South coast beekeepers are reeling from the senseless destruction of hundreds of hives across the region yesterday.

A toxic poison was sprayed into over 740 honey producing hives in the Batemans Bay area, decimating the local industry.

Police say the attacks on the region’s biggest producers caused  an estimated $150,000 damage, but local producers say the poison will continue to destroy hives over coming weeks.

Beekeepers on the NSW south coast lost about 750 hives after bees were poisoned. Owner of Australian Rainforest Honey, Steve Roberts, lost about 230 hives, south of Pebbly Beach. Photo: Graham Tidy

One of the hardest hit was south coast producer Australian Rainforest Honey.

The company had 240 hives poisoned at its two sites on the south coast, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage.

One of the company’s directors, Stephen Roberts, was at his site just south of Pebbly Beach today, sifting through piles of dead bees and attempting to save those that hadn’t been lost.

Owner of Australian Rainforest Honey, Steve Roberts, at left, with employee, Adlei Baldo, south of Pebbly Beach.

Mr Roberts says the poisoning was a senseless, inexplicable act, and is working with rural police and the NSW Department of Primary Industries to catch those responsible.

Mr Roberts bees are also used to pollinate almonds, and the attacks may have a secondary impact on that industry.

The attacks appear targeted, with the offenders poisoning a series of hidden, remote bushland sites, some up to 40km apart.

“It’s not right, it’s just not right,” Mr Roberts said.

“We’ll have to start up the hives from scratch again, and it’ll be well over $100,000,” he said.

Investigators from the Department of Primary Industries were at the hives today taking samples of the poison, but a spokeswoman said it would take a number of days to determine an exact cause of death.

The beekeeping business is highly competitive and has been described as  cutthroat, but there is no indication that any rival honey producer was responsible.

But while authorities try and track down the culprits, there’s little left for Australian Rainforest Honey to do but mop up and start all over again.

“We’re just lucky that we’ve got a few more loads of bees than others have,” Mr Roberts said.

“We’ll feel it, we’ll definitely feel it, but what can you do?”

Anyone with information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

See Also:

Original Article

(NaturalNews) There is a conspiracy of selling out happening in America. Politics and personal interest it would seem determine government policies over and above health and safety issues. When President Obama appointed Michael Taylor in 2009 as senior adviser for the FDA, a fierce protest ensued from consumer groups and environmentalists. Why? Taylor used to be vice president for Monsanto, a multinational interested in marketing genetically modified (GM) food. It was during his term that GMO’s were approved in the US without undergoing tests to determine if they were safe for human consumption.

The danger of GMO’s

The question of whether or not genetically modified foods (GMO’s) are safe for human consumption is an ongoing debate that does not seem to see any resolution except in the arena of public opinion. Due to lack of labeling, Americans are still left at a loss as to whether or not what is on the table is genetically modified. This lack of information makes the avoiding and tracking of GM foods an exercise in futility. Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:

1. Corn – Corn has been modified to create its own insecticide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared that tons of genetically modified corn has been introduced for human consumption. Monsanto has revealed that half of the US’s sweet corn farms are planted with genetically modified seed. Mice fed with GM corn were discovered to have smaller offspring and fertility problems.

2. Soy – Soy has also been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy products include soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and other products that may include pastries, baked products and edible oil. Hamsters fed with GM soy were unable to have offspring and suffered a high mortality rate.

3. Cotton – Like corn and soy, cotton has been designed to resist pesticides. It is considered food because its oil can be consumed. Its introduction in Chinese agriculture has produced a chemical that kills cotton bollworm, reducing the incidences of pests not only in cotton crops but also in neighboring fields of soybeans and corn. Incidentally, thousands of Indian farmers suffered severe rashes upon exposure to BT cotton.

4. Papaya – The virus-resistant variety of papaya was commercially introduced in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas comprised three-fourths of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto bestowed upon Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore technology for developing papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

5. Rice – This staple food from South East Asia has now been genetically modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. Allegedly, there are reports of rice varieties containing human genes to be grown in the US. The rice will create human proteins useful for dealing with infant diarrhea in the 3rd world. China Daily, an online journal, reported potential serious public health and environment problems with genetically modified rice considering its tendency to cause allergic reactions with the concurrent possibility of gene transfers.

6. Tomatoes – Tomatoes have now been genetically engineered for longer shelf life, preventing them from easily rotting and degrading. In a test conducted to determine the safety of GM tomatoes, some animal subjects died within a few weeks after consuming GM tomatoes.

7. Rapeseed – In Canada, this crop was renamed canola to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed. Food stuff produced from rapeseed includes rapeseed oi (canola oil) l used to process cooking oil and margarine. Honey can also be produced from GM rapeseed. German food surveillance authorities discovered as much as a third of the total pollen present in Canadian honey may be from GM pollen. In fact, some honey products from Canada were also discovered to have pollen from GM rapeseed.

8. Dairy products – It has been discovered that 22 percent of cows in the U.S. were injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). This Monsanto created hormone artificially forces cows to increase their milk production by 15 percent. Milk from cows treated with this milk inducing hormone contains increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1). Humans also have IGF-1 in their system. Scientists have expressed concerns that increased levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with colon and breast cancer.

9. Potatoes – Mice fed with potatoes engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1 were found to have toxins in their system. Despite claims to the contrary, this shows that Cry1 toxin was stable in the mouse gut. When the health risks were revealed, it sparked a debate.

10. Peas – Peas that have been genetically modified have been found to cause immune responses in mice and possibly even in humans. A gene from kidney beans was inserted into the peas creating a protein that functions as a pesticide.

