The Voice of Global Health Freedom™
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
Ban ALL GMOs. GMOs are untested, unsafe and dangerous: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2049
Donate to keep Health Freedom Free: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189
Interesting Bloomberg article yesterday entitled, Big Bucks at Stake. What is remarkable is what Bloomberg recommends in the article… But first some background. The United States FDA approves GMO foods and feeds without any safety testing of significance. Early on in the process of releasing GMOs, the company which owns the patented gene provides the FDA with whatever edited data it chooses to show that the organism in is “safe”, no matter how weak, contrived or meaningless that data is.
No further safety testing is carried out by the FDA, nor are further safety data reviewed, IF they exist.
But, in the largest involuntary human experiment ever conducted, with zero informed consent possible, the world’s food, as it comes through the US food system, its seed system and its feed system, is contaminated with unlabeled, un-traceable GMOs. Any long term (or, for that matter, short term) effects will never be known because who is eating what GMO gene, promoter virus or bacterial marker sequence is totally unknowable. This is the effect of FDA refusing to require “truthful and not misleading” GMO labeling. In deed, the agency, in a true display of the arrogance of power, believes it has authority to censor even “GMO Free” labels!
At the forthcoming Codex Alimentarius Committee on Food Labeling (May 3-7, Quebec City, Canada), the US will, once again, use it might, military and economic power, to try to prevent GMO labeling anywhere in the world.
The article below neatly sums up many of the dangers we are facing if we allow GMO crops and animals, foods and feeds, to exist in our world. Because their DNA is unstable and contagious, there is, in fact, no long-term co-existence possible between non genetically modified plants, animals, insects and, indeed, people, and the modified ones. Does any company have the right to modify the genetic make up of the planet for profit and control? The Biotech industry, of which Monsanto is a particularly horrifying example (but whose horrors are shared by Bayer Crop Sciences, Syngenta, Pioneer, DuPont, Pfizer and a host of others) believe that they have bought that right by patenting genes. The science upon which these patents rest is totally inaccurate and invalid. None the less, the practice will continue unless, and until, nations and individuals take the science seriously and ban or boycott anything which contains GMO or has been fed GMO, is made with, by or trough GMO technology or profits the companies which own these patents.
But to voluntarily boycott these “Franken Foods” we need to know what products contain GMOs and what products are GMO Free. We pledge to do our due diligence best effort to recommend only GMO free products to help support the work of the Foundation.
There is little time left for those of us who believe that genes cannot be patented (since they are not “new and useful” inventions, but rather simply recombinations of existing DNA data, available in nature and free for anyone to discover) and that the biosphere itself must not be contaminated.
Through Big BioTech’s enormous marketing propaganda campaigns, which include providing large funding (through fees and grants) to industry, government and university scientists alike, tainting them all with unresolved conflicts of interest, it is very difficult to find unbiased information and Codex Alimentarius, of course, contributes to this condition by continually permitting ever-growing encroachments by industrial toxins and the like into the food chain.
Click this the link below to join global voices for a total ban on all Genetically Modified Organisms. Please take this action once for each member of your family and pass it along to every person you know, urging them to do the same.
Action Item: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2049
And please remember that the Natural Solutions Foundation depends on your tax deductible donations to continue our vital work for Health Freedom. Click below to set up a recurring tax deductible donation: Once your health freedom is gone, there will be no way to buy it back. Now is the time to share resources to keep health freedom free.
Donate here: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189
There is a great deal that you, as an individual, can do about this direct threat to your health and future, and the future of your children. The first thing you can do is voice your rejection of contaminated foods and corrupt policies which permit and promote them.
If you are not already a member (or if you’ve not been receiving a regular weekly email from us, suggesting that your email provider may be blocking us) please join our Natural Solutions Foundation’s Health Freedom Action eAlert.
Sign up on our Home Page: www.HealthFreedomUSA.org or www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org).
The second action you can take is with your wallet: Make sure that you do not support GMO goods or companies that make it.
The third action, equally as critical as the previous two, is to disseminate this information. Contact Kathy Greene, our Volunteer Coordinator, at Kathy.Greene@usa.net and ask her for an Organizer’s Handbook, filed with helpful information about getting the word out to people who need to hear it.
Thanks for your activism. No one on the planet deserves to have their world contaminated and degraded for greed, by a hand full of ruthless death merchants.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
The Dr. Rima Network
www.DrRima.net
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
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www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
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Big Bucks at Stake
April 24, 2010 Bloomberg reports:
“At stake are the costs to farmers who produce $80.3 billion a year in corn and soybeans, used in products ranging from Coca-Cola to cattle feed to ethanol. “Monsanto has become such a dominant player in the seed business that producers have real concerns that the price they pay for seed is going to be anywhere near reasonable,” said John Crabtree, a spokesman for the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska, a nonprofit group that provides services to farm communities. “The fear is that the sky’s the limit.”
These fears are not unfounded when you consider that prices on everything from the seed to the obligatory fertilizers and pesticides that are required to make the GM seeds “grow properly” have skyrocketed.
