Right To Freedom: What If Big Biz Sues GMO Law?
OUR RIGHT TO FREEDOM: WHAT IF BIG BIZ SUES TO REPEAL VERMONT’S GMO LABELING LAW? (ISSUE 133) JUNE 17, 2014
By Diane Gold
Our right to freedom is the biggest opportunity we have in our lives: the right to create, collaborate, recreate, befriend, congregate, speak out, choose, share, cooperate and vote. The United States was founded on these principles. So, it goes to say that when we the people use our precious system of justice to pass a law, this law is the expression of our voice and is a mirror into our use of our right to freedom.
BIG BUSINESS VS. THE STATE OF VERMONT
What happens when big corporate dogs (Grocery Manufacturers Association, Snack Food Association, International Dairy Foods Association, National Association Of Manufacturers) go after a small innovative state that has voted to make labeling GMOs mandatory? Can the people be knocked down by lobbyists who will not go away because the companies who back them have deep pockets?
This is where the joining of our single voices, our fortitude, our vision and our commitment turns us into a swarm of warriors for any cause that can be heard and gain momentum. It is the way to combat even the most powerful organizations.
As is common knowledge, the corporate giants including Monsanto, BASF, Dow, Dupont and Bayer, are the largest producers of GMO seeds, Monsanto-trait seeds being used in 80-90% of farming worldwide. Most on this list are connected with each of the food associations lobbying to stop the already passed legislation for GMO labeling. We have to ask,
“If GMOs are so good for us or not bad for us, why is it so bad to have to label foods that contain them?”
Here’s what Attorney General William Sorrell said on June 12, 2014 when speaking to his lawmakers about a possible lawsuit,
“and it would be a heck of a fight, but we would zealously defend the law.”
By now, many of us have read The New York Times’ quote by Monsanto head Phil Angell about his company’s responsibility for testing the safety of GMOs,
“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is not our job.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean Angell wants unsafe food. It does mean his company is not going out of its way to investigate all the research against GMOs. Much testing has been done by other companies and universities, but, there is not yet a strong conclusion for GMOs to be outlawed. There have been studies pointing to the dangers of GMOs. There are also reports disproving danger.
Whichever research we believe, shouldn’t we, the people, have the right to a properly labeled food item by our government so that we can decide using our right to freedom? I, for one, am not interested in using GMOs when I have the chance to decline them.
ACTION STEPS AGAINST A GROUP OF CORPORATE GIANTS
Since the job of businesses is to increase revenue, it may not make sense to speak to the corporate giants, since their views remain to expand dollars and cents, with the possibility of health taking a back seat.
Since our job is to care for ourselves, our families and our communities by exercising our right to freedom and making good decisions, we must speak loudly about the things in which we believe. This would include our freedom to have our governments regulate labeling any food items with transparency, no matter the relationship the government has with the food company.
ORGANIZING THE ACTION
1) We know that working as a group gets more done than working alone. So join a group that represents your belief in this instance. I’m not being pushy, but one small action matters. Here’s a link to a petition if you’d like to help the existing State Of Vermont:
action.sumofus.org/a/monsanto-sues-vermonts/6/?sub=mtl
2) Draw something. Have you noticed the main search engine and owner of Android’s logos/doodles ( the big G) have been animated and more creative on a daily basis? This kind of art is motivating, inspirational and makes me move. So, whichever side of this issue you believe in, what about making a drawing and sending online to, at least, one social network?
3) Write or sing a song about our right to freedom including lyrics that say what you believe. This is a very old and effective way to get your message across.
4) Commission an elementary school teacher to do a creative project on the subject of right to freedom and the right to know movement (knowing what’s in and on our food).
5) Write a book or an article on the subject, and speak about it.
