Monsanto Now Owns Your Garden

The issue here is not whether GMO food is safe to eat.  The issue is for-profit corporations having control of our food supply.

For more than ten thousand years, human beings have grown food by saving seeds from the harvest to plant next year.  As long as we can grow food this way, we can survive.

But now Monsanto and other giant agriculture corporations are destroying subsistence agriculture.  No more growing food unless you pay Monsanto for seeds you have to buy again every year.

And because you commie hippies might object to losing control over your own food supply, Monsanto is making sure you can't say anything about it.

Mother Jones:

With little notice, more than two dozen state legislatures have passed “seed-preemption laws” designed to block counties and cities from adopting their own rules on the use of seeds, including bans on GMOs. Opponents say that there’s nothing more fundamental than a seed, and that now, in many parts of the country, decisions about what can be grown have been taken out of local control and put solely in the hands of the state.

“This bill should be viewed for what it is — a gag order on public debate,” says Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy and communications at the Organic Seed Alliance, a national advocacy group, and a resident of Montana, which along with Texas passed a seed-preemption bill this year. “This thinly disguised attack on local democracy can be easily traced to out-of-state, corporate interests that want to quash local autonomy.”

Seed-preemption laws are part of a spate of legislative initiatives by industrial agriculture, including ag-gag laws passed in several states that legally prohibit outsiders from photographing farms, and “right-to-farm” laws that make it easier to snuff out complaints about animal welfare. The seed laws, critics say, are a related thrust meant to protect the interests of agro-chemical companies.

SNIP

Organic farmers can lose their crop if it becomes contaminated with genetically modified material. Even conventional farmers who rely on exports to Asia, where GMOs are banned by some countries, face risks from contamination. There are currently no plans to push for a GMO ban anywhere in Texas or Montana, and neither state requires companies to disclose the use of GMOs. (In Montana, at least, Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, added an amendment to the preemption bill when he signed it, preserving the right of local governments to require that farmers notify their neighbors if they’re planting GMO seeds.) Yet critics of the preemption laws fear that they tie the hands of local governments, which will make it harder for communities to respond to problems in the future. 

Still, the fight isn’t just about GMOs, says Judith McGeary, noting that seeds coated with neonicotinoids — a class of pesticides linked to colony collapse disorder in bees — are also at issue. Under the Texas bill, a local government can’t ban neonic seeds in order to protect pollinator insects, and in the current political climate, it’s hard to imagine that such a ban would happen on the state level.

“We have an extremely large state with an incredible diversity of agricultural practices and ecological conditions, and you’ve now hobbled any ability to address a problem that’s found in one local area,” says McGeary. “Until it’s a big enough issue for a state of 23 million to pay attention to through the state legislature, nothing is going to happen,” she says.

KY's Congress Repugs Voted to Hide Altered Food From You

The real issue here is not food safety, but food supply.  GMO crops are corporate possessions; farmers cannot save seeds for next year's crop, but must buy new seeds every year from Monsanto.  GMO put one of the planet's most toxic and despicable corporations in control of the entire world's food supply.

Regardless of whether genetically-modified organisms in food are dangerous to human health, they are absolutely lethal to the food supply and the ability of farmers to maintain sustainable crops.

But four of Kentucky's six representatives don't give a flying fuck about that.

Only Democrat John Yarmuth of Louisville and repug/teabagger Thomas Massie of Northern Kentucky voted to prevent Monsanto from sneaking unlabeled GMOs into our food.

Repugs Ed Whitfield, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers and Andy Barr all voted to take control of the nation's food supply away from farmers and consumers and give it to giant corporations.

Down with Tyranny:

This is a relatively simple issue. Food activists want to see potentially dangerous GMO food labeled so that consumers can make up their own minds about whether or not to feed it to their families. Monsanto and the GMO-Republicans, led by the Koch brother's Mike Pompeo (R-KS), want to make sure that there is no labeling and that the states that have already passed labeling laws to protect their citizens-- Connecticut, Maine and Vermont-- are over-ruled. I guess the concepts of states' rights and small government are trumped in GOP minds when their Big Business allies squawk loud enough! The bill passed (last week) 275-150. 

GMOs Don't Work

As I have written before, my objection to GMOs has to do with destroying the food supply through hybrid seeds that farmers must buy every year instead of being able to propagate from their own harvest.

Not to mention the extreme danger of putting the future and safety of our food supply in the hands of giant corporations - many of which like Monsanto are proven criminals - which can then literally hold the planet hostage.

Those objections would stand even if GMOs actually worked the way they are advertised.

They don't.

Lauren McCauley at Firedoglake:

The biotechnology industry “myth” that feeding billions of people necessitates genetically engineered agriculture has been debunked by a new report out Tuesday by the nonprofit health organization Environmental Working Group.

The report, Feeding the World Without GMOs (pdf), argues that investment in genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, has failed to expand global food security. It advocates more traditional methods “shown to actually increase food supplies and reduce the environmental impact of production.”

Over the past 20 years, the report notes, global crop yields have only grown by 20 percent—despite the massive investment in biotechnology.

