Splicing the seed: a slippery slope indeed.

The weather, this past week, has been beautiful. Sunny days with temperatures around 20 Celsius, and cool evenings with occasional rain. The sunflowers look magnificent. I don't harvest all I plant, leaving some growing for the birds passing through. It is important to give back and not just take away. Feeding birds is an excellent way to give something back. I have a feeder on the balcony which we can see from our living room. Watching the birds is an all year round pleasure and an opportunity to share. It also gives you a way to spread sunflowers around your neighbourhood.

I was doing some research, getting ready for this weeek's article, when I came across the following in a review of Brewster Kneen's book, Farmaggedon;

"It was also an expression of a loss of respect for the integrity of the seed, a lack of respect which finds much fuller expression in current practices of genetic engineering."

For me the phrase "integrity of the seed" says it all. There are many farming practices that we do not need, especially those that are associated with what has become known as factory farming. I feel that genetic engineering is another one of those methods of food production that we do not need. I don't eat chicken but if I need what i now know about how they are treated, is enough to make me stop.

Respect is the key word in Kneen's statement. Now, I am aware that the food and industry is a major economic entity, spreading, not surprisingly, even to the Internet, however, we do not to mess with the DNA of our food products in order to be able to put dinner on the table. There are natural farming techniques that are capable of producing enough food to feed the world's population. What they may not do is produce a maximum profit and ever growing profit for the food factories. The farmer or perhaps more accurately, the family farm is not the beneficiary of the efforts of the food giants to control the market and increase their shareholders' wealth.

There are a number of organizations that are taking a political action against what I see as a demeaning of Life itself as the seed is the essence from which all food derives. When we no longer respect the seed's integrity, we begin to walk along a very slippery slope, one that may have dire consequences for us all.

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