacuum sealed.

To freeze your onions, the first thing you want to do is peel and chop them. Nothing like chopping a 30-lb bag of onions to make you cry – but there are a few things that you can do to minimize the tears

-Don't touch your face after chopping onions until you have washed your hands.
-Don’t breathe the onion fumes though your mouth – as much as you are tempted, it’s better not to hold conversations while chopping onions. I’m not sure why this is, but the waterworks start as soon as I start talking to someone while chopping onions.
-Keep some cold water running close by – If my eyes are stinging, bending close to the faucet with cold water running really seems to help.
-Keep your onion pieces together while chopping to prevent as much of the oils from escaping into the air. The tighter I keep the pieces together, the less tears I seem to have. It works best if I peel the onion, then slice it in half, and then lay each half on its side and cut it in thin slices, hold the slices together, and then cut in thin slices again in the opposite direction. This allows the rings to work for you in that the structure of the onion has done most of the work for you and there is a lot less chopping to do.

[note from Caleb -- you'll have fewer tears from onions if you use a very sharp knife, which keeps the onion juices from splattering.]

Of course, if you have a food processor, that saves you a lot of work, and all you have to do is peel and quarter your onions, fill your food processor with the quartered onions, and then pulse until they are finely chopped. After the onions are chopped, there are a couple of different ways to do this – one involves small vacuum seal bags and a foodsaver. The other involves a greased muffin tin and gallon-sized Ziploc bags. Of course the vacuum sealed onions are going to last the longest, but not everyone has access to a vacuum sealer, and the bags can get expensive.

[note from Caleb - if you don't have a vacuum sealer, there is a self-sufficient answer: the Archimedes Principle. Put your chopped onions in a freezer bag, and lower the bag into water until only the top is not submerged, and seal the bag. This removes all the air.]

I have also found that the juice from the onions tends to get everywhere and even with the vacuum sealer on the moist setting, the bags sometimes will not seal because the onions get too juicy. Freezing the onions in muffin tins allows you to have a bag of ready to use ½ cup measures of onions that are easily accessible, and they still stay good for several months. I used lard from pasture raised pork to grease the muffin tin to make the onions come out easier after they have frozen. I also added a small amount of water into each measure of chopped onions so that the bits would stick together better in a cube (or my kids called them hockey pucks) after freezing.

Once the onions are frozen, just store the frozen onions together in a gallon sized Ziploc bag in your freezer, and when you need an onion, simply toss in one of your frozen ½ cup servings (or more if you like) into your cooking ground beef or into the slow cooker with your roast, or thaw it out beforehand and drain any excess liquid to use the onions in salads or other recipes.

Anji is the mother of 4 children, and a blogger at meanroostersoup.com. She is the chapter leader for the Salt Lake County chapter of The Weston traditional foods and herbal remedies, and works as a certified foot zone therapist.