GMO A GO-GO!

The above was received by email on 5 January 2014

TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP, GMOs AND THE HORRORS SLOWLY EMERGE FROM THE SHADOWS!

 From Nation of Change 12 OCTOBER 2013

From the Experimental GMO Fields of Kauai to the TPP: Connecting the Dots

By Andrea Brower

Much attention has been turned in recent months to the fact that the agro-chemical/GMO industry -- corporate giants Dow, Pioneer DuPont, Syngenta, Monsanto, BASF -- have been using Hawaii since the 1990s as one of their main testing grounds for experiments engineering new pesticide-crop combos. On the "Garden Island" of Kauai, the industry controls over 15,000 acres of prime agricultural land, which they drench with over 17 tons of restricted-use pesticides each year, and likely at least five times that amount in non-restricted pesticides that may be equally as harmful (such as glyphosate).

Because genetically engineered seeds are most typically designed to be used in conjunction with specific pesticides, the development of new GE crops (or at least the types the industry is choosing to develop) requires repeated applications of these chemicals and their mixing into new toxic cocktails with unknown consequences. From a lawsuit, we know that Pioneer DuPont alone has used 90 pesticide formulations with 63 active ingredients in the past 6 years. They apply these pesticides around 250 (sometimes 300) days each year, with 10-16 applications per day on average. The amount of pesticides used on the island by these operations makes the corn fields in Kansas look organic.
Pesticides are sprayed next to schools, hospitals, neighborhoods and major waterways, with zero buffer zone and zero public knowledge of what is being sprayed and when it will happen. Preliminary evidence suggests that living in the shadow of these companies may be causing alarming rates of rare birth defects and cancers. Residents' complaints of asthma, skin rashes, nose bleeds and migraines are common. There have been several incidents of groups of students at a neighboring school collapsing and falling ill, and a reported eleven teachers have had to leave the small school in the past few years due to health concerns. While they are spending millions marketing themselves as "good neighbors," the chemical companies are doing everything they can to fight even the most basic pesticide disclosure and small buffer zones around schools.

The TPP.

At the international level, through the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) these same chemical corporations are seeking to lock us in to arrangements that guarantee their profit interests will not be impeded by pesky democratic governments protecting people's health or other common interests. The TPP is a highly secretive international agreement being negotiated under the pretext of "trade" between twelve Asian and Pacific Rim countries, including the United States. If passed, it will amount to perhaps the biggest corporate power-grab in history, putting the rights of corporations above those of elected governments and sovereign nations.

Under the cryptic title of "Investor State Dispute Settlement" (ISDS), foreign corporations could challenge national and local laws and regulations that undermine their expected profits, holding tax-payers liable for these losses. Challenges could be brought for everything from attempts to regulate pesticide use to health warnings on cigarettes. Governments would be tried in private offshore tribunals that lack transparency and due process.

Where they already exist, these private tribunals routinely put the economic interests of corporations ahead of the rights of people and governments. Under NAFTA's ISDS provisions the Mexican government was sued by three separate corporations for their tax on High Fructose Corn Syrup, and forced to pay nearly $170 million USD. The highest monetary award in the history of ISDS was ruled on last year when Ecuador was ordered to pay $1.77 billion to Occidental Petroleum Corp for terminating their oil contract.

Like preceding "free-trade" agreements, the TPP will lower environmental and labor protections, weaken biosecurity and food safety efforts, encourage a "race-to-the bottom" in agricultural production, cripple local food economies, lead to further corporate consolidation in all parts of the food chain, and threaten indigenous rights to land and resources. Most fundamentally, the TPP will radically undermine people's ability to participate in defining what kind of future they want. While we can't know the exact details of the TPP because it is being negotiated in secret, what is certain is that it is advancing a food future designed by Monstanto, DuPont, Syngenta and the rest of the agribusiness giants.

Connecting the dots.

What is the logic that is driving a corporate food system forward? How has it become acceptable to allow the world's largest chemical manufacturers to experiment with pesticide cocktails next to schools, while at the same time giving these corporations more power to sue democratic governments attempting to protect people's most basic rights? When we already have all the technology and agricultural knowledge that we need to be feeding every person on the planet sustainably, why do we seem to be choosing paths that are remarkably undemocratic, ecologically and socially destructive?
It is true that money in politics, the "revolving door" in government, corporate media and lack of general public awareness all play a role in promoting a food system that serves the interests of the few over the many. But more fundamentally, we need to pay attention to the driving logics behind a food system in which meeting human needs is obviously not the priority.

Centuries in the making and decades in the congealing (thank you Reaganomics), our corporate food system is the result of subjecting food and agriculture to the logics of privatization, commodification, and the competitive accumulation of wealth at all expense. In other words, food and agriculture have increasingly been turned into a domain for money to make more money. While the complexity and detail of this are a bit much for an already-too-long blog post, some basic points are worth mentioning:

Free monopoly markets.

