GMO allowed by FDA

Wait, Did the USDA Just Deregulate All New Genetically Modified Crops?

It's a hoary bureaucratic trick, making a controversial announcement on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend, when most people are daydreaming about what beer to buy on the way home from work, or are checking movie times online. But that's precisely what the US Department of Agriculture pulled last Friday.


In an innocuous-sounding press release titled "USDA Responds to Regulation Requests Regarding Kentucky Bluegrass," agency officials announced their decision not to regulate a "Roundup Ready" strain of Kentucky bluegrass—that is, a strain genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate, Monsanto's widely used herbicide, which we know as Roundup. The maker of the novel grass seed, Scotts Miracle Gro, is now free to sell it far and wide. So you'll no doubt be seeing Roundup Ready bluegrass blanketing lawns and golf courses near you—and watching anal neighbors and groundskeepers literally dousing the grass in weed killer without fear of harming a single precious blade.


Which is worrisome enough. But even more worrisome is the way this particular product was approved. According to Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Food and Environment Program, the documents released by the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) along with the announcement portend a major change in how the feds will deal with genetically modified crops.


Notably, given the already-lax regulatory regime governing GMOs (genetically modified organisms, click here for a primer), APHIS seems to be ramping down oversight to the point where it is essentially meaningless. The new regime corresponding with the bluegrass announcement would "drastically weaken USDA’s regulation," Gurian-Sherman told me. "This is perhaps the most serious change in US regs for [genetically modified] crops for many years."

First it was soybeans.  Now Kentucky Bluegrass.  Next?  Every single seed/crop known to man.

This makes sense?

USDA Outsources Biotech Crop Evaluation to the GMO Industry

The U.S. is already cultivating 165 million acres of genetically modified crops, up 7 million acres from just two years ago. Modified seeds and large monocultures in general, are monopolizing our nation's agriculture system like never before and crop after crop are deemed "safe" by the USDA. We're headed full speed down a dark, winding road and it seems we're driving blindfolded. And most recently, according to a story on Grist, the USDA is starting a new program which will outsource environmental impact statements on biotech crops to the GMO industry. Obviously, biotech companies are thrilled with the idea.


Once the industry conducts its own crop environmental impact statements, which will no doubt paint a glowing picture of each Round Up Ready gem, it will present the assessment to the USDA in the hopes that they will approve the assessment.

Can you say "fox guarding the henhouse?"

Why would this happen? Come on do you really have to ask - it's all about cash in the pocket.

As said before - we consumers will never win as long as the lobbyists and CEOs are in control of our nation.

If animals are threatened...

Monsanto's Roundup Ready Crops Contain Organism Causing Animal Miscarriages, Scientist Says

Recent research claims that Monsanto's Roundup Ready genetically modified crops contain an organism, previously unknown to science, that can cause miscarriages in farm animals. This disturbing find comes on the heels of Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack's decision to deregulate Roundup Ready Alfalfa (RRA). Roundup Ready is designed to survive Roundup, Monsanto's weed-killing chemical.


Purdue University's Emeritus Professor Don M. Huber presented the findings of the research, which observed the new organism using a 36,000X electron microscope. According to Treehugger, the organism can cause disease in both plants and animals, a rare feat.


Huber wrote an open letter to Vilsack requesting a moratorium on deregulating Roundup Ready crops. Huber states that Roundup Ready has a high concentration of an animal pathogen connected to "plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions." Huber finishes his letter by stating, "It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure."


A recent article in The Washington Post suggests that Roundup Ready Alfalfa is unnecessary and harmful to the farming community. When RRA is grown, reports suggest that weeds develop a resistant to Roundup. This has reportedly already happened to Roundup Ready corn, soybeans, and cottons. As The Washington Post remarks on GMOs, "You can't recall them the way you can a car or a plastic toy. They're out there for good. And no one knows what their full impact will be." Although the impact of Roundup Ready Alfalfa has now become disturbingly more apparent.

What threats to human life? Do we have to wait to find out? It's time to reverse Ag's decision.

Crazy train in the UK

Genetically modified crops are the key to human survival, says UK's chief scientist

Moves to block cultivation of genetically modified crops in the developing world can no longer be tolerated on ethical or moral grounds, the government's chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, has warned. He said the world faced "a perfect storm" of issues that could lead to widespread food shortages and public unrest over the next few decades. His warning comes in the wake of food riots in north Africa and rising global concern about mounting food prices.


