USDA Going for RFID Again…And Again…Ad Nauseum, Ad Infinitum

From my friend Darol:

 

Memo: THE USDA BEATS THIS DEAD MULE OVER AND OVER. They just won’t quit! All government programs are about expanding government and increasing tax-trampling of the citizens. This proposal has been soundly trounced by cattle producers every few years since the early 2000s. It is glossed-over and repackaged at NAIS, ADT, and new names of this old dastardly enforcement.

Unnecessary: The USA has the most cautious livestock producers, with less disease than any country on earth. No livestock producer is asking the government for help in identifying their own cattle. They already know how to ID their cattle. Not needed at all.

Cost: The added cost to large livestock producers is from $6 to $15 per animal. The cost to small producers for pins, applicators, computer entry, etc., will be $25 to $75 per calf. In an industry fighting for their lives, $15 more cost per critter is asinine. Multiply the uselessness considering all cattle are identified by their owners already — no extra cost is wanted or needed.

Follow The Money: Large ear pin/tag companies are “buying” USDA. If USDA makes electronic pins the law, billions will be made by the major companies. It is not about disease — not about identification — it is not that livestock owners want it — it is about the government jobs and ear tag companie’s profits.

Who Wants What: In every comment or listening process USDA and APHIS has conducted (every 2 years) the huge majority of livestock producers soundly reject the increased cost involved, with no value return. Livestock producers are getting so tired of USDA shoving this down our throats over and over…. tired…. tired…….tired.

Call to Action: One more time, tell USDA in their public comments, on line, that no cattle people want this. We don’t need this again, and again. DD


The Dastardly Banner of the Evil USDA

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is seeking public comment on a proposal where APHIS would only approve Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as the official eartag for use in interstate movement of cattle that are required to be identified by the traceability regulations.

An official eartag is defined as an identification tag approved by APHIS that bears an official identification number for individual animals. Regulations allow APHIS to approve tags that can be used as official identification, and both metal and RFID tags are current options.

A transition to RFID tags would support APHIS’ ongoing efforts to increase animal disease traceability by more accurately and rapidly allowing animal health officials to know where affected and at-risk animals are located. While this would not prevent disease outbreaks, it would allow animal health officials to more quickly contain outbreaks early before they can do substantial damage to the U.S. cattle industry.

APHIS is also seeking comment on a proposed timeline for implementation, which the agency would use if this transition occurs. The timeline would make RFID tags the only option for use in cattle and bison requiring official identification on January 1, 2023. APHIS would “grandfather in” animals that have metal tags already in place on that date – their metal tags would serve as official identification for the remainder of their lifespan.

This transition timeline would not alter the existing regulations. The cattle and bison that must be identified will not change, nor will the option for animal health officials in shipping and receiving states to agree to accept alternate forms of identification, including brands and tattoos, in lieu of official identification.

Public comments will be accepted through October 5, 2020 at the following site: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-14463. After reviewing all comments, APHIS will publish a follow up Federal Register notice. This notice will respond to any such comments, announce our decision whether to only approve RFID tags as the only official identification devices for cattle, and, if so, provide the timeline for such a transition.

No Kidding…UN NWO Website UP!

In keeping with the solid tradition of never letting a crisis be wasted, the UN has launched it’s UN NWO website. Complete with a new economic paradigm and all the goals that have been part of their desire to control all of humanity in every aspect of life.

The new economic paradigm is “Happytalism”. Not kidding.

 

Here’s a video….

 

 

Meanwhile, we are being divided into propaganda camps in yet another age old tradition easily recognized as the Rothschild method of financing both sides of an ideological war. Masks, No masks, virus, total hoax, Trump is our savior, Trump is the cause of all problems, on and on and on.

Anyway, they launched their in your face site and have been working on it since the last world wide financial crisis in 2008.

Perhaps if the US withdrew from the UN, like the WHO, we could stand a chance at having a country when we get past all this garbage. But I am not going to hold my breath.

Please let people know about this. It still comes down to the consent of the governed.

GoogleCeuticals…Yes, they are also in the Big Pharma Biz

Excellent blog post with supporting links delineating that Google is indeed in the pharmaceutical business.

An excerpt followed by a link.