The GMO link to strange disease

As early as 2008, NaturalNews.com reported about a condition called Morgellon’s disease. The article went on to report the symptoms of the disease as follows: crawling, stinging, biting and crawling sensations; threads or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; granules, lesions. Some patients report fatigue, short term memory loss, mental confusion, joint pain and changes in vision. Furthermore, there have been reports of substantial morbidity and social dysfunction leading to a dip in work productivity, job loss, total disability, divorce, loss of child custody and home abandonment.

Prior to its reporting, the condition was dismissed as a hoax, but upon further investigation, the evidence pointed out that the disease was real and may be related to genetically modified food.

Despite this link being established, the CDC declared Morgellon’s disease of unknown origin. Worse, the medical community could not offer any information to the public regarding a cause for the symptoms.

When a research study was conducted on fiber samples taken from Morgellons patients, it was discovered that the fiber samples of all the patients looked remarkable similar. And yet, it did not seem to match any common environmental fiber. When the fiber was broken down, and it’s DNA extracted, it was discovered to belong to a fungus. Even more surprising was the finding that the fibers contained Agrobacterium, a genus gram-negative bacteria with the capacity of transforming plant, animal and even human cells.

Morgellon’s disease is not the only condition associated with genetically modified foods. A growing body of evidence has shown that it may cause allergies, immune reactions, liver problems, sterility and even death. Moreover, based on the only human feeding experiment conducted on genetically modified food, it was established that genetic material in genetically modified food product can transfer into the DNA of intestinal bacteria and still continue to thrive.

Heeding the warning

Time and again, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has warned that GMOs pose a serious threat to health, and it is no accident that there can be a correlation between it and adverse health effects. In fact, the AAEM has advised doctors to tell their patients to avoid GMOs as the introduction of GMOs into the current food supply has correlated with an alarming rise in chronic diseases and food allergies.

This should come as no surprise. More than 30 years ago a food supplement called L-trytophan killed 100 people and affected 5,000 to 10,000 more. The cause was narrowed down to the genetic engineering process used in its production. If the symptoms had not had three simultaneous characteristics – namely, they were unique, acute and fast-acting – the disease could never have been identified.

If science could assure us with certainty that serious consequences do not wait for us at the end of the line, it might be to our best interest to let this opportunity pass. Progressive thinking in terms of profit is certainly not wrong. But to brush off precaution on the convenient argument that there is not enough evidence to prove that GM food is indeed harmful is sheer irresponsibility. It certainly is a lame excuse to offer in the event that GM foods are indeed proven to contain health hazards.

Sources for this article:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_11361.cfm
http://www.naturalnews.com/027226_food_GMO_foods.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/023004.html
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/rbgh/
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-02/04/content_9430645.htm
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/pusztai.html
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/database/food/238.honey.html

Original Article

On March 15, over 1,500 beekeepers and anti-GMO protesters marched through the streets of Warsaw, depositing thousands of dead bees on the steps of the Ministry of Agriculture in protest of genetically modified foods and their pesticides which are together largely responsible for the killing off of bees, butterflies, moths and other beneficial pollinators in great numbers.

Later that day the Minister of Agriculture, Marek Sawicki, announced plans to ban MON810, which has already produced millions of hectares of pesticide resistant “superweeds” in the US.

The Polish Beekeepers Association organized the protest, joining forces with International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) and the Coalition for a GMO Free Poland.  Targeting Monsanto’s MON810 GM corn in particular, they also called for a complete ban on all genetically engineered crops as well as the pesticides found to be most damaging to the environment (and particularly to bees).

In 2008, the Polish Parliament banned GM feed, including both the planting and importing of GM crops. “Despite this progressive step,” reports Food Travels, “the European Commission has refused to accept regional bans on GMOs, keeping Polish farmers, producers, and activists on the offensive.”

Regardless, says the ICPPC, “None of the nine European Union countries that have already prohibited MON 810 did so by asking the permission of the EU.”

There was a great variety of attire as beekeepers dressed in their work bee suits and masks and ran their hive smoke guns as they marched, many wore yellow jackets with the famous Einstein quote, and many more original signs, props, and costumes.  Go here for more photos.

The ICPPC is asking Polish residents to write Minister of Agriculture Marek Sawicki, demanding that he implement an immediate moratorium on GM crops, without waiting for EU approval.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtI3TlPPA4g

SOURCE:
http://anonymissexpress.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=2762

By: FoodFreedom, March 25, 2012

Original Article

In a blatant attempt at brainwashing, the Council for Biotechnology Information(CBI) has widely circulated what it calls a Biotechnology Basics Activity Bookfor kids, to be used by “Agriculture and Science Teachers.” The book — calledLook Closer at Biotechnology — looks like a science workbook, but reads more like a fairy tale. Available on the council’s Web site, its colorful pages are full of friendly cartoon faces, puzzles, helpful hints for teachers — and a heavy dose of outright lies about the likely effects of genetic engineering on health, the environment, world hunger and the future of farming.

CBI’s lies are designed specifically for children, and intended for use in classrooms.

At a critical time in history when our planet is veering toward a meltdown, when our youth are suffering the health consequences (obesity, diabetes, allergies) of Big Ag and Food Inc.’s over-processed, fat-and sugar-laden, chemical-, and GMO-tainted foods, a time when we should be educating tomorrow’s adults about how to reverse climate change, how to create sustainable farming communities, how to promote better nutrition, the biotech industry’s propagandists are infiltrating classrooms with misinformation in the guise of “educational” materials.

