Tag Archives: GMO’s

GMO Trees

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Check out this video on GMO trees, what they are, how they are, and think about it.  oH, and as always, do the research:

Video Information

The largely unknown potential danger to human health and the environmental health of our planet posed by the planned introduction of genetically engineered trees is explored in “Silent Forest.” Narrated by Dr. David Suzuki, the film lays out, in compelling detail, the dangers of open-air plantations of these untested man-made trees. And the added problem of intellectual property rights. “A Silent Forest” is a wake-up call to the dangers of genetic engineering of trees and the impact it could have on all of us.

 

http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=CB069DB645440DF9AF4E74E8BA4C5E77

 

from:    http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=CB069DB645440DF9AF4E74E8BA4C5E77

GMO’s & Organ Damage

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3 Approved GMOs Connected to Organ Damage

15th January 2012

By Rady Ananda – foodfreedom.wordpress.com

In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.

Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn – Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 – were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. The data used for this approval, ironically, is the same data that independent researchers studied to make the organ damage link.

The Committee of Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen obtained Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats after a European court made it public in 2005.

The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.

Although different levels of adverse impact on vital organs were noticed between the three GMOs, the 2009 research shows specific effects associated with consumption of each, differentiated by sex and dose.

Their December 2009 study appears in the International Journal of Biological Sciences (IJBS). This latest study conforms with a 2007 analysis by CRIIGEN on Mon 863, published in Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, using the same data.

Monsanto rejected the 2007 conclusions, stating:

“The analyses conducted by these authors are not consistent with what has been traditionally accepted for use by regulatory toxicologists for analysis of rat toxicology data.”

[Also see Doull J, Gaylor D, Greim HA, et al. “Report of an expert panel on the reanalysis by Séralini et al. (2007) of a 90-day study conducted by Monsanto in support of the safety of a genetically modified corn variety (MON 863).” Food Chem Toxicol. 2007; 45:2073-2085.]

In an email to me, Séralini explained that their study goes beyond Monsanto’s analysis by exploring the sex-differentiated health effects on mammals, which Doull, et al. ignored:

“Our study contradicts Monsanto conclusions because Monsanto systematically neglects significant health effects in mammals that are different in males and females eating GMOs, or not proportional to the dose. This is a very serious mistake, dramatic for public health. This is the major conclusion revealed by our work, the only careful reanalysis of Monsanto crude statistical data.”

Other problems with Monsanto’s conclusions

When testing for drug or pesticide safety, the standard protocol uses three mammalian species. The subject studies only used rats, yet won GMO approval in more than a dozen nations.

Chronic problems are rarely discovered in 90 days; most often such tests run for up to two years. Tests “lasting longer than three months give more chances to reveal metabolic, nervous, immune, hormonal or cancer diseases,” wrote Seralini, et al. in their Doull rebuttal. [See “How Subchronic and Chronic Health Effects can be Neglected for GMOs, Pesticides or Chemicals.” IJBS; 2009; 5(5):438-443.]

Further, Monsanto’s analysis compared unrelated feeding groups, muddying the results. The June 2009 rebuttal explains, “In order to isolate the effect of the GM transformation process from other variables, it is only valid to compare the GMO … with its isogenic non-GM equivalent.”

The researchers conclude that the raw data from all three GMO studies reveal novel pesticide residues will be present in food and feed and may pose grave health risks to those consuming them.

They have called for “an immediate ban on the import and cultivation of these GMOs and strongly recommend additional long-term (up to two years) and multi-generational animal feeding studies on at least three species to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods.”

Human health, of course, is of primary import to us, but ecological effects are also in play. Ninety-nine percent of GMO crops either tolerate or produce insecticide. This may be the reason we see bee colony collapse disorder and massive butterfly deaths. If GMOs are wiping out Earth’s pollinators, they are far more disastrous than the threat they pose to humans and other mammals.

Further Reading

Health Risks of GM Foods, Jeffrey M. Smith
Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops, Union of Concerned Scientists
Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years, The Organic Center

About the Author

Holding a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture, Rady Ananda’s work has appeared in several online and print publications. Using years of editorial experience and web publishing, Rady now promotes the ideas and work of a select group of quality writers and artists at Food Freedom and COTO Report.

