Posted on 05/31/2013 8:44:34 AM PDT by opentalk
- A strain of genetically modified wheat found in the United States fuelled concerns over food supplies across Asia on Thursday, with major importer Japan cancelling a tender offer to buy U.S. grain.
Other top Asian wheat importers South Korea, China and the Philippines said they were closely monitoring the situation after the U.S. government found genetically engineered wheat sprouting on a farm in the state of Oregon.
The strain was never approved for sale or consumption.
Asian consumers are keenly sensitive to gene-altered food, with few countries allowing imports of such cereals for human consumption. However, most of the corn and soybean shipped from the U.S. and South America for animal feed is genetically modified.
"We will refrain from buying western white and feed wheat effective today," Toru Hisadome, a Japanese farm ministry official in charge of wheat trading, told Reuters
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.reuters.com ...
I’m sure farmers will be glad to hear they can sell their failed crops at those prices. Would you please help me get the word out...
Thanks Black Agnes... I agree.
Well it sounds like it.
Monsanto is the worlds largest Pesticide producer. Get out of school. There is a real world out here.
"Roundup resistant seeds made it easy for farmers to plant crops and then douse them with Monsanto pesticide, that many farms abandoned other techniques. Now, according to a number of scientific reports, superweeds that are immune to Monsanto’s pesticides have spread to millions of acres in more than 20 states the Midwestern United States." Forbes Sept 03 2011
Uh oh, the Gene mods don't just spread to other food crops...
Just because you can drive a car, does not mean you are mature enough to do so. Just because you can change the genetics of the food source for the Human Race does not mean you are wise enough to understand the unintended consequences. When driving a car you might kill a pedestrian, when modifying a species, you might kill a planet.
Who you going to apologise to then?
My best corn field should produce 200 bushels an acre this year. What qualifies you to declare that to be a "failed crop"?
And my third and last question :
Are you aware of any test /study of the effect on humans, mice or annimals of :
a geneticly modified (GM/Engineered) bacteria infused into
a geneticly modified (GM/Engineered) crops
Considering the fact that Monsanto alledges no testing
I believe this to be a very important test .
If my mother had fed me that crap when I was a kid I woulda ran away from home and probably joined a circus or somethin.........
Report after report has touched on the drought this year and last. Are you saying there hasn’t been one? Really?
And if this is true, what qualifies you to say that farmers are sitting pretty because there are high commodities prices?
Perhaps you can tell us why commodities prices are so high since you seem to think there’s going to be a banner crop this year.
Your argument is an innocent example of the law of unintended consequences. This article shows why a simplistic science approach with tools as powerful as Gene Modification can have disasterous consequences:
(NaturalNews) When Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University and internationally-recognized plant pathologist, wrote a letter back in January to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, warning him about a new mystery disease showing up primarily in genetically-modified (GM) crops, the notice fell on deaf ears.
Research conducted by a team of senior plant and animal scientists found that Monsanto's glyphosate chemical, which is the primary ingredient in its popular RoundUp herbicide formula, appears responsible for infecting plants with an AIDS-like syndrome that destroys their immunity, blocks their absorption of certain vitamins and minerals, and eventually kills them.
Dr. Huber explains in his letter that the destruction caused by glyphosate does not appear limited to plants, either -- animals and humans alike that consume foods tainted with the chemical, or that are exposed in some other way to it, are potentially susceptible to developing the same autoimmune disorder. For this reason, Dr. Huber urged the USDA to further investigate RoundUp, as well as to deny the deregulation of GM alfalfa.
You can read a copy of Dr. Huber's letter for yourself here: http://es-la.facebook.com/notes/wood-prairie-farm/the-complete-text-o...
The key factor of Dr. Huber's discovery was a microscopic pathogen specifically prevalent in GM crops. The pathogen, he explained in an interview with Food Democracy Now! (FDN) as well as in his letter, is common. But an apparent weakening of plant immunity by glyphosate makes plants treated with the chemical more susceptible to contracting the harmful pathogen. And as a result of exposure, large swaths of GM farmland have died, and many animals that feed on GM-tainted meal have become infertile or have had abortions.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032441_pesticide_AIDS.html#ixzz2UtanJ3i9
Note that it is not the Roundup in the plant or even the Gene Mod to resist roundup at higher tolerances that is sometimes having fatal consequences to those who consume the produce.
And he’s everywhere.
Kind of depressing huh?
The Bt in gmo corn is the same found in nature. The corn was modified, not the Bt.
Monsanto, the FDA and many other researchers have tested GMO crops for human safety, many times, all peer reviewed.
The same cannot be said for the anti-GMO camp.
http://sleuth4health.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/anti-gmo-movement-continues-to-disappoint/
There is a lot of research on colony collapse and on GMO plants and some of it intersects.
One of the reasons GMO is not implicated in colony collapse is because they have it worse in Europe where almost no GMO crops are grown (like .06% of total farm acreage).
