Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) to donate to Natural Solutions Foundation and receive a half pound of Shade Grown, Chemical Free Specialty Coffee, “A Little Bit of Heaven in a Cup(C)”
Drinking Shade Grown Coffee is important to your health and to the eco system. As part of the Natural Solutions Foundation’s International Decade of Nutrition, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org, the ecologically and socially responsible production of Panama’s “Black Gold†is part of taking reclaiming clean, safe food for ourselves and food producers. Our extraordinary Valley of the Moon(TM) Shade Grown Coffee is an certified as a Friendly Food. That means that it is friendly to you, your health, then workers and the environment.
Part of the reason this coffee, available in sharply limited supply, is so exceptional is that it is strictly Shade Grown and chemical free.
You can taste it for yourself by clicking here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) and seeing for yourself what A Little Taste of Heaven in a Cup(c) is like.
But part of the Valley of the Moon(TM) magic comes from the fact that the coffee trees are carefully protected from the full intensity of the sun by a forest canopy of carefully tended trees producing the perfect combination of light and shade for the most exceptional coffee flavors.
Your understanding of what Shade Grown means will bring Shade Growing back to the coffee growers of the world. The only way to encourage shade grown coffee farming is to buy the product. Production follows demand, and many farmers are switching back to shade grown methods as consumer awareness increases.
Natural Solutions Foundation’s Valley of the Moon™ Coffee is not only shade grown, but has been the “test bed†for an all exceptional natural, safe and chemical free method of protecting crops and coffee trees from the devastating fungus, “Ojo de Gallo†without chemicals. Conventional fungicides poison workers, waters and consumers. Our novel system protects us all – and the Natural Solutions Foundation will be manufacturing it so that coffee growers across Central America can use it, too.
Because our coffee is friendly to the environment, the workers and your health, it is the first product to be awarded Friendly Food Certification by the Natural Solutions Foundation.
What Difference Does “ Shade Grown†Make?
Conventional, “modern” chemical-using coffee plantations are replacing wildlife habitat at an alarming rate because they require less care, less manpower and allow mass production of coffee.
As a result of the growth of industrial coffee growing, the population of songbirds across North and South America is in significant decline. “Shade grown” coffee, the traditional method of coffee farming, offers a promising alternative.
Benefits
* Taste. As the coffee beans mature more slowly in the shade, natural sugars increase and enhance the flavor of the coffee. Shade grown coffee tastes better!
*Biodiversity Protection Chemicals like 2-4-D (similar to Dixoin) are used on conventional coffee farms. The result is dead soil without bacteria, worms, insects, birds, snakes, frogs or life. And you drink these chemicals when you brew your java.
* Health. Coffee is second only to tobacco in the amount of chemical treatment sprayed on it. In fact, coffee is sprayed with more chemicals than any other product consumed by humans. Workers on conventional coffee plantations are chronically ill and experience serious diseases, infertility, birth defects in their children and other major problems because of the toxic chemicals they spray on the coffee. The cultivation of Shade Grown coffee generally uses organic techniques and is free of chemical use: Valley of the Moonâ„¢ is absolutely free of chemicals. We promise.
* Environment. Shade Grown coffee requires little or no chemical fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides so it promotes a healthy environment. Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Coffee uses no synthetic chemicals of any kind. The shade trees above the coffee plants filter carbon dioxide (a cause of global warming), and aid in soil moisture retention, minimizing erosion.
*Recycling. All coffee remnants from production are used in the continuing enrichment of the soil and habitat protection for the farm. The second skin of the coffee is used as fuel to dry the beans, avoiding cutting down trees to provide that fuel.
* Habitat. Shade Grown coffee provides important bird habitat and supports greater biodiversity. Migrating bird populations have been in rapid decline since the relatively recent introduction of “sun” coffee and the consequent destruction of rainforest for more coffee plantations. Our coffee collaborators, the Hartmann Family, have had more birds identified on their Shade Grown coffee finca than on any other finca in the world: 173 species, according to the Smithsonian Institute!
* Rain forest Preservation. Shade Grown coffee plantations help sustain rain forests. Chemically dependent coffee plantations suffer from soil depletion and increased erosion. Rain forest is stripped to provide fresh growing ground. Shade coffee farms are, for the most part, organic and sustainable. Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Coffee finca is 50% shade grown coffee plantation and 50% untouched mountain rain forest. Without this tree cover, the heavy rains in the Panamanian Highlands will rapidly denude the hills of their soil cover.
