While uncovering an ancient tomb in South Korea,
archaeologists discovered the mummified remains of 30 year old Eung-Tae Lee,
who died in 1586. The following letter
written by his pregnant wife was found with
the body.
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Thursday 25 July 2013
Tuesday 16 July 2013
To My Old Master: "...to test your sincerity...send us our wages for the time we served you"
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson
wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, asking him to come back to
work on his farm. The emancipated Jourdon had moved to Ohio, had found a paid
job, and was supporting his family.
(Be sure to read it all the way to the end)
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
(www.lettersofnote.com;
Source: The Freedmen's
Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy
of the Library of
Congress.)
Mark Twain's letter to the "most ignorant person now alive on the planet"
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) sent the following letter
to J. H. Todd, a salesman who had just attempted to sell phony patent
medicine to him. Mr. Todd had sent a letter and advertisement to the Clemens’
home. According to the
advertisement, the "medicine" in question, called
"The Elixir of Life", could cure ailments such as meningitis, which had killed Clemens'
daughter in 1896, and diphtheria, which killed his
19-month-old son. Clemens, in ill health at the time and very recently widowed,
was understandably furious. He dictated
this reply to his secretary, signing it with his famous alias.
 |
| Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain |
Nov. 20. 1905
J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.
Dear Sir,
Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.
Adieu, adieu, adieu!
Mark Twain
J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.
Dear Sir,
Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.
Adieu, adieu, adieu!
Mark Twain
Tuesday 9 July 2013
Helen Keller's Letter to German Students in 1933
 |
| Helen Keller |
Helen Keller was born on
June 27, 1880 in the small town of Tuscumbia, Alabama. In 1882 when she was 18 months old, she fell ill and
was struck blind, deaf and mute. Beginning in 1887, she made incredible progress
with her ability to communicate with the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan.
Keller went on to college, graduating in 1904. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts
degree. In 1915 she founded, with George Kessler, the Helen Keller International (HKI)
organization, which is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In
1920, Keller helped found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She became a world-renowned author and
speaker. She was a radical in her time - a socialist, a pacifist, a women’s rights activist,
an early supporter of the NAACP, and an advocate for free availability of birth
control. She
was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in
1971.
Americans
learned in May 1933 that students in German universities planned to burn a long
list of books deemed “un-German.” Finding out her books were among those to be
burned, Helen Keller wrote this open letter to the students.
Transcript of letter, as it was published by the Associated Press on May 9, 1933:
"To the student body of Germany:
History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.
You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people.
I acknowledge the grievous complications that have led to your intolerance; all the more do I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.
Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgment upon you. Better were it for you to have a mill-stone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.
Helen Keller"
Tuesday 2 July 2013
the GMO Letters
One June 26th, I found this letter in the Pickens County Herald (pcherald.com) and decided to write a response. Below is the letter I saw and then my response.
"Dear Editor,
As a mother and grandmother, entrusted with feeding and nourishing my family, I can understand the fear of GMO foods. But as a farmer who uses GMO seeds to grow soybeans, corn and other crops, I don’t believe there’s any reason to be afraid of this technology.I believe the fear stems from the fact that most people are multiple generations removed from the farm and do not understand the function of GMOs in agriculture.For thousands of years, our ancestors have been genetically modifying plants and seeds through plant breeding. Today, through biotechnology, scientists can make those natural processes happen much faster.GMO stands for genetically modified organism. To create one, a scientist alters a seed’s DNA to achieve a desired outcome, such as making it more tolerant to drought or decreasing the need for pesticides. These changes help farmers become more productive and produce a better crop.On our family farm, for instance, we use varieties of biotech-enhanced corn that are resistant to a common Alabama pest called the southwestern corn borer. Similar varieties help farmers manage pests, diseases and environmental stresses in soybeans, corn and many other crops. These varieties help us increase our yields and provide an abundant supply of food, feed, fuel and fiber to the world.The use of GMO crops has also reduced the number of chemical applications needed to produce the crop. This is beneficial for the environment because we’re conserving fuel, reducing emissions from our tractors as well as reducing the amount of actual chemicals being applied. Overall, our carbon footprint is being reduced because of GMOs.There are numerous reasons for using GMOs, but the final one I’ll mention is because I know the seeds went through a rigorous safety-approval process. Not one, not two, but three government entities — the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency — work together to inspect and approve each and every genetically altered seed variety and plant brought to the market. This process is thorough and time-intensive, lasting between 10-15 years. What is really reassuring is that in the 12-plus years modern biotech crops have been commercially grown, there has not been a single ecosystem disrupted or person made ill.As Americans, we are lucky to have so many food choices. You have the choice to consume foods that use GMO ingredients or not, but my hope is for you to understand the benefits of each choice. With that said, I will leave you with this final thought: If you have questions about how food is grown or raised, I encourage you to ask the people who have the answers: farmers.
