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One of the myths perpetuated by the pro-GMO (genetically modified organisms) lobby is that critics of GMOs in agriculture are denying choice to farmers and have an ideological agenda. The narrative is that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies, including GM crops.

Before addressing this issue, we should remind ourselves that GMOs have been illegitimately placed on the commercial market due to the bypassing of regulations. Steven Druker’s book Altered Genes,Twisted Truths (2015) indicates that the commercialisation of GM food in the US was based on a massive fraud. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 but only because the FDA covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers, lied about the facts and then violated federal food safety law by permitting GM food to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

If the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, Druker says that the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.

It is highly convenient for the pro-GMO lobby to talk about choice while ignoring such a massive subversion of democratic procedures and processes which could (and arguably is) changing the genetic core of the world’s food.

The denial of choice is a very important accusation. But just what is it that critics are said to be denying farmers? The pro-GMO lobby say that GM crops can increase yields, reduce the use of agrochemicals and are required if we are to feed the world. To date, however, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive.

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

Neil Young Slams Obama, Bayer, Says Fuck Monsanto!

September 23, 2016

Neil Young Slams Obama, Bayer, Says Fuck Monsanto!

Photo © Brian Bruner / Brian Bruner Photography

In addition to providing a stunning performance during the 31st Farm Aid concert in Bristow, VA Neil Young stole the show at the press conference before the event began.

While Farm Aid has always been focused on saving family farmers who are in distress, decades of corporate control and monopolization of the American food supply has forced the organization to also move toward helping restart the tradition of family farming and facilitating the good food movement. Obviously, GMOs have become a major issue as a result. So when it came time for Young to speak at the press conference, the godfather of grunge didn’t hold back.

Speaking fresh on the heels of the Bayer/Monsanto merger, Young spoke about the growing concern over corporate control over the food supply and the fact that this merger is a frightening new development in the corporate war on American agriculture. He also took aim at Barack Obama who has supported, facilitated, and pushed corporate control since the day he took office.

Young stated:

We have just begun. This is a revolution. And we will look back on this one way or the other in ten or fifteen years and see what folks like this are doing. We recently have seen giant corporations that are selling for billions and billions of dollars that are joining together and we heard just a few minutes ago about how somebody was eating bad food and got sick and had to take a lot of drugs and now they are eating good food and are starting to not take so many drugs. And you have to notice that one of the biggest drug companies on the planet and one the largest pesticide providers on the planet, Monsanto and Bayer, have just joined together.

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

Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food and Agriculture Just Took a Turn For The Worse

September 17, 2016

Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food and Agriculture Just Took a Turn For The Worse

defotoberg | Shutterstock.com

News broke this week that Monsanto accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Bayer. The new company would control more than 25 per cent of the global supply of commercial seeds and pesticides. Bayer’s crop chemicals business is the world’s second largest after Syngenta, and Monsanto is the leading commercial seeds business.

Monsanto held a 26 per cent market share of all seeds sold in 2011. Bayer (mainly a pharmaceuticals company) sells 17 per cent of the world’s total agrochemicals and also has a comparatively small seeds sector. If competition authorities pass the deal, the combined company would be the globe’s largest seller of both seeds and agrochemicals.

The deal marks a trend towards consolidation in the industry with Dow and DuPont having agreed to merge and Swiss seed/pesticide giant Syngenta merging with ChemChina, a Chinese government concern.

The mergers would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector, down from six – Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Monsanto and DuPont. Prior to the mergers, these six firms controlled 60 per cent of commercial seed and more than 75 per cent of agrochemical markets.

Alarm bells are ringing with the European Commission putting its approval of the Dow-DuPont deal temporarily on hold, and the US Senate Judiciary Committee is about to hold hearings on the deal due to concerns about consolidation in the industry, which has resulted in increased seed and pesticide prices.

In response to the Monsanto-Bayer merger, US National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson issued the following statement:

“Consolidation of this magnitude cannot be the standard for agriculture, nor should we allow it to determine the landscape for our future. The merger between Bayer and Monsanto marks the fifth major deal in agriculture in the last year…

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

Why the fight for GMO labeling is (possibly) over

April 18, 2016

Why the fight for GMO labeling is (possibly) over

Ever since it became clear that Vermont’s law for mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically engineered ingredients would actually go into force this summer, the big question has been how many food companies would choose to label their products and how many would choose simply not to sell in Vermont.