Brainwashing children. It’s a new low, even for Monsanto.

You don’t have to read beyond the first page ofLook Closer at Biotechnology to realize that this is pure propaganda:

Hi Kids! Welcome to the Biotechnology Basics Activity Book. This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology — a really neat topic. Why is it such a neat topic? Because biotechnology is helping to improve the health of the Earth and the people who call it home. In this book, you will take a closer look at biotechnology. You will see that biotechnology is being used to figure out how to: 1) grow more food; 2) help the environment; and 3) grow more nutritious food that improves our health. As you work through the puzzles in this book, you will learn more about biotechnology and all of the wonderful ways it can help people live better lives in a healthier world. Have fun!

Before we take a closer look at the lies laid out in Look Closer at Biotechnology — lies that are repeated over and over again, the better to imprint them on young minds — let’s take a closer look at the book’s publisher. The Council for Biotechnology Information describes itself as “a non-profit 501(c)(6) organization that communicates science-based information about the benefits and safety of agricultural biotechnology and its contributions to sustainable development.”

According to the Internal Revenue Service, a 501(c)(6) organization is a “business league” devoted to the improvement of business conditions of one or more lines of business. The mission of a 501(c)(6) organization “must focus on the advancement of the conditions of a particular trade or the interests of the community.”

The bottom line is that CBI exists to advance the interests of the corporations that it was formed to promote — in this case, the biotech industry. While it purports to communicate “science-based information,” in fact, that’s not its mission at all. Its mission is to maximize the profits of Monsanto and the biotech industry.

Not surprisingly, CBI is funded largely by the biotech, chemical, pesticide, and seed industry giants: BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow Agro Sciences, Dupont, Monsanto, and Syngenta.

There’s nothing new about corporations lying to the public. Corporations routinely lie to their employees. They lie in advertising. They lie in the lopsided so-called studies and research projects that they self-fund in order to guarantee the outcomes that support their often false, but self-serving premises. They buy off politicians, regulatory officials, scientists, and the media.

Although here we’re focusing on the biotech industry trying to brainwash our kids, CBI certainly does not limit its propaganda to just children. CBI recently contributed $375,000 to the Coalition Against the Costly Labeling Law — a Sacramento-based industry front group working to defeat the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act of 2012. If passed in November, this citizens’ ballot Initiative will require food manufacturers and retailers to label foods containing genetically engineered ingredients, as well as ban the routine industry practice of labeling or advertising GE-tainted foods as “natural” or “all natural.” CBI, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association are campaigning furiously to preserve their “right” to keep consumers in the dark about whether their food has been genetically engineered or not, and to preserve their “right” to mislabel gene-altered foods as “natural.”

Clearly, the Council for Biotechnology Information has little or no regard for “science-based” information. But lies aimed directly at kids — under the guise of science education? In our schools?

Let’s take a closer look at the claims made in Look Closer at Biotechnology.

Lie #1: “Biotechnology is one method being used to help farmers grow more food.” (page 7)

This statement is patently false.

In 2009, in the wake of similar studies, the Union of Concerned Scientists examined the data on genetically engineered crops, including USDA statistics. Their report — Failure to Yield — was the first major effort to evaluate in detail the overall yields of GE crops after more than 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization in the United States. According to the definitive UCS study, “GE has done little to increase overall crop yields.” A number of studies indicate in fact that GE soybeans, for example, actually produce lower yields than non-genetically engineered varieties.

Research conducted by the India research group, Navdanya, and reported in The GMO Emperor Has No Clothes turns up the same results:

Contrary to the claim of feeding the world, genetic engineering has not increased the yield of a single crop. Navdanya’s research in India has shown that contrary to Monsanto’s claim of Bt cotton yield of 1500 kg per acre, the reality is that the yield is an average of 400-500 kg per acre. Although Monsanto’s Indian advertising campaign reports a 50-percent increase in yields for its Bollgard cotton, a survey conducted by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology found that the yields in all trial plots were lower than what the company promised. (Page 11).

The claim that GE crops increase agricultural yields is a blatant lie. Equally untrue is the industry’s claim that it is motivated by the desire to feed the hungry of the world. As the Union of Concerned Scientists points out: “For the most part, genetic engineering techniques are being applied to crops important to the industrialized world, not crops on which the world’s hungry depend.” Where does all the genetically engineered soy and corn — two of the largest GE crops — end up? In animal feed, processed junk foods — and school lunchrooms. Precious little goes to feed the hungry in impoverished regions.

One of the sub-arguments related to increasing yields is the biotech industry’s claim that GMO crops are more resistant to pests — hence more of the crops survive. In Look Closer at Biotechnology kids are told that agricultural biotechnology is a “precise way to make seeds with special qualities. These seeds will allow farmers to grow plants that are … more resistant to pests …” In fact widespread commercialization of herbicide-resistant and Bt-spliced GE crops has engendered a growing army of superweeds and superpests, oblivious to all but the most powerful and toxic pesticides.

What we should be teaching kids in science class is what scientists have been warning for years — that any attempt to increase resistance to pests through genetic engineering will ultimately fail. Insects — and diseases — will build up a tolerance over time, and evolve into stronger and stronger strains. That’s how nature works — and even Monsanto can’t fool Mother Nature. Organic agriculture, on the other hand, utilizing crop rotation, biodiversity, natural fertilizers, and beneficial insects, reduces crop loss from pests and weeds, without the collateral damage of toxic pesticides and fertilizers.

