Month: April 2014

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Does your Body Know GMO Papayas Ms. Amato?

Several months ago, I received a message from a Terez Amato in my Facebook message box.

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I’m not sure what she is referring to by “Thalidomide babies” and “flipper kids” and epidemiology.  Quite a bizarre email indeed because I don’t know what Thalidomide has to do with papayas.  Maybe she read it on some Natural News website and got that idea.

When I read this, I got the impressions that she was kind of bragging that she buys non-GMO certified organic papayas.   I suspect that she must not know that most of the non-GMO stuff is already virus infected.  Nature actually GMO’d these fruits already.  Little does she know that she is actually eating more virus particles in her fruit than she would in a transgenic GMO one.  Of course, your body can’t tell the difference either way.  Only an anti-GMO activist would be freaked out to know this.  Our stomach’s hydrochloric acid and enzymes would destroy those DNA molecules up like nothing and we wouldn’t know the difference.

I did write her back to ask her about her expertise on this issue and she didn’t reply to me.  It would be interesting to learn where she read about this because I can’t seem to find how the two issues are related.

It’s also interesting to note that she is running as a Senator for the Hawaii Legislature.  Good to know where she stands on the issues.

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Just Because You’re Mad… Don’t Take it Out an Everyone!

As a parent of young children, there are simple lessons that instill in my kids as they grow up and learn to interact with others.  Just a few lessons I teach them include being respectful, don’t hit each other, be honest and don’t lie, and just because you’re mad, you don’t take it out on everyone else.  Like many things I do with my kids, I’ve learned it through my mom and dad.

The more I reflect on what I teach my kids, the more I realize that those same lessons apply throughout life if you really think about it.  Then as I look more at what’s happening in Hawaii, I am starting to see that many adults have forgotten some of those basic lessons we learned as kids now.  That is very saddening to me that we teach our kids one thing and totally forget it in our own actions.

What is even more bothersome to me is that elected officials, who have a higher standard to uphold, are also forgetting those small kid time lessons.  If our own leaders can’t instill the right values and behaviors, how can their constituents follow their example?  It’s no wonder politics has become so ugly.

I was reading the Star Advertiser yesterday and was left shaking my head once again.  I wrote a few days ago about the proposed law that removes the exemption for farmers to get permits for grading their land.  If a farmer were to move more than 50 cubic yards of material, it would require a permit now.  It means more costs and time lost to yet another level of regulation.  Less time on the farm means less productivity and lost income.

The amount proposed may be big beans for small farmers but for the ones with bigger fields, 50 cubic yards is really not a whole lot to be moving around.  Due to the abuses of some ag land owners on the Westside, lawmakers have decided to add yet another burden to law abiding farmers.  Kimberly Pine, a city council woman, she stated…

Pine acknowledged the concerns about potential unintended effects but said that “the consequences for our community is that our land has been dumped on and destroyed for far too long, and we’ve had enough.”

I can’t understand why these council members acknowledge problems but still proceed with these half-baked laws.  The catch phrase is that many of them see the “bigger picture” but in actions show that they have no clue what that concept really means.  The bigger picture is not looking at the goal of the law but who and how it affects everyone.  What’s the real impact this will have if actually enacted?

It would be great if they stood in the shoes of those people who would be a target of those “unintended” consequences.  That might make lawmaking a bit more thoughtful and better planned out.  It’s easier to pass a quick bandaid fix to make some people happy but then throw the rest into the fire along the way.  That bandaid isn’t going to fix anything in reality other than mask the real problems.  It’s like being my older daughter, who is reading her book minding her own business, then finds herself whacked in the head by her sister out of the blue.

There indeed is a real problem out there in Waianae with the issues going on, but couldn’t there be more forethought into addressing the real problem, irresponsible land owners?  Is the dumping issue because there aren’t enough landfills?  What really is the reason why it is happening out there?  More questions have to be asked to really help to pinpoint what and how this issue can be remedied before a solution can be put forth.

The actions of the city council and some of the statements made that they don’t care about the consequences really shows two things.  First of all, Pine and others are mad and are rightfully so.  She is willing to take her anger and frustration out on everyone to solve this issue and it doesn’t matter what collateral damage is caused along the way.  That’s what is going to make her feel better and “fix” the problem, as she and other council members perceive.

What she and the Honolulu City Council are doing is something very typical in what young kids do.  Something might be upsetting them and they feel compelled to take out their frustrations on emotions on whoever is around and they don’t care who it is.  It’s like my older daughter having a bad day at school and deciding to kick her sister for no good reason other than her being mad from the day.  My younger daughter will cry out not knowing why she was kicked.  As my older daughter calms down and hears her sister’s crying, and only then she feels remorseful for what she did.  The injury was inflicted and there’s no taking it away and feelings are permanently hurt.

