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.
According to a 2013 report by Food and Water Watch (FWW), “Monsanto’s day-to-day operations have wreaked havoc on the environment and public health.”[12] FWW specifically cites Monsanto’s past production of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Monsanto produced about 99 percent of PCBs used by U.S. industry at its plant in Sauget, Illinois until PCB production was banned by Congress in 1976, due to their carcinogenic properties and detrimental effects to the liver, endocrine system, immune system, reproductive system, developmental system, skin, eye and brain.[12] Despite the ban, PCBs continue to be illegally dumped or leaked, and since these chemicals do not break down easily, they continue to cycle through air, water and soil for long periods of time. Thus PCBs continue accumulating in plants and food crops, as well as in fish and other aquatic organisms, which are then ingested by other animals building up higher levels of PCBs as they move up the food chain.[12]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto
1) how labor intensive this form of agriculture is,
2) how tillage intensive this form of agriculture is,
3) how much water pollution is caused by this form of agriculture,
4) how the rules are rigged to make this form of agriculture seem much more sustainable than it actually is. (the rice seedlings are planted in one field, then those with attractive growth habits are selected and hand transplanted into a second field, but in calculating yield only the second field is considered).
dead birds ~ free range chickens suffer a predictable death rate out wandering about ~ it’s a number above 0.
I don’t view humanity as my opponent.
Most of the left does. And sadly, most of the global elites in general.
I’m sorry you’re unable to think outside of the left/right paradigm and realize that’s a fabrication to divert our attention from the real agenda. Global population collapse and draconian control of the resulting much smaller population.
The left has caught onto this idea because it’s a popular meme. They won’t allow anything concrete to ever happen though. Just like the GOP supports(ed) the pro-life platform. Hasn’t changed the availability of abortion yet. It’s all talk for both. Both are population control methods and both will never be done away with.
When 90% of the food stuffs in the country are GMO I’m not sure how you think we have choice?
It’s actually very very very difficult to buy anything at a regular grocery store that does NOT have GMO food in it. Or any food eaten in a restaurant. That’s hardly ‘choice’.
India has much of the potentially most productive land on the planet. They misuse it of course, but Monsanto can help folks like that, or they can trick you into believing they don’t poop in the rice fields!
They dropped the Type II diagnostic standard down 10 points and doubled the numbers.
Obesity is thought to be the primary cause of type 2 diabetes. The rise in type 2 diabetes is directly in line with the rise in obesity.
Perhaps because GMOs make food more affordable, people eat more food. But to attribute the makeup of the food to diabetes is baseless.
One hopes you understand the differences between adulterants and genetic characteristics. Humans have been genetically manipulating the food supply since einkorn emmer, spelt and then wheat. Ponies and percherons are the result of genetic manipulation. Gernseys, herefords and jerseys are as well. Whether that manipulation occurs in the field or the lab concerns me very little.
Agnes ... care to comment?
“1) how labor intensive this form of agriculture is,”
Because that’s what’s available to the small plot holder in the 3rd world. They don’t even have indoor water seal toilets. But they DO have manual labor.
Because I’m sure nobody in Japan. Or China, or India will EVER automate this method. Neeeeevvvvver.
Because nobody has EVER automated anything with agricultural methods.
Instead of spraying hundreds of gallons of herbicide on a crop and having to do the same thing weeks or a month later...it would be simple to roboticize that component. Think Roomba.
How do you get water pollution from this form of agriculture? Did you even read the article? These guys are using WAY less water. Because as it turns out rice doesn’t NEED to be drowned all season in water.
They aren’t transplanted but once. Small plotholders don’t have the money to buy broadcast seed. They never have. What’s different is allowing the seed to presprout and transplanting the seedlings individually instead in clumps of 3 or 4. They’re also transplanted several weeks EARLIER than they were previously also.
Did you read the Cornell pages on this method?
Instead of supercrowding the seedlings to allow the canopy to close earlier and thus avoid much of the weeding/tillage, they’re spacing them and allowing for more tillering. Tillering != tillage
Now, answer me this. Why aren’t the Japanese doing GMO hand over fist? Why is it banned? I can see why they might ban OUR GMO stuff, they are the Japanese after all. But why aren’t THEY doing it? It’s not like they are a technophobe luddite society. What are they smart enough to figure out that our politicians have been bought off to ignore?
If the small plot holders can become self suffient with this method, even IF they never automate it doesn’t that negate a lot of the ‘grow this type of seed or all the little Indian children will starve’ argument?
The irony here is that if you have diabetes the insulin you now use is GMO. They have bio engineered bacteria to produce insulin so they do not have to process it from pig pancreases.
I have to go to work but I bookmarked your link and will read it but there are 2 misconceptions in your post. The RoundUp readiness is not a genetic modification, it is bred to be RoundUp ready. And the GMO seeds do NOT self destruct! It is just illegal to save the seed and replant them.
Read the cornell page here:
http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/aboutsri/methods/index.html
They are transplanted ONCE. These farmers had previously been transplanting 3 or 4 in a clump and transplanting them several WEEKS later. They’ve ALWAYS transplanted them though. They can’t afford the seed to broadcast a crop. And broadcast seed would be too thickly planted for this method to work anyways.
BTW, I compared the yield with this method and it kicks to hell anything I found from University of Arkansas on yield per acre. Yes, I converted acre to hectare.
Can this be used on a 500 acre field? No, clearly not in the current means. HOWEVER, it’s the method that’s giving the yield. The IMPLEMENTATION of this method just happens to be human intensive. Mechanization is our friend. Because nobody ever used a combine before. Or a seeder. Or any other mechanized farm equipment.
What this is is a fabulous opportunity for some techie with a bent towards agriculture to automate the transplant and surface weeding techniques. Which should be ‘easy’ compared to broadcast seeding methods since the plants are on a predetermined grid planting.
Think Roomba, only in agriculture usefulness terms.
And you wouldn’t literally be pouring profits down the drain with the liquid herbicide out the tip of the sprayer. Repeated. And repeated. And repeated.
What does poop have to do with rice fields? Or Monsanto?
Unless Monsanto is GIVING away clearfield rice and the glyphosphate to keep it so I’m not sure how the small plot holders would afford that.
And so far it looks like the SRI stuff is, acre for acre, kicking Clearfields butt. (Actually, from University of Arkansas, MOST rice beats Clearfield on a productivity basis) Using NO herbicide (so no input cost there) and seeds they’ve saved from previous years (so no input costs there either). Input costs are something the small plotholders can’t afford.
And what causes obesity? Overeating, yes, but why don’t you do a little research on how HFCS and other food additive affect metabolism of carbohydrates & the subsequent insulin resistance.
Frankenfoods are killing us.
“Don’t worry, I will continue to eat GM food, and if you and the Greens are correct, it will kill off all of us GM supporters and you will get your wish and all of your opponents will eventually die off!”
It’s not that simple. Once these GMO crops infiltrate other crop populations, GMOs will be all that’s left. So you people who think you’re funny or cute or whatever with comments like yours are actually trampling on my rights. Your rights end where mine begin and you are taking away my right to avoid GMOs.
Actually, most medications contain some sort of GMO component. Either in the pilling agents or the encapsulation material or the coatings.
It’s getting increasingly more difficult to escape these little monsters.
A relevant followup to this is why are there so many MORE t1d and t2d’s around these days?
When I was in school, in my class of 200+, there were NO t1d’s. Neither in the class of 200+ the year ahead of me or the class of 200+ the year behind me. Now, that same high school with roughly the same number of students has 14 t1d’s. That’s not ‘better diagnosis’ or ‘poor parenting’.
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