The major (or only) gmo crops are corn, soybean, cotton, canola and sugar beets. How many of those are major food sources for bees. Cotton, soybeans and corn are BT crops, canola and beets are Round Up Ready crops.
I don’t think bees are being killed by an herbicide, do you?
And organic farmers use more BT and more applications of it than the GMO growers and for the last 70 years or so, so it’s doubtful that Bt is the problem.
I think CCD is probably a syndrome with multiple factors involving malnutrition (taking too much honey and replacing with cheap corn syrup due to high prices/demand for honey), travel stresses because there are fewer keepers traveling farther distances, plus the various parasites and diseases given a foothold because of poor general hive condition.
” Herbicides are used before the wheat seeds form. There is no poison in your food. “
I believe that there are some studies that show a residue remains in the soil after use of glyphosate.
Dont forget that DDT was a powerful pesticide , but it had residual effects that were toxic to other life forms ( ie: eagles , condors , etc.)
Sometimes there are unintended consequences
Monsanto does not allege no testing. They do no “whole food” testing, which would be stupid and expensive. They do protein testing.
Bacillus Thuringiensis itself has been repeatedly tested over the past 50 years in humans and animals and is approved for use in Organic farming.
http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/24d-captan/bt-ext.html
Valpal1 ~:” One of the reasons GMO is not implicated in colony collapse is because they have it worse in Europe where almost no GMO crops are grown (like .06% of total farm acreage).”
That would seem to bring the question to rest.
My only contact with ‘encapsolated Pericap M ‘ was when it was found in my hives.
I believe it to have weakend the hives vitality , and made it more suseptable to ‘Foulbrood’, a common bee disease.
The Bt the organic farmers use isn’t systemic to the entire corn plant. It’s (hopefully) washed off before the produce is consumed.
The GMO Bt corn contains Bt in every single cell throughout the whole plant. It can’t be washed off or removed with conventional treatment.
And, the whole notion that since it’s a protein it would be broken down and digested rather than absorbed in the gut is fallacy as well.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=bt+toxin+blood+pregnant
“Serum 3-MPPA and CryAb1 toxin were detected in PW, their fetuses and NPW.”
So, the Bt protein wasn’t digested and was, in fact, absorbed into the blood stream. Testing for this for long term effects? Not done.
Well, there are some bees, especially just after winter, which specialize in gathering pollen, just as there are bees that specialize in finding new sources of nectar. It is not surprising that some bees will visit flowers just to gather pollen. Pollen is the protein source bees require to raise broods. Raw pollen is dropped in with common grubs for them to eat after the cell is sealed. Workers digest pollen to produce the glandular excretion, royal jelly, fed to all grubs until differentiation (worker versus queen) cut off arrives. Queen grub cells are flooded with royal jelly, with raw pollen excluded, prior to sealing.
Seven dust was used on tomato to control insects. Tomatoes are self pollinators the flowers of which produce no nectar Farmers did not care about killing off pollinating insects that visited. Yet bees would visit tomatoes to collect pollen and would get some seven along with it. The particle size was about the same. This mechanism was documented to cause colony demise through poisoning.
You are correct that vast majority of foraging bees prefer nectar sources and some pollen is collected coincidentally, but it is untrue that a colony of bees would have to be starving in order that no bees visit a source that provides only pollen.
That said, sudden colony collapse, the theory posited previously that GM corn is the cause, was going on all through the 1980s when I was reading the Bee Journal. I seriously doubt GM corn pollen is responsible for colony collapse. Last I heard the experts were still puzzled. Mites, bee diseases, and competition form invasive and destructive “africanized” bees could combine in ways yet understood to create an escalation of colony collapse rates. In the 1980s bees were going to disappear due to africanized bees, especially feral colonies. I don’t hear much about the africanized bee scourge lately.
Since Apis mellifera seem to be staggering along, and honey is still in abundance on the store shelves, this sudden colony collapse talk seems to be just the africanized bee alarm of the day. Never should one contend the correlation of the rise of the phenomenon identified as sudden colony collapse syndrome and the rise of GM corn as proof of causation and expect to be taken seriously.
If it were, I sure would like Monsanto to engineer a sudden colony collapse plant to take out fire ants.
The NappyOne
Again, it’s the amount of Bt present that’s in question. It’s a volume/surface area calculation. The organic farmer applies the Bt to the surface of the plant. And only parts of that. The GMO puts Bt in every single cell of the plant.
If the solution to pollution is dilution what about testing for the relevant levels of Bt found in the GMO corn vs those found in the Organic corn?
DDT? Really? Every single argument against DDT was debunked decades ago. And there is no evidence that DDT has ever harmed a single bird. That was a complete fabrication. DDT is back in use now in an increasing number of third world countries. It has probably saved more human lives (which is what matters) than all the medicine ever sold.
Oops.
Purdue University discredits own professor : Environmentalist – COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber – Glyphosate – Animals and Miscarriages – No Scientific Data – Fearmongering
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