Monsanto's Roundup disaster

[blue green]

What the heck is wrong with some people??

 

[SneakySneaky]

I read an interesting article about Monsanto being responsible for the African food shortages. Apparently they went to hundreds of self sustaining farming villages and gave the farmers their seeds for free to try. What they didn't tell them was that the seeds weren't natural, and when their heirloom crops pollinated the Monsanto crops NONE of the seeds were viable for next year. Thus breaking 1000+ years of self sustainability. Then they were kind enough to come back the next year, and offer to sell seeds to these starving villages.

Another one to look up is the Monsanto genetically modified BT-Cotton, which kills any livestock that happens to graze on it.

And my personal favorite, the Monsanto genetically modified Pig-salmon, which they have gotten approval to release into the wild.

 

[EllieGrows]

If only they had enough gazebos to burn down

 

[mean mr.mustard]

I read an interesting article about Monsanto being responsible for the African food shortages. Apparently they went to hundreds of self sustaining farming villages and gave the farmers their seeds for free to try. What they didn't tell them was that the seeds weren't natural, and when their heirloom crops pollinated the Monsanto crops NONE of the seeds were viable for next year. Thus breaking 1000+ years of self sustainability. Then they were kind enough to come back the next year, and offer to sell seeds to these starving villages.

Another one to look up is the Monsanto genetically modified BT-Cotton, which kills any livestock that happens to graze on it.

And my personal favorite, the Monsanto genetically modified Pig-salmon, which they have gotten approval to release into the wild.

It staggers my brain to realize that people have no qualms with this company.

They do it in broad daylight right under our noses... with impunity.

I can't wait to see what other populations they will destroy... I mean "enhance".

 

[luvaduck]

What the heck is wrong with some people??

Ignorance is bliss?

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

Not about cannabis or you growing, cause doubt anyone is using Roundup, but this is information someone forwarded to me and seems interesting enough. Figured this forum is a decent spot and basically just FYI stuff. Monsanto has created a real monster and not just about killing weeds or their Roundup Ready genetics...it's actually destroying the soil. Seems it has a half life of like 1 year....yikes! Dr. Huber is supposedly one of the leading experts on Roundup. Anyway...for those info geeks out there...lol. The last PDF is a short read and great overview.

yay! on our way to the next dust bowl situation. right in the middle of a shitty economic too. anybody here seen the grapes of wrath? If not you will see it first hand soon enough.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

I read an interesting article about Monsanto being responsible for the African food shortages. Apparently they went to hundreds of self sustaining farming villages and gave the farmers their seeds for free to try. What they didn't tell them was that the seeds weren't natural, and when their heirloom crops pollinated the Monsanto crops NONE of the seeds were viable for next year. Thus breaking 1000+ years of self sustainability. Then they were kind enough to come back the next year, and offer to sell seeds to these starving villages.

Another one to look up is the Monsanto genetically modified BT-Cotton, which kills any livestock that happens to graze on it.

And my personal favorite, the Monsanto genetically modified Pig-salmon, which they have gotten approval to release into the wild.

eventually they are just gonna have to be killed. along with the entire Rothschild family, and Rupert Murdoch. some people just gotta go. lol

 

[mexcurandero420]

Citizens were lied to over GM study

Addressing criticisms targeted at a study showing GM maize harmed the health of rats, a campaigner concludes that the public was misled in order to protect powerful commercial interests.

When a scientific study was published in September last year showing that a genetically modified maize and tiny amounts of the Roundup herbicide it is designed to be grown with damaged the health of rats, Corinne Lepage MEP called it “a bomb”. The study, by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini’s team at the University of Caen, France, was the first to test the effects of eating a GM food and its associated pesticide over the animals’ lifetime of two years. The study found that GM maize and Roundup caused severe organ damage and increased tumour rates, as well as earlier death.

Lepage knew that if Seralini’s findings were taken seriously, the implications for GM firms and regulators were huge – GM foods are approved on the basis of rat feeding studies that last 90 days at most, equivalent to only seven to nine years in human terms. The tests are done by the same GM companies that want to market the GM seeds. The European Food Safety Authority has argued that even these short tests are not always needed.

Monsanto’s 90-day rat feeding study on this same GM maize had found differences in the GM-fed rats. But the EFSA claimed they were “of no biological significance” and agreed with Monsanto that the maize was as safe as non-GM maize. Séralini’s team obtained Monsanto’s raw data and re-analysed it. They found signs of liver and kidney toxicity in the GM-fed rats, publishing their findings in 2009.

