21 July 2007

Look out, it's Franken-tato!

If you're thinking of sending Igor out to find a brain anytime soon... you'd better not live in Europe.
Only 1 percent of the world's genetically modified food is grown in Europe.
There's a number that just stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps turning the world clock back to the middle ages is a more popular idea in some parts of the world than I imagined.
In contrast, 55 percent of the world's acreage in genetically modified crops is in the United States, where there is no distinction made between genetically modified and traditional varieties.
Read the article. Incredibly, the potato everybody's freaking out about, isn't even for human consumption.

It's been designed to make industrial starch.

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RELATED: Call me crazy, but...

Maybe you should worry about stuff that could actually affect your life.
Mexican cantaloupe irrigated with water from sewage-tainted rivers. Candy laced with lead.

Producers in other developing nations are notorious violators of basic food-safety standards, even as they woo consumers with a growing appetite for foods such as pickled mangoes from India and fruits and vegetables during winter from Mexico.
Most people are aware of the unbelievable messes originating in China, but the problem is much, much larger than that.
China, already under suspicion as the source of tainted toothpaste, contaminated fish and toxic medicine, logged the largest number of violations in the past 12 months, with the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration rejecting 1,901 shipments of food and cosmetics.

But India and Mexico weren't far behind, with inspectors rejecting 1,787 and 1,560 shipments, respectively. The biggest reasons? Foods that are unapproved or contain poisons and pesticides.

Some are simply dirty, with inspectors finding that the shipment "appears to consist in whole or in part of a filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance or be otherwise unfit for food."
Or you can just learn to live with stuff like this... because there's only one way to be totally sure about food nowadays.

Grow your own.

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