Is “Dodo Award” Winner Monsanto
Planning to Take Control Of Commodities Market?
November 17, 2015
By Dr. Mercola
Each year, since 2007, The Center for Biological Diversity has
given a Rubber Dodo Award1
to the person, company, or organization that has "done the most to
destroy wild places, species, and biological diversity."
This year's award, issued on November 5, 2015, went to Monsanto
for its reckless peddling of
glyphosate around the world — a pesticide that was recently
classified as a "probable human carcinogen" by The World Health
Organization (WHO), and has been linked to a worsening of virtually
all chronic disease states.
According to
Dr. Don Huber, an expert in an area of science that relates to
the toxicity of
genetically engineered (GE) foods, glyphosate may be even more
toxic than DDT — a devastating chemical that, just like glyphosate,
was once proclaimed to be "safe enough to eat."
Monsanto's Callous Disregard for Human and Environmental Health
As noted by The Center for Biological Diversity, the heavy use of
glyphosate — particularly on genetically engineered (GE) Roundup
Ready crops, which are also developed by Monsanto — has been
implicated in the dramatic decline in
Monarch butterflies.
Dr. Huber has also previously presented evidence2,3
linking glyphosate to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), honeybee
starvation,4
along with toxicity to soil, woodland plants, amphibians, fish,
aquatic environments, and mammals5
— causing reproductive problems and endocrine disruption.
According to Kierán Suckling, the Center's executive director:
"The science is increasingly clear that glyphosate is
damaging wildlife and putting people at serious risk, yet
Monsanto continues to aggressively peddle the stuff to farmers
and really any customer it can find.
It's hard to fathom the depth of the damage that
glyphosate is doing, but its toxic legacy will live on for
generations, whether it's through threatening monarchs with
extinction or a heightened risk of cancer for people where it's
spread.
Those sitting in Monsanto's boardrooms and corporate
offices won't pay the price for this dangerous pesticide. It's
going to be people on the ground where it's sprayed.
This kind of callous pursuit of profits is at the core of
what's driving the loss of wildlife and diversity on a massive
scale around the globe."
Monsanto has defended the safety of Roundup since the start, but
mounting evidence suggests many of its hazards have been known for
decades.
For example,
Dr. Anthony Samsel obtained evidence from the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) showing that Monsanto knew glyphosate caused
cancer in rats as early as 1981.
Is Glyphosate an Endocrine Disruptor?
In 1996, Congress mandated that the EPA start screening
pesticides to determine whether they may disrupt the endocrine
system. In June of this year, nearly 20 years after the
Congressional mandate was issued, the EPA finally released its
findings for 52 chemicals on the list, one of which was glyphosate.
But, according to The Intercept,6
the EPA relied heavily on biased industry research for its
conclusion that there's "no convincing evidence" that glyphosate
acts as an
endocrine disruptor.
This means the EPA will not require any additional research into
the hormonal effects of glyphosate.
In response to the EPA's exoneration of the chemical, Monsanto's
Global Lead for Ecotoxicology and Environmental Risk Assessment,
Steve Levine, said: "I was happy to see that the safety profile of
one of our products was upheld by an independent regulatory agency."
EPA's Exoneration of Glyphosate Was Based on Pesticide Industry's
Research
But just how independent was the EPA's assessment? According to
The Intercept, it was anything but independent:
"Only five independently funded studies were considered
in the review of whether glyphosate interferes with the
endocrine system. Twenty-seven out of 32 studies that looked at
glyphosate's effect on hormones... were either conducted or
funded by industry.
Most of the studies were sponsored by Monsanto or an
industry group called the Joint Glyphosate Task Force. One study
was by Syngenta, which sells its own glyphosate-containing
herbicide...
Of the small minority of independently funded studies
that the agency considered in determining whether the chemical
poses a danger to the endocrine system, three of five found that
it did...
And a review of the literature turns up many more
peer-reviewed studies finding glyphosate can interfere with
hormones, affecting such things as hormonal activity in human
liver cells, functioning of rat sperm, and the sex ratio of
exposed tadpoles. Yet, of the 27 industry studies, none
concluded that glyphosate caused harm."
It's also worth noting that the EPA included "ancient" studies in
terms of the scientific tests used. We've learned a lot about
endocrine disruptors over the past two decades, but many of the
tests done on glyphosate dated back to the 1970s.
According to the featured article,7
"in all, 15 of the 27 industry studies predated the term 'endocrine
disruption,' which was coined in 1991." One of the studies they
chose to include was 40 years old; meanwhile they left out more
recent, independently performed studies showing harm.
Pesticide Myths Monsanto Wants You to Believe
Shrewd PR professionals teamed with lobbyists and industry-backed
scientists have managed to portray
pesticides as a harmless and essential part of agriculture.
