Stossel: The Truth About GMOs

organic stossel

Activists have convinced Americans that “organic” food is better — healthier, better-tasting, and life-extending. As a result, poor parents feel guilty if they can’t afford to pay $7 for organic eggs.

This misinformation is spread by people like Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association. She says organic food is clearly better: “The nutrition is a huge difference.”

But it isn’t. Studies find little difference.

If you still want to pay more for what’s called “organic,” that’s your right. But what’s outrageous is that this group of scientifically illiterate people convinced the government to force all of us to pay more.

Congress has ruled that GMOs (genetically modified food) must be labeled. Busybodies from both parties supported the idea.

Politicians like Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said, “It doesn’t cost anymore. This idea that … this … will raise food prices is ridiculous.”

It’s McGovern who is ridiculous. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the GMO labeling will cost from $598 million to $3.5 billion.

“But the public wants GMOs labeled,” say advocates. “Surveys show that.”

Of course, they do.

Ask people if DNA in food should be labeled, and most say yes. Yet DNA is in everything.

Polling is a stupid way to make policy.

The idea of modifying a plant’s DNA may sound creepy, but people have cross-bred plants and animals for years.

“The corn we have today, there’s nothing natural about that,” I say to Baden-Mayer in my new video. “What native people ate, we’d find inedible.”

Baden-Mayer laughs at that.

“You’re saying indigenous corn is somehow inferior because you’ve seen it dried and it has tiny little kernels?” she asks.

“Yes,” I reply. I’ve tried to eat it.

“That’s another myth of the industry,” she responds. “People like you believe that.”

I sure do. I also believe it’s good that genetic modification lets us alter nature more precisely, gene by gene. That’s better and safer than the more haphazard crossbreeding that’s been done for years.

This new precision lets scientists make plants that save lives.

In poor parts of the world, half a million people per year go blind due to a lack of vitamin A in their diets. Many die.

Scientists have created a new genetically modified rice that contains vitamin A. This “golden rice” could save those people.

“I’ve heard of golden rice,” sneers Baden-Mayer. “That was a project that all of the chemical companies invested in.”

I sneer right back.

“Golden rice hasn’t succeeded partly because scientifically ignorant fools like you convinced the world that it’s harmful!”

“I knew at a certain point you would resort to name-calling,” she replies. “But it doesn’t change the science on this.”

Sadly, in some countries, people listen to advocates like her and believe that Americans want to poison them. One group of GMO fearful protesters invaded a golden rice field in the Philippines, ripping up all the plants.

Thousands will die or go blind, needlessly, because the organic cult spreads misinformation.

At least educated skeptics now understand that they were wrong about GMOs.

The New York Times points out that many “quietly walked back their opposition” to GMOs. “The science is clear,” says a former opponent in The Wall Street Journal. “They’re perfectly safe.”

The Philippines recently approved golden rice.

But the hardcore zealots will never be convinced.

Baden-Mayer claims GMOs cause cancer.

“We’re using more GMOs than ever,” I point out. “There’s less cancer now. Life spans keep increasing.”

“Compared to when, 100 years ago?” she scoffs.

Absolutely, yes. We live about 25 years longer than Americans did 100 years ago. Even compared to 10 or 20 years ago, we live longer.

The National Academy of Sciences calls GMOs safe. So do the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the USDA.

But no amount of science will convince people like Baden-Mayer. “The GMO issue just has not been investigated enough,” she says.

Organic promoters are wrong on the costs and wrong on the science.

Sadly, they’ve won the battle of public opinion.

Read more at Townhall

Comments (17)

  • Avatar

    Alcheminister

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    Basically, you’re telling me John Stossel is a souled out piece of ignorant moron sh it that I should never even bother to consider?

      • Avatar

        Alcheminister

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        If if you’ve not noticed, I’ve been quite specifically mistyping and mentioning sympathy about Russians.

        Here’s a random Russian:
        https://nobodyone.bandcamp.com/album/ocean-echo

        Uhm, that’s a terrorist, right?

      • Avatar

        Alcheminister

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        Okay so wait a minute, they have an article saying how shit soy oil is…

        ” However, it is important to note there is no proof the oil causes these diseases.”

        Rationale is an amazing thing that apparently doesn’t exist. I mean, you ask them did the inbred toxified soy oil, or toxified inbred gmo soy oil cause worse problems than the not toxified not soy oil? They magically, quite specifically mention how that is both true and not true.

        I took me a long time to tiype this sentence.

    • Avatar

      Mark Tapley

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      Hello Alcheminister:
      The links you post deal with say beans (soy). This crap is highly promoted by the processed food energy because it is cheap. It is the main ingredient in fake meat and is used in lots of other prepared foods such salad dressing and mayonnaise. Soy, unless fermented is not fit for human consumption as it contains phytoestrogens (do not give to male children especially). Soy bean oil is a type of poly unsaturated oil that is very inflamitory. It is an industrial product that becomes rancid before it is even used.

