But officer, I didn't know the rice was illegal!

I hope some of you have been keeping abreast of the latest chemical and technological threats here at my not-so-obviously named blog "Mom's Tinfoil Hat". (Our tech team promises that making the title of our blog actually visible on our blog is "on the list". *edit* It is such a joy to be using a FREE service like Blogspot that can give me better technology than all the money at Viacom!)

I have already covered conspiracies against our health and peace of mind have been hidden in the seemingly innocent form of rice.
Well here's a new one: the recent discovery of an illegal, unapproved, genetically-modified rice called LibertyLink or LL601 from the US firm Bayer on the international market. According to Arkansas Secretary of Agriculture Richard Bell, LL601 has been detected in virtually all milled long-grain rice supplies that have been tested.

No wonder the Bayer homepage has the quote “We want to more intensively exploit the opportunities for growth in the areas of innovation, new technologies and seeds” on it no less than twice.

This has prompted many international markets, including Japan (no, they don’t eat a lot of rice!) and the EU, to refuse some or all of our rice at the border.

So, what does the USDA do? Reprimand Bayer for knowingly selling an illegal and unapproved new technology disguised as food to the global markets? They claim they didn’t knowingly release it into the food chain. Well, one of the biggest complaints about GMOs is how easily the altered genes can irreversibly contaminate the regular food supply. Hmm, maybe we weren't just paranoid after all.

Are they going to recall the rice? Are they planning on fining Bayer for not taking efforts to prevent its experimental and unapproved genes from spreading to the international food supply?

If you answered, none of the above, in fact let’s just retroactively rubberstamp this all as OK, you are our tinfoil hat winner of the day.

The USDA is inviting public comment on this decision. If you would like to comment, you can go through the simple process of going to http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main, you have to know the name of the document is “APHIS-2006-0140-0001”, and you can either click on the little speech balloon and make a comment (which is not readily apparent), or mail your forms in QUADRUPLICATE to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Too bad Bayer didn’t jump through hoops like this to get their Frankenrice approved.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to start drinking coffee...

I had a cup of coffee today instead of my usual cuppa tea. On high octane fuel and listening to my favorite morning news show without my protective headgear, I received a double tinfoil hat bomb.

First, the FDA has approved a spray made of six virsues to be added to food such as lunch meats and hot dogs to target Listeria poisoning. Fellow hipmama and all around cool mom dynamom had already alerted me to this freaky news. Not only are these the first viral particles approved as a food additive, but they will not be listed on the label. At all.

When I took microbiology in my former path to medical school, my Ph.D. professor who used to work for NASA explained why she ate organic foods. She was discussing irradiation of food, but I think the same principle applies here. She said much of what poisons us in these infections is due to the toxins released when the pathogen dies and lyses, or bursts open. These are only single celled organisms. The way they make us sick is by reproducing and exploding as their life cycle ends. She was against these new treatments to kill the pathogens because she believed they would encourage even sloppier food handling (i.e. more bacteria reproducing) because people would rely on these "bug zapping" mechanisms, whether they are radiation beams or viral sprays. Ick.

And, bomb number two: a genetically modified organism (GMO) in rice unapproved for human consumption has slipped into the food supply from the United States. Japan, who just lifted its ban of our possibly Mad Cow infected beef has now banned our rice, and Greenpeace is urging all countries to boycott US grown rice. Sounds like we just lost a big market for our scary unapproved rice.

Double sigh. Anyone feel like a bowl of rice? How about a hot dog? What we don’t know can’t hurt us, right? I think I am just going to drink another cup of coffee…

Crying over scared milk (and bad beef!)

I just put off writing a new blog entry by making a yummy batch of Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies, with sliced almonds added for crunch and a miniscule amount of
health benefit in an otherwise purely hedonistic cookie.

As I tested to make sure the second batch out of the oven was as good as the first, I was messaging with my younger brother, Brad, on my computer. Since he lives 45 minutes away in glamorous South Beach, (where I grew up and went to high school) I rubbed it in that I was enjoying delicious fresh cookies. He messaged back, “Got milk?”

I did, actually. A tall frosty glass of organic milk in my vintage Burger King Empire Strikes Back drinking glass. (The Hoth one, with C-3PO and R2D2 in the foreground and Han Solo on a tauntaun in the background, for those whose geeky minds need to know).

Of course, although my brother undoubtedly would have approved of the glassware, he immediately called me “Hippie!” when I told him I was drinking organic milk. He does this a lot. But, not only hippies like me choose organic dairy and meat. (And organics aren’t just for vegetarians.)

