Exploiting the Poor for Fascism- Monsanto Push on El Salvador

Back in the days of the cave man, when I was growing up, we were taught definitions of socialism and fascism as part of our education. Today, many people can’t distinguish fascism from communism, and communism from socialism. My guess is that it is intentional. What we are actually running under is international communism which has a huge helping of fascism evident as a helpful identifier.

Also, all of this aid tied to corporations that are in business with the federal government helps illustrate the overarching fascism. El Salvador versus Monsanto is an excellent example of this:

Monsanto and Foreign Aid: Forcing El Salvador’s Hand

 

 

U.S. foreign aid is expected to promote poverty alleviation and facilitate developmental growth in impoverished countries. Yet, corporations and special interest groups have permeated even the most well-intended of U.S. policies.

(Photo: sakhorn38 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

El Salvador is a recent example of corporate domination in U.S. foreign aid. The United States will withhold the Millennium Challenge Compact aid deal, approximately $277 million in aid, unlessEl Salvador purchases genetically-modified seeds from biotech giant, Monsanto.[1] The Millennium Challenge Corporation is “a U.S. foreign aid agency that was created by the U.S. Congress in January 2004,”[2] according to Sustainable Pulse, and serves as a conduit for foreign aid funds. MCC’s unethical aid conditions would force El Salvador to purchase controversial seeds from the American biotech corporation instead of purchasing non-GMO seeds from the country’s local farmers[3] – an action that would have negative effects on El Salvador’s agricultural industry in addition to presenting serious health and environmental risks.

The conditional foreign aid from MCC is an attempt to break into El Salvador’s non-GMO agricultural sector and exploit the food market. Because El Salvador has high food insecurity, it imports 85% of its food. This allows U.S. foreign aid organizations to take advantage of the dire need for their own monetary gain. The United States used similar aid policies in Haiti to force open Haiti’s agricultural market for U.S. food products – effectively destroying Haiti’s agricultural economy and creating an overreliance on food aid.[4]

However, at least one ranking individual is pushing back against predatory aid in El Salvador. Ricardo Navarro, President of the El Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technologies, states, “I would like to tell the U.S. ambassador to stop pressuring the Government (of El Salvador) to buy ‘improved’ GM seeds,” and hopes that the El Salvadoran government does not bend to U.S. pressure.[5]

El Salvador recently banned glyphosate and other chemicals in September 2013 – at the same time the MCC stopped the aid package process until “’specific’ economic and environmental reforms were made.”[6] Glyphosate herbicide is a fundamental chemical for Monsanto’s genetically-modified crops, but poses serious toxicity concerns.[7] As a result, El Salvador appears to be the most recent victim of U.S. ‘trade wars’ against countries that oppose Monsanto.[8] France – who was working to ban a Monsanto crop – was “requested to be ‘penalized’ by the United States for opposing Monsanto and genetically modified foods.”[9] Hungary and even the Vatican are also targeted by U.S. foreign policy for being anti-GMO, according to documents released by Wikileaks.[10] Despite Monsanto’s GMOcrops that pose serious health and environmental risks, U.S. officials continue to push Monsanto’s agenda in domestic and foreign policies.

Due to powerful lobbying by corporate giants like Monsanto, in addition to the shipping and agricultural industries, the U.S. government’s foreign aid program has become an encroaching business. Just when the U.S. foreign aid program couldn’t appear to be more corrupt, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, U.S. Congress, and Monsanto have raised the bar.

Notes

[1] “US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds,” RT, June 10, 2014, accessed June 11, 2014, http://rt.com/usa/165128-us-pressures-salvador-monsanto-gmo/.; “U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds,” Sustainable Pulse, June 8, 2014, accessed June 11, 2014,http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/06/08/u-s-government-ties-el-salvador-usd-277-m-aid-package-monsantos-gmo-seeds/#.U5hCmRBCxGN.

[2] “U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds.”

[3] Ibid; “US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds.”