On the other hand, it continues, in recent decades “the dominant source of yield improvements has been traditional crossbreeding, and that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.”

As the report states, “seed companies’ investment in improving yields in already high-yielding areas does little to improve food security; it mainly helps line the pockets of seed and chemical companies, large-scale growers and producers of corn ethanol.”

Get Your Seeds From Coops, Not Corporations

It's getting harder every year to find seeds that are not genetically modified to put real farmers out of business and turn a giant profit for Monsanto.

But in some countries, farmers are doing it for themselves.

Truthout:

In the face of overwhelming competition skewed by the rules of free trade, farmers in El Salvador have managed to beat the agricultural giants like Monsanto and Dupont to supply local corn seed to thousands of family farmers. Local seed has consistently outperformed the transnational product, and farmers helped develop El Salvador’s own domestic seed supply–all while outsmarting the heavy hand of free trade.

 Here in the States, try Seed Savers to find untreated, heirloom, non-GMO seeds.

Beating Monsanto

Corporations are close - very close - to establishing the Lords-n-serfs economy that will give them unchecked power.  But they're not there yet.

And it is possible for even the most marginalized people to stop them.

Truthout:

Farmers across El Salvador united to block a stipulation in a US aid package to their country that would have indirectly required the purchase of Monsanto genetically modified (GM) seeds.

Thousands of farmers, like 45-year-old farmer Juan Joaquin Luna Vides, prefer to source their seeds locally, and not to use Monsanto's GM seeds.

"Transnational companies have been known to provide expired seeds that they weren’t able to distribute elsewhere," said Vides, who heads the Diversified Production program at the Mangrove Association, a community development organization that works in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador.

"We would like the US embassy and the misinformed media outlets [that are pressuring the Salvadoran government to change their procurement procedure] to know more about the reality of national producers and recognize the food sovereignty of the country," he added.

Big Ag might not win.  But only if we fight them every step of the way.

Buy Your Groceries in Vermont

Remember, the issue is not just lack of safety - which has yet to be proven - but the catastrophe of letting one giant corporation own the basis of the entire planet's food supply.

They couldn't make it happen in California, but ....

From Firedoglake:

- It seems Vermont will be the first state in the nation requiring GMO labeling on all foods

Food Safety Won't Matter When Corporations Own the Source of Our Food Supply

Far be it from me to question a biologist's expertise on biology, so I will address the political problem:

GMO puts the entirety of the planet's food supply and future ability to grow food in the hands of profit-taking corporations.

Without GMO, you don't have to pay any money to anyone to grow your own food. Collect seed from open-pollinated, heirloom plants, nurture the seeds into mature plants, eat what you need, store the extra and save seeds from the rest, and do it all over again next year.

With GMO, you have to pay money - huge, unsustainable amounts of money - Monsanto to get seeds to plant to grow food.  But you can't save seeds from what you've grown, because they are hybrids or sterile.  You have to pay again for seeds next year to start all over from scratch.  And the year after that and the year after that and the year after that.

It's food slavery.  Even if I thought GMO foods were perfectly safe, cured cancer, eliminated racism and were the solution to biodiversity, drought, overpopulation, climate change and the heartbreak of psoriasis, I wouldn't eat or plant them because doing so leads to a corporation owning the source of our food supply.

PZ Myers:

I find myself continually bewildered by the argument against genetically modified food. However, we have no choice, we need to constantly improve the stocks.

We have a great deal to gain from growing GM crops. They offer humanity a way to improve food productivity without having to make further inroads into our planet’s wild places to create more fields for farmers. The position was summed up by Sir Mark Wolpert, the government chief scientist last week, when debating the CST’s report. "The challenge is to get more from existing land in a sustainable way or face the alternative, which is that people will go unfed, or we’ll have to bring more wilderness land into cultivation." From that perspective, the case for GM crops is unanswerable.

Not everyone will agree, of course. Green opponents to GM crops claim they pose a risk to health, though no research has ever produced any credible evidence to back this point. Thirty years ago, it could be argued that we should proceed cautiously because of potential health dangers. That argument is no longer acceptable.

I have a lot of sympathy for the green argument, except that it ignores the real problem to focus on a minor issue. The real problem isn’t that some of our crops carry modified genes, especially since they all do — every single one of our major food plants are the product of intense artificial selection for traits that benefit agriculture. No, the real problem is how much of our country is overwhelmed with monocultured species — most of the botanical diversity of the United States is gone under a layer of wheat and corn and soybeans and pretty much nothing else. Minnesota is 54% farmland, and we aren’t even the most intensely plowed over state in the country.

It seems to me that the green approach would be to encourage more GMOs to increase the efficiency of farmland use; and to struggle to get less land committed to agriculture by ending the corn ethanol boondoggle and by encouraging more vegetarian diets, so less livestock. Worrying about an artificially introduced gene in a crop seems silly when the real problem is that versions of that crop are taking over everything, replacing wetlands and prairie with endless fields of corn, GMO or not.