Not by accident, "free market" policies have facilitated a "foodopoly" system, where a handful of agro-food corporations stand between growers and consumers. Today, 20 food corporations produce most of the food eaten by Americans, including organic brands, and four retail chains control over half of all grocery sales. Their power has been facilitated by the TPP's predecessors, and because of their power they sit in the negotiating room for the TPP.

Monopolies always need more money to win the game. Everyone else pays.

Corporations have a single structural mandate -- to make profit for their shareholders. To make profit, agro-food corporations must relentlessly grow, seek new markets, and drive down costs by exploiting people and nature. In the frontiers of wild-west agro-food capitalism, it is a game of who can take the most and get away with it. Syngenta and DuPont have no choice but to endanger bees and biodiversity while lobbying for anti-democratic trade agreements and saturating the planet in glyphosate, atrazine and neonicotinoids. It is more financially prudent for them to spend millions suing the little County of Kauai than to agree to disclose their pesticide use. If Syngenta decided tomorrow to pay just for the health care costs of all the people worldwide harmed by their chemicals, not to mention for environmental remediation or the costs of damaged ecosystem services, there would be nothing left of their bottom-line. We are paying their true costs.

New fences necessary.

For money to make more money, new markets are needed. Over the past centuries, food and the resources to grow it have continuously been transformed into new money-making opportunities by imposing private property in spaces that were perviously considered "common." Today we are witnessing this in the privatization of our common genetic wealth, and in the massive global "land grab" that is expropriating millions of acres of farmland and accompanying water rights from peasant growers in the name of "productivity" and "development" (i.e. folding resources and people into the global capitalist market). Once something becomes "private," society has a difficult time recalling that is was ever considered something that belongs to us all.

Plenty of wealth, but none for the people doing the work. 

As money searches to make new money in the agro-food system, farmers and farm-workers fare the worst. Worldwide, farmers are squeezed in every direction by the agro-food corporations that control agricultural inputs, distribution, processing, marketing and retail sales. The market is anything but "free" for growers, for whom what is produced, how it is produced, and for whom it is produced is increasingly decided by shareholder's profitability margins. It is smallholder farmers who, following decades of policy that displaces local agricultural economies in favor of commodity cash-crops, have become the world's main victims of poverty and hunger.

Keep paying the bank, even when it's well past bloated.

The deregulation of the agricultural commodities futures market 13 years ago signaled a new extreme in turning food and agriculture entirely over to the interests of the capitalist market.
In the past years there has been an influx of purely financial players who seek solely to profit from changes in food prices. Hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate the food commodities markets, with speculative investment in 2011 amounting to 20 times the amount spent by all countries on agricultural aid. A very small number of people are getting rich gambling on hunger.

The logics advancing a corporate food system are not new. What has perhaps become more visible today are the consequences of believing that the best way to organize our economy is around the competitive accumulation of wealth and turning virtually everything into private property so that the almighty market (or more accurately, the players who have the most market power) can dictate what is and isn't good for us. What ends up being good for us is the poisoning of Hawaii and the creation of corporate courts with the power to block democracy. Somebody is making money, and according to the logic of capitalism, that's what matters.

The possibility of something better.

There is no shortage of ways to move in the more sane direction of a food system that actually feeds everybody, provides decent livelihoods, and preserves ecological integrity. For starters: enforce anti-trust laws to break up monopolies in the food system; change policies to support farmers and farmworkers rather than corporate agribusiness; support organizational structures like workers' cooperatives where benefits are distributed more equitably; get banks out of the business of speculating on hunger (and out of policy-making more generally); tax the incredible profits of corporate food giants to fund public distribution systems that affirm food as a basic human right; terminate patents on our genetic commons; redirect resources towards public (versus privatized and non-transparent) agricultural science that mimics nature instead of industry; support the capacity of all nations to feed themselves by strategies based on the right to food; pay more attention to the very intelligent voices of peasants demanding food sovereignty. And on Kauai, pass a strong Bill 2491!

There is much more that could go on this list, and beyond these, we need to think big, to question the logics and structures that have created the need for such proposals in the first place. We cannot be fearful of articulating more "radical," or "at the root" visions and solutions. The values that most of us would claim to share -- democracy, fairness, cooperation, ecological sustainability, taking care of one another -- need to become the logics that structure our food system. When we are poisoning the possibility of an inhabitable planet into the future, allowing a billion to go hungry though there is more than enough to feed everybody, and loosing our last shreds of true democracy -- all in the name of "the market" -- it is well past time to reclaim our common humanity.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED POISON

As with many innovations and developments in those issues of life with which we are surrounded on a daily basis, Genetically Modified Organisms are amongst the most contentious.