There is a third choice which purveyor of canned fruits and vegetables, Del Monte Foods, announced recently. The company will eliminate all genetically engineered ingredients from its foods, obviating the need for special labeling. This won’t be too difficult since there are very few genetically engineered fruits and vegetables.

While the Vermont law is huge victory for the proponents of labels, the U.S. Congress could still pre-empt state labeling laws, something it failed to do earlier this year. But as more and more of the public demands to know which products have so-called genetically modified organisms or GMOs in them and as the number of products on grocery shelves with non-GMO verified labels increases, growers and processors may have no choice but to acquiesce. They may be forced by circumstances either to label their products (or automatically be suspected of trying to hide something for not doing so) or to eliminate GMO crops and ingredients for fear of losing customers regardless of what happens in Congress or in other states.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and other books on risk, explains why this is so in a draft chapter of an upcoming book called Skin in the Game. His investigation begins with why nearly every packaged drink in the United States is labeled certified kosher.

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

Monsanto threatens to quit Indian GM-cotton market if govt cuts its royalties

March 17, 2016

Monsanto threatens to quit Indian GM-cotton market if govt cuts its royalties

Farmers plough and sow cotton seeds in a field in Shahpur village, India © Amit Dave

American agrochemical giant Monsanto has threatened to pull out of India and hold back new genetically modified cotton technologies if the government continues its “arbitrary and potentially destructive” interventions that seek to cut the company’s royalty fees.

Last year the Indian government issued an order to control cotton seed prices effective from the 2016-17 crop year. In a ruling, the antitrust regulator, Competition Commission of India, accused the GMO giant of potentially abusing its dominant position on the market. The Agriculture Ministry set up a special committee tasked with implementing brackets for seed price along with royalty fees, after the completion of an investigation into the matter.

Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (MMB), a joint venture with India’s Mahyco, licenses its products to a number of local seed companies in exchange for royalties. The company also sells seeds directly though the local licensees.

All in all the US subsidiary control some 90 percent of the market, as the agricultural biotechnology corporation serves over seven million cotton farmers in India.

However the new government commission is keen to reduce the price of the crop after local seeds companies filed complaints that MMB was charging high fees to sub-license BT cotton seed technology since 2002. The government is reportedly planning to reduce the royalties of its genetically modified cotton seeds by 70 percent.

Monsanto has challenged the government order in Delhi High Court which asked the American monopolist to pay compensation to farmers, threatening to leave the Indian market.

“If the committee recommends imposing a sharp, mandatory cut in the trait fees paid on BT-cotton seeds, MMBL will have no choice but to re-evaluate every aspect of our position in India,” Monsanto India Region CEO Shilpa Divekar said.

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

Brave New Food: GEs and Clones are Heading to the Dinner Table

December 16, 2015

Brave New Food: GEs and Clones are Heading to the Dinner Table

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Consumers, safety activists, Big Food, biotech companies and many of the US’s importing and exporting partners have been closely watching to see if the FDA would approve the genetically engineered AquAdvantage Salmon, which it did last month. Of course unlabeled GE crops are eaten by millions and GE animals have been created to make human drugs largely under the public radar. Still the AquAdvantage Salmon is the first approved GE animal destined for the US dinner table.

The AquAdvantage Salmon is not the only GE food animal in the works. Scientists at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where Dolly the cloned sheep was created, have spent years creating chickens that can be used as “biofactories” to make eggs with interferon and other disease-fighting substances.

“Once you’ve made the transgenic birds, then it’s very easy,” enthused scientist Helen Sang, PhD. “You can breed up hundreds of birds from one cockerel [young male]—because they can be bred with hundreds of hens and you can collect an egg a day and have hundreds of chicks in no time.

Other researchers are working on animals engineered to contain omega-3. Scientists at Harvard Medical School, the University of Missouri and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have concocted “white piglets with muscle tissue larded with omega-3 fatty acids,” say published reports. All they had to do was modify a round-worm enzyme that converts omega-6 to omega-3, inject the gene into mouse embryos to create mice that make their own omega-3, and transfer the genetic material into pigs–and voila!

