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Showing posts with label GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMO). Show all posts
Showing posts with label GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMO). Show all posts

Saturday, November 13, 2010

The World According to Monsanto (VIDEO)

The World According to Monsanto (US NTSC Format)This is a clip from the French documentary "The World According to Monsanto." It summarizes the history of Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide produced by Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and other companies. It was sprayed extensively during the Vietnam War, leading to a horrific variety of adverse health effects. Monsanto conducted deliberately flawed and coercive studies to "prove" that Agent Orange was safe, causing many Vietnam veterans to be denied sufficient health benefits. (Time: 4:41)
In the late 1990's, Monsanto changed its focus from chemicals like Agent Orange to biotechnology. It now indirectly controls approximately 60% of the world food supply. Monsanto insists that its genetically modified crops are safe.

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Monday, September 27, 2010

FDA refuses to require labeling of genetically modified salmon

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
September 27, 2010
As the FDA stands poised to approve genetically modified (GM) salmon safe for public consumption, the next logical question concerns how GM salmon would be labeled. Would the fish come with a large red warning that says, “Genetically modified salmon”?
The FDA has already gone on the record stating
it will not require any special labeling of genetically
modified salmon. Photo: Woodley Wonderworks.

As it turns out, no. In fact, the FDA has already gone on the record stating it will not require any special labeling of genetically modified salmon. You, the consumer, just have to take a wild guess because you’re not allowed to know what you’re really eating.
The biotech industry takes this absurdity one step further by claiming that labeling GM foods would just “confuse” consumers. David Edwards, the director of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, explained it in this way: “Extra labeling only confuses the consumer,” he says. “It differentiates products that are not different.”
Except that they are different. If they were really no different, then AquAdvantage company wouldn’t be growing them. The whole point of genetically modified salmon is that they are modified with extra growth hormone genes to make them grow more quickly. I don’t know where David Edwards is getting his information, but in the rest of the world, when something is different, that means it’s different.
If it’s no different, then why are so many GM salmon processes patented? If it’s no different, there would be nothing to patent. The entire purpose of a patent is to make a legal claim that “we invented something different” and we own the monopoly rights to it.
The GM salmon industry can’t have it both ways, you see. They can’t claim it’s so unique that their technologies and animals should be proprietary or patented, yet when it comes to food labeling, they claim there are no differences. It’s either different or it isn’t, and in the case of GM salmon, only an outright liar would look you in the eye and claim GM salmon is identical to regular farmed salmon or wild-caught salmon.
FDA insists on keeping people in the dark
The FDA, for its sad part in this saga, claims that it would be against the law to require the honest labeling of GM foods. This agency claims that since GM salmon is identical to regular salmon (it’s “no different” once again, they say), they can’t require it to be labeled any differently.
Except, of course, it is different. The genetic code of GM salmon is provably different, and since that genetic code is imprinted in every cell of the fish flesh, consumers are buying genetically modified fish with a different genetic code whose sole purpose was to alter the biochemistry of that fish so that it would grow larger more quickly. Thus, the physical expression of GM salmon is, by definition, different from the physical expression of regular salmon.
When you eat genetically modified salmon, you are eating something that’s different from regular (natural) salmon.
Word game trickery
What the FDA and biotech industries are doing with the GM salmon issue is playing word games, trying to confuse consumers with sleight-of-mouth language intentionally designed to mislead and misinform. They’ve already decided they want to approve GM salmon and they don’t want it to be accurately labeled. In essence, they want to trick consumers into buying GM salmon by making them think it’s natural salmon.
The trouble with this FDA hucksterism is that the people aren’t as stupid as the FDA thinks, and they aren’t going to be fooled by this genetically engineered salmon. That’s because the minute the FDA approves this Frankenfish, NaturalNews.com and a long list of other websites are going to alert the whole world to the simple truths of the matter:
Truth #1) Genetically engineered salmon is different from regular salmon.
Truth #2) The FDA is going out of its way to make sure GM salmon isn’t accurately labeled.
This is a Frankenfood cover-up, pure and simple, and the public is going to be outraged that the FDA would introduce a genetically engineered fish into the food supply without even requiring it to be accurately labeled!
Watch NaturalNews for more breaking coverage of this issue
We’ll be watching this issue very closely, waiting for the FDA’s final decision. If the FDA decides to yet again betray the American public over this issue, we won’t be at all surprised. But we will be vigilant, and we will ask for your help to spread the word and take action to demand that genetically modified salmon be accurately labeled so that consumers know what they’re actually buying.
Gee, you would think the FDA might be interested in food labeling honesty. But of course, the more you learn about the FDA, the more you realize every decision the agency makes is a political decision that betrays the rights and safety of the American people.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to eat genetically modified salmon. And I don’t want the FDA shoving this down my throat by making me try to guess which salmon is real versus artificially engineered. This Frankenfood shell game must end!
Watch for more news updates on this issue from NaturalNews.com.
Sources for this story include:




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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Fallout Continues for Arkansas Rice Farmers Contaminated by GMOs

Farmers feel economic effects of Liberty Link genes found five years ago 
By Curt Hodges 
Paragould Daily Press - Arkansas, Sept 10, 2010 
Straight to the Source 



Rice Plants
JONESBORO — Three Northeast Arkansas rice farmers say that despite nearly five years that have gone by since the Liberty Link genes were found  in commercially-grown long-grain rice in several states in August 2006, they are still feeling the effects.

“It has affected us economically,” said Clover Bend farmer Stan Jones. “We lost our markets and our reputation in the world of producing desirable, high quality long grain rice.”

Their reputations as producers were damaged by something that they had no control over, Jones, along with Greg Gill and Ray Stone, also Lawrence County rice growers, said Wednesday.

They also said several of their friends and fellow rice growers literally lost everything when rice markets collapsed and crops could not be sold in the aftermath of the discovery of genetically modified traits in commercial rice in the south.

“Here we are four years later and still having to have our rice certified as being free of genetically modified traits,” Stone said. “This is something that happened to us, and we had no control over it whatsoever. We’re still feeling the effects of it.”



The big effect, the farmers said, was not just their reputations and those of other rice growers in the south, but there was a stiff price to pay economically in lost markets and lower prices for all rice that resulted from the fallout of the tainted rice situation involving the Liberty Link experiments by Bayer CropScience that apparently went awry.

The European Union said no longer accepts U.S. rice. The market in Japan for American rice has also been hurt by discovery of the genetically modified traits in commercial rice.

Rice saved for seed has to be certified as free of genetically modified traits, and that certification has to be done at the cost of the farmer.

“It is the farmer that has to pay to have that done,” Stone pointed out, adding that it was not the farmer’s fault that the traits became spread through other varieties and ended up in commercial rice.

The announcement of the discovery of the stray traits was made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in August 2006 that Bayer’s LibertyLink traits had been found in commercially-grown long-grain rice in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Missouri. Five days later the European Union rejected rice grown by U.S. rice farmers and announced that a ban on U.S. imports would be instituted.

The farmers say that the EU ban is still in place, despite the fact that extensive testing has shown U.S. long-grain rice to be free of genetically modified traits.

They had no knowledge of nor intent to grow the genetically modified varieties that were in question, the farmers said Wednesday. But they have had to suffer the brunt of the entire situation from the low prices, rejection and damage to their reputations as growers of what was once considered the world’s premium variety, U.S. long-grain rice.

They are further aggravated by the fact that while Bayer does not dispute that rice seed supplies were contaminated with LibertyLink, the company maintains that growers were not economically harmed by the fact and have yet to explain how the contamination occurred nor to provide assurances that contamination will not happen again.

In 2006 the farmers said they had rice that they planned to sell in the markets that supplied the European Union and other parts of the world with American rice. Those markets, premium markets they say, were virtually closed to them and remain so today. Their rice then had to be sold at lower values, causing them economic damage that they still have not recovered from and they continue to pay the price for it.

Jones said the major variety he grew back then was Cheniere, which just happened to be the variety in which the contamination was found. Although he was certain that his rice had no such contamination, he had a difficult time selling his rice and the fallout from that is still being felt.

To date, said Clayton J. Smaistrla, attorney with Goldman Pennebaker and Phipps of San Antonio and McAllen, Texas, who represent the three Lawrence County farmers and others in the situation, six juries have awarded a total of $54.2 million against Bayer in six trials on the issue. The next Arkansas trial is set for Sept. 20 in Pine Bluff. Additional trials are pending in Arkansas.


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