WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND combining internet sites and movies as you learn. Yes- at the beginning please make movies a part of your diet! Some great ones are free and we list a few at the bottom of the page.
Brand new? Try this:
Step 1: read this GMO primer from Jeffrey Smith's organization which we'll talk about below. Step 2 option a (recommended): Watch the Future of Food. It is online for free, but you can also watch it on Netflix, rent it, or buy it- and we'd like you to buy it from the movie website, because the producer, Deborah Koons Garcia, is an advocate who actively supports others in our community. We'll get back to this movie below. Step 2 option b (good alternative): If you want to surf first, try SayNoToGMOs.org and dig around. They have a neat archive of news they pull from other sites, but we're talking about the essays obviously meant for orientation.
After you've completed 1 and 2 (a or b) you've graduated. <fanfare>
Now we dive in:
Research- easily accessible information on everything GMO: www.gmwatch.org We've changed this page because after hunting down my own stories and having a lonely page and Facebook, now we have the community. We didn't know a single GMO-Free eater out there when we started this site- we were calling out to you. Times have changed and there are a lot of articles that people post to each other online - and over and over they are repostings of GM Watch. I went back to see their site and it is wonderful. So it's the new fave for news with a lot of orientation materials to GMO problems. Dig deep in there. Really look around and try to know the whole website. You'll be glad.
Get on themailing lists for all the organizations you like that we name on this page. We don't get that many updates, not enough to bug us even though we're avid subscribers to all of these. If you want to be informed and involved... mailing lists,mailing lists, mailing lists!
Socialites, news junkies & people needing others to cope with all this: Join our Facebook web. Definitely check out the GMO-Free Portland's Facebook community. We keep each other informed on news and other things like discussing our meals or feelings about how it is to live GMO-Free. There, we met GMO-Free Tampa Bay, GMO-Free Eugene, and GMO-Free Los Angeles. News is coming from GM Watch and the details they give that other secondary sources online often leave out let me find the source papers and post them or the summaries if they limit distribution. Also visit a group we're affiliated with: Label GMOs on FB and labelgmos.org working to get mandatory GMO labeling in California and other states in 2012. They have good general news feeds too just like the GMO-Free cities. Through this year and next, we hope you'll be pushing with us for these GMO mandatory labeling laws.
Ready to change the world? Please see our Act page. It's a link page for ways to get involved using some of the organizations here.
Scientist? Scientist at heart? We love this explanation given by AAEM, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine. It's a synthesis of research with an inquiry point of view which is what distinguishes real science from false. We see a lot of fake research but real scientists performing research do an experiment and write about what happens- they don't feel the need to get a particular answer and let that shift what their study concludes. They ask questions because they are curious- they are inquiring. The AAEM looks at human health in the context that we are inseparable from Earth- a cardinal rule GMO proponents ignore.
Want to teach others about GMOs or be a shopping soldier? Go see Jeffrey Smith. You may be here, thinking critically about GMOs, because of the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT). Author/activist Jeffrey Smith is first and foremost accessible. He now has an activist network around the US where you can meet with others and plan or attend events in your area. You'll be getting things like health risk education and speaker training for free in his Webinars. The book "Genetic Roulette" may actually have more references than words. He has a condensed (but several page) pdf you can read for a summary, or a single page flyer you can hand out for ten cents or read online- all on the health risks of GMOs known at the time. The reference section is a thing of beauty. Two years ago, I played spot-checker at my college- reading journal articles he cited. I was delighted with the summaries he gives and so from the beginning we have confidently distributed these flyers as part of our mission. Only problem is, he would need to write another book like this for the last few years because the health risk studies are piling up and its really serious stuff. He is also a good resource for how to influence your groceries and food companies- in other words, Vote with your dollar. That's what we're about too. More on that then....
