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The GMO Puppetmasters of Academia: What the NYT Left Out

September 9, 2015

The GMO Puppetmasters of Academia: What the NYT Left Out

“Reading the emails make(s) me want to throw up” tweeted the Food Babe after reading a lengthy series of them posted online by the NY Times on Sept 5th. The emails in question result from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and are posted in the side bars of a front-page article by Times reporter Eric Lipton (“Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show”).

The article is highly disturbing, but, as the Food Babe implied, theTimes buried the real story. The real scoop was not the perfidy and deceit of a handful of individual professors. Buried in the emails is proof positive of active collusion between the agribusiness and chemical industries, numerous and often prominent academics, PR companies, and key administrators of land grant universities for the purpose of promoting GMOs and pesticides. In particular, nowhere does the Times note that one of the chief colluders was none other than the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

All this is omitted entirely, or buried in hard-to-notice side bars, which are anyway unavailable to print readers. So, here is the article Eric Lipton should have written.

First, the Lipton Story

The Lipton article seems, at first sight, to be impressive reporting. Lipton describes how Kevin Folta, Chair of the Dept. of Horticulture at the University of Florida secretly took expenses and $25,000 of unrestricted money from Monsanto to promote GMO crops. On behalf of the biotech industry, or via the PR firm Ketchum, Folta wrote onwebsites and attended public events, trainings, lobbying efforts and special missions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

No scientific evidence of GM food safety

July 14, 2015

No scientific evidence of GM food safety

It is “premature” to declare GM safe due to “incomplete” scientific knowledge, finds report commissioned by Norwegian Environment Agency

A new study commissioned by the Norwegian government, and conducted by a nationally recognised scientific authority on the safety of biotechnologies, concludes that available scientific data on GM crops is inadequate to prove their safety.

The scientific report was commissioned by the Norwegian Environment Agency and completed last year, before being publicly released in June by the Genok Centre for Biosafety, located in the Arctic University of Norway. The Genok Centre is a nationally-designated centre of competence on biosafety issues.

Absence of evidence

The new study analyses a dossier by giant agribusiness conglomerate, Monsanto, submitted to the Brazilian government, and also conducts a comprehensive review of the available scientific literature from other sources.

Its focus is on Monsanto’s GM soybean Intacta Roundup Ready 2 Pro, which is grown in Brazil, and also authorised in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and probably also present in Bolivia due to illegal introductions from neighbouring countries.

The report, titled ‘Sustainability Assessment of Genetically Modified Herbicide Tolerant Crops’ concludes that due to major gaps in the scientific literature, it is not possible to give a scientific verdict on their safety. Monsanto’s dossier, the report concludes, demonstrates a range of methodological weaknesses, and highlights the problem of incomplete information and research on GM crops in the available literature.

According to Monsanto, genetically modified organisms do not harm human or animal health, and therefore do not have any adverse effects on crops and the environment.

But according to the new Norwegian study:

 

“Contrary to this assertion, the literature provides indications of harmful and adverse effects to the environment and to health (both animal and human), as well as to socio-economic conditions, particularly over the medium- and long-term.”

The new study is authored by Georgina Catacora-Vargas, a researcher at the Agroecology Centre (AGRUCO) at the Faculty of Agricultural, Livestock and Forestry Sciences, University Mayor de San Simon, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Catacora-Vargas was until recently technical biosafety advisor at Bolivia’s Vice-Ministry of Environment, Water and Forestry Management.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lab rats and the corruption of how we count

July 6, 2015

Lab rats and the corruption of how we count

There’s an old joke about lab rats in which the teller says he or she secretly suspects that all lab rats are prone to cancer and so all research about the risk of cancer in humans based on tests in rats is likely useless.

The Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering, a European-based research group, thought it would look into such a possibility.

Last week the group released its findings and that joke became a reality. The diet fed to most lab rats is so laced with pesticides, heavy metals, genetically engineered feed and other man-made contaminants that lab rats worldwide are indeed at much higher risk of developing cancer and other diseases and disabilities just from the food they are reared on.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that certain substances thought likely to cause cancer in rats and possibly humans now somehow don’t. Rather, the study calls into question practically all safety tests which rely on these rodents. And, in fact, it suggests that the dangers of many substances and genetically engineered plants may have been underplayed.

The researchers point out that some studies purporting to demonstrate the safety of genetically engineered foods fed significant amounts of such GE foods to control groups of rats. These rats should not have gotten any GE food in order that their health profile could be compared accurately to those intentionally fed GE food.

