GMOs and why they are a No No!

This piece ran first in the Spring issue of Edible Berkshires.

Maybe you’re like my friend Dalija Merritt. She buys as much organic food as she can afford. She avoids trans fats and hydrogenated oils, and BHT and BHA preservatives, all artificial dyes and sweeteners and in general, any food item with a list of ingredients exceeding two lines.

But when it comes to GMOs  -- genetically-modified organisms -- Dalijia is quite confused. So are a lot of folks as it turns out.

“I would like more clarity,” says Merritt, who owns the East Gate Inn, a B&B located adjacent to Tanglewood’s main gate in Lenox. “What emblem do I look for? And what foods have GMOs? Are they in dry foods? Are they in canned foods? I try hard to give my guests only the best natural foods.”  

Confession: before I began research for this article, I didn’t pay much attention to the brouhaha over

GMOs. I vaguely knew that the pro-GMO camp argued that we’ve been eating foods with GMOs for more than 15 years and there’s no evidence that they are harmful to humans. But I also knew consumer and right-to-know groups were more convincing: they contend that there haven’t been any long-term studies to determine the safety of GMO exposure over a lifetime.

Then there is the Frankenstein issue. It’s kind of creepy to think about scientists tinkering with the genetic makeup of the plants and animals we eat! According to a Consumer Reports survey of 1,004 representative Americans, ninety-two percent favored labeling GMO-containing foods. GMO labeling is mandatory in 60 countries.

Why not the US?

Until last summer, many states, including Massachusetts and New York, were well on their way to passing legislation requiring manufacturers to label GMO-containing foods. These states were following in the footsteps of Vermont, the first state to pass a mandatory-GMO labeling law in 2014. 

The Vermont law survived a court challenge and was on its way to implementation when the agribusiness and food industry mounted an all out campaign – spending millions -- to convince Congress to put a halt to all state efforts to require labeling legislation. As often happens, industry won.

On July 1, 2016, Congress passed the Safe and Affordable Food Act preempting all state regulation, and making GMO labeling exclusively the responsibility of the federal government. The USDA was given two years to implement the labeling disclosure regulations.

Martin Dagoberto, an activist who led the consumer-advocacy campaign for mandatory labeling of GMOs in Massachusetts, says the new federal law favors manufacturers and food growers. “This law was written by and for industry,” he says. “It’s not a consumer protection law at all.”

Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, says that under the new federal law (which Consumers Union opposed) manufacturers have a choice as to how they will meet the labeling requirement. The system is complex and two of the three options require consumers have access to either the Internet or a cell phone.

“They created a labeling system for rich young people who own computers and cell phones,” Halloran said. “We were totally opposed to the gizmo choices because half the people in rural areas, as well as half those who make less than $30,000 annually, don't own smart phones, nor do more than two-thirds of older people.”

At this point, the USDA is “now undertaking the very wonky process of implementing the law,” says Consumer’s Union policy analyst Will Wallace.

Under the legislation, a comment period should have begun by now. But it just keeps being pushed back. Under the Trump administration, it’s anybody’s guess as to how the USDA regulations will be implemented and enforced.

President Trump's executive order mandating that for every federal regulation implement, two must be slashed, ultimately could spell doom for the labeling legislation. Massachusett's consumer advocate Dagoberto points out, however, that the executive order applies to regulations issued in 2017; the federal labeling regs don't go into effect until 2018. Of course Trump could extend the order.

"Nothing is certain," says Dagoberto. "We just don't know how it's going to roll out."

Meanwhile the demand for non-GMO labeling continues to grow.  Increasingly, food companies recognize the value in voluntarily submitting their products to the not-for-profit Non-GMO Project, an independent organization (launched in 2010) that certifies products as non-GMO. The Non-GMO Project Verified Seal – with the bright orange and black butterfly against a sky blue background -- has certified more than 40,000 products across the U.S.

Those butterfly seals appear on two varieties of Klara’s Kookies, a Lee, Massachusetts cookie producer. Husband and wife owners Jefferson Diller and Klara Sotonova decided to seek non-GMO verification four years ago. “We don’t like to bring products into our home that are not safe for our family. We feel the same way about the cookies we sell to others.”

The certification process costs $1,500 per year for each product. And it requires a small mountain of paperwork.  Diller says that as a food producer, he had to trace back each ingredient used in the cookies to a certified non-GMO manufacturer.  For example, he said, “we had to prove the eggs and egg whites we use are non-GMO verified.”

The case for non-GMO verification became crystal clear to me when I learned the following from Jean Halloran at Consumer’s Union:

Monsanto has for the past two decades genetically-engineered corn and soybean seeds. Why? “It’s part of a production system,” Halloran says. The GMO plants are engineered so that they can survive being dosed with huge amounts of the herbicide glyphosate (known by the brand name Roundup.)

 "They are using 15 times more Roundup than they were 20 years ago,” Halloran says. The herbicide is still being studied for its carcinogenic properties. Meanwhile, there are now “superweeds” that have developed immunity to the herbicide..

So there you have it: Monsanto makes money engineering and selling the GMO-modified seeds and then the corporate giant makes money producing the herbicide used on the crops. What a racket!!

What is a consumer supposed to do?

Easy. Buy products that boast the orange and black butterfly, that is, the Non-GMO Project Verified Seal. The more that consumers buy and demand non-GMO products, the more likely companies are going to seek certification labeling.

So that’s what I am telling Dalija. Look for the butterfly wherever you can.

Spring Springing

This piece appeared first in the Spring edition of the magazine, Edible Berkshires.

March 17^th

March Madness. I had a son who played high school basketball so I know all about the NCAA tournament.

But I’m talking about a different sort of madness here.

