Produce Aisle GMO Conversation

Last night in the produce aisle at the grocery store, I got into a discussion about GMOs with the produce guy and store manager. I wanted to know whether a package of tofu labeled organic was non-GMO, and if so, why that information wasn’t on the label.

After an unsatisfactory answer by Produce Guy stating that USDA regulations ensure that all things in Canada labeled “organic” are GMO-free, I asked him what Canada’s regulations were. After all, we live in Canada and are governed by different (although perhaps similar) rules. Produce Guy claimed he was 100% sure that an organic product has to be non-GMd thanks to USDA legislation. The store manager was really interested in this question and wanted to prove Produce Guy wrong, even offering Produce Guy 2% wiggle room in case he was wrong, hubris being what it is! Produce Guy held to his conviction. So the store manager pulled out his iPhone and Googled (I love how a company name has become a verb -bless the English language!) the tofu manufacturer’s website for answers. He discovered that there is currently no regulatory body in place to certify a non-GMO product. However, Canadian organic growers do not use genetically engineered plants. What was unclear is who regulates that.

If Canada’s organic farmers, in order to be certified organic, cannot use genetically modified plants or organisms, then how is the use of GMOs regulated? How do I know that an organic product is also a non-GMO? Produce Guy said that all organic products have to be non-genetically modified. But how can I know if it’s not clearly labeled on the package? It can’t be assumed that a consumer knows these answers when buying organic. I suggested that some of the reasons biotechnology was developed in the first place was to increase resistance to herbicides and to create pest resistant strains of food crops, therefore these plants would make good “organic” crops due to their apparent reduction in use of agricultural chemicals. How can I be certain that this isn’t the rationale some growers use when growing organic crops?

Today I found an article on the Canadian Organic Growers website. Apparently in 2009, Agriculture Canada implemented the Organic Products Regulations (OPR) which has a logo that certified organic businesses can voluntarily put on their packaging. As I understand it, to be certified organic, the grower’s operation is inspected by an independent inspector who reports the findings to a third-party certifying body. If the grower has adhered to the OPR, they receive organic certification.

But what about GMOs? Well, under the Organic Products Regulations, any product that has been certified organic cannot be contaminated with GMOs. But why not put that on the label to avoid confusion? My guess it is because it is virtually impossible to prevent contamination by GMOs of non-genetically modified food crops, but this is just a guess. After all, something like 50%-70% of all food crops worldwide have been genetically altered. When you consider the many ways in which plants and animals can disperse material, you can quickly imagine the extent to which GMd products can be spread. Birds, wind, insects, etc. help to distribute these products, thus participating in global transmission and contamination.

Agriculture Canada’s website has links to the OPR regulations. What I can’t easily find is information concerning why a claim of non-GMO won’t or can’t be put on a label.

What we grow, how we grow it and process it is very important. What’s also important is that we, the public, KNOW what we’re eating. With our geologic epoch having been officially labeled by some scientists as the Anthropocene, we need to know not only what’s fueling our vehicles, but what’s fueling ourselves too. Is what we’re doing sustainable? Safe? Beneficial? If so, to whom, and for how long?

If you’re interested in reading and doing some research, here are some links I found:

http://www.cog.ca/index.php?page=consumers-and-standards

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/food/organic-products/labelling-and-general-information/certified-choice/eng/1328082717777/1328082783032

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/sci/biotech/reg/bioage.shtml

As for Produce Guy, perhaps we’ll meet again and I’ll give him this FB post for his reading pleasure. If you’re going to claim you’re 100% sure of something, then you better be able to get it right and back it up. Like me when I was 100% sure Plato first suggested the existence of the atom. I was 100% wrong and can back that up! Haha!

Thanks to the vagaries of legislation and regulations, organic products can’t be labeled non-GMO. In Canada, several agencies are involved in the regulation of agricultural products. The main regulators are The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada and Environment Canada.The rules are different than the USDA’s, though due to trade with the US and European countries, some of our regulations must comply with these countries’ rules and vice versa. Canadian organic growers must also adhere to federal and provincial rules. Currently, BC and Quebec are the only provinces with regulations governing organic food production.

After doing the little research I did today, I’d go spare trying to make sense of all these rules! I bet lawyers are doing well in the organics biz these days.

Happy reading!

Ingrid – Certifiably organically modifying Puddle Jumping posts.