"A number of very important factors are about to change our world," said Beddington, an expert in population biology. "Its population is rising by six million every month and will reach a total of around 9,000 million by 2050. At the same time, it is estimated that by 2030 more than 60% of the population will be living in cities and will no longer be involved in growing crops or raising domestic animals. And on top of that the world's population is getting more prosperous and able to pay for more food."


Beddington said these factors indicated that the world was going to need 40% more food, 30% more water and 50% more energy by the middle of the century – at a time when climate change was starting to have serious environmental impacts on the planet, flooding coastal plains, spreading deserts and raising temperatures. "We could cut down tropical rain forests and plant crops on the savannahs to grow more food, but that would leave us even more vulnerable to the impact of global warming and climate change. We needed these regions to help absorb carbon dioxide emissions, after all."


Beddington said humanity had to face the fact that every means to improve food production should now be employed, including widespread use of new biotechnological techniques in farming. He stressed that no harm should be inflicted on humans or the environment. His remarks were made in advance of publication tomorrow of a major report, "The Future of Food and Farming

Johnny, but they do inflict harm.
Wonder how much Monsanto is paying Johnny?

Doubletalking our way to death

UK Scientist Suggests Rebranding GM Crops As "Vaccinated" To Win Over Consumers

The latest face-palm absurdity concerning genetically modified crops: One of the UK's top agricultural scientists has floated the idea that GM crops should be rebranded as "vaccinated" or "inoculated" so that the public would embrace them more willingly.

Pollution will become dust. Cancer will become a slight infection. Death will be called a long sleep.

Blame the victim

Monsanto to fight potential lawsuit by organic farmer whose land ruined by GMOsCompose

Australian organic farmer Steve Marsh recently had his organic certification status pulled by the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia (NASAA) because his organic wheat field was contaminated by a nearby genetically-modified (GM) canola field. And after Marsh threatened to sue the GM farmer for the incident — which has cost Marsh his entire business, by the way — Monsanto, the owner of the GM canola, came out and said it would legally back the GM farmer “in any way [it] could.”

A previous NaturalNews report on the issue explains that GM canola materials blew from a nearby GM field about a mile away and contaminated over 540 acres of Marsh’s organic wheat fields (http://www.naturalnews.com/030686_G…). As a result, Marsh’s fields can no longer be considered organic due to very high standards in the Australian organic industry that hold a “zero tolerance” policy concerning contamination with foreign genetic material.


But rather than work towards prosecuting both the GM farmer and Monsanto for the environmental damage they caused, West Australia Minister for Agriculture and Food, Terry Redman, is instead going after the organic industry, urging it to modify its contamination standards to accommodate Monsanto.

Gee you think Monsanto dangled some bucks in front of Redman?

Stick to religion

Papal Science Advisors Say World's Poor Need GM Crops; Scientists Have Moral Duty to Develop Them

The Vatican's science advisors have come out in support of genetically modified crops, saying that they scientists have both the right and moral duty to produce them to help the world's poor, New Scientist reports. The 40 member group, led by the scientist who developed so-called golden rice which has extra vitamin A, said that there has not been one documented case where GM crops have harmed consumers or the environment....


Quoted in the original, Friends of the Earth is right on when it comments, "We need food and farming policies that put the needs of people before the profits of a handful of GMO companies."


Even if it can be conclusively proven that there is no environmental and health risk from specific GM crops, the inherently unbalanced and inequitable situation created by a small number of multinationals controlling so much of the world's food supply--and putting an end to the age-old and vitally important for sustainable food security practice of seed saving--remains an intractable problem.


It is no true or lasting help to the world's poor to develop GM crops that are drought-tolerant if it just continues to keep them perpetually indebted to corporate overlords.

Wonder how much stock the Vatican owns in Monsanto?

Know your food

Do We Have a Right to Know If Our Food Has Been Genetically Modified? You bet we have a right - and need - to know.

