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The following are some famous environmental quotes centered on the theme of food, agriculture, and nutrition. If you would like to go to the online environmental forum Click Here.
“Little ol' boy in the [Texas] Panhandle told me the other day you can still make a small fortune in agriculture. Problem is, you got to start with a large one.”
- Jim Hightower
“It is vitally important that we can continue to say, with absolute conviction, that organic farming delivers the highest quality, best-tasting food, produced without artificial chemicals or genetic modification, and with respect for animal welfare and the environment, while helping to maintain the landscape and rural communities.”
- Prince Charles
“I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.”
- A. Whitney Brown
“For years we've been told that America is the land of plenty. And while we have plenty of food available to eat, as a rule, most of it is of very poor quality and very lacking in trace minerals. Minerals are less accessible both because chemicals and acid rain have killed off our ground micro-organisms and the minerals in our farming soils are becoming depleted.”
- Dr. Sherry A. Rogers
“Family farmers are victims of public policy that gives preference to feeding animals over feeding people. This has encouraged the cheap grain policy of this nation and has made the Beef Cartel the biggest hog at the trough.”
- Howard Lyman
“GM and agriculture have become so commercially driven that the applications of the technology have become severed from their basic science roots- it’s moving forward at a tremendous pace to produce all these crops for commercial use, but at the same time it doesn’t heed the warnings of our deepening understanding of biology, ecology and genetics.”
- Dr. Michael Antoniou
“As far as genetic engineering for food, that is the great experiment that has failed. They literally have the entire world market against them. All those dreams… the blind will see, the lame will walk… has turned out to be science fiction. They are basically chemical companies selling more chemicals. They’ve been able to spread these herbicide-promoting plants around because it is more convenient for farmers who can just mass-spray their crops. But they’ve given absolutely nothing to the consumer while causing more chemical pollution and contamination.”
- Andrew Kimbrell
“Contrary to what they would like the public to believe, GE crops are neither needed nor beneficial. They have become a dangerous diversion from the real task of providing sustainable food for our world. The technologies of genetic engineering are crude, unreliable, uncontrollable and unpredictable- in short, they do not qualify as technologies.”
- Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
“It can be argued that gene transfer via recombinant DNA techniques resembles the process of viral infection far more closely than it resembles traditional breeding.”
- Dr. Patrick Brown
“If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.”
- God; Leviticus 26:3-4
“The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.”
- Cesar Chavez
“The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.”
- Wendell Berry
“When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings.”
- Dr. William C. Roberts
“If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat
you eat should be zero.”
- Dr. Walter Willett
“Industrialized, chemical-intensive agriculture and our globalized system of distributing food and fiber are literally destroying the earth, driving two billion farmers off the land, and producing a product which is increasingly contaminated. That's why the wave of the future is organic and sustainable, not GMO.”
- Ronnie Cummins
“Farmers are the only indispensable people on the face of the earth.”
- Li Zhaoxing
“I see worries in the fact that we have the power to manipulate genes in ways that would be improbable or impossible through conventional evolution. We shouldn’t be complacent in thinking that we can predict the results.”
- Colin Blakemore
“The law mandates a precautionary approach. It does not demand demonstration of danger, it requires proof of safety. It states that if there are reasonable doubts about the safety of bioengineered foods- doubts that have not been conclusively resolved through solid testing- the foods should not be brought to market.”
- Richard Stroman
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
- Albert Einstein
“We can plant wheat every year, but the people who are starving die only once.”
- Fiorello H. La Guardia
“I took the initiative to raise my concerns publicly on GM food because I thought what was being claimed was simply not representative of the truth…if you move genes around in the very imprecise way that gene technology does, you’re simply going to disrupt normal gene function and you’re going to bring about unpredictable outcomes that are far greater than the intended changes. I felt that what was being put out by the government and industry scientists about the technology was simply inaccurate.”
- Dr. Michael Antoniou
“An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs produced in this country are used for nontherapeutic purposes such as accelerating animal growth and compensating for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on 'factory farms.' This translates to ... almost eight times the amount given to humans to treat disease.”
- Union of Concerned Scientists
“You cannot achieve environmental security and human development without addressing the basic issues of health and nutrition.”
- Gro H. Brundtland
“When you go to the grocery store, you find that the cheapest calories are the ones that are going to make you the fattest - the added sugars and fats in processed foods.”
- Michael Pollan
“Most of the public lands in the West, and especially the Southwest, are what you might call cow burnt. Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in the American West you find hordes of [cows].... They are a pest and a plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They infest our canyons, valleys, meadows, and forests. They graze off the native bluestems and grama and bunch grasses, leaving behind jungles of *****ly pear. They trample down the native forbs and shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic cheatgrass, the Russian thistle, and the crested wheat grass. Weeds. Even when the cattle are not physically present, you see the dung and the flies and the mud and the dust and the general destruction. If you don't see it, you'll smell it. The whole American West stinks of cattle.”
- Edward Abbey
“An alien ecologist observing... Earth might conclude that cattle is the dominant animal species in our biosphere.”
