I was born in the early ’80s and I remember when I was growing up waiting for summertime to eat fresh cantaloupes and watermelons, I just loved them, they were summer fruits (seasonal) and after the summer was gone so they were, you would have to wait until the following summer to get them back. All this was changing rapidly, without me or many noticing but creating a whole new revolution in the producing food process and its unexpected consequences.
GMO (genetically modified organism) is basically an organism altered in a way that does not happens naturally by natural recombination or mix.
In 1994 the Flavr Savr tomato was released, it was the first genetically modified food to be sold to the public. The first ever GMO that got a license to be comerzialized for human consumption. This was the starting point that would change, affect and impact the food industry forever.
Back in the day was interesting getting fruits and vegetables available “off-season”. I don’t think anyone really paid much attention to how they did this possible, there was not much information on the process of creating of all this modified food available. I recall buying fruits in the market that looked perfect, the color was almost unreal, like a photo in a magazine, very appealing to the sight but tastewise often they would lack flavor.
GMO’s certainly helped to the mass food production allowing to have more food availability for our use but it also impacted food quality and nutrient composition. It was a great development in agriculture, great profitable business and all that, but some people and organizations started noticing the side effects in the environment and human health and they started to keep an eye on GMO’s.
Monsanto was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation (1901-2018), was bought by Bayer in 2018.
Monsanto was one of the first companies to apply the biotechnology industry business model to agriculture, using techniques developed by drug companies. Monsanto Company Inc. includes Chemicals, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
This already sounds kind of scary, in fact, they were one of the top 10 US chemical, for example the herbicide Roundup was proven to have link to cancer and its been banned in many countries.
Among many toxic products they created and comercialized: mainly pesticides and herbicides, Monsanto was being involved in high-profile lawsuits around the world but this company had influence over politics and laws (lobbying), basically getting away with it many times. Monsanto used the courts to enforce its patents and licenses.
In 2014 sixty four countries banned Monsanto and Gmo’s: Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France (now de facto ban on all GMO food), Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia (has postponed GMO planting and may consider ban), Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Vietnam. https://mic.com/articles/89341/64-countries-have-taken-the-bold-stand-against-monsanto-the-u-s-won-t#.jBokDeq7H
Today Monsanto does not exist as a company anymore, Bayer owns it since 2018 and they are trying to clean their public image. In my opinion, it is too late to do so, over the last 20 years the changes implemented by GMO’s and Monsanto affected dramatically the health of thousands of people (cancer, DNA damage), as well as poisoning the soil with their chemicals used in farms around the globe. Monsanto would crush small farmers and producers, buying as many companies as possible, implementing its questionable ways to produce food items. I really miss the good old days when you would get what was available for the season, no more no less, without compromising much the health of people, food was produced more naturally, in consequence, our diet was more healthy, and the environment was not affected as much as when all the chemicals were introduced by Monsanto into the agriculture.
Nowadays people are well informed, they want to know what they are eating, the read the labels, nutrition content, calories etc. In a society that is connected all the time is easier to get information online about healthy food or non-healthy food. This plays in our favor, toxic companies such as Monsanto cannot really success anymore, information is available for all of us to know what are we really putting into our bodies.
Food & Technology 