Google is Now a Pharmaceutical Company

July 7, 2019 — Gary Null & Richard Gale have documented that Google now has a pharmaceutical division headed by GlaxosSmithKline’s former chairman of its global vaccine business. Null & Gale write:

Google today is not only a weapon for promoting the pharmaceutical agenda but now also a drug company itself. During the past six years, Google’s parent company Alphabet has launched two pharmaceutical companies. In 2013, it founded Calico, run by Genentech’s former CEO Arthur Levinson. Calico operates an R&D facility in the San Francisco Bay Area for the discovery of treatments associated with age-related diseases. Two years later, Alphabet founded Verily Life Sciences (previously Google Life Sciences). Both pharma companies are partnering with other drug corporations. Recently, Verily has partnered with the European pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to form a new drug company, Galvani Bioelectronics for the development of “bioelectronic medicines.” The collaboration is costing the companies $715 million, and the new firm is being chaired by Glaxo’s former chairman of its global vaccines business. (emphasis added) http://prn.fm/gary-null-show-wikipedia-silicon-valleys-cult-medical-misinformation-07-01-19/

 

Another direct link to blog:

Google is Now a Pharmaceutical Company

 

Next thing ya know, Google will team up with dentists and put in dental implants with wi-fi.

 

Missouri has 3, count them THREE Cannabis Initiatives on the Ballot…And other things

So, in just a couple of days, Missouri will definitely pass some kind of initiative on cannabis. Marijuana for those who are unfamiliar with the history of the term.

Just an fyi for those who don’t know; the entire propaganda piece of “reefer madness” was predicated upon conflating racial issues with terminology. Everyone knew what “hemp” and cannabis were, but applying the idiomatic Mexican phrase of “marijuana” to the plant enabled the people pushing to keep cannabis from being used for health, wealth, and national security,  into a position of control over the dialogue.

Rest assured, not one of these initiatives will do anything to enable people to get “high” without the potential of legal  and severe monetary consequences.

Edited to add, that if anyone in my household were to come down with cancer, we would leaving Missouri and going to Colorado to begin treatments. And I know of several parents with children having leukemia and seizures who have had to leave Missouri to treat their child with effective types and applications of cannabis. It’s very, very sad that not one of these proposals will allow people to take control of their own health and the health of their loved ones. It’s actually heart breaking.

The initiative getting the largest amount of “airtime” is the biggest pile of manure that pretends to be helpful and will harm, hamper and probably actually cause loss of life. That is Amendment 3. It is being put forth by “Doctor and Lawyer: Brad Bradshaw. ” Notably, this amendment allows for a less than certain dosage to be available for people dying from cancer as the maximum allowable amount of cannabis. Again, for people who haven’t studied it out, to cure cancer, a person needs to have a POUND of flower reduced to oil in a month. Not the 3 ounces per month allowed by Amendment 3. It’s enough to make a person feel better without being able to actually heal them of the problem. In simple terms, enough to keep you happily sick and under the care of an industry that is not interested in curing you.

Just take a minute and think of all the people you know who have been diagnosed with cancer…Then take a moment to think about those you have lost to cancer. Is a “Constitutional amendment” that prevents you from doing what is right, normal and caring, worth sacrificing nearly all future cannabis patients over? You “can” if you you have successfully jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops set up by this 49 page amendment to the Missouri Constitution…AND if it is one of the ten of 700 to 1000 diseases deemed by the amendment to have been successfully treated by cannabis.

Actually, I don’t think anything more evil than Amendment 3 has been put forward as a “positive” solution for the well being of citizens ever. In any State. And even more repugnant, Amendment 3 pretends to give Missourians a payment to accept the unnecessary death or disability of their loved ones.

Sorry, but as a person who used to think that cannabis just helped people who were suffering from cancer “feel better” and then having become more thoroughly educated, I can’t see how it is even remotely beneficial to “allow” via a 49 page Constitutional Amendment, the right to be able to feel better while you die. Or for me, and most people, while your loved one dies an unnecessary death.  Because the Constitutional Amendment will not allow you to access a therapeutic dose. It will allow you to feel better…NOT to be healed. Yes, a pound is an awful lot, but to cure cancer, that’s what it takes. Maybe even a couple of pounds.

Oh, and a fifteen percent tax to anyone allowed to purchase cannabis from a licensed dispensary from licensed growers, AFTER they have exhausted all pharmaceutical potentials, which usually fail in 7 years time, will be used to set up and pay an “advisory” board to continue to “think about and study” uses for a plant that the Creator put here for our healing!!!

Disgust doesn’t begin to summarize my thoughts on Amendment 3. Nothing could be more repugnant to those who value life than this almost 50 page monstrosity that will be up for a vote on November 6, 2018. So…You decide. Is $10 a year back worth the death of someone you love? There’s Amendment 3. Killing people softly while pretending to do good.