[4] Haiti Grassroots Watch, “HAITI: Aid or Trade? The Nefarious Effects of U.S. Policies,” GlobalResearch, November 6, 2013, accessed June 11, 2014,http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-aid-or-trade-the-nefarious-effects-of-u-s-policies/5357204.

[5] “U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds.”

[6] “US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds.”

[7] Ibid.

[8] Anthony Gucciardi, “Leaked: US to Start ‘Trade Wars’ with Nations Opposed to Monsanto, GMO crops,” Natural Society, January 3, 2012, accessed June 11, 2014,http://naturalsociety.com/us-start-trade-wars-with-nations-opposed-to-monsanto-gmo-crops/.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Allison Crawford, “Monsanto Launches ‘Trade Wars’ on Opposing Nations,” Health Wire, September 12, 2012, accessed June 11, 2014,http://www.myhealthwire.com/news/food/77.

 

Norway Study on Glyphosate and Missouri’s Amendment 1- “Right to Farm”

If anyone wants one more reason to have GMO food labeled, a very solid study out of Norway shows Round Up accumulation in treated crops to be excessive when ready for consumption.

Should Amendment 1 pass in Missouri, Monsanto’s home state, there will be even more uncontrolled GMO proliferation and spraying of Round Up and 2-4d. Amendment 1 masquerades as a protection against animal rights activists, but it will provide for complete factory farming in the State with no ability to constrain it left to the citizens.

Here are a few questions about Amendment 1:

•If it is to halt the animal rights agenda, then why hasn’t the legislature simply passed legislation to prohibit the most extreme of their activities?

•If it is to protect agriCULTURE as opposed to agriINDUSTRY, then why was the original wording specifically tailored to protect “modern technology”?

•Since we, and all other states, already have statute that prevents nuisance suits against existing farms and ranches, why do we need to change our Constitution? Do we have to protect our right to use an indoor flush toilet in the Constitution as well? Isn’t enumerating every single right of man a little beyond the pale?

•Additionally, who is going to define the terms farm, farmer, rancher, ranching, farming? Regulators, courts and lawyers…Do we trust them?

If you think protecting Monsanto, one of the proponents of Amendment 1, should be part of Missouri’s Constitution, then you should vote for this proposed amendment.

Read this study if you are still of the mindset that Round Up is a good thing. Think about telling your grandchildren that you voted to have them sterilized by the food supply because you thought eating herbicides was good business.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814613019201

As with everything political, you have got to look at the interests of those who are the major supporters of a proposed action. Cargill, Monsanto, Missouri Corn and Soy Growers, and the biggest proponent for destructive free trade agreements, Missouri Farm Bureau, are the major supporters of Amendment 1. Many members of Farm Bureau are the best people you may ever meet! Farm Bureau even does some things that are actually positive for real farmers. Amendment 1 is just NOT one of those positive actions.

Study Indicates Glyphosate (Round Up) Doubles Chance of Lymphoma

With Amendment 1 on the ballot here in Missouri for August 5th, this is terrifically pertinent information. NO independent studies of long term exposure or ingestion have been done in the US!

Study: Glyphosate Doubles Risk of Lymphoma

Scientists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer have found what appears to be a strong link between pesticide exposure and a blood cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Analyzing 44 individual research projects published since 1980, the scientists, writing in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, said that people exposed to the weed killer glyphosate, marked by Monsanto under the brand name Roundup, had double the risk of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Those exposed to 2,4-D, another potent weed killer marketed by Dow Chemical, were 40 percent more likely to develop this disease.

The authors, scientists who work in the IARC Section of Environment and Radiation in Lyon, France, theorized that these pesticides were causing genetic mutations in white blood cells, thereby weakening the body’s immune system and ability to fight off disease.

Previous studies have observed that farmers with exposure to 2,4-D have experienced impaired immune systems.

Last month, EWG reported that research by scientists at the Arctic University of Norway had detected “extreme levels” of glyphosate on genetically engineered soybeans.

Crop scientists have genetically engineered soy to survive blasts of glyphosate so that farmers can use this chemical to get rid of weeds near crops. Over time these weeds have become resistant to glyphosate and grown hardier. In turn some farmers have resorted to spraying more of the pesticide to try to kill the tougher “super weeds.”

