Genetically Modified Products

Genetically Modified Products Present Problems

Crops engineered in China to withstand one pest are now beset by another.

The widespread planting of a genetically engineered crop designed to withstand a menacing pest has had the unanticipated consequence of transforming benign bugs into agricultural predators, according to a new study.

In findings that drive home the difficulty of trying to stay one step ahead of nature, scientists explain how farmers of bioengineered cotton in northern China were able to drastically reduce their insecticide use for more than a decade, only to find themselves spraying a crop that wasn't supposed to need such measures.

The genetically engineered plants were designed to withstand attacks from the cotton bollworm by growing their own pesticide--a deadly toxin that was originally discovered in a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. Splicing the Bt genes into the cotton plants' DNA has kept the bollworm at bay.

Opponents of genetically engineered crops had warned that insects like the bollworm would breed resistance to the Bt toxin. So far, that hasn't happened. Instead, the crops effectively created a new category of pests called mirid bugs.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the National Agro-Technical Extension and Service Center in Beijing documented that as use of Bt cotton rose--and pesticide use declined--mirid bugs did more damage to cotton crops. What's more, the growing population of hungry critters also devoured crops of Chinese dates, grapes, apples, peaches and pears.

In essence, the introduction of genetically engineered cotton transformed the fields into a habitat that enabled mirid bugs to thrive and spread, the researchers reported in the May 13, 2010 issue of the journal Science.

Researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., noticed the problem in 2004, when they surveyed 481 farmers in 5 Chinese provinces. They suspected something was amiss when they found that Bt cotton farmers were using more pesticides than farmers planting conventional cotton. "That made no sense to us," said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a professor of food, nutrition and public policy at Cornell who oversaw the survey. Then they realized that mirid bugs had emerged as secondary pests.

(Continued in next posting),
Suzanne

Genetically Modified Products Present Problems, (con't)

"They had had a field day because farmers were using very little pesticide, since they didn't have to spray for the bollworm," said Pinstrup-Andersen, who published his findings with colleagues. "Over time, the farmers had to go in and use pesticide again."

Mirid bugs were considered minor pests in China. Insecticides sprayed on conventional cotton took care of the butgs, and the need for additional measures arose "only sporadically," according to the study team.

That began to change in 1997, when genetically modified cotton was approved for use in China. The plants use genes from the Bt bacterium to make a toxin that lodges in the cell walls of an insect's digestive tract. That causes cells to swell and break apart, with lethal results. The toxin is not harmful to higher animals, including humans.

By killing off insect larvae, Bt cotton also benefits corn, peanut, soybean and vegetable crops, the researchers found in a previous study. Today, 95% of the cotton grown in China is genetically engineered.

Cotton farmers in Arizona faced the same dilemma after they began planting Bt cotton in 1996 and the absence of pesticides made fields safe for lygus bugs, a type of mirid bug. They dealt with the problem by using targeted pesticides that spared insects like ladybugs that feed on lygus bugs, according to University of Arizona entomologist Bruce Tabashnik.

"The lesson here is that Bt cotton is not a silver bullet," warns Tabashnik, who nonetheless endorses the crop for its role in reducing the need for anti-bollworm pesticides.

There is no reason to think that other types of genetically engineered crops would be immune to this type of problem, Pinsturp-Andersen said. Ultimately, he said, the solution is to develop genetically modified plants that are resistant to a variety of insects, but that will be a continuous process. --adapted from the Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2010.

Comment: Hmm...Will they ever learn? You can't fool with Mother Nature. She strikes back in unanticipated ways, and we the consumers usually end up on the short end of the process.

Suzanne

Thank you for this topic...
Further than what is happening in the field, what are the consequences of ingesting gmo food products? Many many studies have shown that we are in danger b eating gmo foods, so now it may be safer to eat organic meats than to eat gmo tomatoes??
Wow this world is upside down

GMO-Free is Fastest Growing Retail Brand

by Aaron Turpen, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) In a blog post on Nielsen.com1 earlier this month, Nielsen's Tom Pirovano says that U.S. retailers are expanding their store brands and the latest, fastest-growing branding health claim is to label products "GMO-free." This labeling, according to Nielsen's numbers, is up by 67% in 2009 with a sales growth of $60.2 million in that sector.

In fact, healthy claims are tops in many categories of sales growth for store brands, including "Gluten free" and claims of adding or bolstering Omega acids.

Most of these store brands are large and are well-known chains, some known for healthy and whole foods and others more as being cookie-cutter boxes. Supermarkets have been certifying products as organic for in-store brands for some time, so the trend towards healthy claims and marketing is not new.

The rise of sentiment against genetically modified foods (GM or GMO) is growing, however, and market brands reflect that. Readers of NaturalNews are no simpletons when it comes to the dangers of GM foods.2

With genetically modified organisms and foods being linked to organ damage, crop failures, increased water usage, and worse, consumers are finally waking up to the dangers of these products.

Another hot growing trend amongst retail store brands is the claim of being high fructose corn syrup free, which gained 28% or $13 million in market share, according to the Nielsen numbers. This one may become a growing trend, and as Pirovano points out, many retailers are adopting a "wait-and-see attutide to determine if a claim has 'legs' or is merely the latest blip on the consumer trend screen."

Further, thousands of organic and natural food products are now enrolled in the Non-GMO Project's Product Verification Program (known as PVP). This is the nation's first and largest system for scientific testing of product standards against genetic modification.3 This project includes some of the biggest retail names in the food industry and labels from the PVP will be appearing on retail packages this year.

As sentiment against the GMO seeds and products made from their crops grows, so too will the retail market backlash. Although government agencies like the Food and Drug Administration have refused to rule against GM foods, despite the evidence, the free market and consumer demand is turning the tide against them on its own.

As Shelly Roche of Bytestyle.tv says, "The great thing about this new report is that it shows how quickly the market responds when it sees a shift in consumer demand."4

It's becoming obvious that many health-conscious consumers in America are indeed voting with their forks.

Resources:
1 - U.S. Healthy Eating Trends Part 4: Store Brands Expand Healthy Offerings by Tom Pirovano, Director of Industry Insights, Nielsen Co.

2 - Feature NaturalNews Articles on GMOs and http://www.naturalnews.com/027931_G...

3 - Non-GMO Project

4 - 'GMO-free' is fastest-growing retailer brand claim by Shelly Roche, Bytestyle.tv

Suzanne

GMO Poisons Found in Indiana Waterways

Previous ArticleThe Indiana Business Journal reports that proteins from genetically modified crops are showing up in Indiana waterways.

According to the Journal, the University of Notre Dame and Loyola University looked at 217 streams, drains and ditches near Indiana cornfields and found genetically modified (GM) bug-killing protein in 50 of them.

The protein is in genetically modified corn and other crops that are engineered to produce their own pesticide when insects bite them. But when farmers mow the fields, the residue remains from the crushed plants – and it's finding its way to the waterways.

"The protein is carried to surface water by runoff and by the leaves and stalks that sometimes wash into streams," the Journal said. "And the protein lingers. The study was conducted six months after harvest."

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says it is not known whether the trace levels of the protein are a threat to invertebrates in the water.

But either way – it's still poison, and it's a poison that was in 85 percent of the U.S. corn crop last year.

Sources:
Indianapolis Business Journal September 29, 2010

USAToday.com September 28, 2010

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences September 27, 2010

--Posted by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Suzanne

Monsanto Roundup Linked to Birth Defects in New Study

by Aaron Turpen, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Everybody's favorite genetically modified seed and biotech company, Monsanto, has yet again proven their lovability. The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit1 was the focus of a new study looking at their top-selling product, Roundup herbicides.

The study was conducted by Professor Andres Carrasco and an international team of scientists and researchers at the Laboratorio de Embriolagia Molecular at the University of Buenos Aires and was published by the American Chemical Society in August.2 It focused on glyphosate, the prime ingredient of Roundup and the most widely-used broad spectrum herbicide in use worldwide. Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) are also the focus of most of Monsanto's herbicide-tolerant (HT-ready) genetically modified seeds (GM or GMO).

The Argentinian study looked at how GBH affects vertebrate embryos in development. Treated during incubation with a dilute 1/5,000 GBH, the embryos showed several abnormalities in bone development, particularly in the skull and vertebrae. The animal embryos used were frogs and chickens.

For comparison, a 1/5,000 concentration (2.03mg/kg) is about 1/10th of the amount used on most agricultural plants. The maximum level for GBH allowed in soybeans in the European Union is 20mg/kg (established in 1997 when GMO soy was commercialized in Europe). Soybeans after harvest can typically contain up to 17mg/kg of GBH residue.

The research done by Carrasco and his team was prompted by the high rate of birth defects in rural areas of Argentina where Monsanto's GMO soybeans are often grown in large monocultures and sprayed with Roundup from aircraft.

At a press conference during the 6th European Conference of GMO-Free Regions in the European Parliament in Brussels, Professor Carrasco said, "The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy."3

Here in the U.S., we are undergoing a 3-pronged attack against our agricultural and food system. Over 90% of our soybeans, 70% of our corn, and many other common crops are now genetically modified. The plant-patenting and manipulation industry, led by Monsanto, has been taking over both the USDA and the FDA while systematically eliminating family and independent farmers who resist using GM seeds.4

Meanwhile, the evidence against the safety of GM foods continues to mount. This study from Professor Carrasco and his team is just the latest in a long line of research showing the extremely negative effects of the genetic manipulation of our food supply.

The best way to combat this problem individually? Buy from local, non-GMO farmers and growers, eat healthy, non-processed foods, and continue to spread the word about the evils of Big Agra. Things will only change when people begin voting en masse with their wallets and forks, walking away from the Big Agra-Industrial-Pharma-Government complex that is attempting to destroy our lives.

Resources:
1 - Monsanto: The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit by Jeffrey M. Smith, NaturalNews

2 - Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling by Alejandra Paganelli, Andres Carrasco, et al, American Chemical Society, August 9, 2010

3 - Groundbreaking study shows Roundup link to birth defects, Press Release, GMO-Free Regions Conference 2010

4 - Three-Pronged System Enables GMO Takeover of American Agriculture by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews

Suzanne

Genetically Modified Potatoes: Scientists Unleash New Monster

by Anthony Gucciardi

(NaturalNews) Genetic modification of the food supply has run rampant within the past couple of years. A new genetically modified creation has emerged, and may soon end up on your dinner table. Researchers in India have developed a genetically modified potato, loaded with genetically altered amino acids. It seems as if scientists are attempting to recreate nature entirely.

Genetically modified fish have threatened the very genetic coding of fish worldwide, and the genetically modified canola plant has spread into the wild. It is apparent that a tidal wave of genetic modulation has hit the environment very hard.

Genetically modified potatoes now threaten the purity of potatoes internationally. All it takes is a careless farmer to allow his modified crop to be planted elsewhere, without properly labeling the crop as modified. This would mix in the genetically modified crop with traditional, and even organic, crops. This is a legitimate environmental issue, as it is a major threat to food integrity.

Arguably as important as the need to protect our food supply, is the need to protect ourselves from the deadly effects of genetically modified food. Consuming genetically modified food can lead to auto immune disorders, organ failure, sterility, and much more.

If you are unfamiliar with the risks associated with modified food, you are most likely not familiar with how it is created.

The process in which food is genetically modified is extremely outlandish. Billions are spent each year to genetically modify the food supply, leading to an influx of tainted food products. Modifying foods requires one to tamper with the very genetic coding of the crop and/or seed.

The process entails the transfer of genes from one organism to another, such as taking particular genes from a pig and transferring them to a tomato. Not only does this defile nature, but it also leads to a host of health problems.

Due to the complexity of a living organism`s genetic structure, it is impossible to track the long-term results of consuming genetically modified food. Introducing new genes into even the most simple bacterium may cause an array of issues, highlighting the complexity of even the simplest organisms. Introducing new genes to highly complex organisms such as animals or crops is even riskier.

When introducing the gene to its new host, it is essentially impossible to predict the reaction. The genetic intelligence of the host could be disrupted with the introduction of the new gene, creating an adverse reaction. There is truly no way of knowing the long-term effects of genetically modified food, as there are too many variables. There is simply no room for science when Monsanto is involved.

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS...
http://shatterlimits.com/new-geneti...
http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/gm-po...

Suzanne

NY Times asks: Why aren't GMO foods labeled?

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) It is a question that more people should be asking, and one that even some in the mainstream media have begun to entertain: why are genetically-modified (GM) foods, which are patently (no pun intended) different from conventional and organic foods, not required to be properly labeled on food packaging? The answer, dictated directly from the public relations departments of Monsanto and friends via the U.S. government, is that GMOs are safe and identical to natural varieties, and do not require differentiation. But this notion is a flat out lie.

No matter what those in the ivory towers of conventional academia and science often say in defense of GMOs, the simple fact remains that GMOs, also known as imitation food, has never been proven to be safe for consumption, either by animals or by humans, and the technology neither increases crops yields nor reduces the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides. In fact, it does all of the opposite, all while giving complete control of agriculture to a few multinational biotechnology companies that are rapidly eliminating all competition.

And you surely do not have to take our word for it. A simple look into the history of GMOs and how they even gained a foothold in agriculture in the first place clearly illustrates the heavy hand of the likes of Monsanto in weaseling its way into the limelight through lobbying, lies, and deceit (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.ph...).

One would think that the proposition of, at the very least, simply requiring GMOs to be labeled -- just as they are in Europe -- is more than reasonable, as it allows the public to rightfully know what they are buying and feeding their children. But the pro-GM stacked Obama administration, in the spirit of carrying on the pro-GM legacy of previous administrations, has repeatedly said NO to this common-sense approach to food transparency.

According to Obama's U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), labeling GMOs is "false, misleading, [and] deceptive." In other words, being honest is lying, and lying is being honest, according to the administration of transparency (http://www.theatlantic.com/food/arc...).

Or course, the simple explanation for this rhetorical nonsense is the fact that the vast majority of those who now hold positions of power in federal agencies that deal with food, agriculture, and drugs, are former higher-ups at Monsanto (http://www.organicconsumers.org/usd...). So anything that opposes the Monsanto agenda automatically gets shut down, even if it makes perfect sense.

But it goes beyond just labeling, as numerous studies showing the detrimental effects of GMOs prove they are poisons. So in reality, the bare minimum of a reasonable approach is to label GMO poisons as being present in food, even though they truly do not even belong in food, or deserve to be even be called food.

A 2009 study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that three varieties of GM corn that have been approved for human consumption in the U.S. cause "adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system." And this conclusion was arrived upon based on the same data Monsanto used to somehow get these GMOs approved (http://www.naturalnews.com/027931_G...).

Various other studies have also found that GMOs lead to infertility, allergic reactions, autoimmune disorders, intestinal problems, liver dysfunction, enlarged bile ducts, stomach ulcers, premature delivery during pregnancy, and death (http://www.naturalnews.com/026426_G...).

Numerous biologists and others have come forth insisting that, upon review of all available scientific literature on the subject, GMOs are wholly unfit for human consumption. Even the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has stated that an indefinite moratorium is needed on GMOs until proper safety studies have been conducted, rather than industry-funded ones, proving the safety of GMOs. The organization has warned the public to stop consuming GMOs until that time. And the list of documented safety concerns goes on and on.

Jest and jeer as they might, GMO apologists simply do not have science or even reasonable speculation on their side. The evidence is highly stacked against the safety of GMOs, and it is time for their proper labeling on food packaging. Let the public decide whether or not to consume "Frankenfoods" and see how long they last on the market. And in doing so, it will become clear exactly why Monsanto is fighting tooth and nail to make sure that never happens: because the "most evil corporation in the world" would be put out of business in no time.

To learn more about the dangers of GMOs, visit:
http://www.naturalnews.com/GMO.html

Sources for this story include:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...

Suzanne

Suzanne, just so you know, the links don't paste completely.

I hadn't heard about this GMO thing until lately. I do remember wondering why animals nor birds wouldn't eat the corn left by the farmers after the harvest. My wife and I take walks in the country here in Southern Indiana and it is really noticable that there is lots of corn, ears and loose, left by the farmers. It has lain in the fields all winter. Not when I was young. If you wanted to get some of it, you had to beat the varmits and birds.
Just recently we went to my wife's mother's. It was in the morning, and she ask me to let her chickens out of their house. She told me that they had water but no food as it drew mice. So I went to do it. I noticed that she had piled up some loose corn that she had gotten from the field next to the house. I thought that was nice. The chickens would have something to eat as soon as they got out. Not so. They walked right over it and none of them even looked at it. Not so when I was young. We fed our chickens right out of the field. None of it was left.
What are they feeding us?

Even more proven reasons to stop GMOs

by Paul Fassa

(NaturalNews) Despite all the equivocating about GMOs' "potential" dangers and begging for more research, which is restricted by patent laws, the facts are in. GMOs are very problematic for human health, as indicated by whistle blowing scientists.

The whistle blowers revealed that the primary gene for promoting transgenic events in GMOs is a virus known as CaMV 35S. It remains as-is in our guts and keeps on promoting transgenic events with our intestinal flora. Intestinal flora or friendly bacteria are a very large part of our immune systems.

A prestigious scientist in Scotland, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, discovered the effects of GMO potatoes on lab rodents years ago. He was not trying to prove GMOs unsafe. But he had the integrity to publish his findings, which recorded diminishing fertility, spontaneous abortions, and many unhealthy offspring among the ones that managed to arrive alive. He was forced out of his university laboratory position as lead researcher.

Roundup Ready GMOs Create New Pathogen

Now the negative effects of GMOs are taking an observable toll on animals that feed on GM plants in fields where they grow or that are being fed GMO corn or soy. Soon GM alfalfa will be added to the list. Not only animals, but the plants are dying as well.

According to Dr. Don Huber of Purdue University, a new and previously unknown pathogen has been created by the combination of the pesticide Roundup and Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops. Dr. Huber is no stranger to dangerous microbes. He was a bio-chemist colonel in the military researching strategies for detecting and resisting disease outbreaks from biological warfare.

The pathogen Dr. Huber discovered has never been seen before. It approximates the size of a medium virus, but has fungal qualities and is able to reproduce. Now we have a franken-fungal-virus in our midst. He's astonished to find it affects plants as well as animals. It just so happens those dying plants include the very corn and soybean GM crops that use Roundup. So farmers falling for Monsanto contract arrangements are losing their crops while being forced to buy more of the same GMO seeds.

Dr. Huber noted the same tendency for spontaneous abortion and reduced fertility in actual farm animals feeding on GMOs that Dr. Pusztai observed in his Scottish laboratory rodents a few years ago. He has observed this in cattle feeding on Roundup Ready GM grains. So livestock is being lost as well.

Dr. Huber ends his January 2011 letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack with: "We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This (RR) pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure."

GMO Insiders are Running the Agencies

There's no chance USDA head Vilsack will respond to Dr. Huber's plea favorably. Vilsack has been a political Monsanto minion for quite some time. Former chief Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor heads the FDA. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas is a former Monsanto attorney. There are other revolving door recipients of influential government positions from the bio-tech industry as well. Government is stacked with the bio-tech industry against "we the people".

This is why petitioning against GMOs to congressmen and senators, the FDA and USDA and even President Obama WON'T WORK! Potentially workable techniques are summarized in the article linked here. You are welcome to email this author with suggestions and references after reading it http://www.naturalnews.com/031599_G...

[Editor`s Note: NaturalNews is strongly against the use of all forms of animal testing. We fully support implementation of humane medical experimentation that promotes the health and wellbeing of all living creatures.]

Sources for more information include:

Fight back against GMO assault on our immune systems http://www.naturalnews.com/028025_G...

Whistle blowing GMO scientist complete interview
http://www.organicconsumers.org/art...

How the biotech legally prevents independent research on GMO seeds
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/fe...

Complete letter from Dr. Huber to Tom Vilsack http://farmandranchfreedom.org/gmo-...

Why aren't GMOs labeled? A "legal" explanation http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...

Suzanne

I hope I am not unknowingly eating any of that kind of food.

It may take more than hope Daryl.

Seeds of Destruction by William Engdahl states the case quite clearly & forcefully.

Do you own a rototiller?

GMOs are an endtime event.

_________________

Consumer activists unite to demand labeling of genetically modified foods

by Haruka Oatis

(NaturalNews) Washington, DC March 14, 2011. A growing number of consumer activists are staging demonstrations all over the US, with the largest so far at the White House on March 26, 2011.

They demand labeling of genetically modified foods and they're urging activists around the country to "Rally for the Right to Know" locally. The idea has spread like wildfire with other grassroots rallies already being planned in Colorado, California, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee, Florida and Oregon to coincide with the rally in Washington DC.