Kevin Drum, on even more food-supply-endangering problems with GMO crops: 

Even if GMO foods are safe to eat, there are a host of practices surrounding the use and marketing of GMO seeds and crops that are highly questionable. And those practices frequently fail to get the attention they deserve thanks to intense lobbying from corporate interests with billions of dollars at stake. Over at Wired, Brandon Keim provides an example of this dynamic at work. It's the story of Bt corn, which was engineered to be poisonous to corn rootworms, a pest that used to cause billions of dollars in damage to corn crops. For a while it worked great. But then, corn rootworms evolved a resistance to Bt corn, largely due to industry and farmer resistance to proper management:

Monsanto Reaps Rewards for Destroying Global Food Supply

Again, regardless of the risk GMOs may or may not pose to human health, they are an immediate and lethal threat to the safety and longevity of the world's food supply, not to mention the livelihood of the world's farmers. When Monsanto and other corporate giants own every seed on the planet, only the rich will eat.

From The Nation:

The GMO wars escalated earlier this month when the 2013 World Food Prize was awarded to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The choice of Fraley was widely protested, with eighty-one members of the prestigious World Future Council calling it “an affront to the growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and sustainability.”

Monsanto’s Man

The choice of Monsanto’s man triggered accusations of prize buying. From 1999 to 2011, Monsanto donated $380 million to the World Food Prize Foundation, in addition to a $5 million contribution in 2008 to help renovate the Hall of Laureates, a public museum honoring Norman Borlaug, the scientist who launched the Green Revolution.

For some, the award to Monsanto is actually a sign of desperation on the part of the GMO establishment, a move designed to contain the deepening controversy over the so-called biotechnological revolution in food and agriculture. The arguments of the critics are making headway. Owing to concern about the dangers and risks posed by genetically engineered organisms, many governments have instituted total or partial bans on their cultivation, importation, and field-testing.

A few years ago, there were sixteen countries that had total or partial bans on GMOs. Now there are at least twenty-six, including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia. Significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

Restraints on trade in GMOs based on phyto-sanitary grounds, which are allowed under the World Trade Organization, have increased. Already, American rice farmers face strict limitations on their exports to the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and are banned altogether from Russia and Bulgaria because unapproved genetically engineered rice “escaped” during open-field trials on GMO rice. Certain Thai exports—particularly canned fruit salads containing papaya to Germany, and sardines in soy oil to Greece and the Netherlands—were recently banned due to threat of contamination by GMOs.

SNIP

Unfortunately for the biotech corporations, more people are listening to the words of scientists like Dr. Oscar Zamora, vice chancellor of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, who says: “For every application of genetic engineering in agriculture in developing countries, there are a number of less hazardous and more sustainable approaches and practices with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of safety record behind them. None of the GE applications in agriculture today are valuable enough to farmers in developing countries to make it reasonable to expose the environment, farmers and the consumers to even the slightest risk.”

The Fight Against Monsanto: Winning Overseas, Losing Here at Home

Remember: the danger of Monsanto's Genetically Modified Organism seeds is less to individual health (which has not been proven) than to the global food supply when expensive, single-season GMO monoculture destroys the diversity of heirloom, self-propagating seeds.

Don't get distracted by the health arguments. Concentrate on protecting the food supply.

In Europe:

Hungary has destroyed 1000+ acres of GMO corn– for the second time.  So far, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Austria and Peru have bans on GMO crops.

And the French president is maintaining the ban on Monstanto's GM Corn.

In India:

As India’s government prepares to make the controversial Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) bill a law, enhancing the hold that biotech companies like Monsanto have over the nation’s food production, the tiny bee may be emerging as a potential savior by offering ways to increase crop yields naturally.

Thanks to efforts by the Mumbai-based organization Under the Mango Tree, bees have been incorporated into the fields of small farmers and food growers in communities in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Through its Bees for Poverty Reduction program, UTMT is helping farmers increase their incomes and agricultural productivity through India’s indigenous honeybee Apis cerana indica.

But in the U.S., Monsanto's corruption contaminates everything from social media to elections.

Washington state agriculture officials confirmed that a farmer’s alfalfa crop was contaminated with a genetically modified trait, a “low-level” presence that nonetheless has prevented him from exporting it.

SNIP

The “mixup” points to a larger controversy brewing in Washington state over the presence of genetically modified crops, Reuters reports:

USDA and GMO proponents have said biotech and non-biotech crops can co-exist successfully. But opponents said the incident in Washington state shows that non-GMO farmers have to bear the burden and cost of any lost sales if their crops get contaminated, even at low levels.

“Co-existence is a myth,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for the Center for Food Safety, which sued USDA to try to stop its approval of biotech alfalfa. “We don’t know how to control contamination. They say biotech is just another tool in the toolbox. That is not true. It’s a tool that takes over all the other tools and makes them worthless.”

The furor it’s inspired will likely influence an upcoming ballot initiative that would mandate labeling of GMO foods in the state. It’s popularly known as “The People’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.” Monsanto, along with DuPont Pioneer, have dedicated millions of dollars to defeating it.