Recently, 22 leading scientists told the US Environmental Protection Agency that it should act with “a sense of urgency” to urge farmers to stop planting Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bt corn because it will no longer protect them from the corn rootworm. Bt corn is genetically engineered with bacterial DNA that produces an insecticide in every cell of the plant, aimed at preventing corn rootworm. Except that corn rootworms have now developed resistance to these GE mutants.

Just as scientists had predicted years ago, a new generation of insect larvae has evolved, and is eating away at the roots of Monsanto’s Bt corn — a crop farmers paid a high price for on Monsanto’s promise that they would never have to worry about corn rootworm again. Scientists are now warning of massive yield loss and surging corn costs if the EPA doesn’t act quickly to drastically reduce Bt crops’ acreage and ensure that Monsanto makes non-GMO varieties of corn available to farmers.

“Massive yield loss” doesn’t sound like “more food” — whether you’re 12 years old or 112.

What we should be telling kids is what responsible scientists and farmers — experts at the United Nations — have been saying all along: Eco-farming candouble food output. According to a UN study:

• Eco-farming projects in 57 nations showed average crop yield gains of 80 percent by tapping natural methods for enhancing soil and protecting against pests.
• Projects in 20 African countries resulted in a doubling of crop yields within three to 10 years.
• Sound ecological farming can significantly boost production and in the long term be more effective than conventional farming.

Lie #2: “Biotechnology can help farmers and the environment in many ways.” (page 8)

Two lies for the price of one.

Biotechnology — specifically genetic engineering — helps neither farmers nor the environment, according to the majority of legitimate scientists and economists. In fact, the opposite is true. Genetic engineering of seeds has wreaked havoc on the environment and brought misery to hundreds of thousands of small farmers all over the world.

The majority of farmers in developing countries struggle to afford even the most basic requirements of seeds and fertilizers. Their survival depends on the age-old practice of selecting, saving and sharing seeds from one year to the next. When multinational corporations move into areas previously dominated by small farmers, they force those farmers to buy their patented seeds and fertilizers — under pretense of higher yields, and under threats of lawsuits if they save or share the seeds. Every year, they’re forced to buy more seeds and more chemicals from corporations — and when the promises of higher yields and higher incomes prove empty, farmers go bankrupt.

Compounding their corporate crimes, when Monsanto’s patented seeds contaminate the non-GMO crops of small farmers (because the seeds drift across property lines) Monsanto routinely sues farmers for growing their patented seeds illegally, even though the seeds were actually unwanted trespassers. Further, the company has ruined the livelihoods of small farmers by harassing them for illegally growing patented seeds, even in cases where no patented seeds have been grown, either knowingly or by accident.

As Monsanto and others have expanded worldwide, into India, China, Pakistan, and other countries, the effect on small farmers has been devastating. In India, for instance, after World Trade Organization policies forced the country in 1998 to open its seed sector to companies like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta, farmers quickly found themselves in debt to the biotech companies that forced them to buy corporate seeds and fertilizers and pesticides, destroying local economies. Hundreds of thousands of India’s cotton farmers have committed suicide.

And according to a Greenpeace report, poorer farmers in the Philippines were sold Monsanto’s Bt corn as a “practical and ecologically sustainable solution for poor corn farmers everywhere to increase their yields” only to find the opposite was true: Bt corn did not control pests and was “not ecologically sustainable.”

Which brings us to one more of the Council for Biotechnology Information’s lies to kids: That agricultural biotechnology is good for the environment.

Study after study, over more than a decade, has warned us of just the opposite. Even the pro-biotech USDA has admitted that GE crops use more pesticides, not less than non-GE varieties. Genetic engineering results in evermore pesticides being dumped into the environment, destroying soil and water, human and animal health, and threatening the biodiversity of the planet.

How about telling kids instead that numerous reports, including one from theGerman Beekeepers Association, have linked genetically engineered Bt corn to the widespread disappearance of bees, or what is now referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder? And while we’re at it, maybe we should remind kids of the Albert Einstein’s quote: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Maybe we should also tell them that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide, Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world, kills Monarch butterflies, fish, and frogs, destroys soil fertility, and pollutes our waterways and drinking water.

The fact is, widespread use of Monsanto’s Roundup in all agricultural and urban areas of the United States is destroying the environment, pure and simple. US Geological Survey studies released this month show that Roundup is now commonly found in rain and rivers in agricultural areas in the Mississippi River watershed, where most applications are for weed control on GE corn, soybeans and cotton. Here’s the real truth, from an article published this past week: Monsanto’s Roundup is actually threatening the crop-yielding potential of the entire biosphere. According to the article, new research published in the journalCurrent Microbiology highlights the extent to which “glyphosate is altering, and in some cases destroying, the very microorganisms upon which the health of the soil, and — amazingly — the benefits of raw and fermented foods as a whole, depend.”

Lie #3: “Scientists are using biotechnology to grow foods that could help make people healthier.” (page 11)

This is the perhaps the most outrageous lie of all. Telling kids that GE foods are more nutritious is tantamount to telling them Hostess cupcakes and Coca-Cola are health foods.

Genetic engineering — of human food and food for animals that humans eat — has been linked to a host of diseases and health issues, including auto-immune disorders, liver and kidney damage, nutritional deficiencies, allergies, accelerated aging, infertility, and birth defects.

There’s a growing and alarming body of research indicating that GMO foods are unsafe, and absolutely no research whatsoever proving that they are safe. And yet the USDA and FDA continue to approve, and just this past month even agreed tospeed up approval of these crops that scientists and physicians increasingly link to poor health.

