If 1 PPM glysophate can kill a human fetus within 12 hours,
where are the right-to-lifers on this?
In this radio interview, a farmer gives his view of Monsanto’s strategy and tactics for infesting farmland and the food supply even more with their poisons, after they already feed poisoned hay to cows which concentrate it in their milk which is in children’s milk and ice cream.
This post owed to John Pate.
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Quantum physicist and environmental activist Vandana Shiva
foresees The Future of Food, in three parts.
There are only two applications that have been commercialized in these twenty years of genetic engineering. One is to make seeds more resilient to herbicides, which means you get to spread more Roundup, you get to spread more Glysophate, and you get to spread more poison. Not a very desirable trait in farming systems. Especially since what Monsanto will call weeds are ultimately sources of food.It gets even better from there.
These are illusions that are being marketed in order for people to hand over the power to decide what we eat to a handful of corporations.Vandana Shiva is the keynote speaker at the Georgia Organics conference in Savannah, 11-12 March 2011. There’s still time to sign up!
Here’s Part 1: Continue reading
This item horrified a lot of people:
Animal miscarriages from new fungus or virus in Roundup-read crops?
A reader asked:
What would you say to someone like myself who wants to make a difference but has no clue where to start? I think that is a big question with my generation.Well, there’s the pumpkin dance. But you don’t have to start with that.
HFCS may be the easiest thing to start with, because it’s labelled. Don’t buy any product that has High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) in it. You’ll be surprised how many do. At restaurants, check the condiments, don’t use them if they have HFCS, and inform the wait staff why you’re not. When people ask why you’re doing all this tell them. Here’s some background on High Fructose Corn Syrup and Obesity.
This kind of thing is working: Hunts removes HFCS from all its Ketchups.
About pesticides, buy local and organic food, like at
Whisk.
Ask for local food at other stores.
Help with a community garden. Join a CSA. Write a letter to the editor.
You don’t have to do all of these things; these are some ideas. Start small and just do something. Every little bit helps, and you’ll get more ideas as you go along. Your example will help others start.
Also, don’t feel bad about it seeming intimidating. On the one hand we
have the most sophisticated marketing methods the world has ever known,
fueled by megabucks from transnational corporations. On the other hand we
have, er, a few college professors like Michael Pollan, a few farmers who
observe and analyze like Joel Sallatin, a few poets like south Georgia’s
own
Janisse Ray, and so on. Even so, local and organic food is one of
the few industries that has kept booming right through the economic
downturn. People actually want food that’s good for them and tastes good!
Fortunately, around here we also have Georgia Organics! More about that later.
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Gretchen buys meat, fresh vegetables, ginger, cereal, chicken, sausage, and
bacon at Whisk Organic Market in Valdosta.
Also Newman ginger cookies.
She says Gracie says people who come in often don’t understand
organic fruits and vegetables aren’t always the most beautiful ones.
But they’re tasty!
Here’s a playlist of videos of proprietor Gracie Crane Douglas talking about her store.
More pictures of
Whisk Organic Market
in a flickr set.
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Doug Gurian-Sherman writes
No seeds, no independent research:
Multibillion-dollar agricultural corporations, including Monsanto and Syngenta, have restricted independent research on their genetically engineered crops. They have often refused to provide independent scientists with seeds, or they’ve set restrictive conditions that severely limit research options.In case you wondered why all the research seems to come from other countries, such as Argentina and France, as shown in this documentary from Germany? Well, now you know.
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Jill Richardson
publishes a letter
from Col. (Ret.) Don M. Huber,
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University,
who is
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS).
It begins:
Dear Secretary Vilsack:What’s an “electron microsope pathogen”? Continue reading
A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn-suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!
Dr. Stanley Culpepper of UGA Tifton says 52 counties have the mutant pigweed.
He says they’re looking at cover crops and deep turning.
(You may know that as plowing.)
He hastily adds that they’re looking at other herbicides.
But he wraps up by saying we have to look at other methods
than herbicides: tillage and cover crops.
He frames it as diversity and integration.
