Genetically modified

Art portfolio- my work

“Once upon a time”….I received a lovely monster-like toy as a gift from a friend.  One day the children and myself decided to use it’s hands for our scarecrow.  The rest of it’s “body” became a source of inspiration for this work:

"Genetically modified" embroidery on rubber and found objects, 2014

“Genetically modified” embroidery on rubber and found objects, 2014

“This product may contain genetically modified ingredients”

I am starting to see the above words on a lot of products in the Supermarkets.  It scares me, probably because I know so little about genetic modification.  So I’ve started to read some articles on the internet, but that in itself is problematic, because some say “stay away, these products that contain genetically modified ingredients may cause cancer” etc. and others say there is no need to worry.

As a mother I worry about what my kids consume.  A certain packet of chips also contain this warning on it’s label, but the problem is that at every kiddies party there are these chips, or even at the school tuck shop.  So should I tell them to never eat it, or should I follow my mother’s advice of “everything in moderation is okay”?

While I’m still trying to figure this out I decided to pull the ‘monster’ over my head:



Will I change into some kind of monster when I consume enough genetically modified products?

If you know of any articles that might be worthwhile to read on this matter, please would you share it with me?

2 thoughts on “Genetically modified

  1. Hi!

    Let me first say that Im not a scientist, however I know a bit about the subject, as I’m slowly becoming a farm-to-table, sustainability freak, lol.

    You should know that GMOs have been part of our diets for a long, long time. Yellow corn? GMO. Almost all wheat that America produces? You guessed it, GMO. The connections between health issues and GMOs is dubious. I stay away from GM produce mostly because these products are modified to sustain long journeys across borders. Often that means the flavor suffers. And it can mean that they arent as nutritious in the end.

    If you’re really a concerned parent about this kind of stuff, I would focus more on meat products. Avoid mass-produced meat, you’re way more likely to experience health problems from that. Stick to good quality butcher shops if you can.


    1. Hi Sarah, thank you for your comment.

      I agree about the meat products. I received Jonathan Safran Foer’s book: Eating animals, as a gift one day and it really made an impact. I used to be vegetarian, but I enjoy a good seafood dish, so I starting eating meat again. Luckily we live in a place where I can go to the harbour and buy fish directly from the fishing boats. I spoke to these fishermen recently and they are up in arms. They have to travel so deep into the ocean to get fish because of the trawlers they say. By-catch became another concern of mine after the above book I read. Once a year we buy a sheep directly from a farmer who promise that he doesn’t feed his sheep any growth hormones. As far as chicken, we buy ‘free-range’, but again this term also became an issue of investigation, since who knows what free-range means these days. Same for ‘organic’.

      Another thing that makes me wonder is the availability of almost everything right through the year. Should we in South Africa be able to get ‘dragon-fruit?” 1) because of the carbon footprint, 2) it’s unnatural?
      I’ve heard also that here the farmers spray something on the grapes to make them become/seem more red! I hope that this thing they spray have been tested and found harmless, and so what if the grapes are a bit more yellow?

      So if GMO’s only let the flavour suffer and means that I have to take vitamin supplements instead of relying on the food to give me those vitamins, then I guess that is the least of my worries, although some articles mention the impact these GMO produce/farms will have an impact on the bee populations….

      And then there is water issues, Fracking, species of animals and insects dying out, ozone layer, ice melting, plastic in the ocean, trash, space debris….it all makes me dizzy and want to go out and gaze at the stars, or in the day look up in the sky and see dinosaurs in the clouds. Once upon a time when the earth was healthy and the food was tasty……… ❤

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