Tag Archives: GMO’s

GMO's

Russia labels GMOs, while America’s government sells out to the biotech poisoners and propagandists

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Natural News - March 25, 2019 by: Vicki Batts

GMO labeling laws have been a source of controversy in the United States for quite some time. Consumer advocates have called upon the federal government to protect Americans’ right to freedom of choice and to encourage transparency in the food industry, but officials seem to be more interested in defending corporate interests. Industry leaders are afraid proper GMO labeling will interfere with their bottom lines — that alone should be a huge red flag. But while federal officials in the United States are twiddling their thumbs over GMOs, nations around the world are beginning to take action. Russia, for example, just introduced clear GMO labeling on all foods.

While GMO labeling laws have been passed in the United States, the proposed implementation of such laws leaves much to be desired. Critics say GMO labeling practices enacted here in America function more like propaganda for the biotech industry. Brightly colored smiley-face stickers that don’t even bear the letters “GMO” are hardly a clear identifier, after all. Heaven forbid Americans actually make informed decisions about the food they eat– the entire industry would collapse overnight if people knew what they were really getting.

Clear GMO labeling comes to Russia

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which includes Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus, introduced their new, clear GMO labeling practices at the start of the new year. All food and supplements containing genetically modified ingredients will bear a “GMO” label on the packaging.

As Sustainable Pulse reports:

According to the new regulations, the basic size of the GMO label must not be less than 5 mm. The technical regulations also require that the GMO label be applied in a manner that provides easy readability and visibility throughout the shelf life of food and supplement products.

Across the board, the EAEU is taking a firm stance on GMOs. In 2016, Russia’s State Duma voted on a bill which would ban the cultivation of GMO crops and animals in Russia entirely, except for scientific purposes. And in 2018, the Kyrgyzstan government announced that it would be the second country in the world to adopt organic-only farming practices.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is a world away from reaching any kind of transparency on GMOs.

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glyphosate, GMO's

CBC to Broadcast Doc “Modified” Mar 29th

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CBAN - eNEWS - March 29th, 2019

The award-winning Canadian documentary “Modified” will be broadcast nationally on CBC Friday March 29 at 9PM in all time zones (except 9:30 NL). The broadcast will be a shorter version of the original.
Watch it tonight on CBC or view it later, streaming online.
Read and share the CBC article the filmmaker wrote .You can also check for upcoming screenings of the full documentary, or organize a screening in your community.
At the same time that CBC is showing “Modified” across the country, the National Observer has exposed the film “Real Farm Lives” as part of the corporate public relations campaign to promote pesticides and GMOs. Read the National Observer exposé: “Family farm documentary was part of pesticide lobby’s campaign to change how you think”.
Also, TVOntario has responded after CBAN’s on-air challenge. Many of you wrote to the TV station after CBAN’s coordinator Lucy Sharratt pointed out, on-air, that the three other panellists on the show about GMOs shared funding from the same huge biotech corporations, Bayer and Syngenta. In response, TVO has broadcast an interview with US professor Marion Nestle, discussing the impacts of industry influence over research, and the need for broadcasters to disclose the industry funding of guests.

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GMO's, Labeling

Russia’s Clear GMO Labeling Rules Reach the Shelves across Eurasian Economic Union

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Sustainable Pulse - Jan 3, 2019

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), including the countries of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus, has introduced clear GMO labeling on all food and supplement products containing genetically modified organisms, starting from last week.

Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) announced in 2016 that it was inviting all EAEU countries to apply a “GMO” label on the packaging of food products that contain genetically modified organisms.

The Rospotrebnadzor and the EAEU confirmed the proposed amendments to the technical regulations on the labeling of food products in the EAEU, despite objections from some European Union food manufacturers, who claimed that the new GMO label will cause problems for international trade.

According to the new regulations the basic size of the GMO label must not be less than 5 mm. The technical regulations also require that the GMO label be applied in a manner that provides easy readability and visibility throughout the shelf life of food and supplement products.

The announcement of the clear GMO labeling rules in the EAEU follows the disastrous GMO labeling rules announced in the U.S. last month, which according to Consumer Reports will not help consumers in America easily identify food that has been genetically engineered or that contains genetically modified ingredients.

