"Monsanto should not have to
vouchsafe the safety of biotech
food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto's
director of corporate
communications. "Our interest is in
selling as much of it as possible.
Assuring its safety is the FDA's
job." - New York Times, Oct.
25, 1998
"[GMO] Labeling advocates say
the issue is about transparency, not
safety. Scott Faber, head of the
national Just Label It campaign,
testified that consumers want to
know what they are buying and how
the food was produced. He said
advocates are not seeking a warning
label, but a “factual,
non-judgemental disclosure” on the
back of all food packages that
contain GMO ingredients.” Mary
Clare Jalonic,
Associated Press, December 14,
2014
“Glyphosate is the active
ingredient in Monsanto's flagship
herbicide, Roundup. 80% of GMO crops
are engineered to withstand Roundup
and GMO crops now make up 90% of the
United State's corn, soy, sugar,
canola, and cottonseed. Roundup is
also used as a desiccant (drying
agent) at harvest on 160
conventional crops. It is in our
soil, in our food, and in our
bodies.”
GMO Free Lancaster County
“… Monsanto literature regarding
Roundup encourages… farmers to
apply… Roundup applications on many
crops – including wheat, feed
barley, oats, canola, flax, peas,
lentils, and dry beans – right
before harvest….”
WashingtonsBlog, November
17, 2014
The technology of agricultural
genetic engineering (GE) is the
controversial practice of
gene-splicing and disrupting the
genetic blueprints of plants and
trees in a lab, to produce patented
seeds. The seeds are generally one
of two types. One type, which
includes Monsanto’s
Roundup-resistant crops, produces
plants that survive the spraying of
poisons, while all the other plants
around them die. The other type
produces a plant that manufactures
its own pest-killing poison,
designed to target a specific pest.
Contrary to what some in the biotech
industry and the media claim,
genetic engineering of plants is
not the same thing as selective
breeding, or hybridization. Genetic
modification involves inserting
foreign genetic material (DNA) into
an organism. Selective breeding does
not.
For two decades, Monsanto and its
cohorts (Syngenta, Dow, DuPont,
Bayer, and BASF) have been randomly
inserting the genes of one species
into a non-related species, or
genetically “interfering” with the
instructions of an organism’s
RNA—utilizing viruses,
antibiotic-resistant genes and
bacteria as vectors, markers and
promoters—to create gene-spliced
seeds and crops. Through
clever marketing, they’ve
captured the loyalty of North
America’s (and many other nations’)
chemical-intensive farmers, grain
traders and Junk Food corporations.
Fortunately, in the 28 member states
of the European Union, where GMOs
must be labeled and independently
safety-tested, there are little or
no GMO crops planted, and few GMO
foods or food ingredients on
supermarket shelves or restaurant
menus.
Although Monsanto, industry
scientists and corporate
agribusiness claim that GMO crops
and foods, and the chemicals that
accompany them, are perfectly safe
and therefore need no labeling or
independent safety-testing, hundreds
of independent scientists, that is,
those not on the payroll of Monsanto
or its minions,
cite literally hundreds of
studies showing that GMOs and their
companion chemicals, such as
Roundup, are extremely toxic.
Self-appointed GMO (Genetically
Modified Organism) labeling
“leaders” such as Scott Faber of the
Just Label It campaign (a former
lobbyist for the pro-GMO Grocery
Manufacturers Association) need to
stop repeating Monsanto and Big
Food’s lies that there is no
“evidence” that GMOs are dangerous
for human health or the environment.