The Solution to Everythiing?

It's very damn close to way too good to be true.  But if it is true, ExxonMobil and Monsanto will stop at nothing - up to and incuding taking over nations - to stop it.

From the Independent:

A GROUNDBREAKING new Irish technology which could be the greatest breakthrough in agriculture since the plough is set to change the face of modern farming forever.

The technology – radio wave energised water – massively increases the output of vegetables and fruits by up to 30 per cent.

Not only are the plants much bigger but they are largely disease-resistant, meaning huge savings in expensive fertilisers and harmful pesticides.

Extensively tested in Ireland and several other countries, the inexpensive water treatment technology is now being rolled out across the world. The technology makes GM obsolete and also addresses the whole global warming fear that there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, by simply converting excess CO2 into edible plant mass.

Obviously, this puts Monsanto out of the seed-monopolizing business.  But why should ExxonMobil and the rest of the fossil fuel industry hate and fear super water? A CO2-eating substance might take the pressure off CO2-producing fossil fuels.

Answer: most oil drilled out of the earth goes not for fuel but for petroleum-based products like everything plastic and - most of all - chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

Super water frees farming from its 70-year dependence on petroleum-based additives and deals a mortal blow to fossil fuels.

If it really works.  And if the inventors can prevent Exxon-Mobil and Monsanto from buying up the patent and either burying it or charging their usual bankrupting prices for it.

In recognition of the groundbreaking technology, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, London, recently took the hitherto unheard-of step of granting Professor Austin Darragh and his team the right to use their official centuries-old coat of arms on the new technology – the first time ever that Kew Gardens has afforded anyone such an honour.

The Kew Gardens botanists were not just impressed with the research; they used the technology to restore to life a very rare orchid which had been lying dormant and practically dead in a greenhouse bell jar since 1942. Amazingly, the orchid is now flourishing once again.

Intriguingly, chickens and sheep fed the energised water turned into giants. . . but that's another story!

Limerick University off- campus company ZPM Europe Ltd, who are based in the National Technology Park, Limerick, is now manufacturing the Vi-Aqua technology.

What's GMO and What's Not

Since Monsanto and the other Big Ag corporations have prevented labeling laws, we're left to guess what we're buyin. Here's a general guide from Mother Jones.

So what are some examples of food that are genetically modified?

1. Papayas: In the 1990s, Hawaiian papaya trees were plagued by the ringspot virus which decimated nearly half the crop in the state. In 1998, scientists developed a transgenic fruit called Rainbow papaya, which is resistant to the virus. Now 77 percent of the crop grown in Hawaii is genetically engineered (GE).

2. Milk: RGBH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone, is a GE variation on a naturally occurring hormone injected into dairy cows to increase milk production. It is banned for milk destined for human consumption in the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Many milk brands that are rGBH-free label their milk as such, but as much as 40 percent of our dairy products, including ice cream and cheese, contains the hormone.

3. Corn on the cob: While 90 percent of corn grown in the United States is genetically modified, most of that crop is used for animal feed or ethanol and much of the rest ends up in processed foods. Sweet corn—the stuff that you steam or grill on the barbecue and eat on the cob—was GMO-free until last year when Monsanto rolled out its first GE harvest of sweet corn. While consumers successfully petitioned Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to not carry the variety, Walmart has begun stocking the shelves with it without any label.

4. Squash and zucchini: While the majority of squashes on the market are not GE, approximately 25,000 acres of crookneck, straightneck, and zucchinis have been bioengineered to be virus resistant.

5. "All natural" foods: Be wary of this label if you're trying to avoid GE foods. Right now there is no strict definition of what constitutes a natural food. This could be changing soon as federal court judges recently requested the Food and Drug Administration to determine whether the term can be used to describe foods containing GMOs to help resolve pending class action suits against General Mills, Campbell Soup Co., and the tortilla manufacturer Gruma Corp.

Are there any foods I've heard might be genetically modified—but actually aren't?

1. Potatoes: In 1995, Monsanto introduced genetically modified potatoes for human consumption, but after pressure from consumers, McDonald's and several other major fast food chains told their French fry suppliers to stop growing GE potatoes. The crop has since been removed from the market.

2. Seedless watermelon: While it would seem plausible that a fruit that produces no seeds has been bioengineered, the seedless watermelon is a hybrid of two separate breeds. It has been nicknamed the "mule of the watermelon world."

3. Salmon: Currently no meat, fish, or egg products are genetically engineered, though a company called Aqua Bounty has an application in with the FDA to approve its GE salmon.

4. Soy milk: While 93 percent of soy grown in the United States is genetically engineered, most major brands of soy milk are GMO-free. Silk, the best-selling soy milk brand in the country, joined the Non-GMO Project in 2010. Many popular tofu brands in the United States also sell GMO-free tofu products.*

5. Rice: A staple food for nearly half the world's population, there are currently no varieties of GM rice approved for human consumption. However, that could soon change. A genetically modified variety called golden rice being developed in the Philippines has been altered to include beta-carotene, a source of vitamin A. Backers are lauding it as a way to alleviate nutrient deficiency for the populations in developing countries.

