Below we re-post Natural Solutions Foundation Trustee Ralph Fucetola JD’s post election commentary, from his Vitamin Lawyer Health Freedom Blog:
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
President Obama and Health Freedom: Change?
http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2008/11/president-obama-and-health-freedom.html
It is truly an historic moment, with the election of a candidate for president of the United States who identifies himself as a member of a minority ethnic group. One therefore hopes that president-elect Obama will be open to hearing dissenting and alternative opinions about issues such as healthcare freedom of choice. Surely, an administration built on the idea of “change” should be willing to listen to advocates of change.
We are, however, concerned that candidate Obama offered very little about issues that are of concern to health freedom advocates. The campaign chose not to respond to the Health Freedom Presidential Candidate Questionnaire — although several of the Principled Third Party candidates did so; you can see their generally pro-health freedom responses at: http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=1303
We could not find any major media mention of vaccine mandates directly by the winning candidate, but in September, when Sen. Obama and the New Jersey governor passed a demonstration of pro-health freedom parents, some of whom were attending a fund raiser in an upscale community with the politicians, there was a report from the fundraiser,
“I’m afraid Barack Obama was asked by someone at the fundraiser if he supported the parent’s right to choose to vaccinate, and he said he did not!”
The governor, however acknowledged,
“We get more e-mails and letters on this than any other issue other than tolls.”
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/09/obama-and-corzi.html
On another touchstone issue for health freedom advocates, Genetically Modified products foisted on the public without truthful labeling, the new President may not take an entirely pro-industry position. In a pre-election report we learn,
“[Obama b]elieves GM plants are beneficial with tests for environmental and health effects and regulatory oversight.”
The requirement for testing, while falling short of truthful labeling, would be a change from current policy which “deems” GM products safe without third party testing.
On issues such as international harmonization, the “new world order” advisers surrounding the president-elect suggest that it may be difficult to focus any attention by the new administration on this important issue. We can expect the US Codex delegation to continue to have a free hand in supporting the international agenda of the “bigs” – Big Finance, Big Agra, Big Pharma, et al. Codex Alimentarius (the world food code) must continue to be a focus of the movement.
And finally, last year, when we were in Washington several times to help educate Congress about health freedom, we were not able to discuss with Sen. Obama’s staff the important issue of divesting the FDA of its food authority, so that food (including dietary supplement) regulation would not remain the neglected step-child of the FDA’s focus on supporting Big Pharma. However, discussions with other left/liberal legislative aids at that time, including people who will be allies of the president-elect in Congress, suggests a basis for pursuing the divestment issue.
Divesting the FDA may therefore be one health freedom issue that will have some “play” in the new Congress. What will be necessary, of course, will be for several Democratic members of Congress to be willing to co-sponsor a divestment bill. And for hundreds of thousands of Health Freedom Mouse Warriors to demand an end to FDA abuse of power.
The prospects for healthcare freedom of choice are mixed in the coming period.
Advocates of health freedom will need to redouble their efforts, especially to protect our children from vaccine mandates and to prevent ever more HARMonization of our health freedoms with international restrictions.
Divesting the FDA of its misused food authority appears to be a policy for which we may have some hope for real change…
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
Dr. Mae Won Ho is a brilliant and fearless truth teller. Her science is impeccable and her voice is loud and strong when it comes to telling the truth about dangerous make believe science. Nowhere is she more vigorous in alerting us to the absurdities and deadly consequences of corporate junk science and junk policies than in the area of Genetically Modified Organisms or GMOs.
The following article is a must read, must share one which I urge you to forward to as many people as possible so that they can join forces to make sure that all legislators understand that the FDA and USDA are not protecting our interests and Congress must take the reins from them before their criminal negligence kills us all.
The reallity is that stark.
Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to urge your legislators to become supporters of the suite of bills introduced by Rep. Denis Kucinich to require safety assessments of GMOs and require clear labeling of all GMO ingredients and components of food.
And then click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make a tax deductible, recurring donation so that the Natural Solutions Foundation can continue to bring you the facts you need about your health freedom.
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
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
GM is Dangerous and Futile
We Need Organic Sustainable Food and Energy Systems Now
New genetics research invalidates the science underpinning the $73.5 billon global biotech industry and confirms why genetic modification is futile and dangerous; we must implement organic sustainable food and energy systems now Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Invited Lecture at Conference on Future of Food: Climate Change, GMOs and Food Security, 1-2 October 2008, India International Centre, New Delhi
A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members’ website. Details here
An electronic version of this report with full references can be downloaded from the ISIS online store. Download Now
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I am deeply and doubly honoured to be part of this important conference on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, because it was Vandana Shiva and Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher who inspired me and turned me from an ivory tower academic into a science activist. Consequently, I was thrown out of my university and liberated to join civil society in fighting corrupt science and protecting good independent science.