Our daily print media are no exception and the GM food issue has come up yet again in The Age newspaper in Melbourne - another in the Fairfax stable illustrating the weaknesses in that organisations journalistic reactionary perspectives.

There is no reason why GM issues would not be on Fairfax's agenda because no doubt they are supported by organisations such as Monsanto and others in order to still be able to function viably.

Two recent articles in The Age - and the very few letters published commenting on the articles are illustrative of the editor's understanding (sic) of the seriousness of the many problems with genetically modified food items.

Here are the articles and letters and they will be followed by some of the articles from overseas web sites giving the perspectives of countries around the world which have been confronted with the ghastly realities of GM items being forced on them with fertilisers and other chemically altered products.

Genetically modified crops crucial: GrainCorp chief

June 29, 2013
Brian Robins

Alison Watkins: Yields must double to feed the world. Photo: Josh Robenstone

GrainCorp chief executive Alison Watkins has blasted the ''emotional response'' of critics of genetically modified crops, arguing that their use is essential if farm yields are to rise to feed a growing global population. She was also highly critical of the latest political upheaval in Canberra that threatens to stall changes that are essential for the country's future.

''Stop short-term point-scoring and take up the cudgels of reform for our long-term future,'' Ms Watkins said at a business luncheon.

GrainCorp is the subject of a takeover bid from US major Archer Daniel Midland, with shareholders offered $13.20 a share. The offer was cleared this week by the competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, but it has yet to win approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board.

Ms Watkins said that with estimates that the global population will expand by 2.7 billion by 2050, which is equal to twice the size of China's population, or 40 times that of France, pressure is mounting for farmers to lift yields by 50 per cent to keep abreast of growth in global demand.

''Therefore yields have to double to around three tonnes a hectare, yet they've been flattening.''

This increase would have to occur against the backdrop of climate change and declining soil quality, ''which will make it more difficult to achieve this''.

Genetically modified crops in countries comparable to Australia have been able to achieve a 10 per cent improvement in yield, as well as reducing herbicide use by a quarter, Ms Watkins said.

The emotional response to the issue of genetically modified crops had a ''high opportunity cost for our farmers'', she said, at a time when, for example, producing canola crops with fish oil benefits is now possible.

''We do need food companies to take a leadership role as well'' in the debate supporting genetically modified grains, she said. ''They're mostly very conservative.''

All cotton is now genetically modified, she said, along with soy beans.

While critical of government handouts to industry, such as subsidies to the auto industry where, she said, Australia would never be able to compete, Ms Watkins called on the government to boost infrastructure spending, for example, on supply chain infrastructure, to ensure that Australia has a First World asset.

---

Anti-GM attitudes are harming the hungry

July 3, 2013
Nicolle Flint

'The environmentalists' opposition to GM is akin to green cultural imperialism.

[Age Poll: Is it time for Australia to expand GM food production?
Yes
25%
No
75%
Total votes: 2250.
Poll closed 4 Jul, 2013
Disclaimer:
These polls are not scientific and reflect the opinion only of visitors who have chosen to participate.]

As reported in The Age last week, GrainCorp chief executive Alison Watkins criticised the "emotional response" of those who oppose genetically modified (GM) crops, and argued that the use of such technology was essential if farm yields were to meet the global food task. Yet environmental opposition to GM crops still dominates approaches to policymaking – irrespective of the increased food and environmental security GM technology can deliver to the world. Green attitudes to GM technology represent at best a quaint conservatism and at worst green cultural imperialism. Opposition to change is, of course, inherently conservative. But those who seek to limit the developing world to ancient production methods and crop varieties, even if they are not particularly profitable or productive, exhibit an inexcusable cultural condescension.

Stewart Brand, described by some as an "ex-environmental ideologue", neatly summarises this in his book Whole Earth Dis-cipline: "The environmental movement has done more harm with its opposition to genetic engineering than any other thing we've been wrong about. We've starved people, hindered science, hurt the natural environment, and denied our own practitioners a crucial tool." The green movement must now decide whether it wants to use the best of science and technology to deliver real human and environmental outcomes.

Meeting the current world food task means adequately feeding 870 million people who are "chronically undernourished". The vast majority of these people live in southern Asia (304 million), eastern Asia (167 million) and sub-Saharan Africa (234 million). To feed a predicted global population of 9 billion by 2050, farm productivity must increase by 50-70 per cent of current levels. In other words, cereal production, which underpins global food supply with rice, maize and wheat, will need to increase from a current 2.3 billion tonnes per annum to 3-4 billion tonnes per annum. Yet productivity gains have stalled. The remarkable plant-science based revolution that saw cereal production rise from about 700 million tonnes per annum in 1960 to 2 billion tonnes in the mid-1990s has since climbed to just 2.3 billion tonnes.

