With GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds.
This has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants.
We can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying,
using plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead.
Mark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont,
Crop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance, Continue reading
Likely effects of dousing
90+% of all corn, soybeans, peanuts, and cotton grown in Georgia
(and elsewhere)
in Roundup and other toxic chemicals,
often drifting onto other people’s land, schools, shops,
and churches.
It’s not that hard to grow the same crops without those poisons
and without the toxic seeds that require them;
not that hard and more profitable.
Yes, I know Jeffrey M. Smith is not a biological scientist
or medical doctor.
But many of the sources he cites are.
Posted by MyScienceAcademy
29 November 2013,
GMOs linked to gluten disorders plaguing 18 million Americans – report
The IRT release also indicated that glyphosate, a weed killer sold
under the brand name ‘Roundup’ was also found to have a negative
effect on intestinal bacteria. GMO crops contain high levels of the
toxin at harvest.“Even with minimal exposure, glyphosate can significantly
reduce the population of beneficial gut bacteria and promote the
overgrowth of harmful strains,” the report found.
Pesticide poisoning has rapidly increased in Argentina as Monsanto-seed
pesticided crops ramped up.
Meanwhile in Georgia, 90+% of common crops already are doused in pesticides.
What effects are all those poisons having on our own children and adults?
Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko wrote for AP today,
Argentines link health crisis to agrochemicals,
Argentine farmworker Fabian Tomasi wasn’t trained to use protective
gear as he pumped pesticides into crop dusters. Now at 47, he’s a
living skeleton.Schoolteacher Andrea Druetta lives in a town where it’s illegal to
spray agrochemicals within 550 yards of homes, and yet soy is
planted just 33 yards from her back door. Recently, her boys were
showered in chemicals while swimming in their backyard pool.Sofia Gatica’s search for answers after losing her newborn to kidney
failure led to Argentina’s first criminal convictions for illegal
spraying last year. But 80 percent of her neighbors’ children
surveyed carry pesticides in their blood.
Meanwhile,
German researchers found pesticides in all samples of urine,
and
back in the U.S.A. and Canada,
researchers found pesticide metabolites in 95% of schoolchildren tested.
90+% of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and corn around here are
doused in agrochemicals, and even Continue reading
Now easier to vote at the checkout counter (or the farmers market),
at least for non-GMO meat.
Stephanie Strom wrote for NYTimes 20 June 2013,
U.S. Approves a Label for Meat From Animals Fed a Diet Free of Gene-Modified Products,
The Agriculture Department has approved a label for meat and liquid
egg products that includes a claim about the absence of genetically
engineered products.It is the first time that the department, which regulates meat and
poultry processing, has approved a non-G.M.O. label claim, which
attests that meat certified by the Non-GMO Project came from animals
that never ate feed containing genetically engineered ingredients
like corn, soy and alfalfa.
Seen
here.
-jsq
Monsanto is always hiding behind something, starving children
(while selling their parents crops that fail all at once),
the Great God Efficiency, or now, medical research.
Will Clarence Thomas recuse himself this time on this
Supreme Court seed patent,
Bowman v Monsanto?
Will Monsanto manufacture enough Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
to win anyway, or will the other SCOTUS judges rule wisely this time?
Andrew Pollack wrote for the New York Times 13 February 2013,
Farmer’s Supreme Court Challenge Puts Monsanto Patents at Risk,
Monsanto says that a victory for Mr. Bowman would allow farmers to
essentially save seeds from one year’s crop to plant the next year,
eviscerating patent protection. In Mr. Bowman’s part of Indiana, it
says, a single acre of soybeans can produce enough seeds to plant 26
acres the next year.Such a ruling would “devastate innovation in
biotechnology,” the company wrote in its brief.
“Investors are unlikely to make such investments if they
cannot prevent purchasers of living organisms containing their
invention from using them to produce unlimited copies.”…The decision might also apply to live vaccines, cell lines and DNA
used for research or medical treatment, and some types of
nanotechnology.
Yeah, yeah, it could.
But it would be quite easy for SCOTUS to say this ruling is about seeds.
Many organizations have filed briefs in support of Monsanto’s
position — universities worried about incentives for research,
makers of laboratory instruments and some big farmer groups like the
American Soybean Association, which say seed patents have spurred
crop improvements. The Justice Department is also supporting
Monsanto’s argument.
And the American Soybean Association represents big growers
who plant Monsanto seeds.
Too bad they don’t realize they’d make more profits if they
didn’t have to pay for those seeds every year even when
Monsanto jacks up the price
(
43% in 2009), plus pay for
the expensive pesticides that go on them,
and the expensive huge tractor equipment to farm at the scale
Monsanto demands.
Another group that should know better weighs in:
For many years big agro has treated the world’s health as an economic externality, a problem for somebody else that did not affect its own bottom line. That is starting to change, most recently in Argentina.