Resource: You! Learn by closely watching what your money does in the world. You are always voting with your dollar whether you mean to or not. What are you telling companies to keep doing? Maybe if we pay a little more it's okay because instead of only sending money to charities that fix problems, we also spend our daily money with companies that don't make those problems. With everything you buy, you commission all that was done to bring it to you. A good example is fair trade chocolate. Non-fair trade can mean literally slaves- as in Ivory Coast, stolen from neighboring countries at age five to work 19 hours straight, then die one day in the field. Once you know that, you pay $2 more for chocolate because there is no other option your soul considers. Search online for "chocolate," "Ivory Coast," "slaves," and a throw in a giant chocolate brand of your choice into the search terms too. Every non-GMO person should go through this with chocolate because it opens our eyes to the power we have and we learn to take responsibility with joyful hearts. Once we do, we experience the other side of this. We commission good works. We support companies that care about being non-GMO who typically have other ethics they defend at the expense of profit. This lesson that is a journey (always in opposition to the majority) is the very heart and soul of this website. First, Eat no evil. We can't consume things that caused suffering in being brought to us and not suffer ourselves. Strive to make all your food Positive Food, and see if you don't feel you are literally being transformed from the inside. Don't do it all at once- when you see immoral things in too many places and you suddenly can't function to shop or to eat, you have to just tell yourself that you will deal with it and phase away this thing later. Sometimes, it is just too much to deal with at the moment, but we take a little vow- it lets us do what we can and be at peace with that. And if you haven't realized it yet, the term a lot of us use, "clean food," for many means clean of chemicals and GM genes, but also clean of what we consider immoral - as individuals. Spending is a commission, eating is a communion, and our experiences of them is shaping us more than perhaps meets the eye until we take charge.
The militant wing of the cause (but news and getting involved too) We ourselves don't get into protests, and we don't name brands and stores we're upset with except in the most extreme cases - but we support the Organic Consumers Association and let them do what they feel needs to be done for the cause which many of our readers agree with. We're here to serve you and it takes a rainbow. Their site is chalk-full of great fast information and ways to get involved.
A directory of all things non-GMO (and pro-community, pro-farmer editorials) The Organic and Non-GMO Report are friends of ours- they have been at it nearly ten years with newsletters and a buyers/resource guide. If you're a business looking for non-GMO or Organic ingredients, feed, GM testing etc., get one of these. If you're local, email us and we'll let you peruse one of the sourcebooks they gave us just for that purpose. Thank you, Ken.
Trying to not eat GMOs? That's us! Although we send people to try the non-GMO shopping guide for their first experiences cleaning out cupboards, come to our home page link "GMO-Proof Your Home" to be more thorough and find more foods. Animal products are confusing, so see the meats guide we did too. Try it in passes- you can't approach it from a purest point. First, you'll go broke because you don't know yet how to make it possible, and second, if you try to clean your cupboards and not eat any GMO's for a day as your beginning, you will get very frustrated on top of hungry. The guides will get you a long way fast.
We are here to give you what you need to actually do this on a daily basis because its not enough to know what you can't eat. You have to replace that with something. We are your partner in non-GMO living. It's more than finding food. Do you have to mix and cook things you used to buy- or did your grocery bill shoot up? We began this because we want to help others, including coping with bad news and knowing when we're being tricked into eating GMOs. We describe ourselves as "food missionaries" because we serve you. If you connect with us because something is hard and maybe it doesn't have to be, we have ways and we will make time to help you. Email or find us on Facebook.
Please support the lawyers fighting for us! The Center for Food Safety are the lawyers representing and fighting for all of us that we are all indebted to. They need our contributions to keep fighting the deregulations of new crops. If we want to keep them (see their page on "victories" to find out just how important they are to us) we have to contribute as we would to any other necessity such as car insurance, utilities, etc. Also, this is the organization started by the famous Andrew Kimbrell who we know from interviews and essays that are really thoughtful and moving.
Shop and support Organics. There are non-GMO non-organic companies, in addition to all the Organics that are always non-GMO. Organics are a powerful force fighting for the right to GMO-free food. We love all non-GMO products, organic or not. However, we have other concerns that organics address, and we buy produce using the Dirty Dozen- Clean Fifteen lists (thank you, Environmental Working Group) so we don't ingest pesticides in foods that absorb it all the way in like apples, strawberries and grapes. There are a lot of health and ethics issues that have nothing to do with GMO's where buying organics is often better. But this site is about GMO's and not all non-GMO food is organic, but all organic food is non-GMO.
Speaking of organic, if someone asks you if they can accommodate you like they would a vegetarian or someone with a food allergy, the easiest thing to do is tell them to buy Organic. Letting them show you this consideration reinforces their respect that this is a valid need you have and important. Take them up on it, then bring them a houseplant because it was a really great thing they did. Don't tell people not to trouble over you. It's how they learn about this world of non-GMO- so you're working for their health, the health of their pets, the health of the planet we share -when you say, "thank you" to their offer of making sure you can eat non-GMO.