Whenever damning evidence pops up, it is quickly attacked as
"junk science." The tobacco industry perfected and wrote the
proverbial handbook on how to manipulate science and shape public
opinion on toxins, and a number of other industries, including the
pesticide industry, follow the same exact game plan.
Through sheer reiteration of certain statements, the pesticide
industry has developed a list of persistent myths that have no basis
in science or fact, including the following:8
"Pesticides Are Necessary to Feed the
World" |
According to the most comprehensive
analysis9
of global agriculture to date, sponsored by the United
Nations and the World Bank, agroecological farming is the
best way forward.
While insecticide use on American farms increased by a
factor of 10 in the five decades following World War II,
crops lost to pests rose from 3.5 to 12 percent.
Moreover, today nearly 50 percent of the GE corn grown in
the US is not even grown for food; it's grown for ethanol.10
So in a sense, people are being starved and valuable
prairies are being sacrificed to protect Monsanto's fuel
subsidies. |
"Pesticides Are Rigorously Tested for
Safety" |
The fact is the vast majority are
not rigorously tested for
safety before they're approved for use. Moreover,according
to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 60 percent
of herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides, and 30 percent of
insecticides are in fact known to be carcinogenic.
How they're tested is a related issue. Most of the
toxicology testing of chemicals is antiquated, with some
methodologies harking back 150 to 400 years.
As noted by André Leu, author of the book,
The Myths of Safe Pesticides, we now have far more
rigorous and sensitive ways of testing chemicals instead of
just feeding animals, destroying them, and looking at their
organ parts under a microscope.
Using magnetic resonance imaging scans and human cell lines,
for example, you can now detect toxic effects of chemicals
at the parts per trillion range. |
"The Dose Makes the Poison" |
The idea is that the larger the
dose of a poison, the more harmful it is. Alas, modern
science has shown that this is not necessarily the case.
In many instances tiny doses can have a marked effect, and
combinations of chemicals often have synergistic effects,
such that even
non-carcinogenic chemicals can cause cancer.
Researchers have also found that timing of exposure
can make a big difference. As noted by Eco Watch:11
"One stark example from a study12
using MRI technology illustrates the point: children
exposed in utero to the neurotoxic insecticide
chlorpyrifos experienced lasting changes in their brain
architecture."
|
"GMOs Reduce Reliance on Pesticides"
|
Herbicide-resistant crops are
designed to withstand greater amounts of pesticides, and as
resistance among weeds has grown, pesticide use has
skyrocketed.
GE technology drove up herbicide use by 527 million pounds
(about 11 percent) between 1996 (when Roundup Ready crops
were initially released) and 2011.13
In 2002, glyphosate use on Roundup Ready soybeans rose by 21
percent.
Overall, American farmers increased their use of glyphosate
by 19 million pounds that year. By 2011, farmers growing
Roundup Ready crops (corn, soy, and cotton) used 24 percent
more Roundup than farmers planting non-GE versions of the
same crop, because by that time, glyphosate-resistance had
become the norm.
Farmers also began resorting to older, more toxic herbicides
like
2,4-D. |
"We're Weaning Ourselves off of
Pesticides" |
As noted in the featured article:14
"After 20 years of market stagnation, the pesticide
industry entered a period of vigorous growth in 2004.
The global pesticide market was worth approximately $46
billion in 2012 and continues to grow. It is expected to
reach $65 billion by 2017, with the U.S. accounting for
53 percent of global use."
|
"Pesticides Are the Answer to Global
Climate Change" |
As of 2008, 532 patents for
"climate-related genes," had been filed — next-generation GE
seeds designed to withstand heat and drought.
But, by patenting seeds and imposing monocropping instead of
encouraging farmers to save seeds with desirable traits and
to plant a wide variety of foods will only promote increased
food insecurity.
As weather changes increase, we need increased farm
diversification, not less, in order to survive.
There's also ample evidence showing that sustainable farming
will ameliorate climactic changes by creating fewer
greenhouse gases and creating carbon sinks to offset rising
carbon levels in the atmosphere. |
US Government Allowed Monsanto to Monopolize the Seed Industry
Another common myth is that the government will protect you and
look out for your best interest. Unfortunately, that doesn't jive
with reality either. In fact, industry giants like Monsanto have
long controlled the majority of the US federal regulatory agencies
affecting their business. As a result of this collusion, the
chemical technology industry has the freedom to pretty much do what
they please, and the following story is just one example of many.
In 2007, the attorneys general in Iowa, Texas, and several other
states began an inquiry into Monsanto's confidential seed licensing
agreements. Any seed company that wants to use Monsanto's genes in
its own corn or soy plants are required to sign this agreement. They
discovered these agreements required seed breeders and seed
retailers to favor Monsanto over competing companies in a number of
different ways, thereby allowing Monsanto to eliminate competition.