Their demands are:
1. We have the right to know and want genetically modified foods labeled.
2. We want factory farmed animal and genetically modified animal products labeled.
3. We want independent, transparent, long-term studies done on the safety of GMO's for animals, plants and humans.
4. We want the organic industry protected from cross-contamination and law suits to organic farmers.

The FDA currently considers GM foods "substantially equivalent" and therefore doesn't require labeling. There is a growing body of evidence that show:

* Health and environmental concerns.
* Corporate control of world food and seed supplies, and monopolization through patents, government lobbying and corporate interest over human interest in all levels of government.
* Monsanto is the leader in GM patents.

Rally Organizer, Trish Wright "We will not stop in our efforts to accomplish our goals. If the FDA won't tell people, we will. Our freedom of choice is being violated by the FDA not requiring these products to be labeled."

To date, the majority of commodity crops are genetically engineered. (Soy, corn, canola, cotton). Many deregulated crops such as GE Alfalfa and GE Sugar Beet, being planted in 2011, have the ability to destroy the organic industry.

People are asked to participate in, or organize a rally in their area.

Visit: www.facebook.com/rallyfortherightto... for more information.

Suzanne

I agree that we all have the right to know.

Cap The Gene Spill - New video says GMO contamination of world is far worse than Gulf of Mexico oil spill

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) As part of an ongoing effort to warn the public about the dangers of runaway GMO pollution of our planet, the Institute for Responsible Technology executive director Jeffrey Smith has released a new video called Cap the Gene Spill.

The video is viewable in its entirety at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=29315...

In it, Jeffrey compares the genetically modified contamination of the planet to the Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe. Except the genetic pollution of our planet is actually far worse than the Gulf spill because genetic pollution can't be "cleaned up." It persists in the environment... perhaps for the entire future of life on planet Earth.

Here's some of what Jeffrey Smith says in this new video:

[GMO pollution causes] intense, insidious environmental degradation that may never be able to be cleaned up.

And just like the oil spill, you can trace it back to government incompetence and collusion, and industry manipulation -- putting out technologies that are not safe long before the science is ready.

What about the self-propagating genetic pollution? Once it gets out, it then spreads, and cross pollinates... it becomes a self-propagating pollution that could outlast the effects of global warming or nuclear waste. This is an impossible thing to clean up, and we are bequeathing to all future generations the folly of this generation.

Never before have we fed the products of an infant science to the entire population, or released it into the environment without a way to fully recall it.

So we need to cap the gene spill. Put it back in the laboratory where it belongs.

Maybe someday we can predictably and safely manipulate the DNA of plants and know what its impacts will be in the environment and in our bodies, but that day is far away.

Watch the full video now at:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=29315...

The video links to www.ShopNoGMO.org which offers a convenient shopping guide to help you avoid genetically modified foods in grocery stores and health food stores.

Personally, I consider Jeffrey Smith to be the single most important person leading the fight to stop the genetically modified gene contamination of our world. This man deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his valiant efforts to protect humanity from what is literally becoming the seeds of our own destruction.

Follow Jeffrey's work at www.ResponsibleTechnology.org

Soon, NaturalNews will be launching a separate news channel on GMOs, and we plan to strongly increase our editorial coverage of Jeffrey's outstanding work. Keep reading NaturalNews.com for more news about our collective fight to help save humanity from the evils of fraudulent science and greed-driven corporations that seek to control the world's food crops.

Please also share the link to this page, and forward the video link to as many of your friends as possible. They need to see this. Really.

Suzanne

local store here The Real Atlantic SUPERSTORE, will not allow the NON GMO labelling, it is bad for business. Most GMO'd foods include CORN, POTATOES, SOY including TOFU. Yes we are all eating GMO nonsense so be careful, read labels and contact food sources. I phone and check web pages right in the store esspecially for my beloved tomatoes, I eat at least 2 tomatoes each day. Mucci pac grows tomatoes and other non GMO veggies and on their product it is not labbelled NON GMO.
Sobeys sells ECO SPUDS a local Maritime grown non GMO potatoe, the bag does have a small statement that the product is not GMO'd...

My friend and neighbor is creating a new line of natural lotions, soaps, fertilizers which I can only say are very nice smelling and seem to heal, cleanse and make grow from what I have personally seen. We are waiting for it to be marketed and go national, I wlll see if he has a webpage yet and see what everyone thinks..

93 percent of unborn babies contaminated with GMO toxins, study finds

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) A landmark new study out of Canada exposes yet another lie propagated by the biotechnology industry, this time blowing a hole in the false claim that a certain genetic pesticide used in the cultivation of genetically-modified (GM) crops does not end up in the human body upon consumption. Researchers from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Sherbrooke Hospital Centre in Quebec, Can., have proven that Bt toxin, which is used in GM corn and other crops, definitively makes its way into the blood supply, contrary to what Big Bio claims -- and this toxin was found in the bloodstreams of 93 percent of pregnant women tested.

Published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology, the study explains that Bt toxin enters the body not only through direct consumption of GMOs, but also from consumption of meat, milk and eggs from animals whose feed contains GMOs. Among all women tested, 80 percent of the pregnant group tested positive for Bt toxin in their babies' umbilical cords, and 69 percent of non-pregnant women tested positive for Bt toxin.

The only reason many countries even approved GM crops in the first place was because they were told that GM crops were no different than conventional crops. The biotechnology industry has purported for years that the alterations and chemicals used in GM crop cultivation pose no risk whatsoever to human health, and that any GM substances that remain in food are broken down in the digestive system. Now that it has been revealed that such claims are complete fabrications, many groups are urging governments to pull GMOs from their food supplies.

"This research is a major surprise as it shows that the Bt proteins have survived the human digestive system and passed into the blood supply -- something that regulators said could not happen," said Pete Riley from GM Freeze, an alliance of organizations united against GMOs. "Regulators need to urgently reassess their opinions, and the EU should use the safeguard clauses in the regulations to prevent any further GM Bt crops being cultivated or imported for animal feed or food until the potential health implications have been fully evaluated."

Most of the studies that have been used to validate the safety of GMOs have been conducted by the companies that created them in the first place, so they are hardly a credible source for reliable safety data. Governments in North and South America, as well as throughout Europe, have essentially welcomed GMOs into the food supply based on flimsy reassurances rather than sound science.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...

Suzanne

GM soy destroying children

by Kaitlyn Moore

(NaturalNews) Soy, once touted as a medical miracle, has been outed. Ninety-one percent of the soy we consume is tainted by the filth of the GMO machine, literally the most quietly kept epidemic of our lifetime. Soy makes up a large portion of the diet for the chickens, pigs, and cows some of us eat. Even the vegetarian/vegan community is exposed as a number of meat substitutes list soy as a main ingredient. Soy and soybean oil have wiggled their way into a wide array of processed foods including salad dressings, peanut butter, tamari, mayonnaise, crackers, baby formula, baked good mixes, textured vegetable protein, and the list goes on. So unless you are eating an organic version of any of the above, there is a good chance you are exposing yourself to GMO soy.

Genetically engineered crops are destroying the environment, the health of indigenous communities, and ultimately our health as end of the chain consumers. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has reported a number of studies. Their results? Frightening. Think major issues like infertility (http://www.responsibletechnology.or...), immune problems, accelerated aging, and even changes in the cellular structure of major organs (http://www.responsibletechnology.org/). Also, as a result of the antibiotic resistant genes within GE food, they are the highly suspected culprits behind the new "superbug." The animals involved in the studies ended up deformed, sterile, and dead.

Children are the most susceptible to these harmful effect, since they are constantly in a state of high growth; parents should take care. GMO foods, and especially soy, have been tied to an increase in allergies, asthma, and a propensity to get antibiotic resistant infections.

None of this would surprise any of the individuals in various South America countries that live near GM crops. South America is the world's largest provider of soy (http://www.naturalnews.com/031382_G...).

A recent story in the UK Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...) revealed that the herbicides used on GM soy are so toxic that direct contact often results in severe illness and sometimes death. Petrona Villasboa is one of those that has faced direct loss. Her son was accidenatlly sprayed by one of the machines that are often spraying Monsanto's Roundup on the surrounding crops. Silvino Talavera died that same day - and it was a horrible death (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...). That's not all - Non GMO farmers are being displaced, and those that stay run a calculated risk. Mothers living close to GM farmland are twice as likely to have a fetus with a birth deformity.

The industry doesn't want this information out there. Monsanto provides over 90 percent of GMO soy seeds and related herbicides to farmers worldwide (http://www.smdp.com/Articles-c-2011...).

Agent Orange was one of Monsanto's first herbicides and the resulting effect to U.S soldiers and Vietnamese citizens was reprehensible( http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon...).

Scientist who push to hard to get a widespread scientific inquiry about the devastating effects of GE foods have had subtle and not-so-subtle pressure applied and been forced to back off their findings (http://www.responsibletechnology.or...).

Just as efforts are underway to assist these farmers in seeing the benefits of growing organic food as a means of survival and commerce, the end consumer must also make a change. Soy purchases must be viewed in a whole new light. The best way to protect your family from these potential harmful effects is to remove it from your diet or stick to strictly organic soy and organic processed foods.

Suzanne

California to mandate labeling for GMO salmon

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The miserable failure of both the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to stand up for the interests of the people and require proper labeling of AquaBounty's genetically-modified (GM) salmon, which is set to be approved soon, has led California legislators to take matters into their own hands. According to Red, Green & Blue, the California Assembly Health Committee recently approved a measure requiring the "Frankenfish" to be clearly labeled so consumers are aware of what they are purchasing.

AB 88, which was introduced by Assemblyman Jared Huffman, came in response to outcry by consumers, fishing and environmental groups, and even various Indian tribes, who expressed deep concern over the FDA's flagrant disregard for public health in its approval. AB 88 explicitly states that any GM fish or fish product sold without proper labeling will be considered misbranded, and appropriate legal action will ensue

Many NaturalNews readers will remember the details of the AquaBounty saga in which the USDA ignored the known health and contamination risks associated with the GM fish, but decided to approve it anyway -- even though there was no credible evidence that doing so would be safe for people or for the environment (http://www.naturalnews.com/029770_s...).

"Knowing whether our salmon is genetically engineered (GE) is important for a host of reasons, including risks to our native salmon species, and allowing consumers to make dietary choices consistent with concerns they may have for the environment, food safety, and religiously or ethically based dietary restrictions," said Assemblyman Huffman concerning the need for the bill.

The vast majority of Americans have indicated that they want to know whether or not the foods they purchase are GM or not. In fact, a recent MSNBC poll revealed that roughly 90 percent of respondents believe GM labeling is an ethical issue, and that individuals have a right to full disclosure (http://www.nongmoproject.org/2011/0...).

Sources for this story include:

http://redgreenandblue.org/2011/05/...

Suzanne

Take this for what it is worth. I have a bird feeder on my front porch. The birds pick through the seeds and leave ALL the corn. A year ago I visited my mother in law and she ask me to let her chickens out. It was about 9AM, and she thought they might be getting hungry. They had water but no food. I noticed that outside the chicken house she had shelled out a pile of corn. I thought, "how nice" they wouldn'd have far to go to eat. Guess what. They walked right over the corn and didn't even look at it. Three guesses. "Roundup ready" was on the seed corn sack.

This is very serious stuff, so serious that I am wondering why this isn't being picked up by the news media such as CNN, etc.?

"I am wondering why this isn't being picked up by the news media such as CNN, etc.? >

Money. Monsanto has more money than CNN..etc... They also have lots of people in government offices. There has been those who tried but are now selling papers on the corner..etc...

Could you do an experiment? Take corn you know is round-up ready, but not treated and place it out. Also, take some corn which you know is not round-up ready (organic or whatever it takes) and place it out. Place both out with no other seeds. Then see which is frequented the most and which disappears the quickest.

It is most important that none of the seed be treated as I have seen birds distinguish seed meant to poison them.

Monsanto trying to take over world seed supply, nation by nation

by Kaitlyn Moore

(NaturalNews) He who controls the seed controls the food supply; and he who controls the food supply controls the world. There is no question that Monsanto is on a mission to monopolize the conventional seed market. In fact, they are steadfastly working towards the goal of creating a world where 100% of all commercial seeds are genetically modified and patented- basically a world where natural seeds are extinct.(http://www.naturalnews.com/029325_M...)

Unfortunately for the global community Monsanto is accomplishing their purpose. They currently own 90% of the world's patents for GMO seed including cotton, soybeans, corn, sugar beets and canola. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environme...)

Yep, the creators of chemicals that will go down in history for their toxicity and horrific side effects, is attempting to take over the world's seed supply. Ask yourself- do you really want companies such as BASF, Bayer, DuPont, Syngenta, and Dow involved with your food? Sadly, to a large extent they already are. These Monsanto chemical and GMO cronies all share genetically engineered traits and create the patented herbicides and pesticides that GMO crops require to thrive.

Monsanto is infamous for taking advantage of small farmers, and with the advent of MoU's they are doing so with governmental license. Countries like India, Pakistan, Australia, and New Zealand have all executed MoU's with Monsanto. MoU's or memorandum's of understanding permit Monsanto to use publicly owned lands to create so called demonstration farms (GMO breeding camps) which in turn -at least in the case of Rajasthan - are subsidized by the government.

Monsanto literally takes farmer seeds, creates genetically engineered copycat versions, and then retains all intellectual property rights. Dr. Vandana Shiva, Executive Director of the Navdanya Trust, an Indian organization committed to organic biodiversity, states that "the MoU's will in effect, facilitate bio-piracy of Rajasthan's rich biodiversity of draught -resilient crops .... by failing to have any clauses that respect the Biodiversity Act and the Farmers' Rights Act, the MoU's promote bio-piracy and legalize the great seed robbery." (http://www.deccanchronicle.com/edit...).

It is common knowledge that GMO seeds are much worse than conventional ones. As with all of their agreements, Monsanto shields itself from any liability- so when the Monsanto's promises of higher yields with less work ring hollow, when farmers crops fail, or when mass suicides are committed because of crop failure and spirit crushing debt- Monsanto presses on with no worries. (http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/03/0...)

Farmers that sign up for Monsanto's seeds of destruction find themselves hooked. Year after year, no matter what prices are being charged, they are dependent on GMO seeds for new crops because GMO seeds - the bastardized versions they are - don't regenerate. (http://www.naturalnews.com/031742_G...)

Monsanto has no qualms about robbing farmers that don't play poker with them. As a mater of fact; it makes a business of it. Conventional and organic farmers in both Canada and the U.S., who have the misfortune of having lands that border GMO farms, often end up with trace contamination in their crops, making them (if organic), unsuitable for sale. Monsanto actually uses this situation against farmers and files patent infringement claims that they often win.

The result farm owners are left with exorbitant legal bills and fines often forcing them to shut down: clearing away Monsanto competition. In a savvy move for survival, a preemptive suit on behalf of almost 300,000 plaintiffs seeking legal safe harbor, has been filed in New York. (http://www.naturalnews.com/031922_M...)

Monsanto's product has changed from poison to food, but it has held true to its history of violating the rights and health of people around the globe. Monsanto is a 100% committed to the sale of their seeds of destruction no matter what it takes: bullying, infiltration of high government offices with company friendly individuals, or intimidation. The organic movement has taken up the standard against Monsanto's machinations in court as well as through grassroots education and activist efforts. The organic revolution is Monsanto's Achilles heel, and its goal is a world without Monsanto.

1. http://www.icis.com/Articles/2002/0...

2. http://gmo-journal.com/index.php/20...

3. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...


Suzanne

I always thought it'd be good to grow a crop next to a GMO crop and then you'd get the gene (if that was your goal) and say it wasn't your fault. Looks like that wouldn't work. So, couldn't Monsanto be taken to court for bio-trespass?

No. You woldn't get the chance to sue them. They would sue you for using THEIR seeds. I have a video I got from "Seeds of Deception" telling how a farmer in Canada was taken to court because his field of canola was contaminated by their GMO canola. He lost. They claimed that he was using their patented seed.

NPR violates FCC rules, promotes interests of its sponsorship donor Monsanto

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Many NaturalNews readers may be shocked to learn that, for years, biotechnology giant Monsanto sponsored the popular show Marketplace that airs on National Public Radio (NPR). According to a recent report by the Bohemian, the show had received funding from Monsanto for several years, and the views presented on the show have (surprise!) mirrored those of the biotech behemoth, despite the fact that US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules prohibit sponsors from being directly promoted on the network.

The report explains that a recent episode of Marketplace featured the one-sided views of Pedro Sanchez from Columbia University, which just so happens to be the exact same views held by Monsanto. Genetically-modified (GM) crops, increased pesticide and fertilizer use, and expansion of large agribusiness techniques were all presented as the scientific solution to the world's hunger crisis, even though many other recent reports and studies show that this strategy is ultimately a failure (http://www.naturalnews.com/032775_o...).

Outraged by this blatant bias, many listeners called out the network for this abuse of public radio. When questioned about Monsanto's ties to the program and to the network, American Public Media (APM) spokesman Bill Gray told the Bohemian that Monsanto stopped sponsoring Marketplace back in April of 2010. But this cease-funding appears to have done little to sway the show's preference for industrial agriculture, which has been made clearly evident.

In 2009, environmental expert Heidi Siegelbaum wrote a concerning post on the Marketplace website about Monsanto's infiltration of NPR with its corporate agenda. The network had already been in violation of FCC rules by routinely airing sponsorship ads for Monsanto that touted its technology as promoting "sustainable agriculture" and "crop yield[s]," while also "conserv[ing] natural resources."

FCC rules state that NPR sponsors' products and services cannot be promoted on the network. However, for years NPR gave undue credence to Monsanto by repeating its unsubstantiated talking points and marketing claims in its voice-over blips about sponsors.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/06...

Suzanne

Welcome to the world of Monsanto

by Suzanne Meier

(NaturalNews) Monsanto is close to single-handedly controlling seeds around the world, and hence, global food sources. A good mix of lobbying, influential members in the administration and successful spin doctoring appear to be the key to world take over. But don't worry; they say it is for our best and it will even save the planet!

Over the past decades, food has been replaced with rocket fuel, without objection by the FDA and with limited consumer awareness. One of the most unwanted intruders on the list of foods is genetically modified food.

According to Monsanto, however, its genetically modified crops not only represent the cure for world hunger, but also help diminish the problem of climate change. Because GM crops do not need to be tilled or require plowing, Monsanto claims it can lock carbon dioxide in the soil and therefore should get carbon credits! Listening to Monsanto, one could be mistaken to believe GMs are what the world has been waiting for.

But how did Monsanto get this far?

The official eight million US dollars spent on lobbying in 2010 are part of the success story, but their more effective strategy is being the fox in the chicken coop. The Obama administration is littered with Monsanto missionaries. Former Monsanto vice president Michael Taylor is a senior consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration. Islam Siddiqui, vice president of CropLife (Monsanto-funded lobbying group), is a negotiator for the US Trade Representative on agriculture. Roger Beachy, a former director of a Monsanto-funded plant science center, is the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. These and many more GM lovers switch jobs back and forth between the government and Monsanto.

The dangers of meddling with nature, altering the planet, using enormous amounts of herbicides for crops, and causing negative health effects on humans and animals are simply not discussed. Instead, the powerful food elite have zero concerns about playing god. In the world of GMs, they get to be just that - blending daisies with pigs, fish with horses, oak trees with sheep or what not. This process is called biolistics (injecting cells with genetic information). What will happen if this gene gun (biolistic) technology will keep spreading until the planet suffocates? We are not far off. Monsanto has infiltrated North and South America, Asia directly, and numerous countries indirectly (cross-pollination).

The mad theory to have Monsanto run our entire food supply is almost reality.

There are millions of ethical and health questions that remain unanswered as Monsanto is continuing to gun species and plants. Humanity and science alike simply have no concept on what type of fire-spitting dragon they have at their hands. The lunatic takeover of nature will equal a death of the world we know today - all in the name of corporate profit. And not only may we see a tomato with a fish head, no, but the disappearance of the naturally occurring species will also most likely continue at record speeds, such as the vanishing of bees that may be related to GMs. Also, the ground may be incapable of growing natural products, as soil contamination may occur with more than 1600 microorganisms potentially wiped out by GM proliferation.

Monsanto may have the code to transform the planet in the coming decades, if we let them. There is a massive outrage against GMOs in the world today, but is it enough to stop the powers in charge?

The Monsanto marketing spin on GM use is remarkable, so are the profits. Imagine, no farmer allowed to plant natural seeds, but rather bioengineered Monsanto seeds? Welcome to the world according to Monsanto.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/cl...
http://www.angrymermaid.org/monsanto
http://www.raw-wisdom.com/50harmful.

Suzanne

Thanks for sharing this.