The EAEU countries are also moving in the correct direction on sustainable agriculture;

In June 2016 Russia’s State Duma adopted the third and final reading of a government bill that introduced a total ban on the cultivation and breeding in Russia of genetically modified (GM) plants and animals, except for scientific research purposes.

Meanwhile, in December 2018 the Kyrgyzstan government announced that it is set to become only the second country in the world to change their entire nation in to a 100% organic farming paradise.

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GMO's

MODIFIED: A Documentary about Food, Genetic Engineering, and Our Right to Know

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Harrowsmith by  Signe Langford

A Modified American Gothic – Modified Producer, biodynamic farmer, and award-winning filmmaker, Camelia Frieberg, with Aube Giroux.

Award-winning Canadian food blogger, filmmaker, and gardener, Aube Giroux, digs up the facts about GMOs

The film’s opening moments – the shadow cast by a mother and daughter crunching down a chilly dirt road in Nova Scotia – are the first steps taken in what would become a ten-year journey for filmmaker, Aube Giroux, and her mother, Jali.

This bittersweet, multi-award-winning documentary is an exposé of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in our food system, but it is also so much more. And it’s the more that will have audiences putting down that popcorn, with a sidelong glance, and reaching for a hand to hold, or at the very least, a tissue. (Sorry, no details. To illustrate, would be to spoil this thing of beauty for the uninitiated.)

Giroux’s mother believed that with every bite of food we eat, we are making a choice about the kind of world we want to live in and the kind of agriculture we want to support, and it’s this ethos that propelled Giroux around the globe and deep into the fascinating, often clandestine, sometimes violent world of large scale agri-business and the fight – legal and otherwise – for and against GMOs.

In Modified, Giroux – relentlessly egged on by her mother – sets out to discover why GMO’s are not required to be labeled in Canada and the United States, while in 64 other countries around the world, they are.

Narrated by Giroux, she seamlessly weaves the personal with the political; the past with the present, humour with sadness, and art with reality, all while she ticks the requisite boxes of a good and fair documentarian. And while it’s clear what side Giroux falls on in the GMO debate, the film is well-researched, and features several interviews with credible scientists, farmers and beekeepers, professors, Members of Parliament, a PhD in genetics; Lawyer, Andrew Kimbrell, Director of the Center for Food Safety, and heavy-hitter Dr. Jane Goodall, who says, “It’s a complete lie that there is a consensus of scientific opinion that GMOs are safe; there is no such consensus.”

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glyphosate, GMO's

We’re Not Gluten Intolerant, We’re Glyphosate Intolerant

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Wine-WaterWatch.org  -  Sept 5, 2018

“Additionally, the number of people diagnosed with gluten intolerance and celiac disease has risen in tandem with the increased use of glyphosate in agriculture, especially with the recent practice of drenching grains in the herbicide right before harvest, which started in the 1980s and became routine in the 1990s.
Glyphosate residues in grain, sugar and other crops are increasing recently likely due to the growing practice of crop desiccation just prior to harvest, the researchers say. The secretive, illegal practice has become routine among conventional farmers since the 1990s.“

“Celiac disease, and, more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5% of the population now suffers from it,” researchers wrote in a meta-analysis of nearly 300 studies.

“Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic,” they add.

The study, published in the journalInterdisciplinary Toxicology in 2013, was completely ignored by the media except for Mother Earth Newsand The Healthy Home Economist.

Now that glyphosate is getting the attention it deserves, being named as the culprit in a $280 million cancer lawsuit and labeled as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization and the state of California, it may be time to look at the chemical’s role in a related disease:

The symptoms of so-called “gluten intolerance” and celiac disease in are shockingly similar to the symptoms in lab animals exposed to glyphosate, argue the study’s authors Anthony Samsel, an independent scientist who’s served as a consultant to the EPA on arsenic pollution and to the U.S. Coast Guard on chemical hazard response, and Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at MIT.

They point to a recent study on how glyphosate effects the digestive systems of fish. It decreased digestive enzymes and bacteria, disrupted mucosal folds, destroyed microvilli structure in the intestinal wall, and increased secretion of mucin.