Séralini carried out his recent study to follow up these initial findings of toxicity and to see if they were insignificant, as the EFSA claimed, or if they developed into serious disease. The findings were alarming. The initial signs of toxicity in Monsanto’s 90-day study developed into full-blown liver and kidney damage over the longer two-year period. The first tumours only showed up four to seven months into the study, peaking at 18 months.

The common sense conclusions were clear. The 90-day tests routinely done on GM foods are simply too short to see effects that take time to show up, such as organ damage and cancer. And regulatory agencies like the EFSA may be liable for allowing unsafe GM foods onto the market. But this common sense conclusion was not allowed to gain traction. Within hours of the study’s release, it was shouted down as flawed and meaningless by a chorus of scientist critics.

The criticisms were circulated to the press by the United Kingdom-based Science Media Centre and its sister organisations in other countries. Most of the world’s media took the criticisms at face value. The focus of the story shifted from the alarming health risks of a poorly tested GM food to “junk science” that should never have been published.

But all was not as it seemed. Many of the critics were subsequently exposed as having commercial or career interests in GM technology – interests that went undisclosed in media articles that quoted them. The Science Media Centre itself has taken funding from GM and agrochemical companies. Government agencies that condemned the study, such as the EFSA, had been involved in GM crop approvals and so were simply defending their own decisions.

The conflicts of interest would matter less if the criticisms had a solid scientific basis. But most were absurd. For example, critics said Séralini used a strain of rat prone to tumours. But Séralini used the same strain of rat that Monsanto used in its 90-day study on this GM maize and its two-year cancer studies on glyphosate, the chemical ingredient in Roundup herbicide. And research shows that this strain of rat is about as prone to tumours as you and I, making it an excellent human-equivalent cancer model.

Contrary to the critics’ message, the ‘scientific community’ has not united to condemn Séralini’s study. Many scientists, unconnected with Séralini’s group, are alarmed by what they see as suppression of scientific findings that are inconvenient to commercial or political interests. Some contacted me with their concerns and we joined forces to create a website, GMOSeralini.org, to offer the public and journalists a balanced view of Séralini’s findings and what they mean for our health.

None of the scientists claimed that Séralini’s study is perfect. All studies have flaws and limitations. But many said that this was the most detailed study that had ever been done on the health effects of a GM food that’s already in our food supply. The clear conclusion is that all GM crops and pesticide formulations must be tested in lifetime feeding studies to determine any health risks to humans.

Claire Robinson is managing editor of GMOSeralini, an editor at GMWatch and research director at EarthOpenSource.

Claire Robinson
Public Service Europe, 14 January 2013

http://gmoseralini.org/citizens-were-lied-to-over-gm-study/

Keep on growing your own food

 

[mexcurandero420]

Uncovered, the 'toxic' gene hiding in GM crops: Revelation throws new doubt over safe

Uncovered, the 'toxic' gene hiding in GM crops: Revelation throws new doubt over safe

EU watchdog reveals approval for GM foods fails to identify poisonous gene

54 of the 86 GM plants approved contain the dangerous gene
Gene found in food for farm animals producing meat, milk and eggs
Biotech supporters argue there is no evidence that GM foods are harmful

A virus gene that could be poisonous to humans has been missed when GM food crops have been assessed for safety.

GM crops such as corn and soya, which are being grown around the world for both human and farm animal consumption, include the gene.
A new study by the EU's official food watchdog, the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA), has revealed that the international approval process for GM crops failed to identify the gene.

As a result, watchdogs have not investigated its impact on human health and the plants themselves when assessing whether they were safe.

The findings are particularly powerful because the work was carried out by independent experts, rather than GM critics.
It was led by Nancy Podevin, who was employed by EFSA, and Patrick du Jardin, of the Plant Biology Unit at the University of Liege in Belgium.

They discovered that 54 of the 86 GM plants approved for commercial growing and food in the US, including corn and soya, contain the viral gene, which is known as 'Gene VI'.

In this country, these crops are typically fed to farm animals producing meat, milk and eggs.

Significantly, the EFSA researchers concluded that the presence of segments of Gene VI 'might result in unintended phenotypic changes'.

Such changes include the creation of proteins that are toxic to humans. They could also trigger changes in the plants themselves, making them more vulnerable to pests.

Critics say the revelations make clear that the GM approvals process, which has been in place for 20 years, is fatally flawed.

They argue the only correct response is to recall all of the crops and food products involved. Director of the campaigning group, GM Freeze, Pete Riley, said the discovery of the gene, 'totally undermines claims that GM technology is safe, precise and predictable'.