* Preserves Soil Vitality. Chemical coffee farming, dependent on synthetic fertilizer, damages the micro organism web of life which makes soil viable and healthy. Shade Grown, chemical free coffee growing reverses the trend towards chemicals and dependence on them induced by the progressive death of the soil. Since the soil in a chemical coffee finca is devitalized, more chemicals must be used to keep it producing, further polluting both the coffee and the environment. Shade coffee farms traditionally use little or no chemical fertilizer. And Valley of the Moonâ„¢ uses none.
History
Before the advent of “modern†coffee varieties, all coffee was Shade Grown. Traditional coffee varieties are naturally intolerant of direct sunlight, prefering a canopy of sun-filtering shade trees to thrive. The trees not only protect the coffee from direct sun, they also mulch the soil with their fallen leaves which helps retain soil moisturel, shelter birds, insects and pollinators and offer habitat protection for a wide variety of organisms and animals. The shade trees enhance the soil, provide all-important nitrogen fixation and offer vitally needed habitat for birds. The birds in turn provide natural insect control with their constant foraging and fertilization with their droppings. This sustainable method of farming typically uses little or no chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Valley of the Moon™ never uses any.
In 1972, new hybrid varieties of coffee (non GMO varieties) were developed to increase production of the valuable coffee crop. These new varieties produced significantly more coffee beans which were larger and easier to harvest, and produced best in direct sunlight.
Many growers cut their shade trees and switched to the new varieties. Of the 6 million acres of coffee lands, 60% have been completely stripped of shade trees since 1972. Only the small, low-tech farms, often too poor to afford chemicals, preserved their shade trees. Valley of the Moon™’s shade trees are visually and environmentally breathtaking.
Tragically, the new varieties of “sun” coffee carried an additional cost as well: the new hybrids were dependent on high doses of pesticides and chemical fertilizers because they were neither hardy nor naturally resistant to pests, fungus and disease. Soil erosion, water runoff and soil depletion as a result of chemical use and poor agricultural management induced producers to clear vast tracts of rain forest for new soil to plant. It rapidly became apparent that this new method of growing coffee was unsustainable.
The loss of the shade trees on such a large scale also caused an estimated 20% decline in migratory bird populations in the last ten years, due to habitat loss. The diminished songbird population is apparent as far as 1500 miles away from the coffee growing regions in North America and Europe.
In 1996, the movement to support Shade Grown coffee was sparked by the Smithsonian Institute’s Migratory Bird Center, which gathered environmentalists, farmers and coffee companies to address the problem and promote awareness of shade coffee. Today, sales of organically grown, shade coffee represent about 1%, or $30 million, of the U.S. market for coffee beans.
Cost and Selection
How do I know if my coffee is shade grown?
~ Make sure your coffee is Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Friendly Food Certified Coffee
~ Look for coffee which, like Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Coffee states on its literature, packaging or website, that it is “Shade Grown” coffee and uses no pesticides or herbicides.
~ Country of origin is an indicator. While there are exceptions, coffee produced from southern Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala are primarily shade grown. Also, coffee from Sumatra, Timor, New Guinea and Ethiopia are mostly shade grown. Coffees from Colombia, Brazil and Costa Rica are more likely to be “sun” coffees, although there are some shade producers from these regions.
Panama, the home of Valley of the Moon(TM) is one of the world’s smallest coffee producers but is recognized world-wide as the home of some of the world’s best coffees because Panamaninan Specialty Coffee Growers set their collective goal as the production of the world’s finest coffee. Valley of the Moon(TM) is proud to be part of the quality tradition of Panama.
Cost
Although Shade Grown coffee may be more expensive than pesticide-grown industrial coffee, there is far less cost to the environment and it is far less costly to your health.
Natural Solutions Foundation want to thank Eartheasy for this information on Shade Grown vs. industrial coffee.
And thank you for supporting health freedom, the International Decade of Nutrition and the Valley of the Moon(TM) Eco Demonstration Community with its farm, farm school, natural medical center, housing, community center and more. Visit us at www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org and visit us in person in the temperate, magnificent Highlands of Chiriqui, Panama.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
Here is what GMO technology brings: crops (and animals) controlled by corporations like Monsanto whose superficial commitment is to generate as much money as possible but whose deeper commitment is to accomplish a level of control never before seen: total control of the world’s food supply. Who lives and who dies clearly is of no importance to these corporations. Who controls the lives and deaths of farmers and consumers is literally at stake here.
We are well on the way to seeing the “Suicide Belt” of Maharashtra, India, in our own farmlands. If you think that this tragic and horrifying scenario cannot occur in your community, think again.
