Why Are We Eating Foods the Rats Won't Eat

This is a repost of a blog I wrote about 7 years ago.  Although we have much more information now than we did even then, this information still is valid and as we value our lives its worth looking into.

  Monsanto Seeds of Deception

This post is about genetically altered foods, and the damage it is causing human beings. This is an introduction to the dangerous, life threatening residual health effects it has on people. Keep in mind this is just an introduction about this issue. I urge you to do your own research and then share this information with as many people in your networks around the world that you can touch...or talk to. (Start at home in your own communities) But please do not take anyone’s say so about this or any issue as the word. I cannot stress the importance of doing your own research to see for yourself how these issues affect your everyday lives. How do start this research you may ask? Start with this post, I have listed many of the agencies and organizations you may want to start with follow up on the information given in the videos most of them are YouTube so you can research on there as well, go to your agricultural agency in your community and ask questions but do not stop there. You can also go the library and bookstores and inquire about this topic. Look for blogs on the topics too.
If you have anything to add to this post please do share your information, ideas, and thoughts.

1. WHAT ARE GENETICALLY MODIFIED (GM)/GENETICALLY ENGINEERED (GE) FOODS?
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are one of the most dangerous and radical changes to our food supply. These largely unregulated ingredients found in 60-70% of the foods in the US, are well worth the effort to avoid them.



2. HOW GM OR GE FOODS HURT US


In 1999 According to Dr. Arpad Pusztai, the world’s top GMO safety researcher at the prestigious Rowett Institute in Scotland, when fed supposedly harmless Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) to rats, they developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and showed signs of a damaged immune system. Moreover, the results clearly indicated that the cause of the problem was due to the unpredictable side effects arising from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, his study suggested that the GM foods already on the market, which were created from the same process, might also create such effects




3. WHO BENEFITS FROM THIS GM/GE FOOD MARKET?
The Merchants, Big Corporations like Monsanto and other like Corporations, Organizations, Government…….



4. WHO ARE THE FOOD AND DRUG/HEALTH REGULATING AGENCIES?
FDA: Food and Drug Administration
USDA: United States Department of Agriculture
WHO: World Health Organization
WTO: World Trade Organization
ADA: American Dietetic Association
CAC: Codex Alimentarius Commission
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
EPA: Environmental Protection Agency


5. WHAT ROLE DO THESE AGENCIES PLAY IN SUPPORTING THESE GE/GM FOODS?
If you will do the research on these agencies and MONSANTO (the corporation) you will see a revolving door amongst the officials of these agencies. You will then begin to overstand why, the reports and research that has supposedly been done on the foods to keep us healthy and safe from harm; are designed to be deceptive to the public. The reports are also done in favor of the MONSANTO so that this corporation and all its players get richer, while the rest of the world dies quicker.

6. WHY YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER?
You and family’s lives are in danger. The food that you eat everyday without regard to where it came from and whether or not it is safe…..is literally killing you, your families and your communities. There are people out there making life and death decisions for you around you and about you with your input. You are responsible for your own safety. Get the idea out of your heads that the government is supposed to regulate and protect you. Remember Katrina, Remember 9/11. There’s No Such Thing as a Superman…. And Disneyland/Disney World is just a theme park. Not reality. WAKE UP FAMILY.

7. WHAT ACTION STEPS CAN YOU TAKE?
These are some action steps you can take but action is not limited to these and if you can think of any more please list.
• You can first of all do the research on this issue.
• Join Agricultural Groups that do not want GM or GE foods
• Avoid using GM or GE foods and products
• Avoid buying and eating GM or GE products
• Ask your local grocery store to provide a section of foods that are not GM or GE foods.
• Be a watchdog on the above listed agencies and MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD AS A COLLECTIVE AND AS AN INDIVIDUAL.
• Write to letters showing you don’t want GM or GE foods
• Refuse to buy GE or GM foods
• Start a seed bank and share with other like minded individuals
• Educate someone else who is not as computer literate as you are
• Take this to your community meetings
• Save your seeds from foods that you know are not GM or GE foods
• Plant a garden or learn how to
• Grow something organically
• Teach others how to grow food
• Be diligent about protecting your family. Do not look for others to do this for you.

8. Who Are the Forces You Need To Collaborate With?
Agencies and groups that are already fighting these issues.

9. Does Collaborating Mean You Need To Be A Hot Sauce Integrationist?
Okay what does this mean? It means just because we have to join forces for the moment with people who in most cases have been our rivals, does not mean we have to compromise who we are or our culture. It does not call for can’t we all get along, we are all one people or selling out this is serious work and we have to overstand who we are and what we are fighting for. Make no mistake about this people, WE ARE AT WAR……..So right now this is a numbers game. There is strength in numbers. Let’s work it for what it is worth.