CONCLUSION
Whatever the method honoring the right to freedom with respect for the results of a vote, majority or any other democratic process; it is important to be aware of the process and its effect on the public, big business and other future projects. Let’s congratulate Vermont for being the first state with a GMO labeling law that does not depend upon laws passed by other states. If we believe it is the right way, let’s mention it on social networks. If we disagree with the disclosure (I can’t see what sense it would make not to label the food we eat, but…), we can do the research as to why so many people want to remove GMOs, starting with labeling them.
Strive to be proactive, rather than passively hanging on. Each small incremental movement helps the whole to thrive.
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DIANE GOLD, PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR
Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.
She believes in full disclosure when it comes to food. She says,
“For many years, I have experienced non-disclosure of the source of ingredients in foods. Does the ingredient come from a cow, a pig, a tree, a microbe? Although the labeling system in every nation in the world is inferior to what I would like, there has been a tiny change for the better in the 40 years of my research.
“The fact that GMOs are not labeled is only a result of the influence of the companies who manufacture them. This makes me sad but reminds me that I have to take responsibility to educate myself and the community about this situation. The fact that Vermont passed a GMO labeling law means there are others who agree with me.
“Let’s speak, write, draw, educate as many people as we can on whatever our belief is. Our action makes the difference, so let our voices be heard, whichever no matter which way we feel. Let’s exercise our right to freedom in a big way.
“Finally, let us all take good care of ourselves because we are so worth it!”
When we delay gratification, we use one skill which allows self-control: we replace the behavior that would have led us to the immediate reward. Whether we are young children or adults, it is the same strategy. Whether we can throw ourselves deeply enough into a new activity to control our behavior is different for everyone.
The biggest downfall in the ability to delay gratification happens in the first 10 to 30 seconds after we have an urge: we haven’t planned for our replacement behavior or we need a cheerleading team to provoke our behavior change and don’t have one. We have ourselves. Of course, the goal is for us to create this gallery of cheerers within ourselves so that we can do what is best for our lives, immaterial of what our hormones tell us to do. This may take time.
If we look at the predominant age group of people who know about GMOs and who just marched against the biggest seed and pesticide company that genetically modifies our food, we see lots of people between 10 and 40. This is great. It means that the more current generations are educated about food or are more savvy at realizing the mis-education they have gotten from food company’s who trade human health for profit. And the families who stand up against GMOs have children whom they have taught or who have been taught in school.
No matter what age, the time is now to stand together, jump together, march together, dance together, and educate together that genetic modification of food is not the way, while we still have other options. We can look at the great example of marchers against the big seed company, that took place the last Saturday in May, 2014, and be inspired – over 50 countries, over 400 coordinated marches.
1) 
Luckily, we are citizens for change; and we see the need to label GMOs and ban them. Kudos to the State of Vermont for passing a bill that will require labeling of genetically modified anything by 2016. Hopefully, this action will not be politically undone.
We are all citizens for change. We can uplift ourselves and move away from the status quo. We all need more knowledge of our food supply and what is best for our bodies and minds. Let not one day go by where we are not on the lookout for good information given with for humanitarian concern only. Let us also be aware of commercial information that may be manipulated to benefit its supplier, manufacturer, distributor or other profiteer. Our lives depend upon our proactivity, so, to follow, are some ways we can take action.
Integrative Medicine is the new buzz phrase that refers to medical doctors’ looking at biology, psychology, exercise, social adjustment, spiritual balance and nutrition to conclude the best way to work together with a patient on her health.
Because part of healing has to do with self-expression, integrative medicine includes counseling and discussing what is going on in the life of the patient or how the patient feels. Yes, we pay for the time since we may be billed at the highest tier should we touch upon 5 subjects that ail us instead of 1; but we have the ability to have a full and complete session with an expert. Hallelujah.
Having been aware that the health care system compartmentalizes each area, many of us have known that the infrastructure of medicine as it has been displayed and taught to us is out of balance and incomplete medicine. We who know what mind/body disciplines can do for health are thrilled to see the continued popularity of integrative medicine.