Monsanto takes over 500 family farms per year away from their owners because their GMO seed “volunteers”., that is, trespasses and invades, the fields of the family farmers. Claiming that their patented intellectual rights have been invaded, Monsanto seeks damages against the farmer which are so steep that the farmer looses his home and his farm – another win for Monsanto. And, of course, Codex, driven by the US FDA, allows all GMO FrankenFoods as if they were safe and wholesome.
What you are about to read is real and is coming to a farming community near you. But the final word is not yet in. Although more (much more, we believe) of the US food supply contains, or comes from, genetically modified “foods” (aptly called “Frankenfoods”), consumer outrage can, if properly harnessed, literally save the day.
Here are the steps you can take to prevent this disaster:
1. Band together with others of like mind. No one of us can do this alone, but as an electronic community, we have immense power.
a. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187) to become part of the rapidly growing Natural Solutions Foundation Health Freedom eAlert Community. It’s free, it’s secure and it’s powerful!
b. Take the Action Steps in each free issue.
c. Pass the eAlerts along to your entire email list, urging them to join and take the Action Steps, too.
2. Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to urge your Congressional Legislators to become co-sponsors of the GMO labeling and safety study bills proposed in the House of Representatives by Denis Kucinich (D-OH). This is a trans partisan issue and only public pressure will compel Congress to support our health instead of the BioTech industry’s profits
3. Commit yourself, without exception, to buy ONLY products which are labeled “Organic”, or “GMO-Free.
a. Many nutrients and supplements are made with, or sourced from, Genetically Modified Organisms like yeast, corn, soy, bacteria modified to produce vitamins, etc even if those products do not appear on the label. GMO ingredients are literally torn apart in vats and new “foods” assembled from them. If the word “organic” is not on the label, it isn’t organic. If the words “GMO-Free” or “Free of GMOs” are not on the label, then the product IS a GMO product.
b. The Natural Solutions Foundation has created an online store, www.Organics4U.org, where you can find GMO, organic health products. All profits from www.Organics4U.org sales go to this battle.
4. Purchase only fruits and produce whose code number on the small, oval tag (UPC code) begins with the number “9”. This signifies that the item is organic. If the UPC code begins with “4” it has been raised with conventional farming techniques (including fluoride sprays, herbicides, pesticides, soil de-mineralizing synthetic fertilizers, possibly mercury sprays and other toxic substances and procedures).
5. Write to the companies whose products you buy and ask if they use GMO ingredients in their foods. If they tell you that they “meet or exceed FDA standards” that means that the products are made with GMOs.
a. Write back to them and tell them you will not patronize them any longer and that you will share this information.
b. Send a copy of their letter to me at releyes@gmail.com and we will add the company and the specific product to either the Natural Solutions Foundation “GMO Hit List” or our “GMO Kiss List”. We’ll publicize these lists to help others make GMO free food choices as well.
6. Talk to your friends and neighbors, parents of other kids your kids play with, folks in your Seniro Center, people in your church or community organizations. Spread the word. Most people have no idea that they are eating foods which are killing them, making them infertile and damaging their loved ones as well as themselves.
a. Become a Natural Solutions Foundation Community Organizer. Hold meetings, get on the radio, start letter writing campaigns. We’ll show you how. If you write to Kathy Greene at kathy.greene@usa.net and put “Organizer” in the subject line, Kathy will send you a Natural Solutions Foundation Community Organizer’s Handbook and help you get started.
b. Use your creativity to organize your community awareness. Tell us what you are doing and we will assist you in any way we can.
7. Donate here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation so that we can keep on keeping on to make sure that our health freedoms stay free. Right now, it is illegal to label GMO containing foods to say that they are toxic industrial force feeding products. We need to change that and we need to eliminate Bio Tech altogether for our sake, the planet’s sake and, perhaps most of all, our children’s sakes.
8. Become involved in, visit, participate in, and/or lend your support to, the Natural Solutions Foundation Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Community (http://naturalsolutionsfoundation.org/) in the beautiful, fertile and temperate Chiriqui Highlands of Panama where we will
a. Create a demonstration BeyondOrganic Bio Dynamic Zero Emissions(TM) Farm and Farm School to help farmers from around the world re-learn how to grow food without chemicals and teach pollution-free Zero Emissions farming
b. Share the techniques of intensive “foot square gardening” to eliminate under nutrition in people who do not live on farms so that people everywhere can grow fresh, organic vegetables and fruits in very little space and at virtually no cost
c. Create a natural healing and wellness center
d. Offer seminars to guests from the area and beyond on a large number of topics (If you want to run a seminar at our new facility in Volcan, Panama, contact me at releyes@gmail.com!) with an all organic restaurant providing outstanding food in the near future
e. Raise pure, unadulterated food for ourselves and others. For example, we are already harvesting the chemical free, delicious Valley of the Moon Coffee. Every bag supports your health and your health freedom at the same time. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) to make sure that you put A Little Taste of Heaven in a Cup(TM) and give everyone on your gift list the same delight in their cups, too!
f. Create a small boutique hotel where guests at the medical center and the seminars can stay.