And, even if the rats in the control groups don’t ingest the chemical or plant being tested–as is the case in a proper study–they still get sick at abnormally high rates due to their diet. That can make substances being tested appear safer than they truly are because it is more difficult to sort out which effects in the test group are due to the substance or plant being tested.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

Joel Salatin: The Pursuit Of Food Freedom

June 29, 2015

Joel Salatin: The Pursuit Of Food Freedom

A right worth fighting for

Sustainable farming activist Joel Salatin and author of Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal returns this week to talk about the importance of a basic human right: to choose what to eat.

In past podcasts, he’s described the challenges facing farmers who want to grow organically. This week, he sheds light on the additional challenges consumers face in getting access to quality produce and meats.

The bottom line is our industrial system (or, as Joel puts it, the “fraternity”) seeks to protect itself and its existing revenue streams. Research is commissioned to discredit the claimed benefits of organic farming. FDA nutrition guidelines favor the mono-crops grown by factory farms, despite mounting evidence these guidelines are not in the public health’s interest. Pesticides and herbicides are used in ever-greater amounts. Distribution infrastructure doesn’t enable small-scale delivery trucks (which most organic farms use) to plug into it. For those not living in an area concentrated with small farms, being able to identify and purchase healthy food options is difficult.

Joel recommends we elevate “food freedom” to the same status as we demand for other core personal liberties like public safety and legal equality:

We need to celebrate and energize the public to defend the freedom to acquire the food of our choice from the source of our choice. This whole orthodoxy thing we’ve been talking about is militating right now against being able to choose for ourselves the kind of fuel we want for our own bodies. I look at this whole food freedom effort as rectifying something that was missed in the Bill of Rights. We’ve got the right to own a gun, the right to assemble, the right to worship, the right to speak, the right to be secure in our persons without a search warrant. There are all sorts of wonderful rights. But we did not get the right to choose our food.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Monsanto Bites Back

May 25, 2015

Monsanto Bites Back

Monsanto, the U.S. agribusiness giant that controls a quarter of the entire global seed market, could soon be even bigger and more powerful than it already is, following renewed speculation over its interest in Swiss agrichemicals firm Syngenta. The logic behind the deal is clear: Monsanto ranks as the world’s largest purveyor of seeds while Swiss-based Syngenta is the world’s largest pesticide and fertilizer company.

A Monsanto-Syngenta tie-up would “deliver substantial synergies that create value for shareholders of both companies”, said Monsanto president and COO, Brett Begemann, adding that cash from these side deals would make an acquisition easier to finance. It would also be the largest-ever acquisition of a European company by a U.S. rival.

The target, Syngenta, seems somewhat less enthusiastic. It is the second time in as many weeks that Monsanto has tabled an unsolicited offer for its Swiss competitor. The first time, on May 8, Syngenta politely but firmly rebuffed Monsanto, saying that the offered price of $45 billion undervalued the company. In response to the latest offer Syngenta said a sell-off of its seeds business would not be enough to allay regulators’ concerns about the tie-up.

The 2 C’s: Consolidation and Concentration

If the deal is consummated, the two companies combined would form a singular agribusiness behemoth that controls a third of both the globe’s seed and pesticides markets, as Mother Jones reports:

 

To make the deal fly with US antitrust regulators, Syngenta would likely have to sell off its substantial corn and soybean seed business, as well its relatively small glyphosate holdings, in order to avoid direct overlap with Monsanto’s existing market share, the financial website Seeking Alpha reports.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Are Monsanto’s Worst Fears Coming True?

May 19, 2015

Are Monsanto’s Worst Fears Coming True?

The End-Game for GMOs?

The decision of the Chipotle restaurant chain to make its product lines GMO-free is not most people’s idea of a world-historic event. Especially since Chipotle, by US standards, is not a huge operation. A clear sign that the move is significant, however, is that Chipotle’s decision was met with a tidal-wave of establishment media abuse. Chipotle has been called irresponsible, anti-science, irrational, and much more by the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and many others. A business deciding to give consumers what they want was surely never so contentious.

The media lynching of Chipotle has an explanation that is important to the future of GMOs. The cause of it is that there has long been an incipient crack in the solid public front that the food industry has presented on the GMO issue. The crack originates from the fact that while agribusiness sees GMOs as central to their business future, the brand-oriented and customer-sensitive ends of the food supply chain do not.

Chipotle Mexican Grill

The brands who sell to the public, such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, Kraft, etc., are therefore much less committed to GMOs. They have gone along with their use, probably because they wish to maintain good relations with agribusiness, who are their allies and their suppliers. Possibly also they see a potential for novel products in a GMO future.

