Report Finds Regulators Knew Monsanto's Roundup Caused Birth Defects

[ktlight]

FYI:


Industry regulators have known for years that Roundup, the world's best-selling herbicide produced by U.S. company Monsanto, causes birth defects, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?" found regulators knew as long ago as 1980 that glyphosate, the chemical on which Roundup is based, can cause birth defects in laboratory animals.

But despite such warnings, and although the European Commission has known that glyphosate causes malformations since at least 2002, the information was not made public.

Instead regulators misled the public about glyphosate's safety, according to the report, and as recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, the German government body dealing with the glyphosate review, told the European Commission that there was no evidence glyphosate causes birth defects.

source
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/06/report-finds-regulators-knew-monsantos.html

[oceanz]

Why do I get the feeling this thread and the Ecoli thread should be linked?


The letter, written by Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University, to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, warns of a pathogen “new to science” discovered by “a team of senior plant and animal scientists”. Huber says it should be treated as an “emergency’’, as it could result in “a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

The letter appeared to have been written before Vilsack announced his decision to authorize unrestricted commercial planting of GM alfalfa on 1 February, in the hope of convincing the Secretary of Agriculture to impose a moratorium instead on deregulation of Roundup Ready (RR) crops.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/newPathogenInRoundupReadyGMCrops.php
Recommendations
In summary, because of the high titer of this new animal pathogen in Roundup Ready crops, and its association with plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions, we request USDA's participation in a multi-agency investigation, and an immediate moratorium on the deregulation of RR crops until the causal/predisposing relationship with glyphosate and/or RR plants can be ruled out as a threat to crop and animal production and human health.

It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders. To properly evaluate these factors, we request access to the relevant USDA data.

I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.

Sincerely,

COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)

[oceanz]

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URL="http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/11/jury-awards-136-million-in-genetically-modified-rice-lawsuit.aspx"]http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/11/jury-awards-136-million-in-genetically-modified-rice-lawsuit.aspx[/URL]
In a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Huber urged the government to immediately stop deregulation of Roundup Ready crops, and to delay the approval of alfalfa until further research has been conducted.

This is also what makes the recent approval of GM alfalfa in the US so incredibly dangerous. The release of GM alfalfa quite literally threatens the entire organic industry, including organic meat, as alfalfa is the fourth most grown crop in the US, and is used to produce forage seed and hay to feed cows and other livestock.

Tom Vilsack, for example, US Secretary of Agriculture is firmly entrenched with the biotech industry. He's a long-time supporter of genetically engineered crops, including bio-pharmaceutical corn, and was the founder and former chair of the Governor's Biotechnology Partnership. He's also a staunch supporter of animal cloning. Back in 2005, he pushed through the undemocratic and highly unpopular seed pre-emption bill, which strips local government's right to regulate genetically engineered seed (including where GE can be grown, maintaining GE-free buffers or banning GE corn locally).

Read more at above link