By splicing genes from animals into plants, the natural barrier that separates diseases that plague the plant kingdom from the animal kingdom is most likely being whittled away. We have germs, bacteria, virus, and prions to contend with now. Imagine how life would change if molds and other plant specific diseases started to infect people and animals.

Surely we have reached the place in time where we can destroy ourselves and our planet several times over by our technology.

It appears that mold already has the ability to infect people and cause health problems! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mold_health_issues

Vandana Shiva - The Future of Food and Seed Scientist, feminist, ecologist, seed advocate, and author, Vandana Shiva, presenting the keynote address at the 2009 Organicology Conference in Portland, Oregon, on February 28, 2009. An excellent and informative video on what is going on with seed.

Death blow to GMOs? California ballot initiative calls for mandatory labeling of all genetically engineered foods

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) In what is perhaps the most significant breaking news we've heard on the GMO front in a long time, an effort has just been announced in California that seeks to gather enough signatures to put an historical initiative on the ballot which would require the labeling of GMOs in foods.

I interviewed Ronnie Cummins from the Organic Consumers Association (www.OrganicConsumers.org), who is a key leader in advocating mandatory GMO labeling. His organization is playing a significant role in helping to get this initiative on the ballot in California.

This is the pathway to victory against GMOs! With this initiative on the ballot, we have a very achievable strategy to deal a death blow to GMOs and restore sanity and integrity to our seeds and food crops.

Listen to the full interview with Ronnie Cummins on SoundCloud:
http://snd.sc/qPBFJk

Or click PLAY on the audio object here:

Interview with Ronnie Cummins about GMO labeling ballot initiative in California by NaturalNews


Highlights from the announcement for mandatory GMO labeling
• This labeling initiative is effectively a "ban" on GMOs, because most consumers simply won't buy genetically engineered ingredients once they know they are present in conventional foods.

• GMOs are only continuing to be grown and sold today because consumers have been prevented from knowing about the GMO ingredients in their foods.

• 75% of all non-organic processed foods in grocery stores today contain genetically engineered ingredients.

• 90% - 95% of Americans want to know which foods contain GMOs.

• The GMO industry is already gearing up to fight this ballot initiative and plans to spread lies about GMOs such as "GMOs are necessary to feed the world" or "genetically engineered crops are perfectly safe!" (The quack scientists who push GMOs are no doubt gearing up to spread their lies and disinformation as part of the effort to confuse consumers and thereby protect their GMO profits.)

• This initiative, if approved, would force health food retailers like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to reformulate their own products and inventory to remove GMOs. "There's gonna be panic in the boardrooms of Whole Foods and Trader Joe's," says Cummins.

• 700,000 signatures are needed in California to put this initiative on the ballot. This will require an army of volunteers with clipboards to gather the signatures. See below for how you can contribute to this effort.

• Go to www.OrganicConsumers.org and click on the "Millions Against Monsanto" campaign page to see where you can sign up to be a volunteer.

• Significant funding providers for this campaign include: Dr. Bronner's - $1 million, Nature's Path - $500k, Mercola.com - $500k, Organic Consumers Association - $250k and others.


More announcements and interviews coming from NaturalNews
Tomorrow, NaturalNews is announcing our own donation and fundraising effort to support the effort to demand mandatory GMO labeling and ultimately remove GMOs from the food supply entirely. Keep reading NaturalNews.com this week and throughout the month of October, where you'll find up-to-date breaking news and announcements about the most important developments in the realm of GMOs.

Also check out our sister site www.AlternativeNews.com for breaking alternative news throughout the day. We're covering the Occupy Wall Street protests, GMO rallies, victories against fluoride, the latest news on vaccine dangers, and a whole lot more.

We are winning this info war against runaway greed and false science! Help us spread the word by sharing our stories and linking to them.

Suzanne

Five short videos from Jeffrey Smith provide sharable introduction to GMOs for your friends who need to know

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) Jeffrey Smith from the Institute for Responsible Technology has released five short videos that are perfect for sharing with friends who might be new to GMOs. These short videos tell powerful, hard-hitting stories about GMOs in just two or three minutes, and they're easy to forward to others who need to know the truth about what's happening to our food supply.

Here are the five videos, posted on NaturalNews.TV. You can also share the URL of this article if you'd like to introduce your friends to all five of these videos:

Even farm animals refuse to eat GMOs
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=C5A58...

Jeffrey Smith relates a story about how farmers test whether their farm animals will eat GMOs. Most farm animals naturally avoid genetically engineered feed if given a choice!

How GMOs turn your babies into medical experiments
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=98B87...

This short film reveals how genetically engineered foods are being widely consumed today, causing a vast assortment of side effects, including widespread infertility and damage to their sperm cells and DNA. Rats fed genetically modified soy had half their babies die. Don't let our babies become guinea pigs of the GMO biotech industry!

Jeffrey Smith - How GMOs may turn your body into a human pesticide factory
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=C3996...

Jeffrey Smith reveals how genetically engineered crops result in gene transfers into the bacteria in the human gut. It means that after eating GMOs, we may have genetically modified proteins inside our own bodies. Even worse, when BT (genetically engineered) corn is consumed, the gene that produces the BT toxin may transfer into the bacteria living in your intestines, turning you into a HUMAN PESTICIDE FACTORY.

How GMO research is rigged using fraudulent science
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=DCDDB...

Jeffrey Smith reveals some of the dirty tricks used by Monsanto and other biotech companies to twist their "science" and make GMOs look safe even when they're extremely dangerous. This is all from the same industry that said DDT was safe, PCBs were safe, Agent Orange was safe, and so on. "Corporate science" is always distorted, especially from the biotech industry.

Cap the GMO Gene Spill
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=3FFF0...

Eye-opening video about the genetic pollution of our planet caused by GMOs. Featuring Jeffrey Smith from the Institute for Responsible Technology who explains how GMOs represent a planet-wide genetic contamination of the planet that's far worse than all the oil spills in the history of the world. GM crops result in widespread environmental degradation, and it's all being done based on warped, dishonest "corporate science."


Scientists under attack - video trailer
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=37BEF...

This is the trailer for a documentary available from the IRT called Scientists Under Attack. It reveals the total distortion of science being used by the biotech industry, and the way in which honest scientists who try to question GMOs are viciously attacked and discredited.

A must-see video trailer if you want to understand what's truly going on with GMOs and the outrageous criminality of the biotech industry.

The documentary itself is available at:
http://www.responsibletechnology.or...

Help NaturalNews raise funds to support the IRT
NaturalNews has pledged $15,000 in matching fund donations for the IRT. As of today, more than $11,000 has been donated by NaturalNews readers, bringing the total donations to over $22,000.

Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the IRT to support its important work raising awareness about GMOs. Read more at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/033773_J...

Suzanne

Suzanne there seems to be a problem with the above links that you supplied!

Sorry Crater, this is an exact copy of the original article. Don't know what happened.

Suzanne

How to fight a grassroots battle against Monsanto -- and win!

by PF Louis

(NaturalNews) Writing to congressmen, the FDA and Obama, to stop Monsanto from contaminating the food chain, has proven fruitless. It's no use pretending we have a representative government when we are faced with a corporate plutocracy that owns the government.

Careerists have used the revolving doors between biotech industry and the USDA and FDA for years. Obama has chosen one of Monsanto's top revolving door careerists, Michael Taylor, as his "Food Czar." "So what now must we do?"

Boycotting GMOs
This makes good sense. But the biotech industry's successful lobbying for exemption from existing label legislation makes boycotting difficult. They are not required to label GMOs or foods containing GMOs. So how can the public know?

Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception and founder of The Institute for Responsible Technology, has spearheaded the boycott movement with campaigns for educating the public of what foods to avoid.

Jeffrey's strategy is to achieve a market tipping point where food processors realize they're losing a substantial market share by using GMOs in their products. He realizes labeling is an issue that needs to be circumvented.

Cornucopia website recently published a list of cereals and other processed "natural" foods that appear in health food stores containing GMOs. That list was recently featured by Mike Adams, who also explains the "natural" food con. (source below)

Organic Consumer Association (OCA) has created a Millions Against Monsanto section on its website. OCA head Ronnie Cummins has vigorously campaigned health food retailers to bypass the government's collusion with Monsanto and label GMO appropriately.

"The GMO Free Project" is a third party non-profit committee that has taken the task of getting food processors to voluntarily submit their products for testing to earn their "GMO Free" label.

That label has two distinctions: The "Verified" designation means just that. "Enrolled" means the food processor has signed on but the product hasn't been tested yet. Not everyone is on board yet, but it's a start.

Legal system guerrilla warfare
This has recently just started for real, and should be pursued vigorously. The crux of Monsanto's monopoly is their manipulation of patent laws. PUBPAT, a group of lawyers concerned with patent malfeasance has recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of 60 organic trade associations and farmer groups challenging Monsanto's patent issues.

The current case challenges Monsanto's intimidating and suing farmers for patent right infringement when their crops are contaminated by GMO crop fields. PUBPAT is challenging other issues, such as Monsanto's illegal double patents. A direct hit on this point could strike a lethal biotech wound.

GMO contracted farmers now have to assume liability for suits from farmers whose crops have been contaminated. This is mostly motivated by successful contamination suits against Bayer Corporation for their GMO Liberty Link rice, which is experimental and not approved.

The most recent Bayer award went to Riceland Foods, the largest rice cooperative in the USA. Riceland had claimed huge revenue losses because of Europe's refusal to buy the contaminated rice.

Other rice farmer and distribution groups had been awarded earlier. Bayer's total for these awards is estimated at close to a billion dollars.
And there have been international suits pending as well. Most of these are based on planting GMO crops in EU nations where they are banned.

The biotech industry is aggressive and vicious with efforts to expand their empire. Monsanto even uses Xe Services, a privately owned security agency formerly called Blackwater, which is a mercenary group. They have been assigned the task of locating and isolating biotech seed resistors internationally and "influencing" them.

A suggestion: Exploit Monsanto's recent assigning contamination liability to GMO contracted farmers with the growing number of GMO farmers who are disappointed with their sagging yields and rising prices for seeds and pesticides through Monsanto.

This would take like minded legal foundations to link up with the disenfranchised farmers and create a blowback that would stagger the biotech industry. Someone should coordinate this effort as soon as possible.

We need a tsunami of boycotts and legal actions against the biotech industry. We must all do what we can to resist the biotech industry's efforts to control the food supply.

Educate yourself. Stay tuned with Natural News, and check out Organic Consumers Association and Institute for Responsible Technology's websites.
Our future is at stake with this clear and present biotech danger.

Sources for this article include:

Video of Dr. Don Hubert on latest crop disease threat from Monsanto's Roundup http://vimeo.com/22997532

Mike Adams on Cornucopia's list of GMO cereals http://www.naturalnews.com/033838_b...

Appeals court rules organic farmers can sue biotech firms if their crops are contaminated http://www.naturalnews.com/033216_G...

The PUBPAT suit http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/20...

Riceland/Bayer and more http://www.organicconsumers.org/art...

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/215/...


Suzanne

Public outcry is working to stop GMOs

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The fight against genetic modification (GM) seems like a never-ending, uphill battle. But Lord Melchett, former director of Greenpeace and current policy director at the Soil Association, says that, despite what the biotechnology giants would have you believe, most nations of the world are rejecting GMs and thus preventing their takeover of the planet.

"[M]any people in Europe may be unaware of the extent of the resistance to GM in places like India and China, because they swallow the GM industry line that it is supported all across the world," he was cited as saying in The Independent. "I have to say that where we are now with GM leaves me feeling very optimistic."

A quick visit to the website of GM-giant Monsanto, for instance, indicates that what Melchett says is true. Fancy, deceptive marketing and design tactics would have you believe that the world is lovingly embracing the alleged wonders of GM crops, but this is hardly the case. In fact, the only reason GMs even have any foothold at all is because, in some countries, they have been deceitfully approved beneath the radar of the general public.

But as the general public has begun to learn more about GMs -- and the fact that they are dishonestly hidden and unlabeled in the U.S. food supply -- things are beginning to change. In recent years, several new GM crops have been defeated due to public opposition.

"America is where we're told GM is a huge success...but it's simply not true," said Melchett at the recent Sustainable Planet forum in Lyon, France. "If anybody tells you this, ask them, where is GM wheat? Monsanto had it ready to go but it was stopped by American farmers. Ask them, where is the GM version of alfalfa, the fourth most commonly grown crop in the world? American farmers went to court to stop it being commercialized."

Continued efforts are needed to stop GM crops from gaining any further ground, and with enough dedication, the outspoken public may even help reverse the tide.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...

Suzanne

GM Seeds Threaten World Food Supply

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The agribusiness strategy of aggressively promoting genetically modified (GM) and highly hybridized seeds are placing world food security at risk, according to studies conducted by researchers from the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) and presented at the World Seed Conference in Rome.

Researchers are increasingly warning that global warming and the ensuing worldwide ecological disruption may render many popular seed varieties unsuitable. A recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that temperature rises from global warming are likely to lead to shortages in corn and soy, two of the world's most important food crops.

"Where farming communities have been able to maintain their traditional varieties, they are already using them to cope with the impacts of climate change," said IIED project leader Krystyna Swiderska. "But more commonly, these varieties are being replaced by a smaller range of 'modern' seeds that are heavily promoted by corporations and subsidized by governments. These seeds have less genetic diversity yet need more inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers and more natural resources such as land and water."

Traditionally, farmers have saved seeds from a number of different varieties of each crop, which has made them able to adapt more readily to crises like drought or pestilence. But with farmers abandoning traditional varieties for higher yielding but genetically homogenous corporate varieties, the genetic diversity that protects the world's food supply from disaster could be lost.

According to the IIED, global agriculture needs to adopt a model similar to the Participatory Plant Breeding program in southwest China, in which small farmers and seed breeders are cooperating to develop new crop varieties and share the profits.

"Traditional seed varieties are critical to help Chinese farmers adapt to climate change," said Jingsong Li of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy. "At the same time, this biological diversity is under threat from problems such as drought, floods, pests and diseases, which climate change may promote. For these reasons, farmers are keen to improve their varieties through Participatory Plant Breeding."

Sources for this story include: www.foodnavigator-usa.com.

Suzanne

Personally, I don't see a problem with the concept of GMO. However, I see a serious problem with the implementation of it.

The implementation is an art, not a science. In fact, one may question the "art" part as it is not very controlled. It is more of a let's try it and hope for the best. The two ways I know is by bacterial injection or by the shotgun approach. Either way, the gene must first be excised. I forget some of the details or proper terms, but an enzyme or bacteria (?) is used to cut the DNA strand. Different enzymes cut it closer to the gene or further than others. You hope for a fairly close cut. It may include or exclude the "junk" DNA between genes. Markers are used to assist the process.

Junk DNA means that part of the code which has yet to be determined what it's for. It may be useful for the gene in question or it may be useful for some other gene in the source plant. Imagine if the excising gets it wrong. If it is code which turns on (or off) some other gene in the source DNA, gets inserted in the target DNA, what if it is pointing to some unrelated target DNA gene? If left out for the targeted gene, then most likely, those plants won't be used. But what if it is code which only turns it on (or off) under certain circumstances? Those circumstances are different in the target DNA.

Anyway, once this "close enough" gene is excised and properly prepared for insertion, special infecting bacteria can be used which take up the gene into their own DNA, and infect/insert into the target plant's DNA. And yes, part of the bacteria's DNA may be transferred as part of the natural infection process. Hope it doesn't seriously affect the end result.

An alternative way is to bombard the target DNA cell culture. Basically with a shotgun approach. Do enough cells, and some of them may accidentally get the gene in the right areas of the target DNA which is expressed "good enough" to be used. Just like in normal plant breeding, hundreds are selected through to find one that works.

So, you have extra DNA from the source, extra DNA from bacteria, inserted in an unknown or uncontrolled location in the target DNA. Amazing that it even works! But hey, it's good enough, let's use it.

If you are one who eats anything, then you should have little worries about what gene is inserted into what. But if you avoid animal products, what happens when they use a frog gene to create a frost resistant plant? And of course, there is the issues with ingesting other animal genes and then worrying about viruses targeting those genes/characteristics or your immune system not recognizing those genes.

That was approaching it from the greed/ignorance level. Some say such embedded genes are causing health problems. Maybe it's just an unfortunate side effect.

But what if someone wanted to intentionally cause problems? With the irrationality of vaccinations and even though the few experiments done have shown no benefit but they keep urging it upon people, one wonders if there is something else going on. Something sinister, something intentional rather than one of ignorance or hopefulness. What if a gene is inserted into a plant/plant product, it becomes commonly accepted, it causes no problems, but it does code for part of a compound or reactant? Then, once it's in place, what if another gene is introduced which codes for the other half?....

How does one determine whether a product is genetically modified? How does one screen for an unknown gene?

GMOs killing off Monarch butterflies, report finds

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) You have likely seen them dancing through the air and gracing the petals and leaves of various plants and shrubs. But a new study published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity says that the popular Monarch butterfly, which is an absolute necessity for farmers, is on the decline. And the cause? Genetically-modified (GM) crops like corn, soy, and cotton, which today blanket millions of acres of American cropland.

Though not necessarily in the same vein as bees and bats, Monarch butterflies are still considered to be migrational pollinators. They travel very long distances and often inadvertently pollinate various flowers and plants. But Monarchs rely on milkweed plants to breed -- milkweed is actually the only plant on which Monarch larvae can feed -- and the use of pesticides in GM agriculture is contributing to the elimination of milkweed, and thus the elimination of Monarchs.

The study explains that during the 2009 - 2010 Monarch overwintering season, which represents the time during which eastern North American Monarch butterflies hold out through the winter in warmer Mexico, populations reached an all-time low. And while they increased slightly the following year, they still remained at dismally low levels.

Besides loss of forest in overwintering areas and continued land development, the report tacks the "expansion of GM herbicide-resistant crops, with consequent loss of milkweed host plants" as the culprit in declining Monarch butterfly populations. After all, Monsanto's Roundup herbicide specifically targets milkweed for termination, and roughly 150 million pounds of the poison are applied to US cropland every year.

If GM crops continue to take over the whole of agriculture with great strides, as they continue to do, Monarch butterflies (as well as bees and bats), may eventually become extinct. And without these pollinators, of course, it will be no longer possible to grow food.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.growswitch.com/blog/2011...

Suzanne

Sorry, I don't buy that.

First, I don't see, nor ever have seen, very many milkweeds in a corn field. Second, why would Monsanto create a herbicide to target milkweed rather than Russian thistle, pigweed, bindweed, or other serious weeds? And aren't milkweeds perennials which would most likely require more than one year to flower and therefore would not be established to any extent of a food source in cultivated fields anyway?

This is stating that Monarchs are not extinct due to farmer's sloppy field practices. Farmers who don't spray, cultivate their corn and I would be surprised if very many milkweeds grew in it. A slogan could be, "Save the monarch, become lazy farmers".

But why the concern for Monarchs? What about corn ear worm? Or corn borers, rootworms, stalk borer, cutworms, armyworms? Many of these produce butterflies which would be as much of and more of a minor pollinator as Monarchs are. And some of those are what Monsanto is specifically targeting. Save the Ear Worm!

And which food crops, of which the majority eats, require insect pollination?
Not corn, not wheat, not oats, not rice, not beans.

Kland, this agenda is explained in Seeds of Destruction by F. William Engdahl.

Seeds of Destruction review:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7716

_____________________________________

But I don't read that as intentional but more of greed and a don't care attitude of the side effects. What I'm questioning is if there is something very intentional and not just for protecting profits. In other words, could these illnesses not be a "side effect" of the imprecise process, but could they have been intentionally studied, researched, and designed to cause harm?

In my view, the reason GMO is wrong is that combining genes from different species is a divine, creative prerogative. That's my understanding of what is involved. But I'd really like to hear your reasons Kland for thinking the concept is fine.

I read your description of the process of creating a GMO organism and it seems you're acknowledging that men are combining genes from different species. This was what men were doing before the flood and the dinosaurs are an indication they were far more advanced than modern geneticists. The interference of men in the created order was one of the primary reasons for the flood according to inspiration. It seems the flood annihilated genetically modified creatures and we're going to see a repetition of that history when the earth is cleansed again - this time with fire.

When I said I don't see a problem with it, I was stating it from a position of the world rather than a believer. For if approaching it from a believer, splicing in frog genes into a tomato plant, does that make tomatoes unclean?

However, still, I see genes as code. Inserting code from one place into another, is that wrong? Not what God created, but if you come at that angle, is anything today what God created? I'd say nothing is. It's part of evolution - change over time. Not change into something totally different, not a dog into a cat type of evolution, not a increase of information, but more of a filtering or a loss over time.