Instead of force-feeding kids lies in bogus activity books, how about having them read some truthful articles?

The study Bt Toxin Kills Human Kidney Cells says Bt toxins are not “inert” on human cells, and may indeed be toxic, causing kidney damage and allergies observed in farmers and factory workers handling Bt crops. The article supportsprevious studies done on rats, showing that animals fed on three strains of GE corn made by Monsanto suffered signs of organ damage after only three months.

Or how about this: “19 Studies Find That GMOs Aren’t Up to Consumer Safety Protection Standards” which reports:

It is abundantly clear that both GMOs made to be resistant to herbicides (aka “Roundup Ready”) and those made to produce insecticides have damaging impacts on the health of mammals who consume them, particularly in the liver and kidneys. We already know that from the trials of 90 days and less. In looking a little deeper into the info, we found a number of issues that point to a probable increased level of toxicity when these foods are consumed over the long term, including likely multi-generational effects.

Multi-generational effects. Eating GMO foods harms not only our health, and our kids’ health — but quite possibly their kids, too — even if we stop eating them today.

In a recent report to the United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council by Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, Schutter outlines the case for sustainable agricultural practices (the antithesis of industrial agribusiness, with its GE crops and heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides). He also addresses the links between health and malnutrition. In the report, Schutter shows why undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency and overnutrition are different dimensions of malnutrition that must be addressed together through a life-course approach. From the report’s summary:

Existing food systems have failed to address hunger, and at the same time encourage diets that are a source of overweight and obesity that cause even more deaths worldwide than does underweight. A transition towards sustainable diets will succeed only by supporting diverse farming systems that ensure that adequate diets are accessible to all, that simultaneously support the livelihoods of poor farmers and that are ecologically sustainable.

Corporate greed plus a complicit government have allowed for the rampant poisoning of our food and environment, and the demise of sustainable agriculture practices — practices sorely needed if we are going to feed the world’s population, and avoid a world health crisis. And we’ve exported the same misery and destruction to foreign countries far and wide.

Propaganda like the CBI’s Look Closer at Biotechnology has brainwashed many of our kids into thinking that the biotech industry has people — not profits — in its best interests. The book’s claims are laughable. But framing blatant lies as “science” for children in schools borders on criminal.

For parents and teachers out there, here’s an alternate lesson plan. Because world hunger is a concern, because saving our planet does matter, and because better health is a worthy and achievable goal, let’s ask our kids to think critically, instead of accepting at face value “information” attractively packaged by multinational corporations.

Don M. Huber, emeritus soil scientist of Purdue University puts it in terms everyone, kids included, can understand. Huber talks about a range of key factors involved in plant growth, including sunlight, water, temperature, genetics, and nutrients taken up from the soil. “Any change in any of these factors impacts all the factors,” he said. “No one element acts alone, but all are part of a system.” “When you change one thing,” he said, “everything else in the web of life changes in relationship.”

This is what we should be teaching the future stewards of our planet.

SOURCE:
http://www.alternet.org/food/154602/outrageous_lies_monsanto_and_friends_are_trying_to_pass_off_to_kids_as_science?page=entire

By: Ronnie Cummins, March 20, 2012

Original Article

“Farmers worldwide are resisting for food sovereignty, but the rest of the world must join us.”

SOURCE:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/04/04-5

By: Common Dreams, April 4, 2012

Original Article

Energy-intensive industrial farming practices that rely on toxic chemicals and genetically engineered crops are not just undermining public health—they’re destroying the planet. Here’s how:

#1 Generating Massive Greenhouse Gas Pollution (CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxide) and Global Warming; While Promoting False Solutions Such as Industrial Biofuels, So-Called Drought-Resistant Crops, and Genetically Engineered Trees

Evaluations of corn grown for ethanol show that whatever reduction in emissions you get from burning corn instead of oil in the gas tank is more than offset by the fact that producing biofuel from corn requires as much fuel as it could replace.

Corn production, like the production of all of the crops (corn, cotton, canola, soy, and now, sugar beets and alfalfa) that Monsanto has so successfully industrialized through its business model of selling patented GMO seeds to increase the use of its pesticides, is very fossil fuel intensive.

But that’s just the beginning of Monsanto’s contribution to agriculture’s green house gas emissions. With ever-increasing acreage, where are all those GMO crops going? They’re being fed to animals, and when you look at emissions from factory farms, you’ll wish we burned them in the gas tank instead!

Added to the greenhouse gas emissions from crop production and factory farms is the pollution related to heavily processed food and the fact that food in the U.S. travels anywhere from 1500 to 3000 miles to reach your plate and must be either cooled or frozen in transit or storage. That’s fossil fuel intensive, too.

Before we total the life cycle contribution of Monsanto’s crops to greenhouse gas emissions, we have to take several steps back and acknowledge that clearing land to grow GMO crops for animal feed is the biggest driver of forest and wetland destruction, which generates 20% of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases.

All told, the production and processing of Monsanto’s GMO crops, from deforestation to fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, polluting factory farms, and fuel-intensive food processing and distribution, is estimated to produce up to 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

• TAKE ACTION:
• Tell Obama, Congress & the USDA to Dump Monsanto’s Failed…
• Tell Congress: Organic Is the Answer to Climate Cha…

#2 Polluting the Environment and the Soil-Food Web with Pesticides, Chemical Fertilizers, and Persistent Toxins, Including Dioxin

Industrial agriculture’s heavy reliance on pesticides and fertilizers is responsible for the release of many dangerous toxins into our environment, but since Monsanto first commercialized genetically engineered crops in the 1990s, we’ve been exposed to one more than any other. It’s common name is glyphosate, but Monsanto markets it as RoundUp and has created “RoundUp Ready” crops to promote it. RoundUp Ready crops are genetically engineered to withstand endless amounts of RoundUp. The success of Monsanto’s business model has made RoundUp the most-used pesticide in the history of the world.