These same lessons apply to all politicians and adults if you really think about it.  Hawaii County Council members, Margaret Wille and Brenda Ford, were both mad at Monsanto so they insisted on passing a bill that hurt the papaya farmers.  They didn’t do any further research like their fellow County Council member, Greggor Illagan, did to address why they felt they way they did.  They lashed out on farmers and damaged their reputations and led them to be piled upon by many activists.  Greggor Illagan was also left to be a target of the activists despite doing his due diligence to truly look at the perceived problem.

Representative Jessica Wooley, as a mom, was mad to find out that GMOs were being fed to her children and she was going to protect them for this perceived harm learned by her associations with Earthjustice.  She clearly believed in an agenda based on the false fact that, “There are no regulations on biotechnology.” (She made this statement publicly at a Neighborhood Board meeting earlier in the year and later recanted when shown the truth.)  She went out and put out the labeling law twice in two years in her attempt to attack the seed farmers here.  She not only fueled the misinformation campaign against these companies and their workers, but once again focused on the papaya farmers as a result.  She ran on the platform that she was going to help farmers, but only her approved types unfortunately.

Then we cannot forget the actions of Kauai County Council member Gary Hooser and the other members like Jay Furfaro, Joanne Yukimura, and Tim Bynum, when they voted to pass Bill 2491.  None of these members did their due diligence to find out the facts about the seed farmers and passed a law on the emotions and misinformation of a crowd being manipulated by outside interests using scare tactics.  Not only did the heavy handed fear campaign succeed in convincing the leaders to pass such a law, it created another attack against the papaya farmers along the way.  These members were mad and lashed out by passing the contentious law causing permanent collateral damage across the board in the Kauai communities.

My kids know that they aren’t allowed to use their emotions to lash out at others or each other.  It’s a big “no-no” in our house.  I too have to remember that even if I’m mad or tired, lashing out only means I’ll have to apologize later but the damage has been done.  My dad always drilled it into my head as a kid that, “You’d better think first before you do something you might regret.”  He was my example of what I was expected to be like and he’d correct me along the way.  I know that I’m the example to them because that is what I expect of my children to be like.

I only wish our elected officials would get a clue and be the true leaders in our communities and not like my 3 year old toddler, who’s still learning those lessons.

 

T

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And They Cry, “Let the People Decide!”

Once again, there is an upcoming anti-GMO concert party going to happen on Kauai.  This poster is going around the social media right now touting this event.  This is the hip thing to do in our islands, have a big old shin dig.

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Once again the lack of awareness of these activists are glaring.  There’s Makana with his GMO cotton overalls and cotton GMO aloha shirt with a guitar that is coated with chemicals.  He tries to look as if he is a farmer that is speaking for farmers but in reality, is just a musician.  He’s the idol of the GMO Free crowd right now so its time to keep the iron hot!

This concert will likely have high tech devices like speakers and instruments that were made by a multinational corporation but they will scream in horror of their alleged atrocities.

 They flying in people like Vandana Shiva from around the world who’s job it is to scare and outrightly disinform people.  Forget the fact that she’s not coming here on a home made wooden boat from India.  She’s a jet setter traveling all around the world and corporate made high tech planes that guzzle tons of synthetic, earth polluting jet fuels.  She wants to save the world with her message of being green is good and use lots of GMO guzzling cars to get to these concerts.  She’s out to save the world while polluting the earth.

The concert attendees are earth lovers who wave their hands with peace and love for they are doing the aina a favor.  All the meanwhile they are using oil burning power to dance, sing, and party.  They eat and drink from corporate made beers or foods that were brought in on gas powered ships to feed the people for that day.  The majority of what they consume likely is GMO and they aren’t choking on it that day.

Tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of human energy are joined in that one spot for several hours socializing and reinforcing their beliefs about this Hawaiian sounding movement.  They are bonded by this need to save the earth from the poisoners of the world but then don’t even realize their own poisoning of the world.

Tons of trash created by food containers, beverages, and posters fill up the dumpsters that fill our landfills on the island.  It piles on the same trash that was created from all the Bill 2491 hearings and the labeling bills.  The multiple marches held throughout the year is also buried in the trash mound too, and leeching into the aina.

The sewage created by this gathering is also enormous.  It all goes into that fossil fuel powered sewer systems to be processed to save the land from toxic human waste.  These people are worried about their water systems but don’t worry about their own impacts on water either when they gather together.

The concert will eventually end and lots of photos and videos of this momentous event will fill the corporate owned social media sites like Facebook and YouTube.  These people yearn for the “old days” where things were so much better but will never forget to bring their latest corporate made IPhones or smartphones.  Without this high technology, these activists are lost but they still refuse to accept the “evil” ways of modern day farming.