Genetic engineering’s early promise to reduce pesticide use now seems empty. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reported that herbicide use doubled—from 62 million pounds in 1996 to 128 million pounds in 2012. Glyphosate now represents more than 83 percent of the chemical pesticides used in the U.S. annually.

The IARC study was published April 23, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was considering approving GE seeds of corn and soybeans engineered to withstand 2,4-D, a suspected carcinogen. If the EPA approves the new GE seeds and if 2,4-D is used to kill weeds on some of the 170 million acres of corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. annually, the USDA estimates that 2,4-D use is likely to triple, dramatically increasing people’s exposure to a pesticide that may cause cancer.

How can consumers reduce their exposures to these pesticides? When we eat GE foods, we are taking a dose of pesticides with them. Right now, we can’t tell which foods are genetically engineered. We have to guess. EWG believes people have the right to know which foods are genetically engineered. What can you do? Tell your elected representatives to support legislation to label GE foods.

Note from Food Revolution Network: Additional tools for reducing pesticide and GE food exposure are the Environmental Working Group’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce and the Institute for Responsible Technology’s non-GMO shopping guide.

Strong Arming El Salvador for Monsanto

This is just another example of the corporate control that dominates agriculture. Monsanto forces everyone to consume their toxic swill in the US unless they grow all their own food or buy ONLY from others or grow all their own food. This is just one of the many reasons why people who care at all about health and economic freedom should be against Amendment 1 on August 5th in Missouri. It is not about constraining HSUS from harming animal agriculture, it is about complete carte blanche for GMO’s of both animal and plant varieties in the State.

Here’s the article regarding El Salvador:

US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds

 

As one of the preconditions to authorizing close to $300 million in aid, the United States is pressuring El Salvador to purchase genetically modified seeds from Monsanto instead of non-GM seeds from local farmers.

According to Sustainable Pulse, a website covering developments related to genetically modified organisms and sustainable agriculture, the US will reportedly withhold $277 million in aid through the Millennium Challenge Compact if El Salvador refuses to purchase GM seeds from the biotech company Monsanto.

The website states that the stalled aid package was originally put on hold in late 2013, when it was revealed that Millennium Challenge Corporation would not deliver funds to the country unless “specific” economic and environmental reforms were made. Apparently, one of those is related to the purchase of GMO seeds.

Speaking with Verdad Digital, however, the president of the El Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technologies (CESTA) criticized the US negotiating position and said the country should back away from its demand.

“I would like to tell the U.S. Ambassador to stop pressuring the Government (of El Salvador) to buy ‘improved’ GM seeds,” CESTA president Ricardo Navarro said, adding that the move would hurt the local economy and only benefit US companies.

Navarro specifically singled out Monsanto for criticism as well, saying, “There is a harmful corporation on the planet called Monsanto … it is truly disturbing that the U.S. is trying to promote them.”

In Europe, too, Monsanto’s GM seeds have garnered criticism. In March, France banned the growth and sale of the company’s insect-repelling maize seed MON 810, just a few days before it was revealed that insects in the US were developing resistance to the crop.

The comments from Navarro also arrive as Monsanto is under fire in several South American countries, including El Salvador and Brazil. As RT reported previously, El Salvador passed legislation in September 2013 banning glyphosate, used in Monsanto’s Roundup pesticides, as well as dozens of other agricultural chemicals.

Similar proposals are being considered in Brazil, where the country’s prosecutor general recently urged the National Health Surveillance Agency to “reevaluate the toxicity of eight active ingredients suspected of causing damage to human health and the environment,” including glyphosate and seven other chemicals.

As for why glyphosate is coming under such heavy scrutiny, new research has indicated that while the chemical is not as dangerous on its own, it becomes extremely toxic to humans once it mixes with natural metals found in soil.

Meanwhile, other reports have linked glyphosate to the outburst of a fatal kidney disease that has killed thousands of people in El Salvador and Sri Lanka, and could also help explain similar situations in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and India.