The FDA is close to approving genetically modified (gm) salmon. See this and this.
We know that at least some genetically modified foods may harm the environment.
And serious questions have been raised about whether some gm foods might increase allergies or cause other health problems in humans and other organisms. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Indeed, as Mother Jones pointed out last week, gm salmon may itself increase allergies:
Consumers Union senior scientist Michael Hansen called the company’s food safety tests “woefully incomplete,” and the group pointed out that the FDA approval panel is mostly comprised of GE [i.e. genetic engineering] cheerleaders, with no fish ecologists or allergists. Why’s an allergist important? Because the company’s own tests suggest that the new salmon could be much more allergenic than regular salmon.

Food protests around the world

GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard

Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants. In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Ignored by multinational corporations and corrupt public policy makers, citizens act to protect the food supply and the planet.
The French vineyard is the same field attacked last year when the plants were only cut. But the security features installed after that incident kept authorities at bay while the group accomplished its mission yesterday.

Imagine if this happened here. Agribusiness security forces would declare "terrorism"... But which is really the "terror" bomb - ripping out the plants or playing science/God with food?

Think small

Farmers to DOJ -- "Break up Big Ag"

While farmers were the star of the show at last Friday's antitrust hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the debate over the monopolization of farming is one where all of our interests are squarely at stake.


Anyone who eats and has a brain should be downright terrified that just a few giant businesses control the vast majority of food available to us as consumers. Perhaps that explains why more than 15,000 people submitted comments in anticipation of the hearings - four more of which are scheduled this year as a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.


Patrick Woodall, a research director for Food and Water Watch, and a panelist at the hearings said, "At the end of the day, farmers and activists could speak truth to power and delivered a tough message to the regulators that action was long overdue, it was time to bust the agribusiness trusts and level the playing field for farmers and consumers. Many audience members, like Marcia Ishii-Eiteman from Pesticide Action Network North America, also challenged the reliance on agrochemical inputs and the false hope of genetically modified crops."


U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, "This is not just about farmers and ranchers. It's really about the survival of rural America."


He's right, of course, but that's not just some romantic Rockwellesque notion; almost anyone who eats depends on a shrinking number of farmers struggling at the other end of our fork. If they disappear, our freedom to eat what we choose will vanish as well.

Support your local farmer....your local farmer's market...grow your own.

Eating healthy

Image via Wikipedia

How Can I Avoid Genetically Modified Foods?

This week's headline-grabbing news that agriculture giant Monsanto's genetically modified corn was found to cause organ failure in rats is sure to send panicked shoppers into an anti-frankenfood frenzy. The good news is that this is precisely the kind of damning study (GM corn + animals = death) that will help bring to light the potentially catastrophic consequences of scientifically altered crops. The bad news is that even those who see that light will have a difficult time completely boycotting genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as they've come to be known.

That's because GMOs aren't just limited to the foods we eat; they're also in the clothes we wear (cotton is one of the most prevalent GMO crops) and in the everyday household products we use. Those who buy giant jugs of distilled white vinegar to make DIY eco-friendly cleaning products might be interested to know that their vinegar may, in fact, be distilled from GMO corn. I say may, because if you live in the United States, there's no proof that the products you buy or the food you serve your children hasn't been genetically tampered with. While the EU, Japan, China, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand have labeling laws for GMO foods, there are no such requirements in the US, despite the fact that a 2008 CBS News poll found that an overwhelming 87 percent of Americans would like GMO foods to be labeled.

Several great solutions - buy organic, avoid processed/packaged foods, call Congress and ...

Beware the SCCC. No, it's not some new government agency (though maybe it should be). That stands for soy, cotton, canola, and corn, which are among the most common GMO crops. The statistics are startling: 91 percent of soy, 87 percent of cotton, 75 percent of canola, and 73 percent of corn crops grown in the US are GMO, according to the USDA. So unless the label specifically says organic, you can pretty much bet that any food or product you buy that contains any of the big four have been genetically changed. We're not just talking tofu and tortilla chips, either: It's the sheets on your bed, those potato chips fried in cottonseed oil, and the aspartame in your Diet Coke (made using a fermentation process that involves soy and corn).

And of course my solution - grow your own!

GMO - Oh No!

Image via Wikipedia

Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure

In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto's GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.


According to the study, which was summarized by Adam Shake at Twilight Earth, "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."

Lesson to be learned? Careful where you buy your food from. Careful where you buy your garden seeds from.