New Report Details Harms of Fracking including Asthma, Birth Defects, Cancer
A new report, titled Compendium of Scientific, Medical and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking is the most authoritative study that’s ever been done on fracking and how it is contaminating the air and water – and imperiling the health of millions of us.
Our examination of the peer-reviewed medical and public health literature uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health.”
This report looked at news investigations, government assessments, and more than a thousand peer-reviewed research articles. The study shows that fracking is poisoning our air, contaminating the groundwater, and putting our health of at risk.
Dr. Sandra Steingraber is a biologist and one of the co-authors. She’s been a public health advocate on issues like breast cancer and toxic incinerators. She says that “Fracking is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
Those of us in the public health sector started to realize years ago that there were potential risks, then the industry rolled out faster than we could do our science. Now we see those risks have turned into human harms and people are getting sick. And we in this field have a moral imperative to raise the alarm.” –Dr. Steingraber, Rolling Stone
Fracking is a complicated extraction process with public health hazards at virtually every part of the process. If you want to read it, click here to read the report, and then click the download button to view the PDF.
Residents living near an active fracking site breathe in carcinogens like benzene and formaldehyde. THis leads to an increased risk of asthma and leads to developmental disorders and problems with pregnancies.
Pregnant women have a major risk, not only themselves but they’re carrying a fetus whose cells are multiplying continuously. If those cells get hit by some toxic chemical from fracking, it may not manifest itself for years.” – Dr. Lynn Ringenberg, president-elect of Physicians for Social Responsibility
Fracking sites have caught fire some have even exploded, as happened last month in Belmont County, Ohio. Communities have shown that fracking contaminates underground aquifers with hazardous chemicals. Fracked gas travels through pipelines, and leaks and explosions are now well-documented. Piped gas has to continuously be re-pressurized at compressor stations, and those stations have been documented to emit toxic gases and fine particle matter like methane, benzene, formaldehyde and other known human carcinogens.
Dr. Kathleen Nolan is a co-author of the report. She’s a pediatrician and bioethicist. Dr. Nolan has examined people who have been sickened by fracking. Shedescribes a case of one western Pennsylvania family:
They would see a yellow fog, kind of like a chemical mist coming from the compressor station. Their two youngest children, nine and 11, started having tics where their muscles would go into spasms, those spasms would persist even when they were asleep.”
The Trump administration officially withdrew an Obama-era rule for higher standards regarding the treatment of animals whose meat will be sold under the organic label.
The standards were first created in 2016 under the United States Department of Agriculture. The rules had not been put in place yet. The USDA officially overturned the rule Monday, after delaying its implementation three times.
The rule would have required poultry to be housed in spaces large enough to move freely and fully stretch their wings. Livestock would be required to have some access to outdoor space year round.
The existing robust organic livestock and poultry regulations are effective. The organic industry’s continued growth domestically and globally shows that consumers trust the current approach that balances consumer expectations and the needs of organic producers and handlers.” – Greg Ibach, USDA Marketing and Regulatory Program Undersecretary
At this time animals must be raised without antibiotics or growth hormones, and the animal feed needs to be organic well. Clarity around animal welfare and living conditions is lacking. Many organic hens and cows live in similar conditions as their factory-farmed counterparts, with no room to move and little to no significant outside access. The USDA estimates that half of all organic eggs are produced from hens living in total confinement.
Consumers trust that the Organic seal stands for a meaningful difference in production practices. It makes no sense that the Trump Administration would pursue actions that could damage a marketplace that is giving American farmers a profitable alternative, creating jobs, and improving the economies of our rural areas.” – Organic Trade Association
The proposed rule drew 47,000 comments, with only 28 supporting the withdrawal, according to data compiled by the Organic Trade Association.
This is representative of the influence lobbyists and election money has at the Trump administration’s USDA.” – Mark Kastel, co-director of Cornucopia Institute
Six out of 10 Americans feel that animals used to produce organic food should be raised on farms with higher animal welfare standards. More than half of Americans believe such animals should be allowed time outside and room to move freely.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch Now Twice the Size of Texas
According to a new study, there are more than 79,000 tonnes of ocean plastic and other trash (mostly plastic) all within a 1.6 million square kilometer area of the North Pacific Ocean (600,000 square miles). That’s 16 times larger than previous estimates. That’s twice the size of Texas.
