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Thread: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Séralini's Revenge: World's most evil company Monsanto rocked by new court documents

    James Corbett The Corbett Report
    Sat, 05 Aug 2017 15:11 UTC


    The case against Monsanto is the gift that keeps on giving.

    Previously in these pages I discussed how the trial of Monsanto currently taking place in the California Northern District Court-technically known as "Multidistrict Litigation," with the formal title of "In re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 2741)"-is airing some of the agrichemical behemoth's dirtiest laundry. In my article "Monsatan On Trial For Roundup Cancer," I revealed how dozens of lawsuits filed against Monsanto for its role in causing the non-Hodgkin lymphoma of thousands of people across the US had been rolled into one dramatic court case, and how discovery from that case had yielded the remarkable deathbed testimony of EPA whistleblower Jess Rowland.

    Then new documents emerged from the case confirming what many had long suspected: Monsanto has an entire internal corporate program (appropriately entitled "Let Nothing Go") employing an army of internet trolls who spam the company's propaganda on every social media post, forum and online comment board where its products and practices are being discussed.

    Just this week, one of the law firms working on the trial released an equally explosive collection of "Monsanto's Secret Documents," proving another long-suspected claim against the world's most evil company: That it has in fact ghost written many of the key articles defending its products in the mainstream press-articles that were supposedly written by "independent" journalists. When the embarrassing details of the story came to light, including a suggested "draft" of an article written by Monsanto for Forbes "journalist" Henry Miller in 2015 that was exactly identical to the article that appeared under his name, Forbes pulled the piece from its website and ended Miller's employment. In a different leaked email exchange, former Monsanto consultant John Acquavella complained to a Monsanto executive, "I can't be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication," adding, "We call that ghost writing and it is unethical."

    But if all that weren't bad enough, the latest documents to emerge from the case also detail exactly how Monsanto attempted to smear the research of Gilles-Éric Séralini, the French scientist who published a groundbreaking study showing an increase in tumors among rats fed genetically modified corn and Monsanto's RoundUp herbicide.

    See details of Monsanto's campaigns against Séranlini's study/paper here (<---)
    Last edited by Hervé; 5th August 2017 at 15:35.
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Karma, looking at you monstanto.

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    More Dicamba devastation: 'Miracle' weed killer that was supposed to save farms is killing them instead

    Caitlin Dewey
    The Independent
    Wed, 30 Aug 2017 18:47 UTC




    Man-made disaster raises serious questions about the state of US agriculture © The Washington Post

    Controversial herbicide dicamba found to poison crops as well as pigweed chemical was intended to root out

    Clay Mayes slams on the brakes of his Chevy Silverado and jumps out with the engine running, yelling at a dogwood by the side of the dirt road as if it said something insulting.

    Its leaves curl downward and in on themselves like tiny, broken umbrellas. It's the telltale mark of inadvertent exposure to a controversial herbicide called dicamba.

    "This is crazy. Crazy!" shouts Mayes, a farm manager, gesticulating toward the shrivelled canopy off Highway 61. "I just think if this keeps going on..."

    "Everything'll be dead," says Brian Smith, his passenger.

    The damage here in northeast Arkansas and across the Midwest - sickly soybeans, trees and other crops - has become emblematic of a deepening crisis in American agriculture.

    Farmers are locked in an arms race between ever-stronger weeds and ever-stronger weed killers.

    The dicamba system, approved for use for the first time this spring, was supposed to break the cycle and guarantee weed control in soybeans and cotton. The herbicide - used in combination with a genetically modified dicamba-resistant soybean - promises better control of unwanted plants such as pigweed, which has become resistant to common weed killers.

    The problem, farmers and weed scientists say, is that dicamba has drifted from the fields where it was sprayed, damaging millions of acres of unprotected soybeans and other crops in what some are calling a man-made disaster. Critics contend that the herbicide was approved by federal officials without enough data, particularly on the critical question of whether it could drift off target.

    Government officials and manufacturers Monsanto and BASF deny the charge, saying the system had worked as Congress designed it.

    The backlash against dicamba has spurred lawsuits, state and federal investigations, and one argument that ended in a farmer's shooting death and related murder charges.

    "This should be a wake-up call," said David Mortensen, a weed scientist at Pennsylvania State University.

    Herbicide-resistant weeds are thought to cost US agriculture millions of dollars per year in lost crops.

    After the Environmental Protection Agency approved the updated formulation of the herbicide for use this spring and summer, farmers across the country planted more than 20 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans, according to Monsanto.

    But as dicamba use has increased, so too have reports that it "volatilises," or re-vaporises and travels to other fields. That harms nearby trees, such as the dogwood outside of Blytheville, as well as nonresistant soybeans, fruits and vegetables, and plants used as habitats by bees and other pollinators.

    According to one 2004 assessment, dicamba is 75 to 400 times more dangerous to off-target plants than the common weed killer glyphosate, even at very low doses. It is particularly toxic to soybeans - the very crop it was designed to protect - that haven't been modified for resistance.

    Kevin Bradley, a University of Missouri researcher, estimates that more than 3.1 million acres of soybeans have been damaged by dicamba in at least 16 states, including major producers such as Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. That figure is probably low, according to researchers, and it represents almost 4 percent of all US soybean acres.

    "It's really hard to get a handle on how widespread the damage is," said Bob Hartzler, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State. "But I've come to the conclusion that [dicamba] is not manageable."

    The dicamba crisis comes on top of lower-than-forecast soybean prices and 14 straight quarters of declining farm income. The pressures on farmers are intense.

    One Arkansas man is facing murder charges after he shot a farmer who had come to confront him about dicamba drift, according to law enforcement officials.

    Thirty minutes down the road, Arkansas farmer Wally Smith is unsure how much more he can take.

    Smith's farm employs five people - including Wally's son, Hughes, his nephew, Brian, and the farm manager, Mayes. None of the men are quite sure what else they'd do for work in this corner of Mississippi County.

    ​Dicamba has hit the Blytheville - pronounced "Bly-vul" - region hard. For miles in any direction out of town, the soybeans that stretch from the road to the distant tree line are curled and stunted. A nearby organic farm suspended its summer sales after finding dicamba contamination in its produce.

    At the Smiths' farm, several thousand acres of soybeans are growing too slowly because of dicamba, representing losses on a $2 million investment.

    "This is a fact," the elder Smith said. "If the yield goes down, we'll be out of business."

    The new formulations of dicamba were approved on the promise that they were less risky and volatile than earlier versions.

    Critics say that the approval process proceeded without adequate data and under enormous pressure from state agriculture departments, industry groups and farmers' associations. Those groups argued that farmers desperately needed the new herbicide to control glyphosate-resistant weeds, which can take over fields and deprive soybeans of sunlight and nutrients.