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods


Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

My Journey to Cape Town South Africa

Greetings Everyone!

I first have to tell you that this journey although initated by my school FAMU has been a life long desire... to visit AFRICA the Mama Africa! Oh I can only tell you that the feeling is so strong to finally touch the land.   God has made it possible and united yet another one of his children to come home even if it is for a visit......I am in Cape Town, South Africa in an area called Paarl, named after Paarl Mountain, its their winter April - August and its 11cdegres min and 18c degrees max.... whats that in our weather....hmm guess you gotta do some research.

FAMU has an independent course called Social Problems in Agronomy and the trip to Cape Town South Africa will be 3 weeks.  There are 7 students and 3 Professors on this venture. I will try to capture a little everyday so you can share this wonderful journey with me.   We are immersed in the culture as we are staying with two families who run these marvelous bed and breakfasts.  Zentree Bed and Breakfast and Cotton Bed and Breafast.

I have already met an newly founded NGO named Keep the Dream 346 I was speaking with one of the founders Riaan van der Hoeven who explained the goals and objectives of the company. They are training people to grow their own food via community gardening and  other sustainable methods of community engagement.  I will have pictures and more information soon  ... Stay tuned leave me your comments and questions I will try to answer as time permits....
Off ... into ... the wild blue yonder...

The Conscious Plat Hour

The Conscious Plat Hour

A Sis STAR to pay attention to is Conscious Plat. Join us and share this powerful program while she speaks on the topic of naming ceremony where she reclaims a piece of her heritage by honoring the ancestors, informing our people about breaking the shackles on the minds from the colonized way of thinking , living and acting. Conscious Plat is a writer, poet, singer, and producer among some of the talents she shares with us
Check her website out at

http://www.consciousplat.com/

Food Culture Justice and Food Security: Why Global Networking is Crucial

Gris Gris Lab Herbal Garden, New Orleans, LA

I recently attended a food security conference in New Orleans, LA with three of my colleagues,from Tallahassee, Florida.  Cultural Arts Natural Design International (CANDI), The Greater Frenchtown Revitalization Council, Project Food, and a Horticulture Scholar were chosen to participate in this conference. We were sponsored by the  Nathan Ballentine aka The  Man in Overalls  and the Wiley Sunshine Foundation.

Qashima Boston, Joyce Brown, Claire Mitchell and Miaisha Mitchell

We are a collaborative of grassroots organizations working to build sustainable, healthier communities that have access to fresh healthy foods and a better way of life.  Although this collaborative has varied and many strengths in their own right this conference and others like this are key to building a united front on sustaining and building healthier food systems locally as well as  around the world. We learned much in the way of organizing around food systems, policy, producers, land issues and much more. For me learning the language or the lingo of this forum was key.   So I will share at least one  new  term for me.

• Land-trust:: A land trust is a nonprofit organization that, as all or part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisition, or by its stewardship of such land or easements.( There is much more to this definition so I would do the research on this for more information.) In relation to farm land. Some open questions I have are ; How does this actually work if someone wanted to donate land to you or your organization, if its in a land trust?
• Food Sovereignty : "Food sovereignty" is a term coined by members of Via Campesina in 1996 ^[1] to refer to a policy framework advocated by a number of farmers, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, rural youth and environmental organizations, namely the claimed "right" of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces. 
•  
• Food Security: Food security happens when all people at all times have access to enough food that...

1. is affordable, safe and healthy
2. is culturally acceptable
3. meets specific dietary needs
4. is obtained in a dignified manner
5. is produced in ways that are environmentally sound and socially just  Its everybody's business! 

• Principles

  Via Campesina's seven principles of food sovereignty include:
• Food: A Basic Human Right. Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right and guarantee the development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization of this fundamental right.
• Agrarian Reform. A genuine agrarian reform is necessary which gives landless and farming people – especially women – ownership and control of the land they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those who work it.
• Protecting Natural Resources. Food Sovereignty entails the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially land, water, and seeds and livestock breeds. The people who work the land must have the right to practice sustainable management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual property rights. This can only be done from a sound economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agro-chemicals.
• Reorganizing Food Trade. Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies must prioritize production for domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices.
• Ending the Globalization of Hunger. Food Sovereignty is undermined by multilateral institutions and by speculative capital. The growing control of multinational corporations over agricultural policies has been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral organizations such as the WTO, World BankIMF. Regulation and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly enforced Code of Conduct for TNCs is therefore needed. and the
• Social Peace. Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside, along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, oppression and increasing incidence of racism of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.
• Democratic control. Smallholder farmers must have direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo a process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate information and open and democratic decision-making. These rights form the basis of good governance, accountability and equal participation in economic, political and social life, free from all forms of discrimination. Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision-making on food and rural issues.