Defend our food and water from corporate crime (and learn a lot): Food and Water Watch is a great resource and besides being really on the ball about the GM salmon and other GMO issues, they help us by telling us how to filter the weedkiller out of our water and how to stop globalists from stealing the water supply and selling it back to us.
If you are an organization fighting this fight, please email us so we can tell others about you. We're off doing a lot for the cause- the website often comes last until we reach people more here than in other ways. We go where we're needed. So if we missed your organization, please email us- or better yet, say hello to our group on Facebook.
Learn about foreign food. And maybe just don't eat it. Including from Europe. :( Foreign countries have different GMO's than America- and many are victims of illegal plantings (by American companies) so we don't eat a lot from them until we've checked the food out first by calling them and asking questions. At least in the US we can keep track of at-risk ingredients. You can look at Europe here: www.gmo-compass.org. It is thorough and not for or against GMOs. But if you want to see where GMO's are illegally spotted, you want the GM Contamination Register. Big corporations making US products go outside the US with illegal and bullying tactics to grow their test crops and contaminate areas, for any freaky thing they dream up here and abroad. The big five companies, Syrgenta, Bayer, DuPont, Dow and Monsanto are all behaving criminally around the globe and intentionally exploiting every chance they can, to get in to a country and plant while a window opens up. GMO-Free countries in Europe still import and feed GMOs to the animals because they have a hard time getting non-GMO feed so no, you can't just say the cheese is from Ireland which is a GMO-Free country for growing crops. But look online and see the acts being committed against countries that are so adamantly against GMOs. They are under attack.
We also have a Twitter page (and follow you, Mendocino. Good luck keeping it a GMO-free agricultural area! along with some other originals in California and now throughout the US) You can find many other terrific people/organizations by looking at who we follow. We don't add any people on Twitter - just organizations and companies (and we delete groups based on insensitivity to others!) It's a quick way to find more organizations and once you follow advocates, its also the fastest way to get news. We hear things from big organizations a day or two before they can update their web pages, and they add links to take actions like writing congressmen. Suggest others for us to follow please. We post on Twitter in waves very inconsistently but its really our following list that is the reason to look at it.
Now... Movies!
We mentioned movies already but lets just start over. The movie "The World According to Monsanto" is interesting because it shows the research being done. See it for free on TopDocumentaryFilms.Com with lots of other great films. When the producer searches online to get original documents, you see her search terms, the URLs, and in theory you can reproduce her damning evidence. It's shocking what she uncovers.
As we said at the top, an excellent free movie is "The Future of Food" shown on TheFutureOfFood.com, of course. Be sure to watch the five-minute segment 25 minutes into the moviefor a great visual of the process of making a GMO, using bacteria, viral DNA promoter sequences and antibiotic resistance markers. Deborah Koons Garcia is wonderful and there are a lot of things on their website for all of us, mainly support of great organizations and community works. They have a movie in production, Symphony of the Soil (coming out Spring 2011, check here on the S of S Facebook page) that should be wonderful and is very important and relevant to our site's topic.
And see if you can find "King Corn," "Bad Seed" and of course, "Food, Inc." We also recommend a hard-to-get movie, "Black gold: wake up and smell the coffee" because its all about globalist bullying and people overcoming it. In fact, if you want to find movies, click on our Facebook page or or friends that we mention and just type: "What are the best movies?" It will be a great discussion.
Resource: You again! Learn by not eating them. Learn what it means to your life. We link to a lot of other organizations, plus real-food providers, and of course there's our site which is its own unique resource for how to live without GMO food. Just do this: Learn about GMOs a little, cut out some GMOs, learn more, cut out more. Because 1. You'll feel better when you stop eating them and 2. You'll want to eat fewer because you do know what they really are. They unsell themselves so if you learn about them as you cut them out of your diet, it will just kind of grow inside you as something you do because you want to. Believe me- I wouldn't be washing the corn film from my pain reliever if I didn't know too much about GMOs to let them into my body. But along with the occasional pain in the neck, we also got introduced to way way better food. We didn't know such good food existed. Eating non-GMO is the golden key to the hidden land of yumminess and people making food who really care - about the food and about just generally being good. You'll see when you start reading the sides of packages and calling companies. If you end up a tablet washer like me, you'll also end up a healthier, happier person, we guarantee. What you will gain in trying to honestly never eat a single GMO compared to avoiding them passively most of the time is absolutely joyous. What you will learn will blow your mind. So thank you for joining us in being GMO-Free or on the way there and let us know how we can help you.