How can you support this innovative effort to help farmers around the world reclaim the production of clean, safe food? By one of more of the following options:
1. Become personally involved by bringing your skills and abilities to the Valley of the Moon
2. Provide tax deductible donation or “friendly financing” support which has significant financial return
3. Connecting us with Foundations or potential donors who will find what we are doing interesting and worth considering for support. Visit www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org to find out more and then contact me at releyes@gmail.com with questions, suggestions or thoughts.
It’s really up to us. Reclaiming the production of food worldwide is essential to solving the problem. But so is making sure that we are buying clean, unadulterated food. Every time you make a food purchase, you are either helping the Bio Tech companies to destroy your health and the planet while they take over our food supply or helping to keep them from doing it.
Every time.
If we buy the food that the Bio Tech companies have poisoned we are giving them a profit from harming us. Let’s not do that, shall we?
The FDA and the USDA are worse than useless – the are literally paralyzed by a 1992 Executive Order by then-President George H. W. Bush which says that GMO foods are “substantially equivalent” to unmodified ones and forbids them to require or examine safety testing except for the most basic evaluation early in the development process which has been done by the Bio Tech company itself. There is no safety testing, there is no clinical testing, there is only a Bio Tech Fox in the consumer health hen house.
Think about it: the employees in Monsanto’s UK Headquarters in London refused to eat food in the cafeteria made with, or containing ANY GMO food. What do they know that you need to know? That all GMO food is dangerous, can have astonishingly high levels of pesticide, that this technology can cause hidden and as-yet unsuspected diseases, horrifying environmental damage, antibiotic resistance, birth defects, sterility, kidney, gut and immune system damage, infant deaths, cancer and on and on and on.
Read the article below, take it very, very seriously and then let’s get started putting an end to this collective nightmare which has been foisted upon us by a government to weak to stand up for any of our rights or for our health, too corrupt to care about either and too industry-friendly to even ask questions. It’s really up to us.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops
By Andrew Malone
When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it’s even WORSE than he feared.
The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father’s body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.
As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a
grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India’s economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.
Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own
life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.
Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years’ earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.
There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on – they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless – as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting.
Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.
As neighbours gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. ‘He was a loving and caring man,’ she said, weeping quietly.
‘But he couldn’t take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.’
Shankara’s crop had failed – twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India’s ancient story.
But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts – and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the ‘GM Genocide’ by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a ‘global moral question’ – and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.
Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning ‘the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India,
stemming… from the failure of many GM crop varieties’.
Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.
The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace ‘the future’ and follow suit.
So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the ‘suicide belt’ in Maharashtra state.
What I found was deeply disturbing – and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.
For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.
Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide – a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.
It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.
Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and ‘agrarian distress’ that is the real reason for the horrific toll.
But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.
In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands – only to kill themselves as well.
Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed – two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.
She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. ‘He
cries when he thinks of his mother,’ said the dead woman’s aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.
Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were ‘magic seeds’ – with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.
Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.
The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new
bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.
In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.
But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers’ lives have slid back into the dark ages.
Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years – up to 17 million acres – many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.
Far from being ‘magic seeds’, GM pest-proof ‘breeds’ of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.
Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That’s because GM seeds contain so- called ‘terminator technology’, meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.
As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.
Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.
As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto.
‘We are ruined now,’ said the dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’
Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. ‘He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,’ she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her
home to pay their respects. ‘He was dead by the time they got to hospital.’
Asked if the dead man was a ‘drunkard’ or suffered from other ‘social problems’, as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. ‘No! No!’ one of the dead man’s brothers
exclaimed. ‘Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.
‘He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.’
Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a ‘factor in this tragedy’. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as ‘untimely rain’ or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.
Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds – no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.
During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three ‘independent’ surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more
expensive – and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.
(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is ‘only double’ the price of ‘official’ non-GM seed – but admitted that the difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by ‘unscrupulous’ merchants, who often also sell ‘fake’ GM seeds which are prone to disease.)