    Such weeds have grown stronger and more numerous over the past 20 years - a result of herbicide overuse. By spraying so much glyphosate, farmers inadvertently caused weeds to evolve resistant traits more quickly.

    The new dicamba formulations were supposed to attack these resistant weeds without floating to other fields.

    But during a July 29 call with EPA officials, a dozen state weed scientists expressed unanimous concern that dicamba is more volatile than manufacturers have indicated, according to several scientists on the call. Field tests by researchers at the Universities of Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas have since found that the new dicamba herbicides can volatilise and float to other fields as long as 72 hours after application.

    Regulators did not have access to much of this data. Although Monsanto and BASF submitted hundreds of studies to the EPA, only a handful of reports considered volatility in a real-world field setting, as opposed to a greenhouse or a lab, according to regulatory filings. Under EPA rules, manufacturers are responsible for funding and conducting the safety tests the agency uses to evaluate products.

    And although pesticide-makers often supply new products to university researchers to conduct field tests in varied environments, Monsanto acknowledged it did not allow that testing on its commercialised dicamba because it did not want to delay registration, and scientists said BASF limited it.

    Frustrated scientists say that allowed chemical companies to cherry-pick the data available to regulators.

    "Monsanto in particular did very little volatility field work," said Jason Norsworthy, an agronomy professor at the University of Arkansas who was denied access to test the volatility of Monsanto's product.

    The EPA and chemical manufacturers deny that there was anything amiss in the dicamba approval process.

    "The applicant for registration is required to submit the required data to support registration," the agency said in a statement. "Congress placed this obligation on the pesticide manufacturer rather than requiring others to develop and fund such data development."

    Manufacturers says that volatility is not to blame. In a statement, BASF spokeswoman Odessa Patricia Hines said the company brought its dicamba product to market "after years of research, farm trials and reviews by universities and regulatory authorities."

    Scott Partridge, Monsanto's vice president of global strategy, thinks some farmers have illegally sprayed older, more volatile dicamba formulations or used the herbicide with the wrong equipment.

    The company, which invested $1 billion in dicamba production plants last year, has deployed a fleet of agronomists and climate scientists to figure out what went wrong.

    "We're visiting every grower and every field," Partridge said. "If there are improvements that can be made to this product, we're going to do it."

    Regulators in the most-affected states are also taking action. In July, Arkansas banned spraying for the remainder of the season and raised the penalties on illegal applications.

    Missouri and Tennessee have tightened their rules on dicamba use, while nearly a dozen states have complained to the EPA.

    The agency signalled in early August that it might consider taking the new dicamba herbicides off the market, according to several scientists who spoke to regulators.

    The agency would not comment directly on its plans. "EPA is very concerned about the recent reports of crop damage related to the use of dicamba in Arkansas and elsewhere," an agency representative said.

    Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit alleges that dicamba manufacturers misrepresented the risk of their products. The Smiths are considering signing up. Monsanto says the suit is baseless.

    There are also early indications that dicamba may not work for long. Researchers have shown that pigweed can develop dicamba resistance within as few as about three years. Suspected instances of dicamba-resistant pigweed have been found in Tennessee and Arkansas.

    A spokeswoman for Monsanto said the company was "not aware of any confirmed instances of pigweed resistance" to dicamba.

    Some critics of chemical-intensive agriculture have begun to see the crisis as a parable - and a prediction - for the future of farming in the United States. Scott Faber, a vice president at the Environmental Working Group, says farmers have become "trapped on a chemical treadmill" driven by the biotech industry. Many farmers say they think they could not continue farming without new herbicide technology.

    "We're on a road to nowhere," said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "The next story is resistance to a third chemical, and then a fourth chemical - you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see where that will end.

    "The real issue here is that people are using ever-more complicated combinations of poisons on crops, with ever-more complex consequences."

    In Blytheville, at least, one consequence is increasingly obvious: It's a short, scraggly plant with cupped green leaves and a few empty pods hanging near its stem. At this time of year, this plant should have more pods and be eight inches taller, Mayes said.

    "This is what we're dealing with here," he said, before shaking his head and turning back to his truck. "We go to work every day wondering if next year we're still going to have a job."


    Related:
    Amid post-election fallout, EPA quietly approves Monsanto's volatile, drift-prone herbicide dicamba

    Pesticide drift: USDA says "Yes" to Dicamba -tolerant crops

    Monsanto to spend $1B to produce Dicamba, yet another toxic herbicide

    Monsanto's newest poison is drifting to neighboring fields killing more than 42K acres of crops

    Even more toxic chemicals set to enter the food supply
    "La réalité est un rêve que l'on fait atterrir" San Antonio AKA F. Dard

    Troll-hood motto: Never, ever, however, whatsoever, to anyone, a point concede.

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...t-a-love-story

    Quote In a normal year, Kevin Bradley, a professor of weed science at the University of Missouri, would have spent his summer testing new ways to control a troublesome little plant called water hemp.

    This has not been a normal year.

    "I don't even talk about weed management anymore," Bradley tells me, and he sounds disgusted. "Nobody calls me and ask me those questions. I barely have time to even work with my graduate students. Everything is about dicamba. Every single day."

    Dicamba, an old weedkiller that is being used in new ways, has thrust Bradley and a half-dozen other university weed scientists into the unfamiliar role of whistleblower, confronting what they believe are misleading and scientifically unfounded claims by one of the country's biggest seed and pesticide companies: Monsanto.

    "It's not comfortable. I'm like anybody else, I don't like [it when] people are unhappy with me," says Mike Owen, a weed specialist at Iowa State University. Then he chuckles. "But sometimes, like John Wayne said, a man's got to do what a man's got to do!"

    "Certainly, there's not a weed scientist in any of these states who would back down, who would change their story," says Aaron Hager, at the University of Illinois.

    The tensions between Monsanto and the nation's weed scientists actually began several years ago, when Monsanto first moved to make dicamba the centerpiece of a new weedkilling strategy. The company tweaked the genes in soybeans and cotton and created genetically modified varieties of those crops that can tolerate doses of dicamba. (Normally, dicamba kills those crops.) This allowed farmers to spray the weedkiller directly on their soybean or cotton plants, killing the weeds while their crops survived.

    It's an approach that Monsanto pioneered with crops that were genetically modified to tolerate glyphosate, or Roundup. After two decades of heavy exposure to glyphosate, however, devastating weeds like Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, developed resistance to it. So farmers are looking for new weedkilling tools.

    Dicamba, however, has a well-known defect. It's volatile; it tends to evaporate from the soil or vegetation where it has been sprayed, creating a cloud of plant-killing vapor that can spread in unpredictable directions. It happens more in hot weather, and Monsanto's new strategy inevitably would mean spraying dicamba in the heat of summer.