The modest improvement of cereal crop productivity in recent decades has coincided with two significant policy factors: shamefully reduced global investment in agricultural research and development, and the rise of green propaganda that has rejected the science and technology based gains of the plant-science revolution and the benefits of GM technology.

The green agenda has tried to convince the world – and particularly the developing world – that organic agriculture or "agroecology" is the only acceptable form of food production. This is, of course, the same organic agriculture that for 10,000 years delivered famines and constant food instability. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, who led the 1960s plant-science revolution, observed that organic agriculture could only feed 4 billion people and therefore asked which 2 billion people would volunteer to die?

This is not to say past decades of scientific developments were perfect. They weren't. But they did feed double the population on just 11 per cent more land. Arguably the only way to deliver urgent productivity and environmental gains, on the same amount of land, is through GM technology. There is no guarantee that GM will ensure we can meet the future global food supply task. But the human and environmental benefits cannot be ignored.

This is also not to say GM is the only answer. A diversified food supply is a responsible food supply and provides individual farmer and consumer choice. Free and informed choice is the key in the developed and the developing world. Do we want agriculture that delivers greater global food security and environmental sustainability? Or do we want to cling to well-worn arguments such as that the world already produces enough food, it just doesn't distribute it effectively? This may be true, but people are still starving.

Extensive research exists proving the safety and environmental benefits of GM crops based on scientific fact, not emotion. Significant reductions in pesticide use, soil disturbance and damage, fossil fuels and carbon emissions have already been achieved with crops such as Bt cotton and Roundup Ready canola. An ever increasing range of productive crops delivering health, environmental and food security benefits are achievable. Another "ex-ideologue", Mark Lynas, agrees. His book The God Species records that his anti-GM "approach was unsupported by science and largely founded in ignorance about genetics in general". Lynas who was once so motivated as to destroy GM crops, now considers his previous ignorance akin to that of the climate change sceptics he scorns.

History reminds us that great harm is inflicted on individuals not just through obvious acts of violence, but also through ideological stealth. We are currently faced with an environmental movement that rejects a key technology that could deliver food and environmental security to the world. If green does not want to be synonymous with mean, then opposition to GM must be reconsidered. As Lynas says, "there can be no more important task than feeding people while protecting the planet. We must use the best of science and technology to help us achieve this vital aim."

Nicolle Flint is a PhD candidate at Flinders University where she is studying the political representation of Australian farmers in the context of environmentalism and animal activism. She is a regular Age columnist and a member of the Liberal Party.

Letters from The Age 21 JULY 2013:

Manipulated food poses dangers to consumers

THE burden of proof that GM foods are safe to eat rests with their patent owners. Scientific American and Nature Biotechnology report that GM companies withhold seed from independent research, and adverse findings are censored. Even so, published papers show some GM soybean, corn and canola harm experimental animals and may pose health risks to people.

For instance, the ANU found CSIRO's GM field peas, containing a gene from a bean, provoked immune and inflammatory responses in mice. French researchers found rats fed GM maize showed significant liver and kidney damage. And scientists at Scotland's Rowett Institute found intestinal and immune system damage to rats fed GM potatoes. Now Canadian gynaecologists have found insect toxins from GM plants in the blood of pregnant women and their foetuses. The false claims for GM crops take research away from sustainable farming and food production systems based on healthy soils.

Bob Phelps, Gene Ethics, Carlton

No public acceptance

AS THE phone hacking scandal in the UK illustrates, there is a growing chasm of mistrust between corporations and their consumers. The world of GM food is no different. Food is an intimate part of who we are. With secrecy enveloping the details of the relationship between the CSIRO and the biggest biotechnology companies developing GM crops, it is inevitable that the public will express concern.

The near total exclusion of the consumer voice as to the future of food is reflected in survey after survey showing that around the world GM crops have little or no consumer acceptance. Australia's weak GM labelling laws only exacerbate this rejection.

GM crops are one of the few products whose success is dependent on the continued ignorance of the very people who will be consuming them.

Greg Revell, North Warrandyte

The following article comes from NationOfChange on 13 September 2012

Why Are We Being Kept in the Dark Over GMOs?

Dr. Mercola

Natural Society / News Analysis

Published: Thursday 13 September 2012

“While the fight for GMO labeling is loud and clear, corporations and companies opposing GMO labeling, for their own profit and corrupt relations, will stop at nothing to ensure GMOs remain a secret to the public.”


You may already be fully aware of the fight surrounding the latest California GMO labeling legislation known as Prop 37, a bill which I have been very passionate about supporting over the past few months. As it currently stands in the United States, you are actually being completely kept in the dark about what’s in your food. And it may interest you to know that many pro-GMO corporations such as Monsanto intend to keep it that way.