After all is said and done and all the human energy is expended, was there truly a positive impact from what they did?  Was there a piece of the aina cleaned that day to keep sea life healthy?  Were human lives saved by spending half a day at a concert? Will people be fed sustainably by this day? Did they work towards making Hawaii more food secure?  Was the money spent going to last towards a greater cause to actually help farmers keep farming?

Like the transient nature of a concert, so are the actions of these activists.  The current fad is to be anti-GMO right now.  Forget about the long term consequences of what they re asking for because they can’t see beyond the next concert.  They will still go on wearing the textiles that they protest and buy the food and fuel that they fear but acknowledge consuming.  They cry, “Let the people decide,” and don’t even realize what they reap the rewards of in their own lives once again.

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Sustainable Agriculture Doesn’t Mean Only Organic

Thanks to the disinformation campaign of the organic lobby, people have really started to bumble up what the word sustainable means.  There are a lot of people who think that being environmentally friendly automatically means organic and that it also means “sustainable.”  What does sustainable really mean to begin with?

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This definition clearly shows that we can’t equate sustainability to mean organic.  I would have to say that working the lands for 40 years and still growing fruit is definitely sustainable.  Farmers that grow know this.  They use all methods of farming to keep them going.  Being able to farm year after year is indeed sustainable.  It would have to be my dad and all the other multi generation papaya farmers across our state are definitely doing something sustainable!

Dad farmer

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Honolulu City Council Wants to Burden the Farmers

I was really disappointed to learn that there is yet another proposed bill on the books that is going to affect Oahu farmers.  The West Oahu Soil & Water Conservation District met a couple of days ago and discussed that the Committee on Zoning & Planning.  Honolulu City Council will hold a hearing on Thursday April 24, 2014 at 9 a.m. to hear Bill 34, introduced by Ikaika Anderson.  This bill will have a devastating effect on farmers and soil conservation efforts.

Bill 34 will remove the exclusion from the County grading ordinance, grading by farmers under approved Soil Conservation plans with a Soil & Water Conservation District for any project of more than 50 cubic yards of material.

If this bill becomes law, for any project of more than 50 cubic yards of material, farmers will need permits, will need to pay fee and will need to bond the project.

Let’s put some perspective into this law that puts yet another burden on farmers.  What does 50 cubic yards of material look like?

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If you take a look at the above picture, 50 cubic yards is basically one large container and a small one.  The law is seeking to remove the exemption from farmers for moving material.  Is that really a whole lot of material being moved?  I don’t think so and the number is so arbitrary.  What really is the purpose of removing the exclusion of farmers?  Is it to make farming a more attractive business for others to go into?

It’s just really disappointing that our lawmakers come up with this kind of shortsighted laws with no real rationale or idea of the consequences of such actions.  It’s funny how the state is talking about how Hawaii supports agriculture and yet propose these kind of actions.

The truth is that we must prefer importing foods because we are going to essentially tie the hands of the people who feed us.  If you love local food, say goodbye because it is going to get that much harder for farmers to get it on our tables.

 

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Farewell RoundUp, We’ve Found a New Love, Atrazine

If go on the social media and visit some of Hawaii anti-GMO activist pages, here’s some of the typical things you see on there…

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What does all of these images share?  It’s all about fear mongering.  There is no evidence that goes along with many of these pictures and memes, but just the image alone is powerful enough to convince activists of some horrible outcome as the result of any farm other than organic ones.  No one ever seems to crosscheck these statements either and thousands of people just believe without a hint of skepticism.

My grandfather was one of those folks that saw things and just believed it.  He loved to watch wrestling and was convinced that it was real.  My dad would tell him that the stuff he was watching was faked and scripted, to which he’d say, “No way, it’s real!”  The funniest thing was that when there was news of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, he refused to believe it and said that it was fake.

The old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words still applies to this day as we are seeing with our anti-GMO activists.  These pictures that are constantly being put out there on the social media to people who lack that ability to scratch their heads and say, “Now is that for real or what?”  Neither to many of these folks even know how Google operates to pull up the fear laden sites too when they do a search.

It is of no surprise that the fear lovers are going to start up once again by bringing in Tyrone Hayes in May.  They have lost their love our RoundUp and didn’t succeed in getting Senator Josh Green to ban it.  Their newest love affair is now with Atrazine and Tyrone Hayes.

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Before the anti-GMO club goes berserk on this year’s chemical, Atrazine, let me show you how to do the head scratch bit before you just believe it all.  You can read more about the selective reporting done by the author of the article posted by the Babes Against Biotech too.

