The GMO industry’s true motive

Anyone who says legislation requiring the labeling of GMOs would inadvertently make life more difficult for small businesses, farmers or even hungry Americans is someone with a poor assessment of the motives behind the GMO industry. The companies behind many GMO products do not design them to feed the masses or ease the plight of small farmers. They design them for the sole purpose of maximizing profits.

One of the ways they do this is by creating plants resistant to pesticides that they hold the patents on, so the farmers can douse their entire fields with them. This practice creates pests and weeds that are increasingly resistant to pesticides, requiring heavier application and stronger concentrations of these pesticides (and more profits for the corporations). Never mind what kind of effects this will have on ecosystems and native species that are downwind and surrounding GMO farms.

Another tactic is tailoring a high-profit crop to an environment that would otherwise be unsuitable. It’s a practice that tends to replace sustainable native crop rotation, causing negative effects on biodiversity and limiting the bounty that any given area can produce. Farmers using certain GMO seeds often sign contracts that make them more and more dependent solely on the company that holds the patent on that GMO crop.

My point is, knowing whether a GMO product is in the food you buy is important for numerous reasons beyond knowing what you are consuming. It gives you a tool to decide whether you want to help certain corporations profit by exploiting your basic need to eat.

The people who grow and sell organic products are aware of how important accurate labeling is to their industry. Those farms must meet certification requirements before they can label themselves organic.

If GMO products are as flawless as the companies that manufacture them would have us believe, then labeling them would only help their promotion. I believe that when GMO labeling is mandatory, it will amaze us to see how many more of our dollars end up in the right hands.