As of today, you are most likely eating GMOs, and you probably don’t know it. As we forge ahead on this film, I keep coming back to a really basic question for us here in North America - how is it possible that we are eating GMOs everyday, but we don't know about it? Many people don't even know what a GMO is! (FYI: GMOs are genetically modified organisms.)
GMOs are about industry for industry's sake. It's not for us, our health, increased yield, feeding the poor....those are all lies. GMOs exist so chemical companies can sell more chemicals. That’s what this film we are making wants to awaken people to. It’s about crops modified for resistance to chemicals that are made by the same companies that are peddling the GMO seeds.
It's about big, big money. It's about us being lied to and experimented on. It's about massive corporations in bed with the government, and our government betraying its own people to line various corporate pockets.
This film is also about our own ignorance, a society that has fallen asleep in so many ways, distracted by entertainment and endless diversions, to the detriment of our health, happiness, families and future food security. And finally, it's about our children and how far we will go to protect them, love them, and pass on to them a beautiful, safe, thriving world.
It has been a long hard road making this film, but also very rewarding. We have met so many amazing people along the way, made lifelong friends, and joined a growing community of people, companies, and organizations determined to fight GMOs and big agribusiness, while taking back the land for sustainably grown, organic food.
We pushed ahead with this film on a very tight budget, raising funds as we went, with never quite enough to hire any additional help. It has been a wonderful experience making this film, but an immense amount of work and, at times, also very stressful. We can't thank all of you enough for helping our Kickstarter Campaign be so successful and trigger other donations, moving all of this along at a time when we really needed it. THANK YOU!
We are happy to announce that a significant piece of the fundraising puzzle has come into place. The amazing Canadian/U.S. company Nature's Path, has come on board as a major sponsor of the film! We couldn't think of a better fit as they have been committed to pure organic, non-GMO products from the very beginning. We are proud to have them with us on the journey! We still have more funds to raise to complete the film and are hoping for another major sponsor, as well as a host of smaller sponsorships from organic companies.
For our larger sponsors and all the individuals who have joined with us to make this film, we believe the central question is – “How will we choose to live together on this planet?” It is a question of either exploitation or nurture. Will we suck up all the earth’s resources, poison soil, water, and air with toxic pesticides and herbicides, while industry-bought scientists feed us lab-made food and release genetic mutations into the environment and contaminate the natural world? Or will we stop this madness and commit ourselves to sustainable/regenerative organic agriculture, devoted to the health of society, to nutrition, to family farms and communities?
The stakes are very high, but the choice is ours.
I'll leave you with a short video clip I recently put together after our trip to the San Francisco area for a series of interviews. This particular piece is from our time with Claire Hope Cummings, author of Uncertain Peril, and a truly amazing and gracious advocate for all that is good, true, and beautiful in this world.
I will keep you updated as we continue to work towards completing The GMO Film Project.
Jeremy Seifert is the director of DIVE! Living Off America’s Waste and is currently working on his second documentary – The GMO Film Project.
Visit: http://www.gmofilm.com/
Comments
Thank you for fighting the fight by teaching.
Nick
If as you state "GMOs exist so chemical companies can sell more chemicals" how do you explain the commercialization of insect resistant crops - crops which specifically reduce the sales of chemicals - sure, there can be an arugement made that the initial roundup-ready crops were a boon to Monsanto because not only did Monsanto own the patent on the trait, they also owned the patent on roundup (no longer the case, so the sale of a RR bean for instance does not ensure the sale of Monsanto manufactured roundup) but even this approach is simplistic and naive - if all these crops do is boost the profits of chemical companies then why are farmers using them? How does something which has no net benefit to farmers come to be present in over 80% of seeds sold (within the various modified crops) - is your theory that all farmers are morons who will happily throw away money on a whim?
It seems to me that if you are going to take on our ignorance it'd be better to not come from a starting point of ignorance and being downright contrary to the truth (for example the statement that "GMOs exist so chemical companies can sell more chemicals"), obviously research is difficult and it is better to just make stuff up as you go along (the forte of the anti-GM movement) but lets not pretend to be doing anything other than promulgating ignorance if this is the case.
Considering that you are looking for (and found) funding from the organic industry, how can you say, with a straight face "It's about big, big money. It's about us being lied to and experimented on. It's about massive corporations in bed with the government, and our government betraying its own people to line various corporate pockets."
Ask yourself if your film is about money received from the organic industry to line its corporate pockets. Ask yourself if you are in bed with the organic industry and promoting lies (GM is harmful) and creating fear where none is warranted. Creating unwarranted fear over GM and modern farming practices equals more organic sales.
I like one of the ads on this website - "Choose organic to avoid genetically modified foods. It's worth it." Fear equals sales. Meanwhile there are 300 plus peer reviewed studies showing transgenic foods are safe.
http://www.biofortified.org/genera/guide/
I wonder if you have researched these studies before you came to your conclusions (and how early in your research did you come to your conclusions, or did you have them before you started filming).
