Astonishing it is that one of the greatest dangers known to mankind has been overlooked as the world debates issues that pale by comparison.

Not war, not health care, not the economy are anywhere nearly as acute a concern as the simple, startling fact that a handful of major global corporations have all but taken control of the world's food supply and are doing so not only through massive "factory farming" and an outrageous overuse of chemicals but also by genetically engineering seeds that produce altered crops with unknown health hazards.

This is a huge issue and can largely be tracked to quiet organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation -- which has funded much of the research sparking global agricultural trends. Some see it as a push for a single global superstructure and new world order. In the wrong hands, it could pose yet greater hazards [see previous article].

Ironically, the world's seed is now largely in the hands of giant global chemical companies infamous, as author F. William Engdahl points out, for creating serious toxic contamination issues in the past -- Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and DuPont.

By 2002, Monsanto and Pioneer-HiBred of Dupont had controlled sixty percent of the U.S. corn and soybean seed markets -- which consisted almost entirely of seeds that had been genetically modified, reports Engdahl.

Incredibly, other nations that have banned such seeds have been pressured by the U.S. government to yield and products on the grocery shelf do not have to bear a label that they are made of genetically-altered food -- which in some cases has been linked by researchers to cancer and in others to strange and serious health problems in farm animals.

The implications of new technologies "allow three or four private multi-national seed companies to dictate terms to world farmers for their seed," writes the author in Seeds of Destruction, pointing out that gene-altered seeds often are fashioned so that they produce plants that do not then create their own new seeds -- forcing the farmer to buy new seed from the corporation every year. The plants are also engineered to withstand increased use of herbicides sold by the same companies.

Some geneticists are meddling with peas, tomatoes, peppers, wheat, rice, or corn to alter them such that "in one broad, brazen stroke of his hand, man will have irretrievable broken the plant-to-seed-to-plant-to-seed cycle, the cycle that supports most life on the planet," as one critic put it.

By 2004, more than 85 percent of all soybeans planted in the U.S. were genetically modified, and 45 percent of corn -- figures that are almost certainly higher today.

"Corn and soybeans constituted the most important animal feed in U.S. agricultural, which meant that nearly the entire meat production of the nation as well as its meat exports had been fed on genetically modified animal feed,"  Engdahl writes. "Few Americans had a clue as to what they were eating. No one bothered to tell them, least of all the government agencies entrusted with a mandate to protect citizens' health and welfare."

Studies showing adverse effects have been quashed despite signs of trouble. Toxins used in 25 percent of modified crops were found to be harmful to mice, butterflies, beetles, weevils, and lacewings -- perhaps too accounting for the disappearance of bees and other animals -- while a study in Russia indicated that half the offspring of rats fed on genetically-modified soybean diets died in the first three weeks of life.

Genetically-modified ingredients are now in most processed and fast foods and everyday items such as milk and popcorn.

The proliferation has continued under U.S. presidents from both major political parties and gained special momentum under the first President George Bush.

Some trace the trend not only to genetic engineering pioneered by Rockefeller-funded laboratories, but also to a memorandum penned by Rockefeller-protégé and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who in April of 1974 wrote what was entitled "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests."

Known also as National Security Study Memorandum 200, or "NSSM 200," the memo -- kept secret for fifteen years (until organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church forced its declassification) -- was commissioned by Nixon on the recommendation of John D. Rockefeller III and made official policy by President Gerald Ford.

"By the early years of the new century, it was clear that no more than four giant chemical multinational companies had emerged as global players in the game to control patents on the very basic food products that most people in the world depend for their daily nutrition -- corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, even vegetables and fruits and cotton -- as well as new strains of disease-resistant poultry genetically-modified to allegedly resist the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, or even genetically altered pigs and cattle," writes the author.

"Three of the four private companies had decades-long ties to Pentagon chemical warfare research."

Certainly, no one has accused any company of intentionally harming the public. The concern: that the reach for profits has run roughshod over health concerns and has destroyed small farms -- so important to American spirituality at its founding -- while the incredible concentration of agribusiness in the hands of a dozen or less corporations could allow the future take over by a global entity bent on using food was a "weapon" or means of control. That the Rockefellers have long advocated population control comes as little solace.

And so with prayer do we discern -- what is a real concern, what is paranoid, and especially, these days, what we should buy at the supermarket.