After I took all the photos of the maize at Pick n Pay today, I decided to ask random people in the store if they knew what GMO meant. I asked about 10 different people, young, old, white, black, male, female, single, couple and family.
Nine said they had no idea. One guy said "it's about additives, that additives give people allergies so they take the GMO additives out so people don't get allergies". Not quite, no.
What dawned on me today, is that even though maize is now labelled; people don't actually read labels nor have a clue what GMO's are. "May contain GMO's" is also misleading. One needs to err on the side of caution, and just avoid anything that refers to GM's until there is true transparency in the industry. It's going to take an epic public relations / marketing effort to educate people on what it means in their lives.
Explaining to people what GMO's are in layman's terms is a very hard thing to do. My own journey took 6 months before I even vaguely started to unravel it. Most people don't have the time, energy or inclination because they're just too tired and too hassled.
In the meantime, Monsanto is laughing the whole way to the bank. This has to change.
Nine said they had no idea. One guy said "it's about additives, that additives give people allergies so they take the GMO additives out so people don't get allergies". Not quite, no.
What dawned on me today, is that even though maize is now labelled; people don't actually read labels nor have a clue what GMO's are. "May contain GMO's" is also misleading. One needs to err on the side of caution, and just avoid anything that refers to GM's until there is true transparency in the industry. It's going to take an epic public relations / marketing effort to educate people on what it means in their lives.
Explaining to people what GMO's are in layman's terms is a very hard thing to do. My own journey took 6 months before I even vaguely started to unravel it. Most people don't have the time, energy or inclination because they're just too tired and too hassled.
In the meantime, Monsanto is laughing the whole way to the bank. This has to change.
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