“People can continue to eat their junk food,” said Harvard’s Alexander Leaf, MD about the brave new pigs. “You won’t have to change your diet, but you will be getting what you need.” Aren’t animals great?

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

Growing Doubt: a Scientist’s Experience of GMOs

September 1, 2015

Growing Doubt: a Scientist’s Experience of GMOs

By training, I am a plant biologist. In the early 1990s I was busy making genetically modified plants (often called GMOs for Genetically Modified Organisms) as part of the research that led to my PhD. Into these plants we were putting DNA from various foreign organisms, such as viruses and bacteria.

I was not, at the outset, concerned about the possible effects of GM plants on human health or the environment. One reason for this lack of concern was that I was still a very young scientist, feeling my way in the complex world of biology and of scientific research. Another reason was that we hardly imagined that GMOs like ours would be grown or eaten. So far as I was concerned, all GMOs were for research purposes only.

Gradually, however, it became clear that certain companies thought differently. Some of my older colleagues shared their skepticism with me that commercial interests were running far ahead of scientific knowledge. I listened carefully and I didn’t disagree. Today, over twenty years later, GMO crops, especially soybeans, corn, papaya, canola and cotton, are commercially grown in numerous parts of the world.

Depending on which country you live in, GMOs may be unlabeled and therefore unknowingly abundant in your diet. Processed foods (e.g. chips, breakfast cereals, sodas) are likely to contain ingredients from GMO crops, because they are often made from corn or soy. Most agricultural crops, however, are still non-GMO, including rice, wheat, barley, oats, tomatoes, grapes and beans.

For meat eaters the nature of GMO consumption is different. There are no GMO animals used in farming (although GM salmon has been pending FDA approval since 1993); however, animal feed, especially in factory farms or for fish farming, is likely to be GMO corn and GMO soybeans. In which case the labeling issue, and potential for impacts on your health, are complicated.

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

10 Disturbing Facts Most Americans Are Too Fearful To Face

August 14, 2015

10 Disturbing Facts Most Americans Are Too Fearful To Face

Sometimes you have to put out information in hopes that those who haven’t heard this will at least absorb a fraction of it. If you haven’t heard this and you absorb just one of these random points, I believe that may be enough to cause a major paradigm shift in your life or in the life of someone you know. Here are 10 random, mostly recent but some archival information that is factual and verifiable for anyone willing to look it up.

1. Genetically Modified Foods are illegal in many countries for health and medical reasons all the while the U.S. passes laws making GMO labeling illegal.

You may be thinking, say what? That’s right. U.S. citizens are being propagandized daily and are being practically forced to blindly consume GMOs while countries like Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, Australia, Russia, France and Switzerland all have booted Monsanto and their GMO crops from their countries. That’s like being booted out of a town for being a rapist and child molester only to have that same person settle into the next town over and become a grade school teacher or pastor. Now imagine the citizens of that other town having a law forced on them that says rapists and child molesters must be allowed to teach little kids and run churches. That’s what we’re talking about here.

While humanity in other countries wakes up fully to the dangers of GMO foods, Monsanto and other GMO food producers are having a feast in the U.S. buying out politicians, distorting news, research and evidence that proves GMO foods are directly linked to cancer. Like a scene from a bad movie, only it’s not a movie. Actually it’s YOUR life if you are in the United States dealing with this nightmare.

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

Risk Experts Who Predicted 2008 Financial Crash: GMOs Riskier than 2008 Crash … “The G.M.O. Experiment, Carried Out In Real Time and with Our Entire Food and Ecological System As Its Laboratory, Is Perhaps the Greatest Case of Human Hubris Ever”

July 27, 2015

Risk Experts Who Predicted 2008 Financial Crash: GMOs Riskier than 2008 Crash … “The G.M.O. Experiment, Carried Out In Real Time and with Our Entire Food and Ecological System As Its Laboratory, Is Perhaps the Greatest Case of Human Hubris Ever”

Risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb predicted the 2008 financial crisis, by pointing out that commonly-used risk models were wrong. Taleb – a distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University, and author of best-sellers The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness – Taleb became financially independent after the crash of 1987, and wealthy during the 2008 financial crisis.