“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” is a collection of garbage located halfway between Hawaii and California. Winds and ocean currents form gyres, think of water spiraling down the drain in a vortex. These gyres draw in litter from around the world. Garbage gets trapped in the gyres and eventually large pieces break down into smaller pieces, which are ingested by marine life. The patch is growing at an alarming rate. The patch is not a solid mass of plastic. It’s not like the news pictures indicate. Some of the trash is easily visible to the naked eye, but the microplastics make up the bulk of the patch. Satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant mountain of garbage. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch looks like a cloudy soup intermixed with larger items, like jugs, fishing gear, and shoes, etc.
Much of the garbage is rather large. “We were surprised by the amount of large plastic objects we encountered,” said Julia Reisser, from the Ocean Cleanup Foundation. “We used to think most of the debris consists of small fragments, but this new analysis shines a new light on the scope of the debris.”
A sample that was collected during a 2015 expedition showed the majority of the garbage is microplastics less than 0.5 cm in diameter. The Ocean Cleanup Foundation launched the expedition to look at the eastern part of the patch. They used 30 vessels and a C-130 Hercules airplane to acquire and catalog more than one million pieces of plastic.
The new study suggests the total amount of microplastics in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch totals more 1.8 trillion pieces, a number that far exceeds earlier estimates.
The study was based on a three-year mapping effort conducted by an international team of scientists affiliated with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, six universities, and an aerial sensor company. The Ocean Cleanup Foundation is a non-profit organization that spearheaded this research, which is the most complete and thorough study ever done on the garbage patch. It was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Scientific Reports.
It’s estimated that 80% of the trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is from North America and Asia. The trash from North America’s coast takes around six years to reach the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, while Japan’s garbage takes about a year.
People have been focusing on microplastics, because it’s likely to be the one to have the most adverse effects on marine life, because of ingestion. But we need to understand the full-size picture of plastics, starting from the tiniest piece to larger debris.” – Laurent Lebreton, lead author of the paper.
When you go out into the middle of the ocean, you find that there’s a lot more fishing gear than was expected.”
A lot of focus has been pushed toward land-based sources of plastic and waste and single-use plastic, and that’s fair, but it’s also good to remind us that that’s not the only source, that fishing and aquaculture and marine-based sources also contribute to the problem.”
Birth Control Pills for Men are Here. What Does that Mean for Reproductive Health?
Effective male birth control might finally be on its way, as scientists from the University of Washington Medical Center and the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, CA prepare to present their experimental oral contraceptive at the Endocrine Society’s 100th meeting in Chicago. The pill, called dimethandrolone undecanoate or DMAU, contains an androgen like testosterone, a progestin and a long-chain fatty acid (undecanoate) that keeps the birth control from clearing the body too quickly. This last component appears to be key to this new contraceptive offering, according to the study’s senior investigator, Stephanie Page, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at the University of Washington.
DMAU is a major step forward in the development of a once-daily ‘male pill’…Many men say they would prefer a daily pill as a reversible contraceptive, rather than long-acting injections or topical gels, which are also in development.”
The sample size for this study was small, with a total of 83 men completing the study. At the highest dose of the contraceptive, participants had significantly lower levels of testosterone and two of the hormones required for sperm production. Previous male birth control efforts showed liver inflammation, but this new effort passed all kidney and liver safety tests.
Or Serious Side Effects?
The pill didn’t result in any liver damage, but all groups taking part in the trial reported weight gain and decreases in HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels. Researchers classified these issues as mild, but these side effects may indicate that men with lower testosterone experience a lower level of health.
In a recent study of over 5,000 Italian men, scientists found that men with lower sperm count were 20 percent more likely to have higher blood pressure, bad cholesterol, and weigh more. The lower sperms levels went hand in hand with decreased testosterone, leaving many men at increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, stroke and decrease muscle and bone health. Dr. Alberto Ferlin, the leader of this study and a professor of endocrinology at the University of Bresci, said, “Infertile men are likely to have important co-existing health problems or risk factors that can impair quality of life and shorten their lives.”
The side effects of this pill don’t appear to be serious, but a universally reported weight gain and increased bad cholesterol is the precursor to more serious health issues later in life. But it remains to be seen if men will be interested in managing their reproductive functions with a daily pill, especially one where it must be taken with food to be effective.