Sincerely,
Annie Dee
Aliceville, AL
Dear Editor:
My family has been farmers since time immemorial, and I am completely against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), so I felt rather patronized by Mrs. Dee’s letter to the Editor last week. I understand that she is a farmer of some note and merit who has chosen to champion the standard of big-business agriculture and who believes the public relations machine of Monsanto and companies like it. That’s her prerogative. She seems to think that the technology of agribusiness GMOs will provide the world with an overwhelming abundance of food, feed, fuel, and fiber –I think it’s the job of the indomitable family farm. I can’t let America’s farms become minions of profiting international agri-business corporations.
Essentially, there are four things I would like to point out about GMOs: 1) There is a big difference between hybridization and genetic engineering, 2) Genetic engineering has already caused damaging ecological effects, and could cause irreversible damage, 3) GMOs have not been absolutely proven safe for humans, and 4) When it comes to choice of consumption we don’t have that choice --it’s forced upon us.
There is a difference between hybridization, which farmers have been doing for thousands of years, and genetic engineering, which is a relatively new technology. They are two totally different farming technologies. Hybridization has been used since the beginning of agriculture - it has given us specific breeds with specific traits within a species. Farmers would breed one type of cattle with another type of cattle to create a hybrid that had the best characteristics of both types. Farmers would also improve grain harvests through hybridizing one variety of corn with another type of corn.
The problem with modern genetic engineering is that lab-created GMOs combine genes between barriers that cannot occur naturally. Deliberately combining genetic material of one genus with genetic material from a different taxonomic genus is a far cry from the combining of genes within a species by hybridization. For example, Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria DNA is inserted into corn DNA to create genetically modified BT corn. This corn was created to produce the bacterial Bt toxin that is poisonous to certain insect pests, such as the southwestern corn borer. So far, bacillus thuringiensis DNA has been added to corn, potatoes, sugar beets, soy, canola, and cotton. Besides adding DNA from different creatures, scientists also change natural gene sequences; thus creating organisms with characteristics that could never occur in nature or even through hybridization. There is also the problem of irreversible genetic pollution in the environment caused by GMOs.
Theoretically, if a genetically modified salmon bred with wild salmon, unnatural genes would be introduced into the wild population that will remain forever. The same problem of genetic pollution could be seen in corn, wheat, rice or any other crop that has been modified. A hybrid tomato cross-pollinating with a non-hybrid tomato isn't going to radically change the tomato, while a GMO tomato could introduce genetic material from fish or another organism into other tomatoes and totally change what a tomato is. Cross-pollination could totally wipe out open-pollinated heirloom varieties of corn and other crops and make organically grown crops obsolete. A 2004 study showed that GMO creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera) transmitted its genes by wind pollination to different Agrostis species almost nine miles away.
Do GMOs really help the environment by reducing pesticide use consequently conserving fuel and reducing carbon emissions? Not really. Washington State University agronomist Charles Benbrook notes that “genetically engineered (GE) crops have been responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the US over the first 13 years of commercial use of GE crops (1996–2008). This dramatic increase in the volume of herbicides applied swamps the decrease in insecticide use attributable to GE corn and cotton, making the overall chemical footprint of today’s GE crops decidedly negative… The primary cause of the increase [is] the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds.”
Resistance occurs naturally when a pest is subjected to intense repeated use of a single pesticide or herbicide. This has already occurred with Bollworm resistance to BT cotton in the Australia, China, Spain and the United States. Armyworms have already become resistant to genetically modified corn created by Dupont-Dow and grown in Florida and Puerto Rico. (And here I’d like to make a side note that Field Crops Research (2005) wrote that field tests of Bt corn showed that they took longer to reach maturity and produced up to 12% lower yields than their non-GMO counterparts. The International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (2013) just published a study that reports conventional plant breeding, not genetic engineering, is responsible for yield increases in major U.S. crops and that GMO crops can’t even take credit for reductions in pesticide use.)
There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the claim that GMOs have never made a person ill. However, a 2011 Canadian study looked at the presence of the BT toxin in non-pregnant women, pregnant women and fetal blood. All groups had detectable levels of the BT toxin in their blood, including 93% of pregnant women and 80% of fetuses. The truth is that we don’t really know what effect GMOs could have on the human body or what the effect of transference of genetic material to might be. One German study showed that when bees released into a field of BT canola fed the canola pollen to younger bees, the bacteria in the gut of the young bees took on the traits of the canola’s modified genes, proving that genetically modified DNA in pollen can be transferred to bees though their digestive system. In 1999, Andrew Chesson of the University of Aberdeen warned that testing of GMOs might be flawed and might allow harmful substances into the human food supply. You have to remember that the FDA approved commercial production of GMOs is based on studies conducted by the companies who created them and profit from their sale; there seems to be a lack of hard independent scientific data on the safety of consuming GMOs. There are thirty countries around the world that restrict or ban GMOs because they haven’t actually been proven to be safe for human consumption.