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2012/01/15/3-approved-gmos-connected-to-organ-damage/

Round Up Resistant Super Weeds

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Monsanto Defeated by Super Weeds

Posted By Dr. Mercola | December 13 2011 | 24,456 views

By Dr. Mercola

Twenty-one weed species around the world are now resistant to glyphosate, up from zero in 1996 — the year Monsanto started marketing its genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops.

Glyphosate, now the world’s bestselling weed killer and the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is emerging as one of the most dangerous Monsanto products to date, in part because super weeds are emerging at an alarming rate.

A briefing by GM Freeze noted that in the United States, the worst-affected country (which is not surprising since the U.S. also leads the world in GM crop acreage), 13 resistant weed species cover more than 11 million acres, mostly those planted with Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, corn and cotton crops.

The weeds are not only making Monsanto’s promises that their GM crops would reduce pesticide use completely laughable — since farmers are being forced to use multiple, and more, pesticides to keep weeds in their GM crops under control — but also are turning out to be a very big thorn in Monsanto’s proverbial side; one that ironically might turn out to threaten the very GM crops that created them.

Investors Warned About Monsanto’s Super Weeds

As GM Freeze reported, one investment company is now advising its clients to sell Monsanto shares because of the company’s problems with weed resistance, which are arguably set to snowball even further out of control in the very near future. Monsanto’s competitors, biotech giants like Dow and Bayer CropScience, are chomping at the bit to take over where Monsanto has failed, and already have released GM seeds with tolerance to multiple herbicides designed to be used on their own or in rotation with Roundup Ready crops in a last-ditch attempt to delay resistance from developing.

(No word yet on how these companies intend to deal with the new generation of super weeds that will inevitably develop in response to the new herbicide cocktail … )

So this dark cloud’s silver lining is the fact that, with super weeds becoming an undeniable threat that can no longer be ignored, the powers that be may be forced to acknowledge that GM crops are not all they’ve been cracked up to be. And Monsanto is also being shaken to its core by the grand scope of this environmental catastrophe.

GM Freeze reported:

“Monsanto is taking the problem of the rapid development of glyphosate resistance very seriously, as it represents a threat to their main sources of income.

… Monsanto has embarked on major changes in weed management in RR crops, which still includes the use of glyphosate on its own, but also in combination with other herbicides. This is increasing herbicide usage on these crops. So instead of the promised decrease in pesticide use on GM crops, the arrival of resistant weeds has resulted in herbicide use increasing on RR crops. Analysis of USDA data has found increases in herbicide use in all the crops where RR maize, cotton and soyabeans varieties dominate.

… Previous attempts to control resistant weeds by increasing the rate at which glyphosate is applied have proved unsuccessful, yet Monsanto appears to have no intention of taking responsibility for the failure of their technology.”

GM Crops Have Failed to Deliver … and That’s an Extreme Understatement

Herbicide tolerant (Roundup Ready) GM crops were supposed to control weeds and GM Bt crops were intended to control pests. Instead of controlling weeds and pests, GM crops have led to the emergence of super weeds and super pests

And despite claims that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will lower the levels of chemicals (pesticides and herbicides) used, this clearly has not been the case. This is of great concern both because of the negative impacts of these chemicals on ecosystems and humans, and because there is the danger that increased chemical use will cause increasing numbers of pests and weeds to develop resistance, requiring even more chemicals in order to attempt to manage them.

According to Jeffrey Smith with the Institute for Responsible Technology, by 2004 farmers used an estimated 86 percent more herbicides on GM soy fields compared to non-GM fields. Unfortunately, Monsanto’s plan to circumvent the inevitable development of more superweeds is to douse fields with more and more chemicals.

