Eden Foods - Eden President on Genetically Engineered Food

14 February 2001

Responding to genetically engineered organisms as food, Eden's President Michael Potter established a policy on 13 February 1993 keeping these substances out of Eden brand food. Here are his latest thoughts on the past, present, and future of safe food and water.

Greetings,

Quoting the September 1912 issue of the 'National Food Magazine' in an article titled Theodore Roosevelt and Pure Foods, it reads ". . . By his activity in this fight he brought down on his head the lasting hatred of all the food adulterators in America. Until this day no name is more abhorrent to them than that of Theodore Roosevelt. And that organization of food adulterators is one of the most powerful political influences the country has ever had to deal with. It has openly defied the national and state governments for a quarter of a century. The enormous profits it realizes from the processes of imitation and adulteration permit it to have a mighty barrel to spend in influencing legislation. . . ." The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Today we face a more permanent adulteration of our food, the pollution of our food gene pool by giant corporations who 'own' the DNA and are only interested in profit. This affront to organic agriculture and enormous burden on companies like Eden Foods to acquire non genetically polluted organic food, is the most serious threat to the freedom of humanity from corporate exploitation ever. It strikes me as ironic that food is genetically engineered to allow the killing of all life in the soil with toxic herbicides, when the inherent nature of anything considered food is to nurture life.

These same corporations are, today, actively working to acquire ownership of all the fresh water in India and Mexico, with plans for owning all fresh water.

Nature created perfect food. It is arrogant to think that a scientist can make food better by manipulating DNA. It is far more likely that this tampering will limit the expression of the genetic potentialities of life. Recklessly releasing man made, untested organisms into our environment may lead to surprising, devastating results, and has already caused severe economic damage.

For a frightening look at the results of man introducing designed for profit DNA into the environment, one need only look at the deplorable condition of the salmon species and the rapid disappearance of all wild salmon in Scandinavia, the UK, Nova Scotia, Washington State, and British Columbia.

Genetic science is not itself bad. It has potential for creating new silver bullet medicines of value. Tampering with the DNA in our food is another thing, and the vast majority of people on Earth do not want it done.

I have stood on huge tracts of dead soil, all life choked out of it by agricultural chemicals made by these same corporations. For Nature to repair this requires thousands of years; but, we are "the salt of the Earth," and the magic of man is that we can repair this damage using organic techniques in three to five years. What power we have to nurture life; or kill, if we do not act wisely and prevent further processes of imitation and adulteration of food.

Michael Potter