The trouble is, RoundUp is very toxic. It’s known to cause cancer, birth defects and infertility. In fact, some scientists are now saying it’s more dangerous than DDT.

It only took about 15 years for the RoundUp Ready technology to begin to fail, with RoundUp-tolerant super-weeds springing up across the country and farmers having to resort to more and more toxic pesticides for weed control. The biotech industry says it has a solution: replace RoundUp Ready crops with a new type of GMO, “2,4-D Ready” crops.

As dangerous as RoundUp is turning out to be, the only thing worse would be 2,4-D replacing RoundUp’s as the most popular pesticide in the world. The use of 2,4-D releases dioxin. Dioxin is what has made Agent Orange, which contained 2,4-D, a source of horrific birth defects in Vietnam to this day. Genetically engineered 2,4-D-tolerant crops would be a disaster of untold proportions.

• TAKE ACTION:
• Ban RoundUp!
• Stop Agent Orange FrankenCorn!
• Justice for the Victims of Agent Orange!
• Don’t Let Big Ag Stop the EPA From Telling Us the Truth A…

#3 Turning Farmland into Desert, Draining Aquifers and Wetlands

In the U.S., the soil’s capability to sequester carbon has been severely deteriorated due to the enormous increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers, mostly to raise Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops for animal feed. The soil should be a sink for excess carbon but has lost about 50% of its organic matter, making it is less than half as effective as it used to be. Many of our most productive agricultural lands have been degraded or desertified because of industrial production.

Recent studies on the University of Illinois Morrow plots (the oldest continuously farmed experimental plots in the U.S.) have shown that since 1955, when synthetic nitrogen was first used, 40-190% too much nitrogen was applied, yet yields dropped and organic matter declined dramatically. These problems on the Morrow plots are writ large on millions of acres of agricultural soils that have been degraded by synthetic fertilizer all over this country.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer kills soil life, including earthworms and microorganisms. In addition to reduced yields, degraded and deadened soils produce less nutritious food.

Contrary to Monsanto’s marketing claims that their business is about “squeezing more out of a drop of water,” their genetically engineered crops are notoriously thirsty. It takes twice as much water to produce a pound of a RoundupReady crop soybean plant treated with RoundUp herbicide, as it does with a soybean plant that’s not treated with RoundUp.

#4 Poisoning Drinking Water, Acidifying the Oceans

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is also responsible for the nitrate poisoning of two-thirds of the U.S. drinking water supply. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is the major cause of the 405 oceanic dead zones around the world (including the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of California and Oregon). Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn uses more fertilizer than any other crop.

#5 Chopping Down the Rainforests for Monoculture GMO Crops, Biofuels and Cattle Grazing

Clearing land to grow GMO crops for animal feed is the biggest driver of forest and wetland destruction, which generate 20% of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases. In Argentina and Brazil, Monsanto’s genetically engineered soy is the main cause of deforestation.

Argentina has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world with an average of 0.8% of the forest cut down each year, against a global rate of 0.23%. During the period 2002-2006, 1,108,669 hectares of forest were lost. That is 277,000 hectares per year, equivalent to 760 hectares per day or 32 hectares per hour. The speed with which Córdoba’s forests are disappearing is unmatched worldwide, it even surpasses that of tropical forests in poor countries. This is a ecological tragedy for the primitive forests which shelter a biodiversity found nowhere else on the planet.

In Brazil, the soy output increased 7.2 percent in 2011, causing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon to jump sixfold.

#6 Increasing the Cost of Food, While Reducing Nutrition and Biodiversity

The business press unabashedly links Monsanto’s profits to record-high global food prices and increases in the costs of farm inputs, especially Monsanto’s patented genetically engineered seeds. Monsanto’s profits go up as hunger increases and families lose their farms to insurmountable debt.

Nowhere has the connection between Monsanto’s fortunes and farmers’ misfortunes been so clear as in India where 200,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997. For many Indian farmers growing Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bt cotton, suicide is their only means of escaping the debt they’ve accrued to obtain the seeds and pesticides.

Monsanto has made food and farming more expensive, while reducing the nutrition and variety of food available to the average consumer. The world’s farmers are increasingly growing more of fewer number of crops (especially Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn, cotton, soy, canola, sugar beets and alfalfa). The result is that we’re eating a lot more of these few genetically engineered crops, mostly in the form of animal products, oils & fats, and sugars. The most notorious genetically engineered ingredients are high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oils, and processed meats.

The concentration of power in the hands of a few chemical companies like Monsanto and the industrial producers who can most easily afford their products, has resulted in a global food system dominated by two extremes: on one hand, a plenitude of industrially produced junk foods, on the other, regular food shortages and drastic price hikes. This leaves a billion people saddled with obesity and diet-related disease, even as more than a billion don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

#7 Spawning Pesticide-Resistant “Super” Bugs and Weeds, and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Genetically engineered crops designed to produce insecticides or tolerate herbicides have proven a failure. Herbicide-resistant “superweeds” have increased farmers’ weed-control costs to $50/acre, as they battle weeds that can stand up to the most toxic chemicals ever invented, including RoundUp (glyphosate), 2,4-D, dicamba, atrazine, ALS inhibitors, PPO inhibitors, HPPD inhibitors and synthetic auxins. Monsanto’s Bt corn and cotton are being mowed down by resistant insectsfrom Iowa to India.

