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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    New Evidence About the Dangers of Monsanto’s Roundup
    Sharon Lerner

    May 17 2016, 4:18 p.m.

    John Sanders worked in the orange and grapefruit groves in Redlands, California, for more than 30 years. First as a ranch hand, then as a farm worker, he was responsible for keeping the weeds around the citrus trees in check. Roundup, the Monsanto weed killer, was his weapon of choice, and he sprayed it on the plants from a hand-held atomizer year-round.

    Frank Tanner, who owned a landscaping business, is also a Californian and former Roundup user. Tanner relied on the herbicide starting in 1974, and between 2000 and 2006 sprayed between 50 and 70 gallons of it a year, sometimes from a backpack, other times from a 200-gallon drum that he rolled on a cart next to him.

    The two men have other things in common, too: After being regularly exposed to Roundup, both developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer that starts in the lymph cells. And, as of April, both are plaintiffs in a suit filed against Monsanto that marks a turning point in the pitched battle over the most widely used agricultural chemical in history.

    Until recently, the fight over Roundup has mostly focused on its active ingredient, glyphosate. But mounting evidence, including one study published in February, shows it’s not only glyphosate that’s dangerous, but also chemicals listed as “inert ingredients” in some formulations of Roundup and other glyphosate-based weed killers. Though they have been in herbicides — and our environment — for decades, these chemicals have evaded scientific scrutiny and regulation in large part because the companies that make and use them have concealed their identity as trade secrets.

    Now, as environmental scientists have begun to puzzle out the mysterious chemicals sold along with glyphosate, evidence that these so-called inert ingredients are harmful has begun to hit U.S. courts. In addition to Sanders and Tanner, at least four people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup have sued Monsanto in recent months, citing the dangers of both glyphosate and the co-formulants sold with it. As Tanner and Sanders’s complaint puts it: Monsanto “knew or should have known that Roundup is more toxic than glyphosate alone and that safety studies of Roundup, Roundup’s adjuvants and ‘inert’ ingredients” were necessary.

    Research on these chemicals seems to have played a role in the stark disagreement over glyphosate’s safety that has played out on the international stage over the last year. In March 2015, using research on both glyphosate alone and the complete formulations of Roundup and other herbicides, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen. The IARC report noted an association between non-Hodgkin lymphoma and glyphosate, significant evidence that the chemical caused cancer in lab animals, and strong evidence that it damaged human DNA.

    Meanwhile, in November the European Food Safety Authority issued a report concluding that the active ingredient in Roundup was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.” The discrepancy might be explained by the fact that the EFSA report included only studies looking at the effects of glyphosate alone. Another reason the agencies may have differed, according to 94 environmental health experts from around the world, is that IARC considered only independent studies, while the EFSA report included data from unpublished industry-submitted studies, which were cited with redacted footnotes.

    On Friday, April 29, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in — briefly — when it posted a long-awaited report on the reregistration of glyphosate concluding that the herbicide is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” But the agency removed the report and 13 related documents from its website the following Monday, saying the publication had been an error. The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology is looking into the EPA’s “apparent mishandling” of the glyphosate report, and the EPA said it will release the reregistration materials by the end of this year.

    In response to queries from The Intercept, a spokesperson for the EPA wrote that “the safety of all inert ingredients are considered” during the pesticide registration process, though an 87-page “Cancer Assessment Document,” which was among the documents accidentally released, contains no references to research conducted on the co-formulants.
    round-up

    Photo: Mike Mozart

    Naming the Toxins

    Some European governments have already begun taking action against one of these co-formulants, a chemical known as polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, which is used in Monsanto’s Roundup Classic and Roundup Original formulations, among other weed killers, to aid in penetrating the waxy surface of plants.

    Germany removed all herbicides containing POEA from the market in 2014, after a forestry worker who had been exposed to it developed toxic inflammation of the lungs. In early April, the French national health and safety agency known as ANSES took the first step toward banning products that combine glyphosate and POEA. A draft of the European Commission’s reregistration report on glyphosate proposed banning POEA. In April, the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution that supported the POEA ban and also suggested requiring member states to compile a list of other co-formulants to be banned from herbicides. The European Commission’s final vote on glyphosate’s reregistration is expected later this month.

    In response to inquiries about POEA, Charla Marie Lord of Monsanto referred The Intercept to the company’s April 8 blog post, which noted that Monsanto has “already been preparing for a gradual transition away from tallowamine to other types of surfactants for commercial reasons.” The post also said that “tallowamine-based products do not pose an imminent risk for human health when used according to instructions.”

    Independent scientists have been reporting since at least 1991 that pesticides containing glyphosate along with other ingredients were more dangerous than glyphosate on its own. More recently, two papers — one published in 2002, the other in 2004 — showed that Roundup and other glyphosate-containing weed formulations were more likely to cause cell-cycle dysregulation, a hallmark of cancer, than glyphosate alone. In 2005, researchers showed that Roundup was more harmful to rats’ livers than its “active ingredient” by itself. And a 2009 study showed that four formulations of Roundup were more toxic to human umbilical, embryonic, and placental cells than glyphosate by itself.

    But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health.
    Escaping Regulation

    In 2012, Robin Mesnage decided to change that. A cellular and molecular toxicologist in London, Mesnage bought nine herbicides containing glyphosate, including five different formulations of Roundup, and reverse engineered some of the other components. After studying the chemicals’ patterns using mass spectrometry, Mesnage and his colleagues came up with a list of possible molecular structures and then compared them with available chemical samples.

    “It took around one year and three people (a specialist in pesticide toxicology, a specialist of chemical mixtures, and a specialist in mass spectrometry) to unravel the secrets of Monsanto’s Roundup formulations,” Mesnage explained in an email. The hard work paid off. In 2013, his team was able not only to deduce the chemical structure of additives in six of the nine formulations but also to show that each of these supposedly inert ingredients was more toxic than glyphosate alone.

    That breakthrough helped scientists know exactly which chemicals to study, though obtaining samples remains challenging. “We still can’t get them to make experiments,” said Nicolas Defarge, a molecular biologist based in Paris. Manufacturers of co-formulants are unwilling to “sell you anything if you are not a pesticide manufacturer, and even less if you are a scientist willing to assess their toxicity.”

    So when Defarge, Mesnage, and five other scientists embarked on their most recent research, they had to be creative. They were able to buy six weed killers, including Roundup WeatherMax and Roundup Classic, at the store. But, finding pure samples of the co-formulants in them was trickier. The scientists got one from a farmer who mixes his own herbicide. For another, they went to a company that uses the chemical to make soap. “They were of course not aware that I was going to assess it for toxic and endocrine-disrupting effects,” said Defarge. András Székács, one of Defarge’s co-authors who is based in Hungary, provided samples of the other three co-formulants studied, but didn’t respond to inquiries about how he obtained them.

    In February, the team published its findings, which showed that each of the five co-formulants affected the function of both the mitochondria in human placental cells and aromatase, an enzyme that affects sexual development. Not only did these chemicals, which aren’t named on herbicide labels, affect biological functions, they did so at levels far below the concentrations used in commercially available products. In fact, POEA — officially an “inert” ingredient — was between 1,200 and 2,000 times more toxic to cells than glyphosate, officially the “active” ingredient.