    Monsanto and two other chemical companies, BASF and DuPont, announced that they had solved this problem with new "low-volatility" formulations of dicamba that don't evaporate as easily. Yet the companies — especially Monsanto — made it difficult for university scientists to verify those claims with independent tests before the products were released commercially.

    "I wish we could have done more testing. We've been asking to do more testing for several years, but the product was not made available to us," says Bob Scott, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas. "These are proprietary products. Until they release those formulations for testing, we're not allowed to [test them]."

    To make matters worse, Monsanto started selling its new dicamba-tolerant soybeans in 2016, before the new low-volatility formulations of dicamba were even approved for sale. It tempted farmers to use older versions of dicamba on these crops, illegally, and some farmers couldn't resist that temptation. In Arkansas, there were widespread reports that dicamba was damaging neighboring fields that didn't have the benefit of Monsanto's new genes. In one case, a dispute between farmers led to a fatal shooting.

    That fall, at a meeting of weed scientists, Hager confronted Monsanto's representatives. According to Hager, he told the company that "you knowingly released these varieties in an area of the U.S. where you knew that glyphosate resistance [in weeds] was rampant. When you did that ... you knew what was going to happen."

    "I got a blank stare," Hager recalls.

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    The Bayer-Monsanto merger - more bad news for the planet

    Ellen Brown Truthdig.com
    Tue, 03 Apr 2018 14:14 UTC


    © Common Dreams

    Two new studies from Europe show that the number of birds in agricultural areas of France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that more than three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits and the aerators of the soil.

    The chief suspect in this mass extinction is the aggressive use of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly imidacloprid and clothianidin, both made by the Germany-based chemical giant Bayer. These pesticides, along with toxic glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup, have delivered a one-two punch to monarch butterflies, honeybees and birds. But rather than banning these toxic chemicals, on March 21 the EU approved the $66 billion merger of Bayer and Monsanto, the U.S. agribusiness giant that produces Roundup and the genetically modified (GMO) seeds that have reduced seed diversity globally. The merger will make the Bayer-Monsanto conglomerate the largest seed and pesticide company in the world, giving it enormous power to control farm practices, putting private profits over the public interest.

    As Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren noted in a speech in December at the Open Markets Institute, massive companies are merging into market-dominating entities that invest a share of their profits in lobbying and financing political campaigns, shaping the political system to their own ends. She called on the Trump administration to veto the Bayer-Monsanto merger, which is still under antitrust scrutiny and has yet to be approved in the U.S.

    A 2016 survey of Trump's voter base found that more than half disapproved of the Monsanto-Bayer merger, fearing it would result in higher food prices and higher costs for farmers. Before 1990, there were 600 or more small, independent seed businesses globally, many of them family-owned. By 2009, only about 100 survived, and seed prices had more than doubled. But reining in these powerful conglomerates is more than just a question of economics. It may be a question of the survival of life on this planet.

    While Bayer's neonicotinoid pesticides wipe out insects and birds, Monsanto's glyphosate has been linked to more than 40 human diseases, including cancer. Its seeds have been genetically modified to survive this toxic herbicide, but the plants absorb it into their tissues. In the humans who eat the plants, glyphosate disrupts the endocrine system and the balance of gut bacteria, damages DNA and is a driver of cancerous mutations. Researchers summarizing a 2014 study of glyphosates in the Journal of Organic Systems linked them to the huge increase in chronic diseases in the United States, with the percentage of GMO corn and soy planted in the U.S. showing highly significant correlations with hypertension, stroke, diabetes, obesity, lipoprotein metabolism disorder, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis C, end stage renal disease, acute kidney failure, cancers of the thyroid, liver, bladder, pancreas, kidney and myeloid leukaemia. But regulators have turned a blind eye, captured by corporate lobbyists and a political agenda that has more to do with power and control them protecting the health of the people.

    The Trump administration has already approved a merger between former rivals Dow and DuPont, and has signed off on the takeover of Swiss pesticide giant Syngenta by ChemChina. If Monsanto-Bayer gets approved as well, just three corporations will dominate the majority of the world's seed and pesticide markets, giving them enormous power to continue poisoning the planet at the expense of its inhabitants.


    The Shady History of Bayer and the Petrochemical Cartel
    To understand the magnitude of this threat, it is necessary to delve into some history. This is not the first time Monsanto and Bayer have joined forces. In both world wars, they made explosives and poisonous gases using shared technologies that they sold to both sides. After World War II, they united as MOBAY (MonsantoBayer) and supplied the ingredients for Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.

    In fact, corporate mergers and cartels have played a central role in Bayer's history. In 1904, it joined with German giants BASF and AGFA to form the first chemical cartel. After World War I, Germany's entire chemical industry merged to become I.G. Farben. By the beginning of World War II, I.G. Farben was the largest industrial corporation in Europe, the largest chemical company in the world, and part of the most gigantic and powerful cartel in all history.

    A cartel is a grouping of companies bound by agreements designed to restrict competition and keep prices high. The dark history of the I.G. Farben cartel was detailed in a 1974 book titled World Without Cancer, by G. Edward Griffin, who also wrote the best-selling Creature from Jekyll Island, on the shady history of the Federal Reserve. Griffin quoted from a book titled Treason's Peace, by Howard Ambruster, an American chemical engineer who had studied the close relations between the German chemical trust and certain American corporations. Ambruster warned:
    Farben is no mere industrial enterprise conducted by Germans for the extraction of profits at home and abroad. Rather, it is and must be recognized as a cabalistic organization which, through foreign subsidiaries and secret tie-ups, operates a far-flung and highly efficient espionage machine-the ultimate purpose being world conquest ... and a world superstate directed by Farben.
    The I.G. Farben cartel arose out of the international oil industry. Coal tar or crude oil is the source material for most commercial chemical products, including those used in drugs and explosives. I.G. Farben established cartel agreements with hundreds of American companies. They had little choice but to capitulate after the Rockefeller empire, represented by Standard Oil of New Jersey, did so, because they could not hope to compete with the Rockefeller-I.G. combination.

    The Rockefeller group's greatest influence was exerted through international finance and investment banking, putting them in control of a wide spectrum of industry. Their influence was particularly heavy in pharmaceuticals. The directors of the American I.G. Chemical Company included Paul Warburg, brother of a director of the parent company in Germany and a chief architect of the Federal Reserve system.

    The I.G. Farben cartel was technically disbanded at the Nuremberg trials following World War II, but in fact it merely split into three new companies-Bayer, Hoescht and BASF-which remain pharmaceutical giants today. To conceal its checkered history, Bayer orchestrated a merger with Monsanto in 1954, giving rise to the MOBAY Corp. In 1964, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against MOBAY and insisted that it be broken up, but the companies continued to work together unofficially.