I’m not saying that women need to continue taking on the majority of the faux hormone contraceptive responsibilities…in fact, why hasn’t this happened sooner!! But there are still serious health issues stemming from that that we have yet to properly address in modern medicine. Are we adding on to that dog pile? Then again, by the year 2050, giving birth will likely be an extremely dicey proposition due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The amount of plastic in world’s oceans is expected to triple within a decade according to a new UK government report called the “Foresight Future of the Sea.” The report found that 70% of the litter in our oceans is non-degradable plastic, and the amount of litter in our oceans is projected to increase by a factor of three between 2015 and 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-NidY_8b-0
Both the opportunities and the challenges set out in this important report are global in scale and demand our urgent attention. We must keep pushing our scientific understanding of the oceans, harness new technologies, and support commercial innovation.” –Tariq Ahmad , Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister
Plastic chokes marine wildlife and causes numerous other health issues by exposing marine life to toxic chemicals. We also eat these toxic chemicals when we eat seafood. Around 150 million tons of plastic float in our oceans and eight million more tons of plastic come into the ocean each year, according to the World Economic Forum. It is estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by weight if we don’t change our ways soon.
The UK was one of 193 countries that signed a resolution to eliminate plastic pollution in our oceans. A month later the UK outlawed the manufacture of products containing microbeads.
How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors
The soles of your shoes, the fabric of your clothing, your contact lenses, your chewing gum, your phone, food containers, mattresses – all are made with plastic. It’s everywhere. It’s in our salt and it’s in our water. Plastic may be the most insidious and enduring product we’ve ever produced.
While plastic improves our daily life in countless ways, it is also suffocating our planet and causing catastrophic pollution, much of it hidden and microscopic. Just how bad is it?
Bottled water samples were collected and analyzed by scientists over a ten-month investigation. The study analyzed 259 bottles from 19 locations in nine countries across 11 different brands and found an average of 325 plastic particles for every liter of water being sold.
In one bottle of Nestlé Pure Life, concentrations were as high as 10,000 plastic pieces per litre of water. Of the 259 bottles tested, only 17 were free of plastics, according to the study.” – Drinking Bottled Water Means Drinking Microplastics
This study comes just after a damning study of plastic found in sea salt brands was published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports. Theyanalyzed seventeen commercial salt brands from eight different countries on four continents for plastic particles. They found plastics in all but one brand.
BPA is the starting material for producing polycarbonate plastics. We found out it leaches into the ground and water and causes all kinds of problems. Of course, the manufacturers denied and lied until the mounting evidence was incontrovertible. Then BPS was developed, and was a favored replacement; they thought BPS was more resistant to leaching. But BPS is leaching. Nearly 81 percent of Americans have detectable levels of BPS in their urine. Once it enters the body it can affect cells in ways that parallel BPA.
Microplastics, Endocrine Disrupters, and the Environment
Microplastics are most likely, to varying degrees, already in all of our drinking water and in all of our bodies. Microplastics absorb toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other diseases and release those chemicals into animals that consume it, like fish and humans who eat those fish. Experts say since these fibers have been found in most of our water supply, they have to be in our food as well. From fish to organic vegetables, microplastics are everywhere. At this time, there is no known way to completely filter or contain them.
Plastic waste doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it breaks down into smaller pieces of itself, down to the nanometer scale (one billionth of a meter). Science knows that particles of this size migrate through intestinal walls and travel to lymph nodes, glands, and bodily organs.
Plastic is toxic. It has been proven to cause cancer. Plastic toxicity weakens the immune system, metabolism, and affects people’s skin, weight, behavior, and much more. Plastic particles will leach into food and drink and is also absorbed through skin and lungs. Plastics leach endocrine disruptors, meaning plastic screws up our hormonal system.
Most plastic products, from dishes to plastic bags to food wraps, have been proven to release estrogenic chemicals. These chemicals are endocrine disrupters that act like the sex hormone estrogen, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives. Excessive estrogen, estrogenic chemicals, and other endocrine disruptors have been linked to cancer, fertility problems, male impotence, heart disease, and many other conditions.
Endocrine disruptors (EDs) are chemicals that mimic our own hormones. They bind hormone receptors and disrupt the body’s normal hormonal actions. Endocrine disruptors may cause a more powerful response than the natural hormone would have or a diminished response. In some cases, they cause a completely different response than its natural counterpart would have created. EDs are typically measured in parts per trillion, which is indicative of the fact that very small amounts can have a disrupting effect on us. EDs are very stable. They don’t break down quickly. This is, in large part, why they are in so many products. They also get stored in our fat cells. They tend to stick around for a long time.