But why are you being kept in the dark about the dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the fight against Proposition 37? Despite the massive amount of research linking genetically modified foods to environmental and human dangers, giant corporations are shelling out millions and millions of dollars to ensure that GMOs are not labeled in the food market. Why are Americans and others being kept in the dark?

While studies continue to highlight the very serious impact of GMOs on both the human body and the environment alike, a few major countries still do not require the labeling of GMOs. Countries like China, Russia, Australia, France, Spain, and others all require GMOs to be labeled, while Canada and the U.S. are slow to follow. Biotechnology giants like Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences — as well as government organizations such as the FDA — have such a significant impact on what really goes on in America that they may actually be the reason Americans are still kept in the dark.

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job” – Philip Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications. “Playing God in the Garden” New York Times Magazine.

Does that make you a bit concerned about the integrity of our food safety system? There are many important factors to consider with genetically engineered foods, which are increasingly overtaking the food supply. These are living, synthetic organisms that can reproduce and proliferate; they can mutate and migrate. How can a small group of chemical companies be trusted to control and monopolize our foods and restructure the world’s food system?

Well, it seems that no individual within government or alphabet government agency is doing the required work to ensure GMOs are safe; they are simply putting safety responsibility on each other. The FDA has not conducted a single independent test of any genetically engineered product. The agency simply accepts the testing completed and provided by the biotechnology corporations like Monsanto.

“Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety” – FDA, “Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties” (GMO Policy), Federal Register, Vol. 57, No. 104, p. 229.

While the Food and Drug Administration is put in place to protect the consumer, they still let destructive GMOs run rampant. Other organizations like the USDA have also begun ‘speed approving‘ the latest creations coming from Monsanto, reducing the approval time and subsequently the ability to measure the true effects.

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It may also be shocking to you that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is just as corrupt in maintaining the safety of the food supply and other consumer products. Despite links to organ damage, the USDA says that it is changing the rules so that genetically modified seed companies like Monsanto will get ‘speedier regulatory reviews’. What does this mean? With the faster reviews, there will be even less time spent on evaluating the potential dangers.

Most recently, 12 new genetically modified crops have been submitted for USDA approval, with 9 of them being the new fast-tracked process. As stated in their press release, the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, sees the USDA transforming “into a high-performing organization that focuses on its customers.”

Former United States Secretary of Agriculture (served from 1995 until 2001) Dan Glickman was a major promoter for biotechnology and pushed for such products to be sold in Europe to secure profitable exports. He concluded after his USDA departure:

“What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn’t good because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you’re against it, you’re Luddites, you’re stupid. There was rhetoric like that even here in this department. ”

But right now is your chance to say “NO!” to the USDA. For the ‘fast-track crops’, you only have until September 11th of 2012 to have your say before these seeds hit the soil.

The Most Recent News on GMOs – California’s Proposition 37 and GMO Labeling

The most recent fight against GMOs is GMO labeling bill Proposition 37. On November 6, 2012, voters will decide if California’s Proposition 37 will be the first bill to require the labeling of genetically modified foods. About 18 states have made similar attempts, but nothing has even come close to Prop 37. And while 50 other nations have moved to label GMOs, the United States population is still fighting for a bill to be passed in a single state.

While the fight for GMO labeling is loud and clear, corporations and companies opposing GMO labeling, for their own profit and corrupt relations, will stop at nothing to ensure GMOs remain a secret to the public. Monsanto has put out at least $4,208,000 to fight GMO labeling, while other corporations such as Pepsi Co. and Coca Cola have ‘donated’ over one million dollars each. But Monsanto still remains among the largest fighters of GMO labeling.

GE Crops – the Largest Experiment on Earth

Genetically modified organisms may very well be one of the largest and most concerning experiments conducted by humankind. Genetically modified foods have already been linked to numerous health complications, while simultaneously destroying crops, insects, and even helping to contribute to large-scale farmer suicide.

We are performing an experiment on a global scale, where long-term consequences have yet to be conducted. In the realm of short-term research, the information points in a very dangerous direction. Dr. Charles Benbrook, a former agricultural staff expert on the Council for Environmental Quality at The White House, Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture, and Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, has stated:

“The scope of the fraud, if you will – I know that’s a harsh word – the scope of the fraud that’s being sold to the American public about this technology is almost unprecedented.

They have no control over where in that cell or where in that plant’s genome the new genetic material gets lodged and expressed. Because they don’t have control over that, they have absolutely no basis to predict how that trans-gene, the new genetic material, is going to behave in the future as that plant deals with stresses in its environment – whether it’s drought, too much water, pest pressures,imbalances in the soil, or any other source of stress.