With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. ‘We just want to escape from our problems,’ one said. ‘We just want help to stop any more of us dying.’
Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.
India’s farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant
costs of GM seeds.
This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. ‘I told him that we can survive,’ his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. ‘I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.’
But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of
paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children’s schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.
Cruelly, it’s the young who are suffering most from the ‘GM Genocide’ – the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these ‘magic seeds’.
Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Andrew+Malone
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Th
ousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.h
tml
The Independent on Sunday, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, published the following report about a secret meeting in which each of the Prime Ministers of the EU’s 27 countries were asked to nominate a representative to attend a secret meeting designed to develop strategies to force GMOs on a vigorously resistant public.
In the EU, all GMO foods and ingredients must be clearly labeled although animals fed GMO feeds are not labeled despite the fact that their meat and other products contain GMO materials.
Predictably, there is a growing push back movement in the EU against this food tyranny. There needs to be more or same here since, according to a New York Times article, 87% of the American people want clear identification of any GMO products or ingredients in the “foods” they are eating.
More than 80% of all foods consumed in the US contain unlabeled and unidentified GMOs.
Please click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to let your Congressional legislators know that you support the GMO safety and labeling legislation presented by Denis Kucinich (D-OH) and that you want them to support it and become co-sponsors of these bills.
And please forward this to your entire list so that they, too, can get their legislators on board. Now.
Thanks for your activism
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
Europe’s secret plan to boost GM crop production
Gordon Brown and other EU leaders in campaign to promote modified foods
By Geoffrey Lean
Sunday, 26 October 2008
GM corn growing in France, which has since suspended cultivation of modified crops
Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.
The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to “speed up” the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to “deal with” public resistance to them.
And they show that the leaders want “agricultural representatives” and “industry” – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the “vested interests” of environmentalists.
News of the secret plans is bound to create a storm of protest at a time when popular concern about GM technology is increasing, even in countries that have so far accepted it.
Public opposition has prevented any modified crops from being grown in Britain. France, one of only three countries in Europe to have grown them in any amounts, has suspended their cultivation, and resistance to them is rising rapidly in the other two, Spain and Portugal.
The embattled biotech industry has been conducting a public relations campaign based round the highly contested assertion that genetic modification is needed to feed the world. It has had some success in the Government, where ministers have been increasingly speaking out in favour of the technology, and in the European Commission, with which its lobbyists have boasted of having “excellent working relations”.
The secret meetings were convened by Jose Manuel Barroso, the pro-GM President of the Commission, and chaired by his head of cabinet, Joao Vale de Almeida. The prime ministers of each of the EU’s 27 member states were asked to nominate a special representative.
Neither the membership of the group, nor its objectives, nor the outcomes of its meetings have been made public. But The IoS has obtained confidential documents, including an attendance list and the conclusions of the two meetings held so far – on 17 July and just two weeks ago on 10 October – written by the chairman.
The list shows that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany sent close aides. Britain was represented by Sonia Phippard, director for food and farming at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The conclusions reveal the discussions were mainly preoccupied with how to speed up the introduction of GM crops and food and how to persuade the public to accept them.
The modified products have to be approved by the EU before they can be sown or sold anywhere in Europe. But though the Commission officials are generally strongly in favour, European governments are split, causing the Council of Ministers, on which they are represented, to be deadlocked.
In that event the bureaucrats on the Commission wave them through anyway. They are legally allowed to do this, but overruled governments and environmental groups are unhappy.
The conclusions of the first meeting called for the “speeding up of the authorisation process based on robust assessments so as to reassure the public”, while the second one added: “Decisions could be made faster without compromising safety.”
But the documents also make clear that Mr Barroso is going beyond mere exhortation by trying to get prime ministers to overrule their own agriculture and environment ministers in favour of GM. They report that the chairman “recalled the importance for prime ministers to look at the wider picture”, “invited the participants to report the discussions of the group to their heads of governments”, and “stressed the importance of drawing their attention to ongoing discussions in the Council [of Ministers]”.
Helen Holder of Friends of the Earth Europe said: “Barroso’s aim is to get GM into Europe as quickly as possible. So he is going straight to prime ministers and presidents to tell them to step on their ministers and get them into line.”