He said: 'This is a clear warning the GM is not sufficiently understood to be considered safe. 'Authorisation for these crops must be suspended immediately, and they should be withdrawn from sale, until a full and extended review of their safety has been carried out.'
Typically, GM crops are modified in the laboratory to give them resistance to being sprayed with powerful weed killers such as Monsanto's Round-up.

This means that, in theory, fields can be doused with the chemical, so wiping out the weeds and allowing the food plants to thrive.


The modification process involves inserting genes into the plants using a technique that allows them to piggyback on viruses that are commonly found in the soil and plants.

It has been assumed that virus genes are not present in the plant once it is grown in the field and reaches consumers, however it is now clear that this is not the case.

A review of the EFSA research in Independent Science News said the presence of the viral gene appears to have been missed by biotech companies, universities and government regulators.

'This situation represents a complete and catastrophic system failure,' it said. 'There are clear indications that this viral gene might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.

'A reasonable concern is that the protein produced by Gene VI might be a human toxin. This is a question that can only be answered by future experiments.'

Biotech supporters argue that there is no evidence from countries such as the USA that eating GM food causes any harm.
However, the reality is that no health monitoring has taken place to establish this. The findings will embarrass the government and the food and farming Secretary, Owen Patterson, who has embarked on a pro-GM propaganda exercise designed to win over sceptical consumers.

Mr Patterson recently rejected public concerns as 'humbug' and 'complete nonsense'. Policy director at the Soil Association, Peter Melchett said: 'For years, GM companies have made a deliberate and chilling effort to stop independent scientists from looking at their products.

'This is what happens when there is a complete absence of independent scrutiny of their GM crops.' Biotech firms are represented by the Agricultural Biotechnology Council(ABC).
Its chairman, Dr Julian Little, said the EFSA study was one small part of a strict and complex scrutiny process.

He said: 'Over the past 25 years, the European Commission has funded more than 130 research projects involving 500 independent research groups which have found no higher risks to the environment or food chain from GM crops than from conventional plants and organisms.

'Furthermore, nearly three trillion meals containing GM ingredients have been eaten without a single substantiated case of ill-health. The combination of these two facts can give consumers a huge amount of confidence in the safety of GM crops.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266143/Uncovered-toxic-gene-hiding-GM-crops-Revelation-throws-new-doubt-safety-foods.html

Keep on growing your own food

 

[SeaMaiden]

My mother is trying to get other dietitians on board to speak out against GMOs. Unfortunately, the organization seems to have been coopted, bought out even possibly. GYO, but also vote with your dollars and know that that makes just as much, if not more impact as GYOing it.

 

[StRa]

fresh news

http://www.euractiv.com/cap/eu-freezes-approval-new-gmo-crop-news-517270

EU freezes approval of new GMO crop cultivation

The European Commission doesn't plan to give the green light to new genetically modified crops in the coming months, as it wants first an agreement on the draft legislation that would allow member governments to decide individually whether to grow or ban GM plants, a spokesperson said yesterday (22 January).

The draft rules proposed by the European Commission in 2010 were meant to unblock EU decision-making on genetically modified crops, by allowing some countries to use the technology while letting others impose cultivation bans.

But opposition from France, Germany and Britain has prevented agreement on the proposals, which must be approved by a majority of governments and the European Parliament before becoming law.

"We are going to discuss the issue with the three governments to see if we can reopen negotiations on the proposals," said Frederic Vincent, spokesman for EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg.

Currently, EU rules state that any GM crop approved for cultivation can be grown anywhere inside the bloc, unless countries have specific scientific reasons for banning their cultivation.

Only two GM crops are currently approved for cultivation in Europe, where opposition from sceptical consumers and environmental groups remains strong.

That compares to more than 90 GM varieties approved for cultivation in the United States and about 30 in Brazil.

Seven GM crops - six maize varieties and one soybean - are currently awaiting cultivation approval from the Commission, having received a positive risk evaluation from the EU's food safety watchdog.

The crops concerned were developed by agri-business multinationals including Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, and Syngenta.

Vincent said the Commission was unlikely to propose approving the seven varieties for cultivation in the coming weeks, but dismissed any suggestion of a freeze on EU cultivation decisions for GM crops.

Commenting on the reports, Greenpeace EU agriculture policy director Marco Contiero said that EU testing is not currently able to assess the safety of GM crops for the environment and health.

“For this reason, European countries unanimously called on the Commission to fix the authorisation system in 2008. The logical next step would be to freeze approvals of GM crops and to reform the way risk assessments are carried out. Unfortunately, so far the Commission's attempts at reform have been far too timid and its refusal to declare an outright freeze on new approvals is determined by its fear of the biotech industry.”
EurActiv.com with Reuters

 

[jorgecervantes1]

if you eat taco bell your eating mon***** i refuse to say there name. as they are destroying our world...

also all there seeds have pesticides in it... why doesn't bad things every happen to bad people? or in this case bad companies

 

[jorgecervantes1]

im sure some of ya'll seen this...

