Everything you eat: Think about the food chain

Several decades ago there was a near panic in Britain when it was revealed, in a lengthy study, that a rabbit eats the same amount of grass a day as a lamb does, or that five rabbits consume the same amount of grass as a calf does. Given that on any normal day, in every grass field in England and Wales you could see over 20 rabbits, the math was inescapable. The rabbits had to go.But how can you do that efficiently, economically? You cannot poison them because what kills a rabbit kills us, too. So scientists came up with a way to alter the breeding capabilities of the rabbits with a human-benign virus formula called myxomatosis. Applied to edible pellets, the rabbits would eat the virus and, presto, their reproductive essence would mutate, be damaged, producing withered limbs, weakened internal organs. In short, they were producing deformed baby rabbits. Crippled baby rabbits were easier prey for hawks and foxes.And for a while it seemed to work. It look like Dr. Death had a hand in the countryside, but the overall rabbit population declined and the grass would thrive to better feed the cattle and therefore humans. Or so people thought. What surprised agronomists studying the grass fields was that the yearly cycle of grass declined. It would seem the rabbit pellet producing bunnies were part of the cycle of fertilization of the fields and had, in fact, been helping bring deep earth nutrients to the surface in quickly decomposing pellets which helped grasses, especially the tall grasses cattle preferred. And what soon showed up were myxomatosis-resistant rabbits, rabbits that became more aggressive and bred in twice the cycle rate. More rabbits, ugly crippled animals — somehow the green fields of Britain had become a battleground of science against nature, and nature was winning.u u uThen comes the debacle over arsenic dumped in tons on cotton fields along the Mississippi. This arsenic was long known to wash down and poison the Gulf, but what happened was that cotton prices dropped and rice prices rose, so farmers with abundant water supply switched to rice and planted in the same fields. To quote an eminent pediatrician, “Arsenic found in rice, especially brown rice, harms the brain development and nerve pathways for all babies and toddlers.” That‘s a pretty clear statement. Mothers, stop feeding rice products to your children, right now.When DDT was the pesticide of choice, it was considered so safe that trucks used to spray neighborhoods and beaches along the East Coast of America every week during summer. Farmers sprayed tons and tons of the stuff, killing off whole bio-systems of bugs and, in the course of that die-off, most of the beneficial bugs and bug-eating birds as well. When we moved to the Harlem Valley in 1989, there were almost no bob-white quail. As the clock ticked to 15 years since DDT was banned, the quail made a comeback, along with song birds, beneficial insects and predators along the food chain. When the first mountain lion was spotted, the fish and wildlife experts said it was a released pet. The next year they were at a loss to explain the cubs she was sporting. Nature can recover if left alone, and bring balance.But then we come to science applied for pure greed. Make up a need, do no real long-term research and sell, sell, sell. Monsanto said there was a need for weed-free corn fields to boost corn crops. So they genetically engineered corn to be impervious to RoundUp (Agent Orange when it was used in Vietnam) and sold it to farmers claiming it would save them profits. And for a while it has (never mind the possible human negative issues with genetically engineered corn and Agent Orange). But what has happened since? In a report published only in Europe (blocked in the USA by you know who) in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Environmental Sciences Europe, by an American scientist from Washington State University, new facts are emerging that Nature is fighting back. Genetically engineered Monsanto corn crops are requiring an increase in both weed-killer and pesticide applications. How much of an increase? A staggering 527 million pounds — per year — in the U.S. And what happens if you stop using Monsanto corn? Well, you can’t. If there is any Monsanto corn nearby the pollination by wind insures your natural corn becomes mutated. Back to using Monsanto chemicals. Meanwhile, super weeds and bugs are gaining the upper hand.All this drives up food costs, pollutes nature and assures you can have little faith in your food chain. Corn is used in everything from soft drinks (corn syrup) to dog food, to cattle food (therefore meat), fish food (farmed salmon, catfish, tilapia, shrimp), eggs (chicken feed), and, of course, corn as a vegetable. Combined with arsenic in your rice, these are serious problems that need government regulation.Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.