    The paper highlights the folly of letting co-formulants fly under the regulatory radar. Although the general public is never exposed to pure glyphosate, government agencies set safe exposure levels for the declared active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides without considering POEA or any of the other chemicals that are bottled with it. In February, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to monitor food for glyphosate residue. But the agency has no plan to test food for POEA or other additives, according to FDA press officer Lauren Sucher. And the EPA hasn’t focused squarely on POEA because it isn’t officially an active ingredient.
    Evidence of Toxicity

    But the EPA has possessed evidence of POEA’s toxicity for years, including several reports of substantial risk to human health and the environment. One, submitted in 1998, noted that 1,000 fish died after 60 gallons of a mixture of chemicals including POEA spilled into a ditch, according to the company responsible for the spill, whose name is redacted in the document. Another report, filed by the chemical company BASF in 2013, noted that several rats that inhaled POEA in an experiment died. Researchers exposed rats to four different levels of the chemical, and at each level, at least some animals were killed. Even at the lowest level, 4 out of 10 rats died.

    The EPA has also reviewed the long-term environmental effects of POEA, including its impact on frogs. In 2008, the agency reviewed the effects of both POEA-containing Roundup formulations and POEA itself on fish and amphibians, and showed that Roundup Original, which has 15 percent POEA, is moderately toxic to wood frogs and that POEA itself is “highly toxic” to rainbow trout.

    As evidence of the harms of co-formulants has been building, the U.S. has increased the amount of glyphosate to which it is theoretically safe to be exposed, which has in turn also increased our actual exposure to the chemicals it is packaged with. Almost 300 million pounds of glyphosate was used on crops in the U.S. in 2013, up from approximately 16 million pounds in 1992, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

    For the lawyers litigating the cases against Monsanto, the idea that POEA and the other ingredients contribute to the toxicity of Roundup is critical. “That’s one of the central theories of our case,” said David Wool, an attorney at Andrus Wagstaff, who is working on suits against Monsanto on behalf of four people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after years of regularly using Roundup. “It’s not only that glyphosate is carcinogenic and dangerous,” said Wool. “Monsanto had every reason to know that, by including POEA, it increased the danger of all of these products.”

    Robin Greenwald, the Weitz & Luxenberg attorney who filed Sanders and Tanner’s case, is confident that discovery, which will begin over the next few months, will show that Monsanto intentionally mislabeled dangerous co-formulants. “My assumption is that we will find documents in their files that show they had ample evidence that the surfactants were not inert and that they too had the potential to cause illness in people,” said Greenwald.

    But for her client, John Sanders, who is now in remission after undergoing chemotherapy, it doesn’t really matter which chemical did what. When he was using Roundup, Sanders had no idea that anything in the liquid that sometimes dripped on his clothes and skin might cause cancer. “That was never in my wildest dreams,” he said recently. Now Sanders, who is 67, dreams about staying healthy. He is due for a CT scan next month to see if his cancer has returned.

    When asked to comment on the lawsuits, Monsanto provided the following statement:

    While we have sympathy for the plaintiffs, the science simply does not support the claims made in these lawsuits. The U.S. EPA and other pesticide regulators around the world have reviewed numerous long-term carcinogenicity studies and agree that there is no evidence that glyphosate causes cancer, even at very high doses. Surfactants such as tallowamines are soapy substances that help to reduce surface tension of the water and are found in many everyday products such as toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, detergent and many other cleaning products. Tallowamine-based products do not pose an imminent risk for human health when used according to instructions. In a 2009 review of toxicological data on tallowamine, the U.S. EPA found no evidence that tallowamines are neurotoxic, mutagenic or clastogenic.

    https://theintercept.com/2016/05/17/...antos-roundup/

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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    German drug company Bayer buys Monsanto

    German drugs and crop chemicals group Bayer AG has offered to buy U.S. seeds company Monsanto for $62 billion in cash, defying some of its own shareholders in a bid to grab the top spot in a fast-consolidating farm supplies industry.

    Monsanto Co's stock ended trading up 4.4 percent at $106 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, well below Bayer's $122 per share cash offer price, in a sign that it faces a tough task convincing the St. Louis-based company to sign off on the deal.

    Monsanto has said it would review the proposal. Some analysts have suggested Bayer might still have to pay more.

    "The price that has now been disclosed is at the upper limit and it is just about economical. Should it rise further, which is to be assumed, the takeover will become increasingly unattractive," said Markus Manns, a fund manager at Union Investment, Bayer's 14th biggest investor

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mo...-idUSKCN0YE0DZ
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    Thumbs down Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    Quote Posted by Tangri (here)
    German drug company Bayer buys Monsanto

    German drugs and crop chemicals group Bayer AG has offered to buy U.S. seeds company Monsanto for $62 billion in cash, defying some of its own shareholders in a bid to grab the top spot in a fast-consolidating farm supplies industry.

    Monsanto Co's stock ended trading up 4.4 percent at $106 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, well below Bayer's $122 per share cash offer price, in a sign that it faces a tough task convincing the St. Louis-based company to sign off on the deal.

    Monsanto has said it would review the proposal. Some analysts have suggested Bayer might still have to pay more.

    "The price that has now been disclosed is at the upper limit and it is just about economical. Should it rise further, which is to be assumed, the takeover will become increasingly unattractive," said Markus Manns, a fund manager at Union Investment, Bayer's 14th biggest investor

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mo...-idUSKCN0YE0DZ
    Knowing Bayer's poisonest past history (of creating weapons employed during WWI) for producing disabling chemicals, such as tear gas and the severe mustard gas - to lethal agents like phosgene and chlorine ...
    Seems like a sadistic no brainer deal made in hell.

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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    Quote Posted by Tangri (here)
    German drug company Bayer buys Monsanto

    German drugs and crop chemicals group Bayer AG has offered to buy U.S. seeds company Monsanto for $62 billion in cash, defying some of its own shareholders in a bid to grab the top spot in a fast-consolidating farm supplies industry.

    Monsanto Co's stock ended trading up 4.4 percent at $106 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, well below Bayer's $122 per share cash offer price, in a sign that it faces a tough task convincing the St. Louis-based company to sign off on the deal.

    Monsanto has said it would review the proposal. Some analysts have suggested Bayer might still have to pay more.

    "The price that has now been disclosed is at the upper limit and it is just about economical. Should it rise further, which is to be assumed, the takeover will become increasingly unattractive," said Markus Manns, a fund manager at Union Investment, Bayer's 14th biggest investor

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mo...-idUSKCN0YE0DZ
    I think this is more about moving money out of the US than anything moralistic. Monsanto's name might change, but the wheel will keep spinning. All the profits will start to move back to a different set of zionists.

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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    will share this here ...

    Quote Posted by giovonni (here)
    Here's the hellish backstory ...

    The Empire Files: Monsanto, America's Monster

    From Abby Martin


    "Few corporations in the world are as loathed—and as sinister—as Monsanto. But the threat it poses to people and planet could be reaching new heights, as the World Health Organization has recently upgraded Monsanto's main product as carcinogenic to humans. With protests against the agrochemical giant held in over 40 countries in May, learn why the global movement against Monsanto is of critical importance to our future. In this episode of The Empire Files, Abby Martin issues a scathing expose on the corporate polluter, chronicling it's rise to power, the collusion of its crimes by the US government, and highlighting the serious danger it puts us in today."