I’m no Google search expert by no means but I am always asking to debunk things because I don’t straight out believe it.  If you enter into Google “debunk Tyrone Hayes” this is what you’ll get in this search.

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If you do another Google search, with Tyrone Hayes and Atrazine, you get a slightly different picture with a bit more of the activist sites like Democracy Now and his own page, Atrazine Lovers.  His academic papers also come up on the top of the search.

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If you’re afraid of reading too many words on Google, like most activists, then you’d scurry on over to their next best research site, YouTube.  What do we find on YouTube when we search for Tyrone Hayes?  Let’s see.

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Holy Atrazine-ites!  All you get is activist videos that are full of fear mongering.  Typical anti-GMO ways again.

When Tyrone Hayes shows up in Hawaii in May, you know what to expect.  You’ll get the same kind of message that came along with Dr. Huber, Stephanie Seneff, Andrew Kimbrell, Vandana Shiva, Hector Valenzuela, and others.  I also start to wonder, who’s funding these folks to have nice Hawaiian vacations on many of the islands.  Are they doing this out of the kindness of their hearts?  Hmmm…

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GMOs Does Not Mean God Move Over and Here’s Why

Here’s another thing that I hear frequently being stated by many of the anti-GMO activists, “Stop messing with the DNA in our food!”  Mark Fergusson, the CEO of the very much anti-GMO Down to Earth Markets also called it, “God Move Over.”  I just hate the fear mongering that’s being said about a technology that can do so much for growing food and decreasing our impact to do so.

The goal of the anti-GMO supporters really is to take advantage of the fact that most people have little to no clue as to what GMO really is.  When there is a huge number of people who are not literate in biology, chemistry, and basic genetics, you have a nice market of people to target with fear and doubt about this technology.

The activists from the Food Babe, Babes Against Biotech, Hawaii GMO Justice Coalition, Earthjustice, and the Center for Food Safety, will also go on to state that genetic modification of our food stuffs is going to mess up people in some form or fashion.  They love to use emotion evoking phrases like, “it’s being shoved down your throats,” to “it’s killing our keiki and kupuna,”  We also can’t forget those syringes stuck in food and skull in crossbones bit that they want on this GMO label.

Why are these people so afraid of this thing called DNA?  It’s probably because they don’t understand what it is to begin with.

I know that videos are great ways to teach people a thing or two about what DNA really is.

Then when you get a better understanding DNA, let’s talk more about genetics.

I hope you kind of got a general idea of DNA and basic genetics.  Now here’s a great video on the story of biotech papayas and how it all comes together.

Note that even with this modification of the genetics, the composition of the papaya is not significantly different than the conventional type.  Also note that the transgenic papayas have disease resistance built into it.  It is developed to resist the papaya ringspot virus that is spread by an aphid.  Even though Gary Hooser has told so many people that GMO means pesticides, it does not at all.  It is a technology that can be applied in many different ways.

If you’re still feeling afraid of genetic modification in our food, let’s talk about the food we eat today.  Here’s a great example of two different types of tomatoes that have altered genetics done through selective breeding.

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These clearly have different genetics to result in these two forms of tomatoes.  We can eat both of them and do you think our body can tell the difference?  No.  The compositions might be slightly different, and the DNA is different but our body can’t tell.

Of course, the next line that a typical anti-GMO activist might say is that these tomatoes don’t have fish genes in it.

The dreaded fish genes!

That’s a funny thought because if you were to eat fish, you are eating fish genes and have you turned into something awful?  Ummm…  No.  So even if a tomato might have genes of a fish, a common blunder quoted by many antis that is not true at all, would your body know this?  Nope.  Genes are not species specific!

If you watched the videos above, you might figure out that you can’t say that the genes is what’s making you allergic to something either.  If you think that there’s a new allergen that’s created by the genetic modification, you’d be wrong too because it is tested and tested for these potential issues.  Allergenic proteins are pretty well known and if detected, the trials are abandoned and destroyed.

The same anti-GMO activists decry biotech testing but then listen to Dr. Oz touting those exotic miracle cures.  He went from touting goji berries and now garcinia cambogia, which has no allergenic tests done ever but assumed safe.  Wouldn’t that worry you more to be consuming these untested things?  Nope.  Where’s the precautionary principle applied here?

The DNA fearing God Move Over crowd continues to cry about the evil of genetic modification and the need for the precautionary principle, but always misses a key point about this technology.  They are worried about what happens when they consume this GMO derived food product because of the unknown genetics.  If that is the case, why aren’t they worried about what happens when they consume banana genes or GMO free noni genes?  If one is afraid of messed up genes, then they should really fear things like heirloom tomatoes that have really altered genetics.