 

Round Up and Autism…MIT Professor Shows Stunning Correlation

Yesterday I came across some incredible information. As everyone is aware, the number of people affected by autism has been skyrocketing. I thought it was from vaccines and the additives present in them…Well, that looks like it is a part of the cause, but if you go through Dr Stephanie Seneff’s Power Point on Round Up prevalence and the increase in autism, it is simply stunning.

Here’s a chart form the PPT that really drives it home:

 

You can watch several videos of Seneff on youtube going over her various studies and the correlation between increases in various diseases and the striking relationship of glyphosate to the disease increase. Here is one that is about an hour long: Dr Seneff on Glyphosate and Autism.

Or you can copy this direct link below:

 

Right to Farm Proposed Constitutional Amendment

If you will look through my posts from the last Missouri session in 2013, you will find an awful lot of info on the “Right to Farm” proposed amendment. Click here to read the most comprehensive piece I did on it. It WILL be on the ballot here in MO  . The language was modified slightly, but we were not able to garner enough action to halt the thing from going through.

Here’s our “victory” on altering the language…instead of ensconcing “modern farming practices and technology” into the Missouri Constitution, it now reads like this:

Section 35. That agriculture which provides food, energy, health benefits, and security is the foundation and stabilizing force of Missouri’s economy. To protect this vital sector of Missouri’s economy, the right of farmers and ranchers to engage in [modern] farming [technology] and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed in this state, subject to duly authorized powers, if any, conferred by article VI of the Constitution of Missouri.

It’s going to be a mess, folks. It will require court challenges and that “farmer” and “rancher” be defined by the State.

The fact is that we already have this right, and we don’t need them to define it, because if they define it, it will mess things up royally.

The intent of the language was- and remains to be- to protect GMO proliferation, biotech interests, and corporate vertically integrated factory farming. It is not intended to protect small diversified farming, and it won’t do so in the long run.

Ballotpedia has good info on this, you can click on this link and read it.

The proponents of the “Right to Farm” amendment say that the need for this change to our Constitution is the threat of animal rights activist groups and the constraints on animal agriculture they bring about. They also intimate that the only people opposed to the amendment are animal rights activists. Guess what? I am NOT an animal rights activist, and neither are a myriad of others who are opposed to this change in Missouri’s Constitution. So that is a patent falsehood.

We don’t need this amendment, and we certainly don’t need to change our Constitution because Farm Bureau wants to increase corporate ag’s stranglehold on small, diversified agricultural endeavors. What concerns me the most is that they will define “farmer” and “rancher” and “agriculture” as adjuncts to this legislation. When they do that, we will have GMO proliferation protected by Missouri’s Constitution and it may include biotech animal ag protections as well.

This amendment is dangerous and unnecessary. Please vote no on it, and let everyone else you know about the hidden dangers and the original intentions of those who pushed this amendment forward.

 

Transhumanism in Process

For many years, I have been pointing out these abominations that science is creating. Michael Snyder does an excellent job of bringing these things out in one fell swoop in the following article. Lots of links and important information for those of us who desire decency in our food supply to be somewhat conversant on.

 I contend, I like my Brave New World better as fiction:

The Era Of Chimeras: Scientists Fearlessly Create Bizarre Human/Animal Hybrids
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/05/era-chimeras-scientists-fearlessly-create-bizarre-humananimal-hybrids/#Y0flJCWXEEQfV6d2.99

Did you know that scientists are creating cow/human hybrids, pig/human hybrids and even mouse/human hybrids? This is happening every single day in labs all over the western world, but most people have never even heard about it. So would you drink milk from a cow/human hybrid that produces milk that is almost identical to human breast milk? And how would you interact with a mouse that has a brain that is almost entirely human? These are the kinds of questions that we will have to start to address as a society as scientists create increasingly bizarre human/animal hybrids. Thanks to dramatic advances in genetic technology, we have gotten to the point where it is literally possible for college students to create new hybrid lifeforms in their basements. Of course our laws have not kept pace with these advances, and now that Pandora’s Box has been opened, it is going to be nearly impossible to shut it.

