GMO OMG (Genetically Modified Organism, Oh My God!)

What is a GMO?

A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. Genetic modification involves the mutation, insertion, or deletion of genes. Genetically engineered crops are crops that are altered with inserted genetic material to exhibit a desired trait.[1]

            GMO OMG is a documentary which offers a glimpse into the life of a concerned father and film-maker.  His two young boys and baby girl take a road trip with him to navigate the confusing roadmap of our food.  His main question at the beginning of the film is:  “Are GMOs safe?”  If they are in 85% of America’s food (unlabeled), he wants to know what the health and environmental effects are for the sake of his absolutely adorable offspring.

            The evasiveness of Monsanto corporation employees is comical.  Until it’s dismal.  No one will answer a worried parent as to the studies conducted by Monsanto itself on lab rats.  The 3-month study has been the basis for World Health Organization and other agencies in deeming GMOs generally safe for consumption.

            Seralini, a French scientist in Caen, conducted a lab experiment on the same breed of rat Monsanto used.  Rather than stopping at 3 months, he followed the effects of GMO food on the rats, as well as Roundup pesticide traces on rats.  The female rats began to grow large tumors and suffered effects on their pituitary glands in months 4-5.  The male rats suffered damage to their kidneys and livers along the same timeline.  Within one day of this study being published, London scientists (all heavily supported by biotech companies) began to attack the methods of Seralini’s article.

            Jeremy, director and reporter of this film, has a wonderful question.  If there is any merit at all to the findings of Seralini’s research, why blindly refute the study and continue on with our ingestion of genetically modified food?  Shouldn’t this spur a second (and much more thorough) look at the health effects – closer scrutiny over a longer period of time?  This is our health we are talking about.  But it becomes clear very quickly that health is not the goal here; it is money.  Lots and lots of money for large corporations who conducted these initial rat studies and refuse to publish the raw data.

            Jeremy does a beautiful job of showing the balancing act of feeding his family.  He filmed Halloween on his family’s street on the heels of some bleak conversations about GMOs in the American diet.  There were closeups of his children in precious costumes, taking candy from neighbors, and sucking on lollipops.  The heart of his documentary, to me, is here.  In a country where GMOs are prevalent in our food production and our food is unlabeled, it makes it nearly impossible for us to choose wisely as parents and to still experience cultural events.  When we act with the precautionary principle, are we sacrificing identity in our culture?  Do we then opt out of all the communal activities that revolve around food?  This is a choice parents and individuals should never be forced to make. 

---

[1] http://www.gmofilm.com/faq.aspx#bookmark0

Boxes and Bibles

Rachel Sanders of BuzzFeed recently published a blogpost entitled 31 Things to Do with Confusing CSA Vegetables.  The article shows pictures of the most prolific and odd-looking produce.  There is a blurb following each and then a list of recipes  - a creative springboard for those who cringe at kohlrabi and groan at garlic scapes. 

“As a CSA subscriber, sooner or later you’re bound to end up with strange, inexplicable vegetables you have no idea what to do with in your share. And you panic, and you freeze up, and they sit in your fridge, and then they rot, and you waste your money, and then everyone’s sad.”

She is so right about the panic and the paralysis!  Our family had never encountered purple peppers, kohlrabi, or bok choi before this year of local eating.  Not only do you get it for a week, you may get it for a month – or two.  Our dinner no longer starts at Kroger, browsing aisles.  It starts on Google, with me researching what in the world this new thing is – and trying to find something “like” it that will give us a clue as to how to interpret it, to know it, and to know what to do with it.  Kohlrabi is related to cabbage; it looks kind of like a turnip; it is crunchy and sweet.  Sunchokes are roots of sunflowers.  You cook them like you would a potato, but they have a taste similar to artichokes.  In the newness and the strangeness, we grasp for the familiar – it helps us to cope with the different and the weird.

It struck me that we do the very same thing with Scripture.  Much like strange-looking vegetables make it to my kitchen in a box, truly bizarre-sounding texts surface in a book.  I sometimes encounter passages that, although they have been around eons and eons, I have never seen before.  Sometimes what is written is so outlandish sounding, I freeze up and turn the page to the verses which are familiar, comfortable, old friends.  And if the paralysis doesn’t take complete hold enough for us to let it rot on the counter or turn the page, we start trying to make it make sense by comparing it to things that are in our minds, “like it.”  We try to create a framework to understand earth-shattering snippets from Jeremiah or visions of Ezekiel.  And then we try to solve it; to put it neatly into a category we already understand.

In my growing love for local food and in my journey of faith, I am learning more thoroughly (and more frequently) to sit and just admire the unknown, to marvel at the mystery.  Each weird vegetable and each off-the-wall Scripture passage reminds me that God is at work, constantly astonishing us with the new and the different.  It is all part of the world that has always been (natural or Biblical), and yet God confronts us with challenges and unique flavors.  Some things don’t fit into a paradigm we understand, at least not at first.  It makes life more deeply rich to cook with brand new flavors and to feast on words that stretch us.  Thank God for spicing it up – for the surprises and the challenges.