Posted on 08/20/2011 1:21:17 AM PDT by bronxville
GM Crops Farmer to Farmer
Michael Hart, a conventional livestock family farmer, has been farming in Cornwall for nearly thirty years and has actively campaigned on behalf of family farmers for over fifteen years, traveling extensively in Europe, India, Canada and the USA.
In this short documentary he investigates the reality of farming genetically modified crops in the USA ten years after their introduction. He travels across the US interviewing farmers and other specialists about their experiences of growing GM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEX654gN3c4
You’re Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It’s Not So!
July 23, 2009
The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.
Here’s the back story -
When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply—the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods—secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried “serious health hazards,” and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.
But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn’t going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.
Dangerous Food Safety Lies
When the FDA was constructing their GMO policy in 1991-2, their scientists were clear that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to “different risks” than conventional foods. But official policy declared the opposite, claiming that the FDA knew nothing of significant differences, and declared GMOs substantially equivalent.
This fiction became the rationale for allowing GM foods on the market without any required safety studies whatsoever! The determination of whether GM foods were safe to eat was placed entirely in the hands of the companies that made them—companies like Monsanto, which told us that the PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange were safe.
GMOs were rushed onto our plates in 1996. Over the next nine years, multiple chronic illnesses in the US nearly doubled—from 7% to 13%. Allergy-related emergency room visits doubled between 1997 and 2002 while food allergies, especially among children, skyrocketed. We also witnessed a dramatic rise in asthma, autism, obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, and certain cancers.
In January of this year, Dr. P. M. Bhargava, one of the world’s top biologists, told me that after reviewing 600 scientific journals, he concluded that the GM foods in the US are largely responsible for the increase in many serious diseases.
In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine concluded that animal studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between GM foods and infertility, accelerated aging, dysfunctional insulin regulation, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, and immune problems such as asthma, allergies, and inflammation.
In July, a report by eight international experts determined that the flimsy and superficial evaluations of GMOs by both regulators and GM companies “systematically overlook the side effects” and significantly underestimate “the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others.”
The Fox Guarding the Chickens
If GMOs are indeed responsible for massive sickness and death, then the individual who oversaw the FDA policy that facilitated their introduction holds a uniquely infamous role in human history. That person is Michael Taylor. He had been Monsanto’s attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA. Soon after, he became Monsanto’s vice president and chief lobbyist.
This month Michael Taylor became the senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. He is now America’s food safety czar. What have we done?
READ MORE:
http://networkedblogs.com/lMhWu
PCB was indicated to be potentially hazardous in 1966 and banned only 6 years later (and has been banned for almost 30 years). DDT is PERFECTLY safe for humans, but lethal to mosquitoes, bearing diseases like malaria. The hysteria around and consequent banning of DDT has caused millions and millions of deaths of adults and children worldwide.
Agent Orange was conceived, produced and employed as a weapon of war so the question of "safety" would be fairly moot, at least as far as Monsanto is concerned.
“DDT is PERFECTLY safe for humans”
Thank you - you’re absolutely correct. Rachel Carson, her book, and environmentalists were/are responsible for many deaths.
My major focus is on Michael Taylor and Monsanto. Thanks again.
The climate grew warmer, too. Can't forget that.
If this guy has “actively campaigned on behalf of family farmers for over fifteen years, traveling extensively in Europe, India, Canada and the USA,”
then he is not “a conventional livestock family farmer.”
He is a rural politician, a farming community organizer.
So it's little wonder they “concluded that animal studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between GM foods and infertility, accelerated aging, dysfunctional insulin regulation, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, and immune problems such as asthma, allergies, and inflammation.”
Their assertions only left out freckles and fallen arches
as problems caused by GM crops. Which “animal studies” are they talking about? Who concluded? Who are you quoting in the above quote? and do they know the difference between a causal relationship and perhaps an association?
Your rant may be great fun but that's all it is so far.
ping for later
“Your rant may be great fun but that’s all it is so far.”
It’s there for your information. Please point out where I ranted?
Yes after all lets take the risk.
Repetitive stress injuries to thumbs in teenagers absolutely sky rocketed, as well. That GM food is REALLY BAD
So what the risks from peanuts and potatoes?
You make extravagant claims with no support. That fits the definition of a rant.
Indeed, just what are the risks of consuming genetically modified foods.
Its not a black and white issue, as something which has been selectively bred is different than something created in a lab.
I’d ask the reverse, why is a grain created in a test tube or an animal raised in a cage no bigger than its body and fed hormones any better than the other choices?
By and large the only difference is in the profit margin to the large global company producing it. Ya know the ones that have put family farmers out of business and made it cheaper to grow cucumbers in South America than Florida.
Most of the American farmers going to SA to farm cite the cost of land as the chief reason, they simply cannot expand and earn enough from an acre of land to pay it's purchase.
South America has cheap land and welcomes these farmers.
Industrial farming has it's drawbacks but unless we're willing to reduce the population of the U.S. by two thirds the days when the family farm was pop, mom and a big family are gone forever.
We used a lot of Agent Orange on our farm in the early 70’s.
As a kid spraying, I would get wet from spraying our pasture with our tractor and sprayer. Agent Orange is simply 24-D and 24-5T mixed together.
The problem as I understand it was with with the 24-5T. Some of it was manufactured with a very toxic substance, due to a manufacturing defect that wasn't known at the time.
That was done when it was used the most in Vietnam.
And who lobbies for regulations and law changes, companies like Monsanto.
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