Scientists try to justify the creation of human/animal hybrids by telling us that it will help “cure disease” and help “end world hunger”, but what if scientists discover that combining human DNA with animal DNA can give us incredible new abilities or greatly extended lifespans? Will humanity really have the restraint to keep from going down that road?

In my previous article entitled “Transhumanists: Superhuman Powers And Life Extension Technologies Will Allow Us To Become Like God“, I explored the obsession that transhumanists have with human enhancement. The temptation to “take control of our own evolution” will surely be too great for many scientists to resist. And even if some nations outlaw the complete merging of humans and animals, that does not mean that everyone else in the world will.

And once animal DNA gets into our breeding pool, how will we ever put the genie back into the bottle? As the DNA of the human race becomes corrupted, it is easy to imagine a future where there are very few “pure humans” remaining.

Sadly, most of the scientists working in this field express very little concern for these types of considerations. In fact, one very prominent U.S. geneticist says that we should not even worry about hybridization because he believes that humans were originally pig/chimpanzee hybrids anyway…

The human species began as the hybrid offspring of a male pig and a female chimpanzee, an American geneticist has suggested.

The startling claim has been made by Eugene McCarthy, who is also one of the world’s leading authorities on hybridisation in animals.

He points out that while humans have many features in common with chimps, we also have a large number of distinguishing characteristics not found in any other primates.

So if we are just hybrid creatures ourselves, why should we be scared of making more hybrids?

From their point of view, it all makes perfect sense.

And right now, extremely weird human/animal hybrids are being grown all over the United States.

For example, just check out the following excerpt from an NBC News article about what is going on in Nevada…

On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.

The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can’t wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus’ brain about two months ago.

“It’s mice on a large scale,” Chamberlain says with a shrug.

When this article came across my desk recently, I noted that it was almost ten years old.

Over the past decade, things have gotten much, much stranger.

For example, scientists have now created mice that have artificial human chromosomes “in every cell in their bodies“…

Scientists have created genetically-engineered mice with artificial human chromosomes in every cell of their bodies, as part of a series of studies showing that it may be possible to treat genetic diseases with a radically new form of gene therapy.

In one of the unpublished studies, researchers made a human artificial chromosome in the laboratory from chemical building blocks rather than chipping away at an existing human chromosome, indicating the increasingly powerful technology behind the new field of synthetic biology.

And researchers at the University of Wisconsin figured out a way to transfer cells from human embryos into the brains of mice. When those cells from the human embryos began to grow and develop, they actually made the mice substantially smarter

Yet experiments like these are going forward just the same. In just the past few months, scientists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Rochester have published data on their human-animal neural chimeras. For the Wisconsin study, researchers injected mice with an immunotoxin to destroy a part of their brains–the hippocampus–that’s associated with learning, memory, and spatial reasoning. Then the researchers replaced those damaged cells with cells derived from human embryos. The cells proliferated and the lab chimeras recovered their ability to navigate a water maze.

For the Rochester study, researchers implanted newborn mice with nascent human glial cells, which help support and nourish neurons in the brain. Six months later, the human parts had elbowed out the mouse equivalents, and the animals had enhanced ability to solve a simple maze and learn conditioned cues. These protocols might run afoul of the anti-hybrid laws, and perhaps they should arouse some questions. These chimeric mice may not be human, or even really human, but they’re certainly one step further down the path to Algernon. It may not be so long before we’re faced with some hairy bioethics: What rights should we assign to mice with human brains?

So what should we call mice that have brains that are mostly human?

And at what point would our relationship with such creatures fundamentally change?

When they learn to talk?

Scientists all over the planet are recklessly creating these chimeras without really thinking through the implications.

In China, scientists have actually inserted human genes into the DNA of dairy cow embryos.

Now there are hundreds of human/cow hybrids that produce milk that is virtually identical to human breast milk.

Would you buy such milk if it showed up in your supermarket? The scientists that “designed” these cows say that is the goal.