What are you doing?? People are getting sick. We have a 50% increase in Celiac disease. Childhood allergies are at an all time high. ADHD, Autism, Diabetes, etc. I applaud the making of the film because more people need to know the truth. I know so many people who are sick right now, with digestive problems, breast cancer, prostate cancer, food sensitivities, etc. I DO blame gm foods. I believe wholeheartedly that you are making this nation ill. You are also causing damage to the environment. We all live here and have to deal with the consequences of your lab experiments. This is also the planet that we are leaving to the children growing up today. Can you sleep at night knowing that you are working for a corporation that is making a nation ill? Can you sleep knowing that your pesticides are destroying aquatic life and making water undrinkable? If you TRULY believe that GM foods are safe than maybe you both and the rest of the Monsanto employees/supporters can be the human guinea pigs studied by independent researchers unaffiliated to Monsanto or the FDA. We can read your medical charts and watch as your organs and autoimmune functions begin to disintegrate. If you aren't willing to do that, then I don't see why you see a problem with Americans being informed and having a CHOICE over what we buy!
"A 2005 animal study conducted at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Irina Ermnkovfl discovered that more than half the offspring (55.6 percent) of rats fed on genetically modified soy died in the first three weeks of life-six to eight times as many as those born to mothers given conventional soy (9 percent) or no soy (6.8 percent). Six times as many rat babies (36 percent) were severely underweight as well compared to
those in the other groups (6 percent ). Several other European studies suggest the dangers of genetically
modified soy. Italian research, for example, showed that genetically modified soy affected the liver and pancreas in mice. In Australia, researchers discovered that genetically modified peas caused lung damage.
For the past fifteen years, much of our nation's milk has come from cows injected with a genetically engineered growth hormone. Indeed. cows hopped-up on rBGH typically lived for only about two
years after they start receiving the drug. By contrast, cows who were not injected with rBGH live on for four to ten years. Canada isn't the only country to disallow the use of rBGH. The genetically
altered hormone is not approved for use in the European Union, Japan, Auslralia, and New Zealand, In addition, the U,N. agency that sets food safety standards, Codex Alimentarius, has twice concluded
there was no consensus on the safety of rBGH.
1998, an article in The Lancet, reported that women with even relatively small increases of a hormone known a insulin-growth factor IGF-1 were up to seven times more likely to develop PREMENOPAUSAL breast cancer. According to a January 1996 report in the International Journal of Health Services, rBGH milk has up to ten times the IGF-1 levels of natural milk. Most recent studies have put the figure even higher at something like twentyfold. ONE IN EIGHT women now has breast cancer!!! IGF-1 has been implicated in prostate and colon cancer.
1995 Great Britain. An acclaimed biologist named Arpad Pusztai was awarded a research grant to create a model for testing GM foods. Dr. Pusztai discovered that genetically modified potatoes not only differed in nutritional content but in their effect on the animals. In their study. After only a ten-day feed ng study, animals fed the GM potatoes suffered damage to thcir immune systems, organs, and tissues, as well as other serious health problems." -excerpts from The Unhealthy Truth
I don't believe you and your claims that GMOs are safe! There is something wrong with our food right now. My sister was diagnosed stage 3 breast cancer last year. She had a mastectomy. If it comes back, it will be stage 4 which is terminal. She was only 38! I met a woman today who was stage 1. She is also in her 30s. My friend's cousin is terminal stage 4. She is also in her 30s. 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer! Maybe that will be your mom, daughter or sister. Please by all means keep giving them that rBGH milk and cheese if you believe it is so safe. Wonder if they have IGF-1 floating through their bodies now or maybe it is in your reproductive system affecting your sperm count and later giving you prostate cancer. My 4 yo nephew is allergic has food sensitivities to nearly every food on the food allergy test. I think that is pretty odd. My brother-in-laws father has terminal prostate cancer. My grandma died of colon cancer. Can hear me? Take some ethical responsibility and just do what is right for our nation's health. We have a RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT IS IN OUR FOOD!! IF you have nothing to hide than allow labeling and let consumers make the choice. I don't need a corporation making that choice for me!
Some countries have banned GMO's all together. The European Union, Russia, and China require GMO disclosure on packaged products. Considering that Russia and China are known for censorship of the media and/or internet, that says a lot if they want their people to know if they're eating GMO derived food or not.
I pretty much shop at local farmer's markets, changed my diet, and buy foods that have the GMO-Free and hormone free labels. Also as much as I love to buy American, when it comes to food I trust imported food more because of other countries rejection of GMO's and will sometimes pay extra if I have to in order to ensure I'm not eating GMO derived food.
Please make sure you and your family eat lots of genetically engineered food and let other people decide what they want to eat.
The chemical company that you work (which really was a weapons company and now claims to be an agricultural company) has consistently demonstrated lack of ethics. Why should we believe their claims? If their products are so good why are they opposed to labeling? Because once the GMOs are labeled we will be able to trace health issues to the GMOs. There is plenty of evidence of the dangers to GMOs. Most people who are eating GMOs are not even aware of it. That is pretty evil.