The conclusions of the meetings on public opposition are even more incendiary. The documents ponder “how best to deal with public opinion” and call for “an emotion-free, fact-based dialogue on the high standards of the EU GM policy”. And they record the chairman emphasising “the role of industry, economic partners and science to actively contribute to such a dialogue”. He adds that “the public feels ill-informed” and says “agricultural representatives should be more vocal”. And in a veiled swipe at environmental groups he says that the debate “should not be left to certain stakeholders who have a legitimate but vested interest in it”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/europes-secret-plan-to-boost-gm-crop-production-973834.html
Neither Candidate for the office of President of the US is committed to controlling, labeling and eliminating GMOs.
That’s bad news for the environment and bad news for us.
But the situation is not hopeless. Take South Africa, for example.
Despite years of force feeding GMO staple foods, including white corn, which most of South Africa’s poor population lives on, the South African Government, despite a great deal of backing and filling, has finally made mandatory labeling of all GMO food and ingredients mandatory.
Why can’t we do the same? Why can’t we rouse enough outrage and pressure to force the US to retreat from its 1992 position, instituted upon the signing of an Executive Order by then-President George Bush Sr., making GMOs administratively (and pseudo-scientifically) “substantially equivalent” to non modified foods.
Science, on the other hand, makes it clear that nothing could be further from the truth. If you check out the GMO Files in this blog, you will find abundant – and very scary – data that makes it clear that these “foods” are not food at all, but industrial toxins.
Right now there are three laws before the US House of Representatives, sponsored by Rep. Denis Kuchinch (D, OH) which would require safety testing, labeling and scientific evaluation of all GMO crops and products.
Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to support those bills and ask your Congressional members to become both supporters and co-sponsors of this vitally important legislation.
In the meantime, I hope you will join the Natural Solutions Foundation’s vigorous and active No-GMO-Forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-genetically-modified-foods/join) and become part of the community of action to stop being fed industrial toxins instead of food, all with the connivance of the next POTUS (President of the United States).
And don’t forget to give generously to support the Natural Solutions Foundation as we keep health freedom free! Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make your recurring, tax exempt donation and here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) to order the best coffee in the world, our Valley of the Moon(TM) shade grown, chemical free coffee – ground or whole bean ~ A Little Bit of (NON GMO) Heaven in a Cup(TM) ~ while you support health freedom.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
US election impact on GM food
By Sarah Hills, 31-Oct-2008 [www.nutraingredients-usa.com]
Genetically modified food companies should be paying particular attention to the results of next week’s presidential election as they could face tough times ahead, according to a Soil Association report. Click here () to read more.
Consumers, food manufacturers and farmers are increasingly moving away from GM products, the new study called Land of the GM-Free? How the American public are starting to turn against GM food, claimed.
At the same time the UK environmental charity said 87 percent of Americans want labels on food telling them whether Genetically Modified (GM) products have been used or not.
The SA added: “These developments, combined with the possibility of Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s pledge to support legislation to label GM food if he should get elected, suggest that GM companies are in for a difficult few years in the USA.”
National Solutions Foundation and www.HealthFreedomUSA.org always bring you urgent information about your health freedom and practical steps you can take to make a difference.
“Breakthrough casualty” (aka “collateral damage”) is what happens when a poorly tested, new drug or device (or novel GMO product) is publicized in the mass commercial media in ways that are not truthful and are misleading. Here are Action Steps To Help Prevent Yourself and Your Loved Ones From Becoming A “Breakthrough Casualty”
Today, the biggest causes of “breakthrough casualties” are the very issues that Natural Solutions Foundation has championed: GMOs, degraded organic standards, forced vaccinations and drugging, toxins (like pesticide residua, irradiation free-radicals, and the like) in the food chain, regulatory failures…
Tell Your Legislators Compulsory Drugging, Including Vaccination is NOT OK!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=21833
Join the Natural Solutions Foundation’s No Forced Vaccination Yahoo! Forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-forced-vaccination/join
Support the Child Medication Safety Act So Schools Cannot Hold Parents Hostage For Refusing To Medicate Their Kids
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=18970
Sign the Historic Tiburon Declaration Protecting Against Forced Vaccination
http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=460
Join the free Health Freedom eAlerts Distribution List
http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187
Make Your Tax Deductible Contribution to the Natural Solutions Foundation to further our work.
http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189
Breakthrough Casualties…
You’ve heard of “Breakthrough Bleeding,” right? That’s when someone starts to bleed in spite of the fact that the body, or a drug, should be keeping them from doing that. Well, there’s another “Breakthrough” problem, and we are all vulnerable to it: “Breakthrough Death” which occurs when the latest medical “breakthrough” is so dangerous, so poorly tested, so poorly understood and so rapidly embraced by the ever-compliant media (“Ask your doctor is it’s right for YOU”) along with the ever time-pressured and sheepish medical practitioner that you, or someone you love, winds up dead or damaged because of a poorly understood, but hastily taken-up “Medical Breakthrough”.