Amendment 2 is much less heinous than Amendment 3. But it still does many of the same things. It does allow for home grow, IF you have exhausted all pharmaceutical efforts and have one of the 10 conditions set forth…10. Out of at least 1,000 conditions positively treated via documented studies. 0ne tenth of health issues are actually ensconced in the Missouri Constitution by this amendment. Read that properly…Point .1000000 of conditions treated by studies.

In it’s favor, Amendment 2 is only 14 pages long. And it commits 4% of tax revenue from the allowable cannabis sales to go to Veteran’s Services. But the impediments to treatment have the same exhaustive and time sensitive issues as does Amendment 3.  It also does not decriminalize cannabis, but qualifies some usage, and allows for 4 plants to be grown by those dying from the denial of effective treatment by cannabis.

Then there is the issue that both Amendment 2 and Amendment 3 could both pass as they are allowed to pass both at once. So then we have 2 Constitutional Amendments that conflict with each other, both of which inhibit individual access and personal accountability, ensconced in the Constitution only to be reconciled in court.

Just want to point out that the reconciliation itself can take 5 years. How many people lose their lives in that time frame?

Too many.

Entirely too many.

Then there is Prop C.

This is NOT a permanent amendment, so easier to change, but it isn’t without issues.  The biggest positive is that it is not a permanent amendment to the Constitution. And that has issues as well. It does nothing to guarantee the rights endowed by the Creator to His creation the right to access herbs He said were good. It does allow for the treatment of 10 diseases, out of thousands. And it presents less difficult hoops to jump through for people literally dying from lack of the Nutraceuticals available in cannabis. 10 diseases of thousands with peer reviewed studies. Thousands, mind you.

So, if you know someone with Lyme disease, or diabetes, they can’t have this. Not under the “laws” prescribed by the initiatives.

From where I am sitting, as a person who has actually studied out cannabis and who has ZERO benefit in the continued prohibition or qualified access to this plant, I have to dice it this way. A “law” even though it is insufficient, is easier to fix than a Constitutional Amendment.

So I am against all of the initiatives. Why? Because every single one of them removes your ability to take care of yourself and places that primary human right directly into the hands of regulators and “lawmakers”.

And I am pro cannabis. By default, I am also pro people and pro life. Politically, the Federal government will have no choice but to deschedule cannabis completely within the next year or two. And I am not for people getting stoned and driving or giving cannabis to kids for any purpose other than medical reasons. I do believe that adults should have the right to enjoy it in the privacy of their own homes for recreational purposes.

Too many have heard of and witnessed the positive effects of Rick Simpson Oil. Too many have seen the positive life enhancements and positive environmental effects..”What IF Cannabis Cured Cancer?” And of course, What we could do with Hemp!

People fail to comprehend that cannabis sativa is actually…Hemp…It also will get you high, but not as what we describe as “hemp”.

It is better to wait for righteousness than to agree to tyranny because we fail to trust in the truth. Missouri is better off holding to the Truth and waiting for the truth to prevail than to assent to severely constricted rights to eat something as helpful as echinacea.

Hemp seed, the flowers of which are not capable of intoxicating anyone, but are a perfect fatty acid food. Hemp seed itself can heal heart disease (actual) and high cholesterol (really made up since the discovery that statins)  plus, they taste good.

Anyway, it seems clear that Missouri will do something on medical cannabis. What we do…may be entirely up to you.

All three of these measures could pass. And that would guarantee a couple of years in court at minimum.

They all require greater than 55% to be considered “pass” and they are all single line issues.For example, Amendment 3 gets a “pass” at 55% of vote, and Amendment 2 gets “pass” at 55% of vote. Then Prop C gets “pass” at 55%…and 2 Constitutional Amendments and a law are in conflict.

In the interim, maybe it’s your child…or maybe your spouse?… that dies because things weren’t clear in all the conflicting statutes and amendments.

That is beyond unjust. You “have the right to try”…QUALIFIER>>> if you have exhausted all pharmaceutical attempts at reconciling your problem.

So, Missouri could have 2 Constitutional Amendments that conflict with each other pass on the ballot;  along with a law that conflicts. It’s a perfect storm of confusion.

From my point of view, it’s better to have no law than to have a bad law that needs to be corrected. Having participated in the attempt to get good and positive legislation passed to thwart a regulatory approach that was and IS harmful…It’s better to have nothing than to have “something” just because. To me, a Constitutional amendment regarding cannabis shouldn’t try to regulate via the Constitution. It should just make it free and legal and courts and legislatures could weigh in appropriately at the point of commerce.

