Posted on 06/04/2013 4:55:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Memorial Day weekend, 2 million people marched in protests against seed giant Monsanto for the purpose of bringing awareness to hazards from genetically modified food, which it and other companies manufacture. Organizer Tami Canal said protests were held in 436 cities in 52 countries.
Genetically modified plants are grown from genetically modified, or engineered, seeds, which are created to resist insecticides and herbicides so that crops can be grown to withstand a weed-killing pesticide or integrate a bacterial toxin that can ward off pests.
The Chicago Tribune reported that because genetically modified organisms are not listed on food or ingredient labels, few Americans realize they're eating GMO foods every day. Genetically modified crops constitute 93 percent of soy, 86 percent of corn and 93 percent of canola seeds planted in the U.S., and are used in about 70 percent of American processed food.
The Tribune reported that the Food and Drug Administration has permitted the sale and planting of genetically modified foods for 15 years and that the Obama administration has approved an "unprecedented number of genetically modified crops," such as ethanol corn, alfalfa and sugar beets. The Alliance for Natural Health USA added that the U.S. Department of Agriculture now wants to eliminate any regulatory controls from genetically altered corn and cotton.
And Monsanto, the world's largest seed-maker and a publicly traded American multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, is leading the pro-GMO march and moving full steam ahead in being the No. 1 U.S. and global farm supplier.
CEO Hugh Grant said this past week, "We're in a growth mode, and with the combination of momentum in our core businesses and new layers of growth coming online from an increasingly global portfolio, we have the strategic drivers in place to continue our growth trajectory next year and beyond."
However, Europe's resistance against GMOs paid off, as Reuters reported last Friday that Monsanto is "not pushing for expansion of genetically modified crops in most of Europe, as opposition to its biotech seeds in many countries remains high."
And The Washington Post also reported the same day that South Korea recently joined Japan in suspending imports of U.S. wheat after an experimental and unapproved strain of GM wheat, designed to resist the deadly effects of Monsanto's most popular herbicide and weed killer, Roundup, was discovered growing on an Oregon farm. (Just this last Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found the rogue Monsanto wheat sprouts in the Beaver State, when a farmer who was attempting to wipe out a field by spraying Roundup couldn't kill the wheat crops.)
There's good reason that most European countries, Japan, and South Korea are resisting GMO crops. Business columnist Al Lewis summarized the dilemma Monsanto faces in his column for Dow Jones Newswires: "For Monsanto, it comes down to saving the 9 billion people expected to populate the planet by 2050. Monsanto is the company that allows farmers to grow more food with less land, water and energy. But it is also the company that brought us products we now know were far more dangerous than advertised, including the insecticide DDT, the toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs and the Vietnam-Era defoliant Agent Orange, which poisoned our own soldiers with dioxins. Monsanto also brought us saccharine -- sweet, yet artificial, and known to cause cancer in laboratory rats."
The Alliance for Natural Health USA cited the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and one of the first scientists to speak out about the dangers of genetically engineered foods: "Recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering) faces our society with problems unprecedented, not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. ... Now whole new proteins will be transposed overnight into wholly new associations, with consequences no one can foretell, either for the host organism or their neighbors. ... For going ahead in this direction may not only be unwise but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics."
So instead of eradicating the need for insecticides and herbicides, genetically modified plants eventually could warrant stronger and more intense pesticides in order to outwit and overcome superbugs and greater strains of diseases. And who's to say what GMOs will do -- now or in generations -- inside our bodies as we consume them on a greater scale and they become a part of the bacteria in our digestive tracts?
With more and more U.S. foods being grown, manufactured and imported from places like South America and Eastern Europe -- the precise areas outside the U.S. where Monsanto's biotech seeds are gaining their greatest foothold, food imports are quickly becoming a recipe for disaster. Remember, too, much of the GM crop grown around the world is used for livestock feed, so there's more than one way for GMOs to be ingested in your diet, such as from meat and dairy products.
Equally alarming is a study that was just published in the journal Neurology. According to Medical Daily, a review of 104 studies conducted around the world revealed that exposure to pesticides, insecticides, weed-killers, fungicides, solvents, etc., increased the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 30 to 80 percent.