The article posted below questions the wisdom of new medical “wisdom”. Indeed, the bone-fields of Medicine are littered with discarded ” breakthroughs”, too hastily approved, too gleefully adopted, too poorly tested. Of course, the graveyards of medicine are littered with the patients who blindly rushed to line up for the newest alleged “advances” and trusted the “wisdom” of the usually-well-meaning, carefully preselected and obedient sheep in MD’s clothing who blithely make their livings by being there with the new whatever-it-is-this-time. For example, in my educated opinion, the new chemotherapy which turns out to damage your heart and not work any better than any of the other ineffective conventional cancer approaches and, like every form of conventional chemotherapy, is a leading cause of NEW cancer in long term survivors; or the new antibiotic that turns out to cause your body to stop making any blood cells, red or white, or causes you to go deaf, or damages the dental integrity of your unborn child; or the new vaccine that turns out to cause healthy young girls and women to die or develop life threatening conditions; or the vaccine overload that turns so many happy young families into tragic families coping with the vaccine injury called autism, asthma, ADD/ADHD and a host of other names.
You get the idea.
What you may not know yet is that “fast track” approval for drugs and especially vaccines means that even the woefully inadequate safety assurances used by the FDA are shunted aside. And whether a drug, device or vaccine has been fast-tracked or not, that FDA approved-whatever is not deemed safe until after Phase IV Clinical Trials are completed and evaluated. And you may also not know that the FDA review committees and advisory committees, panels and boards are filled with people who have stocks, bonds, shares, patents and other direct financial conflicts of interest in the very products they are regulating, or seeking to evaluate and forbid if dangerous. Good system? For them, maybe. Just look at the state of American health and the trillions of dollars made by the illness care industry using things that make you sick and kill you although they have been through Phase I, II and II Clinical Trials. And although these devices, drugs and vaccines are now in their much-vaunted “Phase IV Clinical Trials”
What is a Phase IV Clinical Trial? It is the voluntary reporting, over time, of adverse reactions in the public. In other words, when doctors notice that patients are dying, or having strokes or heart attacks, or getting rather more cancer than “normal” or having more life-threatening asthma attacks or other reactions and the doctors involved bother to report (and often incriminate themselves if they were the ones who gave the drug or used the device in the first place), and these results pile up and the scientists reviewing these data do not have too many conflicts of interest, and their superiors in the system do not have too many conflicts of interest (which are now officially permitted by the agencies of the US Government charged with protecting our safety), then perhaps something will happen to remove this item from sale. But usually not. I need only say the word “Vioxx” and you get the idea. Or “Gardasil” or “Avienda”.
Or core systemic corruption and inability to protect the public… you get the idea. *
We like to think that clinical trials and other strategies protective of the public when using drugs, pesticides, vaccines and other toxins are iron clad and powerful. Nothing could be further from the truth. The FDA, EPA and USDA, the principle “guardians” of public health, do not allocate their funding efficiently to do their jobs. Congressional report after Congressional report, investigative piece after investigative piece makes that very clear. But the structure of these agencies themselves makes it even more clear.
For the FDA, a large proportion of whose operating budget comes from “user fees” which Pharmaceutical companies pay to have their products approved. Those user fees mean that the FDA is the client, not the regulator, of the drug industry.
Now it looks like the food industry will be asked to pay the same sort of user fees so the food side of the house will also become a client of the industry it allegedly regulates. Wonder what will happen to small local, organic producers in that regulatory world, where only the big and powerful are “too big to fail…”
Between the revolving door policy of the FDA, USDA, EPA and other federal agencies (through which high level employees are recruited from, revolve into, and continue to move back and forth between government, academia and industry as their careers develop) and the lack of oversight allowed or engaged in by these agencies, allowing “new breakthroughs” to create “new wealth” and “new disasters”.
Read the article below by a concerned and thoughtful Mom and take the Action Steps at the head of this article to make sure your State and National Legislators know that you do not want to be exposed to compulsory vaccination, a form of compulsory drugging.
Thanks.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
–x–x–
Sometimes ‘new breakthroughs’ in medicine are too new
October 12, 2008
By Kimberly A. Brehm
Every time the medical community changes its mind and announces yet another way to care for your child, I’m amazed that my children made it out of their early years unscathed.