    Published on Jun 13, 2016

    Last edited by giovonni; 14th June 2016 at 17:19.

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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    The Jesuits and Monsanto
    This whole video is definitely worth watching, but at 1 hour 48 minutes in, Leuren Moret begins speaking in depth about Monsanto and the connection to the Jesuits
    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    Quote Highway Robbery
    Organic Consumers Association
    Money being taken out of a safe
    Late Thursday (July 7) night, 63 U.S. Senators voted to rob you of the right to know what’s in your food.

    If you watched any of the Senate “debate” (limited to 30 hours) on the Roberts-Stabenow DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act, you heard one after another of these 63 Senators misrepresent this industry-written bill as a “uniform federal mandatory labeling solution.”

    If you’ve been working on this issue with us for weeks, or months or years, you know that’s a lie.

    The bill passed last night is intended to hide information (behind electronic codes) from consumers, not provide it—in plain English, on a label.

    The bill passed last night is intended to exempt the vast majority of GMOs from even having to be hidden behind codes, much less labeled in plain sight.

    The bill passed last night is voluntary—it contains no enforcement mechanism, no penalties for non-compliance.

    The bill passed last night is an attack on democracy, an attack on states’ rights. It not only overturns Vermont’s carefully considered and fairly debated mandatory GMO labeling law, but as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted in his speech on the Senate floor, this bill overturns nearly 100 other state laws. (Sanders pushed hard to stop this bill).

    The bill passed last night is a fraud, an affront to the nine out of 10 Americans who want what citizens in 64 countries already have—the basic right to know what’s in our food.

    The 63 Senators who sided with (and took hundreds of millions of dollars from) Monsanto and Big Food, stole your right to know, and whatever shred of belief you might still have had in the democratic process.

    But they did not steal your power to boycott any brand or company that refuses to label GMOs. They did not steal your determination to take back an unhealthy, toxic, corrupt corporate food and farming system.

    On Wednesday (July 6), during the cloture vote (which assured that the Roberts-Stabenow bill would not be open for discussion or amendments), OCA led a protest on the Senate floor. That protest led to the arrest and detainment, for over 24 hours, of our political director, Alexis Baden-Mayer. We didn’t change the vote. But we took a stand.

    The Roberts-Stabenow bill will now go back to the U.S. House, which in July 2015 passed its own version of the DARK Act. If the House and Senate reach an agreement, Congress will vote on a bill to keep you in the dark. That bill will then land on President Obama’s desk.

    We will continue to fight it all the way. We hope you will, too.

    Watch the OCA ‘money bomb’ protest:
    https://www.facebook.com/organiccons...4009567789934/
    Each breath a gift...
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    Monsanto’s Dark Act ready for Obama’s signature
    July19
    by Jon Rappoport
    https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2...mas-signature/
    Quote President Barack Obama: Monsanto’s man in Washington

    By Jon Rappoport

    “Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they’re buying.” (Barack Obama, 2007)

    Really?

    In the last eight years, the global outcry against Monsanto and the other biotech giants has accelerated—but not a significant peep has emerged from the Obama White House.

    And now, the bill dubbed The Dark Act is ready for Obama’s signature. It will make GMO labels on food an exclusively federal matter—and those labels will be confusing, weak, and therefore meaningless for the majority of Americans. The Dark Act is basically a free pass for Monsanto and the other biotech giants.

    After his victory in the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in GMO food issues—the USDA and the FDA:

    At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

    As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

    As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

    As the Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

    As the counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

    As the head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.

    We should also remember that Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.

    Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.

    The deck was stacked. Obama hadn’t simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn’t just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.

    And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let’s see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency.

    Monsanto GMO alfalfa.

    Monsanto GMO sugar beets.

    Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.

    Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.

    Syngenta GMO stacked corn.

    Pioneer GMO soybean.

    Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.

    Bayer GMO cotton.

    ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.

    A GMO papaya strain.

    Genetically engineered salmon.

    This is an extraordinary parade.

    Obama was, all along, a stealth operative on behalf of Monsanto, biotech, GMOs, and corporate control of the future of agriculture.

    He didn’t make that many key political appointments and allow that many new GMO crops to enter the food chain through a lack of oversight.

    Nor is it coincidental that two of the Obama’s biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010.

    Obama has been a covert agent since the beginning.

    Imposter. Charlatan. These words fit Obama. He doesn’t care that GMO food is taking over the country and the world. He obviously wants it to happen.

    The sitting president of the United States, and Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow, among others, are prepared to do whatever is necessary to make GMO food dominate America.

    Obama is on board.

    He is the GMO president.
    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    Regarding investments, insiders trading and why bills (like SB 277) get approved in spite of popular constituents disapproval, check this video from Lindsey Williams:


    ... it removes a lot of the mysteries on "governments" workings...
    Last edited by Hervé; 28th July 2016 at 13:24.
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    Glyphosate Causes Changes to DNA Function Resulting in Chronic Disease, According to Study
    (Beyond Pesticides July 18, 2016
    http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynew...ronic-disease/

    Quote Glyphosate Causes Changes to DNA Function Resulting in Chronic Disease, According to Study
    (Beyond Pesticides July 18, 2016) A review of the scientific literature links glyphosate, one of the most popular weed killers in the U.S. and the active ingredient in Roundup, to a wide range of diseases through a mechanism that modifies DNA functioning, adding a new even more troubling dimension to the herbicide’s cancer classification by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. According to the most recent review, Glyphosate pathways to modern disease V: Amino acid analogue of glycine in diverse proteins, conducted by independent scientists Anthony Samsel, Ph.D. and Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., a scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), glyphosate acts as a glycine analogue that incorporates into peptides during protein synthesis. In this process, it alters a number of proteins that depend on conserved glycine for proper function. According to the authors, glyphosate substitution for glycine correlates with several diseases, including diabetes, obesity, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Parkinson’s disease, among others.DNA

    Glycine, the smallest amino acid commonly found in proteins, has unique properties that support flexibility and the ability to anchor to the plasma membrane or the cytoskeleton. This new direct biological evidence, taken together with correlational data, make a compelling case that glyphosate action as a glycine analogue accounts for much of glyphosate’s toxicity, according to the study. The authors find that glyphosate, as an amino acid analogue of glycine, may be incorporated into polypeptide chains during protein synthesis. In doing so, it has an impact on the structure and function of the proteins. Proteins fold up, and glycine is a small molecule that is often found at the folding places. Since glyphosate is much larger, it prevents the protein molecule from folding properly, leading to the disruption of function of many proteins with essential roles in metabolism and regulatory processes.

    The article cites a number of ways that this affects humans and other organisms. According to the study, the consequences of this action can lead to impaired fatty acid release leading to obesity, impaired insulin receptor response leading to diabetes, impaired one-carbon metabolism leading to neural tube defects and autism, impaired cell cycle control during DNA synthesis, and disregulated phosphorylation cascades leading to cancer, lung disorders, and autoimmune diseases.