There’s a lot of DNA in many GMO free products that they should be worried about but don’t even realize it.  I’m more afraid of the bacterial genetics of what’s on some organic foods than I am of GMO corn or papaya any day.

 

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Chemophobia of the Oblivious Anti-GMO Activists

I can’t tell you how many times I have been told, “If it’s not grown organically, then it’s poisoning the a’ina (land in Hawaiian).”  The GMO Free activists keep making this statement over and over and people start to believe it.  It is repeated over and over until it becomes a pseudo-truth that they all regurgitate at their social rallies.

From Big Island County Council Member Margaret Wille to Kauai County Council Member Gary Hooser and even Senator Josh Green, this is now stuck in the minds of the activists and seeping into the minds the general public.  These “leaders” have people thinking that chemicals are bad and we have to avoid them at all costs.  The activists then shout out, “I don’t want any chemicals on my food.”

I’m sorry to disappoint but everything in this world is made up of chemicals including us!  It really bothers me that people are saying these kinds of things, not even realizing that this shows a clear lack of understanding of science.  I sometimes wonder if the movement is not so much about being anti-science, but non-science.  That really is a better descriptor of these folks when they make comments that show their chemophobia.

What a lot of the GMO free folks really demonstrate with these statements is that they really don’t understand the concepts about chemicals and toxicity.  They automatically assume that if the chemical is derived naturally that it is safer and that is not the case.  They also think that anything used on a biotech or conventional farm is very toxic just because it is called a pesticide.  Little do they realize that just paying attention to what’s in our own homes, we have a lot of toxic things in our living quarters that work just like pesticides.  It’s time to educate people a bit on this issue.

Toxic Talk

Before we go on, let’s talk about toxicity for a bit here.  Here is the definition of it on Wikipedia:

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What is important to note with the concept of this is that there is a degree to which something can be harmed by the substance.  Certain substances like water and salt is vital to life but when taken in at high doses, it can prove deadly to organisms.  This applies to nearly every substance that we might ingest or be exposed to.  Like the ancient scientist Paracelsus noted, “The dose is what makes the poison.”

Ah, the dose that makes the poison is the key concept here.  Toxicity is also measured in something called lethal dose (LD) and is usually expressed in a measure called the median lethal dose or LD50.  LD50 refers to the amount of a substance it would take to kill 50% of the population of say rats or mice per milligram of substance to kilogram of body weight.  It is an indication of the lethality of a substance.  In general, the smaller the amount, the higher the lethality of the substance.

I decided to take yet another walk around my house to find “poisons.”  I bet if many of the GMO free folks did the same walk, we’d all find the same things too.

My Kitchen of Death

I started in my kitchen to see if I had poisons lurking there.  Sure enough, I found quite a bit of things that if taken in the right doses could be toxic to me.  Take a look at what I found.

salt

Right above my stove and purposefully added to food is a nice hefty, but toxic container of table salt or sodium chloride.  A GMO free activist would never believe it but this is much more toxic than RoundUp any day.  Table salt has a LD50 of 3000mg/kg vs. RoundUp at 5600mg/kg.

Eating small amounts of it makes food tastes great but too much isn’t good for us as we all know.

baking soda

I’ve seen so many natural fallacy sites and lots of GMO Free sites touting baking soda as the chemical free way to clean.  Please, baking soda is a chemical called sodium bicarbonate in technical terms.  Its LD50 is 4200 mg/kg and is much more toxic than RoundUp also.  If a small child were to consume just a few tablespoons of this, it would be extremely toxic and it’s stated right on the box.

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Dishwashing soap is also considered a pesticide.  When you go to the gardening stores, you can buy diluted dishwashing soap that’s sold as soap spray pesticides for the same price as a large bottle of it.  Save money by making your own pesticides right from your own kitchen.

Some people have tried using the homemade recipe for weedkiller that uses dish soap along with some salt that is effective.  That is likely much more toxic that the RoundUp you find premixed in the stores.  That’s why it makes a great weed killer of all weeds!

bug spray

I do hate bugs and will admit to using pesticides.  This stuff works great to keeping the bugs out of my kitchen and foodstuffs.  Who likes having roach infested cupboards?  I’m sure many other GMO free folks have a can or two of bug spray available for the same reason.  We live in Hawaii where cockroaches are the size of B52’s and we don’t believe in coexistence with them!

coffee

Now why would I put coffee here?  Coffee contains a pesticide!  Yes, indeed, caffeine does kill!  How many millions of people consume coffee yet are fine?!  Caffeine’s LD50 is at 192 mg/kg.  Yes, it is much more toxic that RoundUp is!  The GMO free folks drink this organically but fear pesticides!  The irony of it all!