Were dinosaurs amalgamated species? Were they created by man before the flood? Were they extinguished at the flood? Were none on the ark? More specifically, what is a dinosaur?

What about the flowers Ellen White described being larger than they are today? Since they don't exist, does that mean they were amalgamated?

Speaking of plants, if amalgamation means genetically modified, does that mean men before the flood did not genetically modify, or amalgamate, plants?

Did only man amalgamate things? I think something else is going on. Not sure what, but one thought is things amalgamated either through satan and/or on their own. The flood merely reset it. Maybe so, maybe not...

And, since "there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men" does that mean men were genetically modifying man and beast at least by the time of Ellen White if not before?

Which further leads me to think something else is intended, but course, not man with beast.

Four ways Monsanto threatens the environment and public health

by Anthony Gucciardi

(NaturalNews) Biotechnology giant Monsanto has been the leader in genetically modifying the planet, altering the genetic structure of crops and seeds that are consumed by individuals around the globe. Scientific research has found that GM crops and herbicides are not only leading to a number of health disorders, but they are also spawning mutated species of insects and powerful superweeds. This is only a couple of the ways that Monsanto continues to recklessly endanger human health and the environment -- here are the complete 4.

1. GM crops consistently linked to organ problems, other biological damage
Despite hard evidence linking the consumption of GM crops to organ disruption and a host of other health ailments, Monsanto continues to push its GM crops on developing nations under the guise of solving world hunger and empowering local farmers. In a telling review of 19 studies analyzing the dangers of GM crops including corn and soybeans, scientists reached a shocking conclusion regarding the true safety of these ubiquitous food staples. Researchers concluded that consumption of genetically altered corn and soybean products can actually lead to significant organ disruption in rats and mice.

The organ damage was specific to the liver and kidneys, two organs that are vital in the cleansing of toxins. It is important to remember that over 93 percent of United States soybeans are genetically modified, and this number is increasing. What this means is that public health is continually being threatened by the global food supply, as evidenced by the major study review.

2. Bt-containing gmo crops are spawning mutated superbugs
Going beyond the initial genetic modification process, Monsanto also offers GM crops filled with a toxic biopesticide known as Bt. Incorporated into the crops to kill insects, Bt usage has led to the development of mutated insects that are resistant to the biopesticide. Insects that are continually exposed to Bt actually begin to develop a resistance to the toxin through the act of mutation. In present day, around 8 insect populations have mutated to resist Bt. Of the 8, 2 species are specifically resistant to Bt sprays and a staggering 6 are resistant to Bt crops as a whole.

As a result of the resistance, farmers are forced to increase their pesticide use. Meanwhile, Monsanto continues to genetically manipulate the Bt-filled crops further in an attempt to overcome the powerful mutations exhibited in the insect populations. Despite heavy modification, research has found that even further modified Bt crops provided 'little or no advantage' in fighting off the insects. If Monsanto chooses to continue with this process, it will undoubtedly lead to even more pesticide spraying.

3. Roundup creating superweeds spanning millions of acres
Superweeds now infest over 120 million hectares of farmland, all thanks to Monsanto's popular herbicide Roundup. Farms across the world are being infested with herbicide-resistant superweeds that show no sign of stopping. These are the very same farms that Monsanto claims to be assisting and empowering. The super resistant weeds developed an immunity to glyphosate, a primary herbicide that Roundup contains. In 2010, experts estimated the weeds to cover over 120 million hectares across the globe, 4.5 million of which are within the United States. Nations like Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Europe and South Africa are experiencing an increase in these superweeds.

When farmers have come to Monsanto seeking aid, Monsanto denies them any warranty. On their website, the company states "Roundup agricultural warranties will not cover the failure to control glyphosate resistant weed populations."

4. Monsanto is involved in creating aspartame
A 1999 investigation by The Independent revealed that aspartame is actually created using GM bacteria. The article, entitled "World's top sweetener is made with GM bacteria" included a Monsanto spokesperson admitting that aspartame was indeed created using genetically altered bacteria. According to the report, the Monsanto rep stated:

"We have two strains of bacteria - one is traditionally modified and one is genetically modified," said the source. "It's got a modified enzyme. It has one amino acid different."

Aspartame, of course, has been linked to brain tumors and other health conditions. Amazingly, one showed that of 48 rats experimented on, up to 67 percent of all female rats developed tumors roughly the size of golf balls or larger.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Monsanto_de...
http://www.monsanto.com/weedmanagem...
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Bt_resistan...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...
http://www.enveurope.com/content/23...

Suzanne

Genetically-modified salmon found to be contaminated with infectious salmon anemia

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) As the US federal government continues to evaluate whether or not to approve AquaBounty's genetically-modified (GM) "AquAdvantage" salmon, Canada's Cohen Commission (CC), a group established by the nation's government to track the decline of Sockeye salmon in the Fraser River, has announced some shocking information. According to a recent report, AquAdvantage being raised at a land-based, isolated site on Prince Edward Island have been found to be contaminated with Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA), a serious viral disease that affects Atlantic salmon.

Catherine Stewart from the Living Oceans Society and Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform recently gave an interview in which she explained the mysterious ISA discovery in the "Frankenfish." According to the CC report, Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) reported to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) back in 2009 that there had been an outbreak of ISA at the Prince Edward Island facility raising AquAdvantage salmon.

"I think we have to ask the question, 'How did this get into this facility?' This is a land-based, closed-tank system that's raising these genetically-engineered fish," said Stewart. "It could only have come through the eggs or the smolts, or through water that the facility pumps from the bay into their facility."

AquaBounty is the same company, of course, that has been trying to ramrod US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its highly-allergenic AquAdvantage Frankenfish without so much as a shred of independent, legitimate scientific evidence proving that the imitation fish is safe for humans and the environment, or that it will not reproduce and destroy stocks of wild salmon all over the world (http://www.naturalnews.com/GM_salmo...).

Meanwhile, this Prince Edward Island scandal clearly illustrates that AquaBounty is incapable of even protecting its own protected stocks of fish from disease, let alone protect the world's oceans from contamination. If the company cannot even maintain its own disease-free, protected environment, how can it be trusted not to release GM fish and their traits into the wild?

"Was AquaBounty getting [its] eggs from Norway, Scotland, and were these ISA-infected eggs? We don't know," added Stewart. "And if [AquaBounty] had that disease in its facility, what's happening to the water they are dumping into the bay? What percentage of the water they use in this facility is recirculated, and what percentage goes out as effluent into the receiving waters, and does that effluent water contain the ISA virus? Are they treating the effluent? Again, we don't know."

Be sure to watch the entire interview with Stewart at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVh4...

Suzanne

Monsanto spends whopping $2 million in third quarter 2011 lobbying federal government

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) If you have ever wondered how the biotechnology industry has been able to develop the cozy and unquestioning relationship with the federal government that it has today, you need not look much further than Big Biotech's lobbying expenditures. According to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek report, biotech giant Monsanto spent a whopping $2 million just in the third quarter of 2011 lobbying the federal government to support its agenda.

One of its loftiest lobbying seasons on record, Monsanto's Q3 payoffs to our so-called public servants in Washington has kept the wheels greased, so to speak, for expanding its monopoly on patented agriculture. This multi-million dollar bribe from the world's most evil company (http://www.naturalnews.com/030967_Monsanto_evil.html) will help ensure that genetically-modified (GM) alfalfa, for instance, avoids running into any more regulatory roadblocks, even though the crop is useless, and will only serve to contaminate the entire food supply (http://www.naturalnews.com/GM_alfalfa.html).

According to a disclosure filed by Monsanto on Oct. 18, the company has been lobbying both Congress and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to weaken regulatory requirements for both GM sugar beets and alfalfa, which have been a primary focus for the company throughout the past year. Monsanto is also spending millions to ensure that its patents on various other GM crops remain in place for years to come.

Back in the first quarter of 2010, Monsanto spent nearly $2.5 million lobbying the federal government to craft patent law changes in its favor, rather than in the public's favor. This hefty sum also conveniently arrived on the doorsteps of lawmakers in Washington not long after the time when the US Department of Justice (DOJ) began an investigation into Monsanto's business practices to determine if the company was in violation of federal antitrust laws. Monsanto actually gave the federal government a record $2.53 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 right after the DOJ first began the investigation (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9GFL8780.htm).

According to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks corporate lobbying practices, Monsanto has spent more than $5.1 million in 2011 lobbying the federal government. In 2010, Monsanto spent over $8 million, and in 2009, over $8.6 million. Monsanto's largest lobbying year was in 2008, when it spent nearly $9 million bribing the federal government to betray the people (http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000055).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9RL51J81.htm

Suzanne

EU Halts Imports of US-based Corn Gluten Feed Due to GMO Contamination

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The European Union (EU) has rejected roughly one million tons of US-based corn gluten feed, a leftover byproduct of corn processing that is commonly fed to conventional livestock, over concerns that it might be tainted with illegal genetically-modified organisms (GMO). Unlike the US, the EU still has at least some standards when it comes to GMOs, and has typically been much slower to adopt them compared to countries in North and South America.

Reuters Africa reports that corn gluten shipments into the EU have basically stopped as a result of contamination concerns, and that many traders are now trying to figure out a solution. However, the report slants the issue and blames EU restrictions, rather than the US tainted food supply, for the ordeal, and suggests that the EU needs to loosen its standards to keep the supplies going.

The EU has already capitulated to heavy pressure from the biotechnology industry and its advocate countries like the US to fast-track GMO approval. And even though EU labeling requirements for GMOs have largely eliminated them from the food supply -- when given the choice, of course, the vast majority of people will choose non-GMO foods. GMOs still sneak their way into the European food supply via an animal feed loophole.

In fact, the EU Commission recently decided to end its zero tolerance policy for GMOs because, frankly, it is near-impossible to avoid GMO contamination these days, especially when the imported goods are coming from the US. So even though Europeans resoundingly oppose GMOs, they are still exposed to them every time they eat meat from a conventionally-raised animal (http://www.naturalnews.com/031977_GMOs_food_chain.html).

But in the case of the tainted corn gluten feed, the contamination in question comes from a certain type of GM corn, Syngenta's MIR162 Agrisure Viptera variety, which has not yet received EU approval. Only 37 GM crops have been approved for import into the EU, and MIR162 is not one of them, as EU standards for approval are much more stringent than they are in the US.

But rather than loosen its standards as many are demanding, the EU would do better to preserve its own food supply by looking for new corn gluten vendors in nations that have not capitulated to the demands of the biotechnology industry. The only way to end the expanding tyranny of GM food is for countries that oppose them to stop trading with the countries that cultivate them.

Sources for this article include:

http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL6E7NK21P20111221

Suzanne

Health Basics: What Are GMOs?

by S. D. Wells

(NaturalNews) Molecular engineers working in laboratories for Monsanto, the giant American biotech company, are gene-splicing vegetable seedlings with poisonous pesticides and herbicides so the plants are inherently protected from the insects and worms that might damage them. The majority of products Americans eat daily contain some form of GMO soy, corn, canola (rapeseed) oil or cotton seed oil. Research shows that consuming the popular herbicide/pesticide Roundup leads to the mutation of cells in the human body, in turn fueling the development of malignant tumors and other various forms of cancer.

In other words, as the plants grow up from the ground, they already contain genes from toxic concoctions, therefore helping corporations and their "cooperating" farmers maximize profits. Some countries are terrified and outraged, knowing there are not sufficient studies on the long term effects from this bio-engineering "guessing game," and are boycotting American exports of major vegetables, dairy, and meat products for this specific reason, including Germany.

Consider this: What if over half of all the food being sold in grocery stores contained pesticides that you couldn't taste or smell, with no warnings on the labels, and then you got cancer from eating them after ten years? Or, what if a pregnant mother could get her baby vaccinated in the womb with an insecticide, so that no insects would ever bite the child after it was born? Would anyone be crazy enough to do it, especially if it was FDA approved?

More than 85% of all corn, soy and canola oil are GMO

The bad news is in, and it may not be changing for quite awhile. GMO vegetables and all of their by-products are not labeled as GMO in the United States. Currently, 93% of soy, canola and cottonseed oil, 86% of corn, 95% of sugar beets, 13% of squash, and rice is on the cutting board now. As much as 77% of the world's soy is GMO also. Think for a moment about all of the popular products that have some kind of processed soy or corn in them; it would take an entire book to list them all. GM potatoes and tomatoes have been taken off the market.

To appreciate the size of this health and environmental disaster, one should understand the 96% rule. For the first time ever, science has created models that combine the clinical and genetic similarities of rodents, great apes and humans for determining the odds of acquiring cancer.

A comparison of genetic blueprints with that of the human genome shows that our closest living relatives share 96% of our DNA (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3...). Before now, scientists had hypothesized that it was only about 35%. The FDA and CDC quite often denounce research regarding popular cancer causing foods, additives, and artificial sweeteners because tests are only run on rats and mice, but not humans. Now we know we are affected by toxins, just like the other animals.

To pour salt in the wound, GMO pesticides not only kill most of the nutrients in foods, but most GMO plants die after one year and new seeds must be purchased from Monsanto. It's all part of the money making scheme (http://paraschopra.com/publications...).

What's the cure? Eat only organic food from local farmers markets and health-food grocery stores. And if you say it's more expensive, you're wrong. Surgery and chemotherapy for stomach, kidney and colon cancer far exceed the price of non-GMO foods, drinks, candy and gum (and that's with health insurance). Also, let your voice be heard about GMO labeling. (MillionsagainstMonsanto.com)

Sources for this article include:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Biotec...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3...

http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/...

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/...

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/...

http://paraschopra.com/publications...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...

http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon...

http://www.treehugger.com/corporate...

http://www.treehugger.com/corporate...

http://www.ghorganics.com/GM%20food...

http://www.naturalnews.com/033504_G...

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/cott...

Suzanne

I may have to revise my opinion of GMO. While I still don't see a problem with the concept, there is still a problem with the implementation. In the seedsofdeception video, there is a part where two different genes do not cause a problem, but it was brought out the mere process of injecting the genes disrupt the DNA, causing problems. What is implied is, forget the foreign DNA and the foreign bacteria used to excise it, but just use plain gold particles and blow them through the source cells and you will have problems. This makes me think of microwaving food and there may be some similarities regarding the damage done -- to both the food and the consumer of it.

This could be tested and confirmed. Now, all we need is someone who has the equipment designed for genetically modifying organisms, to spend money and several years selecting and growing the plants out, then spend several years testing consumption of them to determine that they should not be doing what they are doing. Think anyone will provide the funding and willing to do the research? Think anyone will be allowed to publish results which aren't favorable?

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/A...rentl/index.cfm
Third row down.

Leaked documents reveal US diplomats actually work for Monsanto

(NaturalNews) Biotech giant Monsanto has been genetically modifying the world's food supply and subsequently breeding environmental devastation for years, but leaked documents now reveal that Monsanto has also deeply infiltrated the United States government. With leaked reports revealing how U.S. diplomats are actually working for Monsanto to push their agenda along with other key government officials, Monsanto's grasp on international politics has never been clearer.

Amazingly, the information reveals that the massive corporation is also intensely involved in the passing and regulations concerning the very GM ingredients they are responsible for. In fact, the information released by WikiLeaks reveals just how much power Monsanto has thanks to key positions within the United States government and elsewhere. Not only was it exposed that the U.S. is threatening nations who oppose Monsanto with military-style trade wars, but that many U.S. diplomats actually work directly for Monsanto.

What the leaked documents reveal -- Military style trade wars, government corruption

In 2007 it was requested that specific nations inside the European Union be punished for not supporting the expansion of Monsanto's GMO crops. The request for such measures to be taken was made by Craig Stapleton, the United States ambassador to France and partner to George W. Bush. Despite mounting evidence linking Monsanto's GM corn to organ damage and environmental devastation, the ambassador plainly calls for 'target retaliation' against those not supporting the GM crop. In the leaked documents, Stapleton states:

"Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices."

The undying support of key players within the U.S. towards Monsanto is undeniably made clear not only in this release, but in the legislative decisions taken by organizations such as the FDA and USDA. Legislative decisions such as allowing Monsanto's synthetic hormone Posilac (rBGH) to be injected into U.S. cows despite being banned in 27 countries. How did Monsanto pull this off?

The biotech juggernaut managed to infiltrate the FDA positions responsible for the approval of rBGH, going as far as instating the company's own Margaret Miller as Deputy Director of Human Safety and Consultative Services. After assuming this position, Miller reviewed her own report on the safety and effectiveness of rBGH.

Many US diplomats pawns of Monsanto's GM agenda

While it may be shocking to you if you are not familiar with the corrupt influence of Monsanto, the cables also show that many US diplomats are pushing GMO crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative. Interestingly enough, the U.S. focused their efforts toward advisers to the pope specifically, due to the fact that many Catholic figureheads have openly voiced their opposition to GM foods. With this kind of political influence, is it any wonder that many food staples are now predominantly GM? Nearly 93% of U.S. soybeans are heavily modified conservatively, with many other staple crops coming in at similar numbers.

U.S. diplomats have unique opportunities to spread honest and intellectual campagins that can serve to better mankind and end suffering, however they are instead spreading the roots of Monsanto deeper and deeper into international territory. As a substitute for the betterment of mankind, these paid-off diplomats are now spreading environment desecration and health destruction.

As if there wasn't already enough information to reveal Monsanto's corruption, the biotech giant also spends enormous amount of money lobbying government each year. Monsanto spent an astonishing $2 million lobbying the federal government in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone, according to mainstream sources. Why so much cash? The government lobbying focuses on issues like regulations for GM crops and patent reforms. This 'legal' form of persuasion is the reason government agencies like the USDA and FDA let Monsanto roam freely.

Satisfying government officials' financial vested interest is all that matters when dealing with corrupt mega-corporations like Monsanto. As long as these financial ties continue to exist, Monsanto will continue to reign over the food supply and continue to wreak devastation to the environment, ecosystem, and humankind.

Sources for this article include:

http://naturalsociety.com/us-start-trade-wars-with-nations-opposed-to-monsanto-gmo-crops/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9RL51J81.htm
http://213.251.145.96/cable/2007/12/07PARIS4723.html
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1677871/fearful-of-genetically-modified-crops-youre-too-late

Suzanne

Senator pushes for GMO labeling in Washington State

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats occupy the White House, federal regulatory officials continue to disregard concerns about genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), and stonewall all efforts to mandate proper GMO labeling. As a result, individual states are having to craft their own GMO labeling legislation, including a new bill recently introduced in Washington State that would mandate GMO labeling beginning in 2014.

The Epoch Times reports that Washington State Senator Maralyn Chase has sponsored a new bill that would require both raw GMOs and processed foods containing GMOs to be properly labeled beginning July 2014. Any food product containing GMOs will have to bear a list outlining which ingredients are natural and which ingredients are GMO. Several other GMO labeling bills have also been introduced in the state legislature.

"People have the right to know what they're eating," said Sen. Chase about her bill. She has reportedly been working for years to address the GMO labeling issue, noting that it is a "question of transparency and accountability."

PCC Natural Markets reports that legislators from both sides of the aisle in Washington State are in support of several farmer-authored GMO labeling bills. After all, farmers trying to sell non-GMO crops, especially overseas, bear the brunt of not having GMOs labeled because their foreign market potential becomes greatly limited.

Of particular concern is the potential future approval of GM wheat, much of which would be grown in Eastern Washington. Farmers there are concerned that, if approved, GM wheat will ruin their foreign market potential since most other industrialized nations require GMO labeling, or flat out reject GMO imports. Japan, for instance, has already said it will reject GM wheat from the US, should it be approved.

Back in early 2011, more than 1,200 Eastern Washington farmers signed a petition brought before the state legislature to require GMO labeling. This "Committee to Safe Farm Markets" has tried for years to get the attention of legislators about GMO labeling, but to no avail.

As we reported previously, similar GMO labeling efforts are currently underway in California. Backed by a coalition that includes Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, Nature's Path, Eden Foods, Lundberg, Organic Valley, and United Natural Foods, a GMO labeling initiative in California is moving forward with roughly 80 percent support among polled Californians.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-s...ods-176684.html

http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/1201/gmo_labeling.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/033763_GMOs_California_ballot_initiative.html

Suzanne

I wonder what the political situation is in Canada regarding this?

Hi Daryl, there's little reason to wonder - Canada's open for business.
_______________________

Canada is open for business?

Can you elaborate?

Business interests come first in Canada, before food safety, social welfare, healthcare, aboriginal rights, pension security, education, veterans' benefits, prison reform.

Business first. This is what Canadians elected in May 2011.

So Goodbye to Caterpillar in London Ont.

Goodbye to pension security.

Goodbye to food inspectors & food scientists.

Welcome back asbestos mining in Quebec.