Food Futures Now , *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free, How organic agriculture and localised food, and energy systems can potentially compensate for all greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities and free us from fossil fuels “Change to gene theory raises new challenges for biotechâ€
The headline appeared in the business section of the International Herald Tribune 3 July 2007 [1]. The article went on to say: “The $73.5 billion global biotech business may soon have to grapple with a discovery that calls into question the scientific principles on which it was founded.â€
It was referring to the findings of project ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA elements), organised by the US National Human Genome Research Institute. A consortium of 35 research groups went through 1 percent of the human genome with a fine-tooth comb to find out exactly how genes work.
To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a “tidy collection of independent genes†after all…Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood.â€
The Human Genome Research Institute said that these findings will challenge scientists “to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.â€
The author of the article Denis Caruso commented that, “the report is likely to have repercussions far beyond the laboratory. The presumption that genes operate independently has been institutionalized since 1976, when the first biotech company was founded. In fact, it is the economic and regulatory foundation on which the entire biotechnology industry is built.†She went on to point out that gene patents and safety assessment based on the same paradigm are also in trouble.
She is right on all counts. I pointed that out 10 years previously when a plethora of findings in molecular genetics had already invalidated the genetic determinist paradigm underpinning the biotech industry. In fact, the paradigm had begun to unravel almost as the industry was starting up twenty years earlier.
The Brave New World of GM Science
In Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare, the Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business [2] first published in 1997/1998 I explained why the science behind GM is wrong and obsolete, and hence dangerous; a story elaborated further in Living with the Fluid Genome [3] published in 2003.
Genetic engineering of plants and animals began in the mid 1970s in the belief that the genome (the totality of all the genetic material of a species) is constant and static, and that the characteristics of organism are simply hardwired in their genome. This was encapsulated in the Central Dogma of molecular biology. The genetic information goes from DNA, the genetic material, to RNA, a kind of intermediate, to protein which determines the characteristic involved, such as tolerance to herbicide, for example. One gene determines one trait, so you can transfer one gene and get exactly the trait you want, be it herbicide tolerance, or resistance to insect pest.
But geneticists soon discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic and ‘fluid’. It is constantly in conversation with the environment, and that determines which genes are turned on, when, where, by how much and for how long. Moreover, the genetic material itself could also be marked or changed according to experience, and the influence passed on to the next generation. Most of that was known by 1980, long before the Human Genome Project was conceived.
The best thing about the Human Genome Project is to finally explode the myth of genetic determinism [4] (The Myth that Launched a Thousand Companies, SiS 18), revealing the layers of molecular complexity that transmit, interpret and rewrite the genetic texts [5] (Life Beyond the Central Dogma series, SiS 24). The ENCODE project has confirmed and extended the complexities especially with regard to what constitutes a gene. Traditionally, a gene is a sequence of DNA that codes for a protein with a well-defined function. This idea has been well and truly shattered [6]; as Barry Patrick wrote in the Science News [7] “genes are proving to be fragmented, intertwined with other genes, and scattered across the whole genome.â€
The genetic engineer’s idea of a gene is presented in Figure 1. It has a regulatory signal, a promoter that says to the cell, go and make lots of copies of the coding sequence that would be translated into a protein, and a terminator that says stop, end of message. This is what genetic engineers put into cells to make a genetically modified organism (GMO).
A gene expression cassette, the genetic engineer’s idea of a gene
Figure 1. A gene expression cassette, the genetic engineer’s idea of a gene
Instead, within the human genome, and indeed other mammalian genomes, coding sequences are in bits (exons) separated by non-coding introns, and exons contributing to a single protein could be in different parts of the genome. Coding sequences of different proteins frequently overlap. Regulatory signals are similarly scattered upstream, downstream, within the coding sequence or in some other distant part of the genome. Coding sequences occupy just 1.5 percent of the human genome, but between 74 and 93 percent of the genome produce RNA transcripts [7], many now known to have regulatory functions. So much so that the project of mapping genetic predisposition to diseases, the original rationale for the Human Genome Project, has now run into serious trouble.
David M. Altshuler, associate professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School and his research team showed that the risk for type 2 diabetes involves more than a mutated gene. Instead, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and other deadly ailments involve non-coding DNA as well as in genes [8]. “We’re realizing that things happening ‘somewhere else’ in the genome, not in genes, are playing critical roles†in sickness and in health, Altshuler said.