The Institute of Science in Society reported:

“As Einstein famously quoted, ‘no problem can be solved with the same consciousness that created it.’ That is precisely what Monsanto is doing: advocating more and more herbicides to be used. New guidance published by the company to manage resistance includes:

  • The use of a cocktail of pesticides including 2,4-D, prior to sowing crop seeds
  • The production of GM seeds expressing tolerance to more than one pesticide. DuPont has already commercialised seeds tolerant to glyphosate and glufosinate. Monsanto has recently announced an agreement with the German pesticide and biotechnology company BASF to develop crops stacked with glyphosate and dicamba tolerant genes
  • The use of herbicides that remains active in the soil, killing any seedlings as they germinate, including sulfentrozone

The consequences of increasing herbicide use are likely to put the environment and people at further risk.”

Why Glyphosate is a Health and Environmental Disaster

Glyphosate is the world’s bestselling weed killer, and it’s found in more than 30 percent of all herbicides — an extremely disturbing scenario considering the data showing it to be an immense threat to human health and the environment.

GM expert Jeffrey Smith has reported that glyphosate promotes the formation of certain types of fungi that are dangerous to people and contaminate food and animal feed. One such fungi, the Fusarium fungus, has been linked to plague epidemics, cancer, infertility and animal diseases. Residues of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide found in GM food and feed have also been linked to cell damage and death, even at very low levels. Researchers have also found it causes membrane and DNA damage, and inhibits cell respiration.

And in one animal study, rats given 1,000 mg/kg of glyphosate resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate, and skeletal alterations were observed in over 57 percent of fetuses!

Research published last year shows that glyphosate causes birth defects in frogs and chicken embryos at far lower levels than used in agricultural and garden applications.

The malformations primarily affected the:

  • Skull
  • Face
  • Midline and developing brain
  • Spinal cord

Other independent scientific research has also found that glyphosate causes:

Endocrine disruption DNA damage
Developmental toxicity Neurotoxicity
Reproductive toxicity Cancer
Liver Damage Kidney Damage

 

Many of these effects were apparent at much lower doses than the typical levels of pesticide residues found in food … Yet despite the evidence of widespread human exposure, which strongly suggests that the precautionary principle should be applied, regulators are turning a blind eye.

for more, go to:    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/13/monsanto-defeated-by-super-weeds.aspx?e_cid=20111213_DNL_art_2

Some Resources for Health Action

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From Dr. Mercola’s Newsletter, here are a few organizations that are working to promote health awareness and safety:

Consumers for Dental Choice

The Consumers for Dental Choice (toxicteeth.org) is a nonprofit corporation established in 1996 by consumer advocates, mercury poisoning victims, scientists, and mercury-free dentists. It aims to educate the public about the health and environmental dangers of mercury fillings and to ensure better government oversight on amalgam. Part of its education work is demanding the full flow of non-deceptive information between dentists and their patients, including helping put an end to the American Dental Association’s notorious “gag rule” that attempts to silence mercury-free dentists, and to the promotion of mercury amalgam under the misleading term “silver.”

Charles BrownCharles G. Brown is National Counsel, Consumers for Dental Choice. Formerly Attorney General of West Virginia. His legal expertise covers antitrust, consumer protection, administrative, and government relations. Brown is a Yale Law graduate, author of First Get Mad, then Get Justice: The Handbook for Crime Victims, and editor of The Sherman Brigade Marches South: The Civil War Memoirs of Colonel Robert Carson Brown, which was penned by his great-grandfather.

Mercury amalgams, so-called “silver fillings,” are one of the primary sources of toxic mercury exposure in consumers. To learn more about the dangers of this archaic practice, and support our ongoing efforts to eliminate this neurotoxin from dentistry around the world, please join us on Facebook!

 

Organic Consumers Association

Organic Consumers AssociationThe Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots 501(c)3 public interest organization promoting health, justice, and sustainability. It prides itself as the only organization in the United States focused on promoting the views and interests of the country’s estimated 76 million organic and socially responsible consumers. The OCA participates in the important issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children’s health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability, and other key topics

.

Ronnie CumminsRonnie Cummins is the founder and Director of the Organic Consumers Association. He has been a writer and activist since the 1960s, with massive expertise in human rights, anti-war, anti-nuclear, consumer, labor, environmental, and sustainable agricultural areas. He is the author of several published articles, a children’s book series called Children of the World, and Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers.