Taleb noted last year that most boosters for genetically modified foods (GMOs) – including scientists – are totally ignorant about risk analysis. Taleb said that proliferating GMOs could lead to “an irreversible termination of life [on] the planet.”

This month, Taleb – and tail-hedging expert Mark Spitznagel, who also made a hugely profitable billion dollar derivatives bet on the stock market crash of 2008 – wrote in the New York Times:

Before the crisis that started in 2007, both of us believed that the financial system was fragile and unsustainable, contrary to the near ubiquitous analyses at the time.

Now, there is something vastly riskier facing us, with risks that entail the survival of the global ecosystem — not the financial system. This time, the fight is against the current promotion of genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s.

Our critics held that the financial system was improved thanks to the unwavering progress of science and technology, which had blessed finance with more sophisticated economic insight. But the “tail risks,” or the effect from rare but monstrously consequential events, we held, had been increasing, owing to increasing complexity and globalization. Given that almost nobody was paying attention to the risks, we set ourselves and our clients to be protected from an eventual collapse of the banking system, which subsequently happened to the benefit of those who were prepared.

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

GMOs and the Neoliberal Apologists

June 16, 2015

GMOs and the Neoliberal Apologists

Ignoring Reality, Subverting Morality

Monsanto is often called one of the most ‘evil’ companies on the planet. It has a history of knowingly contaminating the environment and food with various poisons, cover ups and criminality (see this, outlining the company’s appalling history). In recent times, there has been much focus on its promotion and patenting of GMOs, the deleterious impacts of its glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup and how GMOs pose a threat to human and animal health, ecology and the environment (see this, for example).

Campaigners and activists have described how global agribusiness players like Monsanto are threatening food security and food democracy. Monsanto and others have been able to capture or unduly influence government regulatory/policy agendas, important trade deals and global trade policies via the WTO. Monsanto is a major player and wields enormous political influence and receives significant political support.

Little wonder then that we now have campaigns specifically targeting Monsanto. While it is laudable and correct to highlight the actions of Monsanto and indeed its partners like The Gates Foundation, we should not be side tracked from developing a wider analysis to understand the underlying forces that drive companies like Monsanto.

A recent piece by Christina Sarich shows that any shares held by Gates or the individuals at the top of the Monsanto corporate structure like CEO High Grant or CTO Robb Fraley are dwarfed by those held by institutional shareholders, such as Vanguard, Capital Research and State Street.

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

Monsanto and the Subjugation of India

June 14, 2015

Monsanto and the Subjugation of India

Control the Food, Control the State

After a study of GMOs over a four-year plus period, India’s multi-party Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture recommended a ban on GM food crops stating they had no role in a country of small farmers. The Supreme Court appointed a technical expert committee (TEC), which recommended an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops until the government devised a proper regulatory and safety mechanism. As yet, no such mechanism exists, but open field trials are being given the go ahead. GMO crops approved for field trials include rice, maize, chickpea, sugarcane, and brinjal.

The only commercially grown genetically modified (GM) crop gown in India at this time is Bt cotton. It is hardly the resounding success story the pro-GMO lobby would like us to believe.

Pushpa M Bhargava is founder director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India. Writing in the Hindustan Times, he states that

* Bt cotton is far from having been an unqualified success in India. It has worked only in irrigated areas and not in rain-fed regions that represent two-thirds of the area under cotton cultivation in the country.

* Out of over 270,000 farmers’ suicides, Bt cotton farmers constitute a substantial number.

* In Andhra Pradesh, there have been deaths of thousands of cattle that grazed on the remnants of Bt cotton plants after harvesting of cotton.

* Resistance to pests in Bt cotton has developed over the years. There has also been a marked increase in the number of secondary pests such as mealy bug.

* The soil where Bt cotton has been grown over a prolonged period has become incapable of sustaining any other crop.

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

The Chilling Thing an Industry Insider Said about Glyphosate, GMOs, and Why He Sold His Conventional Seeds Company

May 27, 2015

The Chilling Thing an Industry Insider Said about Glyphosate, GMOs, and Why He Sold His Conventional Seeds Company

Dan Romig, who along with his father co-founded Trigen Seed LLC in 1993 and bloodstresold to Limagrain Cereal Seeds in 2010, is an insider in the seeds industry. His father was head of R&D at Northrup King, a subsidiary of Syngenta, which Monsanto is currently trying to acquire.