The kind where you’ve absolutely and totally had your fill of winter. And then some. But there’s at least five or six weeks of it left. You just don’t think you’re going to survive the last gasps of snow and ice and that bone brittle cold.

In three days the calendar says spring will arrive. Who are we kidding?

What about that mid-sized glacier blocking my back door?  I need hip boots to get to the bird feeder.

Who decided spring was in March anyway?

In 2009, my husband and I lived in Washington, DC, where I saw dark purple and yellow pansies thriving in FEBRUARY!  And the first week of April, there is the miracle of cherry blossoms. 

Hundreds of trees, each looking like they are wearing a delicate pink ballerina’s skirt fluffing around them.

Back to the misery that is an early Berkshire County spring. I am remembering a May 20^th when we had to light the damn woodstove.

OK, enough of this miserable complaining.  For a moment this morning, stare at the beautiful meadow outside the window.

There now. It’s sunrise and the willow trees are glowing a pale orange. The buttery disc that is the moon is setting over that beautiful hillside you are so fortunate to see.

Before you decide you are moving to Miami, open the back door and inhale the absolutely pristine country air. Let the throaty racket that is the morning’s birds settle deep into your heart and soul.

Soon you will start to feel the continuing miracle that is Mother Nature.

Meditate on the fact that despite the cold and snow, the sun is up once again and it’s another glorious day in the Berkshires.

********

April 17^th

Finally, thank God, it's here. Hard to fathom what’s happened in the last few days.

It was winter-looking even on Sunday. The pond still had some white ice.

The backyard glacier was still the size of a sectional sofa. There, lying everywhere in the backyard, were those crystallized eyebrows of snow.

And then of course, was the mud. Where there wasn’t snow there was the misery of goo that we have to endure between winter and spring.

But whoosh! Monday came and its mild temps erased the ice. The glacier was no bigger than a dinner plate. The mud was drying up.

Now there's a hint of spring in the lawn. Green shoots have popped up everywhere, and amidst the crusty brown leaves appears the first purple crocus!! Soon we will have the ecstasy of daffodils and tulips.

The birds are doing their sweet singing, too, and those wonderful spring peepers are making a racket, which always sounds a bit extraterrestrial to me.

At the feeder today, there are brilliant yellow goldfinches. And a redwing blackbird. And nuthatches. And then, our one true harbinger of spring: dozens of robins are bobbling around right where that glacier used to lay.

Will the rose-breasted grosbeak return come May?

Open the windows and all of the doors. Let it all in: the sun, the budding trees, the spring breezes that smells like warm earth.

After what we in Berkshire County have endured, there is no end to this mighty miracle that is spring!

What if the water in your sink poured out black and stinky?

If you were listening to All Things Considered on NPR last evening, chances are you heard a very moving story about a special education school on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. The school, which has been operating for 40 years, offers services to about 60 children and adults with moderate to severe disabilities.

Saint Michael's Special Education School has a water problem. A BIG problem. The tap water often pours out black and foul-smelling into the sinks. The school is forced to buy its water in big jugs, which costs the school thousands of dollars a year. St. Michaels needs clean water, and there is now a project underway that would supply that water.

Amazingly, the foul water meets national drinking water standards -- the so-called primary standards. As NPR correspondent Laura Morales reports, the water is not poisonous. But it doesn't meet the secondary "aesthetic" standards which affect how the water tastes, looks and smells.

Enter Dig Deep, a California-based non-profit organization devoted to helping communities dig and maintain low-cost water supplies. Dig Deep has a filtration plan for St. Michael's water system. That water project costs $100,000. They have raised $75,000 already. Can you and the people you know help them reach their goal?

As the young Navajo girl tells the camera in a video on the Saint Michael's website, "WATER IS LIFE!"

Indeed, water is a precious resource. Here in the Northeast, we so easily take clean water for granted. Lately, though, even before I knew about St. Michael's problem, I have been thinking a lot about water, and how it's in such short supply in so many western states. It makes me turn faucets off, do less wash, take shorter showers, flush toilets fewer times.

To donate to the water project, go to Dig Deep's website. Fortunately, we don't have to dig too deep in our pockets to help make clean water flow on a reservation in Arizona.

This piece also appears on The Huffington Post.

NASA: 235 trillion miles is close by in the universe!

On February 22, 2017, The Washington Post reported:

"A newfound solar system just 39 light-years away contains seven warm, rocky planets, scientists say. The discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, represents the first time astronomers have detected so many terrestrial planets orbiting a single star. Researchers say the system is an ideal laboratory for studying distant worlds and could be the best place in the galaxy to search for life beyond Earth."

 It's been weeks since the discovery was announced.  

By

now

I suppose I should have fathomed this news.

But as many times as I read accounts

of the discovery, I am awed. My brain can

absolutely make no sense of the distance. 

NASA says that these exoplanets

can be reached in 40 light-years.

40 light-years, huh?

That equals

235 trillion miles, a distance that 

NASA says "is relatively close to us."

Double HUH??

Why do I keep coming back and 

coming back and coming back

to what I call one of the deepest

mysteries I can recall.

I was talking to my son-in-law Evan, a rather

brilliant scientist, about light-years.

He calculated that if you were traveling at the speed

of light, you could circle the Earth

seven times in one second!

Maybe it's just me, but I believe that

all of this is rather impossible

to take in.

It's a little (just a very little) like standing

at the edge of the Grand Canyon and

trying to absorb the vast pink and brown and orange 

glory before you.

This news is definitely in the category of 

things I will never ever comprehend.

It's right up there with staring at a baby

or a flower or somebody's eye

and all those other miracles of Mother Nature.

I could spend each day for the rest of my life

contemplating all of this and I am quite sure

I will always end up in the same place

Mystified and oddly, comforted too,

that there is an INFINITY of 

of miraculous things and us? Hardly a speck of dust in the Universe.