Organic food is ‘real food,’ and as such, the Organic Alternative is a matter of survival.

luoride Action Network

Fluoride Action NetworkThe Fluoride Action Network (FAN), founded in May 2000, aims to broaden public awareness on the toxicity of fluoride compounds and the health impacts of current fluoride exposures. It brings comprehensive, up-to-date information on fluoride issues to scientists, policymakers, and citizens, along with vigilantly monitoring government action that may affect the public’s fluoride exposure. Its work has been cited by Scientific American, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, National Public Radio, and Prevention Magazine, and other national media outlets.

Dr. Paul ConnettDr. Paul Connett is the Executive Director of the Fluoride Action Network. He is a Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence University in New York and is a co-author of The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There.

Communities that fluoridate their municipal water supplies purposely disseminate a toxic drug to entire populations, without regard for differences in age or health status, and most importantly, without individual consent

National Vaccine Information Center

National Vaccine Information CenterFounded in 1982, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is a national charitable, non-profit educational organization. NVIC launched the vaccine safety and informed consent movement in America in the early 1980s and its three decade mission has been to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and protect the informed consent ethic in medicine. NVIC monitors vaccine reactions, research, development, regulation, policy-making and legislation and works to protect vaccine exemptions in state health laws.

Barbara Loe FisherBarbara Loe Fisher is President of the National Vaccine Information Center, which she co-founded with parents of DPT vaccine injured children. A graduate of the University of Maryland, she worked as a writer and community relations professional at a teaching hospital before becoming a mother to three children. She is co-author of the seminal 1985 book DPT: A Shot in the Dark and author of The Consumer’s Guide to Childhood Vaccines and Vaccines, Autism & Chronic Inflammation: The New Epidemic. A video blog commentator for the NVIC Vaccine E-Newsletter and on Mercola.com, during the past 20 years she has served as a consumer member of vaccine advisory and stakeholder committees at the Food and Drug Administration, Institute of Medicine and Centers for Disease Control.

The right to voluntary informed consent to any medical intervention, including use of a pharmaceutical product such as a vaccine that can injure or kill you or your child, is a human right that must be protected at all cost.

for more information, and to see Dr. Mercola’s video, go to:    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/01/about-health-liberty.aspx?e_cid=20111001_DNL_art_1

More on Safety of GMO’s

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This Food Knowingly Causes Cancer in Rats – Are You Eating it?

Posted By Dr. Mercola | October 05 2011 |

By Dr. Mercola

When it comes to products with the potential to devastate the planet, Monsanto takes the cake.

This company has single-handedly created some of the most destructive products known to man, including polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, and dioxin (Agent Orange). They are also the world leader in genetically modified (GM) seeds — and if we don’t take action soon, the entire planet could soon become contaminated with these toxic seeds, leading to the complete destruction of the natural food supply.

United States Chooses to Ignore the Precautionary Principle, Embrace Monsanto’s GM Foods

Dr. Philip Bereano has spent the last three decades looking into genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in foods, crops, animals, and humans—both nationally, here in the United States, and internationally. His work led him to participate in the negotiation of two international treaties under the United Nations that dealt with issues relating to GMOs.

In my interview with him earlier this year, he shared his perspective on the safety of GM foods — or rather the lack thereof.

“First of all, we need to understand what we mean by the word safe. Actually, in terms of the academic literature, “safe” refers to “an acceptable level of risk.” It doesn’t refer to situations where there is no risk. Most of us drive in cars all the time and consider it to be safe even though we know that people are killed and injured in automobiles frequently. We have to understand that safe equals acceptable risk.

The problem with calling genetically engineered organisms safe is that there are no valid risk assessments being done on them. There is no research, really, being done into the health or environmental effects of a genetically engineered organism. Certainly no work that is published in the open peer-reviewed literature, or that isn’t proprietary. Corporations promoting these things claim that they have done research, but you can’t get any information on it because it’s all claimed to be proprietary.

Under what is known now as the precautionary principle—which is what your grandparents used to teach you about “looking before you leap”—the only prudent course of action is to NOT proceed with something which has potential risks and only potential benefits until you know a little bit more about it.”