The dangers of plastics have not been studied adequately, and the plastic industry has no desire or intention of doing so. A study looking into the effects of BPA on rat testicles found that lipoic acid exerted antioxidant effects that can protect against BPA damage. In the study, BPA was shown to reduce testosterone, testicular weight, protein content, antioxidant activity, and beneficial enzyme activity, while damaging the mitochondria. Fetal exposure to BPA has been associated with obesity, altered reproductive function, and cancers later on in life. BPA was accidentally discovered to be carcinogenic when medical researchers came to find that rats were getting cancer during a study for something else. They found out that it was caused the BPA in the water bottles. And now we are supposed to trust BPA free plastics?
How to Avoid Plastic Toxicity
Many manufacturers have stopped using BPA to harden plastics, replacing it with “BPA-free” alternatives like the most common replacement, BPS (Bisphenol S).
Our research showed that low levels of BPS had a similar impact on the embryo as BPA. In the presence of either BPA or BPS, embryonic development was accelerated. Additionally, BPA caused premature birth.” –Nancy Wayne
You probably can’t avoid plastics. Even if you go to another planet plastic is going to take you there and contaminate that ecosystem. But you can limit plastic consumption and keep your body in a homeostasis state that detoxifies itself at all times. And the good news is that with the right diet and a healthy body, BPA and BPS can be flushed out of your system quickly, some say within 24 hours. A properly working body can process and dispel a lot of toxins. An unhealthy body rids itself of toxins at a slower rate than the toxins are consumed and produced.
Ways to Limit Plastic Contamination & Plastic Use
Keep your home clean, and vacuum regularly
Filter tap water
Always avoid artificial fragrances
Stay away from warm or hot plastics, don’t even breathe near them
Avoid canned foods
Avoid conventional personal care products like shampoos, soaps, moisturizers, makeup
Avoid conventional and big-ag produce (pesticides and herbicides have plastic residues)
Cook your own foods using whole-food ingredients
Stop using plastic straws, even in restaurants
Purchase food, like cereal, pasta, and rice from bulk bins and fill a reusable bag or container
Use paper or your own reusable shopping bags, bulk goods bags, and bring your own mesh produce bags (FYI: I suspect that many paper bags contain BPA and BPS)
No more chewing gum, it’s made of plastic
Buy boxes and glass instead of plastic bottles whenever possible
Use a reusable bottle or mug for your beverages or coffee and soda refills (but you don’t drink that crap, do you?)
Boycott any restaurant that still uses styrofoam – Why is that still a thing?
Use matches or invest in a refillable metal lighter – avoid the plastic disposable ones
Eat real, whole foods – fresh foods equates to less packaging and less previous plastic contact
Don’t use plasticware ever, bring your own if need be
Use cloth diapers – disposable diapers are extremely toxic to the environment and your baby
Did you know that some receipts contain 250 to 1,000 times the amount of BPA typically found in a can of food? If that isn’t scary enough, BPA transfers readily from the receipt to skin and cannot be washed off. Different types of receipts contain varying levels of BPA. If you aren’t sure whether or not a merchant uses BPA in their receipts, either ask directly or let them know early in the transaction that you will not need your receipt. Gas station receipts are particularly notorious for containing huge amounts of BPA.” – Home Maker Chic
How to Detoxify Plastic Byproducts
To eliminate BPS, BPA, and other plastic residues from the body, one must first and foremost, make sure your gut is not leaking! A healthy gut microbiome will breakdown toxins into inert substances. See How To Heal Your Gut for more on that.
The second most important thing you can do is consume lots of salads like these. Incidentally, salads are part of building a healthy gut microbiome. A large salad with 15 different vegetables and herbs will chelate toxic chemicals from the body while providing nutrition and feeding a healthy, diverse microbiome.
Also, eliminate heavy metals and other toxins as well. Toxins tend to disrupt the endocrine system. The endocrine system is your hormonal system (click to learn more), which includes glands like the thyroid, adrenals, and the pancreas. Heavy metal toxicity and other toxins will also inhibit the body’s ability to detoxify other chemicals including plastic residue.