The combined Monsanto-Syngenta behemoth would control a third of the globe’s seed and pesticides markets.

Among the controversies surrounding Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship product, and largest selling weed killer in the world, there is this one: the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a component of the UN’s World Health Organization, declared that glyphosate, one of the active ingredients in Roundup, is “probably carcinogenic.”

Don Quijones, in his article on WOLF STREET, Monsanto Bites Back, vivisected the implications of the Monsanto-Syngenta deal and issues surrounding glyphosate.

Dan Romig then commented on the article from his insider point of view, and in doing so also told the story of his company and why they ended up selling it. It’s a chilling, insightful, and important read:

By Dan Romig:

Glyphosate is now being used by grain producers to desiccate their fields before harvest. Four days before running the combine, growers spray their fields to kill weeds and their plants in order to have an easier harvest. But in so doing, glyphosate then enters the final product (wheat, barley, oats, and others). Almost every human being has it in their bloodstream.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff [Senior Research Scientist at MIT] has led the way in research on what this does to a person. As glyphosate gets into the digestive tract, it kills much of the beneficial bacteria and produces intestinal permeability, or ‘leaky gut syndrome.’ It also chelates minerals such as aluminum, and then ‘cages’ the aluminum which goes into the bloodstream, and finally ends up in the pineal gland. Look at the correlation between when RoundUp was invented in 1970, put into mass use around 1979 and then unleashed into GMO crops in the late 1990’s, and the rise in Alzheimer’s and autism among other neurological disorders.

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

Arguments against GMOs

May 23, 2015

Arguments against GMOs

I recently decided to take an epidemiology course to fill in gaps in my knowledge base. The entire online graduate certificate in Environmental Health looked interesting, so I applied for the entire certificate. Environmental Health was the first course that I took online at this flagship Florida university. The online experience would be a separate post in itself — the online course was mechanically flawless but grossly deficient in interactions and building critical thinking skills.

One of my class assignments was to argue in a paper against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Since the course and the textbook were too reductionist for my tastes, I argued using macroscopic arguments. I doubt the teaching assistants read it–like all other assignments in thisMOOC, it received a grade with no comments. Various friends are asking me what I think of GMOs, and most students in the class and most of my friends think that GMOs are a great solution for our food problems, so I am reposting the paper here.

Corporations promote GMOs as the solution to world hunger through expanded global food sources. That hopeful argument is not based on evidence, and there are many arguments against widespread GMO use. Most science and policy arguments are reductionist. But Einstein said that we cannot solve problems from the same consciousness that created the problems. We must learn to see the world anew, from a larger scale to see a complete picture of the processes involved. Reductionist science is not the answer to the problems engendered by a finite biosphere with a human population in overshoot.

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

Sowing the GM Seeds of Depopulation?

May 21, 2015

Sowing the GM Seeds of Depopulation?

The Sinister Ideology of the Rich

If physical violence is to be used only as a final resort, a dominant class must seek to gain people’s consent if it is to govern and control a population. It must attempt to legitimize its position in the eyes of the ruled over by achieving a kind of ‘consented coercion’ that disguises the true fist of power. This can be achieved by many means and over the years commentators from Gramsci to Althusser and Chomsky have described how it may be done.

However, one of the most basic and arguably effective forms of control is eugenics/ depopulation, a philosophy that includes reducing the reproductive capacity of the ‘less desirable’ sections of a population.

There is a growing fear that eugenics is being used to get rid of sections of the world population that are ‘surplus to requirements’. And it is a legitimate fear, not least because there is a sordid history of forced/covert sterilizations carried out on those deemed ‘undesirable’ or ‘surplus to requirements’, which reflects the concerns of eugenicists who have operated at the highest levels of policy making. From early 20^th century ‘philanthropists’ and the Nazis to the nascent genetics movement and rich elites, by one means or another ridding the planet of the great unwanted masses has always been fairly high on the ‘to do’ list (see this informative piece)

…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…

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1. Genetically Modified Foods are illegal in many countries for health and medical reasons all the while the U.S. passes laws making GMO labeling illegal.

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