Welcome to Alberta Tarsands expansion & environmental disaster.
__________________________________

Welcome too, shale gas fracking.
_________________________

And $65 Billion for F-35 fighter jets which don't work.
____________________

Study: Roundup diluted by 99.8 percent still destroys human DNA

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) A new study published in the journal Archives of Toxicology proves once again that there really is no safe level of exposure to Monsanto's Roundup (glyphosate) herbicide formula for genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). According to the new findings, Roundup, which is applied by the tens of thousands of tons a year all around the world, is still toxic to human DNA even when diluted to a mere 0.02 percent of the dilution amount at which it is currently applied to GM food crops.

Numerous studies have already identified the fact that Roundup causes DNA damage, not to mention endocrine disruption and cancer. But this new study, which originates out of the Medical University of Vienna, is one of the first to illustrate Roundup's toxicity at such drastically diluted levels, which is a direct contradiction of the agri-giant's talking points about the supposed safety of Roundup.

"Comparisons with results of earlier studies with lymphocytes and cells from internal organs indicate that epithelial cells are more susceptible to the cytotoxic effects and DNA-damaging properties of the herbicide and its formulation," wrote the authors in their abstract.

"Since we found genotoxic (DNA damaging) effects after short exposure to concentrations that correspond to a 450-fold dilution of spraying used in agriculture, our findings indicate that inhalation may cause DNA damage in exposed individuals."

Interestingly, it is not so much just the glyphosate ingredient in Roundup that is extremely poisonous, as much as it is this chemical's amplified toxicity in the presence of other additives in the formula. Polyoxyethyleneamine, for instance, a surfactant that facilitates glyphosate's absorption into cells, has been found to significantly increase Roundup's synergistic toxicity in humans.

Despite Monsanto's claims to the contrary, Roundup is clearly an exceptionally toxic chemical that has no legitimate place in agriculture. According to data compiled by GreenMedInfo.com, Roundup is linked to causing Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, imbalanced hormones in children, DNA damage, low testosterone, endocrine disruption, liver cancer, meningitis, infertility, skin cancer, kidney damage, and even uranium poisoning (http://www.greenmedinfo.com/toxic-ingredient/glyphosate).

Environmentally, Roundup is a pervasive threat to air, water, and particularly groundwater and drinking supplies, as studies have shown that it does not effectively biodegrade after being sprayed. Back in the fall, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released data showing that air and water all across America's "bread belt," where much of our nation's food is grown, is highly contaminated with glyphosate (http://www.naturalnews.com/033699_Roundup_pollution.html).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.greenmedinfo.com

Suzanne

Monsanto's Roundup threatens stability of global food supply

by Anthony Gucciardi

(NaturalNews) Monsanto's reckless disregard for public health and the agricultural stability of the planet may be even more significant than previously thought. A shocking new report reveals how Monsanto's Roundup is actually threatening the crop-yielding potential of the entire biosphere. The report reveals that glyphosate, which was developed by Monsanto in the early 1970s and is the active ingredient in its patented herbicide Roundup, may be irreversibly devastating the microbiodiversity of the soil - compromising the health of the entire planet, as a result.

New research published in the journal Current Microbiology highlights the extent to which glyphosate is altering, and in some cases destroying, the very microorganisms upon which the health of the soil, and - amazingly - the benefits of raw and fermented foods as a whole, depend. Concerningly, certain beneficial strains of bacteria used as food-starters in cultures for raw yogurt, such as Lactobacillus cremoris, have entirely disappeared from certain geographic regions where traditionally they were found in plenty. The study reports that the death and growth inhibition of selected food microorganisms was observed in concentrations of Roundup that are lower than are recommended in agricultural practice.

This means that farmers who are increasingly using larger and larger concentrations of Roundup and similar glyphosate-based herbicide formulations to countermand the increasingly resistant super weeds GM agriculture has spawned, are not only damaging the immediate health of the soil, but subsequent yields of indispensable food-starter microorganisms, as well as the microbes that ensure the overall fertility of the soil for producing crops well into the future.

Monsanto's Roundup assaults the planetary biosphere

Microorganisms are responsible for much more than just the health content of raw and fermented foods. The most numerous inhabitants in the web of life, microorganisms participate quite literally "at the root" of the nitrogen, phosphate, oxygen and carbon cycles, and are therefore indispensable for the health of the entire biosphere. Astoundingly, there are an estimated 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (6 x 10 to the 30th power) bacterial cells on the planet, and these soil microrganisms represent about 50 percent of the the total biodiversity in terms of numbers of species.

As Roundup usage threatens these soil microrganisms, including fungi and the mycellium (technically the largest organism in the world), it could lead to devastating implications. Compromising the health of the mycellium, in particular, may cause serious harm to the planet. According to prominent mycologist Paul Stamets, mycellium may actually act as a 'network' within the biosphere, acting as the Earth's 'natural internet' in which virtually all organisms may rely upon. It has been recognized throughout the ages that all life depends on the soil. Without healthy soil, the health of the entire planet is at risk.

Charles E. Kelogg was one individual who stated such in the USDA yearbook back in 1939. Kelogg said:

"Essentially, all life depends upon the soil ... There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt also voiced similar concerns, warning:

"The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself."

Based on an ever-increasing body of scientific evidence showing glyphosate biodegrades slowly, sinks down through the topsoil where it accumulates in the groundwater (source for natural drinking water, e.g. aquifers, springs), and is found in nearly all air and rain samples tested in the US, it is safe to say that Monsanto's best-selling Roundup is one of the greatest threats to human and environmental health ever created.

As the USDA continues to sit back and allow Monsanto to threaten the environmental stability of the planet, it becomes more apparent that the USDA and Monsanto are gladly willing to exchange the future of the planet and its inhabitants for short term gain. In fact, the USDA has even given Monsanto's latest GMO crops speedier approval in order to secure the company's profits, ignoring the numerous known harmful effects of Monsanto's past creations, e.g. Agent Orange, Aspartame, DDT.

The known effects of Roundup

The negative effects of Monsanto's Roundup on human health and the environment have been firmly established by numerous scientific studies and large-scale investigations, with scientists even linking the best-selling herbicide to conditions like infertility and cancer due to its genotoxic (DNA damaging) nature. Amazingly, even when diluted by 99.8 percent (450-fold lower dilutions than used in agricultural applications), Roundup still exhibits serious genotoxic characteristics and is harmful to the integrity of human DNA. Meanwhile, this carcinogenic herbicide product is used nationwide by unsuspecting homeowners and agricultural workers. According to the United States Geological Survey, 176 million lbs of glyphosate were used in the U.S. in 2007.

Outside of the public health realm, Roundup's startling environmental havoc is perhaps an even greater cause for concern. Despite being created to fend off weeds, Roundup is actually spawning resistant superweeds across millions of hectares (one hectare is 10,000 square metres), bankrupting farmers and destroying crop land. These resistant weeds currently cover over 4.5 million hectares in the United States alone, though experts estimate the world-wide land coverage to have reached at least 120 million hectares by 2010. The onset of superweeds is being increasingly documented in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Europe and South Africa.

The research is clear: Roundup is not only harming human health and damaging farmland, it is threatening the very biosphere itself by destroying microbial biodiversity, with the future agricultural stability of the planet, i.e. the ability to produce food through monoculturing, at serious risk of collapsing.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22362186

http://www.naturalnews.com/035050_Roundup_Monsanto_DNA.html

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2909

http://www.naturalnews.com/034620_Monsanto_diplomats_GMOs.html

http://greenmedinfo.com/toxic-ingredient/glyphosate

Suzanne

FDA petition to label GMOs nears one million signatures - sign it today!

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Only a few more weeks remain before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stops accepting public comments about a petition filed by the Center for Food Safety (CFS) seeking the FDA's compliance with requiring mandatory labeling of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). And with more than 850,000 comments already submitted, according to Just Label It!, truth in labeling advocates everywhere are hopeful that the petition will reach its target of at least 1,000,000 signatures by the March 27 submission deadline.

In conjunction with more than 450 other food freedom advocacy groups, organic food brands, and farmer and seed organizations, CFS filed a petition with the FDA on October 12, 2011, urging the food safety agency to stop delaying and begin enforcing mandatory GMO labeling. Citing near-unanimous support for mandatory labeling among all Americans polled in several national surveys, as well as the more than 20 other nations around the world that already require GMO labeling, CFS is demanding that the FDA take action.

And to spur along the effort, the Just Label It! campaign has been organizing a petition-signing drive to get at least 1,000,000 unique signatures in support of the petition by March 27, 2012, which is the FDA-established deadline for the petition. Filed as Docket # FDA-2011-P-0723-0001, the petition correctly states that failure to label GMOs is misleading individuals and families everywhere, and that pursuant to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), the FDA has a lawful mandate to require that GMOs be labeled.

You can read the full petition here.

In preparation for its final push to gather the target number of petition signatures, Just Label It! will be releasing an "infographic" on March 7, 2012, that explains the issues surrounding GMOs and why they need to be labeled. When this infographic is released, we will post a link to it here on NaturalNews so you can share it with your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and anyone else you come into contact with. The infographic will also be linkable through Facebook and Twitter as well.

You can sign the petition through the Just Label It! portal by visiting: http://justlabelit.org/takeaction

To learn more about the Just Label It! campaign and to watch a short film about GMOs by Food, Inc. creator Robert Kenner, visit: http://justlabelit.org/

Sources for this article include:

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com

http://justlabelit.org/takeaction

http://www.regulations.gov/;D=FDA-2011-P-0723-0001#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2011-P-0723-0001

Suzanne

Protesters successfully shut down California Monsanto office

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) A recent two-day protest in Northern California against genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) led to the complete shutdown of a Monsanto corporate office for an entire day, according to reports. On Friday, March 16, 2012, activists affiliated with the Global Days of Action to Shut Down Monsanto began rallying in front of the Davis, Calif., office of Monsanto, where they held up banners, gave speeches, and set up tents in front of the Monsanto building on Fifth Street, which caused the biotech giant to shutter its operations.

"In the course of the two-day event, activists held up signs, gave speeches to inform and inspire each other and solidify the movement, drafted a resolution about Monsanto with many proposed solutions to be presented to the California legislature, celebrated each other and went "freeway blogging" - displaying a large hand made banner that said, "Shut Down Monsanto" on the Pole Line Road overpass over I-80," writes Mark Graham of Food Freedom. "Thousands of drivers were shown this message."

Sponsored by The Anti-Monsanto Project, the Peace & Freedom Party, and various chapters of the Occupy movement from around Northern California, the weekend rally in Davis serves as a template for activists in other cities to follow. All it took to shut down Monsanto, after all, was a few dozen people standing in front of the building -- imagine what hundreds, or even thousands, of activists could together accomplish?

Awareness about GMOs and the fact that they continue to remain unlabeled in the American food supply is becoming a forefront issue in the public spotlight. And evidence of this is being fleshed out in California, Connecticut, Washington and nearly a dozen other states where mandatory GMO labeling laws have been proposed or are currently making their way through the legislative process.

The truth about the dangers and ineffectiveness of GMOs, as well as the extreme toxicity of Roundup (glyphosate) and the other chemical pesticides and herbicides used on GMOs, are also gaining national attention. A recent study published in the Journal of Toxicology in Vitro, for instance, revealed that even very low levels of Roundup destroy testosterone and lead to male infertility (http://www.naturalnews.com/035135_Roundup_herbicide_testosterone.html).

In 2009, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) concluded that GMOs "pose a serious health risk," and called for an immediate moratorium on their cultivation and use in food. Credible scientific studies continue to show that consumption of GMOs is linked to organ damage, gastrointestinal disorders, autoimmune illnesses, and infertility. GMOs also do not perform any better than natural or hybrid crops.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/gmo-wars/content?oid=5513229

http://naturalsociety.com

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/03/21/davis-shuts-monsanto-down/

Suzanne

Biotech farm to milk mutant transgendered offspring of GM goats

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The insatiable lust among genetic engineers to tamper with the natural order has reached new freak-show proportions. Genetic butchers from AgResearch, which NaturalNews recently reported had reluctantly abandoned a 13-year animal cloning operation due to an overwhelming number of animal deformities and deaths (http://www.naturalnews.com/031573_cloning_animals.html), are once again in the news, this time for their plans to milk the transgendered offspring of genetically-engineered (GE) goats.

In a truly disgusting display of "science" gone wild, AgResearch scientists have been intentionally breeding GE goats, most of which are now producing transgendered babies that are essentially females in sterile male bodies. And just like the animals in the company's previous cloning project, the GE goats' offspring are deformed and riddled with diseases like arthritis, respiratory illness, and ruptured ovaries.

According to Steffan Browning, spokesman from Soil & Health Organic New Zealand, AgResearch hopes to milk these transgendered "goys," as they have dubbed them, to see whether or not the corrupted genes will be "expressed in the milk." The corrupted genes in question were reportedly derived from human sources and spliced into the animals' genes.

The GE animals, which currently live on AgResearch's Ruakura GE animal facility, are obviously not living normal, healthy, and humane lives. AgResearch's exotic experimentation is not only a clear demonstration of animal cruelty, but it is also a blight to New Zealand's agriculture reputation, as it represents the only GE field trial currently operating within the country.

"Considering that a recent report showed AgResearch scientists intentionally corrupting monitoring research of risky microbial horizontal gene transfer (HGT), these unnatural reproductive outcomes and continued animal welfare issues, should spell the end of the Ruakura GE experiments," wrote Browning in a report.

"Good animal welfare records and a GE free reputation are very important for New Zealand's trading image and increasingly demanded by consumers," added Browning. "Cruel experiments for a GE farming future are not what either New Zealanders or valuable overseas consumers want."

Sources for this story include:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1106/S00039/agresearch-transgender-g...

Suzanne

Study: EPA-approved GMO insecticide responsible for killing off bees, contaminating entire food chain

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Early last year, leaked documents obtained by a Colorado beekeeper exposed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) illegitimate approval of clothianidin, a highly-toxic pesticide manufactured by Bayer CropScience that the regulatory agency knew was capable of killing off bees (http://www.naturalnews.com/030921_EPA_pesticides.html). Now, a new study out of Purdue University in Indiana has not only confirmed, once again, that clothianidin is killing off bees, but also that clothianidin's toxicity is systemic throughout the entire food chain, which could one day lead to the catastrophic destruction of the food supply.

The study, which was published in the online journal PLoS ONE, investigated the various methods and routes by which a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, which includes clothianidin, are harming honey bees. They discovered that both clothianidin and thiamethoxam, another component of neonicotinoid insecticides, persist in "extremely high levels" in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of crops treated with these insecticides, which runs contrary to industry claims that the chemicals biodegrade and are not a threat.

The research team also found neonicotinoid compounds in soil, including in fields where the chemicals were not even sprayed, as well as on various plants and flowers visited by bees. Based on their analysis, the researchers involved with the study determined that bees actively transfer contaminated pollen from primarily neonicotinoid-treated corn crops, and bring it back to their hives. The bees also transfer neonicotinoid compounds to other plants and crops not treated with the chemicals, which shows just how persistent these chemicals truly are in the environment.

You can read the entire report for yourself at the following link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/?tool=pubmed

"This research should nail the coffin lid shut on clothianidin," said Laurel Hopwood, chairwoman of the Sierra Club's Genetic Engineering Action Team, who is petitioning the EPA to finally ban these chemicals after years of needless delay. "Despite numerous attempts by the beekeeping industry and conservation organizations to persuade the EPA to ban clothianidin, the EPA has failed to protect the food supply for the American people."

Without bees, which are now dying off at an alarming rate due to exposure to clothianidin and various other insecticides and fungicides, one third or more of the food supply will be destroyed, including at least 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables that rely on bees for pollination. This is why Dr. Neil Carman, Ph.D., scientific advisor to Sierra Club, has put out a call for the EPA to immediately ban the use of clothianidin and the other neonicotinoid insecticides for the sake of protecting the food supply from irreversible destruction.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/?tool=pubmed

http://iowa.sierraclub.org/Agriculture/agriculture.htm

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=6919

http://www.naturalnews.com/030921_EPA_pesticides.html

Suzanne

GMO Alert: Top 10 Genetically Modified Foods To Avoid Eating

by Aurora Geib

(NaturalNews) There is a conspiracy of selling out happening in America. Politics and personal interest it would seem determine government policies over and above health and safety issues. When President Obama appointed Michael Taylor in 2009 as senior adviser for the FDA, a fierce protest ensued from consumer groups and environmentalists. Why? Taylor used to be vice president for Monsanto, a multinational interested in marketing genetically modified (GM) food. It was during his term that GMO's were approved in the US without undergoing tests to determine if they were safe for human consumption.

The danger of GMO's

The question of whether or not genetically modified foods (GMO's) are safe for human consumption is an ongoing debate that does not seem to see any resolution except in the arena of public opinion. Due to lack of labeling, Americans are still left at a loss as to whether or not what is on the table is genetically modified. This lack of information makes the avoiding and tracking of GM foods an exercise in futility. Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:

1. Corn - Corn has been modified to create its own insecticide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared that tons of genetically modified corn has been introduced for human consumption. Monsanto has revealed that half of the US's sweet corn farms are planted with genetically modified seed. Mice fed with GM corn were discovered to have smaller offspring and fertility problems.

2. Soy - Soy has also been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy products include soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and other products that may include pastries, baked products and edible oil. Hamsters fed with GM soy were unable to have offspring and suffered a high mortality rate.

3. Cotton - Like corn and soy, cotton has been designed to resist pesticides. It is considered food because its oil can be consumed. Its introduction in Chinese agriculture has produced a chemical that kills cotton bollworm, reducing the incidences of pests not only in cotton crops but also in neighboring fields of soybeans and corn. Incidentally, thousands of Indian farmers suffered severe rashes upon exposure to BT cotton.

4. Papaya - The virus-resistant variety of papaya was commercially introduced in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas comprised three-fourths of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto bestowed upon Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore technology for developing papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

5. Rice - This staple food from South East Asia has now been genetically modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. Allegedly, there are reports of rice varieties containing human genes to be grown in the US. The rice will create human proteins useful for dealing with infant diarrhea in the 3rd world. China Daily, an online journal, reported potential serious public health and environment problems with genetically modified rice considering its tendency to cause allergic reactions with the concurrent possibility of gene transfers.

6. Tomatoes - Tomatoes have now been genetically engineered for longer shelf life, preventing them from easily rotting and degrading. In a test conducted to determine the safety of GM tomatoes, some animal subjects died within a few weeks after consuming GM tomatoes.

7. Rapeseed - In Canada, this crop was renamed canola to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed. Food stuff produced from rapeseed includes rapeseed oi (canola oil) l used to process cooking oil and margarine. Honey can also be produced from GM rapeseed. German food surveillance authorities discovered as much as a third of the total pollen present in Canadian honey may be from GM pollen. In fact, some honey products from Canada were also discovered to have pollen from GM rapeseed.

8. Dairy products - It has been discovered that 22 percent of cows in the U.S. were injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). This Monsanto created hormone artificially forces cows to increase their milk production by 15 percent. Milk from cows treated with this milk inducing hormone contains increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1). Humans also have IGF-1 in their system. Scientists have expressed concerns that increased levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with colon and breast cancer.

9. Potatoes - Mice fed with potatoes engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1 were found to have toxins in their system. Despite claims to the contrary, this shows that Cry1 toxin was stable in the mouse gut. When the health risks were revealed, it sparked a debate.

10. Peas - Peas that have been genetically modified have been found to cause immune responses in mice and possibly even in humans. A gene from kidney beans was inserted into the peas creating a protein that functions as a pesticide.

The GMO link to strange disease

As early as 2008, NaturalNews.com reported about a condition called Morgellon's disease. The article went on to report the symptoms of the disease as follows: crawling, stinging, biting and crawling sensations; threads or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; granules, lesions. Some patients report fatigue, short term memory loss, mental confusion, joint pain and changes in vision. Furthermore, there have been reports of substantial morbidity and social dysfunction leading to a dip in work productivity, job loss, total disability, divorce, loss of child custody and home abandonment.

Prior to its reporting, the condition was dismissed as a hoax, but upon further investigation, the evidence pointed out that the disease was real and may be related to genetically modified food.

Despite this link being established, the CDC declared Morgellon's disease of unknown origin. Worse, the medical community could not offer any information to the public regarding a cause for the symptoms.

When a research study was conducted on fiber samples taken from Morgellons patients, it was discovered that the fiber samples of all the patients looked remarkable similar. And yet, it did not seem to match any common environmental fiber. When the fiber was broken down, and it's DNA extracted, it was discovered to belong to a fungus. Even more surprising was the finding that the fibers contained Agrobacterium, a genus gram-negative bacteria with the capacity of transforming plant, animal and even human cells.