Anthony Gucciardi wrote for NaturalSociety 11 April 2012, Explosive: Monsanto ‘Knowingly Poisoned Workers’ Causing Devastating Birth Defects,
In a developing news piece just unleashed by a
courthouse news wire, Monsanto is being brought to court by dozens of Argentinean tobacco farmers who say that the biotech giant knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children. The farmers are now suing not only Monsanto on behalf of their children, but many big tobacco giants as well. The birth defects that the farmers say occurred as a result are many, and include cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness.
This would be the same Monsanto that was convicted of chemical poisoning in France.
But this is once again far away in a small country of which we know nothing, right? Wrong:
The farmers come from small family-owned farms in Misiones Province and sell their tobacco to many United States distributors. The family farmers say that major tobacco companies like the Philip Morris company asked them to use Monsanto’s herbicides and pesticides, assuring them that the products were safe. Through asserting that the toxic chemicals were safe, the farmers state in their claim that the tobacco companies ”wrongfully caused the parental and infant plaintiffs to be exposed to those chemicals and substances which they both knew, or should have known, would cause the infant offspring of the parental plaintiffs to be born with devastating birth defects.”
Still, it must be some obscure poison only sold in the third world, right?
Wrong:
The majority of the farmers in the area used Monsanto’s Roundup, an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate that has shown to be killing human kidney cells. What’s more, the farmers say that the tobacco companies pushed Monsanto’s Roundup on the farmers despite a lack of protective equipment. In other words, these farmers — many in dire economic conditions — were being directly exposed to Roundup in large concentrations without any protective gear (or even experience or skills in handling the substance). Still, the farmers say the tobacco giants required the struggling farmers to ‘purchase excessive quantities of Roundup and other pesticides’.
That would be the same Roundup that farmers use around here all the time, without protective equipment. The Roundup we already knew was
Steve Connor writes in The Independent 28 Sep 2010 that
GM maize ‘has polluted rivers across the United States’:
An insecticide used in genetically modified (GM) crops grown extensively
in the United States and other parts of the world has leached into the
water of the surrounding environment.The insecticide is the product of a bacterial gene inserted into GM
maize and other cereal crops to protect them against insects such as
the European corn borer beetle. Scientists have detected the insecticide
in a significant number of streams draining the great corn belt of the
American mid-West.The researchers detected the bacterial protein in the plant detritus that
was washed off the corn fields into streams up to 500 metres away. They
are not yet able to determine how significant this is in terms of the
risk to either human health or the wider environment.
This is the same “gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuriengensis (Bt)”
used in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready cotton and peanuts and soybeans.
Since
Andrew Pollack writes in the New York Times that
After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto:
As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the
year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different
accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This
may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.
I remember that!
The month after Forbes did that,
Covalence did a survey that ranked Monsanto
the least ethical company in the world.
Worse than Philip Morris, Chevron, or Halliburton!
About that time we discovered
Monsanto Corn Causes Liver and Kidney Damage in Rats,
and that
Monsanto’s GM soy causes sterility and five times higher infant mortality in hamsters.
Meanwhile, the
U.S. Department of Justice was
investigating Monsanto’s seed business. At least
seven U.S. states started their own
investigations, and later the U.S. EPA fined
Monsanto $2.5 million for selling seeds illegally in Texas counties where
they were banned.
Since then we’ve learned that
Pesticides Linked to ADHD.
Specifically organophosphate pesticides.
Like Glysophate (RoundUp).
And that indicators of pesticides, including organophosphates,
are found in the urine of 95% of school children.
We already knew that
Glysophoate causes birth defects in humans.
Anyway, could all this bad news have some effect on Monsanto’s share price?
 Image by Adrisbow Photography |
Jeffrey Smith writes in Huffingtonpost about
Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality in Hamsters:
“This study was just routine,” said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.
After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.
Not just a little higher: five times highher infant mortality.
And it’s not necessarily the soybeans themselves:
GM crops cause liver and kidney damage,
by E. Huff, staff writer for NaturalNews.com:
A report published in the International Journal of Microbiology has verified once again that Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) crops are causing severe health problems. A legal challenge issued against Monsanto forced the multi-national agriculture giant to release raw data revealing that animals fed its patented GM corn suffered liver and kidney damage within just three months.
Adding to the mounting evidence that GM crops are dangerous all around, this information provides a damning indictment against Monsanto which continually insists that its GM products are safe. Not only are GM crops proving disastrous for the environment, but study after study, including those conducted by Monsanto itself, is showing that GM foods are detrimental to health.
This appears to be a publication in another venue of the same results
we remarked on a couple of months ago.
Still bad news for Monsanto.
But they’ve got
nothing to hide, right?
Monsanto only released the raw data after a legal challenge from Greenpeace, the Swedish Board of Agriculture and French anti- GM campaigners.
Oh. Nevermind.
Maybe Monsanto really is the least ethical company in the world.