As Faber
stated at a Congressional
Hearing on December 10, 2014:
“We do not oppose… genetically
modified food ingredients. We think
there are many promising
applications of genetically modified
food ingredients… I am optimistic
that the promises that were made by
the providers of this technology
will ultimately be realized…that we
will have traits that produce more
nutritious food that will see
significant yield…”
Given the current barrage of pro-GMO
propaganda in the mass media,
“GMO-Free” proponents need to put
far greater emphasis on the fact
that it isn’t just the imprecise and
unpredictable nature of
gene-splicing itself—a process that
produces toxin and allergens, and
shuts down essential gene
functions—that threatens human
health and the environment. The
billions of pounds of systemic toxic
pesticides (herbicides,
insecticides, and fungicides),
especially Roundup, that are used on
GMO and so-called conventional
crops, are equally, if not more,
hazardous to human health and the
environment.
These systemic agro-toxins, for the
most part, cannot be washed off
before eating. These biocides end up
on our dinner plates and in our
drinking water. They lodge in our
bodies and in the bodies of our
children, slowly but surely
degrading our health and killing us.
The world needs a food and farming
system that is organic,
climate-friendly and regenerative,
one that is free of pesticides,
animal drugs and chemical
fertilizers—not one that is merely
GMO-free.
GMOs—Just as ‘safe’ as toxic
‘conventional’ foods
When Monsanto, the FDA, or the
Biotechnology Industry Organization
are asked whether GMO-tainted foods
are safe, notice that they always
say that GMOs as “just as safe” as
“conventional” (i.e. chemical and
drug-tainted) foods, and pose no
“unique” risks to human health or
the environment. In a twisted sense
they are right, because both
GMO and non-GMO chemical-intensive,
factory-farmed crops and foods are
dangerous. They all destroy public
health, animal health, soil health,
the environment and contribute to
global warming.
GMOs and Roundup, neonicotinoids,
2,4 D, atrazine, glufosinate, and
dicamba—and all the other chemicals
being sprayed on the food that we
eat, and ultimately running off into
water that we drink—are poison. The
major reason chronic diseases like
cancer, autism, diabetes and
obesity, along with reproductive,
behavioral, endocrine and immune
system disorders, are spiraling out
of control is that our environment
is toxic, and we are ingesting, from
the womb, to the hospital, to the
grave—poisoned, pesticide-laden
food.
Certainly we want mandatory labeling
of GMOs at the state level (the feds
are obviously too corrupt to trust
on GMO labeling). But the main
reason we want labeling is to defend
ourselves, our families and the
environment from further assault—by
boycotting and driving GMO food,
animal feed (most GMOs go into
animal feed and biofuels, not human
food), and Roundup off the market.
This means that organic and
grass-fed or pasture-based foods
must move from being 5 percent of
the market to becoming the dominant
force in U.S. food and farming, as
soon as possible. To achieve this,
we need to boycott not just GMO
foods, but all chemically
contaminated foods, including
factory farmed GMO-fed meat and
animal products, and foods from
crops
sprayed with Roundup
“pre-harvest,” not just in the U.S.,
but globally as well.
Fifteen years ago I wrote a book
with Ben Lilliston on the alarming
hazards of genetically engineered
foods and crops: Genetically
Engineered Food: A Self-Defense
Guide for Consumers. Even then, it
was obvious that out-of-control
agro-toxic corporations like
Monsanto (producers of aspartame,
Agent Orange, DDT, dioxin, and PCBs)
were not really interested in
increasing yields, producing
healthier food or reducing pesticide
use—even though they made, and
continue to make, these fraudulent
claims ad nauseum. What
Monsanto was, and is, really up to
is maximizing the sales, by any
means possible, of their proprietary
herbicides (Roundup, dicamba),
insecticides (Bt), seeds (corn, soy,
cotton, canola, sugar beets,
alfalfa) and animal drugs
(recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone
or rBGH, now owned by Elanco).
Already in 1989, scores of consumers
had been killed, and thousands
permanently injured after they
ingested a heretofore-safe
over-the-counter nutritional
supplement called L-tryptophan,
which for the first time had been
laced with genetically engineered
enzymes. Although the FDA tried to
cover up the deadly consequences of
this first product of genetic
engineering, the Japanese
pharmaceutical company, Showa Denka,
which manufactured the genetically
engineered supplement, ended up
paying out $2 billion to the
consumers it had poisoned.