I found so much good stuff researching this topic, it is going to spawn more than one post. I will share this one great site I found: The O’Mama Report - Organic Information and Inspiration. My husband pointed out that I squealed when I stumbled across it. They have an O’Baby and O’Kids area, too. This site is definitely being added to my Top Tin websites list, which is still under construction.

I also found a complete new Top Tin list, the top ten reasons to buy organic dairy and meat, and that will be coming to you soon.

Spliced rice? Not so nice!

Ventria's newest Frankenfood biotech project has two strikes against it, making it the newest candidate on my Tinfoil Hat worthy list. First, it is a genetically engineered food or genetically modified organism (GMO), which in and of itself makes me twitchy.

An example of the science driving GMOs -------------------------------->

Yes, a tobacco plant spliced with a firefly, feeding starving children and saving lives the world over.

Second, it contains remnants of an abundant, naturally occurring, healthful substance. While claiming to be supporting the good health this substance promotes, instead of encouraging and supporting its natural (and free!) consumption, the biotech firm is trying to isolate it, alter it, splice it, patent it, and sell it.

Ventria's rice is genetically engineered to contain two proteins from human breast milk. The purpose of this super immunized rice, according to the biotech firm, is to treat diarrhea in infants.

Do I have to point out the irony in this?

The Ecologist recently had a fantastic article entitled Suck on This about the global impact of increased infant formula feeding and decreased breast feeding rates. Amid tons (tonnes? The Ecologist is published in the UK) of great information about the risks of substituting breast milk with formula, they include this statistic:

"Even in developed countries, bottlefed babies have rates of diarrhoea twice as high as breastfed ones."

This does not include increased diarrhea caused by water borne diseases in developing countries to which breastfed babies are not exposed. Also, the article states that bottle fed babies are five times more likely to be admitted to a hospital for gastroenteritis.

Now, please don't clog my inbox with a bunch of angry replies about how you COULDN'T breast feed or chose not to because of XYZ. Your stories are very important. Of course, formula is a life saving invention that saves the lives of babies whose mothers have a compelling reason why they cannot or should not breastfeed.

However, that does not change the alarming statistics in the article, or that have been released by the US government on US breastfeeding rates. Exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months in the US has reached a level of 13% as of 2002. Almost 9 out of 10 mothers in the United States are giving their infants formula at least some of the time by the age of 6 months, and most of these are not breastfeeding at all. So, until those numbers improve, please save me the preaching at the choir complaints.

I am a lactation consultant, and am training to be a midwife (or a doctor). I sympathize with the complexities of being a nursing mother in the modern world, have pumped in a car, suffered through mastitis and cracked nipples. I have read the research on why women say they don't breastfeed, and see the biggest problem as women who don't even make it out of the hospital breastfeeding. The main reasons I have read (and seen) from these women is a perceived lack of support, either from their family or from their social and health care network.

Women are increasingly convinced that breastfeeding is a lifestyle choice, and do not see members of their community valuing it or the hard work it takes to be successful at it. With the powers of capitalism behind formula in new and ever frightening ways, it looks like the preaching will continue.

I do not believe these conversations are directed at all at women who have already had children, whether or not they breastfed, and don't plan to have more, except perhaps inform their conversations with future moms and future supporters of breastfeeding. I hate that of all the people I wish would read these articles (employers of future mothers, labor and delivery nurses, pediatricians, obstetricians, parenting magazine writers, future mothers and families of them), the ones I usually hear from are the moms who already know this and feel guilty because they chose not to breastfeed and now regret it, or were one of the few who actually could not breastfeed due to complications or medication, and are already aware of the negatives of formula.

I was part of a great discussion about guilt due to problems breastfeeding on a message board, and think it is a very important topic. One of my closest friends (yes, this sounds like the old "I have a black friend so I can't be a racist" arguments) was not able to breastfeed after trying very hard, and I seriously do not intend to make any mom who has not chosen to breastfeed or could not breastfeed feel guilty or inferior. I just want to support women in the future valuing the effort it takes to breastfeed.

Also, it peeves me that I think the biotech firms are hiding behind infant health because it is hard to criticize a company that is claiming to be saving babies. Why don't they try to breed AIDS drugs into rice? Because, as I see it, people already have to pay (wayyyy too much) for AIDS drugs, not breast milk, and the millions of victims of AIDS (and their orphaned families and communities left behind) aren't quite as sympathetic target group as sick babies. If they spent one tenth of the money they are spending for R & D (and PR) for this new rice on promoting breastfeeding instead, I wonder how many babies they could save.