From Moms Across America
For millions of underserved children, school meals are the only meals they consume. School lunches contain many GM crop ingredients such as corn, soy, and sugar from sugar beets and are processed with GM oils such as canola and soybean oil. Most genetically modified crops are engineered to withstand toxic chemicals such as glyphosate, glufosinate, dicamba, and many more harmful chemicals.
The wheat, peas, beans, oats, and other grain ingredients found in school lunches, such as in hot dog and burger buns, bread crumb coating, pasta, pizza crusts, etc., are primarily derived from conventional crops that are often sprayed with glyphosate as a drying agent before harvest—this practice results in high levels of glyphosate residues in the foods. Thousands of food samples have been tested for glyphosate; we are unaware of such testing on school lunches.
The frequent use of these chemicals, for instance, 280 million pounds of glyphosate herbicides are used each year in the United States, has been shown to kill the microorganisms in the soil that are critical for soil health. Glyphosate also traps many minerals, depleting the soil of essential nutrients. Therefore, an increasing amount of fertilizers are required to grow crops—over 500 million pounds Of fertilizers were reported to be used in 2008. Many fertilizers are derived from manure from animals fed genetically modified grains sprayed with glyphosate and other petrochemicals. Studies have shown that these petrochemicals contain heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, barium, and aluminum. The chemical residues, especially glyphosate, do not wash off. The heavy metals in the fertilizer leach into the soil, are taken up into the crop, and are found in wheat, corn, or soy food ingredients.