David B. Goldstein at Duke University is very pessimistic. He said the effort to nail down the genetics of most common diseases is not working [9]: “There is absolutely no question that for the whole hope of personalized medicine, the news has been just as bleak as it could be. After doing comprehensive studies for common diseases, we can explain only a few percent of the genetic components of most of these traits.†For schizophrenia and biopolar disorder, there is almost nothing, for type 2 diabetes, 20 variants, but they explain only up to 3 percent of familial clustering, and so on.
Goldstein added: “we have cracked open the human genome and can look at the entire complement of common genetic variants, and what do we find? Almost nothing. That is absolutely beyond belief.â€
That is just what I predicted soon after the human genome sequence was announced [10, 11] (Human DNA ‘BioBank’ Worthless, SiS 13/14; Why Genomics Won’t Deliver, SiS 26)
Fresh attempts are now made to redefine a gene either in terms of a protein product [12] or a transcript [13], neither of which are satisfactory or would save the industry. All patents on genes based on the old concept are no longer valid; ultimately because the patent is awarded on a supposed function attached to a DNA sequence. But as genes exist in bits interweaving with other genes, so are functions. Multiple DNA sequences may serve the same function, and conversely the same DNA sequence can have different functions. Again, I have explained Why Biotech Patents Are Patently Absurd [14].
Despite the bewildering complexities of how the genome works, individual processes are precisely orchestrated and finely tuned by the organism as a whole, in a highly coordinated molecular ‘dance of life’ that’s necessary for survival.
In contrast, genetic engineering in the laboratory is crude, imprecise and invasive. The rogue genes inserted into a genome to make a GMO could land anywhere; typically in a rearranged or defective form, scrambling and mutating the host genome, and tend to move or rearrange further once inserted. Transgene instability is a big problem, and has been so right from the beginning. There is fresh evidence that GM crops grown commercially for years have rearranged [15, 16] (MON810 Genome Rearranged Again. Transgenic Lines Unstable hence Illegal and Ineligible for Protection, SiS 38). This is a real opportunity to challenge the validity of all biotech patents. Another key issue is safety. Transgene instability means that the original transgenic line has turned into something else, and even if it had been assessed as ‘safe’, this is no longer the case.
The genetically modified genes are a big hazard because they do not know the intricate dance of life that has been perfected in billions of years of evolution. That’s ultimately why genetic modification is both dangerous and futile.
Thirty years of GM are more than enough
We’d had 30 years of GM and more than enough damage done, as detailed in the ISP Report The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World [17] and the dossier GM Science Expose : Hazards Ignored, Fraud, Regulatory Sham, Violation of Farmers Rights [18] we compiled for the European Parliament in June 2007. And more evidence has been piling up since. Why has this been allowed to go on? W documented how national and international regulators and advisory bodies such as the European Food Safety Authority not only routinely ignore the precautionary principle, but also actively abuse science, sidestep the law, and helping to promote GM technology in the face of evidence piling up against the safety of GM food and feed [19] (GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham, ISIS scientific publication).
Let me summarize the evidence stacked up against GMOs.
* No increase in yields
Successive reports [17, 18, 20] confirm that the yields of all major GM crops varieties cultivated are lower than, or at best, equal to yields from non-GM varieties. Studies from 1999 to 2007 consistently show that GM soya decreased yields by 4 to 12 percent compared to non-GM soya, while Bt maize yields from 0 to 12 percent less than conventional isolines. Up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton crops have been recorded in India [18] (and amply confirmed by the farmer witnesses who are here today). New research from the University of Kansas found a 10 percent average yield drag for Roundup Ready soya [21], and extra manganese is needed for the soil Scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia found growing GM cotton in the US could result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent [22, 23] (Transgenic Cotton Offers No Advantage, SiS 38)
* No reduction in pesticides use
USDA data showed that GM crops increase pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the United States [17]. New data paint an even grimmer picture: the use of glyphosate on major crops went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides [24] in order to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds [6]. Palmer 3pigweed is a major concern in Georgia, with farmer there having to mow cotton down in fields with glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth [25]. And following close on the health of that is glyphosate resistant giant ragweed [26]. Roundup tolerant canola volunteers are top among the worries of Canadian farmers [27, 28] (Study Based on Farmers’ Experience Exposes Risks of GM Crops, SiS 38)
* Roundup lethal to frogs and toxic to human placental and embryonic cells [18].
Roundup is more toxic than glyphosate, and it is used in more than 80 percent of all GM crops planted in the world.