    In Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (2007), William Engdahl states that global food control and depopulation became U.S. strategic policy under Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger, who was secretary of state in the 1970s. Along with oil geopolitics, these policies were to be the new "solution" to the threats to U.S. global power and continued U.S. access to cheap raw materials from the developing world. "Control oil and you control nations," Kissinger notoriously declared. "Control food and you control the people."

    Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity and establishing proprietary control with GMO seeds distributed by only a few transnational corporations, led by Monsanto; and by a massive, taxpayer-subsidized propaganda campaign in support of GMO seeds and neurotoxic pesticides. A de facto cartel of giant chemical, drug, oil, banking and insurance companies connected by interlocking directorates reaps the profits at both ends, by waging a very lucrative pharmaceutical assault on the diseases created by their toxic agricultural chemicals.

    Going Organic: The Russian Approach
    In the end, the Green Revolution engineered by Kissinger to control markets and ensure U.S. economic dominance may be our nemesis. While the U.S. struggles to maintain its hegemony by economic coercion and military force, Russia is winning the battle for the health of the people and the environment. Russian President Vladimir Putin has banned GMOs and has set out to make Russia the world's leading supplier of organic food.

    Russian families are showing what can be done with permaculture methods on simple garden plots. In 2011, 40 percent of Russia's food was grown on dachas (cottage gardens or allotments), predominantly organically. Dacha gardens produced more than 80 percent of the country's fruit and berries, more than 66 percent of the vegetables, almost 80 percent of the potatoes and nearly 50 percent of the nation's milk, much of it consumed raw. Russian author Vladimir Megre comments:
    Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world-and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody's got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year-so in the US, for example, gardeners' output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia's gardens-and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.
    In the U.S., only about 0.6 percent of the total agricultural area is devoted to organic farming. Most farmland is soaked in pesticides and herbicides. But the need for these toxic chemicals is a myth. In an October 2017 article in The Guardian, columnist George Monbiot cited studies showing that reducing the use of neonicotinoid pesticides actually increases production, because the pesticides harm or kill the pollinators on which crops depend. Rather than an international trade agreement that would enable giant transnational corporations to dictate to governments, he argues that we need a global treaty to regulate pesticides and require environmental impact assessments for farming. He writes:
    Farmers and governments have been comprehensively conned by the global pesticide industry. It has ensured its products should not be properly regulated or even, in real-world conditions, properly assessed. ... The profits of these companies depend on ecocide. Do we allow them to hold the world to ransom, or do we acknowledge that the survival of the living world is more important than returns to their shareholders?
    President Trump has boasted of winning awards for environmental protection. If he is sincere about championing the environment, he needs to block the merger of Bayer and Monsanto, two agribusiness giants bent on destroying the ecosystem for private profit.


    Related:
    DuPont & Dow chemical merger: Bad deal for people and the planet
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Breakthrough in explosive lawsuit against Monsanto

    by Jon Rappoport May 23 , 2018

    A San Francisco lawsuit against Monsanto and its weedkiller, Roundup, is moving forward. And it’s just received a new green light from the judge in the case.

    Monsanto’s lawyers are bracing for a deep level of attack, which they were hoping to avoid. The judge has ruled the jury can hear testimony on this issue: Monsanto suppressed evidence that Roundup causes cancer.

    Reporter Carey Gillam has the story (The Guardian, 5/22):
    “At the age of 46, DeWayne Johnson is not ready to die. But with cancer spread through most of his body, doctors say he probably has just months to live. Now Johnson, a husband and father of three in California, hopes to survive long enough to make Monsanto take the blame for his fate.”
    “On 18 June, Johnson will become the first person to take the global seed and chemical company to trial on allegations that it has spent decades hiding the cancer-causing dangers of its popular Roundup herbicide products – and his case has just received a major boost.”
    “Last week Judge Curtis Karnow issued an order clearing the way for jurors to consider not just scientific evidence related to what caused Johnson’s cancer, but allegations that Monsanto suppressed evidence of the risks of its weed killing products. Karnow ruled that the trial will proceed and a jury would be allowed to consider possible punitive damages.”
    “’The internal correspondence noted by Johnson could support a jury finding that Monsanto has long been aware of the risk that its glyphosate-based herbicides are carcinogenic … but has continuously sought to influence the scientific literature to prevent its internal concerns from reaching the public sphere and to bolster its defenses in products liability actions’, [Judge] Karnow wrote.” [Yes, the Judge in the case wrote that statement.]
    “Johnson’s case, filed in San Francisco county superior court in California, is at the forefront of a legal fight against Monsanto. Some 4,000 plaintiffs have sued Monsanto alleging exposure to Roundup caused them, or their loved ones, to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Another case is scheduled for trial in October, in Monsanto’s home town of St Louis, Missouri.”
    “How the Johnson lawsuit plays out could be a bellwether for how other plaintiffs proceed. If Johnson prevails, there could be many more years of costly litigation and hefty damage claims. If Monsanto successfully turns back the challenge, it could derail other cases and lift pressure on the firm.”
    “According to the court record, Johnson had a job as a groundskeeper for the Benicia unified school district where he applied numerous treatments of Monsanto’s herbicides to school properties from 2012 until at least late 2015. He was healthy and active before he got the cancer diagnosis in August 2014. In a January deposition, Johnson’s treating physician testified that more than 80% of his body was covered by lesions, and that he probably had but a few months to live.”
    How will Monsanto proceed? First, they’ll argue that Johnson’s cancer could have been caused by other factors. They’ll throw the kitchen sink at the jury. It could have been genetics. It could have been lifestyle. It could have been causes that are still unknown to researchers. It could have been starlight from a galaxy far, far away. Monsanto’s lawyers will try to bury the jury in reams of supposition.

    Second, they’ll show the jury an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) finding that Roundup does not cause cancer. Like the FDA, the EPA has sided with major corporations in efforts to protect them. Monsanto will claim: “The federal government has asserted Roundup is safe, and that’s the end of our responsibility. The federal government is the final arbiter.” Which is to say: the truth isn’t the final arbiter.

    Third, Monsanto will execute a series of acrobatic moves to prove they never suppressed evidence that Roundup causes cancer. They were simply “considering all relevant safety issues.” They were “posing various scenarios.” Their internal memos were “temporary work product” on the way to making a final judgment about Roundup’s safety. They were raising valid concerns about flawed studies that claimed Roundup was dangerous.

    If all else fails, Monsanto might try to settle with Johnson—and then claim the $$ payout was simply a way to show compassion for his unfortunate condition—and move on—continuing to offer the public a fine and safe product (Roundup). No guilt admitted.

    In the extreme—and I need to raise this question—might Monsanto, behind the scenes, secretly and illegally offer Johnson’s lawyer and his client a very large sum to present a weak case in court and let Monsanto win the case?