Here are several less opinionated articles on the subject. Bottom line is that YOU have to decide.  For me, I am voting “no” on all of them. But only once..:)

https://www.civilized.life/articles/missouris-3-competing-medical-marijuana-ballots/

https://info.umkc.edu/unews/three-missouri-ballot-initiatives-aim-to-legalize-medical-marijuana/

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2018/08/03/missouri-has-three-marijuana-initiatives-on-the-2018-ballot-heres-the-breakdown

Your thoughts are always welcome…

If you do nothing nothing else, please watch “Run from the Cure” which is the story of healing pioneer Rick Simpson and his rediscovery of the healing properties of cannabis oil.

 

 

 

 

Round Up…It’s What’s for Dinner

The Guardian has a good article regarding the prevalence of Round Up (glyphosate) in our food supply. As many of us have long suspected, it’s in just about everything. But the FDA hasn’t completed their study, so the only information available is the internal emails between researchers on this study.

It’s quite telling.

For people who think that Round up actually disappears from the soil once it’s been applied, the contamination across the entire gamut of your food should put that belief to a serious challenge.

Here is an excerpt from the article, but please do go and read it as this is really only a snippet and it is well worth the read.

More than 200m pounds of weedkiller are used annually by US farmers on their fields. It is sprayed directly over some crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat and oats.
More than 200m pounds of weedkiller are used annually by US farmers on their fields. It is sprayed directly over some crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat and oats. Photograph: Marvin Dembinsky Photo Associate/Alamy

……..But the internal documents obtained by the Guardian show the FDA has had trouble finding any food that does not carry traces of the pesticide.

“I have brought wheat crackers, granola cereal and corn meal from home and there’s a fair amount in all of them,” FDA chemist Richard Thompson wrote to colleagues in an email last year regarding glyphosate. Thompson, who is based in an FDA regional laboratory in Arkansas, wrote that broccoli was the only food he had “on hand” that he found to be glyphosate-free.

That internal FDA email, dated January 2017, is part of a string of FDA communications that detail agency efforts to ascertain how much of the popular weedkiller is showing up in American food. The tests mark the agency’s first-ever such examination.

“People care about what contaminants are in their food. If there is scientific information about these residues in the food, the FDA should release it,” said Tracey Woodruff, a professor in the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. “It helps people make informed decisions. Taxpayers paid for the government to do this work, they should get to see the information.”

The FDA is charged with annually testing food samples for pesticide residues to monitor for illegally high residue levels. The fact that the agency only recently started testing for glyphosate, a chemical that has been used for over 40 years in food production, has led to criticism from consumer groups and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Calls for testing grew after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015. (read entire article here)

Skynet is Here~This is serious

At times it becomes difficult to stay within the realm of good social discourse when you’ve read entirely too many documents that clearly demonstrate George Orwell’s axiom of a “boot stamping on a human face forever”.  Such is the case with AI, quantum computing, Cern, the Mandela Effect, frequency weapons, 5G, nanobots, nanoparticles as antennae, geoengineering, the “FunVax”, DNA gene signaling, Bitcoin possibly being invented and run by AI, AI creating their own language and ignoring their programmers, self acquiring targeting drones, facial recognition, brain scanning technology, voice to skull technology, the internet of things, sexbots, Sophia and Alexa, et al.

If you think I am making anything referenced above up to be fodder for a novel, please do a little research. But do it kind of quickly, please.

The video below is just short of 20 minutes in length. I suggest you watch it. I also suggest that after you’ve watched it, you send it on to as many people as you think you may care about in the world.

Let me know your thoughts after watching it.

North Dakota Hemp Growers Bitten By Drought and Market Controls

If you will go and read the entire article on the site, you will have a pretty thorough idea of why the regulatory processes kill entrepreneurs and small business in general. It goes well beyond the issue of cannabis and carries over to nearly every endeavor known to man.

Here’s the thing, the ONLY legitimate function of government is to protect your rights. This does indeed include when another person or entity is impeding your rights. You have the right to profit from your labor. Otherwise, there is no reason to engage in labor. There are legitimate laws that have been passed and are never enforced against monopolies and too heavy of consolidation in sectors of the economy. The consolidation laws are anti-trust/anti-competition laws. Those are not enforced….Grr.

A point I would like to make regarding the farmer not being able to sell the stalks of his hemp is that if it were chopped or shredded, it could be made into silage for cattle. It doesn’t just have to go for nothing because there is no hemp fiber processor in North Dakota.