* GM crops harm wildlife
UK’s farm scale evaluations have found that GM crops harm wildlife [18]; more recently a study led by Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois in the United Stated, found that wastes from Bt corn impaired the growth of a common aquatic insect [29, 30] (Bt Crops Threaten Aquatic Ecosystems, SiS 36). This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is evidence that GM crops, especially Bt crops contribute to the demise of the honeybee worldwide because it compromises their immune system and make them exra-susceptible to attacks by parasitic fungus (31) (Parasitic Fungi and Pesticides Act Synergistically to Kill Honeybees? SiS 35).
* Bt resistance pests and Roundup tolerant superweeds render the two major GM crop traits practically useless [18].
A recent review concluded that [32] “evolved glyphosate-resistant weeds are a major risk for the continued success of glyphosate and transgenic glyphosate-resistant crops.†And the evolution of Bt resistant bollworms worldwide have now been confirmed and documented in more than a dozen fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 and 2006 [33]. Worse yet, secondary pests now plague the fields and spread to other crops in India [34] (Deadly gift from Monsanto to India, SiS 38).
* Vast areas of forests, pampas and cerrados lost to GM soya in Latin America
Argentina alone has lot 15 m hectares [18]; and this has worsened considerably with the demand for biofuels (see later)
* Epidemic of suicides in the cotton belt of India
An estimated 100 000 farmers have killed themselves between 1993-2003, and a further 16 000 farmers a year have died since Bt cotton was introduced [18]
* GM food and feed linked to deaths and sicknesses
Evidence of serious health impacts in lab tests and from farmers’ fields around the world (more below)
GM food and feed inherently hazardous to health [19]
Here are some highlights from our GM Science dossier [18] on the hazards of GM food and feed. Dr. Irina Ermakova of the Russian Academy of Sciences showed how GM soya made female rats give birth to severely stunted and abnormal litters, with more than half dying in three weeks, and those remaining are sterile. Hundreds of villagers and cotton handlers in India suffer allergy-like symptoms, thousands of sheep died after grazing on the Bt cotton residues, goat and cows as well were reported in 2007 and 2008 [35] (Mass Protests against GM Crops in India , SiS 38). (As reported by farmer witnesses as this conference, the problem is continuing and sterility in offspring of exposed animals has also been observed.) A harmless bean protein transferred to pea when tested on mice cause severe inflammation in the lungs and provoked generalised food sensitivities. Dozens of villagers in the south of the Philippines fell ill when neighbouring GM maize fields came into flower in 2003, at least five have died and some remain ill to this day. A dozen cows died having eaten GM maize in Hesse Germany and more in the herd had to be slaughtered from mysterious illnesses. Arpad Pusztai and his colleagues in the UK found GM potatoes with snowdrop lectin damaged every organ system of young rats; the stomach lining grew twice as thick as controls. Chickens fed GM maize Chardon LL were twice as likely to die as controls. And finally, GM maize Mon 863 was claimed to be as safe as non-GM maize by the company, and accepted as such by European Food Safety Authority. But independent scientists of CriiGen in France re-analysed the data and found signs of liver and kidney toxicity.
Different animals and human beings exposed to a variety of transgenic crops with different traits either fall ill or die. The evidence compels us to consider the possibility that the hazards of GMOs may be inherent to the technology, as I suggested more than ten years ago [2].
Table 1. Summary of Exposure of Animals and Human Beings to GMOs
Species GM species Transgene trait Effect
Rat Soya Roundup Ready Stunting, death, sterility
Humans Cotton Cry1Ac/Cry1Ab Allergy symptoms
Sheep “ “ Death, liver toxicity
Cows “ “ “
Goats “ “ “
Mice Pea Alpha-amylase Inhibitor Lung Inflammation, General food sensitivity
Mice Soya Roundup Ready Liver, pancreas and testis Affected
Humans Maize Cry1Ab Illnesses and death
Rats Maize Cry3Bb liver and kidney toxicity
Cows Maize Cry1Ab/Cry1Ac Death and illnesses
Rats Potato Snowdrop lectin Damage in every organ system. Stomach lining twice as thick as controls
Mice Potato Cry1A Gut lining thickened
Rats Tomato Delay ripening Holes in the stomach
Chickens Maize Glufosinate tolerance Deaths
An epidemic of Morgellons Disease has hit the US and other countries that had been involved in genetic modification technology [36] (Agrobacterium & Morgellons Disease, A GM Connection?. SiS 38). The pathogen is suspected to be Agrobacterium, which has been widely used in smuggling genes into cells to make GMOs. Is this a disease created by GM? There have been close calls before.
US courts rule GM crop field-tests and releases illegal
The message that GM crops are unsafe appears to have got through to the judiciary system in the United States. There have been three court rulings against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for failing to carry out proper environmental impact assessment, making the original releases illegal [37] (Approval of GM Crops Illegal, US Federal Courts Rule, SiS 34). These are the first rulings against GMOs in the top producing country in the world, which has been also promoting GMOs aggressively.