“These features are highly reminiscent of celiac disease,” Samsel and Seneff write.

Additionally, the number of people diagnosed with gluten intolerance and celiac disease has risen in tandem with the increased use of glyphosate in agriculture, especially with the recent practice of drenching grains in the herbicide right before harvest, which started in the 1980s and became routine in the 1990s:

While some suggest the recent surge in celiac disease is due simply to better diagnostic tools (which as you can see above happened around 2000), a recent study suggests it’s more than that.

In 2009, researchers looked for gluten antibodies in frozen immune serum obtained between 1948 and 1954 for gluten antibodies, and compared them with samples from people today. They found a 4-fold increase in the incidence of celiac disease in the younger generation.

As further evidence the researchers make the following points:

“Celiac disease is associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria.”

“Celiac disease is associated with the impairment of cytochrome P450 enzymes. Glyphosate is known to inhibit cytochrome P450 enzymes.”

“Deficiencies in iron, cobalt, molybdenum, copper and other rare metals associated with celiac disease can be attributed to glyphosate’s strong ability to chelate these elements.”

“Deficiencies in tryptophan, tyrosine, methionine and selenomethionine associated with celiac disease match glyphosate’s known depletion of these amino acids.”

“Celiac disease patients also have a known increased risk for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which has also been implicated in glyphosate exposure.”

“The incidence of non-Hodgkins lymphoma has increased rapidly in most Western countries over the last few decades. Statistics from the American Cancer Society show an 80% increase since the early 1970’s, when glyphosate was first introduced on the market.”

“Reproductive issues associated with celiac disease, such as infertility, miscarriages, and birth defects, can also be explained by glyphosate.”

Glyphosate residues in grain, sugar and other crops are increasing recently likely due to the growing practice of crop desiccation just prior to harvest, the researchers say. The secretive, illegal practice has become routine among conventional farmers since the 1990s.

Ironically, the practice increases yields by killing the crops. Just before the plants die, they release their seeds in order to propagate the species:

“It goes to seed as it dies. At its last gasp, it releases the seed,” Seneff told The Healthy Home Economist.

Moral of the story? We need to go glyphosate-free, not gluten-free. And that means going organic, especially when it comes to grains and animals who eat those grains. Well, you might need to go gluten-free too for a while, until you’ve healed your gut.

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glyphosate, GMO's, Monsanto

How much a life? Monsanto trial exposes risks of Roundup herbicide

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Rabble.ca     Lois Ross      August 23, 2018

As a Saskatchewan resident for many years, I often heard the phrase “Roundup Ready.” It was coined as if it were a harmless jingle for soda pop. The ad still rings in my ears.

All farmers know of Roundup, the most effective weed killer. Most urbanites do as well. The way the corporate giant Monsanto has marketed, promoted, and created an artificial need for Roundup is a true story of profiteering and avarice. Now, finally, even some courts are accepting that it likely kills much more than just weeds and that Monsanto has acted to cover up concerns about the safety of Roundup.

A few years ago, Dewayne Johnson, a courageous man and one who is also dying of cancer, launched a lawsuit against Monsanto. In early August, Johnson had his day in court — and won. He showed that David can still take down Goliath — something that some of us had begun to wonder about given all the nasty stories of corporate greed, seed manipulation and cover-ups we have come to know.

But some days there are heroes. And Dewayne Johnson and the thousands of cancer patients now suing Monsanto are modern-day heroes. The 46-year-old father of two was composed in court as the San Francisco jury sided with him, noting that exposure to Roundup was a substantial factor in his getting cancer, and ordering Monsanto to pay Johnson $289 million in damages. Monsanto states it will appeal, but the appeal will cost the transnational corporation $25 million a year in interest should their appeal not be successful. Reason to pause, perhaps, for a bit of reflection.

Meanwhile, Bayer, the German company that bought Monsanto a few years ago, saw its stock plunge by billions following the court decision.

For years many have been concerned that Roundup causes cancer. Many have also been concerned about the marketing of genetically modified (GM) seed, specifically modified to only grow if used with glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

Read on at:  SOURCE