By the way, why do farmers use your seeds? Because once they start using them they can not stop or they get sued by Monsanto if the fields contain any GE plants. Once the GMOs are released into the fields there is no way to recall them other than by destroying the crops. Quite a scheme your company has in place!
can't wait to see it.
When deciding whether to have our own new farm certified, I began to read up on the organic regulations and the claims that organic advocates make.
It turns out that I was quite wrong to consider organic a worthwhile movement. It is plagued by fear-mongering designed to scare people away from "conventional" foods and the dreaded "GMOs."
The organic advocates have been promising a catastrophe based on genetic modification for years but that catastrophe never seems to happen. Remember when all the monarch ****erflies were going to die because they ate GE corn pollen?
Genetic engineering gives us vaccines, medications, and insulin. It's success in agriculture is illustrated amply by the speed with which farmers worldwide are adopting GE crops. As a small, one-acre farmer with a small orchard, I would welcome such crops as potatoes engineered to resist blight and Colorado potato beetles, and brassicas that are not susceptible to cabbage loopers.
The problem with GE crops is that they're designed for the big, corporate farmers while the little farmers have next to nothing. There may be creditable arguments against the way certain corporations are managing genetically engineered organisms, but that is a completely separate argument from the safety and efficacy of those organisms for farmers. The answer may be to make them more widely available for everyone.
When you look carefully at the "studies" frequently tossed around by organics advocates on the Internet, you find that they have either been debunked (e.g. Pusztai and Huber) or not been replicated. Many of these "studies" are junk. For example, the alleged toxicity of the genetically-engineered corn containing Cry1Ab protein in pregnant women (study by Aris, L.) is a complete sham: They never even controlled for what the subjects were eating. They simply assumed the women were eating genetically modified corn products. I had to read the study myself to find this out. It infuriates me to see it continually circulated by the know-nothing organic crowd.
I have done a complete about-face. I find the organic movement appalling in its dishonesty and the selling of misinformation and fear. It advocates non-scientific homeopathy and herbal "remedies" for livestock while railing against the sound science of genetic engineering. It permits its own use of pesticides (copper sulfate, rotenone) while railing against "toxic chemicals." It claims to be pro-farmer while at the same time excoriating farmers who do not submit to the little green box of organic philosophy.
The increasing population of the world is a real problem. Every tool is going to be needed to feed the new millions that will arrive, including genetic engineering. The backward-looking organics movement will get us nowhere.
"We can't control nature! We can't commodify the sacred!"
So how exactly do you characterize what the Sumerians invented several thousand years ago?
One doesn't have to wait long for crappy, mysticism to rear its head in these videos.
"I have done a complete about-face. I find the organic movement appalling in its dishonesty and the selling of misinformation and fear. It advocates non-scientific homeopathy and herbal "remedies" for livestock while railing against the sound science of genetic engineering. It permits its own use of pesticides (copper sulfate, rotenone) while railing against "toxic chemicals." It claims to be pro-farmer while at the same time excoriating farmers who do not submit to the little green box of organic philosophy."
Organic movement is what we need the food from nature, not from lab, scientists will never be able to fully reproduce food in nature, the difference is in taste and where does it grow. Like Randy said:
A 2005 animal study conducted at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Irina Ermnkovfl discovered that more than half the offspring (55.6 percent) of rats fed on genetically modified soy died in the first three weeks of life-six to eight times as many as those born to mothers given conventional soy (9 percent) or no soy (6.8 percent). Six times as many rat babies (36 percent) were severely underweight as well compared to those in the other groups (6 percent ). Several other European studies suggest the dangers of genetically modified soy. Italian research, for example, showed that genetically modified soy affected the liver and pancreas in mice. In Australia, researchers discovered that genetically modified peas caused lung damage.
Russian academy of sciences are not paid by biotech companies to say that gm food is toxic or healthy.
You said:
"The increasing population of the world is a real problem. Every tool is going to be needed to feed the new millions that will arrive, including genetic engineering. The backward-looking organics movement will get us nowhere."
This proves that you're either uneducated, or you're simply biotech guy who is payed a lot to say stuff like this. The fact is that today we today produce food (conventional and organic, I'm not talking about gm food) for 12 billion people, so gm food is totally unnecessary. It is a matter of food distribution, it's not a matter of can we feed entire population (because as I said we today produce enough food for 12 billion people), it's a matter of distribution of food, politics and economics of each country, not to mention the war leaders who don't allow to distribute the food for those who really need it.
Bungling with mother nature cannot end good (one way or the other), only bad. Also, people used to eat much healthier food 50-60 years ago.
Like I said it's my right to reject gm food or anything else that concerns my own personal health.
You said.
""We can't control nature! We can't commodify the sacred!"
So how exactly do you characterize what the Sumerians invented several thousand years ago?
No, we cannot control nature, we can only take what nature gives us and try to enrich it, without green environment there is no organic, conventional or gm food, you can't have something from nothing. Because we dramatically changed nature, this is why today so many bad events are happening to us and the environment, everything has a high price and that includes the way we're producing food.