The first case was on drug-producing GM crops in Hawaii. The court said that the USDA violated the Endangered Species Act as well as the National Environmental Policy Act.
The second court case not only ruled GM herbicide-tolerant creeping bentgrass illegal, but also that the USDA must halt approval of all new field trials until more rigorous environmental reviews are conducted.
The third decision was passed on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa for having been commercial released illegally without an Environment Impact Statement.
An avalanche of bans and rulings strikes GM crops worldwide
There have been numerous bans and restrictions imposed on GM crops in recent years, which say a lot about the inadequacies of regulatory regimes worldwide (see Box 1).
Box 1
Rulings and bans on GMOs between May 2007 and May 2008
* US GM alfalfa ban made permanent [38]
* US Federal Court of Appeals ruled against GM bentgrass again [39]
* Four counties in California have bans or moratorium on GM crops and the first state bill to protect Californian farmers against lawsuits that intimate and harass them when their field are contaminated passed through the Agriculture committee in January 2008 [40]
* Montville USA became the first town outside California to ban GM crops [41]
* South Australia extended its GM ban [42]
* Romania joined EU members in banning GM crop Mon 810 [43], the others are France, Hungary, Italy, Austria, Greece, and Poland
* 13 out of 20 counties in Croatia have declared themselves GM-Free [44]
* Greece renewed its ban on GM maize seeds [44]
* Germany imposed much stricter regulations on GM maize [46]
* Scotland backs GM ban in Europe [47]
* France banned GM maize Mon 810 in February 2008 and passed GMO law in April to guard against contamination by GMO, making it compulsory for farmers to “respect agricultural structures, local ecosystems and non-GMO commercial and production industries†[48, 49]
* Wales is set to ban GM crops [50]
* Switzerland bans crops until 2012 [51]
* More than 230 regions, over 4 000 municipalities and other local entities and tens of thousands of farmers and food producers in Europe have declared themselves GMO-free so far [52]
EU Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas has expressed serious reservations concerning GMOs [53] (GM-Free Europe Beginning?, SiS 36), which is unprecedented in the history of the European Commission. On 7 May 2008, the European Commission delayed a decision on allowing farmers to grow more GM crops, and asked European Food Safety Authority to reconsider its previous review, which it had admitted was inadequate, as it was unable to take indirect and long term impacts into account [54].
No case for GM crops, small scale organic farming is the way ahead
Meanwhile, on 15 April 2008, 400 scientists of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) released its 2 500-page report [55, 56] (GM-Free Organic Agriculture to Feed the Worldâ€, SiS 38) that took 4 years to complete. It is a thorough examination of global agriculture on a scale comparable to the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change.
The IAASTD calls for a fundamental change in farming practice to counteract soaring food prices, hunger, poverty and environmental disasters, it says GM crops are controversial with respect to safety for health and the environment, and will not play a substantial role in addressing climate change, loss of biodiversity, hunger and poverty. Small scale farmers and agro-ecological methods are the way forward, and indigenous and local knowledge are as important as formal scientific knowledge. It warns that growing crops for biofuels could worsen food shortages and price rises.
The conclusions of the IAASTD are remarkably similar to our own report Food Futures Now *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free [57] launched in UK Parliament a week later.
Our Food Futures Now report goes a step further. We argue that only organic agriculture can truly feed the world. More than that, organic agriculture and localised food and energy systems can potentially compensate for all greenhouse emissions due to human activities and free us from fossil fuels, and we need to implement this urgently.
The UN has declared 2008 the year of the Global Food Crisis, and it has been the top news story everyday for months now as the crisis deepens. Food prices increased by an average of 40 percent last year; a string of food riots and protests spread around the world including the UK, and more than 25 000 farmers killed themselves in India.
Most commentators agree that the immediate cause of the food crisis is the divestment of food grains into producing biofuels. BusinessWeek identified Monsanto as a “prime beneficiaryâ€. Its stock correlated closely with the price of oil (better than ExxonMobile), and hardly correlated with the price of corn, basically because no one will eat its GM corn. Nevertheless the pro-GM lobby are out in force, using the food crisis to promote GM crops.
GM crops are one big failed experiment based on an obsolete scientific theory, and this failure has been evident since 2004 if not before [58] (Puncturing the GM Myths, SiS 22). Apart from yielding less and requiring more pesticides, anecdotal evidence since 2005 from farmers around the world indicates that GM crops also require more water [59]. Industrial Green Revolution agriculture is now generally acknowledged to be a major driver of climate change as well as being vulnerable to climate change because of its heavy dependence on fossil energies and water, and its susceptibility to pests, diseases and climate extremes [56, 60, 61] (Beware the New “Doubly Green Revolution”, SiS 37)..GM crops have all the worst features of industrial Green Revolution varieties exaggerated, and not least, there are outstanding safety concerns as I mentioned. Growing GM crops for biofuels does not make them safe, as they will contaminate our food crops all the same.