- Dr. David Hamilton Wright
“They're now turning those seeds into intellectual property, so they have a virtual lock on the seeds upon which we all depend for our food and survival.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“We human beings are part of 'biodiversity.' We are dependent on the whole food chain down below us.”
- Darrell Merrell
“One's stomach is one's internal environment.”
- Samuel Butler
“The other major problem with introducing GMOs is gene flow. This is as significant as buildup of resistance, probably more significant.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“Meat is an inefficient way to eat. An acre of land can yield 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but that same acre would only graze enough cows to get 165 pounds of meat.”
- Alexandra Paul
“I'm not so thrilled about the factory farming movement in our country and also pesticides - you don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face.”
- Daryl Hannah
“The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.”
- God; Leviticus 25:23-24
“In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.”
- Michael Pollan
“All red meat contains saturated fat. There is no such thing as truly lean meat. Trimming away the edge ring of fat around a steak really does not lower the fat content significantly. People who have red meat (trimmed or untrimmed) as a regular feature of their diets suffer in far greater numbers from heart attacks and strokes.”
- Dr. Michael Klaper
“True, nuts are high in fat, but most of them contain monounsaturated fat that is good for the heart. In fact, eaten in moderation, nuts can lower your risk of heart disease and heart attack.”
- Dr. Andrew Weil
“The industry's not stupid. The industry knows that if those foods are labeled "genetically engineered," the public will shy away and won't take them.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“If you think humans are meat-eaters then try eating the animal raw like every other meat-eater on the planet. If something is not palatable in its raw state then you probably shouldn't be eating it.”
- David Wolfe
“The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to agricultural policies and subsidies.”
- Michael Pollan
“A safe and nutritionally adequate diet is a basic individual right and an essential condition for sustainable development, especially in developing countries.”
- Gro H. Brundtland
“Any scientist who tells you they know that GMOs are safe and not to worry about it, is either ignorant of the history of science or is deliberately lying. Nobody knows what the long-term effect will be.”
- David Suzuki
“As happened with tobacco, health warnings about meat eating are multiplying, and awareness of the environmental effects of meat production is rising. Just as cigarettes lost their allure, meat is losing its social cachet in some countries. Food marketers in the United Kingdom estimate that 2 million people in that country are strict vegetarians. More important, the number of people limiting meat in their diets is rising rapidly. An estimated 6 million people in the United Kingdom dine on meatless meals most of the time.”
- Alan B. Durning and Holly B. Brough
“The haphazard and negligent agency regulation of biotechnology has been a disaster for consumers and the environment. Unsuspecting consumers by the tens of millions are being allowed to purchase and consume unlabeled genetically engineered foods, despite a finding by FDA scientists that these foods could pose serious risks.”
- Center for Food Safety
“We are basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant food and minimizing our intake of animal foods”
- Dr. T. Colin Campbell
“We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas guzzling automobiles. Big cars made sense only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat makes sense only because the true costs of producing it are not counted.”
- Frances Moore Lappe
“Many organic practices simply make sense, regardless of what overall agricultural system is used. Far from being a quaint throwback to an earlier time, organic agriculture is proving to be a serious contender in modern farming and a more environmentally sustainable system over the long term.”
- David Suzuki
“The amount of meat lost each year through careless handling and brutality would be enough to feed a million Americans for a year.”
- John McFarlane
“We are already producing enough food to feed the world. We already have technology in place that allows us to produce more than we can find a market for.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“Biosolids are a valuable resource, rich in nitrogen, other nutrients, and organic materials. When applied to crops, the material helps the soil retain moisture, reduces erosion, and increases yields. Less fertilizer is required, which has the added environmental benefit of using a natural, recycled product.”
- Liz Black
“While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“Genetic pollution from GMO’s is a real possibility. This can be exerted by cross-pollination, unplanned breeding and horizontal gene transfer.”
- Dr. Terje Traavik
“Changing eating habits in the North is an important link in the chain of events needed to create environmentally sustainable development that meets people's needs. The Beyond Beef campaign is an important step in that direction.”
- Dr. Walden Bello
“As a scientist, I wouldn’t drink milk from cows fed GM maize with the present state of knowledge.”
- Dr. Robert Orskov
“We will not lose our right to hunt in one cataclysmic legal case. Hunting will be killed slowly, like a cancer overwhelming the body and mind until we no longer have the strength to fight or the will to survive.”
- Jim Slinsky
“Fast food may appear to be cheap food and, in the literal sense it often is, but that is because huge social and environmental costs are being excluded from the calculations. Any analysis of the real cost would have to look at such things as the rise in food-borne illnesses, the advent of new pathogens, such as E.coli 0157, antibiotic resistance from the overuse of drugs in animal feed, extensive water pollution from intensive agricultural systems and many other factors. These costs are not reflected in the price of fast food.”
- Prince Charles
“The earth will not continue to offer it's harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.”
- Pope John Paul II
“When you look at an apple, some people would say the non-organic apple is cheaper than the organic apple. But when you factor in what you're receiving in terms of vitamins, minerals, etc., the organic apple—on that basis—is cheaper than the non-organic apple.”
