DuPont pleased China considering foreign GMO research

US-based international chemicals and health care company DuPont said it supports its subsidiary and partners in China engaged in genetically modified organism (GMO) research and development, now that China is considering lifting a ban on foreign investment in GMO research in the country, according to the Beijing-based China Business Journal.

On Nov. 4, the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, updated a draft catalogue of industries in which foreign investment is allowed, which will result in lifting the ban on GMO research funded by foreign companies, even though developing and growing crops will still remain prohibited. The draft will remain in the consultation phase until Dec. 3.

China banned the research and development of GM crops by foreign companies more than a decade ago, although the government has been devoting resources to the research and development of GMOs.

In response to the recent change, Williams Niebur, vice president of DuPont, told the paper that the firm is very pleased to see the change while the company itself feels greatly encouraged.

Niebur added that he hopes foreign enterprises will be allowed to participate in discussions over the matter while the draft is seeking consultation. If the draft is passed, DuPont will allow its subsidiary and partners in China to participate in GMO research and development, he stated.

Currently, international companies, including DuPont Pioneer, Monsanto and Bayer are at various stages of collaboration with China's research institutions.

China's deputy minister of agriculture Yu Xinrong said in a speech delivered during a food safety summit on Nov. 7 that the Chinese government is supportive of international agricultural companies taking part in GMO research and development in China.

Yu also said that lifting the ban on foreign investment in GMO research is a step towards further opening up China's agriculture industry and will greatly boost GMO innovation.

Although the Chinese government has been investing heavily in research institutions and local enterprises engaging in the research and development of GMOs, public debate on the safety of this type of crop has become increasingly intense over the last few years. Many choose to shun GM food and have been very concerned over news about mislabeling or GMOs leaking into the market.

High level officials and the Ministry of Agriculture have responded stating that these kinds of crops are safe and that GMO crops have been important for boosting grain yields over the last few years, the report said.

References:

Yu Xinrong 余欣榮

Source 

GM crops may not resolve food crisis, scientists say

NEW DELHI: Genetically modified (GM) crops have so far been promoted as the 'breakthrough' technology that will help resolve food insecurity in India. But a group of prominent agricultural scientists, who addressed the media on Monday in Delhi, said that GM crops may not help feed India's booming population. They suggested that India use a mix of ecological farming, supported by conventional breeding and make optimum use of local knowledge and natural resources instead.

"How we grow our crops, what kind of crops will be grown, where and by whom are in fact the critical questions", said Prof Hans Herren, Co-chair of International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), who was awarded the World Food Prize in 1995. "India must invest in rural infrastructure and institutions".

The scientists stressed that transgenic approaches are incompatible with sustainable agriculture and livelihoods. "What we really need is a shift in paradigm, where a holistic approach drives our interventions in agriculture without reductionist solutions hogging the centre-stage and taking away precious resources", Herren added.

Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, USA quoted a study on productivity of transgenic crops in the USA. He said that their studies had shown that conventional breeding and farm management continue to greatly out-perform transgenic technology when it comes to yield improvements.

Another scientist, Professor Jack Heinemann from the School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury gave the example of South America where GM technology has failed to solve food crisis "Only two countries in the world, both in South America, grow GM on more than 40% of their agricultural land and both are suffering from increased food insecurity. Most of their poor neighbors that have not adopted GM have improving food security statistics," he said.

They gave the example of high-tech GMO technology in the USA. "Adopting GM technology has been accompanied by greater consolidation of resources and power for few seed companies, higher seed prices, greater risk for farmers and less choice in varieties with hardly any increase in productivity," they said.

The media briefing by scientists on 'Can GM Crops Meet India's Food Security and Export Markets?' was organized by Aruna Rodrigues, lead petitioner in a public interest litigation seeking moratorium on GM testing in India. Adding to the doubts over the success of GM technology in food is a study by a molecular biologist, Prof Gallis Eric Seralini of University of Caen in France.