Any further indulgence in GMOs will surely damage our chances of surviving global warming. We must get on with the urgent business of building organic, sustainable food and energy systems right now.
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Irradiated food is really bad stuff. Of course, it is not radioactive, but it is filled with disease-causing free radicals caused by the process of bombarding it with high energy radiation, the contents of dead organisms killed by the radiation, inactivated, worthless enzymes, and the bits and pieces of what is known in the legal trade as “filth”: insect parts, rat excrement, hairs, dead vermin, etc., which careful handling would eliminate or minimize.
Food that is going to be irradiated, however, does not receive careful handling typically since it will be “sterilized” by the irradiation. If your food is not only irradiated, but genetically modified and stuffed with toxic chemicals, in other words, meets FDA, USDA and Codex standards, now THAT’s as bad as it gets. That’s fully weaponized, “loaded and locked” food. Don’t go near the stuff.
UGH!
Consumers do not want irradiated food. So the ever corporate-friendly agencies of the government, and of course, Codex Alimentarius, take the crafty step of not telling us whether food is irradiated or not if they can get away without doing so. Once food is processed, it does not have to have the familiar “radura”, the radiation symbol, which the law previously required.
Now that fresh lettuce, spinach and other greens are defined as a “health hazard” by a berserk FDA, they, too, will be irradiated before we can eat them. All of them, unless consumed locally or grown by you or your friends.
What does that tell you? Eat locally. Grow your own food.
Print bumper stickers that say “Grow or Glow” and tell people what that means. Get good at “4 foot square” gardening, or growing on your patio or balcony. Organize window box growing for your community or community gardens. You ARE in control of what goes into your body. If you are not, get yourself organized and get into that position. Meet with your neighbors to make this happen for all of you. You and your neighbors are something else besides neighbors: you are CONSUMERS.
Consumers are very powerful when they take the time and effort to be. Since your food is being weaponized against you and your family (!) GET organized.
Email Kathy Greene, kathy.greene@usa.net, the Community Organization Coordinator of the Natural Solutions Foundation and let us help you get your neighbors motivated and activated. We have an excellent eBook on Community Organizing that we will send you if you ask. Just put “Organizing” in the subject line.
Consumer organizations perform valuable services. Not only can they be watchdogs and whistleblowers, they can provide significant information to other consumers, government officials and agencies, university decision makers and the people who attend and shape policy at national and international meetings. According to our West African sources, in that part of the world, consumers organizations who become upset about an issue can literally bring down a government.
Of course, what that takes is a strong sense of ownership: this is MY body, this is MY environment, this is MY child, this is MY body. And the people living right next store to me, and across town, and across the country care about what happens to me, and to themselves, too.
If companies and governments are lying to me, or poisoning me or corrupting my food, or my field or my child’s body, or keeping deadly secrets of putting me in harm’s way for your own good, we, the Consumers, should, can, will, say “NO!” to what is bad and “YES!” to what is good for us.
Up with consumers and consumerism, I say.
The diametrical opposite to consumerism, of course, is “corporatism”. What is good for corporations, which is generally what governments decide is good for them since so much money is involved, is very often exactly NOT what is good for people, for consumers, for you, for me. And, oh, by the way, it may not be at all good for the environment. In fact, when their decisions and actions are good for the consumer or the environment, that is the cause for press releases and hoopla.
It’s up to us.
The Organic Consumers organization has published a very useful compendium called “WHAT’S WRONG WITH FOOD IRRADIATION, http://www.organicconsumers.org/Irrad/irradfact.cfm. Although food irradiation is presented by government and industry, and, of course, by the ever corporate-friendly FDA and USDA, as benign and helpful, it is neither. Read below and see why irradiation, sometimes misleadingly called “Cold Sterilization” or “Cold Pasturization” is neither.
And then start eating and growing organic!
Check it out and take control of your health by taking control of what you eat!
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.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
What’s Wrong With Irradiated Food?
Irradiation damages the quality of food.
· Irradiation damages food by breaking up molecules and creating free radicals. The free radicals kill some bacteria, but they also bounce around in the food, damage vitamins and enzymes, and combine with existing chemicals (like pesticides) in the food to form new chemicals, called unique radiolytic products (URPs).