In 1994, Monsanto’s minions in the
FDA (including Monsanto lawyer, and
later Obama Food Czar, Michael
Taylor) forced onto the market the
controversial recombinant Bovine
Growth Hormone (rBGH). rBGH was
marketed to dairy farmers who
injected the hormone into dairy cows
to force them to produce more milk.
It was brought to market, despite
mounting evidence of increased
antibiotic resistance and cancer
risks, and over the objections of
the General Accounting Office
(Congress’ watchdog agency), and the
Consumers Union, the Cancer
Prevention Coalition and the Pure
Food Campaign. Although approved for
sale in the U.S., rBGH was
subsequently banned in Europe,
Canada, and most industrialized
nations.
A few years later, a gene-spliced
soybean patented by Pioneer Hybrid,
designed as an “improved” animal
feed which would be planted on
millions of acres, was pulled from
production when scientists realized
that it would set off deadly
allergies in humans who unwittingly
ingested the Brazil nut-spliced
soybeans.
Also in 1996-98, as soon as
Monsanto’s genetically engineered,
“Roundup- Resistant,” soybeans,
corn, canola and cotton hit the
market—over the objections of
independent scientists,
environmentalists, and food safety
experts—the use, contamination and
residues on food of this toxic
herbicide began to skyrocket.
Pesticides and flawed,
industry-manufactured ‘science’
Genetic engineering corporations and
their indentured journalists,
scientists and government
bureaucrats have proclaimed since
1992 that their mutant GMO foods and
animal feeds—and the toxic chemicals
used along with them—are perfectly
safe, basing their claims on 1,700
(Monsanto’s current number)
so-called “
scientific
studies.”
Of course the problem with these
Monsanto-endorsed studies “proving”
that GMOs and Roundup are safe is
that they are typically
industry-funded, distorted,
short-term, typically
non-peer-reviewed, and commonly
omitting or hiding crucial data as
“proprietary.” In addition to
ignoring the hundreds of
peer-reviewed articles in the public
domain that clearly show damage from
GMOs or Roundup, many of the 1700
studies purporting to prove the
safety of GMOs actually do show
harm.
When pro-GMO scientists look at the
safety of GMO foods, 80 percent of
which are heavily sprayed with
Roundup, they typically look only
narrowly at the “active” ingredient
in Roundup, ignoring the chemical
breakdown agent or metabolite AMPA,
which is linked to liver disease,
and the highly toxic “inert”
ingredients in the herbicide,
including: ammonium sulfate,
benzisothiazolone, glycerine,
isobutene, isopropylamine,
polyethoxylated alkylamines,
polyethoxilated, tallowamine, and
POE-15.
As André Leu points out in his
critically-acclaimed recent book,
“The Myths of Safe Pesticides:”
“There are numerous studies that
show that Roundup is more toxic than
its active ingredient, glyphosate.
These studies link the pesticide to
a range of health problems such as
cancer, placental cell damage,
miscarriages, stillbirths, endocrine
disruption, and damage to various
organs such as the kidney and the
liver… [inert ingredients in
pesticides] amplify up to 1000 times
the toxicity of their AP [active
ingredient].” – “The Myths of
Safe Pesticides,” p. 11, Acres USA,
2014).
In addition to ignoring the dangers
of Roundup’s metabolites and “inert”
ingredients, industry-sponsored
scientists overlook the fact that
multiple pesticide residues are
routinely found on most
(non-organic) GMO and “conventional”
foods—and that these
multiple-residue chemical cocktails
are often far more toxic, even in
tiny doses, than the pesticide being
studied.
As Leu states:
“The ever increasing body of
peer-reviewed science shows that the
current methodology of only testing
the active ingredient as a single
agent and not testing common
combinations is flawed and
insufficient to determine the safety
of chemical exposure in a real world
situation where humans are exposed
to daily cocktails of chemicals.” –
“The Myths of Safe Pesticides,” p.