On farms raising animals for food, the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics has created a serious threat to the longevity and effectiveness of certain classes of antibiotics used to treat a host of human illnesses. Doctors concede that antimicrobial drug resistance due to use in animal feed has already cost thousands of lives. In 2006, the EU banned the use of antibiotics in water and feed, proving that raising livestock without drugs is possible.

• TAKE ACTION
• No Agent Orange Corn!
• Ban Monsanto’s RoundUp! Experts Say It’s Worse than DDT! Tell the EPA to Ban Glyphosate
• Can You Imagine a World without Antibiotics? Tell the FDA to Protect Human Health and Regulate Antibiotics in Animal Feed

#8 Generating New and More Virulent Plant, Animal and Human Diseases

The following is a summary of a must-watch interview (Part 1, Part 2) that Dr. Joseph Mercola conducted with Dr. Don Huber.

The way Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide (glyphosate) kills weeds and plants is by compromising their defense mechanisms, making them very susceptible to soil borne organisms. It’s not a direct killer, but it has a debilitating effect on the weed’s immune system, much like the human disease AIDS.

Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready gene, which enables crops to withstand glyphosate, doesn’t solve the problem of a debilitated immune system, all it does is make it possible for the plant to survive and to accumulate more glyphosate. RoundUp Ready crops aren’t killed immediately by the soil diseases RoundUp makes them susceptible to, because they’ve been engineered with genes from a resistant bacteria, but they are still more likely to succumb to disease than plants that aren’t exposed to RoundUp.

Among these disease-causing pathogens are fusaria, which causes sudden death syndrome in soybeans and is a major disease-causing organism for most of our crops. In crops sprayed with RoundUp, we find an increase of up to 500 percent in root colonization by this fungus.

While glyphosate promotes the growth of more virulent pathogens, it also kills off beneficial bacteria that might keep such pathogens in check in the soil and in the guts of animals and humans that ingest the crop.

Scientists have discovered a brand new organism in genetically engineered animal feed, an organism that has since been linked to infertility and miscarriage in cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry. We can anticipate that, with such a broad spectrum of animal species, which is extremely unusual, that humans will face the same problem, and there has been an increasing frequency of miscarriage and a dramatic increase in infertility in humans in just the last eight to 10 years.

The organism was initially identified by veterinarians around 1998, about two years after the introduction of Roundup Ready soybeans, which is one of the staple feeds. The vets were puzzled by sudden high reproductive failure in animals. While sporadic at first, the phenomenon has continued to increase in severity. Dairies are reporting rates of spontaneous as high as 70 percent.

The cause-effect relationship between high reproductive failure and this new microbial entity has been established, but the research has not yet been published. The reason for the delay is because they really do not know what the organism is. It’s not a fungus. It’s not bacteria. It’s not a mycoplasma or a virus. It’s about the same size of a small virus; you have to magnify it 40,000 times.

When the veterinarians wanted to find the source for this new organism, they went to the feed. The first place where they found high concentrations was in the soybean meal. Since it has been found it in corn and in silage, only where there is a genetically engineered crop that has had glyphosate applied to it. The organism is also found in manure when the animals have been given feeds with high glyphosate residues. When that manure is applied to pastures and cattle graze on it, we also see high infertility rates there.

The organism is found in the placenta, in the fetus, and in the sperm. In the dairy industry, it sometimes takes twice as much semen to get a conception and as many as four to eight inseminations rather than the typical 1.2 to 1.5. One bull breeder had to pull 40 percent of his bulls out of service, because of fertility.

If we continue to douse our crops with ever increasing amounts of glyphosate, we will inevitably see the same effect on human health as we’re seeing in plants and animals.

Glyphosate gets inside the plant; it cannot be washed off. Once you eat it, it ends up in your gut, where 80 percent of your immune system resides. Glyphosate can wreak havoc with your health by upsetting the healthy ratio of good and bad stomach bacteria.

Because organically-farmed fields are not doused with glyphosate, organic fields still contain beneficial soil bacteria that actually hinder pathogens in and on the food from multiplying out of control. This may be yet another reason why organic foods are less prone to be contaminated with disease-causing pathogens than conventionally-grown foods.

Pathogens such as E. coli have a high tolerance for glyphosate compared to their natural biological controls. What this means is that it may not be the presence or absence of pathogens per se that determines the safety of our food supply, but rather the presence or absence of the natural control organisms, which are effectively destroyed by glyphosate. Salmonella, Clostridium, and a lot of these disease organisms are ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. Our health is dependent on keeping them in check. If we’re eliminating that check, we’re going to see an increase in Alzheimer’s, thyroid problems, autism, Parkinson’s — any disease that has a tie with either the endocrine system or nutrient availability.

Genetically engineered crops are supposed to be nutritionally equivalent to conventional foods, but they’re not. On the contrary, they’re nutritionally inferior due to glyphosate’s herbicidal mechanism, which blocks absorption of micronutrients. Genetically engineered crops contain about 50 percent less manganese and up to 70 percent less zinc. They also contain less copper, iron and magnesium, just to name a few. This affects the overall health of the plant, and its reproductive ability, and when you eat this nutritionally inferior food, you’re not getting the micronutrients your body needs for proper function either. Animal products are similarly affected when they’re from animals raised on genetically feed.

Studies of pet rats are exposing behavioral differences in animals given genetically engineered feed, as opposed to normal food. The non-GMO-fed rats are docile. They can be pulled out of their cages and patted just like a cat. But try and reach in to the cage where the rats are being fed the genetically engineered feed. The rats are irritated. They don’t get along together. They always go off into their own little world. They do backflips. They crawl up and run around the cage. They can’t get any peace, can’t settle down. That is very typical of what you’d see with autism.

Doctors working with autistic children are noting many correlations between the rats fed genetically modified feed and autistic children. When you look at the stomachs of the GMO-fed animals, they have all of the severe allergy responses, the inflammation and the reddening. The intestinal lining is deteriorating. The smell of the intestinal contents is very rank. The biology has been drastically changed. Doctors say that’s exactly what they’re seeing with autistic children.

Another effect of the new mystery organism associated with genetically engineered crops is premature aging. Research done in Iowa three years ago showed that prime beef from a two-year old cow had to be downgraded to that from a 10-year old cow.

Glyphosate can also disrupt a number of other biological systems, including liver function, blood function, and hormonal function. Glyphosate is a potent endocrine disruptor that can affect the endocrine system, thyroid function, and pituitary function.

• TAKE ACTION
• Ban Monsanto’s RoundUp! Experts Say It’s Worse than DDT! Tell the EPA to Ban Glyphosate

#9 Utilizing Wasteful Fossil Fuel-Intensive Practices and Encouraging the Expansion of Natural Gas Fracking and Tar Sands Extraction (Which Destroy Forests, Aquifers, and Farmland)

The industrialized food system is responsible for more than half of greenhouse gas emissions, making Big Ag one of Big Oil’s biggest customers. We could deprive the oil and gas industry of a significant amount of income by making the shift from polluting, fossil-fuel-intensive factory farms to carbon-sequestering organic and local agriculture.

Until we do make the shift, we need to acknowledge that the old adage “you are what you eat” applies to energy and the climate, as well as the body. It isn’t just Hummers that are pushing the expansion of natural gas fracking and tar sands extraction, it’s also Big Macs.

The worst thing about agriculture’s wasteful ways that the more fossil fuels we use to produce our food, the more farmland will be destroyed in the search for new sources of that fuel.

Natural gas fracking pumps many millions of gallons of hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, including known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, into the ground during the drilling process, and into the air from evaporation tanks. Pollution of water, air and food from the gas drilling industry is exempt from federal pollution laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clear Air Act, thanks to Dick Cheney’s 2005 Energy Policy Act and its ‘Halliburton Exemption.’

In upstate New York, the three million acres of superior grasslands which are currently unused are threatened by natural gas fracking. This is enough pasture land to raise local, grass-fed cattle to replace all the factory farmed beef sold in New York City.

The Keystone XL pipeline would carry toxic tar sands oil 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline would cross the massive Ogallala aquifer, which supplies drinking water in 8 US states, and irrigation for millions of acres of farmland. We’ve already seen the damage the thick tar sands oil laden with volatile compounds can do from spills in the Yellowstone River and the Kalamazoo River. The first Keystone pipeline, developed with state-of-the-art technology, has already spilled 12 times in its first year in operation.

• TAKE ACTION:
• Tell Congress: Organic Is the Answer to Climate Cha…

#10 Stealing Money From the 99% to Give Huge Subsidies to the 1% Wealthiest, Most Chemical and Energy-Intensive Farms and Food Producers

The following is a summary of Donald Carr’s must-read article, “Why the 2012 Farm Bill is a Climate Bill.”

In the 2012 Farm Bill, Congress is poised to cut 7 million acres from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The CRP is administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and pays farmers to keep highly erodible land out of production.

Putting land into conservation programs leads to cleaner water, healthier soil, and robust wildlife habitat, and also plays a major role in fighting climate change. According to the USDA [PDF], one acre of protected land sequesters 1.66 metric tons of carbon every year, carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. The 7 million acres about to be cut from the CRP have been putting 11.6 million metric tons of carbon into the soil every year.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that this amount of carbon is equivalent to the annual emissions of 2 million passenger vehicles. All that stored carbon will be sent back into the atmosphere if those 7 million acres are plowed under to plant more genetically engineered corn for ethanol and livestock feed.

Meanwhile lavish government payments to highly profitable mega-farms continue, and farm state lawmakers and agribiz lobbyists are working toward newer programs that could increase taxpayers’ burden, along with agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

• TAKE ACTION:
• Tell Congress: Organic Is the Answer to Climate Cha…

Save the Planet From Monsanto! It’s not enough to stop eating genetically engineered food. If we want a liveable planet we’ve got to boycott all factory farmed food and make the Great Transition from energy and chemical-intensive agriculture to a re-localized and organic system of food and farming. The World According to Monsanto is a recipe for disaster. Monsanto and Big Ag contaminate every link in the food chain, threatening the very foundation of life: living nutrient-rich soil, clean water, resilient crops, healthy animals, stable climates, and diverse food sources. The good news is that agro-ecological and organic methods can reverse this threat and sustain food production for future generations, but we don’t have much time to turn things around.

SOURCE:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_24800.cfm

By: Alexis Baden-Mayer & Ronnie Cummins, February 1, 2012

Original Article

Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater’s Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State “security services,” that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training – for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of “public disclosure” of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a “totally separate entity from Blackwater.”

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become “Monsanto’s intelligence arm,” spying on activists and other actions, including “our people to legally integrate these groups.” Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really “donating” anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their “donations” finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.