Morgellon's disease is not the only condition associated with genetically modified foods. A growing body of evidence has shown that it may cause allergies, immune reactions, liver problems, sterility and even death. Moreover, based on the only human feeding experiment conducted on genetically modified food, it was established that genetic material in genetically modified food product can transfer into the DNA of intestinal bacteria and still continue to thrive.

Heeding the warning

Time and again, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has warned that GMOs pose a serious threat to health, and it is no accident that there can be a correlation between it and adverse health effects. In fact, the AAEM has advised doctors to tell their patients to avoid GMOs as the introduction of GMOs into the current food supply has correlated with an alarming rise in chronic diseases and food allergies.

This should come as no surprise. More than 30 years ago a food supplement called L-trytophan killed 100 people and affected 5,000 to 10,000 more. The cause was narrowed down to the genetic engineering process used in its production. If the symptoms had not had three simultaneous characteristics - namely, they were unique, acute and fast-acting - the disease could never have been identified.

If science could assure us with certainty that serious consequences do not wait for us at the end of the line, it might be to our best interest to let this opportunity pass. Progressive thinking in terms of profit is certainly not wrong. But to brush off precaution on the convenient argument that there is not enough evidence to prove that GM food is indeed harmful is sheer irresponsibility. It certainly is a lame excuse to offer in the event that GM foods are indeed proven to contain health hazards.

Sources for this article:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_11361.cfm
http://www.naturalnews.com/027226_food_GMO_foods.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/023004.html
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/rbgh/
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-02/04/content_9430645.htm
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/pusztai.html
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/database/food/238.honey.html

Suzanne

Big Ag, Monsanto take over research universities and turn them into pro-industry propaganda machines

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Back in the old days before food and agricultural corporations consolidated into the behemoths we know them as today, agricultural institutions of higher learning were dedicated to conducting unbiased research into cutting-edge food production and crop systems that benefited society as a whole. But today, these former "land-grant" universities have largely mutated into pro-industry, propaganda machines funded and controlled by corporate agro-giants like Monsanto that steer research efforts in favor of genetically-modified (GMOs) and chemical-based crop systems.

In a scathing indictment of this sinister, and rapidly growing, form of agricultural fascism, Tom Philpott from Mother Jones dissects a recent Food & Water Watch (FWW) report in which it is openly disclosed that corporate agriculture and the pharmaceutical industry have basically bought out agricultural research education as we know it. Colleges and universities that once received the bulk of their research funding from the federal government now receive it from Monsanto, DuPont, and others, and their research efforts reflect this.

Colleges that began as cultivators of 'open-source' agriculture are now incubators of patented, corporate agriculture

Institutions of higher learning such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UofI) for instance, or Iowa State University (ISU) were originally founded as land-grant colleges, which means the federal government helped fund their building on federal land for the purpose of researching and teaching agriculture, science, and engineering for public benefit. But today, many of these land-grant colleges have essentially been taken over by private interests with little concern for anything other than their own profits.

"The idea of the land grants was to generate agricultural research, funded by the federal government, that benefited society as a whole. And that's pretty much how things went for the first century," writes Philpott. "But then, starting in the 1980s, the federal government started to level off its investment in ag research [...] That's when food and agribusiness companies, which were then in the process of consolidating into the vast global enterprises we know today, began to funnel huge amounts of cash into land grants."

But even the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which used to more closely represent the interests of the people, has become nothing more than a tool for promoting industry interests rather than public interests. So whether the funding comes from the USDA or directly from private industry, it is essentially all now going towards the promotion of GMOs and chemical-crop systems -- little, if any, is used to develop improvements in non-GMO, organic, and sustainable agriculture systems.

Mother Jones commenter Linda Ferris said it best when she wrote, "The 'sell out' by colleges and universities is no surprise for readers who have lived in communities around any one of the systems mentioned in the article [...] This (agricultural schools) is Monsanto's new incubator of technology and propaganda -- a factory of making money on the cheap by controlling these institutions and using their students to do their research and work."

Be sure to read the entire Mother Jones piece for a more comprehensive understanding of how private corporations are brainwashing the next generation of farmers into embracing corporate agricultural systems:
http://www.motherjones.com

Sources for this article include:

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/public-research-private-gain/

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/monsantos_college_strangehold/

Suzanne

Infographic unveiled: Top Ten GMO Foods to Avoid Eating

by J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) We here at NaturalNews.com pride ourselves in providing our readers with the most valuable, up-to-date news and information on a wide range of health-related issues, but we especially like to discuss nutrition because so much of our health depends on what we put in our bodies - and what we don't put in them.

See the NaturalNews infographic at:

http://www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-Top-10-GMO-Foods-to-Avoid-Eating.html

Be aware and beware

With that latter thought in mind, we've developed an infographic to highlight the top 10 GMO (genetically modified organism) foods to avoid, in no particular order:

1. Tomatoes: What? Tomatoes? Yes, that's right. It's probably the No. 1 symbol of a GMO food, having been on the market since about 1994. Still, some think modifying them genetically is okay, including those who traditionally shun GMO foods, which is perplexing. The most recent converts are hailing a new technique developed by researchers for extending the shelf life of tomatoes and other crops from the traditional 15 days or so to a full month. This is accomplished by suppressing two enzymes (A-Man, B-hex) which accumulate during the ripening process. Backers say this modification can decrease waste and increase efficiency, but again, it's a process that genetically alters the product, and there have been reports that some animals have died shortly after consuming GMO tomatoes.

2. Cotton: Considered a food item because its oil can be consumed, cotton - in particular, genetically modified Bt cotton, common to India and China - has damaging consequences. According to recent Chinese research, while Bt cotton is capable of killing bollworms without the use of insecticides, its decreased use has increased the presence of other crop-harming pests. Also, Bt cotton production has been linked to drastic depletion of soil nutrients and lower crop yields, as well as much higher water requirements.

3. Canola: This is probably one of the most misunderstood, misguided "healthy" food choices out there right now, but there is little about canola - and similar oils - that is good for you. Extracted from rapeseed, canola oil and others must be chemically removed from the seeds, then deodorized and altered, in order to be utilized in foods. They are among the most chemically altered foods in our diets.

4. Aspartame: An artificial sweetener found in a number of products, aspartame - discovered by accident in 1965 by a chemist testing an anti-ulcer drug - accounts for as many as 75 percent of adverse reactions to food additives reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to some reports. Some seizures and even some deaths have been blamed on aspartame.

5. Dairy: A disturbingly high number - as many as one-fifth - of dairy cows in the U.S. today are given growth hormones to increase milk production, a figure that has been rising since the FDA approved a genetically engineered recombinant bovine growth hormone known as rbGH or rbST for use in dairy cows in 1993. While said to boost production by 5-15 percent, scientists have expressed concern that the increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1) from hormone-treated cows may boost the risks of colon and breast cancer. Since 2008, Hiland Dairy has stopped using milk from dairy farmers who inject their cows with growth hormone.

6. Corn: Modified now to create its own insecticide, as many as half of all U.S. farms growing corn for Monsanto are using genetically modified corn, with tons of it now being introduced for human consumption, according to the FDA. Doctors at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec recently found Bt toxin from modified corn in the blood of pregnant women and their babies, as well as in non-pregnant women.

7. Papayas: Genetically modified papayas have been grown in Hawaii commercially since 1999, designed to combat the Papaya Ringspot Virus. Approved for sale and consumption in the U.S. and Canada, GM papayas cannot be imported or sold in the European Union.

8. Potatoes: That favorite of American starches, potatoes, especially those that have been genetically modified with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1, have been fed to mice and those mice have been found to have toxins in their systems. Also, according to Dr. Nina V. Fedoroff Willaman Professor of Life Sciences and Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, "rats fed the transgenic potatoes had significantly lower organ weights [...]".

9. Soy: Like other foods, soy, too, has been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy is included in soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and scores of other products, especially baked goods and pastries. According to one report, "[a]fter feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups."

10. Rice: One of the most prevalent starches in the Asian and U.S. diets, rice has been modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. But despite the goal of boosting rice production in countries with high demand, it's not being universally accepted. China, for instance, suspended distribution of genetically modified rice within its commercial food supplies over growing concern about its safety.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-Top-10-GMO-Foods-to-Avoid-Eating.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/035734_GMOs_foods_dangers.html

http://www.deccanherald.com

http://www.hilanddairy.com/green/no-artificial-growth-hormones

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Suzanne

GMO labeling victory! Measure accepted onto California ballot; now the real battle begins

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) In this breaking news for the food-conscious community, the California Secretary of State has just announced that the GMO labeling ballot measure has met and exceeded the requirements to be placed on the November ballot. (http://www.sos.ca.gov/admin/press-releases/2012/db12-068.pdf) and (http://www.labelgmos.org/we_made_it_on_the_ballot)

This measure, which has been strongly pushed by the Organic Consumers Association, the Institute for Responsible Technology, and a large number of dedicated volunteers and donors, would require genetically engineered ingredients to be indicated on food labels. This is an honest labeling issue that would allow consumers to make informed decisions about what they choose to purchase and consume.

504,760 signatures were needed to qualify for the November ballot, and the GMO labeling signature effort has greatly exceeded this number. Tremendous thanks are due to all those who fought for this honest labeling initiative. NaturalNews has consistently covered this issue from day one, and has helped drive significant awareness and funds to this GMO labeling effort.

A passage of this initiative could spell the end of GMOs in America, as food producers already know that if given a choice, 90+ percent of consumers would choose to avoid genetically engineered food. For this reason, food producers would be forced to switch to non-GMO sources for their food ingredients. This, in turn, would see a near collapse of GM seeds being planted in fields across America.

The disinfo war begins

Of course, Monsanto, DuPont, Big Agriculture and the food industry don't want consumers to know what's in their food. They profit when consumers are kept in the dark, and they will spend tens of millions of dollars to spread disinformation about this initiative in order to influence California voters to vote it down.

Thus, the next great battle begins: The battle for voting YES on the ballot measure. Expect NaturalNews and all the same allies who advocated the ballot measure to now shift gears and start educating voters to support the ballot measure.

This initiative will be won on the internet. It is the website articles, Facebook posts, tweets and emails that will educate consumers to vote YES on this measure. Please join NaturalNews in this effort to achieve victory in November in California because it has global implications. If we can defeat Monsanto at the ballot in November, we will be one step closer to eliminating dangerous GM crops altogether.

Stay tuned to NaturalNews for more coverage of this crucial issue. We have won a major battle, but an even larger one awaits us in November.

Personally, I don't care who you vote for when it comes to President, as the candidates are virtually identical in their policies. But voting on this GMO ballot measure is the real reason to get out and vote. This is something that was written by the People, advocated by the People, and its passage will help protect the People from greed-driven corporations that sell poison and call it food.

It's time to end GMOs across America. If you're a California voter, vote YES on GMO labeling in November. Spread the word. Stay tuned to NaturalNews for more grassroots activism on this issue.

Victory against GMOs is within reach!

Learn more:
www.labelgmos.org
www.JustLabelIt.org
www.ResponsibleTechnology.org
www.OrganicConsumers.org

Suzanne

Activist mom launches national movement boycotting GMOs

by PF Louis

(NaturalNews) Occasionally, an outraged citizen turns on the establishment and starts a grass roots national campaign. One such citizen is Connecticut mother Diana Reeves. She quit her promising career with an upscale accounting firm to take care of her young son with cancer, who died before turning five.

With her other two children suffering from health problems, Diana channeled her grief into researching food and its relationship to health, including the effect on health from GMOs.

Her concern and curiosity eventually led her to getting involved with local activist groups NonGMO Hartford and the Connecticut Right to Know group which was pushing for state mandated GMO labeling.

Working with those groups, Diana vigorously campaigned with emails and leaflet handouts to get Connecticut citizens behind that state's proposed congressional bill HB 5117, which included a provision requiring GMO labeling in Connecticut.

The Connecticut Right to Know campaign had garnered overwhelming public support for the provision to label GMOs, and they were certain the provision would be a slam dunk in the State's House of Representitives.

But at the eleventh hour, the GMO labeling provision was taken out of the bill.

How Diana dealt with her state legislators' cave-in

Connecticut legislators went down the same path as Vermont's state legislation by caving in to "industry pressures" that are supported by pro-biotech industry friendly federal legislators, federal agency members, and high court judges.

Industry pressures included the threat of getting sued by the extremely litigious Monsanto, who have left a trail of ruined farmers and farms from frivolous lawsuits rivaled only by General Sherman's scorched earth march through the South during the Civil War.

That's when an outraged Diana took the bull by horns. The lead bull for the stampeding GMO biotech industry is Monsanto, of course, voted by Natural News overwhelmingly in a readers' 2011 readers' poll as the most evil corporation (http://www.naturalnews.com/030967_Monsanto_evil.html).

Diana's story and burgeoning grass roots emailing campaign was featured in a recent Organic Consumers' Association (OCA) newsletter. It is called GMO Free USA. She intends to gather 5,000 or more who oppose GMOs in the food supply to initiate emails directly at food manufacturers.

"The more people who join this consumer email initiative, the more powerful the campaign will be," she asserts. So here's a chance for many of us to contribute to a concerted effort without demonstrating in the streets and risking injury or incarceration while being ignored by the main stream press.

You can find out more and get involved with Diana's GMO Free USA effort via:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GMOFreeUSA/

or yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GMOFreeUSA/

Why every anti-GMO effort is important

It's amazing how many food consumers are still clueless about GMOs and their ramifications that endanger the future of our food supply in addition to their immediate health.

If you visit Diana's GMO Free USA facebook page or their Yahoo Group, you'll see that part of her effort is to educate more in addition to flood food producers and legislators with emails.

Not sure if you should contribute to the cause? Did you know that GMO contamination is rampant and the USDA's National Organics Program (NOP) cannot guarantee there's no contamination of certified organic foods? (GMO contamination ... farmwars Source below)

The non-profit private group Non-GMO Project is trying to do something about that. (Source below)

Jeffrey Smith, international activist, author of Seeds of Deception and founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology was recently interviewed by Health Ranger Mike Adams - very interesting video here (http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=D170A7C686A2BB810D5D9F3FC8473B7A).

Here's a reason to be concerned about GMOs' immediate dangers as well as the disastrous long term consequences mentioned by Mike and Jeffrey in the interview (http://www.naturalnews.com/031742_GMOs_dangers.html#ixzz206O4KWaZ).

Sources for this article include

OCA source on this article http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25635.cfm

Intro to Non-GMO Project http://www.nongmoproject.org/

GMO contamination not part of USDA NOP labeling http://farmwars.info/?p=5426

Institute of Responsible Technology coverage of Monsanto's Bt corn and cotton http://responsibletechnology.org/gmo-dangers/65-health-risks/1notes

Newsletter of biotech atrocity news http://www.warmwell.com/gm.html

Monsanto's sordid chemical history http://www.citywatchla.com

Suzanne

92 percent of Americans want the FDA to label GMO foods - Sign this labeling petition if you're one of them

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) An overwhelming majority of Americans believe the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a legal responsibility to require proper labeling of foods containing genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). But to this day, the FDA refuses to comply with the demands of the American people, who it is supposed to represent, or with the law, which is why your help is needed to force this rogue agency to finally step up and do the right thing.

Based on a number of different polls conducted, anywhere between 90 and 95 percent of people living in the U.S. want GMOs to be labeled. According to the new GMO labeling campaign Just Label It!, 92 percent of Americans want to know whether or not the foods they buy contain GMOs, especially when these foods are being fed to young children.

"While our reasons for wanting to know what's in our food may vary, what unifies us is the belief that it's our right," says the Just Label It! campaign about mandatory GMO labeling. "Without labeling of GE (genetically engineered) foods, we cannot make informed choices about our food."

This is why Just Label It! has created an online petition addressed to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg that urges the agency to stand up for food transparency, and label GMOs. So far, more than 1.1 million people have signed this petition since it was first created just a few short months ago, and Just Label It! is now aiming to reach 1.2 million signatures as part of its next campaign goal.

You can access and sign the petition here: http://justlabelit.org/

Since March, more than 300,000 additional signatures have been gathered by Just Label It! (http://www.naturalnews.com/035223_GMO_labeling_petition.html), and several dozen new partner organizations have also joined in to support the initiative. (http://justlabelit.org/partners/)

If you have not yet signed the Just Label It! petition yourself, you can do so here: http://justlabelit.org/

You can also support local GMO labeling measures like California's Proposition 37, a ballot initiative that will require GMO labeling on all food products sold within the state. If you live in California, or even if you live elsewhere and are interested in helping to build support for Prop. 37, be sure to visit: http://www.labelgmos.org/

You can read the full text of the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, which will be on November's ballot, here: http://carighttoknow.org/content/read-initiative

[b]Sources for this article include:[/size]

http://justlabelit.org/

Suzanne

Monsanto Shells Out $4.2 Million To Sabotage California GMO Labeling Initiative

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) California has the unique opportunity to be the first state in the union to require that genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) be properly identified and labeled on most food items. But the Monsanto Company, one of the biggest purveyors of GMOs, and several other factory food and agriculture corporations are trying to sabotage this effort by contributing millions of dollars to defeat a ballot proposition that would require mandatory GMO labeling.

If passed, Proposition 37, known as the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, will require that all foods made with or containing GMOs, including both raw and processed foods, be labeled as such when sold at the retail level. Products made with or containing GMOs will also be prohibited from being marketed and sold as "natural," a highly-deceptive practice that has become quite common today. (http://www.naturalnews.com/033838_breakfast_cereals_GMOs.html)

Though not perfect, Prop. 37 represents a large step forward towards honest food labeling, which has been severely lacking in the U.S. since GMOs first came onto the scene back in the early 1990s. If Californians successfully pass Prop. 37 in November, much of the rest of the U.S. will likely follow in its footsteps in the coming months and years, which has the potential to unhinge the corporate monopoly that currently controls the American food supply.

But as grassroots efforts try to promote better transparency in labeling, companies like Monsanto, Dupont, Pepsico and others are simultaneously working hard to keep Americans in the dark about the foods they eat. Monsanto recently forked over a whopping $4.2 million dollars to defeat Prop. 37, while Dupont contributed more than $1.2 million against it. Dow Agrosciences, Pepsico, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Bayer Cropscience, ConAgra, BASF, the Kellogg's Company, Hershey's, Hormel and many other industrial food and chemical producers have also donated millions to defeat Prop. 37.

You can view a list of the top 20 largest contributors trying to defeat Prop. 37 here:
http://www.carighttoknow.org

You can also learn more about Prop. 37 here: http://www.carighttoknow.org

And here: http://votersedge.org/california/ballot-measures/2012/november/prop-37

"The giant pesticide and food companies are afraid of the mothers and grandmothers who want the right to know what's in our food," said Stacy Malkan, Media Director of California's Right to Know initiative, which is pushing for the passage of Prop. 37. "These companies will try to buy the election, but it won't work. California moms and dads will prevail over Monsanto and Dupont."

Meanwhile, the little guys, at least little in comparison to the Big Ag and Big Chem conglomerates, are continuing to get the word out about the merits of Prop. 37, and the general importance of transparency and honesty in food labeling.

You can view a list of some of the top donors in support of Prop. 37 here:
http://votersedge.org/california/ballot-measures/2012/november/prop-37

The Cornucopia Institute (CI) has also created a telling infographic of so-called "healthy" food brands that oppose Prop. 37 and mandatory GMO labeling. Some of the names on this graphic may surprise you: http://www.cornucopia.org/2012/08/prop37/

Nearly 50 other countries, including China, Russia, and all the countries in the European Union (EU), currently label GMOs. The U.S. and Canada are among the only developed nations in the world that do not require honest food labeling. The passage of Prop. 37 on November 6; however, could change this.

To learn more, visit: http://www.carighttoknow.org/

Sources for this article include:

http://www.carighttoknow.org

Suzanne

What exactly are GMOs and why should they be labeled?

by PF Louis

(NaturalNews) GMOs (genetically modified organisms) were brought into the world by a chemical company, not an agriculture or food group. Monsanto created DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, marketed aspartame, and created bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to infect milking cows that put pus into commercial milk.

GMOs are created within the seeds of chosen parent crops in laboratories by "splicing" genes from completely unrelated species into those seeds. Normal plant hybrids are cultivated in soil over time by cross pollinating closely related plants.

So far, GMOs have invaded soy, corn, beets (for beet sugar), cotton, and alfalfa agriculture. Many GMO edibles are contained surreptitiously in a wide variety of processed foods, while GMO corn and soy are used by unnatural factory farm feed lots.

