I'm sorry if this has already been discussed, but my search didn't show it.



Have you looked at your Silk milk carton lately? The word organic has been replaced by the word natural. A week after that change, I saw that my store did get in the Silk Organic in a mostly green carton, unfortunately, they only got the unsweetened, no vanilla version. Seems whitewave is buying their non-organic soybeans from China.

Yeah, I noticed the switch a few months ago actually. The Organic is in a brighter green carton than the Unsweetened "Natural" and is about $0.50 more expensive.

Does it really matter, though? Soy beans are pretty protected from absorbing pesticides, and then the fact that it's processed into soy milk should remove any contaminant from pure soy goodness.

havent seen this yet....thanx for the heads up

I've always been told that if you bought one thing organic, it should be soy, because they used the worst chemicals on it. Then there's the GMO's. I've always just took everyone's word on it, and bought organic soy milk.

Drink rice milk !

Something I found on Google..

Yes, I knew there was something I knew originally, but overtime forgot the detail of! They put the herbicide right in the dna! That was it, thank you!

I don't really... drink soy milk, and I stay FAR away from ANYTHING that can be remotely close to a monsanto product =/





That being said, to the user who asked "Why bother", it's also an environmental factor.

While enviroment is important, it's a 'what I put in my body' that causes me to buy the organic soy milk. I have tried rice milk and HATE it. I drink soy milk, and also hemp and almond dream. I often mix them. I even tried oat lately - a lot of calories... The hemp I most recently bought was a light version, so easier on the calories. The Living Harvest Hemp is now calling it TEMPT.

That doesn't even make sense. Herbicides work by killing other plants in the area; putting it directly into soy DNA wouldn't do that.

Uh oh, don't you understand that you are (edit: not) supposed to think about these things, but just react with fear and horror?

genetic food modification is a brilliant tool that has helped many countries feed their people. Without genetic modification many poor countries would have a lot of trouble growing rice and wheat in their environments and most of those countries use these inexpensive grains as a major staple food.



Genetic modification can seem scary because it seems unnatural but natural evolution has shaped our world today and genetic modification is simply selective evolution. By cross breeding plants to obtain the best features of both parent plants you create something that is stronger, healthier and all around better. Most genetic crossbreeding doesn't take place in labs and test tubes like it would be easy to believe but in fields full of plants where scientists simply cross pollinate things until they get something right. Did you know even organic food is subject to cross breeding and in fact these cross breeding techniques help keep plants (and animals) alive and healthy. If one strain of a plant is susceptible to a certain bug and every plant is kept the same with no genetic variations then the entire species could be in danger. Bananas are actually a victim of this problem, almost all bananas in the world share extremely similar DNA, pineapples too.

Hey!! Where is your fear and horror?? Wouldn't it be better for the environment to farm less efficiently and use much more land to grow the same amount of food??

aww lets not get condescending! I don't want anybody to think I look down on anyone who doesn't understand genetics, just as I'd hope people don't look down on me for not understanding theoretical astrophysics as well as I'd like to. Everybody has their academic place and mine is biology I just think it's important that people understand genetics naturally evolve through every generation and helping them along is not dangerous to our health

Well you are better than me. It will be good to have someone around who can explain that plant breeding didn't go from throwing some seeds in a bowl and playing some Barry White to GMO overnight. We have used a lot of methods, things like radiation, to provoke mutations for decades. I will gladly take the precision of GMO over those other methods.

I agree, I'm glad our understanding of DNA has grown to the point where we can use safe methods of genetic engineering.

Organics use more resources and more land for less output. If you're concerned about the impact of the pesticides and herbicides, be aware that organic foods still use pesticides that can be just as harmful to the environment; they just aren't manmade. Urea is a completely organic pesticide, but believe me, the earth isn't thanking us for pouring it all over it.

i dont take soya milk but i think soyabean is very healthy

Where can I read more about this (other then sifting through tons of stuff Google brought up)?

GMO's can cause health problems. People should have a choice in whether or not they want to consume them. As of now companies are not required to label whether or not their products contain GMO which I think is a shame. GMOs can also contaminate other crops with their DNA. This scared Bill Gates and Monsanto enough to build a seed vault. Monsanto also sued farmers farms when their GMO DNA contaminated surrounding farms.



Here is a link on why they are bad.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...icle_11361.cfm

It stops the herbicide from killing that plant itself, then you eat the plant and the herbicide. GMO is NOT a good thing. Monsanto can try to spin it anyway they want to.

Zero evidence of this. None.






Political issue. Don't care.






Non GMO crops can contaminate other crops with their DNA. It has been happening since the beginning of time and has been a very good thing.






Pure baloney. The seed vault was constructed using funds entirely from the Norwegian government. Seed vaults are not new.






