GMO OMG

This is honestly one of the stupidest documentaries I've seen recently.

The reporter makes it very clear that he doesn't understand the difference between GMO and organic foods, which is quite worrying when he is presenting his view on GM foods. He also seems to think that if a fish eats GM soy in a fish pellet then the fish itself is genetically modified.

He constantly tells us that there are no peer reviewed studies on the safety of GMO foods - although there are, in fact, over 2,000 peer reviewed studies... none of which have found any evidence that GMOs are harmful in anyway to humans.

We are told that modifying crops is something we have never done before and the reporter asks a farmer what he thinks God would make of this "new" technology. Leaving aside the God aspect, modifying food is nothing new at all - humans have been doing it since the beginning of agriculture. The only thing that is new is the techniques being used.

At one point we are told of a single study that claims organic farming methods can produce higher crop yields than conventional methods, despite this result being contrary to every other piece of research and despite organic not being the same as GMO.

This "documentary" is very one-sided and ignores great swathes of evidence. It's said that if all the world's experts agree on a topic then a layman should probably take their word for it. In the case of GMOs health groups across the world agree that GMOs are safe to eat and safe for the environment - this documentary is simple scaremongering.

Jeremy Seifert's documentary GMO OMG has a strong approach to its subject matter, stringing along a thesis of a father's concern for the health and wellbeing of his two young children. Seifert explains his son's love for collecting seeds and his fascination that something so big and impacting on a person's life emerges from something so tiny. Seifert then states how he went on to learn about genetically- modified organisms (GMOs), which are manipulations to agriculture in order to increase the longevity and sustainability of crops. Immediately, he breaks down the information to two key types of GMOs, which are "pesticide producers" and "herbicide resistors." The former occurs when a crop is injected with a special chemical that allows it to produce a toxin to kill off invasive insects, while the former occurs when a crop is made immune to weed killer, allowing it to be entirely submerged in widely-distributed fertilizer and still remain unharmed.

This prompts concern for Seifert as a father and, well, a consumer, as he begins to question the contents of everything he is eating. Because the presence and use of GMOs need not be labeled on food in America, it brings question as to whether or not the common phrase of "all natural" holds any leverage. On top of that, what are the effects of GMOs on the human body in the long run? If they are safe and harmless, what's the issue in labeling them? Have we all become involuntary participants in a large, global experiment at the expense of humongous seed corporations?

Such questions are either directly or indirectly peddled by the documentary, and its big point of attack goes in the direction of Monsanto, one of the largest seed/chemical manufacturers in the world. Monsanto kickstarts a lot of farms and agriculture by forcing farmers to trade their natural seeds in order to use the exclusive Monsanto seeds. The company made headlines following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, when it sent over four-hundred tons of seeds to their community, gifting the seeds and allowing them to use them only if the country agreed to stop using their own natural seed. The Haitian community saw this as a backhanded attempt at kindness, as the natural seed holds immense importance in the country, and Monsanto's genetically-modified seed seemed far less attractive.

Seifert persists on to show the impact of Monsanto, through colorful, legible graphs, along with batting off startling statistics. For one, eighty perfect of all processed foods contain GMOs, with eight-five and ninety-one percent of corn and soy being genetically-modified as well. About one-hundred and sixty-five acres in the United States contain genetically-modified crops with about four-hundred and twenty acres housing them all over the world. One of the most alarming things presented in the film is how farms with non-GMO crops are affected negatively by those bearing GMOs. When crops are injected with special chemicals, they shed or bear the chemicals, and when the wind blows, spread the chemicals to other locations. Non-GMO farms in close proximity with GMO farms are often affected by the latter's unintentional spread of chemicals, allowing tests for the quality of the crops to become skewed, which are then met with repercussions from Monsanto's legal team.

Seifert presents all of this to us in a way that, while sometimes too hardened on statistical data, is digestible and easy to follow, especially given the fact that, judging to the beginning of the film, few know what GMOs are and where they can be found. Whether you support the use of genetically-modified organisms and see no harm in it, or find they're an abhorrent route for mankind to make an attempt to "play God," as Seifert bills it in the film, I don't see a harm in wanting to know the health effects of something found in an overwhelming majority of the foods we eat. This is part of the reason I enjoy Seifert's approach to the subject matter, as it forms a thoughtful outline and conversation.