    Stephen Frantz, Ph.D., a pathobiologist research scientist explains it like this: “When a cell is trying to form proteins, it may grab glyphosate instead of glycine to form a damaged, mis-folded protein. After that it’s medical chaos. Where glyphosate replaces glycine, the cell can no longer conduct business as usual causing unpredicted consequences with many diseases and disorders as a result.”

    The release of this study comes on the heels of several other discussions and actions on glyphosate that have taken place over the past few weeks. Last month at a Congressional briefing sponsored by U.S Representative Ted Lieu, a delegation of independent scientists including this study’s authors, presented their findings, urging lawmakers to call on the EPA to ban RoundUp, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide. Beyond Pesticides participated on the panel, providing testimony on the impact of glyphosate on soil systems, as well as the unreasonable risk it poses to humans, animals, and the environment. Following the congressional briefing, scientists spoke at a closed meeting with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), explaining the biochemical and physiological reasons why exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, is linked to autism, Alzheimer’s, cancer, birth defects, obesity, and gluten intolerance, among other health issues. EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs’ Deputy Director and his staff met with the panelists and provided an overview of EPA’s registration process for glyphosate. EPA staff had some interest in the information presented, which was forwarded to relevant staffers. However, EPA indicated that much of the information provided may not impact their current risk assessment for glyphosate, which is expected sometime in 2017.

    Glyphosate, created by Monsanto, is touted as a “low toxicity” chemical and “safer” than other chemicals by industry. But glyphosate has been shown to have detrimental impacts on humans and the environment. Given its widespread use on residential and agricultural sites, its toxicity is of increasing concern. In early 2015, glyphosate was classified by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of as a “probable human carcinogen.” Just a few months later, a study published in Environmental Health News found that chronic, low-dose exposure to glyphosate led to adverse effects on liver and kidney health. Roundup formulations can also induce a dose-dependent formation of DNA adducts (altered forms of DNA linked to chemical exposure, playing a key role in chemical carcinogenesis) in the kidneys and liver of mice. Human cell endocrine disruption on the androgen receptor, inhibition of transcriptional activities on estrogen receptors on HepG2, DNA damage and cytotoxic effects occurring at concentrations well below “acceptable” residues have all been observed.

    Roundup also harms crops’ ability to capture carbon from the air, an important factor in fighting climate change. “Glyphosate negatively affects the soil microbiome,” said Frantz. “It is destroying the ability of soil to be a nutritive medium for producing crops. Organic or biological regenerative agriculture is the solution for the sustainable agricultural sector and will conserve soil, air and water quality, and sequester carbon that helps to mitigate the climate crisis. We call for a ban on glyphosate.”

    Beyond Pesticides urges individuals concerned about glyphosate exposure to support organic systems that do not rely on hazardous carcinogenic pesticides. In agriculture, concerned consumers can buy food with the certified organic label, which not only disallows synthetic pesticides like glyphosate, but also the use of sewage sludge and genetically engineered ingredients. Beyond Pesticides also urges the adoption of organic lawn and landscape programs.

    All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

    Source: Research Gate, Huffington Post
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    I couldn't find this posted anywhere yet, so I hope it's OK to put it here:

    Quote President Obama Signed This GMO Labeling Bill

    by Michal Addady

    @michal_addady

    July 31, 2016, 4:49 PM EDT

    The majority of our food contains GMOs.

    Soon all food packages sold in the U.S. will have to have the proper labeling.

    On Friday President Obama signed bill S. 764 that puts into place a federal standard for foods that have been made with genetically modified organisms, ABC News reports. This move comes just about two weeks after Congress passed legislation to necessitate labeling on all food packages that indicates whether or not they contain GMO ingredients. “This measure will provide new opportunities for consumers to have access to information about their food,” Katie Hill, White House spokesperson, told the news outlet.

    This didn’t win over all food-labeling advocates, however. One criticism is that the bill allowed companies to use QR codes or 1-800 numbers as a form of GMO labeling, forcing consumers to scan the code or make a call to get more information. That’s why some opponents are calling the bill the DARK Act, short for “Denying Americans the Right to Know,” and argue these alternative labels discriminate against low-income consumers who lack the technology to access off-label info. Others have criticized the bill because it isn’t as stringent as a piece of Vermont legislation that will now be superseded by the federal law. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was among the federal bill’s critics, and urged his Twitter followers to contact their senators about the bill earlier this month.

    GMOs are estimated to be in the majority of our food, somewhere between 75% and 80%. The Food and Drug Administration has said that they are safe for consumption, but most consumers argue that, safe or not, they have the right to know exactly what is in their food. American companies say that it’s too expensive to add GMO labeling to their packaging, but former financial and food industry analyst Robyn O’Brien pointed to 64 countries where they are already required to include those labels.

    The details of this new bill have yet to be worked out. That responsibility falls on the Department of Agriculture, which will have two years to write up the rules.
    http://fortune.com/2016/07/31/gmo-labeling-bill/
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    Monsanto/Bayer merging
    http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsro...nto-bayer-deal
    Quote WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement Wednesday after Monsanto agreed to a buyout offer from Bayer in a deal that would create the world’s largest supplier of seeds and farm chemicals:

    “The attempted takeover of Monsanto by Bayer is a threat to all Americans. These mergers boost the profits of huge corporations and leave Americans paying even higher prices. Not only should this merger be blocked, but the Department of Justice should reopen its investigation of Monsanto’s monopoly over the seed and chemical market.”
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    Maybe the Monsanto/Bayer merger is not a done deal.
    Message from SumOfUs.org today in their newsletter:
    (I've deleted their appeals for donations)
    Quote
    Breaking news: agrochemical giant Bayer just announced it’s merging with the most hated company on the planet: Monsanto.

    These two companies joining into one mega-corporation is truly the stuff of nightmares. Together they would be the biggest seed company AND the biggest pesticide company in the world with control over nearly everything we eat and grow. It means more bee-killing neonics in our fields, more toxic glyphosate on our plates, and more corporate control over our food supply.

    But this fight is not over -- in fact it’s just beginning.

    Bayer and Monsanto will have to get this merger past regulators in the U.S. and Europe -- and that’s where we come in. We’re already working with some of the world’s top legal minds to prove that the merger violates anti-trust law -- but to convince the regulators to step in, it will take a massive grassroots outcry as well.
    Regulators can still stop this merger if they find it violates anti-trust law. But they’re already getting hammered by corporate lobbyists pressuring them to back off. That’s why they won’t intervene unless the grassroots speak out loud and clear. And we don’t have much time -- anti-trust regulators have a limited amount of time to take action, and the clock is already ticking.

    If enough of us chip in, we could:

    Initiate antitrust lawsuits in the European Union and in the United States
    Mobilise farmers in US farming states to pressure their representatives
    Commission opinion polls to show public opposition to the merger in German and in key election states in the US
    Work with citizens in Bayer’s home country Germany, where political leaders are already under massive pressure because of our campaign to ban Monsanto’s glyphosate in Europe.

    If we don't win this, the experts agree: it'll mean higher food prices for all of us, with less choice, and the scary possibility of a massive monoculture that could be wiped out with just one bad disease.

