Unfortunately the FDA is considering approving Genetically Modified Salmon. They're almost there, and if they approve it we could see GM salmon on supermarket shelves in 3 years. In many countries of the world (including the US and Canada), GM products are not required to be labelled, so the GM fish will stealth their way onto your table without you knowing. But there are significant dangers associated with GM technologies.
For example, the herbicide used on most GM crops (typically rice, soy and corn), RoundUp, causes birth defects if mothers are exposed to it during pregnancy, and the 'safe' levels are often found to be exceeded 10 times over. And that's just one well-documented example. GM life has been linked to cancer and other life-threatening diseases. But that's just the risks to you.
GM crops have never significantly improved yield (as promised), have not reduced the use of chemicals (as promised), have enslaved farmers economically and dramatically increased farmer suicide rates, have given rise to superweeds that are immune to common/safe herbicides, and have spread into the wild to pollute and damage natural habitats.
GM producers have narrow vision. They have repeatedly proven that profit is their God, and they will stop at nothing (including intimidation and even murder) to make money. They encourage mono-cropping (decreasing biodiversity and increasing habitat fragility) and deforestation, and their 'recommended' farming practices lead to desertification. They are destroying the fertility of the soils, and so are reducing the worlds' potential agricultural yields.
GM animals and fish will fall down in all the same areas. They are bad for humanity, bad for the planet, bad for life, bad for everything. Unfortunately the FDA is run/controlled by pro-GM lobbyists. They have no concern for the environment or human health. If GM salmon is allowed, we all get one step sicker.
The FDA don't even have a suitable process to determining the GM salmon's safety. They are using the animal drug safety procedure to approve this fish - now doesn't that make you feel safe!
One final warning: The approval of GM salmon will open the flood gates for more GM animals. We are witnessing the destruction of agriculture itself, and with it, the possibility of sustainable food production on this planet.
While mono-crops are surely a terrible thing--whatever the thing--why do we simply presume that eating animals is a good thing in the first place? And, if eating animals is toxic to our environment because it is simply not possible to satisfy our disgusting thirst for meat, and so not possible to do it sustainably, why do we presume that the blood-lust was ever a good thing?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that you are shocked that life could be manufactured, but not shocked enough because you seem to think that it's ok for an animal to be born to die for your plate. Fuck that. Get real or be OK with GMO animals. After all, you seem to want to solve social problems.
The truth is that you mistakenly believe that humans must eat meat to survive, and that without a whole fuck-load of meat humans will wipe themselves off the face of the planet... (GOOD riddance). But there is overwhelming proof that the number one cause of global warming is meat consumption and animal industries, no matter how 'kind' and 'sustainable'. Get real. Surely wreaking havoc on our total biosphere is something you would oppose. So, forget eating salmon, and all of its mercury and poison. Forget eating meat, and stop fucking our planet!
The problem is that we need technology and GMO's to solve our over-population issue. But this doesn't need to be a matter of fucking over the future. If everyone stops eating meat and producing animals for fat anti-environmentally-concerned people, and if everyone stops producing children that turn out to be fat and anti-environmentally concerned, we might be able to save our world with mono-crops such as soy. Of course, we could just switch over to hemp, which proliferates in abundace--hemp seed, in particular, as our main staple. But that doesn't taste too good; thereain't no money in that; and no one really cares about the future anyways.
You see, everyone knows we're fucked. I just don't get why anyone would want to bring a life into this fucked up world that is itching to rid itself of us. Does the GMO offer a way out? Does the GMO fuck us in the end? How do we minimize that latter result? It sure ain't by producing more animal shit.
Our future IS poisoned.
ReplyDeleteWhile eating GMO crops is a matter of poison, poison is rarely traced back to the thirst for dioxin-ridden animals themselves. Mercury is the obvious problem in salmon, but the root is much deeper. Dairy is Posion. Meat is poison. And not just for us; for the world and all of its inhabitants. Our biosphere is fucked and we are fucking it. Every time you consume meat, you adopt the responsibility of that particular animal's methane gas burden, etc.--Your life-style and your environmental ethic are at 6's and 7's.