What it really means is spraying poisons eventually
breeds weeds that refuse to be poisoned.
People, of course,
are not so lucky.
This is the same Dr. Culpepper whose extensive slides on this subject I reviewed last summer.
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The promise of Roundup:
“No tilling, just seed, spray, and harvest.”Adriana Alvarez, who lives next door to an Argentinia GM soy field, says:
“They came from this side and sprayed the entire field. Here he turns, spraying all the time.”The farmer was wearing a mask. That’s more than no-till farmers around here do.
Interesting statistic that in Argentina
soy production increased
35-fold between
1996 and 2003
while Roundup use increased
56 times.
And eventually it doesn’t work at all, because it breeds resistant weeds.
In Georgia it took only ten years to produce
mutant pigweed
that not just Roundup but not even paraquat can kill.
Many farmers are realizing that
it’s cheaper, more effective, and more profitable to plow the weed under
in the fall and plant a winter cover crop.
Even mutant weeds are not resistant to cold steel.
The documentary points out many products in German stores that include GM soy. In Argentina, it’s even worse, with increasing numbers of birth defects.
They interview
Prof. Andrés Carrasco about his research on amphibians:
“The hemispheres do not separate, like you can see here. If you look closely you can see one brain. Glyphosate can cause this kind of mechanisms, for it is an enzymatic toxin.”
Monsanto refused an interview, responding in writing:
As Dr. Carrasco has been known to say:“Monsanto is convinced of the safety and usefullness of its products and its contribution to efficacious agriculture.”
“Son hipócritas, cipayos de las corporaciones, pero tienen miedo. Saben que no pueden tapar el sol con la mano.”“They are hypocrites, those corporate lackeys, but they are afraid. They know they can’t cover the sun with their hand.”
The documentarians interviewed
Gilles-Eric Seralini in Caen, France.
“To human cells glyphosate is already toxic in a very low dose. A farmer uses a much higher dose on the field. Roundup is even more toxic than glysophate, for that is only one of the ingredients in Roundup.”Roundup says none of this applies to humans and Roundup is safe. Seralini says:
“Transgenics are toxic for human health.”
This is the same Monsanto that
made Fox rewrite 80 times about RBGH in Florida cows.
The same Monsanto that
was convicted by the French Supreme Court of lying about leaving the soil clean.
The same Monsanto that
was fined $2.5 million by the U.S. EPA for
selling genetically modified cotton seeds without labeling them as such.
Who should you believe? A corporation repeatedly convicted of deception, or scientists who say that GM crops cause liver and kidney damage in animals, according to research using Monsanto’s own data.
The Roundup-spraying farmer said:
Roundup, mas algo! mas algo!It’s time to say:Roundup, more and more!
Ya basta!Enough already!
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PS: Credits to the German TV consumer series ‘plus minus’:
GM toxic soy in animal feed broadcast (© WDR) by Detlef Flintz and Mathias Rauck. Translation and highlighting provided by TraceConsult. Broadcast Tue, 08 Feb. 2011 | 9:50 PM.Bericht
D. Flintz
M. Rauck
Kamera
J. Fenske
C. Kültür
J. Midú
Schnitt
H. Bischoff
E. Elsner
Bryan Walsh writes in Time that
Foodies Can Eclipse (and Save) the Green Movement:
Even as traditional environmentalism struggles, another movement is rising in its place, aligning consumers, producers, the media and even politicians. It’s the food movement, and if it continues to grow it may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution.Food is something that affects everybody, and now that people are starting to realize that the mainstream food supply is poisoned: Continue reading
Susie Madrak writes in Crooks and Liars,
Leaked Document: EPA Scientists Warned Of Bee-Toxic Pesticide. Agency Approved It Anyway.
Clothianidin has already been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects. So why won’t the EPA follow? It probably has something to do with Big Agra, who loves the stuff for treating the corn seed supply.Ariel Schwartz in Fast Company a reminds us of why this matters
The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops.She includes a quote from the study:
Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct RQ based risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long-term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.
Here’s the leaked document (PDF).
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