    Since the announcement of the merger was made, over half a million people have joined the call to stop this merger from hell. Thanks to the SumOfUs community, we were able to get some of the world’s top legal minds to prove that the merger is a disaster, and simply can’t go ahead. We’ve published the legal results as a white paper and you have tweeted and emailed the European and US antitrust authorities in a massive public outcry against this deal. We’ve turned up at any public event Bayer and Monsanto are planning to protest this merger. We’ve even gotten celebrity support from Mark Ruffalo for our campaign.More information:

    Bayer and Monsanto's Mega Merger, Atlantic, 14 September 2016
    http://www.theatlantic.com/news/arch...merger/499919/
    Why Bayer's massive deal to buy Monsanto is so worrisome, Vox, 14 September 2016
    http://www.vox.com/2016/9/14/1291634...o-bayer-merger
    Bayer-Monsanto Deal Would Forge New Agricultural Force, Wall Street Journal, 14 September 2016
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/bayer-an...ver-1473839357
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    Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant Discuss Bayer’s Agreement to Acquire Monsanto

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    Largest-Ever GMO Crops Study Shows Massive Environmental Damage in US
    http://sustainablepulse.com/2016/09/.../#.V-AAoYgrK1u

    Quote According to new research from University of Virginia in the U.S., widespread adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops has decreased the use of insecticides, but increased the use of weed-killing herbicides as weeds become more resistant, leading to serious environmental damage.
    Economist Federico Ciliberto led the largest study of genetically modified crops and pesticide use to date, alongside Edward D. Perry of Kansas State University, David A. Hennessy of Michigan State University and GianCarlo Moschini of Iowa State University. The four economists studied annual data from more than 5,000 soybean and 5,000 maize farmers in the U.S. from 1998 to 2011, far exceeding previous studies that have been limited to one or two years of data.

    Herbicide Use / Environmental Impact (EIQ)

    “The fact that we have 14 years of farm-level data from farmers all over the U.S. makes this study very special,” Ciliberto said. “We have repeated observations of the same farmers and can see when they adopted genetically modified seeds and how that changed their use of chemicals.”

    Since 2008, genetically engineered crops have accounted for more than 80 percent of maize and soybean crops planted in the U.S. Maize seeds are modified with two genes: one kills insects that eat the seed and one allows the seed to tolerate glyphosate, a herbicide commonly used in weed killers like Roundup. Soybeans are modified with just one glyphosate-resistant gene.

    Unsurprisingly, maize farmers who used the insect-resistant seeds used significantly less insecticide – about 11.2 percent less – than farmers who did not use genetically modified maize. The maize farmers also used 1.3 percent less herbicide over the 13-year period.

    Soybean crops, on the other hand, saw a significant increase in herbicide use, with adopters of genetically modified crops using 28 percent more herbicides than non-adopters.

    Ciliberto attributes this increase to the proliferation of glyphosate-resistant weeds.

    Commentators and other peer-reviewed studies have even stated that the rise in pesticide use on GM crops has gone up much further since the 1998-2011 data that was reviewed in this new University of Virginia study. The period from 2011-2016 is when glyphosate-resistant weeds have become a major economic problem for U.S. farmers based on the increase of use and thus money spent on pesticides cutting in to their bottom line.

    THE GLYPHOSATE BOX

    1o Things You Need to Know about Glyphosate

    5 Things You Need to Know about Glyphosate Testing

    Glyphosate in Numbers

    “In the beginning, there was a reduction in herbicide use, but over time the use of chemicals increased because farmers were having to add new chemicals as weeds developed a resistance to glyphosate,” Ciliberto said.

    Maize farmers, he said, have not yet had to address the same level of resistance, in part because they did not adopt genetically modified crops as quickly as their counterparts in the soy industry. However, the study did find evidence that both maize and soybean farmers increased herbicide use during the last five years of the study, indicating that weed resistance is a growing problem for both groups.

    From 2006 to 2011, the percentage of hectares sprayed with only glyphosate shrunk from more than 70 percent to 41 percent for soybean farmers and from more than 40 percent to 19 percent for maize farmers. The decrease resulted from farmers having to resort to combining glyphosate herbicides with other chemicals as glyphosate-resistant weeds became more common.

    “Evidence suggests that weeds are becoming more resistant and farmers are having to use additional chemicals, and more of them,” Ciliberto said.

    Insects do not appear to have developed a similar resistance, in part because federal regulations require farmers to have a “safe haven” in their fields that is free of genetically modified crops. Insects and worms in those safe havens have no need to develop resistance, and because they interact and breed with insects in other parts of the field, they help prevent the development of resistant genes.

    Despite the decrease in insecticide use, continued growth in herbicide use poses a significant environmental problem as large doses of the chemicals can harm biodiversity and increase water and air pollution.

    Ciliberto and his colleagues measured the overall environmental impact of the changes in chemical use that have resulted from the adoption of genetically modified crops, using a measure called the environmental impact quotient, or EIQ, to account for chemicals’ impact on farmworkers, consumers and the environment. Comparing adopters to non-adopters, they found little change in the impact on farmworkers and consumers. However, the adoption of genetically modified soybeans correlated with a massive negative impact on the environment as increased herbicide use also increased contamination of local ecosystems.

    Further investigation of the environmental impact quotient (EIQ) finding is now being called for by independent scientists in the U.S. and Europe using the even more accurate Pesticide Risk Tool (PRiME).

    Overall, Ciliberto said he was surprised by the extent to which herbicide use had increased and concerned about the potential environmental impact.

    “I did not expect to see such a strong pattern,” he concluded.
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    Dr. Vandana Shiva: Monsanto's seeds of suicide

    Dr. Vandana Shiva Global Research
    Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:32 UTC

    "Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people."
    - Henry Kissinger
    Monsanto's talk of 'technology' tries to hide its real objectives of control over seed through genetic engineering
    "Monsanto is an agricultural company. ... We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. ... Producing more, Conserving more, Improving farmers lives."
    These are the promises Monsanto India's website makes, alongside pictures of smiling, prosperous farmers from the state of Maharashtra. This is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers' suicides in India arising from the company's growing control over cotton seed supply - 95 per cent of India's cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto.

    Seed is the first link in the food chain because seed is the source of life. When a corporation controls seed, it controls life, especially the life of farmers.

    Monsanto's concentrated control over the seed sector in India as well as across the world is very worrying. This is what connects farmers' suicides in India to Monsanto vs. Percy Schmeiser in Canada, to Monsanto vs. Bowman in the US, and to farmers in Brazil suing Monsanto for $2.2 billion for unfair collection of royalty.

    Through patents on seed, Monsanto has become the "Life Lord" of our planet, collecting rents for life's renewal from farmers, the original breeders.

    Patents on seed are illegitimate because putting a toxic gene into a plant cell is not "creating" or "inventing" a plant. These are seeds of deception - the deception that Monsanto is the creator of seeds and life; the deception that while Monsanto sues farmers and traps them in debt, it pretends to be working for farmers' welfare, and the deception that GMOs feed the world. GMOs are failing to control pests and weeds, and have instead led to the emergence of superpests and superweeds.

    Altered Genes, Twisted Truth
    The entry of Monsanto in the Indian seed sector was made possible with a 1988 Seed Policy imposed by the World Bank, requiring the Government of India to deregulate the seed sector. Five things changed with Monsanto's entry:
    First, Indian companies were locked into joint-ventures and licensing arrangements, and concentration over the seed sector increased.

