GMO OMG Page #7

to what can be owned?

Just because we can do it,

does that mean we should?

Who is watching over this

new power to alter creation?

Whoo-hoo,

I caught a rainbow trout.

After Washington, D.C.,

I had trouble trusting anything

even the rainbow trout.

Have we really escaped GMOs

way up here in the wilderness?

All the fishes eat

are these pellets.

This food is sponsored by the

FDA like it's all approved.

Pretty much it's like what

they give chickens and stuff.

They're like steroids

to make them bigger.

Where do all these fishes go?

We have a different hatchery.

There's 23 different

hatcheries in California,

but pretty much, we'll just

put them in lakes for fishermen.

Do you know who the supplier is?

Silver Cup is one and then

the other one is Rangen.

Hello, this is Leon.

Yeah.

Hi, may I speak to someone

about the ingredients

in your fish pellets?

Oh, OK.

- What's...

- Before you eat it?

Yeah, exactly.

The main ingredients, you

have fishmeal and wheat flour.

You got some soybean meal

and it could be

genetic modified.

I don't know that for sure.

But I know it's not organic.

So, there you have it.

Rainbow trout caught way up in

the Sequoia National Forest

with your children

in a beautiful pond

and you catch that first fish

as a 4 or 5-year old boy

and it's genetically modified.

What a world we live in,

unbelievable.

Our kids still looked out

at the trucks in the evenings

begging me with their eyes,

knowing that the trucks

were filled with stuff

that tasted like heaven on earth

and they wanted it bad.

Who doesn't want to buy

their children ice cream

on a hot summer day?

But I felt increasingly

uneasy about it

because I was beginning

to understand

what's really hidden inside

a simple ice cream cone.

Opting out of a type of food

like GMOs that are everywhere

means opting out of

culture and tradition

and we weren't ready

to do that completely.

Hey, what about our candies?

I want candy.

No.

Everyone was getting tired

of my obsession with GMOs.

We still didn't know if there

were any health risks

unique to GMOs.

So, we let our kids have

fun with their friends

and experience the

excitement of Halloween.

Candy at every door poured

out by adoring strangers.

That's for you.

Thank you.

Did you draw this downstairs?

What is it?

Fire.

Fire?

Oh, I see some cavities.

- Yeah, I thought...

- They're trying to get you...

I thought I actually

saw some for real.

Did you?

Starting to form.

From all the sugar?

I have some black teeth.

- Some black teeth?

- Yeah.

- I hope not.

- Why?

You're too young.

Did you know that in one day,

I'm going on a plane

all the way to Norway

to this island called Svalbard

and it's almost all the

way up to the North Pole?

Why?

On this island,

they've created the Svalbard

Global Seed Bank.

Do you know how cold

it is inside the vault?

How?

Minus 15 or 20 decrees

in the coldest parts.

You go through this

tunnel underground

and it's inside this mountain

and that's where all the seeds

from all over the whole world.

The seeds are about 135 meters

into the mountain.

We're talking about the most

secure seed bank in the world.

It's an insurance policy.

What we mean to do is,

of course, to prevent

extinction in the future.

We have 700,000 samples coming

from every country on earth.

In every country,

the food industry

is the largest industry

that you find.

In the US, a quarter of the

trucks rolling down the road

have something to do

with the food industry,

and at the very base of that,

at the very foundation of that,

what makes the whole

thing possible,

the whole food industry,

food security,

our life on earth, it's seeds.

This crop diversity

is a common heritage.

And so, when you walk

into the seed vault,

what you see is,

for the first time that I can

think of in my lifetime,

countries, virtually all

countries in the world,

come in together for a common

endeavor with a common purpose

that's very long-term

and it's positive.

I think there's a lesson

to be learned there,

about an awareness

of interdependence

and what that means in terms

of our responsibilities

to each other

and how we ought to be

treating each other.

We haven't found any

GMOs in this entire island.

We found a bottle of ketchup.

It was Heinz American Ketchup

made in Germany with sugar

instead of corn syrup.

So, you have American companies

making products for

Europe differently.

Instead of corn syrup,

they're using sugar.

We're doing a

documentary on GMOs,

- genetically modified organisms.

- Oh yeah.

Norway is quite strict

about that.

It's not allowed.

So, Norway is very...

I think Norway is seeing it

as a very dangerous thing.

That is kind of... we

don't want to...

We don't want to eat or

use or anything like that.

So, that's always when you

go to school in Norway

and you have your kind

of science book here.

- You learn the dangers of it.

- Yeah.

We don't want to know

what's going to happen

if you eat or

do things like that. So...

So, you don't eat them?

No. In a Norwegian market,

it's not allowed.

So, it can well happen

that I've eaten it,

that's it's been in some corn

or something like that,

I don't know how good they

are at separating things,

but like by the law,

it's not allowed.

It's a weird thing to

think about though

because if you're eating

a tomato

and you have the genes of the

scorpion inside the tomato,

it's like, it's not the way

nature made it.

In order to be

approved in Norway,

a GMO will be evaluated

according to our gene

technology act.

This is an act from 1993

which says that a GMO should

not have any health risks

or environmental risks.

In addition,

it should contribute to

sustainable development,

be a benefit to society,

and ethical.

So, this broader approach

to GMOs are very good

in order to capture all

the different elements

that we should take

into consideration

when we say yes or no

to a certain GMO.

Historically, the greatest

threat to crop diversity

has been the modernization

of agriculture.

If you want an agricultural

system that's vibrant

and healthy and doesn't require

lots of pesticides

and other chemicals

and gigantic amounts

of fertilizer and water,

then you're going to need the

diversity in the seed vault.

It's absolutely necessary

to that type of clean,

healthy, green agriculture.

Well, I thought we were

going home after Norway,

but we've ended up in France

because this a two-year study

on the health impacts of GMOs

and Roundup was just

released by this Dr. Seralini,

and this is a question I've had

from the very beginning

when I first found out

about GMOs

and that was never, has

never been really answered.

It's what are the health

impacts of GMOs, if any.

Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini

is a professor of

molecular biology

at the University of Caen

and serves as president

of the scientific board

for the committee of

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes