Well, There Goes the Neighborhood

The FDA just approved the use of Monsanto's GM alfalfa. Alfalfa's primary use is as forage for cattle, especially dairy cattle. This is complicated in a couple of ways. First, if lab rats organs fail after eating GM corn, who's to say the cattle will not suffer any issues from GM alfalfa? They already have enough issues eating a diet based heavily on corn. Second, because the rules for organic foods state that absolutely none of the organic food in question can contain any GM product, that means organic dairy farmers have a long road ahead of them trying to ensure the alfalfa they give their dairy cattle is not genetically modified. This can be especially difficult as alfalfa is pollinated by insects, the wind, etc., any GM alfalfa grown near non-GM alfalfa could cross pollinate and thus ensure that hay fed to the organic dairy cattle makes their milk non-organic. Damn you Monsanto, damn you!

So, what is so bad about genetically modified organisms (GMO's) you ask? First, look at the very moral aspect of messing with genes. How do you take something nature has taken millions of years to perfect and turn it into a Frankenfood? As Barbara Kingsolver put it, it's a fist in the eye of God. Even if you're not religious you have to look it as "playing God." We're taking something, blending it with something else, and we're not sure of the long-term outcomes.
You're still wondering what's wrong with that? Mendel did it, we do it all the time by cross-breeding. This is different. This is not taking two plants in the same family and seeing what happens, this is cross-species breeding. This is crossing the genes of a plant and the genes of a fish or a bacteria and seeing what happens.
The following is something my mom wrote to explain genetically modified foods to my aunt, and I love it, so I'm sharing it.

"Genes are a set of instructions that tell everything living how to "be", how tall, what color, how long of a life span is possible, etc, etc. And whether you believe that millions of years of evolution or God wrote those instructions, they ...are what works. Whether it is a giraffe, a meadowlark, or a toadstool, every being is designed to fit in its own niche. If you are a religious person and believe that God did the designing, then you have to agree that it is an incredible slap in His face to start tampering with what He made. If you are an evolution fan, then you know that a species slowly alters to fit changing conditions, and is therefore already how it needs to be, and that if needed it will change in the proper way. Tomatoes don't need fish genes, regardless of what Corporate America would have us believe. And a really scary thing is that, we as consumers do NOT have to be told what is being done to our food. The really big problem, though, is no one really knows what problems all of this may create next week, next year, or next century. And don't expect our government to protect us; remember this is the bunch of clowns who invited people to come watch nuclear explosions, and kept the Tuskegee trials going even when they knew they were killing people. Just so you know, I'm really not a conspiracy nut or anything, I just think that we have to take the responsibility to protect ourselves. And standing up and saying no to this kind of stuff is important, after all, it really is true - you are what you eat!"

This was posted on Facebook when the Food and Water watch posted about GM salmon and GM pigs. See, alfalfa is just the current of many products on the market that are genetically modified, although it's still just regulated to plants for consumer use/consumption, that may change in the near future as more bio-engineers push for mass production of livestock. Plants are bad enough, but once you start crossing genes of animals for human consumption, we could really be looking at major issues that no one has really though of, or if they have, do not take seriously. Even the World Health Organization is not sure what the effects from GM foods will have down the road. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/
It is speculated that GM foods are safe, but there are still so many questions. With as many questions around the safety of GM foods, why are they allowed to be sold to consumers, deliberately keeping consumers in the dark by not labeling products that are genetically modified? Did someone say money?
Yep, there goes the neighborhood.