Tag Archives: GMO’s

GMO's

Mexico Announces Phase-Out and Ban on Glyphosate Herbicides

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Sustainable Pulse - June 27, 2020

The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), Mexico’s Environment Ministry, has announced that glyphosate-based herbicides will be phased out of use in the country by 2024 to protect human health and the environment.

SEMARNAT announced late Thursday that it has created a roadmap for the gradual reduction of the use of glyphosate in Mexico until it reaches a total ban in 2024.

“Given the scientific evidence of glyphosate toxicity, demonstrating the impacts on human health and the environment, the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) has taken important steps to gradually reduce the use of this chemical until it achieves a total ban in 2024.

Dr. Adelita San Vicente Tello, Director General of the Primary Sector and Renewable Natural Resources at SEMARNAT, announced the news after participating in the conversation Why will Mexico join the ban on glyphosate? organized by the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Academic Observatory of Society, Environment and Institutions.

Damián Marino, from the National University of La Plata, Argentina; Emmanuel González, of the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Xochimilco; Fernando Bejarano, of the Action Network on Pesticides and Alternatives in Mexico (Rapam), and Leticia López of the National Association of Rural Marketing Companies (ANEC), all supported the strong decision that SEMARNAT has made on this issue.

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San Vicente Tello explained that the issue of pesticides has provoked a great struggle for several years, and now SEMARNAT, with Victor M. Toledo at the helm, is taking determined steps towards the transformation of the country’s agri-food system in order to make it “safer, healthier and more environmentally friendly”, as part of which it has identified the gradual reduction of glyphosate with alternative methods as critical.

Among the actions that have already been taken, she recalled that in November last year, under the precautionary principle for the prevention of environmental risks, SEMARNAT stopped the import of a thousand tons of glyphosate.

She also explained that the Committee on Health, Food, Environment and Competitiveness (GISAMAC) was also established in 2019 with the aim of having a national vision for major health and environmental problems. The Ministry recently gave its full support to the policy introduced by the Committee for the urgent attention of environmental issues for the benefit of the health and well-being of the Mexican population.

San Vicente Tello said that, together with the National Council of Science and Technology, she is analyzing alternatives to the use of glyphosate-herbicides for large-scale agricultural production, as there are many weed management experiences with methods that farmers themselves and indigenous communities have applied for thousands of years.

In addition, government education campaigns are being prepared with different medias, such as infographics and videos that will be translated into several languages and will include data and independent scientific sources on the effects of glyphosate-based herbicides on the environment and health, with the purpose of alerting the population to the risks involved from their use. During and after these campaigns the general public and specific communities can draw their own conclusions.

Finally, San Vicente Tello reiterated that in the face of this problem we all have to act, because “beyond productivity, there is human and environmental health”.

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Agrochemical Industry, GMO's, Toxins

Toxic Agriculture and the Gates Foundation

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Counter Punch - Mar 2, 2020 - Colin Todhunter

Chemical fertilizer plant, San Joaquin Valley. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and has $46.8 billion in assets (December 2018). It is the largest charitable foundation in the world and distributes more aid for global health than any government. One of the foundation’s stated goals is to globally enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty.

The Gates Foundation is a major funder of the CGIAR system (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) – a global partnership whose stated aim is to strive for a food-secured future. Its research is aimed at reducing rural poverty, increasing food security, improving human health and nutrition and ensuring sustainable management of natural resources.

In 2016, the Gates Foundation was accused of dangerously and unaccountably distorting the direction of international development. The charges were laid out in a report by Global Justice Now: ‘Gated Development – Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?‘ According to the report, the foundation’s strategy is based on deepening the role of multinational companies in the Global South.

On release of the report, Polly Jones, the head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now, said:

“The Gates Foundation has rapidly become the most influential actor in the world of global health and agricultural policies, but there’s no oversight or accountability in how that influence is managed.”

She added that this concentration of power and influence is even more problematic when you consider that the philanthropic vision of the Gates Foundation seems to be largely based on the values of ‘corporate America’:

“The foundation is relentlessly promoting big business-based initiatives such as industrial agriculture, private health care and education. But these are all potentially exacerbating the problems of poverty and lack of access to basic resources that the foundation is supposed to be alleviating.”

The report’s author, Mark Curtis, outlines the foundation’s promotion of industrial agriculture across Africa, which would undermine existing sustainable, small-scale farming that is providing the vast majority of food across the continent.

Curtis describes how the foundation is working with US agri-commodity trader Cargill in an $8 million project to “develop the soya value chain” in southern Africa. Cargill is the biggest global player in the production of and trade in soya with heavy investments in South America where GM soya monocrops (and associated agrochemicals) have displaced rural populations and caused health problems and environmental damage.

According to Curtis, the Gates-funded project will likely enable Cargill to capture a hitherto untapped African soya market and eventually introduce GM soya onto the continent. The Gates foundation is also supporting projects involving other chemical and seed corporations, including DuPont, Syngenta and Bayer. It is effectively promoting a model of industrial agriculture, the increasing use of agrochemicals and patented seeds, the privatisation of extension services and a very large focus on genetically modified crops.