· Some of these URPs are known toxins (benzene, formaldehyde, lipid peroxides) and some are unique to irradiated foods. Scientists have not studied the long-term effect of these new chemicals in our diet. Therefore, we cannot assume they are safe.
· Irradiated foods can lose 5%-80% of many vitamins (A, C, E, K and B complex). The amount of loss depends on the dose of irradiation and the length of storage time.
· Most of the food in the American diet is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for irradiation: beef, pork, lamb, poultry, wheat, wheat flour, vegetables, fruits, shell eggs, seeds for sprouting, spices, herb teas. (Dairy is already pasteurized). A food industry petition currently before the FDA asks for approval for luncheon meats, salad bar items, sprouts, fresh juices and frozen foods. Another petition before the USDA asks for approval for imported fruits and vegetables.
· Irradiation damages the natural digestive enzymes found in raw foods. This means the body has to work harder to digest them.
· If unlabeled, raw foods that have been irradiated look like fresh foods, but nutritionally they are like cooked foods, with decreased vitamins and enzymes. The FDA allows these foods to be labeled “fresh.”
· Irradiated fats tend to become rancid.
· When high-energy electron beams are used, trace amounts of radioactivity may be created in the food.
Science has not proved that a long-term diet of irradiated foods is safe for human health
· The longest human feeding study was 15 weeks. No one knows the long-term effects of a life-long diet that includes foods which will be frequently irradiated, such as meat, chicken, vegetables, fruits, salads, sprouts and juices.
· There are no studies on the effects of feeding babies or children diets containing irradiated foods, except a very small and controversial study from India that showed health effects.
· Studies on animals fed irradiated foods have shown increased tumors, reproductive failures and kidney damage. Some possible causes are: irradiation-induced vitamin deficiencies, the inactivity of enzymes in the food, DNA damage, and toxic radiolytic products in the food.
· The FDA based its approval of irradiation for poultry on only 5 of 441 animal-feeding studies. Marcia van Gemert, Ph.D., the toxicologist who chaired the FDA committee that approved irradiation, later said, “These studies reviewed in the 1982 literature from the FDA were not adequate by 1982 standards, and are even less accurate by 1993 standards to evaluate the safety of any product, especially a food product such as irradiated food.” The 5 studies are not a good basis for approval of irradiation for humans, because they showed health effects on the animals or were conducted using irradiation at lower energies than those the FDA eventually approved.
· The FDA based its approval of irradiation for fruits and vegetables on a theoretical calculation of the amount of URPs in the diet from one 7.5 oz. serving/day of irradiated food. Considering the different kinds of foods approved for irradiation, this quantity is too small and the calculation is irrelevant.
· Even with current labeling requirements, people cannot avoid eating irradiated food. That means there is no control group, and epidemiologists will never be able to determine if irradiated food has any health effects.
· Science is always changing. The science of today is not the science of tomorrow. The science we have today is not adequate to prove the long-term safety of food irradiation.
Irradiation covers up problems that the meat and poultry industry should solve
· Irradiation covers up the increased fecal contamination that results from speeded up slaughter and decreased federal inspection, both of which allow meat and poultry to be produced more cheaply. Prodded by the industry, the USDA has allowed a transfer of inspection to company inspectors. Where government inspectors remain, they are not allowed to condemn meat and poultry now that they condemned 20 years ago.
· Because of this deregulation (continued under President Clinton, a protégé of Tyson Foods), the meat and poultry industry has recently lost money and suffered bad publicity from food-poisoning lawsuits and expensive product recalls. Irradiation is a “magic bullet” that will enable them to say that the product was “clean” when it left the packing plant. (Irradiation, however, does not sterilize food, and any bacteria that remain can grow to toxic proportions if the food is not properly stored and handled.)
· In 2000, seven meat industry associations submitted a petition to USDA to redefine key regulations relating to contamination. If accepted by USDA, this petition would permit unlimited fecal contamination during production, as long as irradiation was used afterward.
Labeling is necessary to inform people so they can choose to avoid irradiated foods
· Because irradiated foods have not been proven safe for human health in the long term, prominent, conspicuous and truthful labels are necessary for all irradiated foods. Consumers should be able to easily determine if their food has been irradiated. Labels should also be required for irradiated ingredients of compound foods, and for restaurant and institutional foods.
· Because irradiation can deplete vitamins, labels should state the amount of vitamin loss after irradiation, especially for fresh foods that are usually eaten fresh. Consumers have the right to know if they are buying nutritionally impaired foods.