What I didn't enjoy, however, was Seifert's rapid descent into negativity over GMOs, which seemed to happen all too quickly. From the beginning, we see a concerned father wanting to get to the bottom of what's in his food. By the half hour mark, we can see Seifert has clearly taken the pathway to being against the use of GMOs, which is fine if the film had started out by taking that stance rather than trying to travel down the middle of the road. Once Seifert starts digging into the potential harms of GMOs, he never revisits or adheres to what one thought he would in the beginning of the film, which is a fair analysis of both sides. In an age where prolific fact-checking has made every documentary at least questionably authentic, GMO OMG would've benefited from an equal examination not only for intellectual purposes but for consistency purposes as well.

Yet, it's sophomoric to dismiss GMO OMG has a film with no substance or thought-provoking questions whatsoever. Seifert gets almost philosophical and contemplative when he talks about the pervasive patenting and trademarking of seeds and wildlife that is occurring with big seed corporations like Monsanto, Du Point, and Syngenta, saying these companies are in a "race to own the building blocks of life." He questions the ethical behavior of corporations - in a way that's very popular right now - about their evasive ways to avoid questioning on the GMOs used in their products in a way that would lead any reasonable person to assume there is something to hide. The only detractor to GMO OMG is that Seifert picks a side far too easily and, in turn, compromises hope for a mostly-unbiased analysis.

Directed by: Jeremy Seifert.

It took all of 10 minutes for me to start asking "is he going to present any facts, or will this be entirely him making assumptions?" Didn't take long after that for me to start laughing at it. And not much longer after that i just gave up on it. If you're already anti-GMO you'll probably really enjoy this. If you're hoping for information, on the other hand, don't waste your time. He makes claims about GMOs being bad for you, while also saying there's no credible data about GMOs. What? How does that work? The opening of the movie set the tone perfectly: very biased parents trying to protect their kids from all chemical threats. It's one thing if you actually understand what you're afraid of, but it's another to make a documentary claiming that all GMOs are bad when you don't know what your dealing with. At one point, he says he's ready for a fist fight... hopefully he meant to fight off angry viewers who wasted money on this fact deficient propaganda film.

It tires. It kind of does.

You see, Big Bird is conspiring against us. I mean, Big Oil. I mean, Big Pharma. I mean, Big Agro. No, no. It really is Bid Bird. It's out to get you.

The propaganda piece that is this "documentary" documents nothing but the collective hallucinations of a sector of the first-world population.

They have never been hungry. They don't have any comprehension of what it means to be hungry, really hungry, the kind of hunger that bends you over. The kind of hunger that starts when you have eaten absolutely nothing for three or four days.

They have only seen hungry children on TV, "brown" children, always safely far, far away from them. They have never seen their own children be hungry, much less, die of hunger.

But they feel entitled to play with their food and yours. And to make ugly faces and reject this and that from their diet because of their political beliefs. They are picky. They are also entitled to criminalize other people's diets and to fabricate stories about food they don't approve of. They are also entitled to forbid you from eating it.

There is no information in this documentary. You will only learn about a delusion. A delusion, by the way, that is killing millions of people every year. Look up vitamin A deficiencies, for example. It's perverse. You and I can protect ourselves from these people. The poor of the world can't.

OOOOO--WHEE! There are just some very passionate reviewers around here. I gave this one a good 24 hours to simmer before writing this. First off, I'm going to review the documentary, not do what most of the 1-star reviewers do and spout off about how GMO fears are all a hoax. My rating of GMO OMG is low because I felt our friendly narrator here exploited his children to tell his story. Seifert is new to making documentaries and while he creates some pretty pictures, they're a little too sentimental for his narrative. He's brave for taking on this subject and one can wonder if all these 1-star reviews are not part of some corporate public relations department's retaliation.

My soap box is: that if GMOs are so safe, then what's the big deal about labeling them? Labels give people the CHOICE to decide what they put in their bodies. (Though now labels don't really even matter because GMOs are in everything, so, moving on…)