They just don’t know how it’s going to behave. They don’t know how stable that expression is going to be, or whether the third generation of the plant is going to behave just like other generations. They don’t know whether the promoter gene, which has been moved into the plant to turn on the new piece of genetic material, will influence some other biosynthetic pathway that’s in the plant, turning on some natural process of the plant when it shouldn’t be turned on, or turning it off too soon.”

Without choice, how can there be trust? Why is the United States government so reluctant to let you know if you’re ingesting GMOs? California’s Proposition 37 is the most recent and possibly last hope for America to move a massive step forward in freedom of choice and freedom of health. Those against us are afraid because we have the power to initiate change.

Please contribute to the Organic Consumers Fund to ensure that Americans will finally have the basic right to know what’s in their food.

I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can. Please support this important state initiative, even if you’re not a resident of California!

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ABOUT Dr. Mercola

Dr. Mercola has made significant milestones in his mission to bring people practical solutions to their health problems. A New York Times Best Selling Author, Dr. Mercola was also voted the 2009 Ultimate Wellness Game Changer by the Huffington Post, and has been featured in TIME magazine, LA Times, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, Today Show, CBS’s Washington Unplugged with Sharyl Attkisson, and other major media resources.

MONSANTO SONG - OLD MAN SANTO

Thanks to Organic Consumers Organisation (August 2012) for this fantastic picture of what is in store for us all - Thanks to Monsanto and others.

30 MAY 2012

From NationofChange:

First Super Weeds, Now Super Insects -- Thanks to Monsanto

By Dr. Mercola

Organic Consumers Association / News Report

Published: Wednesday 30 May 2012

“Not only are we seeing rapid emergence of super-weeds resistant to glyphosate, courtesy of Roundup Ready crops, we now also have evidence of emerging Bt-resistant insects.”

A new generation of insect larvae is eating the roots of genetically engineered corn intended to be resistant to such pests. The failure of Monsanto's genetically modified Bt corn could be the most serious threat ever to a genetically modified crop in the U.S.

And the economic impact could be huge. Billions of dollars are at stake, as Bt corn accounts for 65 percent of all corn grown in the US.

The strain of corn, engineered to kill the larvae of beetles, such as the corn rootworm, contains a gene copied from an insect-killing bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.

But even though a scientific advisory panel warned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the threat of insects developing resistance was high, Monsanto argued that the steps necessary to prevent such an occurrence -- which would have entailed less of the corn being planted -- were an unnecessary precaution, and the EPA naively agreed.

According to a recent NPR report:

"The scientists who called for caution now are saying 'I told you so,' because there are signs that a new strain of resistant rootworms is emerging...[A] committee of experts at the EPA is now recommending that biotech companies put into action, for the first time, a 'remedial action plan' aimed at stopping the spread of such resistant insects ...

The EPA's experts also are suggesting that the agency reconsider its approval of a new kind of rootworm-killing corn, which Monsanto calls SmartStax. This new version of Bt corn includes two different Bt genes that are supposed to kill the rootworm in different ways. This should help prevent resistance from emerging, and the EPA is allowing farmers to plant it on up to 95 percent of their corn acres. But if one of those genes is already compromised… such a high percentage of Bt corn could rapidly produce insects that are resistant to the second one, too."

There can be little doubt that genetically engineered crops are the most dangerous aspect of modern agriculture. Not only are we seeing rapid emergence of super-weeds resistant to glyphosate, courtesy of Roundup Ready crops, we now also have evidence of emerging Bt-resistant insects. Add to that the emergence of a brand new organism capable of producing disease and infertility in both plants and animals, and a wide variety of evidence showing harm to human health, and the only reasonable expectation one can glean is that humanity as a whole is being seriously threatened by this foolhardy technology.

Bt Corn—a Most Dangerous Failure

Monsanto's genetically modified "Bt corn" has been equipped with a gene from soil bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), which produces the Bt-toxin. It's a pesticide that breaks open the stomach of certain insects and kills them.

This pesticide-producing corn entered the food supply in the late 1990's, and over the past decade, the horror stories have started piling up. And the problem with Bt crops go far beyond the creation of Bt-resistant insects.

Monsanto and the EPA swore that the genetically engineered corn would only harm insects. The Bt-toxin produced inside the plant would be completely destroyed in the human digestive system and would not have any impact at all on consumers, they claimed. Alas, they've been proven wrong on that account as well, because not only is Bt corn producing resistant "super-pests," researchers have also found that the Bt-toxin can indeed wreak havoc on human health.

Bt-Toxin Now Found in Many People's Blood!