Do you have a choice of whether to consume genetically modified organisms or not? Not in the United States of America you don’t. Even if you could directly remove it from your diet, it is still fed to meat animals here in the United States. According to the USDA, 93% of soy, 93% of cotton, and 86% of corn grown in the U.S. are GMO. It is estimated that over 90% of canola grown is GMO. There are also commercially produced GMO varieties of sugar beets, squash and Hawaiian Papaya. Currently, there were no genetically modified animals approved for use as food, but a genetically modified salmon is close to being approved. It is estimated that GMOs are now present in more than 80% of packaged products in the average U.S. grocery store. In Europe any products containing more than .09% (point zero nine percent) genetically modified ingredients are labeled; however the United States has no such labeling requirement. You really have no freedom of choice in what you consume. Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio says it best: “Its’ not about taste. For me, it’s not even about the science. It's about freedom. We call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave, we export freedom around the globe, we try to anyway, we fight wars in the name of freedom, and yet I don't have the freedom to know what’s in my food.”
Respectfully yours,
Tom Clardy
Reform, AL 35481
"Dear Editor,
As a mother and grandmother, entrusted with feeding and nourishing my family, I can understand the fear of GMO foods. But as a farmer who uses GMO seeds to grow soybeans, corn and other crops, I don’t believe there’s any reason to be afraid of this technology.I believe the fear stems from the fact that most people are multiple generations removed from the farm and do not understand the function of GMOs in agriculture.For thousands of years, our ancestors have been genetically modifying plants and seeds through plant breeding. Today, through biotechnology, scientists can make those natural processes happen much faster.GMO stands for genetically modified organism. To create one, a scientist alters a seed’s DNA to achieve a desired outcome, such as making it more tolerant to drought or decreasing the need for pesticides. These changes help farmers become more productive and produce a better crop.On our family farm, for instance, we use varieties of biotech-enhanced corn that are resistant to a common Alabama pest called the southwestern corn borer. Similar varieties help farmers manage pests, diseases and environmental stresses in soybeans, corn and many other crops. These varieties help us increase our yields and provide an abundant supply of food, feed, fuel and fiber to the world.The use of GMO crops has also reduced the number of chemical applications needed to produce the crop. This is beneficial for the environment because we’re conserving fuel, reducing emissions from our tractors as well as reducing the amount of actual chemicals being applied. Overall, our carbon footprint is being reduced because of GMOs.There are numerous reasons for using GMOs, but the final one I’ll mention is because I know the seeds went through a rigorous safety-approval process. Not one, not two, but three government entities — the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency — work together to inspect and approve each and every genetically altered seed variety and plant brought to the market. This process is thorough and time-intensive, lasting between 10-15 years. What is really reassuring is that in the 12-plus years modern biotech crops have been commercially grown, there has not been a single ecosystem disrupted or person made ill.As Americans, we are lucky to have so many food choices. You have the choice to consume foods that use GMO ingredients or not, but my hope is for you to understand the benefits of each choice. With that said, I will leave you with this final thought: If you have questions about how food is grown or raised, I encourage you to ask the people who have the answers: farmers.
Sincerely,
Annie Dee
Aliceville, AL
Dear Editor:
My family has been farmers since time immemorial, and I am completely against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), so I felt rather patronized by Mrs. Dee’s letter to the Editor last week. I understand that she is a farmer of some note and merit who has chosen to champion the standard of big-business agriculture and who believes the public relations machine of Monsanto and companies like it. That’s her prerogative. She seems to think that the technology of agribusiness GMOs will provide the world with an overwhelming abundance of food, feed, fuel, and fiber –I think it’s the job of the indomitable family farm. I can’t let America’s farms become minions of profiting international agri-business corporations.
Essentially, there are four things I would like to point out about GMOs: 1) There is a big difference between hybridization and genetic engineering, 2) Genetic engineering has already caused damaging ecological effects, and could cause irreversible damage, 3) GMOs have not been absolutely proven safe for humans, and 4) When it comes to choice of consumption we don’t have that choice --it’s forced upon us.
There is a difference between hybridization, which farmers have been doing for thousands of years, and genetic engineering, which is a relatively new technology. They are two totally different farming technologies. Hybridization has been used since the beginning of agriculture - it has given us specific breeds with specific traits within a species. Farmers would breed one type of cattle with another type of cattle to create a hybrid that had the best characteristics of both types. Farmers would also improve grain harvests through hybridizing one variety of corn with another type of corn.
The problem with modern genetic engineering is that lab-created GMOs combine genes between barriers that cannot occur naturally. Deliberately combining genetic material of one genus with genetic material from a different taxonomic genus is a far cry from the combining of genes within a species by hybridization. For example, Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria DNA is inserted into corn DNA to create genetically modified BT corn. This corn was created to produce the bacterial Bt toxin that is poisonous to certain insect pests, such as the southwestern corn borer. So far, bacillus thuringiensis DNA has been added to corn, potatoes, sugar beets, soy, canola, and cotton. Besides adding DNA from different creatures, scientists also change natural gene sequences; thus creating organisms with characteristics that could never occur in nature or even through hybridization. There is also the problem of irreversible genetic pollution in the environment caused by GMOs.
Theoretically, if a genetically modified salmon bred with wild salmon, unnatural genes would be introduced into the wild population that will remain forever. The same problem of genetic pollution could be seen in corn, wheat, rice or any other crop that has been modified. A hybrid tomato cross-pollinating with a non-hybrid tomato isn't going to radically change the tomato, while a GMO tomato could introduce genetic material from fish or another organism into other tomatoes and totally change what a tomato is. Cross-pollination could totally wipe out open-pollinated heirloom varieties of corn and other crops and make organically grown crops obsolete. A 2004 study showed that GMO creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera) transmitted its genes by wind pollination to different Agrostis species almost nine miles away.
Do GMOs really help the environment by reducing pesticide use consequently conserving fuel and reducing carbon emissions? Not really. Washington State University agronomist Charles Benbrook notes that “genetically engineered (GE) crops have been responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the US over the first 13 years of commercial use of GE crops (1996–2008). This dramatic increase in the volume of herbicides applied swamps the decrease in insecticide use attributable to GE corn and cotton, making the overall chemical footprint of today’s GE crops decidedly negative… The primary cause of the increase [is] the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds.”
Resistance occurs naturally when a pest is subjected to intense repeated use of a single pesticide or herbicide. This has already occurred with Bollworm resistance to BT cotton in the Australia, China, Spain and the United States. Armyworms have already become resistant to genetically modified corn created by Dupont-Dow and grown in Florida and Puerto Rico. (And here I’d like to make a side note that Field Crops Research (2005) wrote that field tests of Bt corn showed that they took longer to reach maturity and produced up to 12% lower yields than their non-GMO counterparts. The International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (2013) just published a study that reports conventional plant breeding, not genetic engineering, is responsible for yield increases in major U.S. crops and that GMO crops can’t even take credit for reductions in pesticide use.)
There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the claim that GMOs have never made a person ill. However, a 2011 Canadian study looked at the presence of the BT toxin in non-pregnant women, pregnant women and fetal blood. All groups had detectable levels of the BT toxin in their blood, including 93% of pregnant women and 80% of fetuses. The truth is that we don’t really know what effect GMOs could have on the human body or what the effect of transference of genetic material to might be. One German study showed that when bees released into a field of BT canola fed the canola pollen to younger bees, the bacteria in the gut of the young bees took on the traits of the canola’s modified genes, proving that genetically modified DNA in pollen can be transferred to bees though their digestive system. In 1999, Andrew Chesson of the University of Aberdeen warned that testing of GMOs might be flawed and might allow harmful substances into the human food supply. You have to remember that the FDA approved commercial production of GMOs is based on studies conducted by the companies who created them and profit from their sale; there seems to be a lack of hard independent scientific data on the safety of consuming GMOs. There are thirty countries around the world that restrict or ban GMOs because they haven’t actually been proven to be safe for human consumption.
Do you have a choice of whether to consume genetically modified organisms or not? Not in the United States of America you don’t. Even if you could directly remove it from your diet, it is still fed to meat animals here in the United States. According to the USDA, 93% of soy, 93% of cotton, and 86% of corn grown in the U.S. are GMO. It is estimated that over 90% of canola grown is GMO. There are also commercially produced GMO varieties of sugar beets, squash and Hawaiian Papaya. Currently, there were no genetically modified animals approved for use as food, but a genetically modified salmon is close to being approved. It is estimated that GMOs are now present in more than 80% of packaged products in the average U.S. grocery store. In Europe any products containing more than .09% (point zero nine percent) genetically modified ingredients are labeled; however the United States has no such labeling requirement. You really have no freedom of choice in what you consume. Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio says it best: “Its’ not about taste. For me, it’s not even about the science. It's about freedom. We call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave, we export freedom around the globe, we try to anyway, we fight wars in the name of freedom, and yet I don't have the freedom to know what’s in my food.”
Respectfully yours,
Tom Clardy
Reform, AL 35481
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