Today is Food Day

In the US we celebrate Food Day each October 24. This observance originated in 1975 by the an entity called Center for Science in the Public Interest with the intention of creating something in the vein of Earth Day. The goals were raising our awareness of:

The spotty history of food day culminates in the present iteration which began c. 2011 where it was revived. This initiative is now conducted under the auspices of FoodDay.org which is an element of the CSPI.

While I certainly support the awareness of food given the perilous nature of production these days — with all of our migrant workers urinating and defecating in the fields they're harvesting and resultant e coli infections among the listeria and other worst case scenarios of nutrition ... I am even more shocked and apalled at the frank absence of genetic modification of the food supply and it's conspicuous absence from the published focus areas.

I for one would have listed this first along with the importance of maintaining heirloom varieties and organic and sustainable cultures for production above all else. It would seem that those things I think are important are lower priorities for the organization.

While hunger and the basic mechanics are indeed significant; we have a threat from the likes of bully companies like Monsanto which would have us consume their genetically modified commodities in the absence of informed consent.

Then we read horror stories of soybean farmers who made the mistake of planting monsanto seed making it abundantly evident that oversight is not only necessary ... but overdue AND should include machine guns pointed at these thugs who think they are supposed to be able to lord over the farmer at their whim.