If you've been following NaturalNews for some time, you may recall several articles describing GMOs' inherent human and animal health hazards as well as crop and environmental dangers. If not, you'll find most of them here. (http://www.naturalnews.com/GMO.html)

GMOs damage crops, the environment, and the food chain

GMOs are often genetically created artificially to tolerate herbicides, made by Monsanto and others, that kill weeds. The herbicides contain glyphosates. Monsanto's Roundup weed killer is meant for Roundup Ready GMO crop seeds. It's an extremely toxic glyphosate agent.

Glyphosates greatly harm grazing animals and pollute the wells and groundwater of farm areas where they're used. (http://naturalsociety.com)

They create sterility and birth defects among animals and humans. Most of the honey bee die-off, or colony collapse, is attributed to glyphosates. If enough pollinating bees disappear, our food chain is endangered further.

Glophosate's chelating capabilities remove minerals from the soil where they're sprayed. So crops get increasingly worse while increasingly abundant Roundup resistant weeds, or super weeds, force farmers to add more toxic materials to Roundup.

It's a vicious cycle for farmers who, conned by greater production promises, unwittingly signed on to Monsanto Roundup Ready GMO binding seed contracts. Monsanto uses patent laws to litigate against farmers whose non-GMO fields are contaminated by GMO fields, forcing smaller farms out of business.

Most farmers fold because they cannot afford the litigation. American farmers are attempting to organize against mostly Monsanto's GMOs. European farmers have managed to resist thus far.

Why you should be concerned

Maybe the reasons summarized above are too abstract. So let's get personal. Contrary to mainstream media's (MSM) outlook, the jury is not out on GMOs. GMOs do destroy human and animal health while endangering non-GMO crops with contamination. That's been discovered by several scientists acting independently.

They jeopardize their careers and even their lives by communicating what they find while the MSM ignores them. Anti-GMO activist and author Jeffrey Smith lists the casualties and summarizes Monsanto's harassment here: (http://www.sott.net)

Agro-ecologist Don Lotter, Ph.D. released an inside scoop when he stated:

The promoter gene used ... [the] cauliflower mosaic virus, ... [was assumed to be] denatured in our digestive system, but it's not. It has been shown to promote the transfer of transgenes from GM foods to the bacteria within our digestive system, which are responsible for 80 percent of our immune system function.

Read Lotter's interview here: (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19468.cfm)

This from Wessex Natural Law research papers: The cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV 35S) used for plant genetic engineering is cited as a source of viral recombination as well as a gene silencer and DNA disruptor.

Forget petitioning the government. It's so corrupted that one of Monsanto's most ruthless executives, Michael Taylor, now serves in the Obama administration as FDA chief adviser, or "Food Czar."

That's why our only chance is to help California succeed with Proposition 37. GMO labeling may spill over from California making it easier to boycott GMOs. (http://www.kcet.org)

Sources for this article include:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lni6OAJz3sk&feature=player_profilepage

http://www.naturalnews.com/031825_GMOs_threat.html

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19468.cfm

http://rense.com/general33/fd.htm

http://www.gene.ch/info4action/2000/Feb/msg00028.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/033804_Scientists_Under_Attack_GMOs.html

Suzanne

http://vimeo.com/6575475

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

This video is a must-see, and is available for FREE for at vimeo right now. (I've heard it may no longer be available except through the purchase of the DVD version shortly.)

I'm sure Monsanto would not be pleased to have this information coming to light.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Shocking findings in new GMO study: Rats fed lifetime of GM corn grow horrifying tumors, 70% of females die early

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) Eating genetically modified corn (GM corn) and consuming trace levels of Monsanto's Roundup chemical fertilizer caused rats to develop horrifying tumors, widespread organ damage, and premature death. That's the conclusion of a shocking new study that looked at the long-term effects of consuming Monsanto's genetically modified corn.

The study has been deemed "the most thorough research ever published into the health effects of GM food crops and the herbicide Roundup on rats." News of the horrifying findings is spreading like wildfire across the internet, with even the mainstream media seemingly in shock over the photos of rats with multiple grotesque tumors... tumors so large the rats even had difficulty breathing in some cases. GMOs may be the new thalidomide.

"Monsanto Roundup weedkiller and GM maize implicated in 'shocking' new cancer study" wrote The Grocery, a popular UK publication. (http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/topics/technology-and-supply-chain/monsant...)

It reported, "Scientists found that rats exposed to even the smallest amounts, developed mammary tumors and severe liver and kidney damage as early as four months in males, and seven months for females."

The Daily Mail reported, "Fresh row over GM foods as French study claims rats fed the controversial crops suffered tumors." (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2205509/Fresh-fears-GM...)

It goes on to say: "The animals on the GM diet suffered mammary tumors, as well as severe liver and kidney damage. The researchers said 50 percent of males and 70 percent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 percent and 20 percent in the control group."



The study, led by Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen, was the first ever study to examine the long-term (lifetime) effects of eating GMOs. You may find yourself thinking it is absolutely astonishing that no such studies were ever conducted before GM corn was approved for widespread use by the USDA and FDA, but such is the power of corporate lobbying and corporate greed.

The study was published in The Food & Chemical Toxicology Journal and was just presented at a news conference in London.

Findings from the study

Here are some of the shocking findings from the study:

• Up to 50% of males and 70% of females suffered premature death.

• Rats that drank trace amounts of Roundup (at levels legally allowed in the water supply) had a 200% to 300% increase in large tumors.

• Rats fed GM corn and traces of Roundup suffered severe organ damage including liver damage and kidney damage.

• The study fed these rats NK603, the Monsanto variety of GM corn that's grown across North America and widely fed to animals and humans. This is the same corn that's in your corn-based breakfast cereal, corn tortillas and corn snack chips.

The Daily Mail is reporting on some of the reaction to the findings:

France's Jose Bove, vice-chairman of the European Parliament's commission for agriculture and known as a fierce opponent of GM, called for an immediate suspension of all EU cultivation and import authorisations of GM crops. 'This study finally shows we are right and that it is urgent to quickly review all GMO evaluation processes,' he said in a statement. 'National and European food security agencies must carry out new studies financed by public funding to guarantee healthy food for European consumers.' (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2205509/Fresh-fears-GM...)

Read the study abstract

The study is entitled, "A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health." Read the abstract here:
http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm

That abstract include this text. Note: "hepatorenal toxicity" means toxic to the liver.

Our analysis clearly reveals for the 3 GMOs new side effects linked with GM maize consumption, which were sex- and often dose-dependent. Effects were mostly associated with the kidney and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, although different between the 3 GMOs. Other effects were also noticed in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system. We conclude that these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn. In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded.

Here are some quotes from the researchers:

"This research shows an extraordinary number of tumors developing earlier and more aggressively - particularly in female animals. I am shocked by the extreme negative health impacts." - Dr Michael Antoniou, molecular biologist, King's College London.

"We can expect that the consumption of GM maize and the herbicide Roundup, impacts seriously on human health." - Dr Antoniou.

"This is the first time that a long-term animal feeding trial has examined the impact of feeding GM corn or the herbicide Roundup, or a combination of both and the results are extremely serious. In the male rats, there was liver and kidney disorders, including tumors and even more worryingly, in the female rats, there were mammary tumors at a level which is extremely concerning; up to 80 percent of the female rats had mammary tumors by the end of the trial." - Patrick Holden, Director, Sustainable Food Trust.

Spread the word: GMOs are toxic!

Share this story. Tweet it, Facebook it, post it.

See the "What is a GMO" video by Nutiva:
http://www.youtube.com/user/nutiva?feature=watch

Watch the new video on GMOs by Jeffrey Smith:
http://www.geneticroulettemovie.com

Watch the Health Ranger's music video:
http://www.naturalnews.com/NoGMO.html

Support Proposition 37:
www.CArighttoknow.org

Suzanne

GMO victory within reach? Proposition 37 is 'likely to pass' declares LA Times (but your help still needed!)

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) Proposition 37, the GMO labeling bill that's on the ballot in California, is polling 2-to-1 in favor of passing, the LA Times is now reporting. 61% of registered voters currently support GMO labeling, and only 25% oppose it.

This high support rate is the result of a massive, decentralized grassroots effort involving non-profits, independent news outlets (like Natural News), educators like Jeffrey Smith, activists like Ronnie Cummins, large financial donors like Dr. Mercola, honest companies like Dr. Bronner, and countless volunteers who have donated their time, money and effort to get Proposition 37 passed.

But this race is nowhere near over. Huge corporations are, of course, lined up in opposition of Proposition 37 because they don't want you to know that you're eating GMO. Monsanto, Dupont, Coca-Cola, Pepsico and all the other usual suspects have funneled tens of millions of dollars into defeating Prop 37, and their ads have only begun to start running.

Over the next four weeks, these corporate liars are going to pummel California voters with a barrage of disinformation about Proposition 37 in a desperate bid to defeat this ballot measure. "Their upcoming avalanche of attack ads will try to scare voters into believing food costs will go up if Proposition 37 passes, using bogus figures from bogus 'studies' funded by their own campaign," explained Gary Ruskin, campaign manager for YES on 37.

What's really funny about these attack ads, by the way, is that they never use the words "genetically modified" or "GMO" because they know people don't want GMO! So they try to pretend Prop 37 is about something else entirely, hoping to confuse voters into voting it down.

Your help is desperately needed in this final hour

Right now, we've got to fight money with money. We've already achieved huge success just getting this measure on the ballot. We've waged a wildly successful grassroots activism campaign on the internet, spreading the message of GMO labeling across Facebook, Twitter, email, YouTube and websites. This victory is now within reach, and it would be one of the most significant consumer victories in the history of America!

Right now, I urge you to donate to the YES on 37 campaign. Click here to go to the donation page.

Every donation helps, even $7, $15 or $20. Please consider donating what you can, even if you don't live in California. Why? Because if this measure passes in California, it could very well halt the use of GMOs nationwide! Proposition 37 is the leverage point for achieving a sweeping victory against the hidden use of GMOs in our food across the nation.

So please, to the extent you can, donate NOW to Yes on 37.

What we're doing to help support Proposition 37

As I'm writing this story, right now, I'm donating $1,000 to this campaign from my own personal funds.... --end of article.

Suzanne

Political and corporate elite shun GM food on their own plate

by Carolanne Wright

(NaturalNews) With a sad twist of irony, corporate and government elite dine on safe, organic food while the masses, those very people who are supposedly represented and protected by their governments, are poisoned by hidden genetically modified organisms, pesticides and dangerous contaminants. The presidential family demands organic food in their kitchen, yet behind closed doors, shake hands with the biotech industry. China's top brass is fed by an exclusive, gated organic garden while the rest of the population consumes GM food, steroid contaminated meat and dairy laced with melamine. Even Monsanto's own employee's command non-genetically modified food in their canteen. Access to clean, organic and healthy food is not a given right anymore -- it has become a political battleground with the average citizen suffering the loss.

White House double-take

While First Lady Michelle Obama digs up the White House lawn to plant an organic garden, her husband promotes a GMO agenda within his administration. "You know, in my household, over the last year we have just shifted to organic," she said in a New Yorker interview during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Organic produce from the garden feeds the Obama family and visiting dignitaries alike. Seems okay so far. But then take a look at Obama's laundry-list of presidential appointed positions with biotech ties: USDA head Roger Beachy, a former director at Monsanto, FDA food safety czar Michael Taylor, one-time vice president for public policy at Monsanto, Commissioner of the USDA Tom Vilsack who created the Governors' Biotechnology Partnership. Under President Obama, 10 new GM crops have been approved for 'safe consumption.'

Spiked fences protect organic gardens from the people

The political elite in China enjoy the safest of food -- organic produce, grass-fed beef from Inner Mongolia, rice free of pesticides, chemicals or genetically modified organisms. Compare this with the food supply of ordinary citizens that is laden with pesticides, industrial chemicals and GMOs. Children have become sick and died from tainted baby formula and milk products. Blindness and death have resulted from adults consuming fake liquor. Yet Chinese leaders have their own protected food sources of the highest quality. In Beijing, an organic farm is surrounded by a six-foot spiked fence while security personnel guard the entrance. The garden produces food for top-notch officials only. Beidaihe Sanitorium, a seaside haven for retired party cadres, exclusively uses a specialty rice that is organic and free of GMOs. As for the public, they can purchase the small remaining surplus of the grain at 15 times the cost of regular rice. All the while, the government continues to approve GMOs and harmful chemicals for general consumption.

GMO-free meals at Monsanto

Remember the notice at a Monsanto staff canteen stating the decision "to remove, as far as practicable, GM soya and maize from all food products served in our restaurant. We have taken the above steps to ensure that you, the customer, can feel confident in the food we serve." According to Tony Coombes, the company's spokesperson, "Yes, this is the case, and it is because we believe in choice."

Evidently the average citizen is not allowed the same courtesy of choice considering GMOs have infiltrated the food supply and are not labeled in North America. Only those who can afford the price tag of organic food are able to protect themselves from harmful contaminants. As for the rest of the population, they are the ones who will suffer the devastating health consequences of a corrupt system.

Sources for this article include:

"Meet Monsanto's Number One Lobbyist: Barack Obama" Jon Rappoport. Infowars, September 24, 2012. Retrieved on October 2, 2012 from: http://www.infowars.com

"White House Will Not say Where It Gets Its Meat (And I Don't Blame Them)" David Kirby, Huff Post Green, April 20, 2010. Retrieved on October 2, 2012 from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

"Does Monsanto Man Mitt Romney Secretly Eat Organic?" Tom Philpott. MotherJones, September 26, 2012. Retrieved on October 2, 2012 from: http://www.motherjones.com

"In China, what you eat tells who you are" Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2011. Retrieved on October 2, 2012 from: http://articles.latimes.com

"Amid milk scare, China's elite eat all-organic" Associated Press, NBC News, September 24, 2008. Retrieved on October 2, 2012 from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26874854/#.UGrObal9mlI

"GM food banned in Monsanto canteen" Michael McCarthy, The Independent, December 22, 1999. Retrieved on October 2, 2012 from: http://www.independent.co.uk

Suzanne

Pollen from GM soybeans threatens Mexico's honey sales

by PF Louis

(NaturalNews) A large part of Mexico's agricultural export is honey. They are ranked fifth worldwide for exporting the bees' food, but recently Germany rejected a batch of honey from Mexico. Pollen from genetically modified (GM) soybean plants was found in the honey being imported.

Bee keepers in the region and agricultural authorities of the Mexican state of Campeche, one of the states in the Yucatan Peninsula at the southeastern tip of Mexico, were mystified. So a research team familiar with bees and Mexico came in to determine what was going on with GMOs affecting bee colonies in Campeche.

Apparently, some locals thought that GMO contamination from crops considered safe for human consumption was okay in other nations. There is plenty of GM soy declared fit for human consumption in Mexico. Others didn't realize that the bees from local apiaries would be collecting pollen from nearby GM soybean plants. No matter, German buyers weren't buying.

David Roubik, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and his colleagues found that six honey samples from nine hives in the Campeche region contained soy pollen in addition to pollen from many wild plant species. The pollen came from crops near the bee colonies in several small apiaries.

According to a quote by Roubik from a source article, "Bee colonies act as extremely sensitive environmental indicators. Bees from a single colony may gather nectar and pollen resources from flowers in a 200-square-kilometer area." [1]

Wait a minute, 200 sq km is 124 square miles, or a 124-mile by 124-mile area! How would the USDA's four-mile buffer between GMO and non-GMO fields work if that's true?

Meanwhile, back in the USA

The rural area of Jackson County in Oregon has been a controversial hot spot of food war activity with local non-GMO farmers raising their fists to battle Syngenta's GM intrusions that have already contaminated some of their organic or standard commercial crops and seeds.

Syngenta is not allowed to seed their GM creations on open fields in Switzerland, where they have their headquarters, because GMO cultivation is banned there.

So they seek other regions where the land is fertile and the climate's right and rent plots to try out their GM crop seeds and see how well they resist herbicides like Roundup or whatever else they think should be tested agriculturally. Safety and contamination testing isn't part of their agenda.

Jackson County has been invaded by Syngenta, and their experimental GM crops have violated the four-mile buffer zone mandated by the USDA for beet and chard seed plots. Syngenta had fields within one mile of three organic farming operations, and further investigation has discovered that Syngenta had been in Jackson County operating undercover in unmarked rented fields since 2009. [2]

This area is big on cultivating organic beet and chard seeds and other organic crops. Sugar beets and chard are of the same species, Beta vulgaris. So Syngenta's GM beets threaten both non-GMO and organic beets and chard, and their seeds. Since agricultural authorities are not listening to these local farmers, they formed their own movement called "GMO Free Jackson County."

The created a petition to bring the whole matter of banning GMO seeds and cultivation to Jackson County. After obtaining over 6,700 signatures, Measure 15-119 to completely ban GMO seeds and farming will be on the ballot May 20, 2014. [3]

In Canada, non-GM alfalfa farmers are resisting Health Canada's green light to start planting GM alfalfa in eastern Canadian provinces, which are not as involved in exporting alfalfa and alfalfa seeds to nations that reject GMOs. Western and Central provinces need that market. So they are putting up the most resistance without much support.

Canada has already had major agricultural losses with non-GM flax and flax seed contamination from GM flax, as well as large scale issues with organic canola. In Washington State (USA) during the summer of 2013, an alfalfa farmer's hay was rejected from export because of GMO contamination. [4]

There is no possibility of non-GMO and GMO co-existence without contamination, despite GMO industry and corrupt agricultural agency reassurances. Pushing for consumer labeling implies that co-existence is okay. It is not! Label laws won't matter when all organic or non-GM crop foods are contaminated from GM seeds and crops.

There needs to be a cooperative effort between consumers and non-GMO farmers to resist biotech industry's takeover of the food supply by banning its cultivation in as many local areas as possible. Retail labeling will do nothing to stop these GMO monsters, especially here in a fast-food nation where most don't really care what's in their food.

Sources for this article include:

[1] http://esciencenews.com

[2] http://www.usobserver.com

[3] http://www.gmofreejacksoncounty.org

[4] http://www.thestar.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

Suzanne

Interesting math...

124 sq miles is not a square of 124 miles by 124 miles. But the math is worse! :-) 200 sq km is 77 sq miles. And 77 sq miles is a square about 8.8 miles by 8.8 miles.

I caught that the 124 sq miles, too, and then saw you already caught it!

So if the buffer is between the hive and the GMO fields, 4.4 would be adequate? Assuming bees will go an equal distance in all directions, meaning the mathematical buffer calculations are almost adequate, that is, there was a coherent reason behind it?


I didn't think soybeans was much of a honey or pollen source. They don't require it. But after searching, I found some noticing no bees on their beans and others saying soybean is a major honey producer. It looks like it depends on how well the beans are growing: water, soil, weather conditions, year-to-year, and location in the country (south and east are best).

Non GMO crop Farmers have lost extensively by GMO contamination. They are usually the ones to have their crops rejected, have their seeds taken away from them and destroyed, or be taken to court for "stealing" the patent rights of the GMO plants because a neighbors GMO field contaminated their crops, while in fact they wanted nothing to do with process.

From what I understand a farmer in Australia has taken the GM growers to court for contaminating his "organic" crops. It's a first, and non GMO farmers are fearful of the outcome. If it goes in their favor it may be a break through for them, but if it goes against them they may lose all rights to grow organic or nonGMO crops.

Monsanto's New Herbicide-resistant GM Crops Threaten American Vegetable Farmers

by L.J. Devon, Staff Writer

(NaturalNews) Many American corn and soybean farmers embrace genetically modified seeds and herbicide chemicals. This biotechnology invention helps them produce higher crop yields without having to worry about weeds. Today's farmers can just apply, en masse, chemicals like glyphosate, which knock out the weeds, allowing the hybrid corn and soybeans to thrive. While this science seems to increase certain food production, it is actually limiting vegetable farmers.

"You have a lot of crops that are sensitive to these herbicides," USA Today reported Neil Rhodes, director of the herbicide stewardship program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, saying. "With vegetable farmers facing the prospect of a much larger area being sprayed with them in coming years, 'I'm not surprised they're concerned.'"

Drift and evaporation causing herbicides to spread to vegetable fields, causing deformities, damaging yields

While 93% of all soybeans and 85% of all feed corn grown in the USA is genetically modified to be glyphosate-resistant, herbs and vegetables are damaged in the process. Sometimes the damage to vegetables can be seen up to 100 miles away from an herbicide-laced field. This damage is caused by drift, which is when pesticides sprayed in one field evaporate or travel by wind into neighboring fields that may contain susceptible broad-leaved vegetable crops. Those farmers who are most affected live in the Midwest and include those who grow potatoes, tomatoes, squash, beans and peas.