8).
In allowing supposedly safe “maximum
residue limits” and “average daily
intake” (ADI) levels of toxic
poisons like Roundup in our food and
water, government regulators are
recklessly ignoring the fact that
most (non-organic) foods today, GMO
and non-GMO alike, are being sprayed
with Roundup, either as an herbicide
or a pre-harvest desiccant. The
nearly omnipresent accumulation of
these Roundup residues in produce,
processed foods, meat and animal
products (unless they are organic)
is extremely hazardous, causing
birth defects, gene mutations,
chromosomal aberrations and cancer.
They destroy our essential
gastrointestinal biome (gut) health
by killing off the beneficial
microorganisms and bacteria in our
stomach and promoting the “bad”
microorganisms that can lead to
gastrointestinal disorders, obesity,
diabetes, heart disease, depression,
autism, infertility, and Alzheimers.
(“The Myths of Safe Pesticides,”
pp.69-70).
Moreover Monsanto and the pesticide
industry conveniently hide the fact
that hormone receptors in human body
cells often “misidentify” tiny
parts-per-billion, or even
parts-per-trillion, of pesticides as
if they are human hormones,
converting these pesticide residues
into potent and deadly hormone
disruptors. In other words, there
really is no “safe limit” for
Roundup or other pesticide residues
in human food, animal feed,
municipal drinking water or breast
milk.
Even though the government claims
that it is using sound science to
determine “safe” residue levels of
pesticides such as Monsanto’s
Roundup, a USDA official recently
admitted to a Reuters reporter
that they are not even testing for
glyphosate, the active ingredient in
Roundup:
“As has been the case with past
analyses, the USDA said it did not
test this past year for residues of
glyphosate, the active ingredient in
Roundup herbicide and the world's
most widely used herbicide. A USDA
spokesman who asked not to be quoted
said that the test measures required
for glyphosate are ‘extremely
expensive... to do on a regular
basis’...”
When
the FDA sends out a letter to Monsanto
(or Dow, Dupont, Syngenta or any other
biotech company) approving the
commercialization of a new GMO, they
basically admit that they, the FDA, have
not conducted their own independent
studies on the GMO, but rather are
accepting the studies submitted by the
company as proof of efficacy and safety.
As Dr.
Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union
pointed out in his
testimony to the American Medical
Association on March 19, 2012:
“The lack of adequate safety
testing can be seen in the letter
FDA sends to the company after
completion of a ‘safety
consultation.’ For example, the
letter sent to Monsanto on September
25, 1996, about one of their first
Bt-corn varieties, MON810, states,
‘Based on the safety and nutritional
assessment you have conducted, it is
our understanding that Monsanto has
concluded that corn, grain, and
forage derived from the new variety
are not materially different in
composition, safety of other
relevant parameters from corn,
grain, and forage currently on the
market, and that they do not raise
issues that would require premarket
review or approval by FDA.’ Note
that FDA does not state its own
opinion about the safety of this
crop; it only states what the
company believes. The letters for
all 84 ‘safety consultations’ done
since the Flavr Savr tomato [1994]
contain basically the same language.
This clearly shows that the FDA does
not conduct safety assessments.”
Monsanto
and the genetic engineering lobby have
incessantly proclaimed, with little or
no
evidence whatsoever, that these
controversial crops and foods will
reduce pesticide use, eliminate world
hunger, cure disease, mitigate climate
change and vastly improve public health.
However, a close look at their actual
business practices, sales figures,
political lobbying and bullying in court
(suing hundreds of farmers for the
“crime” of saving seeds) reveal
Monsanto’s true goals: to monopolize the
global market for seeds, foods and
fiber, and to sell as many toxic
herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides
as possible.
An increasing number of scientists and
consumer advocates warn that current
gene-splicing techniques are crude,
inexact and unpredictable, and that the
toxic chemicals, especially Monsanto’s
Roundup, sprayed on these genetically
engineered seeds and plants are
incredibly dangerous. In October 2013,
more than 200 scientists, physicians,
academics and experts from disciplines
relevant to the scientific, legal,
social and safety assessment GMOs issued
a
statement which said, “we strongly
reject claims by GM seed developers and
some scientists, commentators, and
journalists that there is a ‘scientific
consensus’ on GMO safety and that the
debate on this topic is ‘over.'"
It is now blatantly obvious that GMOs
are nothing more than patented Pesticide
Delivery Systems (PDS) designed to
increase sales of poisonous
agrochemicals such as Roundup,
glufosinate, Bt, 2,4 D and
neonicotinoids. To claim that GMOs are
perfectly safe is equivalent to saying
that pesticides, herbicides and
fungicides—systemically laced at
ever-higher levels into GMO-tainted
human food and animal feed—are perfectly
safe. And to make matters worse,
hundreds of millions of pounds of
Monsanto’s Roundup, the most widely used
herbicide in the world, are now
routinely sprayed on 160 different
crops, just before harvest, including
wheat, potatoes, oats, canola, flax,
peas and dried beans. In other words,
just about every non-organic item in
your supermarket, or every item on your
restaurant menu (bread, potatoes, meat,
milk,) is now tainted with Roundup.
A 12-point agenda for driving
GMOs off the market
The anti-GMO and organic
Movement has come a long way in
the past two decades. But given
the dangers posed by GMOs and
Roundup, it’s time to move
aggressively forward. Here are a
dozen crucial steps we need to
take in 2015 to drive GMOs and
Roundup off the market.
1. Stop Congress from passing
the Pompeo bill (HR #4432) in
2015, which would take away
states rights to pass mandatory
GMO food labeling bills, and
make it legal for unscrupulous
food and beverage companies to
continue mislabeling
GMO-tainted foods as “natural”
or “all natural.”
2. Stop Congress from
“fast-tracking” and passing
secretly negotiated “Free Trade”
agreements (the
TPP-Trans-Pacific Partnership,
and TTIP-Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership) that
would weaken consumer and states
rights to label and safety test
GMO and factory-farmed foods.
3. Pass more state laws
requiring mandatory labels on
GMOs.
4. Pass more bans on GMOs,
neonicotinoids and pesticides at
the township, city, and county
levels.
5. Support Vermont, Maui
(Hawaii), Jackson and Josephine
counties (Oregon) in their
federal and state legal battles
to uphold their laws requiring
labels and/or bans on GMOs.
6. Educate the public on the
dangers and cruelty of GMO-fed,
factory-farmed meat, dairy and
egg products, and organize a
“Great Boycott” of all
factory-farmed foods.
7. Support mandatory state
legislation to label dairy
products and chain restaurant
food coming from factory farms
or CAFOs (Confined Animal
Feeding Operations).
8. Pressure retail natural
food stores and coops to follow
the lead of Whole Foods Market
and the Natural Grocer to label
and/or ban all GMO-derived
foods, including meat and animal
products and deli foods, from
their stores.
9. Pressure restaurants to
follow the lead of organic/grass
fed restaurants and ban, or at
least label, all GMO
ingredients.
10. Support consumer efforts
to test for Roundup/glyphosate
contamination in drinking water,
human urine, breast milk, and in
non-GMO food products such as
wheat, potatoes, oats, peas,
lentils and dry beans that are
currently sprayed with Roundup
before harvest.
11. Educate the public on the
positive health, environmental,
ethical and climate-friendly
(greenhouse gas sequestering)
attributes of organic,
grass-fed, and pasture-raised
food and farming.
12. Boycott the “Traitor
Brand” products of the Grocery
Manufacturers Association,
International Dairy Foods
Association, and the Snack Food
Association.
Copyright © 2015
Organic Consumers Association ·
https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/consumer-self-defense-12-ways-drive-gmos-and-roundup-market