choc chips

Chocolate chips indeed have some chemicals in it that is toxic, yet we consume it with no fear at all.  The chemicals found in it are theobromine and caffeine.  We all know that keep the dog out of chocolate or they will get sick and it is all thanks to this chemical.  Theobromine has a LD50 of 1265 mg/kg and yes, it is more toxic than RoundUp!  The amount of theobromine in chocolate chips is quite small so you’d have to consume a lot of it for it to be toxic.

tabasco

Believe it or not but that hot sauce you douse your food in contains something toxic.  That chemical is called capsaicin.  It is naturally occurring and found in hot sauce, to kim chee, to even that muscle rub.  Some people love eating this pesticide!  It has a LD50 of 148.1 mg/kg to 161.2 mg/kg in rats, making this much more toxic than RoundUp.

 

iron

Iron is an essential nutrient to our functioning but in too high of a dose is very toxic.  It’s LD50 is 250 mg/kg in mice and 300 to 1100 mg/kg in rats making it much more toxic than table salt or RoundUp any day.  Anyone can buy this in the store too!

tylenol

The very things we give our children to make them well can also be toxic.  I found a bottle of acetaminophen in my kitchen cabinet.  The LD50 for this pain reliever is at 700 mg/kg for rats which shows that it is more toxic than the GMO free folks’ RoundUp.

ibuprofen

I’m sure many parents have a bottle of this in their medicine chest.  Ibuprofen has a LD50 at 800 mg/kg in rats making it also more toxic than RoundUp.  I personally like using this to really help my kids feel better and know that it works but is also toxic at high doses.  I’m sure other GMO free parents do the same and have no second thought about it when it comes to sick kids.

aspirin

Some folks take these tablets daily not realizing that it is more toxic than that dreaded weedkiller.  Aspirin, also known as salicylic acid, has a LD50 of 1360 mg/kg making it less toxic than iron and all the above pain killers listed.

Bathroom of Poison

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There are a lot of potentially poisonous things found in my bathroom but oh, so necessary for cleaning or health purposes.  Remember, that if used in the right amounts will make things toxic to us.  Using these chemicals sparingly as needed actually does wonders for our home and bodies when needed.

The Garage of Gloom

 antkiller volks terro raid

I hate bugs in my house.  I admit that I hate letting nature take its course in my living quarters.  In Hawaii, the bugs will take over as it is their tropical paradise also.  I have those horrible pesticides to stop letting nature take it’s course over my home.  Am I afraid of these pesticides?  Nope.  Kills bugs so I love them.

oilspray oxy lysol 409

When it comes to cleaning up after dirty kids, dogs, and an old person, I’ll be honest that going chemical free as the antis love to harp on, doesn’t cut it for me.  Wiping down a toilet with vinegar and baking soda just does not do the job at all.  It takes some good germ killers that if taken in too high of a dose, this stuff is toxic.  I bet a lot of anti-GMO activists who marched had homes that had these chemicals in it!  All bought at Longs CVS on sale!

volks sluggo

I garden as a hobby for fun and yes, I use chemicals on my plants.  These indeed are toxins when taken in too high of a dose but so necessary for my plants to grow happily.  I give my gardenias a nice spraying of Volck’s Oil every few months to kept the sooty mildew that those pesky scales create.  If I don’t spray it, I get no flowers.  I also use snail and slug killer in my lettuce and greens boxes so that I have less worry about rat lungworm disease that is very dangerous for humans.

adams fleatick

I am sure that other anti-GMO activists who have pets must have pesticides like these in their homes.  With the warm weather all year long, the fleas and ticks love our beloved pets.  I don’t believe in coexistence with these blood suckers so I kill them and keep them out of my home.

comboguard

Dear golly goodness, I even feed pesticides to my pooches too.  What an awful owner to be feeding poisons to my dogs!  Well, I hate fleas and critters so the pooches have to eat these pesticide pills.

glaze rainx

I love keeping my car shiny and sparkly and have yet to find chemical free things to do this.  For now, I use my favorite resin glaze and Rain-X headlight polish to keep my car in tip top shape.  I apply this directly to the car and my skin comes in contact with this stuff.  Oh, the exposure to toxins!  Hmm.  Toxins or rust?  I pick toxins to keep my car nice.  I bet a lot of of antis do the same thing since I’ve seen them with some nice GMO fueled cars and trucks!

bleach

I like my clothes fresh and clean and a bit of bleach helps to accomplish this.  It’s toxic in the right dose.  It is also known as sodium and calcium hypochlorite.  Its LD50 is 192 mg/kg making it very toxic indeed.  Let’s not forget that that this is also used in food preparation, and even though it is synthetic, it is approved for use on organic food processing.  We even drink it and even swim in it!  It kills the germs that can make people sick which is why we use it.