Gulf of Mexico oil disaster

I am disgusted by the recent events of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, and the “spill” that BP is doing a terrible job at trying to stop. Wanting to know what other accidents have happened in the world in regards to oil production, I turned to Wikipedia to see if they had a list of “spills”, and sure enough, they do. Here’ the link – Wikipedia List of Oil Spills. Of all the oil producing nations, the U.S. has had the most spills.

I’ve been posting an awful lot on my Facebook page. My hope is that I’ll reach a larger readership than I would if I only posted to this blog. The highest number of viewers in the past year has been 10. Makes me laugh. But from time to time I’ll post here as well. For now, all I can say is I encourage everyone to consider carefully what they are personally doing that places further demand on oil production, and by extension, places a great deal of stress on the environment. For example, this is what is happening to seabirds along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico: Louisiana Coast pictures.

A friend of mine says he’s going to start riding a horse to work. That way, he can nap in the saddle as the horse heads for home. The horse can eat hay and grass, and my friend can sequester the manure and use that gas for cooking and light. Saving the world, one quirky idea at a time.

Of course, he’ll probably have to get a job a little closer to home that has a stable to park his horse!

Shit Sequestration

So, in my journeys through the Internet, reading about alternative fuels and hydrogen, I turned my attention towards shit sequestration, aka, biofuel.

There are numerous articles on it, and I learned that in the developing world, it is used as an alternative to burning biomass, which is used to fuel cook-stoves indoors. With biofuel, the exhaust is cleaner and poses fewer health problems for women and children than biomass does. As you may already know, lung cancer rates are extremely high in women and children in the developing world, which is linked to the carcinogens in the smoke from burning biomass for food production. Please watch this very interesting TED video of Amy Smith’s talk on making more efficient biomass ‘briquettes’ TED Talks.

Amy Smith’s approach is definitely cheap to produce, and much cleaner burning than what is currently being used in the third world. But there is an alternative – in the production of biofuel. It seems pretty simple: According to Wikipedia, waste from livestock and humans is placed in a containment tank, the anaerobic bacteria in the waste produces methane gas, and the gas is collected and piped into the stove to fuel it. The cost is low to build a biofuel tank (for our standards), and it will work with little maintenance for 10 – 15 years Wikipedia/Biogas.

Unfortunately, burning methane produces carbon dioxide. I don’t know if it is more or less than burning fossil fuels. What I do know is that, based on the current catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, Telegraph.UK, collecting shit and burning the methane from it seems like a better way to produce fuel than drilling in the ocean, or on land for that matter. Or even extracting oil from tar sands. Animals and humans produce a lot of waste, and it seems like, with relatively simple technology, we can feed our fuel-hungry selves with a renewable source. And we can even produce electricity out of it. Go figure.

Terasen Gas in BC is exploring biofuel options Terasen Gas. Although I hate huge farms (5800 head of cattle? Seriously gross), the efficiency of the systems in the following article is interesting Farm Credit Canada.

All this has got me thinking about human waste, but most of all, the potential fuel source that could be collected on… cruise ships! Think about it! They are like small floating cities. The largest, the Oasis of the Seas, carries 5,400 passengers. That’s like hitting the shit pay-load! Imagine if every port that the Oasis of the Seas stopped at had a pumping station that siphoned the waste out of the ship and into a biomass tank, eventually converting it into fuel for electricity and gas. 5400 passengers eating their way to happy oblivion onboard, gleefully pooping out their very expensive meals, freely giving of themselves to fuel the regions they visit. Better yet, what if this same system was redirected BACK into the ship, and used to shuttle these thousands of passengers back and forth around the world, leaving a smaller imprint than they are currently leaving? The additional benefit would be less polluting out in the middle of the ocean, in International Waters, where ships are permitted to dump their effluent.

Mom used to call cruise ships “floating bajs boxes” (‘bajs’ means ‘poo’ in Swedish). I wish she was alive so we could discuss this potential benefit of the floating bajs boxes, as they really make for very easy shit sequestration and biofuel production.

Of course, this sort of idea would never fly, because our petroleum economy has us hamstrung, and the corporations and people who benefit from our current system will do whatever they can to keep it as it is. And governments are lobbied by the most powerful and the status quo will persist.

But a gal can dream, can’t she?

And speaking of oceans, plastic and shit, watch this TED talk, and the next time you’re thirsty and you want to buy a bottle of water, think again, and instead, go to the bathroom or the nearest water fountain, and take a long, cool, refreshing drink from the tap. Our future depends on it. TED Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic