Reflections: Week 5 & 6

Week 5 and 6 Review

Week 5: Week five seems like it was so long ago for me! I am going to have rough time trying to remember everything from last week, but here it goes...

• Last week Reading 15 was assigned to a group of people in class. We had a discussion in the reading and it really made me think about the steady increase of our population. Automatically, I wondered if there would ever come a time that we wouldn't have enough food for everyone on our earth?!
• We had also watched a film titled "Diet for a New America". This film really made me think. It pointed out facts that I had never known about animals and how they're raised based on the type of meat they are going to be, how much fat actually affects our blood and how horrible our country eats compared to others (which is a main reason a lot of people in our country have health problems).
  
• The last thing we had done during week five was a CSPI. I had done a questionnaire the analyzed the food that I eat. How much I am eating of certain types of food (meat, vegetables, fruit and dairy) and then shows me how what I am eating, effects the earth. At the end of the questionnaire, it gives you a few examples on what you can do to help improve your diet and environment. One of mine was to eat less meat, which I did not decided to follow because already, I don't think I eat enough of it.

Week 6:

• This week in class, we had watched a film titled "The Future of Food". I was assigned to do a review on this film so I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail. If you'd like to read more about it, visit my Future of Food post! This film had held my interest for a while, and made me realize eating food that I grow in the area I live in, should be more important to me than eating food that might be cheaper and is coming from who knows where!
• Individuals were also assigned readings for this week. My reading was about corporate social responsibility. It gave the history of CSR within a few different countries and reasons for why "big wig" corporations should invest some of their time and money to make our country a better place to live.

What I think: The more and more we get into the semester, the more I like this class. I am constantly learning new ways to change some of my unhealthy "environment" habits and made the place I am living in, better! One of the things I have decided to try because of this class is putting an empty half gallon milk jug in my toilet! :) We'll see if it works! Another thing that I am doing, more so now than I was before, is watching what I eat. I want to make sure that what I am eating is something that is actually healthy for me, and not a food that is "thought" of as healthy! So I'd like to give props for Dr.V for making me think more about my environment and how my choices effect it!

Review: The Future of Food

This past week, we had watched a film titled "The Future of Food". While the movie had a lot of interesting facts, it was not too entertaining for me. The film had covered the history of genetically engineered food, patents on seeds and focused on a company titled Monsanto who had taken many people in the farm industry to court for using their patented seeds.

Summary:

Starting in the 20th century, nitrogen was being used as a fertilizer for many farm field, nerve gas was modified to be used as insecticides, and there was much more technology available which was suppose to make certain foods more readily available and cheaper. The era of having food production being able to keep up with the increase in population is called the "Green Revolution". The green revolution had created a spread in technology throughout the world. "These technologies included pesticides, herbicides, irrigation projects, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and improved crop varieties developed through the conventional (that is, not using biotechnology), science-based breeding methods available at the time". A popular herbicide many farms were using during the Green Revolution and are currently using on their land is called Roundup.

Ever since farming had started, families have saved their crop seeds to use and plant a new crop the following year. A company called Monsanto put an end to this. Currently, Monsanto has 11,000 patents of seeds and when a farmer purchases seeds from the Monsanto company, they are forced to sign an agreement that once the years crop is over with, they will NOT safe any of their seeds to use the following year and all of their previous seeds must be destroyed as well.


A specific part of the movie that stood out to me, was the case of Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto. For many years, Percy had used the herbicide, Roundup, on his farm. One year while spraying Roundup on his crops, Percy noticed that there were some areas around the power lines did not die from the spray. It wasn't something that struck Percy as odd, and word had somehow spread to the Monsanto company. Without any notice to Percy, Monsanto was quickly on his land, testing hiscanola oil seeds. Monsanto had made the decision to sue Percy for using a "Roundup ready seeds that he had probably purchased or borrowed from a neighbor so he did not have to spend the money himself". Monsanto had assumed Percy was breaking their patent and was not going to allow it. After further research, I had found that "In an out of court settlement finalized on March 19, 2008, Percy Schmeiser has settled his lawsuit with Monsanto. Monsanto has agreed to pay all the clean-up costs of the Roundup Ready canola that contaminated Schmeiser's fields. Also part of the agreement was that there was no gag-order on the settlement and that Monsanto could be sued again if further contamination occurred. Schmeiser believes this precedent setting agreement ensures that farmers will be entitled to reimbursement when their fields become contaminated with unwanted Roundup Ready canola or any other unwanted GMO plants".

Other important facts:

• The flavor saver tomato was the first genetically engineered food product introduced to the public
• 2001 was the first year people had realized they were eating large amounts of genetically engineered foods (they are not required to be labeled)
  
• Starlink (corn products) was found to be unsafe for humans - there was a massive recall
• In order for a seed to be patented, it must be different from all others
• Mexico does not used genetically engineered seeds
• A terminator seed has been introducted. It is engineered so that the seed cannot be used the following year

What I thought: After watching this video, I think that there are a lot of people in this world that are very money hungry. Monsanto is a huge corperation that is sueing over 9,000 individuals because they're suspicious of where these farms are getting their seeds from. How is it possible to prove which seeds are who's and why would a company waste their time hurting farms that are providing a service to our country, along with the ones we export to. I also believe that labeling genetically engineered foods is important. If a child has an allergic reaction to something they ate, it would be impossible to figure out which gene in a genetically engineered food item flaired the reaction. The more movies we watch about food throughout the semester, convice me I need to start getting a majority of my food from co-ops rather than just some.
Other view points/websites:

A website that has information about NOT patenting seeds and a link to information on patent cases.

An article on what Monsanto plants seeds

Monsanto's website

Website with more information on Percy's case

Share and Voice: Conservation Action Network

Hey guys :) Today I was wasting time in between classes and decided I wanted to find a topic that interests me, that I could do a share and voice about. I came across the World Wildlife Federation's website. The World Wildlife Federation is a multinational conservation organization and works in over 100 countries and is supported by 1.2 million members within the United States and close to 5 million members globally. The World Wildlife Federation's main mission is to conserve nature while using the best scientific knowledge that is available while trying to preserve life on our planet as well as the ecosystem. They do this by:

• "protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species;
• promoting sustainable approaches to the use of renewable natural resources; and
• promoting more efficient use of resources and energy and the maximum reduction of pollution"

An important part of the website that I had found was a page dedicated to previous conservation successes the World Wildlife Federation has already implemented throughout the world! Some of these successes include: The illegal logging act, shutting your lights off for earth hour, and sustainablee fisheries policies This page lists action that the World Wildlife Federation has been apart of for the past ten years and the laws that they have gotten passed.

I challenge you to take a look at the page, Major Victories, and post which conservation success hits close to home for you or effects you personally!