But of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. A very good Slate article detailed some more of the human/animal hybrid experiments that have been taking place all over the planet…

Not long ago, Chinese scientists embedded genes for human milk proteins into a mouse’s genome and have since created herds of humanized-milk-producing goats. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Michigan have a method for putting a human anal sphincter into a mouse as a means of finding better treatments for fecal incontinence, and doctors are building animals with humanized immune systems to serve as subjects for new HIV vaccines.

And Discovery News has documented even more bizarre human/animal hybrids that scientists have developed…

Rabbit Eggs with Human Cells

Pigs with Human Blood

Sheep with Human Livers

Cow Eggs with Human Cells

Cat-Human Hybrid Proteins

As technology continues to advance, the possibilities are going to be endless.

One professor at Harvard even wants to create a Neanderthal/human hybrid. He says that he just needs an “adventurous female human” to carry the child…

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago.

His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer.

He said his analysis of Neanderthal genetic code using samples from bones is complete enough to reconstruct their DNA.

He said: ‘Now I need an adventurous female human.

‘It depends on a hell of a lot of things, but I think it can be done.’

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a really, really bad idea to me.

And right now, the U.S. federal government is actually considering a plan which would allow scientists to create babies that come from genetic material drawn from three parents

A new technology aimed at eliminating genetic disease in newborns would combine the DNA of three people, instead of just two, to create a child, potentially redrawing ethical lines for designer babies.

The process works by replacing potentially variant DNA in the unfertilized eggs of a hopeful mother with disease-free genes from a donor. U.S. regulators today will begin weighing whether the procedure, used only in monkeys so far, is safe enough to be tested in humans.

Because the process would change only a small, specific part of genetic code, scientists say a baby would largely retain the physical characteristics of the parents. Still, DNA from all three — mother, father and donor — would remain with the child throughout a lifetime, opening questions about long-term effects for this generation, and potentially the next. Ethicists worry that allowing pre-birth gene manipulation may one day lead to build-to-order designer babies.

Many scientists believe that these kinds of technologies will “change the world”.

They might be more right about that than they ever could possibly imagine.

When we start monkeying with human DNA, we could be opening up doorways that we never even knew existed.

If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Hopefully scientists around the globe will understand the dangers of these types of experiments before it is too late.

 


Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/05/era-chimeras-scientists-fearlessly-create-bizarre-humananimal-hybrids/#Y0flJCWXEEQfV6d2.99

China Refusing Toxic Corn

The ramifications of this are very large. While most may not be aware of this, there are shipments from China being held up at our ports, so there may be a little trade war going on that is largely unnoticed. Food for thought anyway. Unfortunately, the Chinese make lots of our shoes, clothing, parts and the like….let’s not talk about the “food”. 🙂

China rejects more U.S. corn due to MIR 162-Xinhua

 

(Reuters) – China‘s quality watchdog at the northern city of Tianjin turned away 21,800 tonnes of U.S. corn after detecting an unapproved genetically modified corn strain (GMO), the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Monday.

The latest incident put the country’s total rejection of corn shipments from the United States, the world’s largest exporter, at 908,800 tonnes since November. The corn was turned away because the shipments contained MIR 162 corn, a GMO strain developed by Syngenta AG which is not approved for import by China’s agriculture ministry. (Reporting by Niu Shuping and David Stanway; Editing by Richard Pullin)

 

Monsanto Protection Act is Now Law

If people remember, before Obama became President he said he would get GMO’s labeled…Ha! Instead, in the standard American corporate government method, he just gave the go ahead for massive expansion of GMO crops. While other nations are firmly constraining and refusing these aberrations, we get more of them here. Almost makes on want to move to a non-GMO country. Even China is refusing to accept shipments of this garbage.

More ‘Corporate Welfare’: Obama Signs ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ Into Law
Just signed provision prevents federal courts from stopping the planting of genetically engineered crops, despite health, environmental consequences

– Andrea Germanos, staff writer

“In this hidden backroom deal, Senator Mikulski turned her back on consumer, environmental, and farmer protection in favor of corporate welfare for biotech companies such as Monsanto,” said Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety. (Photo: Peter Blanchard/flickr)
President Obama signed what has been dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act” on Tuesday, legislation critics say amounts to “corporate welfare” for biotechnology corporations like Monsanto, and puts farmers and the environment in jeopardy.