According to a report by Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center in Boulder, Colorado, the influx of genetically modified seed has steadily ratchet prices upward. Seed used to be fairly inexpensive, in large part due to the practice of planting seed collected and saved from the previous year. With GE seeds, this ancient farming practice is no longer employed and farmers must buy new seed each year.
The 2009 Organic Center report, titled The Magnitude and Impacts of the Biotech and Organic Seed Price Premium, states that farmers who purchase Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 soybeans in 2010 will pay 42 percent more per bag than they paid just last year.
This is in stark contrast to the overall rise in soybean seed prices over the last 25 years, which was 63 percent. Between the years of 1975 and 1997, soybean farmers spent four to eight percent of their farm income on seeds. Last year, those who planted GE soybeans spent 16.4 percent of their income on seeds.
The story is the same for GM corn growers, who will pay just over twice the amount for the latest eight-trait “SmartStax” corn seed, compared to those planting conventional seeds. And GE cotton seed now cost nearly 6 times more than conventional. The report shows that the GE seed price premiums FAR exceed the organic seed price premium, across the board, for various crops. This should be an eye opener for anyone who still believes genetically engineered crops are the way to inexpensively feed the world… [Emphasis added - REL]
The only one who is truly benefiting, it seems, is Monsanto, who ended their fiscal year in 2009 with revenue of $11.7 billion. Over $7 billion of that came from sales and licensing of seeds and seed genes. [Emphasis added - REL]
So, is growing GM crops REALLY in the best financial interest of most farmers? Or are they simply being hoodwinked by fancy marketing that promises increased yield and reduced pestilence? Benbrook asks the same question, and has called for further studies to evaluate whether or not GM crop yields warrant the disproportionate difference in price. If previous studies are any indication, I believe the answer is no.
GM Crops Yield Unimpressive Results
In reality, GM crops create previously unimaginable profits for sub-par performance when compared to conventional or organic crops. And when you review the potential danger these crops pose to human and environmental health, the list is so disturbing you could easily say we’re all paying for poison when we buy GM food products. [Emphasis added - REL]
After 30 years of GMO experimentation, the data to shows [All emphasis added below - REL]:
* No increase in yields; on the contrary GM soya has decreased yields by up to 20 percent compared with non-GM soya. Up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton have been recorded in India. And studies >by scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia in 2008 found that growing GM cotton in the U.S. can result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent.
* No reduction in pesticides use; on the contrary, USDA data shows that GM crops have increased pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the U.S., and the use of glyphosate [Most frequently marketed as Monsanto's dangerous herbicide, Roundup (c) - REL] went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds.
* Roundup (C) herbicide is lethal to frogs and toxic to human placental and embryonic cells. Roundup is used in more than 80 percent of all GM crops planted in the world.
* GM crops harm wildlife, as revealed by UK and U.S. studies
* Bt resistant pests and Roundup tolerant superweeds render the two major GM crop traits useless. The evolution of Bt resistant boll-worms worldwide have been confirmed and documented.
* Vast areas of forests, pampas and cerrados have been lost to GM soya in Latin America.
* Epidemic of suicides in the cotton belt of India.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, more than
182,900 Indian farmers took their own lives between 1997 and 2007 as
a result of failed GM crops. It estimates 46 Indian farmers commit
suicide every day.
* Transgene contamination is completely unavoidable,
as science has recently revealed that the genome (whether plant,
animal or human) is NOT constant and static, which is the scientific
base for genetic engineering of plants and animals. Instead,
geneticists have discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic
and changeable, and constantly ‘conversing’ and adapting to the
environment. This interaction determines which genes are turned on,
when, where, by what and how much, and for how long. They’ve also
found that the genetic material itself has the ability to be changed
according to experience, passing it on to subsequent generations.
* GM food and feed linked to deaths and sicknesses both in the fields in India and in lab tests around the world.
How Can YOU Stop Monsanto from Ruling, and Ruining, the Food Supply?
Allowing Monsanto to monopolize the market could have lethal consequences for all of us. Because not only is Monsanto doing what it can to eliminate competition from other agricultural biotech products, their end game is to do away with conventional seeds, period. As I’ve discussed in many previous articles, this is a threat to human civilization and would spell disaster for the entire planet. Fortunately, you don’t have to be directly involved in the legal or political end of the battle.
You, as an ordinary citizen, still have the power to make perhaps an even GREATER difference in how business will pan out for Monsanto – by steering the market demand toward non-GMO crops and foods. Every time you choose to buy a non-GMO product over a product that contains GM ingredients, you are making a dent in the empire that is Monsanto.
While you’re waiting for the leaders of the world to catch up, take advantage of local sources of organic foods as often as you can. You can also avoid GM foods by:
* Reducing or Eliminating Processed Foods. Some 75 percent of processed foods contain GM ingredients. Use the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, available for free at www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.
* Read produce and food labels. When looking at a product label, if any ingredients such as corn flour and meal, dextrin, starch, soy sauce, margarine, and tofu (to name a few) are listed, there’s a good chance it has come from GM corn or soy,unless it bears the USDA organic seal.
* Buy organic produce. Buying organic is currently the best way to ensure that your food has not been genetically modified.
Note: All Emphasis Added – REL