Bees
I’ve gone on rants before about GMOs and pesticides. The large companies are mucking with our food.
I remember way back in high school when I first heard of the issue of GMO foods… genetically modifying tomatoes to be bigger. I drew a cartoon as an assignment for one of my classes.
Now, Years later… the bees have succumbed to pesticides used on and GROWN INTO our food. How is this a surprise that pesticides kill off the GOOD insects, too!?
Oh, look… I’m ranting. Okay. I’ll stop.
Bee nice! Avoid the Neonicotinoid!
If it kills insects, why the hell do they think it would be okay for us to eat. Also do you know what both Monsanto and the White House have in common? Their cafeteria’s only serve organic food. What does that tell you about how they feel about the rest of us?
Not too sure on that Monsanto/White House story. Too good to be true.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-monsanto-canteens-cafeterias-serve-non-gmo-foods.478/ suggests it isn’t, but honestly, I don’t know those guys, though they seem to quote their sources. Didn’t dig that far, though.
Pesticides bother me, certainly. GMO less so, because isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do for thousands of years? Grafting trees together, harvesting seeds to transport as new crops elsewhere, breeding for size and sturdiness (though, sadly, rarely taste). We’ve just got better tools now to do it with. E-mail vs. letters, I think. That’s not to say it can’t be dangerous; e-mail buried us in spam as well as enabling a letter across the continent in seconds, but I don’t see it as inherently bad.
Not going to go off on a Rant here, but look up “Golden Rice”
ALL coins have TWO sides!
William,
I agree. I don’t 100% trust GMOs but I don’t believe that they are the cause of the bee problem. I do believe that pesticides, fewer wildflower fields and pollution play a larger role. That among the other natural things bees have to deal with, hive population, mites and diseases they would normal get will now cripple a hive.
There are so few un-farmed bees in some areas that some farmers heavily rely on bee keepers bees to pollinate their farms and orchards. But even bee keepers are having trouble with their hives.
This has been an ongoing problem and the solution to it, isn’t going to clear it up overnight. Hopefully we fix the problems before there are no more bees.
Also, weed killers like round up also play a part as people spray that stuff everywhere. It’s a shame because you can just use a little vinegar and it does the same job without any harmful chemicals used.
And in the same vein, let’s stop the casual over-use of antibiotics! Ever hear about that super-bug that’s going around in hospitals that’s almost impossible to treat with known antibiotics? Ever try to buy a hand soap that ISN”T loaded up with antibiotics? Ever wonder if there’s a connection? There is…
Squiddies… Your comments here show that you are well-versed in the GMO area and what is happening to our food sources.
I must admit, I am untrustful of government (as a whole) and organizations that can be bought. And when I see other countries’ governments outlawing GMOs that come from this country, it raises a rather BIG red flag. What do they know that we citizens don’t?
Given, GMO golden rice seems to be a way of using the “innovation” for good… but mucking with genetics is a tricky business. Where does it end? I don’t think that animal DNA should be inserted into plants. Google-able. But maybe that’s just me.
As far as bees go and pesticides… I live in Salinas where agriculture is king. Pesticides are regularly used and neighborhoods that are right on the edge of lettuce and strawberry fields are usually papered with warnings when they spray. Salinas seems to have a high rate of cancer. Not just cancer, but birth defects, etc… coincidence?
http://blogs.kqed.org/ourxperience/2011/09/21/salinas-salad-bowl-or-pesticide-bowl-of-the-world/
Imagine lettuce that has been bio-engineered to include a bug-killer to save the company money… not to make YOUR food safer… but to keep yields high… and I don’t think that this is fiction. It happens with corn.
And so bees, who normally do their normal bee thing… are being killed off… because pesticides don’t stay where “they’re supposed to.”
Oh, shoot! I went on a rant. I’m sorry, friends. I need to just say what I want in the toon and let that bee. Wha-wha.
fear not! robobees to the rescue!
William McDuff, I will admit that I did not check the source for validity on the cafeteria thing so I could be wrong. But in response to your question “Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do for thousands of years?” No actually that isn’t what we’ve been trying to do for thousands of years. We have been mimicking nature with hybridizing our plants, we only cross plants in the same family because that’s all that nature allowed.
Genetically modifying is a horse of a different color. With genetic modification you can take specific genes from one thing completely unrelated to another and splice it in. Scientist don’t fully understand all of the intricate ways that genes affect each other and they don’t test anywhere near enough. From what I’ve actually read, you can have a genetically modified plant that produces perfectly for three or four years and then something flips and it’s toxic, without warning.
I would have a lot less concern over GMO’s if they were far more focused on making them safe than on making them money. The fact that they lobby so hard to keep from labeling GMO products should be a pretty big clue that they are hiding something. Otherwise what’s the problem with letting us know what is and is not genetically modified and letting us decide what we want to feed our families?
Priorities, I know, I know, save the coffee…. err I mean the Bees!
That was only a Bee rate rant compared to yours. Coke has spent 2.6 Million in Jan-March of this year to fight GMO labels.
Check out Mothers against Monsanto to find out how many times Glyphosate (Round Ups technical name) remains after it was sprayed… 16, from food to critters to you to fertilizer to food to critters to you again…..Why Round up and GMO? Because the GMO’s NEED ROUND UP TO SURVIVE.
Anatman… robobees… hmmm… I didn’t see any machine guns on them… maybe they have lasers…
Grammy… Money ruins everything, so they say… and I believe them… whoever them is.
My definition of when a corporation goes bad: when money is the prime directive (number one), and not putting out the bestest, most high quality product you can… a product you can stand behind with confidence in its integrity and your own.
Scott… GMO labeling will possibly cause companies to lose money… therefore those companies don’t want to risk people being able to make a choice. If peoples feel like their food is poisoned/unsafe/weird, maybe they will not choose to buy it. AND If there wasn’t something WRONG, why would a label matter?
Can anybody give me a reason to trust Monsanto? Their actions have given me no reason to.
https://www.facebook.com/welovegv
This is one of about six pages I use.
Monsanto (along with Dow) supplied JFK with Agent Orange.
Beetles… Yah, I know… they sprayed my dad with it when he was in Vietnam. And he died in 2006 from brain cancer. Coincidence? Well, I’m going with “nope” and &^^^%%%$333## Monsanto.