OUR RAVAGED GENETICS - INBREEDING GONE WILD-

WE ARE ENGINEERING OURSELVES OUT OF EXISTENCE.  FRESH DOES NOT MEAN NUTRITIOUS.  GOOD LOOKS DO NOT MEAN HEALTHY.  AND CULTURAL DIFFERENTIATION DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Restoring Balance to America's Food Supply.  There's another take on the current high focus on our food supply:  "Eat it to Save it"...Protecting the biodiversity of our food supply.

With the food issue front and center (“Food,Inc.” being a must see movie), I’ve been taking a closer look at the breeding aspects of our food and animal supplies and was appalled to find that the rush to produce more on smaller plots of land has also resulted in massive loss of species of vegetables, crops and inbreeding with animals.  As a former “farm girl”, I know this to be dangerous.  At the very least,  the plants and animals become weaker they lose their natural resistance to diseases.  More pesticides and anti-biotics are required.  Genetic diversity is crucial to the health of the planet.  Crops and animals adapt to certain regions and climates.  We are now engineering them with the same stroke of the same brush, destroying biodiversity, nutrition and the great diverse smorgasbord nature supplies us.

I find this ironic because I have been blogging about this for years (see my blog hhtp://thenaturaleye.com/ “An Urgent Memo to The World”.)  Can we not see that the condition of the human race is directly related to, and a reflection of, the condition of our Natural World? We are so intertwined that what we do to Nature we do to Ourselves.

In our slumber we have allowed the genetic diversity of our food supply to be reduced to a few strains, allowing the Monsanto’s of the world to rub their hands together giving them permission to continue re-engineering our food supply-minimum varieties means less R&D, means more profits, and to produce more chemicals to counter the ravaged natural system of nature’s counterbalances. Monsanto uses terms like “crop resistant”, “drought resistant”, as if they are doing us a favor when, in fact, they are destroying our soils, rivers, food and now have the world by the throat, controlling the world-wide food supply.

Seventy-five percent of the world's food now comes from seven crops: wheat, rice, corn, potato, barley, cassava and sorghum (mostly GMO).  Three breeds represent 60 percent of an animal population 99 percent of turkeys eaten in America come from a single breed and the Broad-Breasted White can no longer naturally reproduce.  The are brutally artificially inseminated.  More than 80 percent of dairy cows are Holsteins and 75 percent of pigs come from just three breeds.

The following article is discussing a viewpoint that as consumer demand drives production, we should eat more varieties of our food and by so doing, increase demand. http://www.miller-mccune.com/science_environment/eat-em-to-save-em-1338

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said "If we screw up with agriculture, with the growing world population and climate change, the consequences are not going to be the failure of a car company, whereby another car company can easily fill in for them," he said.  "Eventually, the consequences are starvation.  People need to understand the production of food is fundamentally different than the production of cars.  I don't think as a society we've really grasped that."


Sadly, if you go into the produce section of any supermarket you will see neat rows of fruits and vegetables all looking uniform as if they came out of a widget machine. Perfectly lined up, and polished, just like a car lot.  In the natural world no two things grow the same…there are no two human beings identically the same.  Yet we want everything lined up in perfect order, looking perfect (including each other) and we think that means “good”, “nutritious”, and “healthy”.  Wrong.  We have forgotten the natural organic process of life and turned our agricultural crops and animal raising over to industrialization and into a homogenized, sanitized production line. Thankfully the move to local food, slow food and organic food is drawing our attention to this very fact.

What does this ultimately mean to the human race?  It means our food looks good but is devoid of nutrients, is full of pesticides and insecticides and anti-biotics and artificial hormones that we ingest.  What do you think our human bodies are doing with all this overload?  The vitamin and supplement business is now billion-dollar business as we try to make up for what is lacking in our food or rid ourselves of the toxins we are ingesting.

If you have ever had the blessed opportunity to grow your own vegetables or raise your own animal stock you will appreciate the beauty and diversity that exists when we nurture nature to be all she can be in all her glory, constantly offering her abundance to us.  We just forget that her abundance depends upon our awareness, caring, and efforts to restore her to her natural balance.