GMO OMG

The Peace of Wild Things.

"When despair for the world grows in me

"and I wake in the night at the least sound,

"in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be.

"I go and lie down where the wood drake rests

"in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

"I come into the peace of wild things

"who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

"I come into the presence of still water.

"And I feel above me the day-blind stars,

"waiting with their light.

"For a time, I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free."

Having children makes you start seeing

everything differently.

It's the first time that either my wife, Jen, or!

Had to feed someone besides ourselves.

You have a little life to nourish and look out for.

And that responsibility made us think more about food

than we ever had before.

And so did my son, Finn's obsession with seeds.

When he was 3 years old,

he taught himself how to write letters

by copying seed names

out of a Seed Savers Exchange catalog.

He's 6 now and has been collecting seeds

for half his life.

Finn helped me take my first real look at a seed.

He taught his little brother Scout, too,

and I know he'll share his love with his sister, Pearl.

His wonder filled me with wonder.

Which plant will make a lot of seeds?

That's how simple it is.

It's like, every time you just plant one seed,

it will like, grow into a plant

and it produces like, thousands of seeds.

It's crazy.

It's hard enough just raising a family,

but then, all these unexpected issues complicate

what's already so exhausting.

You find out about toxic chemicals in your house,

asbestos in the walls, BPA in baby bottles,

methyl iodide on strawberries, lead in toys,

arsenic and heavy metals in tap water,

antibiotics in meat,

flame retardant from furniture in breast milk.

Everything causes cancer

and it's all subtle, hidden, latent.

We tried to be awake and make good decisions,

to look out for our children and do our best for them,

but one thing we totally missed...

We just never heard about it... was GMOs:

genetically modified organisms.

Seeds much like my son Finn's seeds

but with altered genes

and they are in our food for either good or ill,

I didn't know,

but it bothered me that we are eating them

and didn't even know what they were.

I decided to see if anyone else knew about GMOs,

and that was the beginning of a very long journey.

We're doing a documentary on food.

- Okay. - What people eat.

I'm wondering if you eat GMOs?

I don't even know what that is.

Give me one second.

Hey, girls. How are you doing?

I got henna tattoo right over there.

GMO, what's that?

I don't know what they are.

What is that?

I don't even know what it is. What the hell is that?

What is it?

GMO?

What's that?

Genetically modified organism.

Oh.

So, you don't know. They don't know.

I don't know. Nobody knows.

Like, cattle, chicken?

I eat anything.

Any hot chicks eat them?

No, I'm not sure because I don't know what they are.

Does it taste good?

What are GMOs?

GMO, I don't know what it is.

That would not help me.

I don't know. Don't ask me that stuff.

Like, I don't know. Ask her.

Do you eat that?

What are they?

Genetically... um...

Man, I'm lost.

OK, how do we know if eat it or not?

I heard something about strawberries with fish

or something like that.

It's like, gen... genetically made something,

I know, but I don't know what the O is.

I don't know what they are.

I don't know what that is.

Genetically modified... organic?

No, gen... genetically modified...

- organisms. - Organisms.

How is it possible that we are also clueless?

It felt weird not knowing something so basic

about one of the most essential things in our lives.

I suddenly felt uneasy about all the food we are eating.

So, I did some research to answer a very basic question.

What is a GMO?

According to the World Health Organization,

GMOs are organisms in which the genetic material

has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally.

But what does that mean exactly?

It gets complicated pretty quickly.

They involve Agrobacterium tumefasciens

and vectors and Ti plasmids and Cry1Ab genes

taken from soil-dwelling bacteria called

Bacillus thuringiensis.

They are glyphosate resistant enzymes called EPSPS

and my favorite, a gene gun with protoplast electroporation

bombarding cells with gold particles

coated with DNA encoding,

but in plain English, there are two basic types of GMOs,

pesticide producers and herbicide resisters.

A pesticide producer kills insects like Monsanto's Bt corn.

A gene from a naturally occurring bacterium

is inserted into the DNA of corn.

The modified corn produces a toxin lethal to insects.

An herbicide resister is immune to weed killer,

like Roundup Ready soy.

The DNA is altered with a soil bacterium's gene

to make the plant immune to the weed killer called Roundup.

Farmers douse their fields with Roundup to kill every weed

and unwanted plant,

but even when coated in herbicide,

the soy plant remains unharmed.

I couldn't find anything definitive

on the health effects of GMOs.

Most studies were only three months in length,

done by the same company selling the GMOs.

The studies aren't peer reviewed

and they refused to release the raw data to the public.

Were they hiding something?

Were we all a part of some gigantic experiment?

Or maybe GMOs make us stronger and faster and healthier?

Who knows?

But did we even have a choice on the matter?

Was there a way to opt out if you wanted to?

And then something happened that really awakened me

to a much bigger story about seeds and food and control.

We, the peasants of Haiti,

are the guardians of the seeds of life.

At the moment, we see the seeds of death...

invading our country.

Haiti is the poorest country

in the Western Hemisphere.

People suffer from crippling poverty,

hunger, and malnutrition.

The earthquake made an already desperate situation much worse.

With hundreds of thousands dead

and countless bodies lost beneath the rubble

and over a million people crammed into tent-cities,

the agrochemical company Monsanto offered Haiti

475 tons of seeds.

So, why would poor rural farmers burn seeds?

Was there a hidden threat in Monsanto's donation?

And when she says, "It is disappointing to see people

encouraging farmers to burn seeds..."

The people is this guy.

Yes, it's me.

We think that's a normal reaction

for a capitalistic enterprise.

Because the objective of Monsanto is to make money.

The objective of Monsanto is not the quality of food

that people are eating.

Monsanto's objective is not to protect life.

It's not to protect the environment.

When people like me say these types of seeds are poisonous,

when I say these seeds are destroying the life of the land

and destroying the people...

That's when I attack the interest of Monsanto.

Stop Monsanto! Chase them out.

Monsanto is poison for the air.

Stop Monsanto! Chase them out.

Monsanto is poison for the people.

Stop Monsanto! Chase them out.

Help! Help!

Peasants in the country,

Peasants in the North,

Peasants in the South,

Peasants in the West...

Let's stop them!

It was to change life, the seeds Monsanto sent to us.

Understand?

We wanted to have our own homegrown seeds to plant.

We plant produce that you can plant every year.

With the Monsanto product, you can plant just one time.

That's why we didn't take it.

They say they have a gift to give you.

It's a gift to kill you.