My Latest Anti-Anti-Transgenics Tirade

'They're invading us.'

These very sincere folks were demonstrating on Ave. Septima today against transgenic seeds, which they claim are destroying everything from Colombia's seed diversity to everybody's health.

The fear of transgenic organisms and demonization of Monsanto Corporation have become deep-rooted, self-perpetuation psychosis which is going to be with us for a long, long time.

But the specific criticisms of transgenics seem completely baseless. I asked several of today's demonstrators why they opposed transgenics. 'They're damaging our health,' they told me; added another 'We're being invaded,' and 'They're manipulating our food.'

'Because of love for life.'

Except that humans have been manipulating their food genetically for at least the past 10,000 years, since agriculture began. For hundreds of thousands of years before that, nature was manipulating our food thru evolution and random genetic mutations.

Transgenic methods are faster, more dramatic and less random - but not fundamentally different.

Do transgenic techniques have dangers? Sure, just like anything else, altho they're far outweighed by the technique's potential benefits for humans and the environment. And what the protesters were objecting to: coporate agriculture, loss of traditional biodiversity and the proliferation of unhealthy, processed foods, aren't caused by transgenics but by wider economic trends like globalization, monoculture agriculture and mass marketing. Transgenic crops may have accelerated those trends, but that's all.

Free seeds now!

As for transgenic foods infiltrating your genes and creating a third eye sprout on your forehead - that's impossible. A transgenic food's genes get digested your stomach, like all proteins, and broken down into their basic building blocks. If transgenics did cause health damage, don't you think that lawsuit-happy North Americans, who've been eating transgenics for decades, somebody, at least once, would have been able to prove some harm? But they haven't.

Eating ice cream. Transgenic or not,
too much junk food is bad for you.

Transgenic crops do have environmental impacts - but many of them are positive. For example, some insects have recently begun to develop resistance to Monsanto's BT crops - and that's causing farmers to return to using old fashioned pesticides. Those pesticides are bad for the land, rivers, ocean and plants and animals, including people.

Tragically, the U.S. and other parts of the world are experiencing a wave of extintions: Bats, honeybees and many kinds of amphibians are going fast - and they're only the ones we've noticed. In the bees' case, at least, pesticides are a leading suspect.

'Monsanto out of Colombia and the planet.'

Certainly, loss of seed biodiversity and junk food are real problems - but focusing on transgenics as the villains just hides the true, fundamental threats.

But transgenics make a wonderful enemy because the concept is new and strange and in Monsanto opponents have a great big corporate villain with a strange-sounding name to attack.

By groundlessly attacking transgenics, activists are depriving many millions of people, including perhaps malnourished children in Colombia's El Choco Department, of cheaper and sometimes healthier food. Take, in particular, the insane campaign against golden rice, a transgenic seed fortified with vitamin A, which has the potential to save the lives of millions poorly-nourished children the world over - if only anti-transgenics activists quit standing between kids and their health. Opponents of Golden Rice have blood on their hands, just as surely as do the paranoics who oppose a life-saving vaccination.

'Yankee corn out of Colombia'

But, to me, the most tragic part of this is that intstead of fighting a life-saving solution, these activists could instead be fighting against the the real threats to the environment and our health which are all around us - but go ignored because their not so simplistic and exciting as fighting an imaginay boogeyman.

Can anybody say air pollution? Deforestation? Fast food and sedentarianism? Smoking? Climate change? Malaria?

Danger - Monsanto.

'Out with Monsanto.'

Traditional seeds. 'Seeds are the real gold in life.'

'Do you know that your food could be poisoned?'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

When the 'Solution' Becomes the Problem

When the city introduced those blue SITP buses last year they were to be the solution to Bogotá's chaotic, inefficient and very polluting public bus system - and they may yet be. But so far they aren't showing it.

Most of the SITP buses travel empty, or nearly so. That was supposed to be a start-up problem - except that after months of operation, their ridership has approved little.

But, at least, officialdom promised us, these new buses wouldn't ignore emissions laws, as the regular buses and TransMilenio buses so flagrantly do.

'Really, honestly, cross our hearts, we're actually enforce the environmental laws this time.'

Except that, as these photos show, they haven't.



Anybody in there?

I can see right thru you.

The motor's on, but nobody's home.

Bogotá's ancient, dirty and chaotic private bus fleet certainly needs replacing - but are more polluting buses, which are also usually empty, the solution?

By Mike Ceaser, of

Bogotá Bike Tours

Importing the American Way of Death

Future fat? Young women leave a Bogotá McDonald's
with ice cream cones. 

This NY Times story has got to be one of the most startling (and ignored) pieces of news reported in recent years: Immigrants to the United States, despite better education, nutrition and health care, are dying younger and suffering more chronic diseases than did their parents and grandparents back home, mostly in Latin America.

That's because, along with the benefits they find in the U.S., these immigrants also adopt U.S. habits, including too much food, especially fatty foods, and a sedentary lifestyle. The predictable results include obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Celebrating American culture! Lots of Dunkin' Donuts in
Bogotá, too. 

So, will somebody please explain to me why Colombians (and others across the planet) are embracing this deadly American lifestyle?

(Hint: Maybe because corporations make huge profits from it.)

The recent book 'Salt Sugar Fat,' by Michael Moss, documented how big corporations aggressively market unhealthy foods to kids and adults with few scruples. Why should we expect companies to behave any better in Colombia?

On the path to the American Way, forget traditional
fruit markets like Paloquemao....