    Second, seed which had been the farmers' common resource became the "intellectual property" of Monsanto, for which it started collecting royalties, thus raising the costs of seed.

    Third, open pollinated cotton seeds were displaced by hybrids, including GMO hybrids. A renewable resource became a non-renewable, patented commodity.

    Fourth, cotton which had earlier been grown as a mixture with food crops now had to be grown as a monoculture, with higher vulnerability to pests, disease, drought and crop failure.

    Fifth, Monsanto started to subvert India's regulatory processes and, in fact, started to use public resources to push its non-renewable hybrids and GMOs through so-called public-private partnerships (PPP).
    In 1995, Monsanto introduced its Bt technology in India through a joint-venture with the Indian company Mahyco. In 1997-98, Monsanto started open field trials of its GMO Bt cotton illegally and announced that it would be selling the seeds commercially the following year. India has rules for regulating GMOs since 1989, under the Environment Protection Act. It is mandatory to get approval from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee under the ministry of environment for GMO trials. The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology sued Monsanto in the Supreme Court of India and Monsanto could not start the commercial sales of its Bt cotton seeds until 2002.

    And, after the damning report of India's parliamentary committee on Bt crops in August 2012, the panel of technical experts appointed by the Supreme Court recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all GM food and termination of all ongoing trials of transgenic crops.

    But it had changed Indian agriculture already.

    Monsanto's seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of superprofits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides and agrarian distress which is driving the farmers' suicide epidemic in India. This systemic control has been intensified with Bt cotton. That is why most suicides are in the cotton belt.

    An internal advisory by the agricultural ministry of India in 2012 had this to say to the cotton-growing states in India:
    Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton. The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers.
    The highest acreage of Bt cotton is in Maharashtra and this is also where the highest farmer suicides are. Suicides increased after Bt cotton was introduced - Monsanto's royalty extraction, and the high costs of seed and chemicals have created a debt trap. According to Government of India data, nearly 75 per cent rural debt is due to purchase inputs. As Monsanto's profits grow, farmers' debt grows. It is in this systemic sense that Monsanto's seeds are seeds of suicide.

    The ultimate seed of suicide is Monsanto's patented technology to create sterile seeds. Called "terminator technology" by the media, sterile seed technology is a type of Gene Use Restriction Technology, GRUT, in which seed produced by a crop will not grow - crops will not produce viable offspring seeds or will produce viable seeds with specific genes switched off. The Convention on Biological Diversity has banned its use, otherwise Monsanto would be collecting even higher profits from seed.

    Monsanto's talk of "technology" tries to hide its real objectives of ownership and control over seed where genetic engineering is just a means to control seed and the food system through patents and intellectual property rights.
    As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals - and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science. They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that GMOs were safe. - Jane Goodall, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth
    A Monsanto representative admitted that they were "the patient's diagnostician, and physician all in one" in writing the patents on life-forms, from micro-organisms to plants, in the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Stopping farmers from saving seeds and exercising their seed sovereignty was the main objective. Monsanto is now extending its patents to conventionally bred seed, as in the case of broccoli and capsicum, or the low gluten wheat it had pirated from India - which we challenged as a biopiracy case in the European Patent office.

    That is why we have started Fibres of Freedom in the heart of Monsanto's Bt cotton/suicide belt in Vidharba. We have created community seed banks with indigenous seeds and helped farmers go organic. No GMO seeds, no debt, no suicides.

    The beauty of seed is that out of one you can get millions. The beauty of the pollinator is that it turns that one into millions. And that's an economy of abundance. That's an economy of sharing. To me that's the real economics of growth - because life is growing. The economics and technology of hybridization, of genetic modification, is a deliberate creation of scarcity.

    Genetic engineering has never been about saving the world, it's about controlling the world.

    Why GMOs are a death knell to biodiversity and farming



    About the author
    Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. She is also the founder of Navdanya.org, an organization dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity.


    Related:
    GMO's: Setting the record straight

    Food poisoning on a global scale

    Gunning for Vandana Shiva: The New Yorker, GMOs and chemical farming

    Economic growth obsession opposes life, justice and human dignity

    GM Seeds and the militarization of food - and everything else
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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    Where Do the 2020 Presidential Candidates Stand on GMOs?
    https://www.organicconsumers.org/blo...B+651+Saturday
    January 28, 2020
    Organic Consumers Association
    by Alexis Baden-Mayer

    "Editor’s note: This information was compiled by Citizens Regeneration Lobby (CRL), the 501(c)(4) sister organization of Organic Consumers Association. CRL can endorse candidates and engage in political advocacy that is out-of-bounds for 501(c)(3) organizations. We can’t share CRL’s endorsements with you here. If you’d like to receive that information from CRL via email, please join CRL here.

    About half of all American adults have one or more preventable, chronic, diet-related diseases.

    Whether it’s factory-farm foods from animals raised on GMO feed, or sugary foods and drinks made with GMO sweeteners or foods fried in GMO fats, nearly all the foods making Americans fat and sick contain genetically engineered ingredients. This is how genetic engineers are “feeding the world,” as they like to say.

    But what the genetic engineering industry is really interested in is how many billions of dollars they can make selling pesticides.

    Fact: Genetic engineering has been used almost exclusively as a means to sell pesticides, especially the carcinogenic glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide that Monsanto created its genetically engineered crops to withstand. Today, 99 percent of GMOs grown around the world are engineered to withstand massive applications of glyphosate, an herbicide classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

    There’s no reason our food should be produced from crops that are genetically engineered to be soaked in carcinogens.

    More than 14,000 certified organic farms and 3,900 producers finishing grassfed cattle in the U.S. today are proving that another food system is possible.

    And they’re doing it with virtually no federal assistance compared with the massive subsidies lavished on the producers of GMO crops and factory farm animal products.

    Through a Green New Deal, we could turn this situation around by supporting family farmers; by investing in regenerative organic farming and land use practices that sequester carbon; and by building a food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.

    We’ve investigated each of the 2020 Presidential candidates to learn where they stand on GMOs by looking into who is funding their campaigns, what their records are as elected officials and what the candidates have said in their platforms and public statements.

    We know where several of the Presidential candidates stand on GMOs because they were in the House or Senate in 2016. That was the year Congress removed labels from genetically engineered foods by passing a federal bill that took away states’ rights to label GMOs and instituted a federal “bioengineered disclosure” standard that has yet to result in any GMOs being labeled.

    We’ve combed through data compiled by FEC.gov and OpenSecrets.org to find out who’s taken campaign contributions from the biggest companies in the food system, including the four multinational corporations, Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta, BASF, and DowDuPont (now Corteva). These four companies control 75 percent of GMO plant breeding research, 60 percent of the commercial GMO seed market and 76 percent of pesticide sales globally.

    Here’s what we know about where each of the presidential candidates stand on GMOs. We’ve listed every candidate currently in the race, beginning with the incumbent and his Republic challengers, followed by the Democratic hopefuls, in alphabetical order.

    Our exhaustive research wasn’t able to uncover everything we’d like to know about every candidate. To learn how you can help get every presidential candidate on record, join Citizens Regeneration Lobby.

    Donald Trump took $1 million from DowDuPont, then reversed Obama’s plan to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to neurodevelopmental problems, reduced birth sizes and weights, lower I.Q.s, attention deficit and autism.