Most people living on a modern, refined diet suffer from candida overgrowth, and consequently, a leaky gut. Ingesting pesticides, GMOs, antibiotics, alcohol, and other toxic foods kill our natural, beneficial gut microbiome. The refined sugars and flours we ingest feed the microbes that survive our toxic lifestyles. These microbes thrive in our toxic bodies because they feed off of simple sugars and weak cells. They also feed off of plastics, heavy metals, and all kinds of toxins. And they are not the microbes that optimize our health. THe best gut bacteria just happen to like the healthiest foods. Nature wouldn’t work if it were any other way.
The diet I recommend may sound extreme. It’s the same diet I advocate for those suffering from cancer, diabetes, depression, any other autoimune disease or infection, or for those who just want to detoxify. If you are sick, no amount of supplements will fix that. But with the right diet, supplements will radically speed up the process of getting well. If you want to live life disease free, save the following articles:
Even if you’re not feeling ill in any way, detoxifying plastic or anything else is done best with raw, fresh vegetables. The right salad will chelate heavy metals, BPAs, BPS, and more, all while replenishing the minerals we need. Garlic, parsley, cilantro, and many other foods show promising chelation properties, but their effects alone are weak. Thr trick is to combine many healthy foods with their many health benefits for a holistic approach. Taking a few cloves of garlic a day will not significantly reduce levels of toxins any more than taking a supplement. In other words, don’t underestimate the importance of the right diet. It must contain a wide variety of fresh, whole foods.
Supplements for BPA and BPS, Heavy Metal Detox, and Other Endocrine Disrupters
Without a proper diet, the right supplements will work, but only to a certain extent, and only for a little while. On the other hand, supplements taken with a healthy diet can radically speed up healing time.
1.) Get thee some probiotics – pronto. I’m not talking celebrity endorsed yogurt here. Chose fermented foods like kimchi, natural sauerkraut, and kefir. A refrigerated, concentrated probiotic supplement helps. Drink kombucha. Bifidobacterium breve and Lactobacillus casei were found to extract BPA from the blood of mammals and were excreted out through the bowels. That is very good news!
Beneficial bacteria strengthen the gut and help break down chemicals like BPA so they can be cleared out. As a bonus, they break down pesticides, another major endocrine-disruptor, and other toxins as well. Probiotics are becoming well known for breaking down endocrine-disruptors and other toxins in the body.
My recommendations (pick one depending on the budget):
Syntol AMD (powerful probiotic with prebiotics and enzymes)
Chelators are small molecules that bind very tightly to metal ions. Activated charcoal is proven to attach to heavy metals including beneficial macrominerals, so mineral supplementation is recommended when consuming activated charcoal, though this can be mitigated with a healthy diet like as mentioned above.
Activated charcoal is highly negatively charged. It seems to bind with positively charged particles. Pathogens typically have a high positive charge associated with them, and so do plastics. Activated charcoal filters have shown to remove BPA from water, but I don’t see any research on its ability to filter BPA from the body, but I think it works.
Like activated charcoal, bentonite clay is negatively charged. Unlike charcoal, bentonite clay provides minerals and other nutrients to the body while it sucks out toxins, as it helps repair the intestinal tract.
Another chelator, and much more. Any self-respecting eco-friendly health-nut has a bag of food-grade DE somewhere. Take it with water to kill pathogens in your gut, and use it outside or indoors for pest control.
Food grade DE is approximately 80-85% silica. Life cannot exist without silica. Most people are silica-deficient.
Chlorella has a well-documented history of helping remove heavy metals and other toxins like dioxin from the body expeditiously. Its high concentration of chlorophyll and fiber seems to be a big part of its exceptional detox benefits. It’s almost certain, considering the mechanism, that Chlorella (and spirulina) help pull out BPAs and other plastic residue.
Chlorella is a good source of protein, GLA, and phytochemicals, B12, B2, B3, iron, magnesium, Beta Carotene, and a bunch of powerful phytochemicals. Chlorella stimulates the growth of friendly bacteria. Furthermore, chlorella’s cell walls act to absorb toxic compounds within the intestines, restoring proper gastrointestinal pH and helping to promote normal peristalsis. And it is another chelator, as it is also very negatively charged, attracting positively charged molecules.