The United States is one country, however, that has fully embraced GM foods on a regulatory level, and does not appear to have any intentions of following the precautionary principle. GM corn, soybeans, canola, and sugar beets have made their way into approximately 80 percent of current U.S. processed grocery store items, now that up to 90 percent of several U.S.grown crops are grown with genetically engineered seed.

So if you live in the United States, you have most certainly already been exposed to GM foods — most likely a lot of them.

Meanwhile, GM seeds are banned in Hungary, as they are in several other European countries, such as Germany and Ireland. These countries have chosen NOT to allow their land to be used as a testing ground in a massive uncontrollable experiment, which is essentially what the introduction of GM crops is.

Not surprisingly, according to information from Wikileaks, there are also indications that the U.S. State Department has been active in defending Monsanto in other countries, particularly in response to the French documentary, “The World According to Monsanto,” which condemned Monsanto’s criminal behavior.

Do You Know the Risks of GMOs?

GM foods are, from my perception, one of the most significant threats that we have against the very sustainability of the human race. Why? In a nutshell, these toxins are being linked to a growing repertoire of assaults against human health and the environment – and they are already migrating into fetal blood, which means future generations are now at risk.

Some GM crops, such as GM sugar beets and certain varieties of GM corn and soy, are engineered to withstand otherwise lethal doses of Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. Other GM crops, such as Bt corn, are designed to produce their own pesticide internally.

Earlier this year, Cry1Ab, a specific type of Bt toxin from GM crops, has for the first time been detected in human and fetal blood samples. It appears the toxin is quite prevalent, as upon testing 69 pregnant and non-pregnant women who were eating a typical Canadian diet (which included foods such as GM soy, corn and potatoes), researchers found Bt toxin in:

  • 93 percent of blood samples of pregnant women
  • 80 percent of fetal blood samples
  • 69 percent of non-pregnant women blood samples

According to Jeffrey Smith:

“There’s already plenty of evidence that the Bt-toxin produced in GM corn and cotton plants is toxic to humans and mammals and triggers immune system responses. The fact that it flows through our blood supply, and that is passes through the placenta into fetuses, may help explain the rise in many disorders in the US since Bt crop varieties were first introduced in 1996.

In government-sponsored research in Italy, mice fed Monsanto’s Bt corn showed a wide range of immune responses. Their elevated IgE and IgG antibodies, for example, are typically associated with allergies and infections. The mice had an increase in cytokines, which are associated with “allergic and inflammatory responses.”

As you may know, chronic inflammation is at the root of many increasingly common diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease. Food allergies are also skyrocketing, as is infertility, which could also be a potential side effect of GM foods, based on results from animal studies. Monsanto insists that GM foods are no different from conventionally grown varieties, but the research does NOT support this claim. Here is just a sampling of the unsavory findings associated with GM foods:

to read more and see the videos, go to:   http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/05/has-any-company-ever-harmed-the-planet-more-than-this.aspx?e_cid=20111005_DNL_art_1

Organic Seed Growers take on Monsanto

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ORGANIC FARMERS AND SEED SELLERS SUE MONSANTO TO PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM PATENTS ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED SEED
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Preemptive Action Seeks Ruling That Would Prohibit Monsanto From Suing Organic Farmers and Seed Growers If Contaminated By Roundup Ready Seed

NEW YORK – March 29, 2011 – On behalf of 60 family farmers, seed businesses and organic agricultural organizations, the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed suit today against Monsanto Company to challenge the chemical giant’s patents on genetically modified seed.  The organic plaintiffs were forced to sue preemptively to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement should they ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed, something Monsanto has done to others in the past.

The case, Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto, was filed in federal district court in Manhattan and assigned to Judge Naomi Buchwald.  Plaintiffs in the suit represent a broad array of family farmers, small businesses and organizations from within the organic agriculture community who are increasingly threatened by genetically modified seed contamination despite using their best efforts to avoid it.  The plaintiff organizations have over 270,000 members, including thousands of certified organic family farmers.

to read more, go to:    http://www.osgata.org/march-29-2011-osgata-press-release