    As President, Trump also issued an executive order to exempt GMOs from federal regulations. GMOs aren’t safety tested, labeled or monitored for impacts on human health or the environment. But GMOs are currently regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service as potential plant pests when they are herbicide-tolerant crops, by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency when they are crops or organisms that produce pesticides and by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration as “new animal drugs” when they are genetically engineered animals.

    It’s not much, but these regulations have done two important things: 1) alerted the public to the existence of new GMOs; and 2) provided an opportunity for public comment before new GMOs enter our food system. Trump’s executive order threatens to wipe away our right to know if GMOs even exist! If that were to happen, companies like Monsanto could create new GMOs and release them into the environment and our food system without notifying anyone. The consequences could be disastrous and irreversible and it would be even more difficult than it is now to figure out what impact GMOs are having on our health.

    Joe Walsh, when he was a Congressman, counted among his top contributors McDonald’s, a company with a huge carbon footprint (29 percent from factory farmed beef) that makes its money from child obesity and animal cruelty.

    Bill Weld, former Governor of Massachusetts, between 2007 – 2011 worked as a registered lobbyist for international law firm McDermott, Will & Emery. He’s listed on reports for defense contractor Raytheon, CNX Gas Corporation, Sony Electronics and shoemaker New Balance. Weld is currently a member of lobbying firm ML Strategies. Weld is a corporate lobbyist, but there is no evidence that he has worked for Big Ag.

    Michael Bennet, as a Senator, has taken money from the political action committees of BASF, Bayer, DowDuPont, Syngenta and CropLife (the GMO/pesticide companies’ trade association). His voting record reflects these campaign contributions. He voted for the 2016 Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law, which took away states’ rights to label GMOs but has yet to result in any federally required labels on genetically engineered food.

    Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has taken campaign contributions from Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta, a Chinese-owned manufacturer of neonicotinoid pesticides blamed for the insect apocalypse hitting bees, butterflies and other pollinators. While in Congress, Biden never had the opportunity to vote on GMOs, but he made his views clear by refusing to cosponsor any of bills introduced by colleague Dennis Kucinich that would have required safety testing, labeling and contamination prevention for GMOs.

    Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, has not made his views on genetic engineering known. In 2011, while he was Mayor of New York City, his Department of Health’s report on city pesticide use revealed that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed-killer was the city’s most heavily used liquid herbicide, but Bloomberg made no effort to reduce its use. [New York City is currently considering a bill that would make all of its parks pesticide-free.] That said, Bloomberg is a well-known anti-obesity crusader who has taken on the soda industry. Nearly all sodas are made with high-fructose corn syrup made from GMO corn, though his campaigns have never mentioned this.

    Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign has taken campaign contributions from James Travis, Senior Director of International Government Affairs at Bayer, the company fighting thousands of cancer victims who claim Monsanto (now Bayer)’s Roundup weedkiller gave them non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

    John Delaney, as a Congressman, voted for the 2016 Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law, which took away states’ rights to label GMOs but has yet to result in any labels on genetically engineered food.

    Tulsi Gabbard, a Congresswoman from Hawaii where GMOs and related pesticides are field tested with disastrous consequences, has always been very vocal in her calls for common sense regulations of this industry, including labels on genetically engineered food.

    Amy Klobuchar, as a Senator, has taken money from the political action committees of BASF, Bayer, DowDuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta and CropLife (the GMO/pesticide companies’ trade association). Her voting record reflects these campaign contributions. She voted for the 2016 Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law, which took away states’ rights to label GMOs but has yet to result in any federally required labels on genetically engineered food.

    Deval Patrick has not made his views on genetic engineering known. He is a former governor of Massachusetts and a current executive at the investment firm Bain Capital. In his early career, he was a lawyer for the NAACP, but was later recruited to serve as general counsel for Texaco, a corporation he was monitoring for racial discrimination. He has also been corporate counsel to Coca-Cola, a company that has lobbied government regulators to shift the blame for obesity away from its GMO high-fructose-corn-syrup-sweetened beverages.

    Bernie Sanders, a Senator from Vermont, the first state to require labels on genetically engineered food, has been one of Congress’s top advocates for GMO labels, forcing a floor vote on states’ rights to label GMOs in 2013, and fighting until the very end to prevent passage of the 2016 Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law, which took away states’ rights to label GMOs but has yet to result in any federally required labels on genetically engineered food.

    Tom Steyer, a billionaire businessman, has not made his views on genetic engineering known. In 2018, his tweet celebrating the first Roundup-exposed cancer victim’s win against Bayer/Monsanto, was met with jeers raising the fact that his hedge fund Farallon Capital Management had $776 million invested in Monsanto.

    Elizabeth Warren, as a Senator, has flip-flopped on GMO labeling. She voted against the 2013 Sanders amendment for states’ rights to label GMOs. She then supported a Food and Drug Administration guidance on voluntary GMO labels. Finally, she voted against the 2016 Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law, which took away states’ rights to label GMOs but has yet to result in any federally required labels on genetically engineered food.

    Andrew Yang, an attorney and entrepreneur, has not made his views on genetic engineering known.

    Alexis Baden-Mayer is political director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). To keep up with OCA news and alerts, sign up for our newsletter."
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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    Think New GMO Food Labeling Law Will Help You Avoid GMOs? Think Again.
    01/21/22
    By Dave Dickey
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/d...-slXJWeJDhb6Ms

    "The new federal labeling law for foods containing genetically modified organisms is sure to create confusion and make it burdensome for consumers to know if the foods they eat contain genetically modified ingredients. Will a lawsuit be able to change that?
    Welcome to 2022 and the shiny new federal labeling rule that will require manufacturers to disclose when foods are bioengineered! Sort of …

    The new law essentially replaces a patchwork of state regulations regarding the labeling of genetically modified foods and food products. Unfortunately, the law is sure to create confusion and make it burdensome for some consumers to know if the foods they eat contain genetically modified ingredients.

    “Bioengineered” is the new term for genetically engineered (GE) ingredients and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Bioengineered plants or animals essentially have an inserted gene that comes from a laboratory. The idea is to make the host plant or animal more resistant to disease or pests or to increase nutritional value.Labels that declare “contains bioengineered food ingredients” mean at least one food ingredient includes DNA from a laboratory produced gene(s).

    So … it should be simple right? People who wish to avoid eating GMO and GE products should just say no to bioengineered labeled products on their grocery shelves.

    Except it ain’t that simple.

    First off, food manufacturers don’t necessarily have to put “contains bioengineered food ingredients” on the label. In fact many probably won’t.

    The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has decided an electronic QR code or a note to receive a text message will suffice. Small companies can stay on the right side of the law with either a website or phone number.

    But that’s not the worst of it for those who want to avoid GMOs.

    The USDA made “highly refined” ingredients exempt — things like high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil both of which are derived from — wait for it — GMO crops. And of course, apples, eggplants, papayas, pineapples, potatoes and salmon can contain GMOs.

    And if that isn’t troublesome enough, other GMO labels — notably the USDA Organic and Non-GMO Project Verified — will remain.

    And in case you are wondering, food service establishments and restaurants get a full pass on the new rules.

    Yeah.

