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Monday, February 18, 2008

A Fuseli Future With Monsanto's Sugar Franken-Beet

Fuseli painted The Nightmare. I just saw it over Christmastide at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It is as unsettling as ever. I also went to the ROM, or Royal Ontario Museum, recently and looked at glassware along with their new addition which looks as if they got into a fight with the University of Toronto next door, and the U of T took a broken beer bottle and bashed old ROM in the facade with it. Now from the brave, new world of Genetically Engineered Foodstuffs...or Golem cuisine. http://jcarrot.org/ge-sugar-coming-soon-to-candy-in-you/ Sorry to be the bearer of scary news on Valentines Day, but if you thought GMOs in your tofu was a bummer, guess what Monsanto is bringing you next - yep, GE sugar for your Valentine! About half of sugar produced in the U.S. comes from sugar beets (the other half is cane sugar). In the next few weeks, sugar beet farmers throughout the U.S. will be considering what type of sugar beets to plant, and food companies will have to decide what types of sugar they will accept. And this year, there is something new for farmers and the sugar cooperatives to choose from — Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beet, genetically engineered to survive direct application of the weed killer, Roundup. In addition to the specter of eating GE sugar, the sugar that comes from these novel plants will also have much heavier loads of pesticides on them. At the request of Monsanto, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency increased the allowable amount of glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup that kills plants) residues on sugar beetroots by a whopping 5000% at the time USDA permitted the growing us GE sugar beets. The inevitable result is more glyphosate pesticide in our sugar. The thoughtful people at the site have filed a complaint challenging USDA deregulation of the Monsanto Sugar Franken-Beet. Other work is being done. Follow the link above to the site for more information. Get your sweet heart a Franken-tine candy sampler!

The Golem about to eat an apple...I hope.

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