    You decide.

    If Monsanto has intentionally hidden the dire effects of Roundup for decades, while people have gotten sick and died, what wouldn’t they do?

    Among the myriad scandals and crimes of Monsanto, here is one that sheds light on the mindset of the company. Axisoflogic.com reports (3/22/12):
    “In 2001, 3,600 inhabitants of the city of Anniston, Alabama, attacked Monsanto for PCB [a chlorine chemical] contamination. According to a report, declassified by the U.S. Agency of Environmental Protection (EPA), Monsanto for almost forty years dumped thousands of tons of contaminated waste in a stream and an open garbage dump in the heart of a black neighborhood in the city.”
    “The way The Washington Post reported the story is instructive: ‘Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as ‘CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy’ — show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew. In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one.”
    “Monsanto was finally convicted in 2002 of having polluted ‘the territory of Anniston and the blood of its people with the PCB’. The firm was ordered to pay $ 700 million in damages and to guarantee the cleaning-up of the city. No legal action was brought against the company officials.”
    "La réalité est un rêve que l'on fait atterrir" San Antonio AKA F. Dard

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Monsanto invests over $100 million to change the DNA of every plant we use for food
    May 24, 2018
    https://www.naturalhealth365.com/mon...news-2571.html
    Quote Monsanto, ‘the most hated corporation in America,’ plans to take the science of genetic manipulation to a whole new level. According to a March 27 article in Business Insider, the agrichemical giant has joined forces with Pairwise Plants – a California start-up company helmed by a pair of Harvard scientists – and plans to invest a whopping $100 million in a form of gene-editing technology.

    While the new technology, known as CRISPR, is being hailed by some as a way to correct genetic diseases, many natural health advocates question its safety – and whether our food is an appropriate target for gene-editing.

    Three days after the collaboration was announced, a published study showing that CRISPR induced unexpected mutations in mice was retracted. The timing is highly suspicious, to say the least – especially in light of Monsanto’s long and disgraceful history of suppressing damaging research.

    Monsanto: CRISPR-made produce to hit grocery store shelves within 10 years
    The gene-editing tool CRISPR (an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) allows scientists to manipulate DNA to produce traits such as flavor, longer shelf life, convenient sizing or tolerance to drought and disease.

    In other words, unlike traditional GMO methods – which add genes from another organism – gene-editing changes (or deletes) existing genes.

    Monsanto plans to “gene-edit” corn, soy, wheat, cotton and canola – major crops used in an extensive variety of foods. (Of course, they will then have exclusive rights to the “edited” crops).

    The company’s stated goal is to be the first to get CRISPR-made produce into the U.S. marketplace – and to do so within the next 5 to 10 years.

    And, they are pulling out all the stops in pursuit of this goal.

    Not only has Monsanto invested $100 million in Pairwise, but they are providing leadership as well. The collaboration between the two companies is so cozy that Tom Adams – the head of Monsanto’s biotechnology department – is slated to lead Pairwise as Chief Executive Officer.

    Unpredicted mutations appear in study – as safeguards fail
    Natural health experts and GMO critics – including the non-profit organization GM Watch – warn that CRISPR could cause unpredictable mutations.

    Their suspicions appear to have been confirmed by an explosive study published last May in Nature Methods, in which CRISPR caused hundreds of unintended, “off-target” mutations in mice.

    The mice had originally undergone CRISPR gene editing to correct a genetic defect. When researchers sequenced their genomes – their entire collection of genes – they found that two of the mice had sustained more than 1,500 mutations involving the nucleotide (a small block of DNA).

    CRISPR technology is believed to be so precise and predictable that the USDA has already given the “green light” to CRISPR-produced foods.

    Yet, computer algorithms used by scientists to screen for possible unintended mutations completely failed to predict them. In addition, the mutations were “off-target,” meaning they didn’t occur in the genes that had been edited in the first place.

    Leading authority on genetic modification had been expecting these results
    Commenting on the study, Dr. Michael Antoniou – a molecular geneticist and authority on genetic modification – called the results “unsurprising.” Chillingly, he remarked that there “wasn’t a question” of unintended mutations appearing. “The only question,” remarked Dr. Antoniou, “is how many.”

    These mutations, of course, could have unintended effects. For example, said Dr. Antoniou, the disruption of an enzyme’s function could lead to unpredictable biochemical reactions.

    Dr. Antoniou maintains that the entire genome sequences of gene-edited organisms should be submitted to biosafety authorities – and that long-term toxicity studies should also be performed.

    GM Watch agrees, stating that new genome editing should be at least as strictly regulated as the original genetic modification technique.

    But, the story doesn’t end there.

    Scientific study retracted in the wake of biotech corporate announcement
    Three days after the announcement of Monsanto’s collaboration with Pairwise, the study was retracted from online versions of Nature Methods. A month later, on April 27, 2018, it was retracted from the printed journal.

    Nature Method’s editors explained that “multiple groups” had questioned the researchers’ interpretation that the nucleotide changes were due to CRISPR treatment.

    And, without more analysis of the rodents’ genetic background, no one could claim certainty. Ultimately, the editors ruled that the changes discovered by the researchers were actually due to “normal genetic variation.”

    Undeterred, the study’s authors are currently carrying out follow-up studies using whole genome sequencing.

    Although the study, “Unexpected Mutations after CRISPR-Cas 9 editing in vivo,” has been retracted, you can still view it here.

    Are we seeing a kinder, gentler Monsanto? Probably not!
    Monsanto is currently using gene editing in order to develop “enhanced premium vegetables,” including “crunchier” lettuce, “sweeter” cantaloupes, and a version of broccoli that is touted as containing more antioxidant, cancer-fighting phytochemicals such as glucoraphanin.

    And the company claims it is using old-fashioned crossbreeding to do it.

    The twist is, scientists can now examine the offspring’s genome for known markers for desirable traits – then grow plants with those markers. And, they can now scan for genetic variations in the seeds, without waiting for an entire plant to grow.

    But are these new fruits and vegetables as healthy as their natural, un-edited counterparts? Among other issues, critics say that many of the products are crossbred for increased sweetness – and as a result, contain more sugar.

    Unbelievably, there is no law mandating that Monsanto account for potential long-term effects.

    Dr. Robert Lustig, pediatric endocrinologist and the president of the Institute for Responsible Nutrition, scoffed at the idea of a more ecologically responsible Monsanto. “The only result they (Monsanto) care about is profit,” Dr. Lustig remarked.

    (Remember, this is the same Monsanto that has sued farmers for regrowing licensed seeds, created a bumper crop of Roundup-resistant superweeds, and – lest we forget – developed Agent Orange. All while maintaining a tradition of blatant lies, deceit and scientific fraud).