United States fast food chains such as McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts are invading Colombia, hand in hand with sugary drink makers Coca Cola and Pepsi, promoting chronic diseases which rob years from people's lives. El Tiempo editorialized last month that more than half of Colombians are overweight or obese. (In contrast, one of every six children under age five and one out of every six pregnant women is anemic, numbers which are particularly high in rural areas.) Convenience stores, like the Oxxos colonizing Bogotá, hawking unhealthy processed foods, are trying to drive out traditional mom-and-pop stores which feature breads, fruits and vegetables.

...and head to processed, fat-packed products at chain stores. 

Already, several Latin American countries, including Chile, Argentina and Mexico, are among the world leaders in per-capita cola consumption. Colombians consume about 50 liters per capita per year - just a little more than one third of the 130 liters an average Argentinian drinks - but you can be sure that the soft drink companies are doing their best to make Colombians drink more sugar.

The chronic diseases caused by overeating create huge costs for health care systems and are compounded by trends toward sedentarism, fueled by increasing car use.

These two people just bought churros -
deep fried fat in batter. 

El Tiempo reports that in 2009 Colombia's Congress passed a law intended to combat the country's increasing junk-foodedness, but that it was never regulated or enforced.

Peru recently passed such a law, which restricts advertising to children and the sale of unhealthy foods in kiosks. The law is, naturally, opposed by stores and advertisers, which make lots of money by pushing harmful stuff onto children. But, incredibly, a Catholic Church leader also attacked the new law as a restriction of freedom and parental authority. Strange, isn't it, for a church that's so eager to prohibit so many other things. Or is it that abortion, euthenasia and gay marriage are moral issues, but child obesity and heart attacks are not?

In practice, the avalanche of junk food advertising just leaves both kids and parents at the mercy of predatory corporations.

Vitamins! But the churros seller has the nerve to label their junk food 'nutritional.'

Another goal of the American way of death is to stamp out low-profit habits such as bicycling... 

and walking...

and replace them with the profitable car driving. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Do Edible Ants Hold The Answer?

Tourists buy hormigas culonas
near Plaza Bolivar today.

Planet Earth is facing a looming food crisis, not only because the number of humans is increasing, but even more because more and more of those humans want to eat meat, which requires lots of land and resources.

Fortunately, the Food and Agriculture has a solution: Eat Insects!

Even better, Colombians are already eating ants, called hormigas culonas, which are in season right now.



Mouth watering? Hormigas culonas come roasted and salted.



Insect eating isn't as crazy at it sounds. Cultures all over the world eat all sorts of insects, with no apparent harm. The hormigas culonas (lliterally, big butt ants), a traditional food of indigenous people near the Venezuelan border, come streaming out of their nests this time of year and are caught in nets strung in trees. There's apparently little harm done to the ant colonies, since the insects streaming out are males, whose only function is to reproduce and establish new colonies. As long as just a few get thru, the species reproduces itself.

Edible ants for sale.

Of course, today ants are only a novelty food in Colombia. But there are good reasons why ants, grasshoppers and even insect pupae could be an important part of the human diet. They grow quickly, occupy little space and provide lots of protein, nutrients and other stuff.

More importantly, insects are much more productive than vertebrates in turning feed into meat. For each ten kilograms of feed a cow eats it produces only one kilogram of cow. Because an insect is cold blooded, it requires much less energy to maintain itself. As a result, an insect produces about eight times more 'meat' per amount of feed than a cow does. (Poultry are more efficient than cows and pigs, but less than insects.) Best of all, you can eat a whole insect, including usually its exoskeleton - but just try biting thru a cow's backbone.

The big-butt ants are supposed to be aphrodisiac.

Insect farming also has the benefit of reducing concerns about animal suffering, since insects are presumably less intelligent and sensitive than than mammals. And insects could easily be farmed at home, in small areas, reducing deforestation impacts.

Does the idea of eating insects seem gross? That's strange, since crustacean delicacies like shrimp, crab and

lobster are taxonomically speaking just marine insects.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Legacy of Rogelio Salmona

The entrance to the Archivo Nacional, just south of La Candelaria, one of Rogelio Salmona's many works in Bogotá.

Pedestrians walk along Jimenez Ave., the Eje Ambiental,
designed by Rogelio Salmona but never completed
and now sadly neglected. 

Rogelio Salmona is unquestionably Colombia's most famous architect of recent times. Born in 1929 in Paris, the son of French and Spanish Jewish parents, Salmona's family moved to Bogotá in 1934. He grew up in the Teusaquillo neighborhood, and after the Bogotazo violence returned to France to work for years with famed architect Le Corbusier.

Returning to Colombia in 1957, Salmona taught in the Universidad de los Andes and designed many buildings and other structures which have become landmarks, mostly in Bogotá, but also scattered across Colombia.

Salmona's works are known for their brickwork, their curves and for being open to and integrated into their surrounding environments. With their quiet pools and interior patios, they seem to bring the outdoors inside. Those characteristics also show the deep influence of Arab/Moslem architecture in Salmona's style.

The Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Center in La Candelaria. The building was designed by Salmona and built by the Mexican government in honor of the Nobel-Prize winning novelist, but contains nothing about the writer. 

Las Torres del Parque, behind Bogotá's bullfighting stadium. The complex curvers around the stadium, and was supposed to house people of all classes, but now seems to be inhabited by the wealthy. Salmona lived in one of the towers during his final decades. 

The Jorge Eliecer Gaitan house-museum, which has never been completed. 

A view of the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco and its contiguous park, which forms part of the Parque Simon Bolivar. 

Visitors cross bridges in the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

A pathway to the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Pools and pathways in the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Pools of water at the entrance to the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Pools and bridges at the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio Barco.

Entrance to the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus. 

Brickwork on the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus

A pool in the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus

Students relax in the Postgraduate Social Sciences Building on the National University's Bogotá campus

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours