GMOs and Roundup, neonicotinoids, 2,4 D, atrazine, glufosinate, and dicamba--and all the other chemicals being sprayed on the food that we eat, and ultimately running off into water that we drink--are poison. The major reason chronic diseases like cancer, autism, diabetes and obesity, along with reproductive, behavioral, endocrine and immune system disorders, are spiraling out of control is that our environment is toxic, and we are ingesting, from the womb, to the hospital, to the grave--poisoned, pesticide-laden food.
Certainly we want mandatory labeling of GMOs at the state level (the feds are obviously too corrupt to trust on GMO labeling). But the main reason we want labeling is to defend ourselves, our families and the environment from further assault--by boycotting and driving GMO food, animal feed (most GMOs go into animal feed and biofuels, not human food), and Roundup off the market. This means that organic and grass-fed or pasture-based foods must move from being 5 percent of the market to becoming the dominant force in U.S. food and farming, as soon as possible. To achieve this, we need to boycott not just GMO foods, but all chemically contaminated foods, including factory farmed GMO-fed meat and animal products, and foods from crops sprayed with Roundup "pre-harvest," not just in the U.S., but globally as well.
Fifteen years ago I wrote a book with Ben Lilliston on the alarming hazards of genetically engineered foods and crops: Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers. Even then, it was obvious that out-of-control agro-toxic corporations like Monsanto (producers of aspartame, Agent Orange, DDT, dioxin, and PCBs) were not really interested in increasing yields, producing healthier food or reducing pesticide use--even though they made, and continue to make, these fraudulent claims ad nauseum. What Monsanto was, and is, really up to is maximizing the sales, by any means possible, of their proprietary herbicides (Roundup, dicamba), insecticides (Bt), seeds (corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beets, alfalfa) and animal drugs (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone or rBGH, now owned by Elanco).
Already in 1989, scores of consumers had been killed, and thousands permanently injured after they ingested a heretofore-safe over-the-counter nutritional supplement called L-tryptophan, which for the first time had been laced with genetically engineered enzymes. Although the FDA tried to cover up the deadly consequences of this first product of genetic engineering, the Japanese pharmaceutical company, Showa Denka, which manufactured the genetically engineered supplement, ended up paying out $2 billion to the consumers it had poisoned.
In 1994, Monsanto's minions in the FDA (including Monsanto lawyer, and later Obama Food Czar, Michael Taylor) forced onto the market the controversial recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). rBGH was marketed to dairy farmers who injected the hormone into dairy cows to force them to produce more milk. It was brought to market, despite mounting evidence of increased antibiotic resistance and cancer risks, and over the objections of the General Accounting Office (Congress' watchdog agency), and the Consumers Union, the Cancer Prevention Coalition and the Pure Food Campaign. Although approved for sale in the U.S., rBGH was subsequently banned in Europe, Canada, and most industrialized nations.
A few years later, a gene-spliced soybean patented by Pioneer Hybrid, designed as an "improved" animal feed which would be planted on millions of acres, was pulled from production when scientists realized that it would set off deadly allergies in humans who unwittingly ingested the Brazil nut-spliced soybeans.
Also in 1996-98, as soon as Monsanto's genetically engineered, "Roundup- Resistant," soybeans, corn, canola and cotton hit the market--over the objections of independent scientists, environmentalists, and food safety experts--the use, contamination and residues on food of this toxic herbicide began to skyrocket.
Pesticides and flawed, industry-manufactured 'science
Genetic engineering corporations and their indentured journalists, scientists and government bureaucrats have proclaimed since 1992 that their mutant GMO foods and animal feeds--and the toxic chemicals used along with them--are perfectly safe, basing their claims on 1,700 (Monsanto's current number) so-called "scientific studies."
Of course the problem with these Monsanto-endorsed studies "proving" that GMOs and Roundup are safe is that they are typically industry-funded, distorted, short-term, typically non-peer-reviewed, and commonly omitting or hiding crucial data as "proprietary." In addition to ignoring the hundreds of peer-reviewed articles in the public domain that clearly show damage from GMOs or Roundup, many of the 1700 studies purporting to prove the safety of GMOs actually do show harm.
When pro-GMO scientists look at the safety of GMO foods, 80 percent of which are heavily sprayed with Roundup, they typically look only narrowly at the "active" ingredient in Roundup, ignoring the chemical breakdown agent or metabolite AMPA, which is linked to liver disease, and the highly toxic "inert" ingredients in the herbicide, including: ammonium sulfate, benzisothiazolone, glycerine, isobutene, isopropylamine, polyethoxylated alkylamines, polyethoxilated, tallowamine, and POE-15.
As Andre Leu points out in his critically-acclaimed recent book, "The Myths of Safe Pesticides:"
"There are numerous studies that show that Roundup is more toxic than its active ingredient, glyphosate. These studies link the pesticide to a range of health problems such as cancer, placental cell damage, miscarriages, stillbirths, endocrine disruption, and damage to various organs such as the kidney and the liver" [inert ingredients in pesticides] amplify up to 1000 times the toxicity of their AP [active ingredient]." -- "The Myths of Safe Pesticides," p. 11, Acres USA, 2014).
In addition to ignoring the dangers of Roundup's metabolites and "inert" ingredients, industry-sponsored scientists overlook the fact that multiple pesticide residues are routinely found on most (non-organic) GMO and "conventional" foods--and that these multiple-residue chemical cocktails are often far more toxic, even in tiny doses, than the pesticide being studied.
As Leu states:
"The ever increasing body of peer-reviewed science shows that the current methodology of only testing the active ingredient as a single agent and not testing common combinations is flawed and insufficient to determine the safety of chemical exposure in a real world situation where humans are exposed to daily cocktails of chemicals." -- "The Myths of Safe Pesticides," p. 8).
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