Recently, I learned a big lesson, or, rather, I was reminded of an old lesson that I believe is as inherent as our survival instincts which lead us to an eye for an eye. I was asked to help a friend use the punishment system on her child. I did not look at the end results of this situation that was spinning out of control. But, I said I’d lend a hand. Not until the punishment I helped to deliver was hijacked by intervention from the other parent did I realize I was acting out of my belief system and into a system which lacks cooperation and respect.
We’ve spoken before about habits that are internal, such as addiction to cocaine, and external, such as the habit of punishment and feeling powerful from this technique. In this case, I agreed to use the deprivation method of behavior to restore order, that is, the taking away of a freedom to maintain discipline. There is a better way.
When someone commits a crime and shows remorse; we are often eager to lend an ear, show mercy, wish for a small consequence with special privileges for this person and label the person a regular one who made a mistake.
A new study conducted in Ontario at McMaster University by Mark Tarnopolsky (MD, PhD) and his team came up with something astounding: that exercise can rejuvenate the skin.
So Tarnopolsky and team did testing on a group of 29 men and women, ages 20 to 84. About half were active, doing three hours of workout per week. The other half did less than one hour a week. So the team examined skin on the butt, since that area would have less sun damage.
To factor in whether lifestyles and diet made the difference, they took another sample of individuals for study. They put a group of previously sedentary people, 65 years and older, to exercise after first sampling their skin, which looked average for their age. They did a routine of jogging or cycling for 30 minutes two times a week for three months. At the end of this period, their skin measured that of 20- to 40-year-olds.
I stepped out the other night because I promised a friend I’d meet her at a bar for people over 60 with music from the 1950s and 60s. Since I don’t drink because I don’t drink just two, I was able to observe the crowd. What I was not prepared for was the amount of people, both men and women, who had had injection procedures to make the face look less wrinkly.
This will get you moving and creating your own health through exercise. From your inner self out to the world.
1. My Workout Is Boring.
(1) If our activity doesn’t keep our attention, we quit. We usually are not taught the merits of follow through and perseverance, so we quit.
The art of tai chi is a system of movement that uses wave-like, circular patterns of moving the body, arms and legs. Its purpose is to connect everything that we do with the body with our mind and our spirit. It’s not a magic potion of movement; what it is is a very slow moving discipline that, because of its slowness, allows the mover to connect the movement to the mind. Its purpose is to teach the mind to act fluidly like the body movements. The physical moves are tools to connect us to ourselves.
Here’s something to think about. When I am doing tai chi, the speed at which I am moving allows me to focus my attention on my movement. The movement allows me to focus on only 1 thing. This focus allows me to follow each body part, 1 at a time. I can, as well, connect my motion with the heat and the balance of my body, the expansion and compression of my lungs, the flow of my blood, and the space in which my body exists. I am in moving, martial meditation.
Picture the adventure of a dandelion seed, using the fibers of the dandelion flower to keep it airborn, and it is whisked away by a fluid stream of the wind. The ride is smooth with no sudden movement other than what the airstream provides for it. This fluidity likens it to the journey of tai chi, where we learn to follow the line of movement of one body part from its beginning to its end which leads it into a new beginning of the next body part. This rolling rhythm that is tai chi allows us to translate our wave-like action of our body to our mind, reducing or removing jerky decisions, panic or despair.
For all the reasons that we don’t burn out when we do tai chi, this old and sophisticated art offers solutions to people with a huge list of physical and emotional issues: memory disorders like Alzheimer’s Disease, muscle disorders, like Parkinson’s Disease, Anxiety Disorder, Chronic Organic Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), cardiovascular disease, balance disorders, diabetes and more. And it’s a martial art that teaches self-protection, one-pointed focus, stress-free living and how to maximize health.
People with low vitamin D levels are more likely to die from cancer and heart disease and to suffer from other illnesses, scientists reported in two large studies published on Tuesday.
Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and is an important part of the immune system. Receptors for the vitamin and related enzymes are found throughout cells and tissues of the body, suggesting it may be vital to many physiological functions, said Dr. Oscar H. Franco, a professor of preventive medicine at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and an author of one of the new studies, which appeared in the journal BMJ [April 1, 2014.]*
“Based on what we found, we cannot recommend widespread supplementation,” said Evropi Theodoratou, an author of the study and research fellow at the Center for Population Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. The second study also looked at bone health. While Vitamin D had long been believed to help prevent osteoporosis fractures from falls, clinical trials in recent years have challenged the idea. The study also found no evidence to support that assumption.
Dr. Theodoratou was not alone in suggesting people hold off on taking vitamin D supplements for now. Even though Dr. Franco found them to be beneficial, he said that more research was needed to show what levels are best. Instead of taking pills, people could improve their vitamin D levels with an adequate diet and 30 minutes of sunlight twice a week, he said.
“But there is enough positive research currently to indicate that people should be supplementing with vitamin D for a variety of positive health outcomes,” he added.
In all sectors that touch upon health care, there are conflicts of interest. We have the habit of ignoring them. In order to do research, we need money, so we sell products. These products may be less than perfect to save money and to make more. In order to live well, some of us may create partnerships and agree to job restrictions we never would have if we didn’t need the money. These are compromises. We all have made one. These are not unethical moves, in themselves. Ignoring the huge conflicts of interest that develop because of them is. Not making this disharmony common knowledge is!
Health insurance companies are another sector that creates conflicts of interest. The cost of insurance-reimbursable health care is so high that these companies foster the habit that they are the only way and that they are required. True, I would not want to be without health care as an almost 65-year-old citizen, but I do want to honor these comments from Jon Raymond, founder of Out In The Streets Films, from his article The Sadism Of American Health Care,
Our doctors may be promoting a drug or treatment protocol so that they receive a bonus or good connection from a drug company or an insurance company. Most doctors will not promote what they don’t believe in; however their discussion of drugs from a company that favors them they give their patients urges other doctors to do the same, benefiting the original prescriber and the drug company. If the drug could have been replaced with exercise or good food, this non-drug strategy gets lost in the shadows.
We might also consider the ethics of raising animals for slaughter, or, in the case of dairy cows, shortening their lives by 80% as long as cows who do not get milked by machine on a dairy farm or traumatizing pigs in tiny cages.
Finally, although there are conflicts in finance and natural resource manufacturing, too, we will close with media conflicts. Journalists have to omit some news. They report what their corporate heads allow, which often coincides with the voices of their advertisers.
Know the conflicts of interest in health care, and eat well. Consider how funding drives decisions for all of us. Know that all our industries, factory farmers, health insurers, medical personnel and facilities, our research companies, government regulators are run by profit. And all the sectors fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
What makes the above quote a great definition is that Charles Darwin alludes to something similar in his Origin of the Species as did his predecessor, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 500 years before Darwin. They both arrived at the idea that traits can be passed down generationally even if they are acquired through acquired training of the previous generations. Another way of saying this would be that the offspring of parents who are trained in a certain behavior are born with the behavior and no previous training in the future generations.
We can look at the domestication of one or two wolf species. The domesticated wolf became the dog, according to James Serpell, professor at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Vet Medicine in his 1995 The Domestic Dog. Through teaching the wolf pup of the wild wolf to be calm, gentle and social with humans; the offspring of the tamed wolf pups began to exhibit the gentler traits at birth, without any training.
So, the way of our evolution has to do with the training we are given which, if ingrained in us well, can be passed down to our offspring or to their future generations from birth. What could exist is our own domestication, cultivating the habit of peaceful coexistence.
The point here is if we start role playing peaceful solutions to different circumstances when we are young, we will be very experienced at conflict resolution by the time we reach 25 when our voices can help run the world. We will recognize human rights violations and know how to use our voices against them using our peaceful methods. This means we may be interested in letting go of our old ways.
