Joachim Hagopian

The world’s most powerful chemical manufacturer, Monsanto, and the powerful food and agri-industries have had their way in America for many decades. Through the power of lobbyists pouring money into the hands of corrupt lawmakers, US presidents, and federal agencies like the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), until just recently they have successfully squelched any grassroots movements made by the American people concerned about the food they eat and its effect on their physical health.

Similar to the health industry, citizens of the United States are virtually the only national population among developed nations without a universal healthcare system for all its citizens, Americans are also the only national population in the industrial world forced to eat genetically modified organisms (GMO) as their food source. In a recent poll only 15% of British farmers said they would be willing to eat genetically modified food. Of course as residents within the European Union, they do not have to since GMO’s are banned. In fact, 64 other nations laws are in place protecting the health of citizens by forcing food to be labeled as GMO’s, thus offering their consumers a choice. More and more nations around the world are simply banning GMO foods from even entering their country altogether. This trend is becoming a growing concern for the large US exporters of GMO soy, wheat and corn products.

The European Union (EU) operating on behalf of the health of all Europeans just banned the import of apples from the US as the world’s second largest producers of the fruit (behind China) because of the toxic chemical preservative diphenylamine (DPA) used to artificially keep apples from turning naturally brown with age. Its chemical reaction to the apple causes toxins that have proven to be carcinogenic. When the EU passed a law in 2012 lowering the trace of DPA to .1 parts per million and then recently discovered that the US apples were averaging .42 parts per million, Europe banned all apples made in America from arriving.

In recent years a similar increasing trend has both the US agri- and livestock industries worried that the rest of the world is deciding to no longer import American produce, meat and other food products for that very same reason — USA products have simply been deemed too poisonous and unhealthy for countries and continents that unlike America actually care about the health of their citizens. The lobbying power of the largest transnational corporations have run into such stiff resistance and opposition from health conscious consumers throughout Europe and other parts of the world that they have successfully pressured their governments to protect them with both universal healthcare and far healthier food. In short, governments elsewhere take better care of its citizens than does America.

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