We are shocked about GMO's because we value life, no matter the object, and know that biodiversity is the best fail-safe for disease, and the ability for the super rich to wipe us out. You seem shocked that animals may poison you because they have been tampered with by certain companies; but not shocked enough, it seems because you think you have a colonializing right to them. Fuck that!
Oddly, it would seem that if one cares about the human race, as you seem to for some redemptive reason, one should be in favor of mono-cultures. Here technology may solve some of our issues. We can feed lots in the long-run if we fuck the environment in the short run. But it's madness if those solutions cause environmental damage, causing further problems to be solved by further "solutions". So, fuck meat.
Ironically, it seems that GMO's solve their own problems. With the consumption of GMO's one is more likely to die. That may be the best solution to the envion'mental' problems.
I certainly don't believe we have a colonizing right to dominate animals. You've read me wrong. I don't really care that GM-whatever is bad for human health. I write that because I know a lot of people do care about that, and I use it as a rhetorical tool, with the hope of putting people off GM. GM does cause health problems, both to humans consuming them, and to ecosystems that have to deal with them. But I'm not really concerned about humans getting sick - there's too many of us anyway!
ReplyDeleteSo what you say about GM solving it's own problem may well be true. However, the damage GM causes to the surrounding systems aren't worth it to me, so I will use every available argument to put people off supporting it (and hopefully encourage people to actively oppose it).
I personally don't eat seafood because of the rate of plunder of our oceans, and the resultant (ridiculously massive) threat to biodiversity. However, I don't expect everyone else to stop (even if I hope for it). Preaching the ideals of veganism is just that - preaching. And a lot of people (myself included) are turned off by preaching, regardless of whether or not they agree.
Zerzan calls for a return to primitive existence, but even a hunter-gatherer society includes hunters. I don't like predators very much, but humans have two eyes facing forward, which at least points to us having some predatory ancestry/nature. Indeed, predation goes back a long way, and in many ways is a basis for evolution (otherwise, why bother!). Evolution is the only known natural process in the universe that increases the complexity and diversity of the system. Single celled organisms can be predators! I'm not going to oppose the entire process of evolution (although some of it seems to result in intense cruelty), because I don't know what I would then be left with. The hope for the eventual heat-death of the universe, when literally nothing happens? That doesn't sounds like a compelling dream for the future.
So I'm going to stick with supporting diversity, which means to some degree supporting the evolutionary process. I may be sick to allow humanity to eat meat, but I can't provide an alternative suggestion that is viable. I'm pretty sure that the only way to stop humans from eating meat is to wipe out all humans. And the only way to stop living things from eating other living things is to wipe out all life. And the only way to stop all non-living things (like black holes) from consuming all non-living things is to achieve complete entropy, when nothing happens, nothing matters, nothing relates to anything, nothing exists.
I'm not going there, and I doubt you would either. But I don't know how to draw the arbitrary line that you do. Or why I should even try.
I like diversity. It's interesting.
My point wasn't that you should stop eating animal products for preachy ethical reasons. Fuck ethics. My point was that your environmental ethic is pathetic because you do eat animals. You care about the system, but only so much--only if it is feasible. The truth is that you don't take responsibility for the animal industries you support; you explain it away by some point about fertilization, even though you know damn well that run-off is a huge polluter, and that the entire system is taxed as a direct result of the blood-lust. Rowe Farms is just a "happy name" for farms that exploit animals and in turn (necessarily) exploit the earth, just as humans have always been and always will be exploited by bosses. If anyone is drawing arbitrary lines...
ReplyDeleteSince you eat meat, you partake in the colonialization of animals--animals that "live" and die for your totally misinformed view of protein. Sadly ironic: the anti-colonialist is a closet colonizer! You don't like predators very much, but you reap the rewards of those that prey on weakness, those that manufacture life for death for human happiness.
