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:

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.

Terrorist Insects and the Poisoning of Western Kentucky

If you live in Western Kentucky, get the fuck out of there this weekend, and take all your animals with you, while waiving bye-bye to your vegetable garden. I mean it. Ag Commissioner Jaime Comer has declared mosquitos a terrorist threat beside which Al Qaeda pales in comparison, and he's gonna poison those motherfuckers to death.

No matter how many human beings get poisoned, too.

How do I know he's using a poison that will harm people? Because he's refusing to name it.

From the press release:

Agriculture Commissioner James Comer said the Kentucky Department of Agriculture will commit resources to conduct aerial mosquito control applications around Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley in an effort to knock down a significant infestation caused by heavy rains in the area. Department officials met with representatives of Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration last week, and the group put together a plan to address the problem.

“This infestation is beyond the capability of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture to control from the ground,” Comer said. “This is a serious problem for our friends in western Kentucky, and we want them to know that help is on the way.”

SNIP

As a result of the entomologist’s report, the Department of Agriculture will work with private contractors — Clarke, a global environmental products and services company based in Roselle, Ill., and Dynamic Aviation of Bridgewater, Va. — to spray an area within two miles around the lakes between the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers to the north and U.S. 68 to the south. The total area to be treated is approximately 133,249 acres. Product will be applied at a rate of 0.8 ounce per acre.

"Product." Might we know the name of this "product." No. Its active ingredients? No.  The information on its Material Data Sheet supplied to emergency response teams regarding its toxicity and danger of exposure? NO.

No special precautions are necessary during the application, according to Clarke, but the company encourages residents with individual health concerns to contact their healthcare providers.

Like I said, Get. Out. Of. There.

SNIP

Comer will appear at a town hall meeting in Trigg County next week to discuss the department’s plan and answer questions from the public. Roger Thomas with the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy and numerous other state and local officials also will attend. The meeting will take place on July 2 at 9 a.m. CDT at the Renaissance Center in Cadiz.

HAHAHAHAHA. The spraying begins Jun 29!  Day after tomorrow! Three days BEFORE this meeting, at which the public will have no questions because it will be Too. Fucking. Late.

Wonder why in 10 grafs Comer found plenty of room for specious claims about the pesticide's safety, but not room for a single word - the name of the pesticide.  Could it be because it's this one?

In our focus on energy, let’s not forget the joy of pesticides. Certainly people in Wilsonville, Oregon won’t forget:

Target shoppers in Wilsonville, Oregon found a tragedy in the parking lot as tens of thousands of of bumble bees were found dead and dying on the pavement, along with honey bees and ladybugs. Shoppers notified Rich Hatfield, a conservation biologist with the Portland-based Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, who went to the scene to investigate.

Oregon officials say preliminary results point to an insecticide that was used on the nearby European Linden trees. The trees were sprayed with a pesticide called Safari to kill aphids, an insect that destroys plants and vegetation. Safari is part of a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids that are known to kill pollinators such as bumblebees, Associated Press reports. The investigation is still under way. If the pesticide is the confirmed cause and it wasn’t used according to the label instructions, civil penalties could be handed down ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per violation for gross negligence or willful misconduct, Dale Mitchell, program manager in the Agriculture Department’s pesticide compliance and enforcement section, told AP.

Why is this pesticide even legal? But hey, I’m sure that a pesticide that kills 50,000 bees has no effect on humans. So. Much. Confidence.

Fifty years ago, Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, referred to pesticides and herbicides as biocides, literally "life-killer," because they kill living things.

If you're a living thing, stay the fuck out of Western Kentucky this weekend. 

Can't Escape Monsanto's Poison

Wonder what happened to all the butterflies? They've been Roundup-ed.

Mike Barrett at Truthout:

Monsanto’s Roundup, containing the active ingredient glyphosate, has been tied to more health and environmental problems than you could imagine. Similar to how pesticides have been contributing to the bee decline, Monsanto’s Roundup has been tied to the decrease in the population of monarch butterflies by killing the very plants that the butterflies rely on for habitat and food. What’s been shown to be an even greater threat to the population, though, is Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn and soybeans.

A 2011 study published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity found that increasing acreage of genetically modified Roundup Ready corn and soybeans is heavily contributing to the decline in monarch butterfly populations within North America. Milkweed, a plant butterflies rely on for habitat and food, is being destroyed by the heavy use of glyphosate-based pesticides and Roundup Ready crops. Over the past 17 years, the monarch butterfly population in central Mexico has declined, reaching an all-time low in 2009-2010.

“This milkweed has disappeared from at least 100 million acres of these row crops,” said Dr. Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas and director of the research and conservation program Monarch Watch. “Your milkweed is virtually gone…this [glyphosate use on RR crops] is the one main factor that has happened…you look at parts of the Midwest where there is a tremendous use of these crops and you see monarch populations dropping. It’s hard to deny the conclusion.”

According to the Department of Agriculture, in 2011 94 percent of soybeans and 72 percent of corn grown in the United States were herbicide-tolerant. Due to this increase, the amount of Roundup used on crops in 2007 was 5 times higher than in 1997, only one year after Roundup Ready crops were available.

Another study published int he journal Crop Protection and conducted by Robert G Hartzler, an agronomist at Iowa State, found that milkweed on farms in Iowa declined 90 percent from 1999 to 2009. Additionally, his study found milkweed only on 8 percent of corn and soybean fields surveyed in 2009, which is 51 percent lower than in 1999.

Although the butterfly population may be suffering, humans are taking heat from Monsanto’s creations as well. Past research has shown that Monsanto’s Roundup ready crops are leading to mental illness and obesity, primarily by destroying the amount of good bacteria found in the gut. The corporation’s Roundup, containing glyphosate, has also been shown to cause infertility and birth defects.

Glyphosate is so present today that it has been found to be polluting the world’s drinking water through the widespread contamination of aquifers, wells, and springs. What may be most shocking is that very high concentrations of glyphosate have been found in 100 percent of urine samples tested in a recent study.

Find options here.

Just Say No to the Pesticide Pusher

Unfortunately, not all of the 15 stalled nominees President Obama appointed during the Senate's easter recess were worthy of their new jobs. Fortunately, the appointment lasts only until the end of the year, unless the Senate approves it.

Tell the Senate to reject the Pesticide Pusher.

While many applauded President Obama's long-awaited recess appointments on March 27, agricultural activists slammed his decision to appoint "pesticide pusher" Islam Siddiqui as the chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the US trade representative. Siddiqui is currently vice president for science and regulatory affairs for CropLife America, a global agribusiness lobbying group representing Monsanto, DuPont, Dow and other pesticide corporations.

In March 2009 these companies urged first lady Michelle Obama to reconsider her decision banning the use of pesticides in her organic White House garden. In August 2005 they petitioned the EPA to use children in pesticide experiments--a move that prompted environmental groups to sue the EPA for failing to protect children. As an official at the USDA, Siddiqui oversaw the first proposed federal standards for organics. But when those rules allowed genetically modified organisms, irradiation and toxic sludge, the USDA received 300,000 public comments in protest, and only then tightened the standards.

Last year Siddiqui's appointment stalled when 90,000 people and more than eighty consumer advocacy groups objected to his appointment. This year at least 110 organizations, spearheaded by the Pesticide Action Network and the National Family Farm Coalition, have once again urged the Senate to reject his appointment, in the interest of "family farmers, farmworkers, consumers and the planet."

Personally, if DuPont, Monsanto, Dow and their murdering brethren endorsed fresh air, I'd start living in the basement.