How about organic foods?

Since the late '90s, USDA organic standards have prohibited any genetically modified ingredients. Originally, the agency tried to include GE foods under the organic umbrella, but it backed down in 2002 after a massive public outcry to save organic standards.

Lots more info at the link.

Home-grown veggies are non-GMO only if you obtain the seed from sources of heirloom and organic seeds, like Seed Savers.

It's Neither Ignorant Nor Misdirected to Oppose GMO

Last month, biologist PZ Myers, whom I greatly admire, took a shot at those who oppose Genetically Modified Organisms as unscientific woo-peddlers.

Much of the dissent with GMOs is based either on ignorance, or is misdirected.

SNIP

This strange unfounded fear of GMOs is unfortunately most strongly expressed in the political left. It’s embarrassing that political progressives are being made to look bad by raging superstition and unscientific claims.

I cut no slack for woo-peddlers or for knee-jerk attacks on modern science.  But PZ is focusing on the woo-ish anti-science tiny minority of anti-GMO activism and ignoring the much bigger fight: stopping one giant company - Monsanto - from using GMO to make all agriculture subject to corporate ownership and control.

He calls on anti-GMO-ers to engage in that fight as if there were not millions of people already engaged in global activism against Monsanto.

As for the scientific case against GMOs, here's the latest from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In the decade and a half since the agricultural biotechnology industry in the United States staged its first field trials, federal and state governments and private corporations have spent billions of dollars on research, commercial development, and regulation. This paper focuses primarily on the environmental successes and failures of that investment and the implications of that experience for U.S. readiness to deal with the next generation of agricultural biotechnology products.

SUMMARY

The American experience with genetically modified food crops, while encouraging, does not justify complacency about potential risks for several reasons. First, our experience is quite limited in important ways. Only two traits, herbicide and insect resistance, have been significant commercial successes. Crops with other traits have failed to achieve commercial success, have been held back by companies, or never made it through the research and development pipeline.

Second, the U.S. government provides very little post-market oversight of biotech foods. A recent report by the U.S.-based Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology (cited above) questions the ability of the government's weak monitoring and enforcement systems to detect unexpected human health and environmental problems and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.⁵⁹ In fact, the current "don't look, don't find" approach to monitoring is likely to detect only the most dramatic, highly visible effects.

Third, the scientific underpinnings of risk assessment and risk management are chronically and severely underfunded. Compared with the amount of U.S. taxpayer funds spent on biotech product development and related research, very little is earmarked for research on risks of engineered products. For example, in the 11-year period of 1992 to 2002, the USDA spent approximately $1.8 billion on biotechnology research and approximately $18 million on risk-related research.⁶⁰ Many features of genetically modified food crops, for example, impacts of stacked genes and unresolved issues about Bt allergenicity, raise concerns that have simply not been adequately investigated.

Fourth, the diversity promised in future products and the new, more complex issues they are likely to raise are expected to severely challenge a regulatory system already straining under the comparatively light weight of today's products. This point is made by a trio of studies produced by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The first report, Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants: Science and Regulation, after reviewing the risks of crops engineered to produce insecticidal toxins and evaluating the EPA's program for regulating these crops, recommended that the agency strengthen its oversight.⁶¹

Two years later, a second report focused on the USDA and its regulation of engineered crops. The Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: the Scope and Adequacy of Regulation found serious shortcomings in the department's oversight of biotech products and recommended significant changes in its regulatory program.⁶² The report particularly noted that the USDA was ill prepared to protect against the risks of a new generation of biotech products nearing the end of the research and development pipeline.

Also in 2002, NAS published Animal Biotechnology: Science-Based Concerns, the academy's first report devoted solely to animals produced through modern biotechnology methods.⁶³ That report found that the federal government's regulatory efforts have not kept pace with the advances in animal biotechnology research. As a result, they concluded that the current framework might be inadequate to oversee new animal biotech products as they move from laboratories towards commercialization.

Finally, the scientific evidence available to date, while encouraging, does not support the conclusion that genetically modified crops are intrinsically safe for health or the environment. The next generation of products—crops engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals⁶⁴ and crops engineered to alter regulatory and metabolic pathways⁶⁵—offer far more numerous traits and appear to be more obviously dangerous than Bt and herbicide-tolerant crops. It would be a serious misstep to overread the positive early experience with Bt and herbicide-tolerant crops and conclude that the weak regulation currently in place will suffice to control the risks of these and other new crops.

 The attacks on GMO dissenters are the same attacks leveled at J. Robert Oppenheimer for his doubts about the safety of nuclear power, and Rachel Carson for sounding the alarm about artificial pesticides.  "Hysterical luddites! Ignore them!"

Maybe this time the GMO cheerleaders are right. I hope so. But the corporate track record on scientific dangers is one of 100 percent failure. So I doubt it.