· Current US labels are not sufficient to enable consumers to avoid irradiated food. Foods are labeled only to the first purchaser. Irradiated spices, herb teas and supplement ingredients, foods that are served in restaurants, schools, etc., or receive further processing, do not bear consumer labels. Consumer labels are required only for foods sold whole (like a piece of fruit) or irradiated in the package (like chicken breasts). The text with the declaration of irradiation can be as small as the type face on the ingredient label. The US Department of Agriculture requirements have one difference: irradiated meat or poultry that is part of another food (like a tv dinner) must be disclosed on the label.
· The US Food and Drug Administration is currently rewriting the regulation for minimum labeling, and will release it for public comment by early 2002 [now long past – REL]. They may eliminate all required text labels. If they do retain the labels, Congress has told them to use a “friendly” euphemism instead of “irradiation.” [Hence “cold sterilization” or “cold Pasteurization” and similar inaccurate terms on foods which must be labeled, a small minority of foods which are consumed after irradiation -REL]
Electron-beam irradiation today means nuclear irradiation tomorrow
· The source of the irradiation is not listed on the label.
· The original sponsor of food irradiation in the US was the Department of Energy, which wanted to create a favorable image of nuclear power as well as dispose of radioactive waste. These goals have not changed. Cobalt-60, which is used for irradiation, must be manufactured in a nuclear reactor.
· Many foods cannot be irradiated using electron beams. E-beams only penetrate 1-1.5 inches on each side, and are suitable only for flat, evenly sized foods like patties. Large fruits, foods in boxes, and irregularly shaped foods must be irradiated using x-rays or gamma rays from nuclear materials.
· Countries that lack a cheap and reliable source of electricity for e-beams use nuclear materials. Opening U.S. markets to irradiated food encourages the spread of nuclear irradiation worldwide.
[Codex Alimentarius supports the universal irradiation of all foods moving through international trade except those which have been fully processed to an end product like roasted coffee. The USDA requires all fruits and vegetables (with very few limited exceptions) to be irradiated before they are imported into the United States. -REL]
Irradiation using radioactive materials is an environmental hazard
· The more nuclear irradiators, the more likelihood of a serious accident in transport, operation or disposal of the nuclear materials.
· Food irradiation facilities have already contaminated the environment. For example, in the state of Georgia in 1988, radioactive water escaped from an irradiation facility. The taxpayers were stuck with $47 million in cleanup costs. Radioactivity was tracked into cars and homes. In Hawaii in 1967 and New Jersey in 1982, radioactive water was flushed into the public sewer system.
· Numerous worker exposures have occurred in food irradiation facilities worldwide.
Irradiation doesn’t provide clean food
· Because irradiation doesn’t kill all the bacteria in a food, the ones that survive are by definition radiation-resistant. These bacteria will multiply and eventually work their way back to the ‘animal factories’. Soon thereafter, the bacteria that contaminate the meat will no longer be killed by currently approved doses of irradiation. The technology will no longer be usable, while stronger bacteria contaminate our food supply.
· People may become more careless about sanitation if irradiation is widely used. Irradiation doesn’t kill all the bacteria in a food. In a few hours at room temperature, the bacteria remaining in meat or poultry after irradiation can multiply to the level existing before irradiation.
· Some bacteria, like the one that causes botulism, as well as viruses and prions (which are believed to cause Mad Cow Disease) are not killed by current doses of irradiation.
· Irradiation encourages food producers to cut corners on sanitation, because they can ‘clean up’ the food just before it is shipped.
Irradiation does nothing to change the way food is grown and produced
· Irradiated foods can have longer shelf lives than nonirradiated foods, which means they can be shipped further while appearing ‘fresh.’ Food grown by giant farms far away may last longer than non-irradiated, locally grown food, even if it is inferior in nutrition and taste. Thus, irradiation encourages centralization and hurts small farmers.
· The use of pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and other agri-chemicals, as well as pollution and energy use, are not affected. Irradiation is applied by the packer after harvest or slaughter.
· Some so-called Free-market economists say irradiation is ‘efficient’: it provides the cheapest possible food for the least possible risk. But these economists are not concerned about the impaired nutritional quality of the food. They are not considering the environmental effects of large-scale corporate farming, the social costs of centralization of agriculture and loss of family farms, the replacement of unionized, impartial government inspectors with company inspectors , the potential long-term damage to human health, and the possibility of irradiation-resistant super-bacteria. All of these developments should be (but are not) considered when regulators and public health officials evaluate the benefits of food irradiation.
In a truly free market, consumers would have access to truthful and not misleading information about all their food choices and could decide for themselves what risks to take. Honest companies would be free to truthfully tell that their products are organic, non-GMO, non-toxic, non-irradiated. Free people are free to choose risks… or to reject them. Slaves, of course, have to take whatever sh-t is dolled out to them.
Which are you?