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Agrochemical Industry, Big Pharma

‘Bill Gates is continuing the work of Monsanto’, Vandana Shiva tells FRANCE 24 - Video 12 min

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France 24 English - Oct 23, 2019 - Video 12 min

Our guest is Vandana Shiva, a world-famous environmental activist from India. Her latest book is entitled “One Earth, One Humanity vs. the 1%”. She tell us about more her opposition to big multinationals such as Monsanto for their nefarious influence on agriculture. But Shiva also singles out billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg for criticism. “When Bill Gates pours money into Africa for feeding the poor in Africa and preventing famine, he’s pushing the failed Green Revolution, he’s pushing chemicals, pushing GMOs, pushing patterns”, she tells FRANCE 24’s Marc Perelman.

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Pesticides

Do You Want to Eat Some Pesticide? - Video 13 min

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James Corbett Report - Nov 10, 2019 - Video - 13 min

SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=33782 The propaganda shills of the corporate GMO frankenfood pushers are finally putting their mouth where their mouths are. How? By eating pesticide, of course! Get the skinny on this PR stunt and what it tells us about the nature of biotech propaganda on this week’s edition of #PropagandaWatch.

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GMO's

Tell the USDA to Do Its Job: Protect Consumers, Not the Biotech Industry!

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Aug 1, 2019 - Organic Consumers Association

DEADLINE AUGUST 5: Tell the USDA to do its job: protect-consumers, not the biotech industry!

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants to let companies like #Monsanto-Bayer, #Dow #Dupont and #Syngenta (now owned by #ChemChina) “ #regulate” their own genetically engineered products—under a proposed rule the #USDA euphemistically calls the “ #Sustainable, #Ecological, Consistent, Uniform, Responsible, Efficient,” or “SECURE” for short.
Please feel free to cut and paste to share with friends
https://advocacy.organicconsumers.org/page/12118/petition/1

Now, under the Trump administration’s “free-for-all” approach to regulation, the USDA wants to let companies like Monsanto-Bayer, DowDupont and Syngenta (now owned by ChemChina) “regulate” their own genetically engineered products.

TAKE ACTION: Tell the USDA to do its job: protect consumers, not the biotech industry!

From the department of “you can’t make this stuff up,” the USDA calls its new proposed rule for reviewing and approving GMOs “Sustainable, Ecological, Consistent, Uniform, Responsible, Efficient,” or “SECURE” for short.

If this new rule is allowed to take effect, biotech companies will for sure be more secure—secure in the fact that they will be allowed to unleash any genetically engineered organism into the environment or into the food system—with no oversight, no independent testing and no accountability.

The USDA’s proposed rule follows Trump’s executive order, issued in June, calling for “modernizing the regulatory framework for agricultural biotechnology products.” Which is just shorthand for protecting corporate profits at the expense of human health and the environment.

If passed, “SECURE” will also be a disaster for organic farmers, whose organic certification—and livelihoods—will bethreatened even further by contamination of their non-GMO, organic crops when GMO seeds “drift” into their fields.

Under USDA’s proposed “no-regulation rule,” almost every GMO would be exempt from regulation. And biotech companies would be the ones to decide whether or not their frankenfoods are “safe.”

As Dr. Allison A. Snow, professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University, wrote to the New York Times in 2015:

Asserting that biotech is safe is like saying that electricity is safe. Genetic engineering can be used safely or stupidly. Scientists, corporations and government agencies try to avoid the latter, and regulators need strong scientific data to evaluate risks.

Snow had this to say to a National Geographic reporter:

“Every transgenic organism brings with it a different set of potential risks and benefits,” says Snow. “Each needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. But right now only one percent of USDA biotech research money goes to risk assessment.”

In other words, we need more—not less—regulation of GMOs, especially in the rapidly changing era of new “gene-editing” technologies such as CRISPR and RNA interference (RNAi).

As Snow said, even before the USDA’s new proposed plan to hand over the regulation of GMOs to biotech corporations:

“We’ve let the cat out of the bag before we have real data, and there’s no calling it back.” 

Given the coordinated effort and relentless push by the biotech industry and the USDA to deregulate, it may also be too late to “call back” this latest proposed rule. But try we must.

PETITION and SOURCE FOR ARTICLE

GMO's

TORONTO MARCH AGAINST BAYER + HEALTH CANADA

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Toronto Non-GMO Coalition - Posted May 17, 2019

TIME:             12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.  

DATE:            Saturday, May 25, 2019  

PLACE:          Beginning at Old City Hall, 60 Queen St. W. -– Ending at St. James Park

Why Do We March?

Since Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto in June 2018, we should all be far more concerned about the future of agriculture. We’re outraged how our food system has been hijacked by a handful of chemical companies who continue to patent nature and forge monopolies over the world’s food supply.

Media Inquiries Contact:    Jennifer Berman Diaz, 647-980-4686