(If that's 'preachy', we need more preachers. Preachers rarely make arguments, and I got loads! Also, I never was turned off by a preacher simply for being a preacher. It was always His bad arguments.)
One revolution in animal ethics suggests that eating animals is just unnecessary, given other sources that are far less taxing on the environment. Consider animal feed. Animals have to eat food to be food for you. Why not just use the land that is used for animal industries for other staples that are far more bio-available anyways? We could have, literally, billions of acres of organic soy, hemp, and kale-crops if we just wipe out these industries. Is eating animals always unnecessary? It seems clear to me that this isn't even hard. So, to diagnose what you have said: You take the obvious truism that it would be necessary some of the time to eat animals to justify the totally misinformed view that it is ok, all the time. Ridiculous. Zerzan et al. have proven that we were once gatherer-hunters: we foraged for the most part and then started consuming animals more and more and more. Here, community problems started to arise.
Your view on animal industries partakes in herd-mentality. Only you are part of the winning herd that isn't being fucked with for some other dinner plate.
If civilisation is going to collapse in the next 30-200 years, then I want to make sure the outcome is not a strengthened hierarchical/industrial human existence, but a change from that. If 8 billion humans are going to die horribly through starvation, thirst and conflict (as I believe is likely), then I want the result to be a world that is greatly changed, not a world that's still nature-killing in orientation.
ReplyDeleteMany of my problems with agriculture today come down to farms being too big and too intensive. I believe there is such a thing as healthy small scale farming. I believe that when done well, farming can increase the biodiversity, increase the health of the land, and increase the sustainability and resistance of the land to desertification. Permaculture is a good example of this.
I also believe that as humanity transitions in future decades, people will try to hold on to agriculture very strongly since it has proved effective at providing a sustainable source of food for most of the last 10,000 years (and human memory doesn't extend much beyond that due to lack of records regarding the way of life). Even if agriculture itself is a(the) problem (as Zerzan claims), I believe there's a strong argument to support healthier instances of it in the next few centuries (just as you do by growing your own food). I believe there's also a strong argument to support the healthier instances of the raising of animals, for similar reasons. There's the additional argument that providing meat through the continued domestication of (already domesticated) animals will reduce the number of species that are hunted to extinction by humans who don't care and just want to eat meat (and there's a lot of people out there who are like that). I believe that supporting the healthier instances of the caring for and farming of animals (at least for the next few centuries) will result in increased biodiversity over the alternative.
I don't (want to) support industrial agriculture and agribusiness.
I do indeed draw arbitrary lines. I admit that. I believe we all do, you and Zerzan included. We just draw those lines at different places. Hopefully our influence on each other will change where we both draw our lines, as I suspect we both have things to learn from one another.
Again, thanks for posting your comments, they're certainly making me think (and change). I hope other readers are similarly influenced.
So where's this line?
ReplyDeleteThe line is very nuanced, and has to be true to the context. It will constantly change, and I am not able to accurately state where it lies. It's something we as humans need to work out.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I know that the line does cut out large/intensive/mono-cultured/GM agriculture. In my opinion it doesn't cut out all animal farming (what you would call animal exploitation), because biodiversity is more important to me than ideals of a particular, recent, elite, urban diet, e.g. veganism.
But that line is certainly something that needs to be discussed.
Privilege is a matter of being in a position to choose how to eat, and what to eat. I accept my privilege. You use yours to chose to only care about biodiversity--whatever that means. Moreover, you use yours to impose an ethics of care for animal consumption. Fine and well; but it is an imposition.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it seems that you just don't know what you are talking about. In many 'poor' pockets of the world, meat is simply not available for consumption--or if it is, it comes with a large IMF debt attached. Moreover, in some places the consumption of meat was a colonial imposition that has, in turn, caused more colonization in the form or ravaged rainforests for third-world meat, etc.,. So, I wonder how you propose to impose an ethics of care for animal consumption in a non-elitist way. Moreover, I wonder how you can suppose that such is a new thing. Clearly you don't know what you are talking about.