I grew up in Wisconsin, surrounded by cornfields and cows. Out the window of my high school classes I would see rows of corn all the way to the horizon. The license plate on my first car read “America’s Dairyland.” My family wasn’t in farming, so even though I was surrounded by it, I never knew much about what was going on, or going into the plants that grew around me. After seeing this movie today, I wonder if I was one of the last to grow up surrounded by non-genetically modified food and drink milk that wasn’t laced with growth hormones.

Adam Shake of Twilight Earth has a great post that contains a 1 hour 48 minute movie call the World According to Monsanto. It’s a French-made documentary that researches the truth about what Monsanto is up to. The film has interviews with scientists, researchers, and people in the U.S. government that were in charge of the FDA and other departments when GMO’s started being distributed. All great stuff. They also travel the world interviewing people and finding stories of failure and problematic situations resulting from Monsanto’s dedication to expansion and profit, whether healthy or not.

70% of the food in your local supermarket contains bioengineered elements.

US food companies are not allowed to indicate that they are or are not genetically modified. We have federal policy that says these things are the same. They call it Substantial Equivalence- it’s a fancy way of saying pretty much the same. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

I had never heard of the principle of substantial equivalence, which is the justification used by the government for treating Genetically Modified (GM) crops the same as those that are natural. The protocol means that GM crops don’t need to be tested. They point out in the movie that you have to do a bevy of tests just to add a little food coloring to something because it’s classified as a food additive. But you add a gene in and you don’t have to test anything because

The film digs into issues that cotton farmers are having in India and corn farmers are having in Mexico. It’s terrifying- there are farmers committing suicide from failure to make enough money farming in India and Monsanto seeds are making their way into the diverse varieties of ancient corn in Mexico. There are plenty more examples and stories of devastation around the world. The film hits the mark in many ways- it tells stories to support a bevy of damning statistics.

The saddest part about all of it is the sense of inevitability. It seems like there is no question that Monsanto seeds and chemicals will infiltrate and take over all of the natural seeds- our genetic modifications will make their way into and become the natural way that seeds exist. It remains to be seen whether this will be a good, bad, or inconsequential thing. This movie makes it seem unequivocally bad.

If you’re interested in learning more about Monsanto and the history of their chemical, biological and agricultural acts, watch The World According to Monsanto.

Photo Credit: jimmedia (via Flickr under CCL)