    The debate of whether GMO foods are safe to eat has raged for decades. And even though the World Health Organization and American Medical Association concluded GMOs are safe, we should have empathy for those who prefer to avoid such foods.

    And obviously, that’s where the law fails. Transparency is far less than 100%.

    That’s in part the point of a lawsuit working its way through the federal courts filed by the Center for Food Safety (CFS). The CFS contends USDA in mandating labels with the word “bioengineered” and prohibiting use of GMO and GE labels will, at its root, confuse and make it difficult for consumers to make shopping decisions:

    “Despite that instruction and the overwhelming support from stakeholders to allow continued use of the far more well-known ‘GE’/ ‘GMO’ terms, in its final rule USDA instead excluded ‘GE’ and ‘GMO,’ prohibiting them from use in the on-package text or symbol labeling, only allowing use of the term bioengineered.

    “That decision was arbitrary and capricious, contrary to the Act’s plain language and the APA and failed to fulfill the Act’s fundamental purpose of informing consumers. It is antithetical to the Act’s purpose because it will confuse and mislead consumers.”

    CFS also contends the new rules will discriminate against more than 100 million Americans without smartphones or cell service.

    USDA must respond to the CFS claims by mid-February. After that, the United States Beet Sugar Association, the American Sugar Beet Growers Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation will weigh in on the debate.

    Then it’s back to the CFS counter-reply due in late March.

    It’s probably not likely the courts will rule that USDA will need to go back to the drawing board. But here’s hoping something can be tweaked to improve transparency for folk wishing to avoid GMOs."

    Originally published on Investigate Midwest.
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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    Dr. Seneff The Real Truth About Health
    from: stephanieseneff.net <seneff@csail.mit.edu
    4/12/22 at 3 p.m. EDT
    FREE 17 Day Live Online Conference
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    "I will be giving a free 1 1/2 hour lecture tomorrow, April 12, at 3 p.m. Eastern time during The Real Truth About Health Free 17 Day Live Online Conference that is taking place April 1 - 17, 2022, that will be followed by a half-hour Q&A period

    Title: Glyphosate, Deuterium, Prions and Neurodegeneration.

    I have been deeply researching into neurodegenerative diseases lately, and I believe I am making progress in understanding the role that deuterium plays in the disease process. Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) is a fascinating natural element, and organisms have learned how to manage it skillfully, but unfortunately via proteins that are highly sensitive to disruption by glyphosate.
    REGISTER FOR FREE NOW https://therealtruthtalksabouthealth...r_info?o=62037
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    ­I will also be participating in a panel discussion that should be stimulating and engaging:

    GMO's, Chemicals, and The Food System and How They Directly Affect Your Health

    Thursday, Apr 14, 2022, 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm EST
    I will be joined by Jeffrey M. Smith, Julian Cribb, Andre Leu, Ronnie Cummins, and Joanna Malaczynski-Moore.

    Hope to see you there!"
    Dr. Stephanie Seneff

    ­
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    https://stephanieseneff.net/
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    Default Re: GMO And Related Stuff

    ‘They Tried to Kill Me,’ Biologist Who Exposed Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller Tells RFK, Jr.
    04/12/22
    By Susan C. Olmstead
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/d...a-402216440cdd


    "In an interview on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini talked with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about the dangers of Roundup and GMO foods, and how Monsanto attacks scientists and deceives the public.
    Kennedy described the findings:

    “He [did] something nobody else dared to do, which is to take the exact same test [on rats] that Monsanto did for 90 days and do it for two years instead, which is the typical lifespan of a rat. And he found … 80% of the rats that consumed Roundup developed tumors compared to 30% in the control group.

    “Not only that, but the tumors in the rats were 130% larger.”

    Monsanto mounted a campaign to suppress and discredit Séralini’s research. The infamous Monsanto Papers revealed the company’s strategy.

    Kennedy was co-counsel on the legal team of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, which acquired the papers.

    When the Monsanto Papers — hundreds of thousands of documents — were unsealed, Kennedy said, “for the first time we saw Monsanto’s internal communications. We saw their strategy for destroying Professor Séralini’s reputation and getting his article retracted.”

    Monsanto employed former intelligence agents and other “hitmen” to destroy the reputations of scientists and to get retractions from the journals, Kennedy said.

    He added:

    “[Monsanto] had a number of strategies. Each one of the strategies was designed to make sure that Monsanto — that Roundup — was not harmed by the science.

    “One of the strategies was called ‘Let Nothing Go.’ Another one was called ‘Freedom to Operate’ or FTO. Another was called ‘Whack-a-Mole.’ Every time a scientist would pop his head over the barricades and publish a study that showed that Roundup was unsafe, they would whack him.”

    “Project Spruce” was another example, Kennedy said. “And all of them were implemented by these black ops spies, including former members of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.”

    Séralini, who said he is “just a researcher,” credited Kennedy with shedding “lots of light in our world.”

    Commenting on his research, Séralini said:

    “We discovered that [Monsanto] knew that they were [committing] crimes, that they were having toxic products with the Roundup the main herbicide of the world, [and with] GMOs that … were modified in order to contain this pesticide.”

    Many people don’t understand that some GMO foods have been modified to be tolerant to Roundup, Séralini said.

    Kennedy explained that originally, GMO companies claimed genetic modification would reduce the need for pesticides and produce better crops, telling the public, “You’re going to have bigger kernels of corn, larger strawberries, higher-quality food, more meat, more of everything … a cornucopia of the green revolution without chemicals.”

    But, he said, GMOs have been used primarily to make crops that are tolerant of pesticides:

    “You can saturate the landscapes from airplanes with this toxin. And the only thing on that landscape that will grow will be the Roundup-ready corn and Roundup-ready soy. Now they have Roundup-ready wheat and barley and sorghum.

    “And they’ve actually dramatically increased the use of pesticides and the exposures to our children, rather than reduced them.”

    “It’s really devastating to the environment,” said Séralini.

    French biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense have something in common: They’ve both devoted a portion of their careers to exposing the toxicity of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller.

    The two met for the first time on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast” where they discussed their work.

    Séralini is a molecular biologist and an expert on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pesticides. He is a professor at the University of Caen and president and chairman of the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN).

    Séralini also is the co-author — along with Jérôme Douzelet — of “The Whole Truth About the Monsanto Papers.”

    The book details how Monsanto attacked Séralini and deceived the public after he published groundbreaking findings about Roundup herbicide.

    Séralini’s findings were reported in a 2012 Food and Chemical Toxicology article, which the journal’s editor-in-chief, under pressure, retracted in 2013.

    GMO foods survive with large quantities of toxic pesticides in them, and those pesticides are passed to the animals and humans who eat them, he said.

    The consequences to public health include cancer risks — and harm to the immune system, the nervous system and the endocrine system.

    “The thing is, people don’t know that when they use pesticides, they eat petroleum waste,” said Séralini. “It is very important … that we shed a new light on this.”

    Kennedy and Séralini spoke of the tremendous political and legal might behind Monsanto and other big chemical companies.

    “Some people linked to [Monsanto] tried to kill me … at least first scientifically, and then physically,” said Séralini. “I have the chance to survive all this system. … Many people didn’t survive.” "

    Watch the podcast here:https://childrenshealthdefense.org/d...a-402216440cdd
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