Food for Thought: Pesticides Poured on Dinner Plates Plants soak
up pesticides. And each year, millions of pounds of pesticides
are poured on our food crops. In the last fifteen years, some of
our food crops have been genetically engineered by chemical
companies to contain new ingredients that enable them to
withstand increasing doses of pesticides, insecticides and other
chemicals. These genetically engineered crops have led to an
increase in overall pesticide use, by 404 million pounds from
the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011, according to
Reuters. That’s a great business model if you are a chemical
company selling pesticides, but what if you are an eater? No
labels were put on these ingredients when they were introduced
into our foods in the 1990s. No amount of washing is going to
remove substances that are embedded in their tissues. Perhaps
that is why these genetically engineered crops are labeled in 60
countries around the world, including all 27 countries in
Europe, Japan, Australia, Rus