Monsanto Destroys $9 Billion U.S. Wheat Export Industry

Destroying an entire sector of the American economy. I'd say that calls for a fine. One equal to the economic value of that sector.  Times three.

From Firedoglake:

 “Unapproved genetically engineered wheat has been found growing on a farm in Oregon”, endangering wheat exports, a major blow since Oregon exports 90% of its wheat.  Update: Japan has already suspended US wheat imports.  Update: The EU is on the lookout for “Monsanto GMO strains” in US wheat imports.

The U.S. exports approximately 30 million metric tons of wheat per year, times $300 per metric ton, equals $9 billion.

Don't help Monsanto kill the rest of American agriculture.

Scroll down to the list of seed companies that have “safe” seed and those that don’t.

Have You Paid Monsanto for the Right to Grow Those Tomatoes?

Last Sunday, Melissa Harris-Perry had a segment on the fight for labeling of genetically-modified (GMO) foods.

Unfortunately, the segment concentrated on the question of whether GMO food is safe to human consumption. The studies are far from conclusive, but that's not the point.

The real danger of GMO foods - and specifically GMO seeds - is twofold:

• GMO seeds are genetically agressive, taking over and crowding out non-GMO seeds, especially open-pollinated heirloom seeds that are the foundation of the planet's food supply.
• GMO seeds are patented products wholly owned by the company that created them - primarily Monsanto - and thus are never freely available in nature but must be purchased from Monsanto at whatever price it chooses to charge.

The consequence is straightforward: One giant corporation - Monsanto - will very soon own the entire global food supply.  We won't be able to feed ourselves without paying a ransom to Monsanto.

From the LA Times on February 19th:

On Tuesday, attorneys for the largest agrochemical corporation in the world, Monsanto, will present arguments before the Supreme Court asserting the company's rights to the generations of seeds that naturally reproduce from its genetically modified strains. Bowman vs. Monsanto Co. will be decided based on the court's interpretation of a complex web of seed and plant patent law, but the case also reflects something much more basic: Should anyone, or any corporation, control a product of life?

The journey of a 75-year-old Indiana farmer to the highest court in the country began rather uneventfully. Vernon Hugh Bowman purchased an undifferentiated mix of soybean seeds from a grain elevator, planted the seeds and then saved seed from the resulting harvest to replant another crop. Finding that Bowman's crops were largely the progeny of its genetically engineered proprietary soybean seed, Monsanto sued the farmer for patent infringement.

The case is a remarkable reflection on recent fundamental changes in farming. In the 200-plus years since the founding of this country, and for millenniums before that, seeds have been part of the public domain — available for farmers to exchange, save, modify through plant breeding and replant. Through this process, farmers developed a diverse array of plants that could thrive in various geographies, soils, climates and ecosystems. But today this history of seeds is seemingly forgotten in light of a patent system that, since the mid-1980s, has allowed corporations to own products of life.

Meanwhile, Congress is making sure any court decision against Monsanto doesn't count.

Aviva Shen at Think Progress:

Liberals and Tea Party members alike are up in arms over the so-called “Monsanto Protection Act,” a provision snuck into the emergency budget bill that essentially exempts biotech firms like Monsanto Company from judicial review. Now that President Obama has signed the law, Monsanto may plant genetically modified seeds even if a court of law orders them to stop. While this is blatantly unethical, and possibly unenforceable, the newfound public outrage over the Monsanto Protection Act ignores the fact that Monsanto has already been above the law for decades. 

The Monsanto Protection Act is merely a drop in the bucket of government-embedded protections the agricultural giant already enjoys. The company has spent decades packing the US Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency with its own members. A new Food and Water Watch report maps out the many ways the company stacks the regulatory deck in their favor:

Check out these two links, both via Firedoglake:

“A dietitian working on a panel [of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics] charged with setting policy on genetically modified foods . . . contends she was removed for pointing out that two of its members had ties to Monsanto”.

“Monsanto and its products are keeping farmers stranded on what ecologists call a ‘pesticide treadmill’–never-ending chemical warfare against fast-adapting ecosystems.”

That giant octopus controlling your life isn't the government; it's corporations like Monsanto.

GMO food labeling

The fierceness with which Big Ag fights every attempt to require food producers to label their products that contain Genetically Modified Organisms as such is a dead giveaway that Big Ag knows no one will knowingly buy much less eat GMO foods.

And if Americans suddenly started seeing GMO labels on virtually every food product in the grocery, there'd be a backlash that would threaten to topple the entire GMO empire.

From Firedoglake:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) have “introduced the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act [requiring] the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to clearly label genetically engineered (GE) foods” as such.

Carey L. Biron at Nation of Change:

A decades-long push to require the labeling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients in the United States received a significant boost Wednesday, when bipartisan bills on the issue were simultaneously proposed in the House and Senate.

Advocates of such measures are reacting with excitement, noting that the new bills appear to be far better positioned than previous such attempts, in terms of both public and Congressional support. If the bills pass, the United States would join 64 other countries that have already put in place similar laws or regulations.

