This vanillabean is still invisible, but not genetically modified.
My genes are natural and I am raised by hardworking women and grown to sweeten your most delicious flavors, while helping to feed my family.
I am beautiful, sweet, black and not cheap. But some kabuki phony Synbio vanilla wants to destroy my life. I will defend myself and not remain silent and never eat ice cream that uses Synbio vanilla.
Join me and see why.
No Synbio Vanilla
No Synbio Vanilla
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Synbio VanillaA new ingredient straight out of a petri dish is about to enter the global food supply in many of our favorite foods from ice cream to birthday cake. And like many of the products of genetic engineering, it won’t be labeled -- instead it is being marketed as “natural”. But this ingredient is anything but “natural”.
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Synthetic biology vanilla flavoring (synbio vanilla) is produced with a new, virtually unregulated experimental genetic technology -- synthetic biology -- an extreme version of genetic engineering. Synbio vanilla was designed to replace natural vanillin flavoring from vanilla beans, and is made in labs using synthetic DNA and reprogrammed, genetically engineered yeast.
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This is the first major use of a synbio ingredient in food, and dozens of other flavors and food additives are in the pipeline, so synbio vanilla could set a dangerous precedent for synthetic genetically engineered ingredients to sneak into our food supply and be labeled as “natural.”
In case you have never seen how I am made and harvested:
But that's by no means the main story about my life. I am more important than just being a plant, I have lots of influence on the livelihood of good people.
"The big problem is the industry."
"Compounding the problem is price speculation."
So I am asking you to support the just created vanillabean brigade of one to petition major ice cream companies like Haagen Dazs, Dreyer’s, Edy’s, Baskin Robbins and others not to use this experimental genetically engineered vanilla in their products.
There’s nothing "natural" about genetically engineered yeast that excretes vanilla flavoring.
The FDA hasn’t even bothered to test this laboratory creation as a new product. Instead the agency will likely approve it as “Generally Regarded As Safe”.
Ice cream companies are one of the biggest purchasers of vanilla flavoring and we need your help to send them a strong message: don't use this unnatural “synbio vanilla” in your ice cream.
This new Synbio vanilla could speed rainforest destruction, and harm sustainable farmers and poor communities that rely on rainforest-raised vanilla beans to survive.
But there is more to it: Synthetic Biology.
The ways in which synthetic organisms will interact with the natural environment are unpredictable and potentially devastating and permanent. While other types of pollution can be cleaned up and do not breed, synthetic biological creations are designed to self-replicate and, once released into the environment, they will be impossible to recall. A synthetic organism designed for a specific task, such as eating up oil from oil spills in the ocean, could swap genes with naturally occurring organisms and outcompete them, potentially disrupting entire ecosystems as a new class of invasive species.
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The U.S. government along with the major oil, agribusiness and chemical companies are already big funders of synthetic biology research, providing hundreds of millions of dollars to start-up synthetic biology companies. Proponents hope this emerging field will create a new "bioeconomy" in which any and all types of plant matter can feed synthetic organisms that will be "living factories" producing fuels, industrial chemicals, bio-plastics, medicines and even food.
So, now, read
this and more source material and do something:
The synthetic biology industry is expanding rapidly, with a market value in 2011 of over $1.6 billion that is expected to reach $10.8 billion by 2016. However, there has been little to no governance of the industry or assessment of the novel risks posed by synthetic organisms. There have been calls for “self-regulation” by the industry and at the end of 2012 President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released a report saying that industry self-regulation would be sufficient and “gave the green light” to the synthetic biology community. Friends of the Earth, along with 56 organizations from around the world sent a public letter to the Presidential Commission which criticized its report for ignoring the precautionary principle, relying on so-called “self-governance” instead of true democratic governance of this technology, lacking adequate review of environmental risks and placing unwarranted faith in “suicide genes” and other technologies that provide no guarantee against the escape of synthetic organisms into the environment.
I throw in this clip, you might not understand much, but the images speak for themselves.
And some other vanilla orchards for your pleasure. This one is for sale. I wonder why, do you too? Can you give me a million bucks?
presented to you by the sock puppet of vanillabean,
the unmodified unintimidated friend of the vanillabean brigade of one.
Disclosure: this sockpuppet is genetically related to vanillabean and testing the new rules of genetically related, unmodified naturally grown sockpuppeteers.