    “Gene editing” may sound less sinister than “genetic modification.” But, for many, it still adds up to “Frankenfood.”

    Sources for this article include:

    GMWatch.org
    https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/late...or-food-safety
    Nature.com
    https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.4293
    BusinessInsider.com
    http://www.businessinsider.com/monsa...produce-2018-3
    Wired.com
    https://www.wired.com/2014/01/new-monsanto-vegetables/
    Cen.ACS.org
    https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i13/...elop-base.html
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Thanks all for the heads up and updates on continued findings!

    What if normal lifestyles cause this ecocide-driven nightmare? What if earth is constantly ruined, little by little? While the population tacitly accepts and blindly-renews the deceitful-matrix. The god cop, bad cop globalism perpetuates hopeless-hope, as a default.

    What if bad dreams fade away, only by a final detachment, to ordinary ways and means? What if we needlessly struggle with consumerist-addictions, like that morning coffee smell, or any marketed-ploy? Knowing full well these never arrest the hell-bent ecocide of the deeper corporate state?

    What if the addiction to ecocide is that trick of human imprisonment? Could this earth-life, be more than a persistent mirage? In this game which we accepted to play? Felt as an energetic, hypnotic simulation? Is the suffering just in the movie plot and not in time-trapped beholder, (us)?

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    The jury just found for groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson in this case, fining Monsanto $289 million in damages, as reported on this new thread: Monsanto was Just Fined $289 Million by San Francisco Jury for Failing to Warn of Known Cancer Risk.
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Dangerous grains: Monsanto's toxic glyphosate found in 43 out of 45 popular children's cereals

    RT
    Thu, 16 Aug 2018 11:55 UTC


    A farmer sprays crops with glyphosate-based herbicide © Jean-Francois Monier / AFP

    A hearty bowl of oatmeal is a healthy way to start your day, but according to a new study, that bowl of oatmeal can contain dangerous levels of glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical linked to cancer.

    The study, carried out by the non-profit Environmental Working Group, found that 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals tested in three locations in the US contained traces of glyphosate. 31 of these contained dangerously high levels of the chemical.

    Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, a weedkiller manufactured by Monsanto. Roundup is the most popular weedkiller in the US, and last week a court in California ordered the company to pay $39 million in compensation and $250 million in punitive damages to a school groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after years of using Roundup at work.

    The World Health Organization's cancer research agency classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans" in 2015. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) labeled glyphosate a carcinogen in 1985, but reversed its position in 1991. In 2017, California listed glyphosate in its Proposition 65 registry of chemicals known to cause cancer.

    The cereals tested weren't all lurid-colored Lucky Charms or sugar-crusted Frosties, but oat-based 'healthy' choices. The high levels of glyphosate came from the oats themselves.

    The highest levels were found in Quaker Old Fashioned Oats - 1,000 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate. The EWG calculated levels above 160 ppb as unsafe for children. Giant Instant Oatmeal contained 760 ppb, and three samples of Cheerios contained concentrations of between 470 and 530 ppb.

    250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed on American crops every year, but the highest concentrations of the chemical are found in non-GMO wheat, barley, oats, and beans. Farmers spray these crops with glyphosate right before harvest time, as they kill the crop and dry it out, making it ready for harvest quicker.

    All oats are not equal though. The EWG also tested 16 cereals made with organically-grown oats. While five of these contained glyphosate, none were above the group's health benchmark of 160 ppb. While organic foods should by definition be free of chemicals like glyphosate, these chemicals can often drift onto these crops from nearby fields of conventionally-grown crops, or at factories that handle both kinds of crop.

    "Glyphosate does not belong in cereal," said the EWG. The organization called on Americans to "urge the EPA to restrict pre-harvest applications of glyphosate and tell companies to identify and use sources of glyphosate-free oats."

    Meanwhile, despite several contradictory studies and a multi-million dollar payout, Monsanto's parent company, Bayer, said last week that "glyphosate is safe for use and does not cause cancer when used according to the label."
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Quote But as dicamba use has increased, so too have reports that it "volatilises," or re-vaporises and travels to other fields. That harms nearby trees, such as the dogwood outside of Blytheville, as well as nonresistant soybeans, fruits and vegetables, and plants used as habitats by bees and other pollinators.
    The idea that Dicamba re-vaporises and then drifts is really terrifying. The question is how many times can it revaporize. When an organic farm has to stop selling because they have detected Dicamba in their crop it makes me wonder. I have to admit that I didn't know that Monsanto also birthed it into the world along with glyphosates. Now, Bayer is planning to change their name as though they can walk away from their much earned reputation.
    Quote Russian President Vladimir Putin has banned GMOs and has set out to make Russia the world's leading supplier of organic food.

    Russian families are showing what can be done with permaculture methods on simple garden plots. In 2011, 40 percent of Russia's food was grown on dachas (cottage gardens or allotments), predominantly organically. Dacha gardens produced more than 80 percent of the country's fruit and berries, more than 66 percent of the vegetables, almost 80 percent of the potatoes and nearly 50 percent of the nation's milk, much of it consumed raw. Russian author Vladimir Megre comments:

    Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world-and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody's got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year-so in the US, for example, gardeners' output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia's gardens-and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.

    On another note the trend in Russia is really encouraging. We, in the US have much to learn from them. Too bad we devote so much effort into making them the enemy of the decade(S).

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Quote Posted by Hervé (here)
    the highest concentrations of the chemical [glyphosate] are found in non-GMO wheat, barley, oats, and beans.
    I quoted this just so that I could show it in bigger font.

    "non-GMO" doesn't necessarily mean "healthier" ... non-GMO food can have as much, or even more, glyphosate, as measured in this study.
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    Quote Posted by Hervé (here)
    the highest concentrations of the chemical [glyphosate] are found in non-GMO wheat, barley, oats, and beans.
    I quoted this just so that I could show it in bigger font.

    "non-GMO" doesn't necessarily mean "healthier" ... non-GMO food can have as much, or even more, glyphosate, as measured in this study.
    Geez. I frequently eat oatmeal for breakfast thinking "it's the right thing to do..." (Thank you Wilford Brimley.) Apparently not.

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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Quote Posted by Hervé (here)
    Dangerous grains: Monsanto's toxic glyphosate found in 43 out of 45 popular children's cereals

    RT
    Thu, 16 Aug 2018 11:55 UTC


    A farmer sprays crops with glyphosate-based herbicide © Jean-Francois Monier / AFP

    A hearty bowl of oatmeal is a healthy way to start your day, but according to a new study, that bowl of oatmeal can contain dangerous levels of glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical linked to cancer.

    The study, carried out by the non-profit Environmental Working Group, found that 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals tested in three locations in the US contained traces of glyphosate. 31 of these contained dangerously high levels of the chemical.
    Chasing down the links one level, here's the Environmental Working Group (EWG) article reporting this study: Breakfast With a Dose of Roundup?.