 

[mexcurandero420]

Yep, i read it about the take over

Old style cartoon

[YOUTUBEIF]hkionqWPc-Q#![/YOUTUBEIF]

Keep on growing your own food

 

[SneakySneaky]

Anyone ever take the time to learn the produce food numbers? Some scary stuff when u realize what they've actually been feeding us.

http://rawearthliving.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/what-does-the-number-on-a-fruit-sticker-mean/

 

[mexcurandero420]

Nearly Half of All US Farms Now Have Superweeds

Last year's drought took a big bite out of the two most prodigious US crops, corn and soy. But it apparently didn't slow down the spread of weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto's herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), used on crops engineered by Monsanto to resist it. More than 70 percent of all the the corn, soy, and cotton grown in the US is now genetically modified to withstand glyphosate.

Back in 2011, such weeds were already spreading fast. "Monsanto's 'Superweeds' Gallop Through Midwest," declared the headline of a post I wrote then. What's the word you use when an already-galloping horse speeds up? Because that's what's happening. Let's try this: "Monsanto's 'Superweeds' Stampede Through Midwest."

That pretty much describes the situation last year, according to a new report from the agribusiness research consultancy Stratus. Since the 2010 growing season, the group has been polling "thousands of US farmers" across 31 states about herbicide resistance. Here's what they found in the 2012 season:


Superweeds: First they gallop, then they roar. Graph: Stratus

• Nearly half (49 percent) of all US farmers surveyed said they have glyphosate-resistant weeds on their farm in 2012, up from 34 percent of farmers in 2011.
• Resistance is still worst in the South. For example, 92 percent of growers in Georgia said they have glyphosate-resistant weeds.
• But the mid-South and Midwest states are catching up. From 2011 to 2012 the acres with resistance almost doubled in Nebraska, Iowa, and Indiana.
• It's spreading at a faster pace each year: Total resistant acres increased by 25 percent in 2011 and 51 percent in 2012.
• And the problem is getting more complicated. More and more farms have at least two resistant species on their farm. In 2010 that was just 12 percent of farms, but two short years later 27 percent had more than one.

So where do farmers go from here? Well, Monsanto and its peers would like them to try out "next generation" herbicide-resistant seeds—that is, crops engineered to resist not just Roundup, but also other, more toxic herbicides, like 2,4-D and Dicamba. Trouble is, such an escalation in the chemical war on weeds will likely only lead to more prolific, and more super, superweeds, along with a sharp increase in herbicide use. That's the message of a peer-reviewed 2011 paper by a team of Penn State University researchers led by David A. Mortensen. (I discussed their paper in a post last year.)

And such novel seeds won't be available in the 2013 growing season anyway. None have made it through the US Department of Agriculture's registration process. The USDA was widely expected to award final approval on Dow's 2,4-D/Roundup-resistant corn during the Christmas break, but didn't. The agency hasn't stated the reason it hasn't decided on the product, known as Enlist, but the nondecision effectively delays its introduction until 2014 at the earliest, as Dow acknowledged last month. Reuters reporter Carey Gillam noted that the USDA' delay comes amid "opposition from farmers, consumers and public health officials" to the new product, and that these opponents have "bombarded Dow and US regulators with an array of concerns" about it.

So industrial-scale corn and soy farmers will likely have to muddle along, responding in the same way that they have been for years, which is by upping their herbicide use in hopes of controlling the rogue weeds, as Washington State University's Charles Benbrook showed in a recent paper (my post on it here). That means significant economic losses for farmers—according to Penn State's Mortensen, grappling with glyphosate resistance was already costing farmers nearly $1 billion per year in 2011. It will also likely mean a jump in toxic herbicides entering streams, messing with frogs and polluting people's drinking water.

For a good idea of what's in store, check out this piece in the trade mag Corn & Soy Digest on "Managing Herbicide-Resistant weeds." Here's the key bit—note that "burndown" means a complete flattening of all vegetation in a field with a broad-spectrum herbicide such as paraquat, an infamously toxic weed killer that's been banned in 32 countries, including those of the European Union:

For those with a known resistance problem, it’s not uncommon to see them use a fall burndown plus a residual herbicide, a spring burndown before planting, another at planting including another residual herbicide, and two or more in-season herbicide applications. “If you can catch the resistant weeds early enough, paraquat does a good job of controlling them. But once Palmer amaranth [a common glyphosate-tolerant weed] gets 6 ft. tall, you can't put on enough paraquat to kill it," [one weed-control expert] says.