Dr. Emanuele Cereda -- author of the study, by researchers from the IRCCS University Hospital San Matteo Foundation in Pavia, Italy -- told the British newspaper Daily Mail: "We didn't study whether the type of exposure, such as whether the compound was inhaled or absorbed through the skin and the method of application, such as spraying or mixing, affected Parkinson's risk. However, our study suggests that the risk increases in a dose response manner as the length of exposure to these chemicals increases."
Eat local and organic, period. And fight GMOs invading U.S. food industries and American homes.
I can get HFCS from GMO corn. I can get HFCS from non-GMO corn. I challenge you to find any study that finds different rates of obesity.
Food additives and GMOs are two different subjects, unless the subject of the discussion has morphed from the alleged health effects of GMOs into that of overall dietary purity.
This has now become an exercise in identifying obfuscation, dealing with mild condescension (”do a little research”) and tolerating fearmongering buzzwords (”Frankenfoods”. Really?)
Bye.
I would like to see someone post the safety tests, most GMO’s were tested for 90 days! That will sure tell you a lot of long term effects...Not.
The problem with GMO foods is that the seeds are modified to resist the effects of the weed killers and allow for more spraying to kill weeds and not crops. So, more of the weed killer gets into the food chain. I am sure that there are probably some good effects as well, but maybe Monsanto should take its engineered seeds to the countries where the people want to eat them.
I don’t think that we know all the detrimental effects of the various products that we spray onto our crops, our lawns and public areas, like golf courses. We have a cancer pocket (women’s cancer) in our county that has been linked to the chemicals from the raspberry farms that got into the water table. My mother-in-law gave up golf after all three of her golf partners died of brain tumors.
And you have scientific evidence that GMOs are unsafe?
Sadly Larry I am not html proficient but I have indeed read several studies.
One was recently posted on another recent GMO thread regarding bT and it’s effects on human kidneys. Our overall health is greatly due to the health of our gut bacteria, how putting spliced viruses and pesticide producing crops in that mix could be healthy is beyond me.
Have you “read the studies”?
Or, have you read somebody else’s, agenda riden summary of those studies?
Bt has been used for years as a naturally-derived pesticide; the big difference here is that Monsantos gene-splicing wizards made corn and other food-bearing plants grow the Bt internally. When its used in organic agriculture you can just wash the Bt off with water; you cant do that when its inside ever cell of the corn youre eating.
...A new study shows that low doses of Bt biopesticide CryA1b as well as the glyphosate herbicide, Roundup, kill human kidney cells. The Bt biopesticide conferring insect resistance and the glyphosate tolerance trait tied to the use of glyphosate herbicides account for almost all the GM crops grown worldwide.
These studies, along with the observation that Bt protein is present in the blood of pregnant women and their babie
Sure, for starters
Don Huber, emeritus professor of plant pathologiy at Purdue University, gave a two-and-a-half hour indictment of glyphosate herbicide and genetically modified crops at the Acres USA conference in December.
Dr. Huber detailed the negative impacts of glyphosate and GM crops on plants, soils, and the environment and animal and human health. He called glyphosate the most abused chemical in the history of agriculture and described GM crops as a failed system.
Glyphosates negative impacts on plants
Huber first detailed the negative impacts of glyphosate on crops, soils, and the environment based on papers that he and other scientists, such as Robert Kremer, a microbiologist with the USDAs Agricultural Research Service, have published.
Huber said glyphosate makes plants more susceptible to diseases, increases the virulence of soil-borne disease organisms, and immobilizes plant nutrients such as manganese. It is also toxic to beneficial soil organisms and accumulates in the soil. There are more than 40 plant diseases reported with use of glyphosate, including many fungal diseases such as fusarium.
There has been a 500% increase in fusarium and huge increases in sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soybeans, Huber said.
He showed slides of Roundup Ready GM soybean fields in Iowa and Illinois affected by SDS. The plants were brown while adjacent fields of non-GMO soybean plants not treated with glyphosate were healthy and green.
Huber referred to a published paper showing significant reductions of minerals in RR soybeans treated with glyphosate: 26% less calcium, 13% less magnesium, 49% less iron, and 45% less manganese.
Another slide demonstrated how, contrary to claims, glyphosate doesnt degrade in the soil: plants growing in a field that had been treated with glyphosate for 10 years were stunted and yellow while plants growing in a field treated with glyphosate for a year were taller and green.