"The herbicides are applied to fields as a liquid, from rigs pulled by tractors," said Franklin Egan, a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. "The vast majority falls straight to the ground but a small fraction can move as water droplets carried by the wind. An even smaller fraction can evaporate and move as a gas."

A case in 2012 out of California showed how herbicide sprayed in the San Joaquin Valley could damage cotton fields 100 miles away. Drift has prompted vegetable farmers to take action against Monsanto and Dow.

Dow to reformulate herbicide while Monsanto hesitates

Representatives from the Save Our Crops group have come together to convince the biotech firms to reformulate their new herbicides, which are projected to become the new chemical standards for agriculture in 2015 and beyond. A member of the group, Jody Herr from Lowell, IN, said his tomatoes were turning out strange when confronted by drifting herbicide. "The leaves were curled, the branches were twisted and misshapen," he said. "The fruit they set was deformed."

Steve Smith, chairman of the Save Our Crops group reported that Dow is on board to make important changes to their herbicide, but Monsanto continues to hesitate. Dow reformulated 2,4-D to make it less prone to vaporize and drift, while also rewriting the label to restrict farmers from using it when the wind is blowing toward a sensitive crop. The other herbicide up for change is Monsanto's dicamba, which has been around for more than 40 years. Both biotech juggernauts are waiting through a regulatory process. Dow's new Enlist corn and GM soybean seed is designed to be resistant to herbicide 2,4-D. Monsanto awaits approval for Roundup Ready 2 Extend corn and soy, which is resistant to dicamba.

The new herbicides are designed to mimic a naturally occurring plant growth hormone. "The plant literally grows itself to death," said Egan.

A tragic trajectory, regardless

Whether they change or not, the new herbicides will be manufactured in increased volumes across American agriculture, creating an ever so intrusive and abusive chemical state, inflicted haplessly upon the environment. Welcoming new versions of Roundup will perpetuate farmers' notion to take surrounding plant life for granted, as biodiversity is disregarded in agriculture -- traded away for limited and controlled food variety. These chemical increases will expand GMO dominance while prairies, wildflowers and medicinal herbs are wiped out at all costs.

Superweeds - a growing consequence of overused herbicides

On top of that, overuse of glyphosate and related herbicides has led to the rise of chemical-resistant superweeds, which cannot be stopped no matter how much chemical is poured into the soil. Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest admits this, saying, "overuse and misuse by farmers and the biotech industry has led to the development of glyphosate-resistant weeds."

In the fight against nature, which is a lost and dangerous science, biotech firms have been working overtime to develop new herbicides that are much stronger than the newly emerging superweeds. It's only a matter of time before the superweeds outsmart the scientists again as they adapt to their harsh chemical environment.

The silent chemical warfare is only beginning, as the hybridization of seed and food advances forward. The thrashing of the natural Earth continues. Will you be a part of agricultural restoration or will you continue to buy into the chemical warfare hashed out onto the environment, food and human life?

Sources for this article include:

http://www.usatoday.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

Suzanne

GMOs Will Unleash Global Killer 'Ecocide' Across the Planet, Warns Prominent Scientist

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) A top scientist and "risk engineering" expert is now publicly warning that GMOs pose a dire, genuine threat to the continuation of life on Earth. Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, says that GMOs have the potential to cause "an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet."

His full explanation is presented in this public paper which describes how even a small risk per crop species can still result in global ecocide if pursued with abandon. As Taleb explains, "The risk of ruin is not sustainable, like a resource that gets
depleted in the long term (even in the short term). By the ruin theorems, if you incur a tiny probability of ruin, as a "one-off" risk, survive it, then repeat the exposure, you will eventually
go bust with probability 1." (Where "probability 1" means a 100% chance.)

Rational thinking automatically leads to skepticism of GMO safety

This sober, scientific conclusion is of course entirely rational and founded in clear thinking. Self-deluded GMO zealots and paid Monsanto trolls predictably try to gloss over these risks in their quest for profits and power, but that does not mean such risks do not exist.

In fact, as Taleb convincingly argues, genetically engineered crops are specifically designed to have a survival advantage over conventional crops, allowing them to better resist droughts or infestations of pests or weeds. This survival advantage -- if it's as real as seed manipulators claim -- means genetically engineered plants can out-compete non-GMO crops in open fields. The genetic pollution which is already underway across North America will only get worse, therefore, and there's no reversing it because all living systems -- even genetically engineered ones -- have a natural drive to spread, multiply and survive.

The result is that GMO crops will out-compete and thereby displace non-GMO crops over time. Why does this matter? Because the rise of GMOs is nearly synonymous with the collapse of genetic diversity in seeds and food crops. You don't have to go back very far in history to find examples of mono-cultured food crops failing due to lack of genetic diversity, either:

- The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852 was caused by over-reliance on a genetically narrow food crop. Shockingly, one-third of the Irish population relied on a single crop, and when potato blight (a fungal microorganism) successfully attacked the crop, over one million people died from starvation.

- The current crisis in world banana production is caused because nearly all commercial banana trees are genetically identical clones.

- The near-collapse of Florida citrus due to disease is also caused by a striking lack of genetic diversity across citrus orchards.

A loss of genetic diversity is a pathway to global disease and starvation

Any legitimate scientist in the fields of anthropology, genetics or agriculture will warn you that low genetic diversity is the first step toward crisis and collapse of any given population. When genetic diversity is lost, the entire species becomes vulnerable to being wiped out by epidemic disease.

This principle is irrefutable and widely recognized as truth among nearly all scientifically-literate thinkers... except those pushing GMOs, of course. Those denialists selectively edit "scientific truth" to exclude any concerns that might question the wisdom of displacing the world's treasure of seed diversity with corporate-patented seeds. The Precautionary Principle is gladly thrown out the window when corporate profits are to be realized from doing so.

Transgenic GMOs could cause catastrophic ecocide

Beyond the loss of genetic diversity, Taleb is also concerned about the possibility of catastrophic transgenic effects which could somehow weaken the world's food crops in ways human scientists never intended or anticipated. Murphy's Law -- which states that if something can go wrong, it will -- is widely recognized as a frustrating truth across physics, medicine, computer science and space exploration. Yet it is magically and irrationally declared null and void only for GMOs, where the roll of the dice quite literally threatens the sustainability of future life on our planet.

As Taleb explains, even if the chance of any single genetically engineered crop going wild and unleashing global crop failures is very small, the fact that companies like Monsanto and DuPont seek to dominate the global seed supply by perpetually releasing more and more genetically engineered crops means that sooner or later, a genetic catastrophe is all but inevitable.

If you play Russian Roulette every weekend, in other words, and there really is a live round in one of the gun's chambers, sooner or later you are bound to blow your brains out. This is true even if the revolver has 1000 chambers (with 999 of them empty) so that the odds of losing seem incredibly small each time you play. (Interestingly, Taleb uses this exact same illustration in his paper...)

As Taleb also explains in his paper, the cost of losing is so great that even tiny odds of failure may not be acceptable. After all, we're talking about the entire future of life on our planet.

GMOs may unleash mass global crop failures followed by starvation and disease

I warned about precisely this issue two years ago in my "Murdered by Science" series of articles which discussed how careless applications of science are putting the very existence of the human race at risk. (And for the record, I am not anti-science. I am 100% pro-science when the Precautionary Principle is honored.)

Those articles, widely derided by prostitute scientists paid by corporations to troll the web and attack reason, are in fact even more urgent to read today, in 2014. In those articles, I pointed out that GMOs are in the most extreme class of pollutants because they are self-replicating. While chemical spills can eventually be cleaned up, and even heavy metals can be remediated over time, genetically engineered DNA that escapes into the wild can never be put back into a box.

Self-replicating pollution is the worst class of pollution, far exceeding even the risk of nuclear accidents wiping out humankind. "As humans, we are ill equipped to understand the mathematics behind such risks," writes Taleb. And he's correct: human brains are not hard-wired to fully grasp the long-term implications of self-replicating pollution. In the same way, most people are utterly incapable of accurately imagining the long-term outcomes of compounded interest -- a phenomenon which eerily reflects the spread of self-replicating pollution.

How dishonest science fools the uneducated masses

Because humans are not hard-wired to grasp the long-term risks of self-replicating pollution (as posed by genetically engineered crops), it is all too easy for paid prostitute-scientists to pull the wool over the eyes of the public and falsely claim GMOs present no risks whatsoever. This is why every single scientist who is currently promoting GMOs is, in fact, a threat to the continuation of human life on our planet. By deceiving the public and glossing over the very real threats to life posed by GMOs, they directly contribute to the spread of GMO genetic pollution which may end in genuine catastrophe and massive loss of life.

Imagine the global collapse of all GM corn crops. Or imagine the collapse of global soy production. Every crop which is GMO has some risk of being wiped out in a catastrophic manner caused by the un-natural manipulation of the crop's genetic code.

The history of scientific advancement, of course, is rife with huge failures to foresee unintended consequences. Perhaps the most important example of that is found in the current rise of superbugs across modern hospitals. Utterly unforeseen by the world's top scientists and pharmacological researchers, superbugs have now risen to such prominence in our health care system that even the CDC has warned that the age of antibiotics is over.

Superbugs, in fact, were a product of antibiotics. As drug companies churned out the drugs to "beat disease" -- and doctors prescribed those drugs to hundreds of millions of patients worldwide -- the perfect environment was created for the nurture and spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, many of which are fatal to patients.

I personally knew three people who were killed in U.S. hospitals by superbug infections. Superbugs are the new death pandemic in America, and they are currently killing 48,000 Americans each year. They were unleashed by scientists who had no intention of causing death and destruction. Rather, those scientists working on antibiotics genuinely believed they were saving lives with no downside. At first, it all seemed true -- antibiotics inarguably saved many lives early on. But now, antibiotics are in fact the reason why deadly superbugs have escaped the reach of modern medicine and genuinely threaten the human race with incurable infections.

Scientists are not immune to making catastrophic mistakes that cause massive death

The superbugs lesson desperately needs to be understood by the self-deluded prostitute-scientists currently pushing GMOs. Importantly, they need to swallow their arrogance for just long enough to understand that your INTENTION does not control the long-term effects of your ACTIONS.

Just because you wish for GMOs to "feed the world" does not mean they will. In fact, positive intentions can and do frequently blind scientists to the downsides of their own innovations. In example after example, scientists who believed they were pursuing technology for the betterment of humankind ended up inadvertently contributing to mass death and destruction.

The Manhattan Project, anyone?

But at least the dropping of atomic bombs on civilian populations in Japan was a catastrophe that could be contained. The damage, although immense, was limited and could not mysteriously multiply itself over time. GMOs, on the other hand, are like seeds of mass destruction because they can replicate, spread and conquer.

So controlling them may not be possible once they are unleashed. And they have already been unleashed. Genetic pollution is now widespread across our agricultural landscape, and the vast majority of organic farms in the USA have experienced some level of contamination from genetically engineered crops.

Why so few people are capable of rationally discussing the ecological risks of GMOs

In a very real sense, most human beings are cognitively incapable of participating in any rational discussion of these issues. This includes most scientists, by the way, who are themselves just as vulnerable to peer influences and false mythologies as anyone else. In the name of "science," far too many scientists today merely embarrass themselves by pushing obscenely silly arguments in defense of GMOs, claiming utterly stupid things like, "humans have tinkered with the genetic code of plants for thousands of years. Genetic engineering is no different."

Although this is the most frequently-invoked argument by GMO denialists, it is blatantly idiotic and grossly deceptive from the start. Selective breeding of various phenotypes within the genetic pool of a given species in no way equates to cross-species DNA manipulation which combines insect or soil genes with plant genes. Any person who even attempts to equate these two concepts does nothing more than affix a giant "DUNCE" sticker to their own foreheads. (And yes, numerous scientists invoke this silly argument every single day, across the mainstream media.)

Taleb also addresses this same issue head-on in his public paper, explaining:

Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.) There is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from an organism and putting it into another. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become "natural."

The abandonment of caution in the quest for profits

The next idiotic argument put forth by desperate prostitute-scientists is that GMOs aren't dangerous because there's no evidence they are dangerous. As stupid as this sounds, it is also the faith-based argument of the chemical industry which insists "all chemicals are safe until such time as they are proven dangerous."

If this bass-awkwards logic sounds familiar, it's because it is also invoked by the processed food industry in claiming that all food additives, preservatives and chemicals are inherently safe unless and until they are proven dangerous.

What all this non-logic has in common is an illogical presumption of safety. This has always been the argument of the mass poisoners of our world. Regardless of the poison being discussed -- BPA, mercury fillings, pesticide chemicals, DDT, toxic heavy metals, triclosan, MSG and more -- its corporate backers have consistently and predictably hired swaths of prostitute-scientists to declare the substance to be "safe until proven otherwise."

The tragic lesson of lead arsenate pesticides

This presumption of safety sooner or later ends very badly. For over a hundred years, the heavy metals pesticide lead arsenate was "presumed safe." Made primarily of lead and arsenic, it was indeed very effective at killing pests that threatened food crops. So farmers across North America and around the world sprayed it on their food crops, producing amazing quantities of food... at first, anyway.

Before long, the lead and arsenic bio-accumulated in agricultural soils, poisoning the trees that produced the food as well as the customers who ate it. To this day, soils across the world remain heavily poisoned by these deadly heavy metals, which is one of the reasons why so many superfood products sold today contain such high levels of heavy metals (see the Natural News Forensic Food Lab results for examples).

Lead arsenate -- just like GMOs -- was "presumed safe" because it didn't cause immediate death to anyone. According to corporate-sponsored prostitute-scientists, anything that doesn't kill you within seconds is automatically presumed to be safe. All long-term implications of the chemical or technology are willfully swept under the rug and ignored. Corporations lean on government regulators until the cover-up becomes policy. At that point, both government and industry become active collaborators in the mass poisoning of the human race.

And that's the whole point of my breakthrough article, The Battle For Humanity is Nearly Lost which covers this collusion in more detail.

In conclusion: No self-replicating technology can be presumed safe if we hope to survive

I am of the opinion, by the way, that human civilization will not survive the next 100 years. Our species is too shortsighted, too driven by greed and too easily manipulated to survive its own corporate-led destruction. The quest for short-term profits blinds nearly everyone to long-term implications. The fact that the masses are already heavily poisoned by this very process makes it nearly impossible for the public consciousness to achieve sufficient lucidity to halt the quickening pace of self-destruction.

So in one sense, I only write this out of a fondness for galactic amusement, not out of any real hope that humanity can save itself from destruction via heavy metals, synthetic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and GMOs. But on the off chance that I am wrong in my prediction of humanity's demise, if we are to survive as a species, such survival will necessitate the global embracing of the Precautionary Principle across all realms of science and technology.

Because even if we halt Monsanto and agree to have all the criminal biotechnology scientists halted from committing ecocide, we are all very likely going to be overrun by artificial intelligence before the year 2050, regardless of what else happens in agriculture or synthetic chemicals. Just as with GMOs, today's most brilliant computer scientists are wholly incapable of understanding the long-term implications of the race for conscious machines and advanced AI tech. The result will almost certainly be that humans will invent the technologies that destroy humanity, and we will all go down in history as the race of sentient beings who were smart enough to invent amazing technologies but too stupid to restrain them.

Note: All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material.

Suzanne

After reading some about Monsanto, it's not only their products, but their hitmen (in a broad way, but not necessarily exclusive of the other) you have to worry about. Kind of makes you wonder if they are connected with dictatorial control. With their arrogant dismissal of their mistakes of the past and their willful targeting of individuals whether they are innocent or otherwise, I have nothing good to say about Monsanto. And that's regardless of the harm GMO's do to you or the environment! And if it's the company and not the product that is the real problem, is there any question as to whether they care if they have a safe product?

It's a program for control of the food market.
Control the food and everything else falls under their control as well.

There is no other way to make sense of what's going on. Why else can they get away with what they are doing if there was any fairness in how governments deal with theses people.

Often wonder if the control over "buy and sell" will be related to this control of the food market -- or if there will be any food available if they remove the ability for plants to reproduce?

As far as the "technology" is concerned -- it may go the opposite way where something causes all the systems to crash with irreparable damage and the populations won't know how to do anything anymore without all their gadgets. I'm not sure our civilization is getting 'smarter' (other than a few ) the vast majority can't even multiply or divide or add simple figures anymore without an electronic gadget.

I think your latter part is right on. I've read where the supposedly advantages are not what is promoted and the plants do less well than what was planted. Some sort of problem arises and some countries will go hungry. They won't have any of their past genetics to grow as they let them perish for this "new" stuff. Or organizations "help" them by switching them to the new crops with all the supposed benefits and they lose the old. They starve and become dependent. And will be put in a position to be coerced to do whatever it takes to get food.

Author of 'The GMO Deception' Explains The Dangers Behind Genetically Modified Foods

by Julie Wilson

(NaturalNews) Sheldon Krimsky is no stranger to the evolution of genetic testing and manipulation. In fact, he's authored and co-authored dozens of books on a range of topics including industrial genetics, hormone mimickers, corrupt biomedical research and why the public needs a "Genetic Bill of Rights."

Krimsky, a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University in Massachusetts, has dedicated his career to analyzing the relationship between agricultural biotechnology and the environment.

His latest book entitled, The GMO Deception: What You Need to Know about the Food, Corporations, and Government Agencies Putting Our Families and Our Environment at Risk, discusses genetically engineered foods and the long-term effects that they have on people's health and the environment.

A preview of his book on Amazon discusses his reaction to his college biology professor's allegation that "science is science," a statement that Krimsky highly disagrees with. "Today, my response would be 'not quite,'" wrote the author.

Krimsky is head of the Council for Responsible Genetics, a public interest group that "fosters public debate about the social, ethical and environmental implications of genetic technologies," according the group's website.

His expertise includes links between science, technology, ethics, values and public policy. Recently, Krimsky spoke with The Boston Globe's Karen Weintraub about his new book.

Weintraub quickly began questioning Krimsky about his apparent "anti-GMO position," asking whether or not he's truly opposed to them or just skeptical.

Krimsky cleverly rebutted by explaining that one of the core values of science is "organized skepticism," and the only way to truly test science is by being skeptical, exploring every possible fault until the skepticism disappears.

When Krimsky addressed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) failure to test the safety of GMOs, instead working a backward approach asking industry to report problems after they have occurred, Weintraub asked if he disagrees with that approach.

"You cannot predict what's going to happen to an organism if you put in a foreign gene. It could interfere with other genes, it could over-express some things and under-express other things. You cannot make predictions without testing them," explained Krimsky.

Weintraub responded by questioning whether or not a company can control where a gene goes or what it does after insertion.

"Genes do more than one thing. If you think of the genome as an ecosystem rather than a Lego system, it gives you a different idea of what the possibilities are. We have to test in order to understand what the foreign gene is going to do to the organism," said Krimsky.

He explained the difference between cross-pollination and genetic engineering, clarifying that hybrid crops come from the same species, while GM crops involve inserting genes from a completely different species and placing them into a plant genome.

Unsatisfied, the interviewer began referencing industry studies that regard GMOs as safe and no different from ordinary crops. Scientists that question the corporate narrative are often "vilified," replied Krimsky, and not all studies have proven GMOs to be safe.

Krimsky discussed the criticism that French scientists received after publishing research which found GMOs to cause "severe adverse health effects" in mice, including the development of mammary tumors and organ damage.

After calling the French study "unrealistic," Weintraub asked, "So this one negative finding carries more weight than dozens of positive ones?"

"Whenever you're looking at the risk of a product, a single negative result is more important than 99 positive results, especially when a substantial number of those positive results are funded by the agribusiness industry. We've had products on the market for 50 years: PCBs, asbestos, tobacco, DDT. Early on people said they were safe," answered Krimsky.

Weintraub wrapped up the interview by asking if anything would convince Krimsky that GMOs are safe.

"I would feel convinced if there were independent studies asking the right questions and seeking experiments looking for the most vulnerable cases," he replied.

A reprint of the interview by GMWatch corrected a few of Weintraub's points, including that there was nothing "unrealistic" about Seralini's long-term safety study on GM maize NK603 and Roundup.

Secondly, regarding Weintraub's comment about one negative study carrying more weight than dozens of positive ones, GMWatch points out that there are no other long-term safety studies on GM corn.

Additional sources:

http://www.gmwatch.org

http://www.bostonglobe.com

http://www.tufts.edu

http://www.amazon.com

http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org

http://www.ijbs.com

http://www.motherearthnews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

Suzanne

It is interesting to me how Monsanto can go to the USDA and keep the labels off GMO food by saying that GMO food is no different from natural food. Then Monsanto can go to the patent office and say GMO food is very much different from natural food and get away with it.

Monsanto gets away with far too much.

I feel for the farmers in Canada who had their Supreme Court rule in favor of Monsanto. They can't protect their own fields anymore.