But of course there's another way. In a 2012 study I'll never tire of citing, Iowa State University researchers found that if farmers simply diversified their crop rotations, which typically consist of corn one year and soy the next, year after year, to include a "small grain" crop (e.g. oats) as well as offseason cover crops, weeds (including Roundup-resistant ones) can be suppressed with dramatically less fertilizer use—a factor of between 6 and 10 less. And much less herbicide means much less poison entering streams—"potential aquatic toxicity was 200 times less in the longer rotations" than in the regular corn-soy regime, the study authors note. So, despite what the seed giants and the conventional weed specialists insist, there are other ways to respond to the accelerating scourge of "superweeds" than throwing more—and ever-more toxic—chemicals at them.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/report-spread-monsantos-superweeds-speeds-12-0

Keep on growing your own food

 

[420mike]

Monsanto is pure EVIL

 

[mexcurandero420]

US farmers may stop planting GMs after poor global yields

Some US farmers are considering returning to conventional seed after increased pest resistance and crop failures meant GM crops saw smaller yields globally than their non-GM counterparts.

Farmers in the USA pay about an extra $100 per acre for GM seed, and many are questioning whether they will continue to see benefits from using GMs.

"It's all about cost benefit analysis," said economist Dan Basse, president of American agricultural research company AgResource.

"Farmers are paying extra for the technology but have seen yields which are no better than 10 years ago. They're starting to wonder why they're spending extra money on the technology."

One of the biggest problems the USA has seen with GM seed is resistance. While it was expected to be 40 years before resistance began to develop pests such as corn rootworm have formed a resistance to GM crops in as few as 14 years.

"Some of these bugs will eat the plant and it will make them sick, but not kill them. It starts off in pockets of the country but then becomes more widespread.

"We're looking at going back to cultivation to control it," said Mr Basse. "I now use insecticides again."

One of the issues if farmers do move back towards non-GMs will be the availability of seed, he said, as around 87% of US farmers plant genetically modified seed.

The top performing countries by crop yield last year were in Asia, in particular China, where farmers do not use GM seed.

http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/06/02/2013/137518/us-farmers-may-stop-planting-gms-after-poor-global-yields.htm

Keep on growing your own food

 

[mexcurandero420]

Stunning Corn Comparison: GMO versus NON GMO

The claims that "There is no difference between GMO corn and NON Gmo corn" are false. Yesterday while on a playdate at the lake, Vince from De Dell Seed Company, Canada's only NON GMO corn seed company called me to support the march and Americans finding out about GMOs. He emailed me this stunning report, clearly showing the nutritional value difference between GMO corn and NON GMO corn. I was floored. And at the same time, not totally surprised because Glyphosate draws out the vital nutrients of living things and GMO corn is covered with it.

The important thing to note in these deficiencies is that these are exactly the deficiencies in a human being that lead to susceptibility to sickness, disorders and cancer. People who have osteoporosis are low in calcium and magnesium, people who have cancer are low in maganese. The list goes on and on.

GMO Corn has 14 ppm of Calcium and NON GMO corn has 6130 ppm. 437 X more.

GMO corn has 2 ppm of Magnesium and NON GMO corn has 113ppm. 56 X more.

GMO corn has 2 ppm of Manganese and NON GMO corn has 14ppm. 7X more.

Look at the levels of Formaldehyde and Glyphosate IN the corn! The EPA standards for Glyphosate in water in America is .7ppm. In Europe it is .2 ppm. Tests showed organ damage to animals at .1ppm of Glyphosate in water. This corn has 13 ppm!

In another study that Dr. Huber reported, on Elizabeth Dougherty's Talk Radio, .97 ppm of formeldehyde showed to be toxic in ingestion to animals. This corn has 200X that! That is why the animals , given a choice will not eat it at all, they can smell the formeldehyde!

Please share this report with your legislature, farmers, news editors, school district food services and Moms.

We will no longer be feeding our children food with nutritional deficiencies, foreign proteins, toxins, sprayed with Glyphosate, or injected with pesticides. Nor will we be fed their lies of safety!

http://www.momsacrossamerica.com/stunning_corn_comparison_gmo_versus_non_gmo

Keep on growing your own food

 

[jocat]

I have been buying 90% organic food for awhile now...trying to avoid GMO..i bet eating at most mainstream restaurants your getting GMO, the info about the formaldehyde is something i didn't know but another clear example why monsanto is not trustworthy and GMO is bad, we have to push for labeling and education then the market will hopefully flush this corporate greedhead out.