Other problems Huber highlighted included bubble kernels on corn cobs that received a late application of glyphosate, damage to winter wheat from residual glyphosate in the soil, poorer growth of russet potatoes resulting from soils treated with glyphosate, and reduced yields in Roundup Ready corn.
Negative impacts on animals
Huber then detailed a litany of feed and food concerns about the effects of glyphosate on animals and human health.
He referred to a 2002 statement from the US Cattlemens Association to the US Congress describing devastating problems with pregnant cows and calves and that high numbers of fetuses are aborting for no apparent reason.
Huber links the problems to feed from GM corn and soybeans. He showed a slide of inflamed stomachs of pigs fed GM feed compared to normal colored stomachs of pigs fed non-GMO feed. Another slide showed cattle stomachs suffering from chronic botulism. Glyphosate in animal feed can cause a microbial imbalance and chronic botulism, Huber said.
New pathogen causing abortions in pigs and cows?
Last year, Huber caused a stir when he wrote a letter to US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack warning him about a pathogen new to science that has been linked to glyphosate and Roundup Ready crops. Huber said the pathogen, which he describes as a microfungus, is linked to illness and reproductive problems in animals and poses threats to human health.
Since writing the letter, Huber has received many letters and emails from veterinarians reporting problems with animals fed GM feed. A veterinarian in Michigan wrote him about a sow (hog) herd that has had an increasing number of deaths and reproductive problems. The cause is unknown, and the vet wonders if it is the pathogen Huber identified. Similar reproductive problems have been reported in cows. Last November Hoards Dairyman reported that cows are losing up to 20% of pregnancies.
We shouldnt expose the entire agricultural infrastructure to a massive experiment, Huber said.
Willing to sacrifice our children
The introduction of GM crops, Huber said, was a betrayal of the public trust by a failure to address potential risks. The irresponsible and premature widespread use is based on flawed and unsound scientific assumptions.
Huber said glyphosate and GM crops are likely harming human health. He cited significant increases in inflammatory bowel syndrome, Crohns disease, and certain types of cancers. Other diseases such as food allergies, autism, endometriosis, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons may also be linked to glyphosate and GM crops, he said.
Glyphosate has totally changed the environment; it has impacted humans, vegetables, grains, fruits, plants, feeds, and animals, Huber said.
In conclusion Huber said that our basic responsibility in agriculture is providing safe and nutritious food. Instead, with current GMO-based agricultural practices, we are willing to sacrifice our children and jeopardize future generations based on failed promises and flawed science just to benefit the bottom line of a commercial enterprise.
Ref akso:
http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2011/apr/6/don-hubers-cover-letter-euuk-commissions/
You can say the same thing about factory chickens as well.
... And who's to say what GMOs will do -- now or in generations -- inside our bodies as we consume them on a greater scale and they become a part of the bacteria in our digestive tracts?
With more and more U.S. foods being grown,manufactured and imported from places like South America and Eastern Europe -- the precise areas outside the U.S. where Monsanto's biotech seeds are gaining their greatest foothold,food imports are quickly becoming a recipe for disaster. Remember,too,much of the GM crop grown around the world is used for livestock feed,so there's more than one way for GMOs to be ingested in your diet,such as from meat and dairy products
You hit the nail on the head.
Here we have conservatives that want to tear it down be cause it is not perfect. Isn’t this what the rats did with our health care? We had the best health care in the world.
There is not much difference between libs and conservatives many time.........................
The health nuts think obeisity parallels Type II diabetes. Actually, it does no such thing.
yeast ~ yeast ~ yeast ~ yeast ~ yeast
So ban the sprays
Where do you get this view that we are health nuts? Where does type 2 diabetes tie into this except in your particular thought process?
In this Democratic republic we are supposed to be privy to the pursuit of life , liberty and happiness. If it makes others happy not to be forced to eat GMO,
What is your issue?
Do you suddenly have the right to shove it down our throats because you think it’s cool?
You call us all (not you personally) Luddites?
I don’t work for i r s, I believe in freedom.
Neither is true.
If you don't want to be thought of as an 'empty calorie health nut' then don't tell us that obeisity or sugar causes diabetes!
And I love to force pigs to eat GMO corn because there’s nothing tastier han roast corn fed pig!
My Dad died from diabetes and weighed 129. You eat all of that $**t you can get. I choose not to.
Why so nasty?
Breeding a certain trait into a crop slowly, over fifty years is good, but adding it in five is bad? Why?
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