Food sovereignty is increasingly being promoted as an alternative framework to the narrower concept of food security, which mostly focuses on the technical problem of providing adequate nutrition. For instance, a food security agenda that simply provides surplus grain to hungry people would probably be strongly criticized by food sovereignty advocates as just another form of commodity dumping, facilitating corporate penetration of foreign markets, undermining local food production, and possibly leading to irreversible biotech contamination Bt corn to Mexico since the passage of NAFTA is a case in point.

The most  dynamic force of this forum was it was mostly entirely contained and designed by grassroots people and organizations. The hosts were the Community Food Security Coalition out of Portland Oregon.

Tallahassee Collaborative Networking with a Journalist Scholar from  Senegal, Africa

Networking was in high energy  and we made many extremely vital connections around the country and around the world.

Malik Yakini Chairman of DBCFSN with Qasimah and Miaisha

 

 

 

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN)

How did this conference help support our work in Tallahassee, FL?

First and foremost lets define our communities. We may live in Tallahassee but our networks  are local, national and global, thus we have an obligation to expand our sharing to our global networks and communities. This will be done by taking this information and breaking it down. Language is key  and  real life situations and relevancy otherwise you will not  engage your community.    This is not an easy task, nor is this work done in isolation. This work must be done in collaboration as a interactive process not a let me show you how its done atmosphere. It must  involve entire communities,with the communities taking the lead, and if the powers at be want to really effect change, it will call for them to put their money where their mouth is, roll up their sleeves and join in. 

Some of the workshops I attended were

Engaging Youth in Food Justice and Community Building

Deborah Leta Habib, Seeds of Solidarity
Vanessa Lynch, Seeds of Solidarity

Youth programs can provide young people with a safe and productive community setting to grow and transform, while cultivating food and skills for activism.  Through dialogue, this session explores key questions, challenges, and strategies for energizing existing youth food and agriculture programs to inspire and engage young people as changemakers. 
Some of the key messages circulating in this forum was you must involve youth in from the beginning of your planning, implementation and view them as viable pieces of the puzzle not as an afterthought or to assign menial tasks.   This group explained as in many mainstream organization people seem to view working with the youth as a job rather than viewing them as having valuable insight on what is happening in their world as well. It was mainly geared toward people who actuall work with children and youth but do not know how to engage them.  Creating meaningful, relevant service learning opportunities can be challenging. When done well, they provide students with excellent, engaging experiences

Grantsmanship Workshop with USDA

The USDA discussed keys to  successful grantsmanship, the dos an don’ts  in proposal writing, working with collaborations, timelines, evaluation, and project sustainability.  This information was helpful and it showed the USDA wanted to help people who had not received grants before as well. The inside tips really did help.  My thoughts were on how deep the USDA roots run with FDA, EPA, United Nations, WHO etc……..(just food for thought)

 From Detroit to New Orleans  Building a US Food Sovereignty Movement

Na Ra Barber, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

Stephen Bartlett, Agricultural Missions

Joaquin Martinez, Community to Community Development

Bob St Peter, National  Family Farm Coalition? Via Campesina North America

Karen Washington, New York City Urban Farmer

Ben Yahola, Myskoke Food Sovereignty Institute.\

This forum  was an action packed dynamo session. There were at least 100 people in the room.  The panel was an awesome group of people and the breakout sessions reveled so many  grassroots  strategies and experience in the room from around the world. This is  definitely a unified grassroots  international movement, and people around the world seem to be saying now is the time and reaching out to unite.

Emerging Technologies and the Threat to a Just Food Systems

This panel discussed the emerging technologies in the food systems such as animal genetic engineering, cloning and   nanotechnology. This was an informative session with the speakers outlining what technologies were actually happening realtime in our food systems.  We also discussed how these technologies threaten our health, animals and our environments.  What was interesting was the variety of interest attending this session, there was a chef, who was very outspoken, Monsanto was prevalent in most of the discussions and there were quite a few college students.

