Monsanto Attacks Farmers for NOT Planting Non-GMO Corn, Makers of Genetically Modified Seed Say

[stockholmer]

More Farmers Evading EPA Rules

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/makers-of-genetically-modified-seeds-say-more-farmers-evading-epa-rules/2012/02/09/gIQAdUKjBR_story.html

Monsanto Co. and other seedmakers reported a threefold increase last year in U.S. farmers caught violating rules intended to stop insects from developing resistance to genetically modified corn. The rules affect farmers planting seeds modified to produce a toxin derived from Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a natural insecticide. The Environmental Protection Agency requires those growers to also plant an adjacent area — a so-called refuge — of non-Bt corn so that bugs feed on both types of corn and don’t become immune to the toxin.

About 41 percent of 3,053 farmers inspected in 2011 failed to fully comply with the refuge requirement, according to data that Monsanto provided last week in an e-mail. Seed companies are concerned that bugs’ resistance to modified crops may be increasing. In July, Iowa State University found that some rootworms have evolved resistance to the Bt gene engineered into Monsanto corn. Entomologists in Illinois and other Midwestern states are studying possible resistance in fields where the insects devour roots of Monsanto’s Bt corn.

Seed companies used sales data to identify farmers who may not have purchased enough seed for a refuge, said Nick Storer, global science policy leader for Dow Chemical Co., another maker of modified seeds. “The whole purpose of doing that was to try to increase the frequency with which we identify non-compliant growers,” Storer said in an interview.

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Monsanto is attempting to attack US farmers who use its GMO agra products. They are running to the EPA complaining that, “Bug's resistance to modified crops may be increasing”, and (ironically), are upset because farmers aren’t planting NON GMO corn, next to GMO seed.

This, according to Monsanto, is because insects who eat both natural and GMO corn DON’T become immune to Monsanto’s pesticide emitting synthetic corn.

Monsanto is thus using a US government agency to enforce its PRIVATE business practices, and ensure that its strangehold on the food chain is maintained.

Anyone who considers themself a green or environmental activist has to admit the world has a serious problem because of the depths to which corporations like Monsanto and their extensive range of GMO products have been able to penetrate the world’s food supply.

[appleannie1]

1. According to Leviticus, altering seed is an abomination to God

[Quantess]

11. Santorum is gonna call you an anti-science liberal, don'tcha know.

Because you wanna be all protective of the ecosystem and stuff.

[Catherina]

13. Which verse is that in?

I think it's an abomination to the entire universe. A biblical quote would be really handy, where is it in Leviticus? Thanks in advance

[jwirr]

2. I do not want GMO farming at all but I do not understand the process. Exactly what is the threat

in GMO farming? I oppose it because I think it is an unnatural process and they often make thing worse. So give me a rundown on what the dangers are please.

[RC]

4. There is little to no diversity with GMO crops

If something infects a crop anywhere, it can then infect the GMO crop anywhere.
We also do not understand genetics well enough to know how of even if it affects us when we eat the crop.

[stockholmer]

5. here are some resources (I urge you to watch the video I posted above as well)

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/agriculture/problem/genetic-engineering/

http://responsibletechnology.org/gmo-dangers

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/AboutGeneticallyModifiedFoods/index.cfm

http://www.invigorate360.com/reviews/top-10-dangers-of-genetically-modified-food/

http://www.saynotogmos.org/

http://www.organicconsumers.org/gelink.cfm

http://gmo-journal.com/index.php/category/gmo-policy/

http://gmo.mercola.com/

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/GMO/Monsanto/monsanto.html

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4147551008386395793#

cheers

[jwirr]

8. Thank you. I hope they are not all videos as my daughter moved my computer and somehow the

speakers do not work. The other daughter has not had time to fix them. I am missing so much. Will mark this for reading later. I need to know what is going on as I am one of the people who is advising my s-i-l as he starts his new career of being a small farmer - over 50 and umemployed. I am coming from having lifed in the small farm era.

[Scootaloo]

6. As RC pointed out, there's little diversity

This has actually resulted in farmers having to spray their fields with more toxins (insecticieds, fungicides, etc) to cope with the plants' own inability to deal with pests and disease.