    You can see the chart of 16 "Organic" cereals and 45 conventional (not labeled "Organic") cereals that they tested. Some 31 of the conventional and 0 of the Organic cereals had glyphosate levels above the EWG's "Health Benchmark" of 160 ppb (parts per billion). All but 2 of the conventional and even 5 of the Organic cereals had at least some glyphosate.

    The glyphosate in cereals with lesser amounts of it, including 5 of the 16 Organic cereals might have been blown onto the crop from nearby fields that were being treated by glyphosate, or might have been cross-contamination at processing facilities that handle both Organic and conventional cereals, or might have been in surface water that drained from contaminated fields.

    Stephanie Seneff, a Senior Research Scientist at MIT, has an extensive and powerful body of work explaining the dangers and mechanisms of glyphosate.

    I just now did (as I've done in years past) a Google search for the three words "Stephanie Seneff glyphosate" and she's been up to some new results in the last year, including a major breakthrough in treating autism, using chlorine dioxide (aka Jim Humble's MMS), which de-activates glyphosate in the gut. I'll have to start a new thread on that, and link to that thread from the most recently active threads on glyphosate, MMS and autism.

    Thank-you, Hervé, for dropping the bread crumb that led down this trail!
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Quote Posted by Satori (here)
    Geez. I frequently eat oatmeal for breakfast thinking "it's the right thing to do..." (Thank you Wilford Brimley.) Apparently not.
    Organic cereals are ok, or, as in my latest post just above, Stephanie Seneff is bringing out remedies, such as chlorine dioxide (CD, aka Jim Humble's MMS) that can help neutralize glyphosate in the gut.
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Quote Posted by Satori (here)
    Geez. I frequently eat oatmeal for breakfast thinking "it's the right thing to do..." (Thank you Wilford Brimley.) Apparently not.
    Quote Posted by Paul (here)
    Organic cereals are ok, or, as in my latest post just above, Stephanie Seneff is bringing out remedies, such as chlorine dioxide (CD, aka Jim Humble's MMS) that can help neutralize glyphosate in the gut.
    Here's Jim Humble site where he suggests two reliable suppliers and how to test to see if your product is still usable.
    Last edited by RunningDeer; 17th August 2018 at 18:33.

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    Monsanto cancer ruling sparks backlash around the globe

    Lorraine Chow EcoWatch
    Tue, 14 Aug 2018 22:09 UTC


    Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson leaves the courtroom after hearing the verdict to his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco on Aug. 10. © JOSH EDELSON / AFP / Getty Images

    Glyphosate, the world's most popular herbicide, is at the center of international scrutiny after a San Francisco court on Friday decided in favor of a California school groundskeeper with terminal cancer.

    The jury ruled that the plaintiff, Dewayne "Lee" Johnson, developed cancer from repeated exposure to Roundup, Monsanto's widely used glyphosate-based weedkiller, and ordered the company to pay $289 million in damages.

    The landmark jury ruling, which could open the door for roughly 4,000 similar U.S. lawsuits against Monsanto, sparked outcry around the world.

    Europe
    Germany's Bayer, which purchased Monsanto this year for $63 billion, also purchased a potential mountain of legal costs. Shareholders are certainly spooked. Bayer's stock tumbled as much as 14 percent on Monday, losing about 12 billion euros ($14 billion) in market value, Reuters reported.

    Bayer defended the safety of glyphosate and said it would appeal the verdict. "The jury's verdict is at odds with the weight of scientific evidence, decades of real world experience and the conclusions of regulators around the world that all confirm glyphosate is safe and does not cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma," the company said in a statement to Reuters.

    Glyphosate, the most-used herbicide in the European Union, has been the subject of fierce debate in Europe for years. Last year, the European Commission extended its license for five years, but the ruling in San Francisco has reinvigorated calls for a ban.
    "We must fight the invasion of this substance in our market, a threat that exists due to monstrous commercial agreements signed only in the name of profit," Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Facebook over the weekend.
    France's Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot described the verdict as the "beginning of a war" against glyphosate in Europe.
    "If we wait, such poisons will not be prevented from doing their damage and the victims will be excessively numerous," he said to BFM radio.
    Italy and France are moving towards a phase-out of the chemical. Germany aims to end use of glyphosate in this legislative period, which ends in three years, Reuters reported. In April, German Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner announced she was drafting rules to stop use of glyphosate in the country's home gardens, parks and sports facilities.

    India
    Activists told Times of India on Monday that Friday's verdict in California should prompt a nationwide ban.
    "Our organization has already filed a petition with the ministry of agriculture with thousands of signatures seeking the ban on glyphosate. However the government has not taken any action so far," Kathiva Kuruganti of Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture told the publication.
    Glyphosate is widely used on herbicide-tolerant cotton in India. In May, India's Supreme Court refused to stay the Delhi High Court's ruling that Monsanto cannot claim patents for Bollgard and Bollgard II, its genetically modified cotton seeds, in the country. Monsanto first introduced its GM-technology in India in 1995. Today, more than 90 percent of the country's cotton crop is genetically modified.

    Australia
    On the heels of the ruling in California, Greenpeace is urging the Australian government to restrict sales of Monsanto's weedkillers, which is sold in shops across the country.
    "Use of this dangerous product should be severely restricted," Jamie Hanson, Greenpeace's head of campaigns, told Guardian Australia.

    "Roundup is widely available for sale in Australia ... potentially exposing millions of people to its harmful effects. This case is only the first of hundreds that have been filed in the U.S. claiming Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma. We have no idea how far this will spread and how many more are to come." Hanson added.
    Shares of Australia's Nufarm, which contains glyphosate, fell 17 percent Monday after the cancer finding in California, Reuters reported.
    "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and regulatory authorities around the world, including Australia, support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer," spokeswoman for Monsanto in Australia told Guardian Australia.
    "La réalité est un rêve que l'on fait atterrir" San Antonio AKA F. Dard