Last year, doctors at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec found Bt-toxin in the blood of:

• 93 percent of pregnant women tested

• 80 percent of umbilical blood in their babies, and

• 67 percent of non-pregnant women

The study authors speculate that the Bt toxin was likely consumed in the normal diet of the Canadian middle class—which makes sense when you consider that genetically engineered corn is present in the vast majority of all processed foods and drinks in the form of high fructose corn syrup. They also suggest that the toxin may have come from eating meat from animals fed Bt corn, which most livestock raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO, or so-called "factory farms") are.

These shocking results raise the frightening possibility that eating Bt corn might actually turn your intestinal flora into a sort of "living pesticide factory"… essentially manufacturing Bt-toxin from within your digestive system on a continuing basis.

If this hypothesis is correct, is it then also possible that the Bt-toxin might damage the integrity of your digestive tract in the same way it damages insects? Remember, the toxin actually ruptures the stomach of insects, causing them to die. The biotech industry has insisted that the Bt-toxin doesn't bind or interact with the intestinal walls of mammals (which would include humans). But again, there are peer-reviewed published research showing that Bt-toxin does bind with mouse small intestines and with intestinal tissue from rhesus monkeys.

Bt-Toxin Linked to Allergies, Auto-Immune Disease, and More

If Bt genes are indeed capable of colonizing the bacteria living in the human digestive tract, scientists believe it could reasonably result in:

• Gastrointestinal problems

• Autoimmune diseases

• Food allergies

• Childhood learning disorders

And lo and behold, all of these health problems are indeed on the rise… The discovery of Bt-toxin in human blood is not proof positive of this link, but it certainly raises a warning flag. And there's plenty of other evidence showing that the Bt-toxin produced in GM corn and cotton plants is toxic to humans and mammals and triggers immune system responses. For example, in government-sponsored research in Italy, mice fed Monsanto's Bt corn showed a wide range of immune responses, such as:

• Elevated IgE and IgG antibodies, which are typically associated with allergies and infections

• An increase in cytokines, which are associated with allergic and inflammatory responses. The specific cytokines (interleukins) that were found to be elevated are also higher in humans who suffer from a wide range of disorders, from arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, to MS and cancer

• Elevated T cells (gamma delta), which are increased in people with asthma, and in children with food allergies, juvenile arthritis, and connective tissue diseases.

Rats fed another of Monsanto's Bt corn varieties called MON 863, also experienced an activation of their immune systems, showing higher numbers of basophils, lymphocytes, and white blood cells. These can indicate possible allergies, infections, toxins, and various disease states including cancer. There were also signs of liver- and kidney toxicity.

Topical versus Internal Toxins

Farmers have used Bt-toxin from soil bacteria as a natural pesticide for years, and biotech companies have therefore claimed that Bt-toxin has a "history of safe use in agriculture." But there's a huge difference between spraying it on plants, where it biodegrades in sunlight and can be carefully washed off, and genetically altering the plant to produce it internally.

Bt crops have the Bt-toxin gene built-in, so the toxin cannot be washed off. You simply cannot avoid consuming it. Furthermore, the plant-produced version of the poison is thousands of times more concentrated than the spray.

There are also peer-reviewed studies showing that natural Bt-toxin from soil bacteria is not a safe pesticide either:

• When natural Bt-toxin was fed to mice, they had tissue damage, immune responses as powerful as cholera toxin , and even started reacting to other foods that were formerly harmless.

• Farm workers exposed to Bt also showed immune responses .

• The EPA's Bt Plant-Pesticides Risk and Benefits Assessment, created by their expert Scientific Advisory Panel, states that "Bt proteins could act as antigenic and allergenic sources."


Do You Know what You're Eating?

Did you know that two years ago, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called on all physicians to prescribe diets without genetically modified (GM) foods to all patients?

They sure did, although few doctors seem to have gotten the memo. They also called for a moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), long-term independent studies, and labeling, stating:

"Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food, including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. …There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation…"

I couldn't agree more. Avoiding genetically engineered foods should be at the top of everyone's list—at least if you want a decent shot at optimal health.

The simplest way to avoid genetically engineered (GE) foods is to buy whole, certified organic foods. By definition, foods that are certified organic must never intentionally use GE ingredients, and must be produced without artificial pesticides or fertilizers. Animals must also be reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Additionally, grass-fed beef will not have been fed GE corn feed.

You can also avoid genetically modified (GM) ingredients in processed foods, if you know what to look for. There are currently eight genetically modified food crops on the market:

Soy

Sugar from sugar beets

Corn

Hawaiian papaya

Cottonseed (used in vegetable cooking oils)

Some varieties of zucchini

Canola (canola oil)

Crookneck squash

This means you should avoid products with corn, soy, canola, and any of their derivatives listed as an ingredient, unless it's labeled USDA 100% Organic. As of late last year, this also includes sweet corn, as Monsanto introduced a brand new genetically engineered sweet corn called Seminis®, which contains not just one but TWO types of Bt-toxin, PLUS the Roundup Ready gene for weed control! So besides containing the insecticide, their toxic Roundup herbicide will also accumulate in the kernels.