There's also the possibilities of cross-pollination scattering undesired modified genetics into non-modified plants. This is a particular worry with the so-called "terminator gene," a modification that works sort of like write protection on a CD - offspring created by the modified plant are infertile. While claims of mass extinction are overblown (after all, it's not as if the gene will be expressed in subsequent generations) it could still wreak havoc on farmers who still seed from their own stock. In addition to their "terminator" gene, they've also got a seed variety that will not grow unless hosed with their roundup herbicide... which is about the same thing

There's also the question whether plants modified to produce their own toxins to reduce the need for herbicides / insecticides are at all safe for human consumption. Bt corn is supposed to only affect a few species of insects, but the Bt toxin might not be something other organisms can handle. The variety of Bt corn called "StarLink" is known to cause allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock.

And of course there's just the economically destructive notion of patenting living organisms; several indpendent farmers have been shut down by Monsanto owing to "patented" genes ending up in their fields; cross-pollination, seed mixups, whatever the cause it's treated as copyright infringement. This is being very blatantly used as a method to monopolize agriculture.

[drokhole]

7. Nanoparticles in Food, Vitamins Could Harm Human Health, Researchers Warn

Hot off the presses:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120216185408.htm

"Billions of engineered nanoparticles in foods and pharmaceuticals are ingested by humans daily, and new Cornell research warns they may be more harmful to health than previously thought..."

(more at the link)

Then you take into account wildlife, and the fact that these nanoparticles finding their way into waterways...

[stockholmer]

16. thanks for the post!

[dems_rightnow]

3. That's an EPA rule they are breaking

So it's logical that the EPA would enforce it.

[A Simple Game]

9. I don't like Monsanto but I never thought they were stupid until now.

Why don't they just mix the non-GMO seed in with the GMO seed?

Does the non-GMO seed have to be in a separate plot?

[stockholmer]

10. the GMO corn contanimates the non GMO, and supplants it via genetic mutation

http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/apr10/organicfarmers_gmocontamination.php

Organic farmers report increasing GMO contamination with corn

A group of Midwest organic farmers is reporting increasingly higher levels of GMO contamination of organic corn, which is jeopardizing their ability to sell to organic grain buyers.

A spokesman for the group, which wishes to remain unidentified to protect their organic markets, says, 'We're doing more testing and seeing increased low levels of GMO contamination.'

The farmer group sells organic yellow and white corn for food use.

The farmers screen their corn for grade, kernel size, test weight, and GMOs. 'Buyers will test it too,' says the spokesman.

The farmers and buyers both use the lateral flow 'strip' test that detects the genetically modified protein in a sample.

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------------------------------------------------
Monsanto lobbyist appointed to FDA by Obama

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-who-plea_b_243810.html


The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke. Here's the back story. When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply -- the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods -- secret documents http://biointegrity.org/list.html now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried "serious health hazards," and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply. But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn't going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.

Dangerous Food Safety Lies

When the FDA was constructing their GMO policy in 1991-2, their scientists were clear that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to "different risks" http://biointegrity.org/FDAdocs/01/view2.html than conventional foods. But official policy declared the opposite, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/obamas-team-includes-dang_b_147188.html claiming that the FDA knew nothing of significant differences, and declared GMOs substantially equivalent. This fiction became the rationale for allowing GM foods on the market without any required safety studies whatsoever! The determination of whether GM foods were safe to eat was placed entirely in the hands of the companies that made them -- companies like Monsanto, which told us that the PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange were safe.

GMOs were rushed onto our plates in 1996. Over the next nine years, multiple chronic illnesses http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5050S920090106?sp=true%20was%207% in the US nearly doubled -- from 7% to 13%. Allergy-related emergency room visits doubled http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/ed584ff1c2e1162a852575fc00536790?OpenDocument between 1997 and 2002 while food allergies, especially among children, skyrocketed. We also witnessed a dramatic rise in asthma, autism, obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, and certain cancers.