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    UK Avalon Member avid's Avatar
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    I explained the dangers of this environmental toxin to our MP, why isn’t it banned here? Got a two page platitudinous letter agreeing but multiple waffling about corporations, lobbying, literally being blackmailed by these poisoners totally sidetracked.
    She is aware, just like she is aware of this enclave of west Cumbria being poisoned against our will by fluoridation. Now folk are being made very ill due to newly introduced borehole water, as our local clean water supplies are being ‘sequestered’ by ‘re-wilding’ projects (in the guise of burying nuclear waste under Ennerdale) and the need for clean ‘run-off’ for the nuclear industry. Are we ‘guinea-pigs’ in this neck of the woods?
    Sorry, although digressing, I fear it’s all inter-linked.
    The love you withhold is the pain that you carry
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    RESEARCHERS FIND ROUNDUP RESPONSIBLE FOR HARMFUL ALGAE BLOOMS IN GREAT LAKES
    http://undergroundreporter.org/round...-algae-blooms/
    Toxic algae blooms are showing up more and more in our lakes, rivers and streams. They are so toxic, it's not even safe to swim in the water.
    Some years ago, Drunvalo Melchizadek claimed to have found a way to easily clean up large bodies of water. I remember seeing a video demonstration, where he had a big glass container of some very dirty water taken from one of the Great Lakes, I think. He poured a liquid into it, and in minutes the dirty water became crystal clear. I don't know if anything ever came of that.
    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: Monsanto And Its Lethally Toxic Trails

    Poison Papers reveal: Monsanto knew PCBs were dangerous and kept profiting for decades

    Samantha Wohlfeil inlander.com
    Thu, 20 Sep 2018 13:05 UTC


    The city continues to deal with a legacy of PCB contamination in the Spokane River. © James Nisbet

    Spokane is now suing, and the 'Poison Papers' show why
    It's one thing to hear rumors that major chemical companies knew their products were harming people for decades. It's another to see physical proof, in the form of internal meeting minutes, questionable studies, and other documents from the 1930s to 1970s that all show companies strategically continued to sell chemicals despite clear evidence they could hurt animals, people and the environment.

    That's exactly why investigative journalist Peter von Stackelberg and a small but dedicated team worked to digitize and post more than 100,000 pages of documents dubbed the "Poison Papers" online last year, so everyone could see for themselves.

    The papers show wide-ranging issues not only with companies, but more importantly with the regulatory agencies meant to oversee the industry, von Stackelberg explains.

    "As I got deeper and deeper into it, I couldn't continue to ignore the fact that there was something seriously wrong with the industry and the regulatory system," says von Stackelberg, who first started reporting on the chemical industry decades ago.

    The documents, including private corporate minutes, were largely obtained by Oregon woman Carol Van Strum and others through legal battles and public records requests starting back in the 1970s.

    Among many other issues, some documents show that chemical manufacturer Monsanto knew a family of chemicals known as PCBs were harmful, persistent contaminants back in the '50s, '60s and earlier, yet continued to prioritize their sale for years.

    Those same explosive revelations are part of the basis for a lawsuit the city of Spokane filed against Monsanto, as the city continues to deal with a legacy of PCB contamination in the Spokane River. Washington state has also filed a similar suit.

    Von Stackelberg, now a college lecturer and futurist, will speak about the damning evidence contained in the documents during a free event at Gonzaga on Thursday, Sept. 27, hosted by the university's Environmental Law and Land Use Clinic.

    The event, "Monsanto, PCBs, and the Spokane River," will start at 6 pm in the Barbieri Courtroom, 721 N. Cincinnati St., and will focus on contamination in Spokane, the city's lawsuit, and offer a look at new technological developments and how they might need to be regulated into the future.

    'Jaw Dropping'
    In about 1980, when von Stackelberg was a young reporter at a daily paper in Regina, Saskatchewan, he heard rumors that the provincial government might be looking to ban more than 100 chemicals commonly used in agriculture.

    As a political reporter who also covered the ag industry, he knew that would be a huge deal, so he started digging.

    He learned the Canadian government was actually trying to learn about a long list of chemicals that had been safety tested at Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) in the United States, because the lab's practices had been questioned. Then, he obtained the list.

    "The list of chemicals was actually jaw dropping in terms of the ones where there were serious questions about the safety studies," von Stackelberg says.

    Over the course of about nine months, he reported about questionable pesticides, drugs, food additives such as artificial sweeteners and more. It appeared there were issues at dozens of labs, and that chemical companies had known about concerns around their products for years, von Stackelberg says.

    Eventually, multiple criminal charges came against those who ran IBT.

    But while there was some initial publicity around the chemical industry's alleged misdeeds, the stories eventually dwindled. The other labs and chemical companies weren't taken to task for their roles.

    "The whole thing sort of faded away and 40 years later, we're still dealing with the pollution, the corruption, the fraud and so on," von Stackelberg says. "I call IBT the original sin of the EPA regulatory system. It's never been something I would say can be trusted."

    While he went into the story not having a position one way or the other, von Stackelberg says it was hard not to lose faith in government agencies that were supposed to be regulatory checks on the industry.

    "You've got to be an absolute idiot after unearthing that information not to come to the position that there's something wrong with the regulation system when dozens of chemical companies, and more than 50 labs have a pattern of incompetence, fraud and criminal conduct in some cases," he says.

    Now, von Stackelberg and the Poison Papers team, which includes the Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy, are trying to make sure that story and others like it don't die there.

    Monsanto and Spokane
    In 2015, the city of Spokane sued Monsanto over pollution in the Spokane River from polychlorinated biphenyls, more commonly called PCBs, claiming the city "has suffered, and continues to suffer, monetary damages to be proven at trial," due to Monsanto's actions. The case is ongoing and deals with what Monsanto knew while continuing to sell the products.

    PCBs were used in some household products, including waxes, swimming pool paints and chlorinators, but were more commonly used as coolants and lubricants in electrical equipment.

    Congress banned production of the extremely persistent chemicals by the late 1970s, but they continue to leach out of the products they were used in and into the river. PCBs are believed to cause reproductive issues as well as increased risks for some cancers. In some places, fish from the Spokane River are not safe enough to eat due to PCB levels.

    "The city's argument is, 'Hey now we're stuck with paying for this cleanup, so Monsanto, you need to come pay for part of this,'" says Rick Eichstaedt, a Gonzaga law professor and director of the Environmental Law and Land Use Clinic.

    The lawsuit relies on some of the same evidence now posted on poisonpapers.org.

    One such document is a report of an internal ad hoc committee within Monsanto, dated Oct. 2, 1969.

    The document notes there was little chance that Monsanto could stop the incrimination of PCBs "as nearly global environmental contaminants leading to contamination of human food (particularly fish), the killing of some marine species (shrimp), and the possible extinction of several species of fish-eating birds."

    But while the report notes the right thing to do is warn customers and start working with federal agencies to control the substances, it and other documents make it clear that internal company deliberations came with the constant reminder not to forget the bottom line: Sales of the chemicals were worth millions.

    The first objective of that ad hoc committee? To "protect continued sales and profits" from PCBs.

    "Your city's paying the bill for Monsanto's behavior in the '60s, '70s and '80s," von Stackelberg says. "They profited then, you're paying the bill now."


    Related:
    "La réalité est un rêve que l'on fait atterrir" San Antonio AKA F. Dard

    Troll-hood motto: Never, ever, however, whatsoever, to anyone, a point concede.

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