Again pure baloney. Read the court transcripts (Federal Court of Canada, Federal Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Canada). Had Percy Schmeiser's fields been contaminated with GMO seeds then Monsanto would have been wholely responsible. Schmeiser purposefully isolated, collected, stored and planted GMO seeds. Schmeiser's fields were "contaminated" by GMO seed because he had done everything in his power to ensure that such was the case. This was no secret around his community. In fact Monsanto warned him before he planted his fields in 1998 that they knew what he was up to and that he would either have to pay for the use of those seeds or face legal action. That Schmeiser has become a hero to anti-gmo activists beyond sad.






I know a fun game you can play with Jeffrey M. Smith's writings. Go to the library and get one of his books: "Seeds of Deception" or "Genetic Roulette." Then start at the beginning and trace back every endnote to the source. If that source makes absolutely no sense in comparison to what JMS says - like for instance says the exact opposite then take a drink. If the initial source is other writing by JMS which can't be traced back any further and he just made it up then take a drink. Plan on passing out before you finish the first chapter. It might be wise to have someone around to call emergency services as alcohol poisoning is likely. Smith is a pure nut. He has no relevant education, no scientific training or education and makes statements so scientifically impossible that it would make the most delusional young-earth creationist blush.

Bluesman was 100% right. The google link on page one is completely wrong and nonsensical.

Can you please explain how having a herbicide inside a plant can kill other plants in the vicinity? I'm pretty interested in this.



And for the person who wanted to see sources about organic pesticides: here's one on Rotenone, a highly toxic organic pesticide. And here's an article about the energy inefficiencies of organic farming.

To expand on bleusman's link - A study writen for the UK Ministry of Environment which concluded that: Organic Farming "No Better For the Environment." It says that some crops were better others were worse, particularly: "Organic vine tomatoes require almost 10 times the amount of land needed for conventional tomatoes and nearly double the amount of energy."



Then there is this report by Anthony Trewavas which appeared in the journal "Crop Protection." Other writing by the same author: GM is the Best Option We Have and a presentation on Organic Food and Farming.



Also, here is a short piece by Dennis Avery asking Would Organic Farming Unleash A Billion Cattle On U.S. Wildlands?

As a vegetarian I find the possibility of increased cattle raising beyond concerning.



The Skeptic's Dictionary entry on organic food and farming (which also talks about GMO)



One of the books that the Skeptic's Dictionary mentions is The March of Unreason by Dick Taverne which includes chapters on "The Myth of Organic Farming," "The Case For GM Crops," and "The Case Against GM Crops."





On the pro-organic side is this report: Soil Fertility and Biodiversity in Organic Farming which was the 21 year study that is most commonly cited as the proof that organic farming can feed the world. I had some issues with it when I read it shortly after it came out. First, the study actually showed that the organic agriculture had about 20 - 30% less yield. The difference in favour of of organic was that it used about 50% less energy per acre (because of the energy to create synthetic fertilizers and pesticides). However, if you take into account the decreased yield of the organics then the conventional crops only required less than 20% more energy per yield. So conventional requires more energy, organic more land. Also, the nutrients in the organic soil had decreased significantly (up to a 1/3 or even 1/2) for nitrogen potassium and phosphorus which means that soil was actually being depleted and eventually will require inputs outside of organic farming methods. This was one of the "miracles" of synthetic fertilizer in the first place. Before their inputs soil qualities in europe and parts of north america had decreased significantly over the preceding centuries.



So organic farming required less energy, but needed more land. To me that means that organic loses. However, when you add in the organic farm land was being depleted of nutrients it means that at some point in time they are going to need to use a lot of energy to replenish that land, probably meaning that in the long run organic farming needs far more land for no benefit what-so-ever.



Other studies have managed comparable yields, but don't make clear that they were using cover crops like legumes which means that about every 3rd growing season no crop was grown and essentially means that even if they were achieving the same yields they would need 50% more land to do so as 1/3 of the land was growing legumes (which pull nitrogen out of the air) which would be ploughed under to enrich the soil with nitrogen.



There are two excellent books outlining how the projected peak human population of about 10 billion late in the 21st century can be fed. The first is Vaclav Smil's (I would recommend all of his books they are eye opening scholarly works on energy and food) Feeding the World: A Challenge for the 21st Century and the second is Gordon Conway's The Doubly Green Revolution: Food For All in The Twenty-First Century. Both of those books are reviewed here (along with two other books I haven't read). There are no books on how organic farming could do the same, for the simple reason that it couldn't, at best, support more than about 55-70% of the current world population.

It doesn't kill the plant, it makes it resistant to the herbicide itself.

I posted this link in a separate thread a while back, but since it is pertinent to the original discussion, I will post it again. This article highlights that economic impact that Silk is having on American soybean farmers.



http://www.alternet.org/environment/...he_bus/?page=1



~ Julie

Cool. Now back that up with an article on how that specific gene is going to damage my health.

The site has references, believe whatever you want. The Gates Foundation invested 30 million.






The numbers link references. Thats enough to make me have a preference for the real deal.



You may not care if GMO is in your food but imagine if there was animal products in your food and they didnt tell you about that. An omni would not care but that doesnt mean all of us dont care. I want to know if I am eating frankenfood and I have a right to know that.