 Plate To Politics 
Liz Johnson: The Whitehouse Project
Lisa Kivirist, : Rural Women's Project
Nevada Littlewolf : The Whitehouse Project
This workshop explored what the key ingredients  to stir up  change in our food system. Stating that more women in leadership roles that influence agriculture and food policy change.  There were tools  and strategies shared that could help in all phases of  leadership amongst women from rallying for school lunch reform to running for office while supporting a diversity of women  activists innovators and educators. Real time issue such a structural racism and systemic methods of oppressive discrimination were were discussed by the audience.


The highlight of the conference for me was the networking sessions during which time we met a host of exciting, movers and shakers around the country who are effecting social change around the world. One grassroots organization at a time.

Celebrity Gardeners 

Will Allen of Growing Power and Joyce Brown of Cultural Arts Natural Design International

 Growing Power

Networking , Networking, ........

Some of the Cultural connections were made after the Second Line dance from the hotel to the French Quarters Market place where the gumbo was goooooood and the music was deep ... the crowds were thick and we had beads all over out necks.....So here's a little glimpse of the second line dance if you have never experienced it

Seafood Gumbo

A word  from and about the host of the Food Culture Justice Conference

 
Some Valuable Links from the Community Food Security Coalition

RELATED WEBSITES

A collection of food-security web links in the following categories:

Food Security/Food Systems	Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
Urban Agriculture/Community Gardens	Progressive
Nutrition	Religious
Sustainable Agriculture	Community Development
Farmers' Markets	University/Cooperative Extension
Anti-Hunger	Restaurants/Chefs/Co-ops

More information on Conference from Miaisha Mitchell
More information on Conference from Qasimah Boston 
More Information on Conference from Claire Mitchell

COMMUNITY GARDENS

I recently attended the American Community Gardens Association 31st conference in Atlanta, GA, where I learned about innovative uses of community gardens. We went on Garden tours, in Atlanta. I would like to highlight two here and one from a dynamic presenter. All of the above are our Afrikan Brothers and Sisters.

The first one is PEARL ACADEMY Agriculture and Environmental Center- Where they believe "Instruction in youth is like engraving in stone"

This first garden that we toured was 5 acres of land and had an indoor classroom that looked like a house and and outdoor classroom that looked like a screened in house.

The most exciting part of Pearl's Academy to me was the fact that is was owned and operated by a dynamic Sista P who empowered her youth to actually give the tour.

Their logo is actually the fern from the Adinkra Symbols. She runs a private school there with the principals of Maat' . There was so much vibrant growth.everywhere. There was also much representing with our colors as well.

I was really interested in her growing potatoes in the beautifully painted stacked tires. She said she could grow 150 potatoes in that stack. Wow!

Nothing goes to waste, she had three compost bins , one with vegetation, one with food scraps and another with shredded paper. There was so much information she shared in our tour that was way too brief just enough to excite the natural living part of my soul. They have overnights for the youth, that teach them so many things like building greenhouses, making irrigation systems and much more. You can visit her site for more information but a place you definatly should visit. ....

http://www.pearlacademy.org/

The next site was TRULY LIVING WELL NATURAL URBAN FARMS owned and run by Rashid Nuri

He has six sites for his farms but this particular site is in East Pointe Atlanta, right in front of an apartment complex, it was a lot a lady gave him and he turned it in to this lush area full of organically grown food. He said one thing he can tell us about gardening is "compost,, compost, compost". He showed us his worm bin, compost bins and where he mixes the horse and elephant manure he gets from the zoo!. He talked about building the irrigation systems and how he employs like 10 people from around the way for a couple of hours a week for minimal amounts of money. There are many volunteers but it is a community garden and they have lots of opportunity to provide this organic produce to the city. Since I really am new to gardening I took lots of pictures of crops but I think I will let you name some of them ...LOL...

There were raised beds and other interesting formats. Rashid talked about companion planting like planting amaranth ( also known as callaloo in the West Indies) next to certain foods to repel potato bugs and the like.. There were Japanese basil, in raised beds

and there were rows of taro

There was so much more but here are just a few of the pictures.

You can find out more about Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farms here

http://www.trulylivingwell.com/

In this video some urban gardeners including Bobby Wilson the President of the Atlanta Urban Gardens and Rashid Nuri.

The last but not least is the SANKOFA GARDENS founded by another dynamic Sista Leia Lewis from Shreveport, LA who brought a couple of acres and turned it into a community garden and now she is building a Green School

You can find out more about her gardens here:http://sankofavision.com/director.html

Food Dialog