Phytochemicals found within Chlorella pyrenoidosa support the complex network of enzymatic reactions that drive the human detoxification system. This detoxification network involves the Phase I and Phase II enzymatic reactions that take place in nearly all cells in the body, though they are concentrated in the liver cells. Phase I detoxification reactions change non-polar chemicals that are not water-soluble into relatively polar, water-soluble compounds. The Phase I process can result in the formation of reactive chemicals that are typically more toxic than the original compounds. Phase II detoxification is necessary therefore to add chemical groups to the toxic intermediates to make them water-soluble so that they may easily be excreted via urine and/or feces. Phase I and Phase II detoxification pathways must remain functional for the removal of toxins from the body. This research focuses specifically on the Chlorella pyrenoidosa species of green algae recognized for its detoxification properties. – King Hardt Academy
Chlorella is green algae, but spirulina is more of a blue-green in color. These two algae have a lot in common. Chlorella’s green hue demonstrates that it’s richer in chlorophyll than spirulina, and chlorella is said to have stronger detoxification properties. But spirulina is an even better source of protein, and it offers iron, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, calcium, potassium, zinc, and a host of microminerals.
Digestive enzymes break down food. Metabolic enzymes, also known as systemic enzymes, break down foreign proteins, fibrin, and other toxins, and they clean the blood of impurities. Consider the ramifications of this. Probiotics and enzymes together help breakdown nearly everything in the gut that doesn’t belong. Read more about systemic enzymes here.
Diindolylmethane (DIM) is naturally present in cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. It helps metabolize estrogens and hormone-disrupting estrogen mimics. Indolplex is a dietary supplement that contains a patented, bioavailable form of diindolylmethane.
Glucuronidation is a major metabolic reaction, and mainly takes place in the liver, for disposal of a variety of endogenous (such as TH) and exogenous substrates (such as PCBs).
Calcium glucarate is naturally found in fruits and vegetables, especially cruciferous vegetables. Calcium glucarate helps rid the body of toxins and excess hormones while it protects our cells from carcinogens.
My family and I do avoid it as often as we can. Years ago, I spent considerable time trying to completely eliminate plastic from my life. I found that my overall environmental footprint went up a little. Plastics make things so easy and convenient that sometimes it just doesn’t make any sense to do without it. I’m careful, but plastics don’t scare me. The body can handle a remarkable toxic load when the diet is right. I trust my diet to eliminate the BPA, BPS, and whatever else gets in there that shouldn’t be.
That said, I cannot wait for the day when our plastics come from hemp or some other sustainable alternative. There are much better options available to us if we can just get out from under this petroleum-based economy.
Non-browning Arctic Apple Set For “Aggressive Expansion” After Positive U.S. Test Run
The Arctic Apple was developed by Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF) and has been marketed in several of Midwest locations as part of a promotion test. The apples have been sliced and marketed in 10-ounce grab-and-go bags which were a hit with customers. Observing the “amazing” results of the test run in U.S. markets, the non-browning Arctic Apple is slated for “aggressive expansion.” It will be some time before the item is available in Canada.
We saw robust, positive results. The data was amazing. When people had a chance to see the apple and experience it and realize how fantastic it is, I think that that’s a real game changer. That’s what’s allowed us to move forward very aggressively with a lot of confidence.” Neal Carter, founder, told CBC Daybreak South host Chris Walker
Growers and GMO opponents have repeatedly raised concerns regarding genetically engineered plants like the apple and the complex technology supporting it, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Health Canada have both approved the Arctic Apple for sale.
Carter said customer polls performed in six store locations led to 92 percent of consumers stating they’d be quite likely or extremely likely to purchase the non-browning apples later on.
In addition, he said they saw practically no complaint concerning the genetic alteration of the food, which he found promising in light of the company’s expansion plans. “Our business model has us planting trees very aggressively,” Carter stated.
We understand that there’s a segment out there that chooses not to buy biotech and that’s fine, that’s their choice,” said Carter. “But it looks to us that there’s an awful lot of people that think this product is exciting and they’re really keen to try it and really keen to buy it.”
Carter has been working to create the Arctic apple since 1996. In 2015, his company was bought by Intrexon Corporation — a U.S. biotech company — that is now funding the planting of new trees. By 2022, he anticipates the firm will have more than 1,200 hectares planted in Washington state and will probably be developing more non-browning apples compared to all the apples grown in the Okanagan Valley.