When my babies were young, they slept on their tummies, until the American Medical Association said the position could lead to sudden infant death syndrome. I bathed them in cool water when their fevers ran high, until I heard the tried-and-true practice could cause a seizure. And I gave them over-the-counter cold medicine when they had persistent, hacking coughs and sore throats.
Turns out that wasn’t a good idea, either.
On Tuesday, in response to concerns from medical experts that questioned whether cold and cough remedies do more harm than good to children, drug companies agreed to no longer make such medications for kids younger than 4.
Leading brands like Pediacare, Dimetapp, Robitussin, Triaminic and Little Colds no longer will continue to include dosage information for anyone younger than 4, and some pediatricians are asking the government to go further and ban such medicines for children younger than 6.
Each year, more than 7,000 children – mostly 2- and 3-year-olds – make a trip to the emergency room because of problems with over-the-counter cough and cold medicines. They usually have symptoms such as hives, drowsiness and unsteady walking. The Federal Drug Administration in 2007 pulled over-the-counter cough and cold medications for children younger than 6 to weigh their risks and effectiveness, but it could take another year or more before a final decision is reached.
Since it seems like every decade or so the medical community reverses previous decisions on particular medicines and medical treatments, it’s made me wonder when I can trust “new breakthroughs” and “innovative advances.”
A reversal about something like a cough suppressant – once seen as a benign drug – is the exact reason I have not yet allowed my teen daughters to be vaccinated with the HPV vaccine. It’s too new and hasn’t been researched enough for me to give my approval and feel comfortable.
In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration OK’d Gardasil as a vaccine against four strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer. Since then, more than 8 million girls ages 11 to 14 have been given the vaccine, and some states are considering making the shot mandatory for school enrollment, similar to other immunizations.
When Gardasil was approved a few years ago, my oldest daughter was 11, the ideal age to begin the shots. But I hesitated, thinking about other “new and improved” medicines that later proved to cause harm.
Remember when pregnant women were prescribed Thalidomide for nausea, then it was discovered to cause miscarriages and birth defects? Or when vaccines routinely included mercury, until that too proved to be dangerous? Or how about Fen-phen and Ephedra, which were supposed to be safe weight-loss drugs, and women began dying? In the 1990s, infants were given the rotavirus vaccine, until too many babies died after receiving it, and it was pulled from the market. I could go on and on listing dozens of examples like this, including strong, antidotal evidence of a link between immunizations and autism.
Thousands of parents of autistic children, including my brother and his wife, are firmly convinced their child’s autism was caused by vaccines and no amount of denial from drug companies would convince them otherwise.
And now, three years after young girls starting getting the Gardasil vaccine, it’s being investigated. There have been more than 9,000 complaints of serious ill effects filed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including blood clots, genital warts, paralysis and death.
The CDC said the deaths are not linked to Gardasil, but who knows what they’ll discover after further investigation? I personally am not willing to let my daughters be guinea pigs for the fairly new vaccine when even the CDC agrees the vaccine responds differently to each individual’s immune system and should not be mandatory for school participation.
“The overall effect of the vaccines on cervical cancer remains unknown. The real impact of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer will not be observed for decades,” the New England Journal reported in August. “With so many essential questions still unanswered, there is good reason to be cautious.”
When the wrong decision could cause your child harm – or maybe even result in death – it would be negligent not to be cautious. And when the medical experts change their minds every few years on what’s good and what’s harmful, it’s hard to make the right decision.
http://www.southtownstar.com/news/brehm/1213902,101208brehm.article
–x–x–
Please remember the six Action Steps you can take at the beginning of this posting.
(c) 2008
-x——————-x-
Footnote:
* Less than a year ago, a government study of the FDA concluded:
1) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.
2) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific workforce does not have sufficient capacity and capability.
3) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its information technology (IT) infrastructure is inadequate.
4) FDA does not have the capacity to ensure the safety of food for the nation.
5) The development of medical products based on “new science†cannot be adequately regulated by the FDA.
6) There is insufficient capacity in modeling risk assessment and analysis.
7) The FDA science agenda lacks a coherent structure and vision, as well as effective coordination and prioritization.
8) The FDA has substantial recruitment and retention challenges.
9) The FDA has an inadequate and ineffective program for scientist performance.
10) The FDA has not taken sufficient advantage of external and internal collaborations.
11) The FDA lacks the information science capability and information infrastructure to fulfill is regulatory mandate.
12) The FDA cannot provide the information infrastructure support to regulate products based on new science.
[From: the November 2007 Report of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology, FDA Science and Mission at Risk]