To sum it up, take a look at Doc Cami Ryan’s table on toxicity.

Still Chemophobic?

Should you now be even more afraid of chemicals after finding out all of this?  No.  We rely on these chemicals for sanitation, food preparation, bug control, and other helpful reasons.  Remembering that something is a toxin at the right does is what makes it important to remember.  The more you know, the less you have to fear.  If someone is making you fearful, cross check them and you will find a different story.

It’s kind of like how County Council Members like Gary Hooser and Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff will go to rallies and tell people that GMOs are poisoning them and it’s being shoved down peoples’ throats.  Shortly after that, they sit together and have a GMO meal at a GMO restaurant.  Get off the fear mongering bandwagon and question what’s being said and actually listen to the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

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Those Smart Papaya Farmers Know GMO

One terrific benefit of being a farmer’s daughter is that I do get paid in the form of some “junk” fruits.  Junk meaning that it can’t be sold in the store because it isn’t the right shape or size or has some cosmetic blemish on it.  The fruit itself are perfectly fine but just ugly really.

Some of the fruit I got this week for shilling for the farm was amazingly huge.  Here’s one of the mega ones I ate the other day.

hugepapaya

This beauty weighed in at about 2.5 lbs and had a deep orange flesh that was super sweet.  The Brix reading was about 14 which makes it super sweet and delicious.  The flesh was really fleshy and so ono!

My breakfast tomorrow will be this nice beauty that my daughter is holding.  It is nearly the size of her head and just as gorgeous.  It is just under 2.5 lbs also.

kygiantpapaya

The more I look at the size of these fruits, it made me realize that yes, farmers are smart folks.  They choose the GMO seeds to grow strong healthy trees that yield great fruit like these.  One fruit makes for 2 or 3 servings and it all came from one tree.  That’s a smaller environmental impact when you have a super productive tree indeed.

Just look at the fruits and how productive they are.  It is clear that those smart papaya farmers who choose GMO really do know why GMO has saved their industry.

 

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The Right to Know Should be Pay Attention Instead!

Scarlet, my 15 year old GMO eating dog who is still alive!

Scarlet, my 15 year old GMO eating dog who is still alive!

Let’s face it that the GMO war in Hawaii is still raging on with Maui on the hit list right now by the anti-GMO activists.  The mainland funded SHAKA Movement is going full force over there trying to do the same thing that happened on Kauai.  The pictures and the videos are still posted on the social media documenting the so called “outrage” of the people.  It is really amazing to me that people really don’t pay attention to the things in their daily lives that is created by this GMO technology that they feel is poisoning them so much.

I decided to pay attention and take a look at my own life and see where I actually use GMO products.  I bet that many of these protesters live quite similarly to me.  I get my household stuff from Ross, Macys, Sears, and the local Longs CVS.  I went room to room and around my home to see where I could find those pesky GMO things!

I started off in my bedroom.  I went through my drawers and picked out my clothes for tonight.  I found a nice cotton pajama top and bottom along with cotton underwear.  I can’t afford organic nor would want to buy it.  My GMO cotton night clothes came straight from Macy’s where it was surrounded by tons more of it.

The nice sateen cotton sheets that I sleep on is made from GMO cotton too.  The bed sheets as well as the comforter that tops my bed is all GMO derived and made in India or Pakistan.  Even the cotton mattress pad is GMO!

I’ve learned from Farmer Ravi, and Indian cotton farmer, that he appreciates the Bt cotton seeds since he no longer has to buy highly toxic pesticides to grow it.  He also told me how the pesticide companies there were fighting the agribusiness companies trying to bring in this technology there.  The pesticide companies are different than the agribusiness companies and aren’t the same entities.  I’m happy knowing that some farmer in India didn’t have to expose themselves to old highly toxic chemicals to grow the very textiles I use in my daily lives.

When I peeked into my husband’s dresser drawers, I found that even his clothes are all mostly cotton.  We’ve never bought anything organic as we can’t find it here and it’s likely out of our price range.  From his underwear to his undershirts, it’s all GMO cotton!

Next I went into my kids’ dressers and found the same thing.  Nearly all of their clothing is cotton and all GMO too!  Some are made in the US and some across the world from us.  The farmers that grew it didn’t have to use excessive amounts of pesticides to grow it, which is a wonderful earth friendly though really.

I walked to my bathroom and once again find GMO cotton everywhere!  From my fluffy white towels from Costco, to my shaggy floor rugs from Ross, to my facial cotton pads and my mommy diapers as my kids call it, everything is cotton!