SNIP
“Americans have the right to know what is in the food they eat so they can make the best choices for their families,” Senator Barbara Boxer, a key sponsor of the new bill and author of the 2000 proposal, said Wednesday.

“This legislation is supported by a broad coalition of consumer groups, businesses, farmers, fishermen and parents who all agree that consumers deserve more – not less – information about the food they buy.”

Indeed, public opinion on the matter appears to be overwhelmingly on the side of the new proposal, which would direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the main government regulator on food-related issues, to require food producers to clearly label their products if they contain genetically engineered (GE) components.

According to multiple polls in recent years (including here and here), more than 90 percent of people in the United States favor the FDA requiring the labeling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients.

SNIP
“The fact of the matter is that, for far too long, the FDA has been playing politics over science,” Colin O’Neil, the director of government affairs at the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS.

“Corn that produces its own insecticide, or a fish that grows twice as fast as normal, or an apple that doesn’t turn brown for 30 days – we know these are material changes and that those are novel foods.”

Frankenfish is What's for Dinner

We're not talking about plants anymore, as dangerous as GMO varieties of those staple vegetables and grains are to both human health and the safety of the food supply. We're talking about animals.

Remember that the biggest problem with Genetically Modified Organisms is that they crowd out non-modified organisms and permanently deform the food supply.

Edward Teller at Firedoglake: 

On December 21st, the Food and Drug Administration announced that the first genetically-engineered animal ever approaching approval for public consumption — a hybrid Chinook Salmon-Pouty — has been declared to have “no significant impact” on the environment.  As of the 21st, the FDA’s tentative approval of this GMO salmon, called “Frankenfish” by its many detractors, entered a 60-day public comment period.

In Alaska, home of a high percentage of the world’s remaining wild salmon, and a state where fish farming has been banned since 1989, the state’s three national legislators quickly responded to the FDA decision.  Most colorful, Republican Representative Don Young quipped:

“You keep those damn fish out of my waters. It will ruin what I think is one of the finest products in the world,” (Congressman Don) Young said in an interview, saying he fears that the spread of fish farms could eventually contaminate the wild salmon industry in Alaska. He wants to force delays in any FDA approval.

“If I can keep this up long enough, I can break that company,” he said, referring to AquaBounty, “and I admit that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Meanwhile, there are calls in Africa to make it the first GMO-free continent. 

And you'll be shocked to learn that many of the biologists claiming GMOs are safe actually own GMO patents.

R.I.P Real Food. Murdered by Monsanto and the U.S. Ag Dept., November 2012

Every person who plants an heirloom seed, cultivates organic vegetables, seeks to provide healthy nutritious food for her family and others is an immediate existential threat to giant Robo-Ag corporations.

Because the existence of even a single non-GMO food plant proves that there is an alternative to the FrankenFood proliferating worldwide. So Big Ag went crying to the federal government - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Monsanto and its ilk - and demanded protection from those horrible farmers.
 

Aviva Shen at Think Progress:

Every year for the past 13 years, biotechnology giant Monsanto Company has sued about 11 farmers per year for patent infringement of their genetically modified corn and soybean seeds. Many of these farmers have had to pay a settlement to the corporation even when their fields were accidentally contaminated with GM seeds from a neighboring farm. Monsanto simply outspends the defendants, dedicating $10 million a year and 75 staffers for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting farmers. Farmers who have sued Monsanto back have been soundly defeated. 

Monsanto is likely to continue this winning streak with an assist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which released a final report Monday absolving the biotech industry of contamination of non-GM seeds with their products from other fields. The USDA report concludes that organic and other non-GM farmers should simply buy insurance to protect against GMO contamination.

Essentially, Monsanto can sue these farmers all they want for patent infringement, but they are immune to challenges from organic farmers whose products are contaminated by GMOs. As one dissenting committee member commented:

Any farmer/seed grower contaminated will not want to disclose the contamination because they are illegally in possession of a patented material and could be subject to legal action for theft of intellectual property. The committee refused to ever recognize this fact.

The report is just the latest example of the USDA’s cozy relationship with the biotech industry. In fact, the agency has never denied a single application for GM crop approval. Monsanto’s power extends beyond the USDA — also on Monday, the Department of Justice dropped their antitrust investigation into Monsanto’s near monopoly on the nation’s seeds. The stalled Farm Bill in Congress also contains a so-called “Monsanto rider” that would entirely deregulate GM crops and allow Monsanto to basically approve its own product.

There is a slim chance Monsanto’s fortunes could change with a Supreme Court case on this term’s docket. In an unprecedented move, the high court agreed to take on an Indiana farmer’s appeal after he was ordered to pay Monsanto $80,000 for patent infringement. Though the current Supreme Court is quite openly sympathetic to corporate interests, their decision to hear the case at all bodes well for farmers grappling with the agricultural giant all over the country.

 Fuck Monsanto. Grow your own food.  A single planter on a sunny balcony will supply fresh tomatoes all summer long. Order heirloom seeds here. Learn how to grow organically here.

Don't Eat This Shit

Because eating Genetically Modified Organisms pretending to be food will. kill. you.  And destroy the ability of farmers to grow real food.