Summing up the provision in H.R. 933: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, Eric Darier, a senior campaigner on sustainable agriculture at Greenpeace International explains that it

will effectively bar US federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of genetically engineered (GE) crops even if they failed to be approved by the government’s own weak approval process and no matter what the health or environmental consequences might be.
The rider from H.R. 933 reads:

 

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes that the rider presents a “threat to farmers and the environment,” and that while the rider’s language indicates that steps will be taken “…to mitigate or minimize potential adverse environmental effects…,” historical evidence shows that there are indeed risks. In 2006, for example,

unapproved GE rice owned by Bayer, probably originating from a small, short-term controlled field trial in Arkansas, was found to have contaminated the U.S. rice supply. That little incident resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost rice exports and farmer lawsuits that continued for years. […]

A similar threat exists to the environment in the form of gene flow—the transfer of genes from one organism to another—from crops to wild cousins, or from poorly domesticated cultivated plants like forest trees or grasses grown for lumber, pulp, or biofuel.

In fact, gene flow of glyphosate herbicide-resistant creeping bentgrass has already occurred…twice. This also happened from temporary field trials that were conducted in Central Oregon and nearby Idaho specifically to prevent gene flow! USDA mandated an isolation zone of 900 feet around the trial, but gene flow occurred up to 13 miles from the Oregon site.
There could be “long-lasting and serious consequences” from the rider, writes Appetite for Profit author Michele Simon. “This list of pending petitions to USDA to approve genetically-engineered crops includes new versions of corn, soybean, canola, and cotton. Once these crops get planted, it will be too late to do much about it.”

The Center for Food Safety writes that it was Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee (D-MD), who allowed the legislation to move forward without hearings and without bringing it in front of the Agriculture or Judiciary Committees.

“In this hidden backroom deal, Senator Mikulski turned her back on consumer, environmental, and farmer protection in favor of corporate welfare for biotech companies such as Monsanto,” Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety, said in a statement.

This is the kind of deal biotechnology corporations have been hoping for, according to Food Democracy Now!, a group that has been campaigning against the GE rider. “Since losing a court case in 2010 to Center for Food Safety for the unlawful planting of GMO sugar beets, Monsanto and other biotech companies have been desperate to find a way around court mandated environmental impact statements required as a result of a U.S. district court’s ruling,” the group writes.

Gurian-Sherman writes that the rider has biotechnology corporations’ fingerprints all over it:

It was introduced anonymously, without accountability. But let me stick my neck out and say that it is highly likely that the biotech industry influenced the introduction and passing of this rider. Monsanto spends more money influencing our government than any other agriculture company. It spent millions, more than any other firm, to defeat the efforts in California to label engineered foods.
In her post titled “Monsanto Teams up with Congress to Shred the Constitution,” Simon adds that this is “such a big deal” because

The court system is often our last hope, with Congress, the White House, and regulatory agencies deep inside industry’s pocket. Several legal challenges have resulted in court decisions overturning USDA’s approval of new GMO crops, for example, sugar beets.
So the biotech industry, unable to make its case to a judge, figured why not just rewrite the Constitution instead…
Darier concludes that the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ ultimately shows the power corporations wield at the expense of democracy:

This should also be a reminder to all of us across the world of the ability of some corporations like Monsanto to influence policymakers to adopt measures that are against sustainable agriculture, farmers, consumers and the environment. And let’s add now to this list: independent judicial review! A very sad day for democracy and the future of our food.
_____________________________

 

GMO Labeling Initiative in Colorado

The following article actually goes beyond the scope of simply Colorado’s initiative. It’s a pretty good piece and shows the Grocery Industries opposition to any labeling effort. Frankly, if things have to be labeled that may have touched a peanut, it seems like no big deal to let people know that there are or may be GMO’s in foods.

GMO labeling effort in Colorado scores win in state Supreme Court

An effort to put a ballot initiative in front of Colorado voters regarding the labeling of genetically modified foods was allowed to proceed after the state Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by biotech and food industry outfits.