As I look closer to my Herbal Essence shampoo, it too has some form of GMO in it.  There is corn silk extract listed as one of its ingredients.  Wow, GMO shampoo that smells great and washes my hair clean.

My deodorant also has cornstarch as one of its ingredients to keep me fresh and dry.  I am putting GMO right in my pits!  This is amazing!  I’ve been using this for years and really had no clue until I took some time to read the label today.

My dogs get a little night time treat so I took a minute to look at the ingredients of their treat boxes and sure enough, there’s some corn meal listed in it.  I’ve fed it to them for years and they are fine and happy to receive it.  My rescued dog, who has been fed GMO her whole life, has reached the ripe old age of 15 human years this year with no problems at all.  She still runs around the yard like a puppy and is as happy as can be.  I’m lucky that this GMO has kept her healthy and my vet bills low.

I stopped by my kid’s mouse cage to feed their beloved pet, Pip.  Pip’s been alive nearly a year eating GMO corn and healthy as ever.  He looks nothing like Seralini’s frankenrats at all.  I still feed him his GMO feed everyday and toss in a few GMO treats that he takes happily.  He is free of any lumps!

My two cheeky lovebirds, Papaya and Charlie, are snuggled together in their GMO cotton sling bed that I made them and are perky and cheery as can be.  They love it when I put in some GMO sweet corn as a treat.  Papaya is 15 human years old and Charlie is 3 human years and are peppy and sassy, even with all of the GMO treats.

I then stopped by my kitchen and took a closer look at what I have in the cupboards.  Sure enough I have plenty GMO food in there from Spam for my musubis to my favorite Hawaiian Hula GMO papaya seed salad dressing mixes.  I also have GMO corn tortilla chips for nachos this week along with GMO chymosin cheeses of all sorts from Costco.  I have GMO canola oil for making salad dressing under my sink.  I keep a nice stock of GMO condensed sweetened milk to make my heavenly seven layer bars with some chocolate chips that likely have some GMO sugars in it.  I even have non-GMO flaked coconut that’s dusted in some GMO sugar that tastes great toasted.  My cupboard and refrigerator is chock full of GMO food items.

I tidied up the kitchen and saw what I can use to do the job and found Mrs. Miwako’s GMO kitchen towels and Williams Sonoma dishcloths that are all GMO cotton.  My Japanese cotton steaming cloth is GMO cotton and great for making my favorite sticky rice dish, sekihan.  I still can’t see how GMO is so bad and evil as everyone makes it out to be!

I took a look at the containers of fish food and found that it too contains GMO corn meal and some soy in it.  My fish that I got from the farm fair last year is still alive despite consuming it for the majority of its  life.  My goldfishes are also thriving on the GMO fish food and seem to be surviving attacks by our crayfish all along.

I checked on my grandma this evening and discovered that she has vials of GMO right in the refrigerator.  She uses GMO derived insulin to help treat her inherited form of diabetes and has been injecting it for years.  She probably would have had her toe amputated or blinded by the disease if it weren’t for this GMO insulin.

I thought I’d load up my car for tomorrow and realized that there’s GMOs being burned in my daily commute to drop kids off and pick up my grandma from day care.  I washed my car too and used the GMO cotton rags to polish it to a nice sheen with synthetic chemicals that do the job.  I used a lot of chemicals from headline polish, tired shine spray, Rain X, window cleaner spray, resin car wax, back to black spray, WD40, silicone spray, and Armour All spray.  I know that there’s a lot of drift from these chemicals and I breathed it in once a month to keep my car clean, since I do like a clean car inside and out.

I found some cans of paint in my garage too and lo and behold, there’s GMO soy in some of them.  The left over newspaper kept from my guinea pig’s cage also has GMO soy ink on it.  Mr. Pig’s cage has been lined with GMO soy ink paper for years and he’s doing just fine with this exposure.  Heck, I’ve been touching this GMO stuff for years every morning when I read the paper.  The paper itself might even be GMO!

I’m not jumping up and down or making a protest about GMOs anytime soon.  It is everywhere and it really has made those farmers across the world have an easier job growing it for us to use.  The farmers here in the US also have benefitted from GMOs and we are the beneficiaries of their ingenuity and hard work, like it or not.  We’re pretty darn lucky if you ask me.  I can’t understand how people can say this GMO is okay but this one isn’t.  How does one pick and choose which type is better than the other?

Stop and look at the world you live in.  Is it as bad as you really perceive it to be?  I don’t think so when you can have plenty of time to march because a farmer clothed and fed you.  The seeds that grew those products had its roots planted here in Hawaii and I really think it’s a neat thing to realize.  What I am protesting is this right to know should really be my right to ask you to pay attention to what’s around you!