Anyway, here is the article that prompted my little rant above:

Hemp hopes dashed: Drought, market forces work against hemp farmers this year

excerpt of about 1/4 of the article

No free market

Since it is listed as a Schedule 1 substance, industrial hemp comes with a lot of rules that other crops don’t have.

Industrial hemp can’t just be harvested and taken to a grain elevator to search out the best price. It must be sold within the state, and right now, North Dakota has just one buyer.

That individual is on the east side of the state and interested only in buying the seed for food-grade oil.

There are other potentially lucrative products for hemp. The stalks can be harvested for use in textiles. But there’s no processor in North Dakota to buy it for that.

So the stalks, which might have been a secondary crop to boost Fischer’s bottom line, will likely be wasted. Fischer isn’t even certain whether the rules would allow it to be used for cattle bedding.

The prices for Fischer’s crop came out a few weeks before Fischer harvested it. They were disappointing, particularly compared to last year.

“I can’t believe the price they came out with,” Fischer said. “It’s less than half of last year.”

The problem, Fischer said he was told, is that China is importing a lot of hemp, and that’s driven market prices down. But Fischer believes that 3,000 acres was simply too much for North Dakota’s tiny, one-company market.

Dicamba Facing Hurdles

Rec’d the following notice from a fellow GMO fighter. Hopefully an informed populace can throw Monsatan another curve ball:

Dear friends,

Monsanto is launching a super poison that kills plants in its path — except for Monsanto GMOs. It even flies through the air onto neighbouring land!

But in days we can shut it down.

After a massive outcry from 1,000 affected farmers, a key US state could now ban this poison. This will set a precedent to influence regulation around the world.

Monsanto is mounting an intense pressure campaign, and hoping to keep it to a local fight. But if one million of us sign this petition now, we’ll submit it to the official process to show that the whole world wants this toxic chemical out of our fields and off our food! Add your name:

Stand up to Monsanto

It’s no surprise farmers are up in arms. Dicamba spreads death with the wind, drifting onto their crops, trees, soil, and water. Farmers are now faced with a terrible choice — switch to Monsanto GMO seeds, or watch their crops die.

It’s a greedy, dangerous scheme that will make Monsanto billions and could destroy our food system.

But we can stop it. 17 US states opened Dicamba investigations and key Arkansas authorities just recommended a ban — now it is up for a vote. Regulators from the EU to Latin America are watching carefully. If one million of us face down Monsanto in Arkansas, and win a ban, we could stop this deadly poison in its tracks.

Stand up to Monsanto

For years, the Avaaz community has taken on the David vs Goliath fight to stop the corrupt and dangerous takeover of our food system. And we are winning. Last year, we helped stop Monsanto from opening a flagship GM factory in Argentina, and we stopped the EU from giving a new license to the pesticide glyphosate. Now, we can help win in Arkansas where the next fight begins.

With hope and determination,

Dalia, Nick, Danny, Allison, Diego, Camille and the rest of the Avaaz team

Sources:

Arkansas Defies Monsanto, Moves To Ban Rogue Weedkiller (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/09/22/552803465/arkansas-defies-monsanto-moves-to-ban-rogue-weedkiller

This miracle weed killer was supposed to save farms. Instead, it’s devastating them. (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/this-miracle-weed-killer-was-supposed-to-save-farms-instead-its-devastating-them/2017/08/29/33a21a56-88e3-11e7-961d-2f373b3977ee_story.html

Arkansas one step from dicamba ban (AgriNews)
http://www.agrinews-pubs.com/news/arkansas-one-step-from-dicamba-ban/article_9a258824-25d7-5e73-a623-9831fb993ecf.html

Monsanto Fighting Arkansas Dicamba Ban (Arkansas Matters)
http://www.arkansasmatters.com/news/local-news/monsanto-fighting-arkansas-dicamba-ban/806920404

Arkansas one step from ban on controversial herbicide next summer (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pesticides-arkansas/arkansas-one-step-from-ban-on-controversial-herbicide-next-summer-idUSKCN1BW33A

Avaaz is a 44-million-person global campaign network
that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decision-making. (“Avaaz” means “voice” or “song” in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 18 countries on 6 continents and operates in 17 languages. Learn about some of Avaaz’s biggest campaigns here, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Monsanto Busted Doing Their Own “Independent Reviews”

It came out several months ago when Monsanto was forced to release emails in the lawsuit for cancer deaths in California, that Monsanto definitely KNEW there were problems, and worked to both control the studies and cover up what they knew to be the truth about their cancer causing, genderbending, bee destroying, genetic aberrations.

