In an earlier post I talked about how to recognize organic tomatoes at the market.  Organic fruits and vegetables are free of chemical inputs like fertilizers and pesticides that cause much damage to human and animal health.

One of the points I made was for the tomatoes (or any fruit and veggie) to be organic it is important that they are not uniform in size, shape and color.  In nature fruits and vegetables don’t grow like spitting replicas of each other!  But when they are sold in packed units where they all look alike, you can be sure they are from crops that have been in one way or another, genetically manipulated.  All crops that are genetically manipulated for uniformity for commercial farming take in huge inputs of chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides. 

THE GENETIC MONSTER UNLEASHED YEARS AGO

Somebody from India raised the point that India and most other countries including the U.S.  don’t have GM food crops!! I wonder how many people think that?

The fact is,   we have had crops that are genetically modified crops in India since the 1960s – in what initially was called the Green Revolution.  They were known as genetically engineered (GE) or HYV (High Yielding Variety) seeds and scientists promised they would give high yields and solve India’s food problems.   There are many techniques of genetic manipulation that were discovered as early as the 1940s.  Over the years they’ve become more expansive, intrusive and irresponsible in their implementation.   BUT THEY ALL INVOLVE SOME FORM OF GENETIC MANIPULATION OF THE PLANTS.

There was a bitter lesson in store for India from the use of the GE crops (more…)