However, over the last five years, as the reputation of GMOs has come under increasing pressure in the US, the cost to food brands of ignoring the growing consumer demand for GMO-free products has increased. They might not say so in public, but the sellers of top brands have little incentive to take the flack for selling GMOs.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Global Food War, Monsanto Trips Over Mexican Judge

March 13, 2015

In Global Food War, Monsanto Trips Over Mexican Judge

The global food wars are heating up. As I reported last September, Mexico is on the frontline of one of the most important global battles – the battle for the control and ownership of seed stocks.

In 2013 a collective of 53 scientists and 22 civil rights organizations and NGOs brought a lawsuit against some of the biggest players in the biotech industry. To everyone’s surprise the presiding judge in the case – a man by the name of Jaime Manuel Marroquín Zaleta – ruled in the litigants’ favor, suspending the granting of licenses for GMO field trials sought by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Pionner-Dupont, and Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (Semarnat).

In defending his ruling, Zaleta cited the potential risks to the environment posed by GM corn. If the biotech industry got its way, he argued, more than 7000 years of indigenous maize cultivation in Mexico could be endangered, with the country’s 60 varieties of corn directly threatened by cross-pollination from transgenic strands.

In a world in which Monsanto is long-accustomed to pushing its weight and getting its own way, especially in Washington, Zaleta’s ruling represents a rare snub. Because of the ruling’s judicial nature, Mexico’s unashamedly pro-GMO government has little choice but to grudgingly respect Zaleta’s decision, writes Antonio Torrent Fernández, the president of Mexico’s Union of Scientists Committed to Society (ACCS), one of the organizations that brought the original lawsuit against Monsanto & Co:

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EU Countries Granted the Right to Ban GMO Crops | Environment News Service

December 7, 2014

EU Countries Granted the Right to Ban GMO Crops | Environment News Service.

A political agreement on new legislation to allow EU member states to restrict, or ban, the cultivation of crops containing genetically modified organisms, GMOs, on their own territory, even if it is allowed at EU level, was reached by Parliament and Council delegations last night.

Starting next spring, member states will be able to ban GMOs stating environmental policy objectives as a justification. These objectives would relate to environmental impacts other than the risks to health and environment assessed during the scientific risk assessment.

Bans could also include groups of GMOs designated by crop or trait. GMO crops in Europe include: corn, soy, sugar beet and rapeseed, among others.

Speaking for the Italian Presidency of the EU, Italy’s Environment Minister Gian Luca Galletti said, “With the agreement in principle reached between the Council, the Commission and the EU Parliament in Brussels we are approaching a great European goal under the Italian Presidency: the recognition of sovereignty and autonomy of the single States as regards the cultivation of GMOs.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Genetically modified escalation | Eric Garza

November 7, 2014

Genetically modified escalation | Eric Garza.
This past Sunday, author and activist Vandana Shiva paid my hometown of Burlington, Vermont a visit. She praised Vermont’s GMO labeling law (Act 120), which the state legislature passed earlier this year and the governor promptly signed. I couldn’t attend Shiva’s talk in person but watched a recording, and quickly appreciated why she’s so revered by her supporters: she’s a superb speaker; emphatic, animated, sharp as a razor and fierce in her delivery. Her poise and confidence while standing behind the podium were something to behold.

Vandana Shiva, despite her exceptional public speaking skills, is not without her critics. Several articles over the past year, among them one in the New Yorker and another in Grist, attack various facts upon which she bases her anti-GMO platform. As best I can tell these pieces had no discernible impact on her popular support, nor did they shift the greater debate over the regulation and labeling of GM foods.

This frightens me. In the GMO debate, the rift between the two opposing sides grows wider by the day and shows no sign of narrowing. Opponents in the debate can’t even agree on the most basic facts relevant to their issue. Do genetically modified crop varieties deliver higher yields? Do they contribute to negative health effects in people and livestock? Do they lead to negative environmental consequences? There are studies that take opposing sides on all of these issues and, sadly enough, their findings are often predictable given the ideological predilections of the researchers and their funding sources.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Seeding change | Transition Free Press

October 24, 2014

Seeding change | Transition Free Press.

small Over Winter Seed Salad Brotherhood Church Greenhouse73% of seed crops are now ‘owned’ by 10 corporations – while community and grassroots initiatives are working to keep global diversity alive. This weekend The Great Seed Festival in London celebrates the people and places that hold the future of many of our crops in their hands. In our Autumn issue we look at seed swaps, seed banks, and open source pollination (by bees and humans). Here Warren Draper reports on the radical acts of exchange happening…online

It is hard to comprehend how patent examiners can grant patents on seeds for plants which have been commonly used, exchanged and cross-bred worldwide for thousands of years: surely it’s like granting a large car manufacturer a patent for the wheel? But large corporations get their own way regarding patents in exactly the same way they control everything else – through powerful lobbying and relentless bullying.

…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…

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