In January of this year, Dr. P. M. Bhargava, one of the world's top biologists, told me that after reviewing 600 scientific journals, he concluded that the GM foods in the US are largely responsible for the increase in many serious diseases. In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine http://www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html concluded that animal studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between GM foods and infertility, http://www.responsibletechnology.org/utility/showArticle/?objectID=2989 accelerated aging, dysfunctional insulin regulation, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, and immune problems such as asthma, allergies, and inflammation.

snip

[A Simple Game]

14. So if they can't mix the non GMO corn within the plot of GMO corn because it will get contaminated

and they can't plant it outside of the plot of GMO corn because it will get contaminated, where are they supposed to plant it?

[stockholmer]

15. they want the farmers to plant it far enough away that the non-GMO holds out for a time from

GMO contanimation. Eventually it will become contanimated. Even more sinister is when they purposely toss GMO seeds into non-GMO farmer's plots. Then they go after the farmers with lawsuits (in the US), and even further extreme measures (3rd world) for 'stealing' their GMO product.

The World According to Monsanto goes into this:

-------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, It's True: GMOs Contaminate Mexican Corn

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/02/yes-its-true-gmos-contaminate-mexican-corn

In April 2002, I sat in the office of UC Berkeley environmental science professor Ignacio Chapela as an ancient telephone chortled incessantly with calls from scientists and journalists curious about his latest study, a paper published in Nature showing how genes from GM corn entered local varieties of the plant in Mexico, where GM crops are banned. Samples of the corn sat in vials on his desk. An international controversy had erupted over the experiment, and earlier that month the prestigious journal published an unprecedented near-retraction. “Nature has concluded that the evidence available is not sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper,” said a terse editorial note. Chapela admitted to making a few interpretative mistakes, but stood by his findings even when a study by a different team of researchers in 2005 was unable to replicate his results. His findings were finally corroborated this week by scientists from Mexico, the United States, and the Netherlands who looked at thousands of seed samples from hundreds of Mexican corn fields and found that around 1 percent of them had genes that had jumped from GM varieties. Even before this week, major detractors agreed with Chapela's main point. Corn disperses pollen easily, so one should expect that GM pollen carried by the wind has mated with local corn varieties in much of the world.

Although neither expensive--total cost $2000--nor surprising, Chapela’s study was attacked because it provoked ongoing feuds. Disagreements about what might happen when GM crops interbreed with their unaltered neighbors are now more than a decade old. Scientists still debate whether transgenics will diminish genetic diversity in local crop varieties, kill beneficial creatures, or reduce the ability of entire plant populations to survive.

Scientists already know that pollen from GM crops can kill beneficial insects. For example, the Bt gene in corn poisons pests like the European corn borer but could also inadvertently wipe out the valuable Typhlodromalus aripo. The T. aripo, as it is known, eats both corn pollen and the ignominious green mite, which wreaked havoc on Africa’s cassava crop in the 1980s and early 90s. The mite was accidentally introduced from South America and scientists combated it in 1993 by importing the T. aripo from Brazil. After it went to work eating mites, it immediately increased cassava yields by 35%. The addition of Bt pollen to that diet could be a boon to the mites and a disaster for T. aripo and farmers. “If it destabilized cassava,” says Andrew Paul Gutierrez, a Berkeley researcher who has done computer modeling on GM crops, “it could destroy the basic food staple for 220 million Africans in an area twice the size of the United States.” Accepting such risks becomes even more difficult given that Bt is probably only a temporary solution to insect invasions. Last February, University of Arizona researcher Bruce Tabashnik documented the first case, in GM cotton, of insects developing a resistance to the Bt gene. “My own experience in the history of insect resistance is that they develop resistance to whatever control measure is used against them,” he told me in 2002. “I think it’s just a matter of time.”.

Even more disturbing to ecologists than the Bt issue is the threat of a GM crop becoming a “superweed,” a plant with the ability to invade and dominate the landscape. Many scientists feared that the biotech company Asgrow had created what could become a kudzu-like threat when it introduced a GM squash in 1992. The squash was capable of breeding with wild squash in Texas but possessed a potential advantage: resistance to a virus that had been a bane to squash growers for years. When environmental groups protested, the Agriculture Department commissioned a report by Hugh Wilson, a squash expert at Texas A&M University, who found that the few studies done to approve the crop “point towards the clear presence of risk.”

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[bvar22]

12. Monsanto can kiss my orgainc, BT using ass,

..and so can Tom Vilsack, Monsanto's Man in the White House.



You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
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