 

From Firedoglake:

If this list making the rounds on the internets is accurate, it’s small wonder CA’s GMO-labelling ballot initiative is being fought so hard. Here’s a shopping guide for non-GMO foods that you can download. Here’s another non-GMO list.

Secret Franken-Corn Coming to Your Nearest Walmart

If you still need a reason to start buying organic at your local farmer's market - or growing your own - here it is.

From Nation of Change: 

Like it or not, Monsanto’s genetically modified sweet corn will soon be arriving on grocery store shelves of the world’s largest retailer, Walmart Stores, Inc., and will not be labeled as such. Despite an onslaught of consumer pressure, the company confirmed late last week with the Chicago Tribune that it has no objection to selling the new crop of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GE) sweet corn.
Other retailers, including the grocery chains Safeway and Kroger, have not responded on the issue, however Whole Foods, Trader Joes and General Mills have all vowed to not carry or use the GE sweet corn. As the country’s largest grocery retailer, Walmart sells $129 billion worth of food a year, giving it unmatched power in shaping the food supply chain.

The GE sweet corn is the first consumer product developed by Monsanto that will go straight from the farm to the consumer’s plate, rather than first being processed into animal feed, sugars, oils, fibers and other ingredients found in a wide variety of conventional food. It is engineered to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, the active ingredient of which is glyphosate. The product is also designed to produce a Bt toxin that will kill insects that feed on the plant. Monsanto’s new sweet corn is being harvested in the Midwest, Northwest, Southeast and Texas. 

Genetically-engineered (GE) crops, or Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMO) pose an existential risk to the world's food supply.  GE crops' engineered resistance to pests and to herbicides permits the rise of super-weeds and super-bugs that cannot be controlled. GMO crop pollen drifts with the wind, contaminatng nearby fields and destroying organic farms.

Yet Monsanto's corporate control of U.S. politicians means we are not even allowed to know when we are buying or eating GE and GMO "food."

Labeling GE products is a crucial way to identify products containing GE ingredients in an effort to sway consumer demand. The European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia and China, require labeling for GE foods .... Enough signatures have been collected to put on the California ballot Prop 37—Genetically Engineered Foods. Mandatory Labeling. Initiative Statute—to require labeling of food produced with GE ingredients, and the industry is now fighting back with a well-funded campaign campaign. More information on the campaign for PROP 37 can be found at the California Right-to-Know website.

However, the only sure-fire way you can avoid the genetically modified food is to buy and support organic. Genetically modified crops are not permitted in organic food production. Researchers are continuing to discover the environmental and health benefits of eating and growing organic food.

GMO Foods to Avoid

The problem is that high-fructose corn syrup, made from the the single most genetically-modified plant on the planet, is an ingredient in almost every kind of processed food. That means ready-to-eat food, from chips to frozen pizza to fast food.  The key to avoiding GMO Frankenfood is to eat fresh, not processed, food. Eat locally-produced food. Eat certified organic food. and grow your own with heirloom (non-modified) seeds (available from seedsavers.org.)

 

Down with Tyranny:

Over the weekend Elizabeth Renter of the Natural Society warned us of the top 10 GMO foods to avoid. "Genetically modified foods," she explains, "have been shown to cause harm to humans, animals, and the environmental, and despite growing opposition, more and more foods continue to be genetically altered. It's important to note that steering clear from these foods completely may be difficult, and you should merely try finding other sources than your big chain grocer. If produce is certified USDA-organic, it's non-GMO (or supposed to be!) Also, seek out local farmers and booths at farmer's markets where you can be ensured the crops aren't GMO... With little regulation and safety tests performed by the companies doing the genetic modifications themselves, we have no way of knowing for certain what risks these lab-created foods pose to us outside of what we already know. The best advice: steer clear of them altogether."

Top 10 Worst GMO Foods

1. Corn: This is a no-brainer. If you've watched any food documentary, you know corn is highly modified. "As many as half of all U.S. farms growing corn for Monsanto are using genetically modified corn," and much of it is intended for human consumption. Monsanto's GMO corn has been tied to numerous health issues, including weight gain and organ disruption.

2. Soy: Found in tofu, vegetarian products, soybean oil, soy flour, and numerous other products, soy is also modified to resist herbicides. As of now, biotech giant Monsanto still has a tight grasp on the soybean market, with approximately 90 percent of soy being genetically engineered to resist Monsanto's herbicide Roundup. In one single year, 2006, 96.7 million pounds of glyphosate was sprayed on soybeans alone.

3. Sugar: According to NaturalNews, genetically-modified sugar beets were introduced to the U.S. market in 2009. Like others, they've been modified by Monsanto to resist herbicides. Monsanto has even had USDA and court-related issues with the planting of it's sugarbeets, being ordered to remove seeds from the soil due to illegal approval.

4. Aspartame: Aspartame is a toxic additive used in numerous food products, and should be avoided for numerous reasons, including the fact that it is created with genetically modified bacteria.

Read the whole thing.