Now that knowledge is becoming mainstream. And they can’t seem to afford to buy everyone off any longer. Not that they don’t have the vast majority of the US House and Senate working to do their bidding.

Here’s an excerpt from a heavily linked article at Bloomberg today. Please be sure to share it:

Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews

Academic papers vindicating its Roundup herbicide were written with the help of its employees.
August 9, 2017, 3:00 AM CDT

Monsanto Co. started an agricultural revolution with its “Roundup Ready” seeds, genetically modified to resist the effects of its blockbuster herbicide called Roundup. That ability to kill weeds while leaving desirable crops intact helped the company turn Roundup’s active ingredient, the chemical glyphosate, into one of the world’s most-used crop chemicals. When that heavy use raised health concerns, Monsanto noted that the herbicide’s safety had repeatedly been vetted by outsiders. But now there’s new evidence that Monsanto’s claims of rigorous scientific review are suspect.

Dozens of internal Monsanto emails, released on Aug. 1 by plaintiffs’ lawyers who are suing the company, reveal how Monsanto worked with an outside consulting firm to induce the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology to publish a purported “independent” review of Roundup’s health effects that appears to be anything but. The review, published along with four subpapers in a September 2016 special supplement, was aimed at rebutting the 2015 assessment by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. That finding by the cancer-research arm of the World Health Organization led California last month to list glyphosate as a known human carcinogen. It has also spurred more than 1,000 lawsuits in state and federal courts by plaintiffs who claim they contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma from Roundup exposure.

Monsanto disclosed that it paid Intertek Group Plc’s consulting unit to develop the review supplement, entitled “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate.” But that was the extent of Monsanto’s involvement, the main article said. “The Expert Panelists were engaged by, and acted as consultants to, Intertek, and were not directly contacted by the Monsanto Company,” according to the review’s Declaration of Interest statement. “Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel’s manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.”

Monsanto’s internal emails tell a different story. The correspondence shows the company’s chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts. At one point, Heydens even vetoed explicit requests by some of the panelists to tone down what one of them wrote was the review’s “inflammatory” criticisms of IARC.

“An extensive revision of the summary article is necessary,” wrote that panelist, John Acquavella, an epidemiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, in a February 2016 email attached to his suggested edits of the draft. Alarmed, Ashley Roberts, the coordinator of the glyphosate papers for Intertek, forwarded Acquavella’s note and edits to Heydens at Monsanto, with the warning: “Please take a look at the latest from the epi(demiology) group!!!!”

Heydens reedited Acquavella’s edits, arguing in six different notes in the draft’s margin that statements Acquavella had found inflammatory were not and should not be changed, despite the author’s requests. In the published article, Heydens’s edits prevailed. In an interview, Acquavella says that he was satisfied with the review’s final tone. According to an invoice he sent Monsanto, he billed the company $20,700 for a single month’s work on the review, which took nearly a year to complete…..(read the rest here)

Perfect Example of MMJ and Why it is No Help to those in Need

This is a perfect example of why MMJ is no good, and it just needs to be completely decriminalized and descheduled. Monopolies and corporate control are in no way an enhancement to personal freedom. Read the article below and see if you agree with me or not. I’m still waiting to find out where they finally fall on this.

Fee to grow medical marijuana in Arkansas: $100,000 a year

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – A state commission has decided that Arkansas residents hoping to grow medical marijuana will have to pay an annual fee of $100,000 to operate a cultivation facility.

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission set the fee amount on Tuesday, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (http://bit.ly/2iB9UsP ) reported. The commission also decided that people who apply must have a $1 million bond or assets worth $1 million and be able to show $500,000 in cash liquidity. The requirements are in addition to a $15,000 application fee the commission approved last week.

The commission was created by the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment passed by voters in November. The panel must create rules by June to govern how Arkansas residents can apply for cultivation and dispensary licenses.

Two commissioners, Dr. Carlos Roman and Travis Story, noted that potential growers would not be able to secure bank loans if they run out of cash because medical marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

Roman, who proposed a $15,000 license fee, argued that the fees for would-be growers should be kept as low as possible to receive the maximum number of applications.

“It’s an expensive endeavor, so it’s not something that someone could just go in with $10,000 and start a cultivation facility. The cost is very high,” Roman said. “So we want to respect the price point on it, but I’m just trying to fight at every level to make it accessible to as many people … to make it open to as many Arkansans as possible.”

Previous Older Entries