For Initiative #48 to make it on the November ballot, supporters must now gather 86,105 petition signatures and turn them into the state by early August, according to Right to Know Colorado GMO. The grassroots group, which is responsible for the initiative, is made up of local farmers, organic food retailers, consumer advocates, and citizens concerned with the “basic right to know what is in our food and what we are feeding our families.”

“We are pleased that the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the GMO labeling ballot title, and we look forward to bringing a GMO labeling initiative before the voters of Colorado this fall,” said Larry Cooper of Right to Know.

In a filing with the state Supreme Court, the Rocky Mountain Food Industry Association’s Mary Lou Chapman challenged the ballot initiative for being misleading, according to Natural Products Insider. Chapman did not return NPI’s request for comment on the Court’s decision.

Initiative #48 would mandate that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) come with packaging that announces “Produced With Genetic Engineering” by July 1, 2016.

The only exceptions to the labeling rules would include food or drink made for animals, chewing gum, alcoholic beverages, medically-prescribed food, foods subject to labeling only for its modified processing aids or enzymes, food not packaged for retail sale that is either processed or served by a restaurant with the intention of immediate consumption, and “food consisting entirely of or from an animal that has not been genetically engineered even if the animal was fed with food that was produced through genetic engineering or any drug that was produced through genetic engineering.”

Distributors, manufacturers, and retailers that fail to properly label GMO food would be subject to the state’s misbranding statute and could face criminal prosecution, according to documents filed with the Colorado Supreme Court.

The Center for Food Safety says dozens of states are considering GMO labeling laws on some level, as there is no federal labeling standard. Polling suggests over 90 percent of Americans would prefer GMO ingredients in consumables to be labeled to some extent.

Recent ballot measures seeking a labeling mandate failed in California and Washington state, though not without major efforts by the most powerful biotech and industry players, such as Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

Supporters of GMOs say adverse effects of food products which come from the manipulation of an organism’s genetic material are unproven at this point.

Yet science is also inconclusive on whether genetically engineered products cannot cause long-termharm to human health. At least, that is the consensus held by the several dozen countries which have banned or severely restricted their use worldwide.

“While risk assessments are conducted as part of GE product approval, the data are generally supplied by the company seeking approval, and GE companies use their patent rights to exercise tight control over research on their products,” the Union of Concerned Scientists said about GMOs. “In short, there is a lot we don’t know about the risks of GE – which is no reason for panic, but a good reason for caution.”

According to the US Department of Agriculture, in 2013, GMO crops were planted on about 169 million acres of land in the US — or about half of all farmland from coast to coast.

The vast majority of conventional processed foods in the US are made with genetically modified ingredients. Around 93 percent of all soybean crops planted in the US last year involved genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant (HT) variants, the USDA has acknowledged, and HT corn and HT cotton constituted about 85 and 82 percent of total acreage, respectively.

“HT crops are able to tolerate certain highly effective herbicides, such as glyphosate, allowing adopters of these varieties to control pervasive weeds more effectively,”reads an excerpt from a recent USDA report.

As those weed-killers are dumped into more and more fields containing HT crops, however, USDA experts say it could have a major, as yet uncertain impact on the environment.

Alarms surrounding the potentially irrevocable damage that GMO crops pose to the environment have been echoed by many researchers in the face of industry studies that insist GMOs are safe for humans and other living organisms.

Nassim Taleb, professor of risk engineering at New York University and author of best-sellers ‘The Black Swan’ and ‘Fooled by Randomness,’ recently said that GMOs have a very real ability to cause “an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet.” Taleb’s thesis basically stems from the fact that GMOs come from laboratory alterations rather than natural processes, and that humans cannot understand that with each modified seed, the potential for “total ecocide” increases.

“There is no comparison between the [bottom-up] tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from an organism and putting it into another,” Taleb and colleagues say in a draft of their research.

“The planet took about close to zero risks of ecocide in trillions of variations over 3 billion years, otherwise we would not have been here.”

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