- Jerry Kay
“Loss of soil productivity, which is causing extensive Land abandonment, is a widespread byproduct of current practices in agriculture and animal husbandry. Since 1945, 11% of the earth's vegetated surface has been degraded -- an area larger than India and China combined -- and per capita food production in many parts of the world is decreasing.”
- 'Warning to Humanity', under the heading 'Soil', the statement signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries including 102 Nobel Prize laureates on November 18, 1992.
“Until around l990 I was a dedicated proponent of genetic engineering. Due to observations made during my own research I then started to become concerned about some appliations. With regard to the development and commercialisation of GMO’s we often are neither able to define probability of unintended events or the consequences of them. Hence, the present state of ignorance makes scientifically based risk assessments impossible. This calls for invoking the ‘precautionary principle’.”
- Dr. Terje Traavik
“Over the last fifteen years, I and other scientists have put the FDA on notice about the potential dangers of genetically engineered foods. Instead of responsible regulation we have seen bureaucratic bungling and obfuscation that have left public health and the environment at risk.”
- Dr. Phillip Regal
“A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet.”
- John Robbins
“I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.”
- God; Jeremiah 2:7
“The price of grain is now directly tied to the price of oil. We used to have a grain economy and a fuel economy. But now they’re beginning to fuse.”
- Lester Brown
“Men no longer love the soil. Landowners sell it, lease it, divide it into shares, prostitute it, bargain with it and treat it as an object of speculation. Farmers torture it, violate it, exhaust it and sacrifice it with their impatient desire for gain. They never become one with it.”
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
“Because biosolids contain organic matter and a host of macro- and micro-nutrients, land application may be the disposal method of choice: this material can act both as a soil amendment, increasing soil organic matter, and as a fertilizer, increasing forage production and enhancing forage quality via recycling of valuable nutrients.”
- Ronald E. Sosebee
“The most political act we do on a daily basis is to eat, as our actions affect farms, landscapes, and food businesses.”
- Jules Pretty
“The land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and garner their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the Lord. The land is to have a year of rest.”
- Leviticus 25:2-5; cf. Exodus 23:10-11
“The public should know that the liability issues here have yet to be resolved, or even raised. If you're a farmer and you're growing a genetically engineering food crop, those genes are going to flow to the other farm.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness, and all the ugly distempers that make an ordered life impossible.”
- Woodrow Wilson
“By 1960, 97 percent of all crops were treated with chemical fertilizers that used salt-based nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. While this method of farming created perfectly shaped and colored produce, it created weak plants. And just like weak animals that are preyed upon by wolves and other predators, these plants are preyed on by pests, necessitating the need for chemical pesticides. Early in the 1990s, researchers set out to determine if these pesticides penetrated the skin of the fruits and vegetables, so they had them peeled and tested. Much to their surprise, they found that these same chemicals were deep in the meat of the fruits and vegetables. So, not only are we eating poor quality food, but this same food is laced with pesticides. And it's not just our fruits and vegetables. The animals we consume are contaminated with the same pesticides and herbicides (from their feed), as well as growth hormones and antibiotics.”
- Dr. Sherry A. Rogers
“If people would only realize that if one leads a life in cooperation with Nature and not against it, then nobody in the world need die of starvation.”
- Sepp Holzer
“Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we've designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food.”
- Michael Pollan
“The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of real food for real people, you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.”
- Dr. Neal D. Barnard
“The right of corporations to force-feed citizens of the world with culturally inappropriate and hazardous foods has been made absolute [in the globalizing economy]. The right to food, the right to safety, the right to culture are all being treated as trade barriers that need to be dismantled…we have to reclaim our right to nutrition and food safety. We have to reclaim our right to protect the earth and her diverse species. We have to stop this corporate theft from the poor and from nature. Food democracy…is the new agenda for ecological sustainability and social justice.”
- Vandana Shiva
“We simply do not know the long term consequences for human health and the wider environment (of genetically modified crops) …if something does go badly wrong, we will be faced with the problem of cleaning up a kind of pollution which is self perpetuating. I am not convinced that anyone has the first idea of how this could be done.”
- Prince Charles
“Contaminated food is a major cause of diarrhea, substantially contributing to malnutrition and killing about 2.2 million people each year, most of them children.”
- Gro H. Brundtland
“Organic farming has been shown to provide major benefits for wildlife and the wider environment. The best that can be said about genetically engineered crops is that they will now be monitored to see how much damage they cause.”
- Prince Charles
“There are 70 pesticides that are listed as known or probable carcinogens, based on animal testing. Of those 70, 44 are in use today, and 23 are used on our food.”
- Gina Solomon
“The 10 largest antitrust law firms in the United States have gone into the federal courts charging Monsanto with creating a global conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws, to control the global market in seeds.”
- Jeremy Rifkin
“Every major food company now has an organic division. There's more capital going into organic agriculture than ever before.”
- Michael Pollan
“People are applying the precautionary principle to their own lives by purchasing food that has not been produced by industrial methods. From the simple stance of hazard avoidance, organically produced food is the best option that we have.”
- Dr. Vyvyan Howard
“Back in 1983, the United States government approved the release of the first genetically modified organism. In this case, it was a bacteria that prevents frost on food crops.”
- Jeremy Rifkin