For a helpful, straightforward guide to shopping Non-GMO, see the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, created by the Institute for Responsible Technology.

Why We MUST Insist on Mandatory Labeling of GM Foods

Mandatory labeling may be the only way to stop the proliferation of GM foods in the U.S. because while GM seeds are banned in several European countries, in the U.S., certain states are actually passing legislation that protects the use of GM seeds and allows for unabated expansion! At present, no less than 14 states have passed such legislation.

Michigan's Senate Bill 777i, if passed, would make that 15. The Michigan bill would prevent anti-GMO laws, and would remove "any authority local governments may have to adopt and enforce ordinances that prohibit or regulate the labeling, sale, storage, transportation, distribution, use, or planting of agricultural, vegetable, flower or forest tree seeds."

While legislation like this sounds like crazy nonsense to normal people, such bills are essentially bought and paid for through the millions of dollars Monsanto and other biotech companies spend lobbying the US government each year. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, Monsanto spent $1.4 million on lobbying the federal government -- a drop from a year earlier, when they spent $2.5 million during the same quarter.

Their efforts of persuasion are also made infinitely easier by the fact that an ever growing list of former Monsanto employees are now in positions of power within the federal government.

Proof Positive that GMO Labeling WILL Change the Food Industry

Many don't fully appreciate the strategy of seeking to have genetically engineered foods labeled in California. The belief is that large companies would refuse to have dual labeling; one for California and another for the rest of the country. It would be very expensive and a logistical nightmare. So rather than have two labels, they would simply not carry the product, especially if the new label would be the equivalent of a skull and crossbones. This is why we are so committed to this initiative as victory here will likely eliminate genetically engineered foods from the US.

Powerful confirmation of this belief occurred in early 2012 when both Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo Inc. chose to alter one of their soda ingredients as a result of California's labeling requirements for carcinogens ii:

"Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are changing the way they make the caramel coloring used in their sodas as a result of a California law that mandates drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens bear a cancer warning label. The companies said the changes will be expanded nationally to streamline their manufacturing processes. They've already been made for drinks sold in California."

This is a PERFECT example of the national impact a California GMO labeling mandate can, and no doubt WILL, have. While California is the only state requiring the label to state that the product contains the offending ingredient, these companies are switching their formula for the entire US market, rather than have two different labels. According to USA Today:

"A representative for Coca-Cola, Diana Garza Ciarlante, said the company directed its caramel suppliers to modify their manufacturing processes to reduce the levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, which can be formed during the cooking process and as a result may be found in trace amounts in many foods. "While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning," Garza-Giarlante said in an email."

Educational Sources

To learn more about GM foods, I highly recommend the following films and lectures:

• Hidden Dangers in Kid's Meals

• Your Milk on Drugs - Just Say No!

• Everything You Have to Know About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods
Important Action Item: Support California's Ballot Initiative to Label GMO's!

In 2007, then-Presidential candidate Obama promised to "immediately" require GM labeling if elected. So far, nothing of the sort has transpired.

Fortunately, 24 U.S. states have (as part of their state governance) something called the Initiative Process, where residents can bring to ballot any law they want enacted, as long as it has sufficient support. California has been busy organizing just such a ballot initiative to get mandatory labeling for genetically engineered foods sold in their state. The proposed law will be on the 2012 ballot.

Since California is the 8th largest economy in the world, a win for the California Initiative would be a huge step forward, and would affect ingredients and labeling nation-wide. A coalition of consumer, public health and environmental organizations, food companies, and individuals has submitted the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act to the State Attorney General. Now, they need 800,000 signatures to get the Act on this year's ballot.

I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can. Be assured that what happens in California will affect the remainder of the U.S. states, so please support this important state initiative, even if you do not live there!

• Whether you live in California or not, please donate money to this historic effort

• Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the California Ballot. It may be the only chance we have to label genetically engineered foods.

• Distribute WIDELY the Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help you identify and avoid foods with GMOs. Look for products (including organic products) that feature the Non-GMO Project Verified Seal to be sure that at-risk ingredients have been tested for GMO content. You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.


ABOUT DR. MERCOLA

Dr. Mercola has made significant milestones in his mission to bring people practical solutions to their health problems. A New York Times Best Selling Author, Dr. Mercola was also voted the 2009 Ultimate Wellness Game Changer by the Huffington Post, and has been featured in TIME magazine, LA Times, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, Today Show, CBS’s Washington Unplugged with Sharyl Attkisson, and other major media resources.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD VIDEO FROM TRUEFOOD