Aborted Fetal Cells Being Used in Making My Food?!

Recently a March 5 press release was sent to me via email and it seemed so far-fetched, I would not have believed it could be true except that the source is Children of God for Life, which I have always believed to be a legitimate organization. (I use Children of God for Life to obtain information on whether a vaccination is based on human cell lines created from aborted babies.) This led me to dig around further instead of deleting that email as one more hoax.

"In a shocking decision delivered Feb 28^th, President Obama’s Security and Exchange Commission ruled that PepsiCo’s use of aborted fetal remains in their research and development agreement with Senomyx to produce flavor enhancers falls under “ordinary business operations”."

Apparently a Shareholder's Resolution was filed in October 2011 that the company “adopt a corporate policy that recognizes human rights and employs ethical standards which do not involve using the remains of aborted human beings in both private and collaborative research and development agreements.”

That doesn't seem real, right?

PepsiCo did not want to adopt such a corporate policy and, it seems, the Security and Exchange Commission has ruled that it does not have to do so.

Wow. Maybe I don't know, but I think there is still a big gulf between common pro-choice opinion and actually supporting using remains of aborted babies to experiment in "super important" things (note my sarcasm) like making our food taste even yummier.

Apparently, PepsiCo partners with Senomyx (see www.cogforlife.org/senomyxalert.htm ), which is a company using human embryonic kidney cell line (HEK-293) to develop flavor enhancers.

Flavor enhancers?

If I understand a simplistic explanation right (and I might not), flavor enhancers are based on neurological responses, not taste responses. So, the food manufacturer wants something that is perceived as sweet or salty without being sweet or salty. This is one way that we can drink zero-calorie drinks or eat zero-calorie foods--which really are rather creepy when I ponder a sustenance that can have zero calories. (There is a chocolate sauce for ice cream that I see at the grocery store and it claims to have zero calories: thick, gooey, sweet chocolate sauce. Ew! What on earth is it made of?)

Somehow, human cells from aborted fetuses are used in the testing of flavor enhancers for desired neurological responses.



These flavor enhancers are listed as "artificial flavors." I happen to note that "artificial flavors" are listed in just about every processed food one can buy for convenient eating.

I've been led to understand that PepsiCo, Nestle, and Kraft Foods use Senomyx for flavor enhancer testing. That covers just about every major brand food you could want to buy in the stores. Here is simply one product list of foods owned by PepsiCo.

This is creepy to me.

This leaves me with many unanswered questions.

I just wanted to alert my blog readers to this strange and alarming news story . . . in case you live under a rock like I do most of the time and usually don't hear about such things! (I was so shocked and scandalized, but when I asked some of my Catholic girlfriends they had heard about this already.)