Ditto for farmer's agreements, which require farmers to apply
Monsanto's Roundup herbicide on their Roundup Ready crops,
preventing competing herbicides to be used. Then, in 2009, the US
Department of Justice (DOJ) initiated a widely publicized antitrust
investigation of Monsanto. However, three years later, in November
2012, the DOJ suddenly closed the investigation without taking any
enforcement action, and without so much as a press release.15
In fact, no public statement about the findings of the investigation
was ever released.
As reported by Salon Magazine16
at the time:
"Several experts agree that the strongest case the DOJ
could have brought against Monsanto would focus on how it has
used its monopoly in one market — the provision of genetic
traits — both to exclude rivals and to gain advantage in another
market: the breeding and retail of seeds. They note that
Monsanto's practices resemble conduct by Microsoft and Dentsply,
two dominant firms that the Justice Department sued for
antitrust violations in the late 1990s.
Both companies had used contracts to restrict
competitors' access to the platforms they needed to distribute
their technologies. In at least one way Monsanto enjoys still
greater power than even Microsoft: because it now owns many of
these intermediaries – the seed breeders and retailers – it no
longer needs written agreements to favor some companies over
others... The public will suffer the costs of Monsanto's capture
of almost total control over much of the U.S. seed business.
Since 2001 the company has more than doubled the price of
soybean and corn seeds, whose crops are used in foods ranging
from cereal and pizza to chocolate and soda... It is not just a
matter of higher prices. The resulting loss of diversity from
Monsanto's dominance may restrict our ability to adapt plant
stocks to an increasingly volatile climate."
USDA Whistleblower Claims Agency Suppressed Research on Bee-Killing
Pesticide
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) also has a history of
protecting industry interests over public and environmental health.
In the first week of November, Jonathan Lundgren, who spent the last
11 years working as an entomologist at the USDA filed a
whistleblower complaint against the agency, claiming he'd been
harassed and retaliated against after speaking about research
showing that
neonicotinoids had adverse effects on bees.17,18
In the US, nearly all corn, about 90 percent of canola, and
approximately half of all soybeans are treated with neonicotinoids.
And, as the use of these pesticides has gone up, bee and Monarch
butterfly populations have plummeted. After publicly discussing his
findings, Lundgren claims: "USDA managers blocked publication of
his research, barred him from talking to the media, and disrupted
operations at the laboratory he oversaw." The message is clear:
if you want to work in science, you better toe the line and don't
disrupt commerce...
Monsanto Rolls Out New Tech That Gives It Essentially Illegal
Insider Trading Advantage
Speaking of commerce, Monsanto recently secured a deal with Deere
& Co., the world's largest maker of agricultural machinery. Deere
has agreed to purchase Monsanto's Precision Planting LLC equipment
unit, which also expands Monsanto's opportunities to sell its brand
new FieldView application — a software package that provides
real-time planting data to owners of Deere equipment. It also
provides real-time harvesting data to Monsanto.
As reported by Chicago Business:19
"Precision Planting, founded in 1993, was acquired by St.
Louis-based Monsanto in 2012 for $210 million. Its main plant is
in Illinois, and it has some operations in South America.
Precision Planting components can be used to augment new seeding
equipment or to retrofit older equipment for precision
applications. For example, they can be used to apply the right
pressure to sow seeds in the best depth and spacing for maximum
yields.
Climate Corp. will retain the digital agriculture
portfolio that has been integrated into its FieldView platform.
Deere has agreed to allow Climate Corp. to use its software
connection to allow customers to send agronomic prescriptions
from FieldView through the John Deere Operations Center to their
equipment, according to the statement. Monsanto now has deals to
integrate FieldView with the three largest farm equipment
makers, following prior agreements with CNH Industrial NV and
Agco Corp..."
What has not been publicly addressed as of yet, is the fact that
this kind of technology will provide Monsanto with unprecedented
insight into market yields of any harvest before anyone else, and
this information could allow them to manipulate and reign supreme
over the commodities market. In essence, while there are some
beneficial features of this software, such as helping farmers
determine the most appropriate seed depth based on various factors,
including weather forecasts, the program also collects and forwards
yield data.
So, at harvest time, all that data will pour in from all the
farmers across the country, giving Monsanto an early overview of the
various crop yields nationwide. As shady as this sounds, there does
not appear to be any laws against this, but it clearly opens the
door for market manipulation, either by Monsanto or whomever they
might sell this data to. This is essentially insider trading that is
technically currently legal, but will likely be outlawed in the
future.
© Copyright 1997-2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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