      The main issue of the video however is organic food. Stossel is correct. Most so called “organic” is no better than un organic. In fact in many cases “farmers markets” are scams where they buy the stuff from the same source as the supermarkets and then tag it “organic” and triple the price. As far as chicken or eggs there is no difference in food valve, just price. The golden rice is mostly just hype because the amount of vitamin A is not high enough to make a difference in normal consumption.

      Stossel is wrong about life expectancy. It was decreasing in Jewmerica even before the huge all cause mortality increase due to the fake virus poison injections. The statistics are skewed because they are adding in childhood deaths years ago that lowered the average age of death. If you look at the first five presidents their ages were 67-83-90-73-85. Better than a lot of people today. Note also that Washington was killed by his doctors from too much blood letting, and Madison who died at 85 had smoked since he was 8 years old.

      Eat a high saturated fat, high protein, low carb diet with weight bearing exercise and plenty of sleep. Drink very little. Don’t smoke. Do not drink or shower in chlorinated, fluoridated water. Test yourself every year to make sure you can get up from flat on the floor to a standing position without using hands, elbows. If you can then younger virtually guaranteed another 5 years unless you are stupid enough to take a fake virus injection.

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    Todd

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    I think you need to read a book called Timebomb by Joe Horn to learn about excitotoxins and the corruption from the very organizations you name as they work with big companies to make a buck. You are the one that will never be convinced. I used to think like you. Then I changed my diet to all natural foods and lost 60 pounds at the age of 45. I had two rules: 1) eat real food God made (that humans are given rule over…this is Biblical) and 2) move. 3 years later I am maintaining my weight quite comfortably; I do not calorie restrict, I eat what I want so long as it is real food and I eat as much as I want. The fake GMO’s in my experience absolutely screwed up my body. I haven’t even gotten into the allergy and stomach problems going away. My experience tells me this article is flat out wrong.

    • Avatar

      Alcheminister

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      Excitotoxins? Amazing. Like MSG?, sodium, chlorine, fluorine and glutmate excesses relative to otherdeficiencies (such as potassium magnesium, iodine and such).

    • Avatar

      Alcheminister

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      Iow, I often mistype, but I have quite a lot of experience with unnecessary toxic horseshit, “doctors” that are imbeciles, souled out, etc.

  • Avatar

    NicaLeon

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    Well it seems like the author of this nonsense didn’t read the article cited, 30% less pesticides, that’s enough for me.
    Should have concentrated on the ridiculous price hikes, instead of shoddy sleight of hand, what is, who is he working for. Give me a break.

    • Avatar

      Alcheminister

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      “30% less pesticides, that’s enough for me.”

      Dude, pesticide addiction is bad hey.. That’s 70% you crave. And I’m not a doctor, I’m a lunatic…but maybe you want to consider that pesticide addiction is bad hey.

  • Avatar

    chris

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    When you take the genetic code for the covid19 SPike toxin(PATENTED), injected in billions of arms, and run bioinformatics programs in order to detect patented pieces in it, you will find MONSANTO patents in it for the old and their newest genetically modified plants!! Coincidence? NO, I don’t think so. ANyone talking about 1000 of years plant breeding and comparing it with GMO’s is a completely uneducated MORON! In order to mix up genes from different species (that’s what GMO plants’ are!!!) one has to perform cutting, pasting and recombining the genes, and that can only happen with POLYMERASE chain reaction, which btw. only works at ~95degC… Did anyone see, EVER, a plant breeding at the boiling point of water??? In the hell, maybe, but NOT ON THIS PLANET.

    • Avatar

      Mark Tapley

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      The patents on the alleged spike proteins are meaningless, as they are based on Insilco (imaginary) genome fragments of a non existent virus. There is not one real study confirming the success of the mRNA. spike protein. What specific GMO food are you referring to? I think most of the GMO plants are making about as much headway as your gene therapies for treating disease. None.

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      Artelia

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      There is a vast difference between breeding plants with other plants of the same species and breeding plants with gene inserts from completely different species, say using animal and bacterial genes. In the same way, people should multiply by breeding with other PEOPLE and not with insects, reptiles or different species of mammals.

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    Jacque Millard

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    My husband worked in packaging for 45years and it doesn’t cost millions and billions of dollars to change the package to say gmo or non-gmo it costs very little. What a bunch of crap. Just another way to scam money.

    • Avatar

      Artelia

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      Thank you, the rest of us overlooked the deception here.
      Anything which needs to be labelled as GMO free should be suspect.
      I also do not trust Heinz products which may be labelled as organic, this is because Heinz, if it wished to create organic foods, should do so across their entire range.

  • Avatar

    Barry Havenga

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    It would conceptually be fine in many cases if you could propagate GMO crops yourself.
    Generally this does not happen.

    • Avatar

      Alcheminister

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      Well, I haven’t seen anything that suggests GMO crops aren’t taint.

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