It is one of the first studies to be done over the entire lifespan of laboratory rats and is the longest health impact study of genetically modified (GM) crops and herbicides on laboratory animals. Seralini's study was recently published in Elsevier journal, found that herbicide tolerant GM maize treated with and without herbicides had some serious health implications on rats.

There were increased cases of mortality among rats fed with GM corn, increased lever and kidney damages seen in the case of male rats fed with GM corn, increased tumors both in the case of male and female rats that have been fed with GM corn.

Also, the effects were sex dependent with the female rats fed with GM crops, developed mammary tumors and pituitary gland failure.

Original Article Here

Myths about industrial agriculture

Reports trying to create doubts about organic agriculture are suddenly flooding the media. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, people are fed up of the corporate assault of toxics and GMOs. Secondly, people are turning to organic agriculture and organic food as a way to end the toxic war against the earth and our bodies.

At a time when industry has set its eyes on the super profits to be harvested from seed monopolies through patented seeds and seeds engineered with toxic genes and genes for making crops resistant to herbicides, people are seeking food freedom through organic, non-industrial food.

The food revolution is the biggest revolution of our times, and the industry is panicking. So it spins propaganda, hoping that in the footsteps of Goebbels, a lie told a hundred times will become the truth. But food is different.

We are what we eat. We are our own barometers. Our farms and our bodies are our labs, and every farmer and every citizen is a scientist who knows best how bad farming and bad food hurts the land and our health, and how good farming and good food heals the planet and people.

One example of an industrial agriculture myth is found in "The Great Organic Myths" by Rob Johnston, published in the August 8 issue of The Tribune. It tries to argue:

"Organic foods are not healthier or better for the environment - and they're packed with pesticides. In an age of climate change and shortages, these foods are an indulgence the world can't afford."

This article had been published in the Independent and rebutted, but was used by the Tribune without the rebuttal.

Every argument in the article is fraudulent.

The dominant myth of industrial agriculture is that it produces more food and is land-saving. However, the more industrial agriculture spreads, the more hungry people we have. And the more industrial agriculture spreads, the more land is grabbed.

The case against industrial agriculture

Productivity in industrial agriculture is measured in terms of "yield" per acre, not overall output. And the only input taken into account is labour, which is abundant, not natural resources which are scarce. 

"Industrial agriculture is an inefficient and wasteful system which is chemical intensive, fossil fuel intensive and capital intensive."

A resource hungry and resource destructive system of agriculture is not land saving, it is land demanding. That is why industrial agriculture is driving a massive planetary land grab. It is leading to the deforestation of the rainforests in the Amazon for soya and in Indonesia for palm oil. And it is fuelling a land grab in Africa, displacing pastoralists and peasants.

According to the FAO International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources in Leipzig (1995), industrial agriculture is responsible for 75 per cent biodiversity erosion, 75 per cent water destruction, 75 per cent land degradation and 40 per cent greenhouse gases. It is too heavy a burden on the planet. And as the 270,000 farmers' suicides since 1997 in India show, it is too heavy a burden on our farmers.

The toxics and poisons used in chemical farming are creating a health burden for our society. Remember Bhopal. Remember the Endosulfan victims in Kerala. And remember Punjab's Cancer train.

Navdanya's forthcoming report "Poisons in our Food" is a synthesis of all studies on the health burden of pesticides which are used in industrial agriculture but not in organic farming.

Industrial agriculture is an inefficient and wasteful system which is chemical intensive, fossil fuel intensive and capital intensive. It destroys nature's capital on the one hand and society’s capital on the other, by displacing small farms and destroying health. According to David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agricultural sciences at Cornell University, it uses 10 units of energy as input to produce one unit of energy as food.

This waste is amplified by another factor of 10 when animals are put in factory farms and fed grain, instead of grass in free range ecological systems. Rob Johnston celebrates these animal prisons as efficient, ignoring the fact that it takes 7kg of grain to produce one kg of beef, 4kg of grain to produce 1kg of pork and 2.4kg of grain to produce 1kg of chicken.

The diversion of food grains to feed is a major contributor to world hunger. And the shadow acres to produce this grain are never counted. Europe uses 7 times the area outside Europe to produce feed for its factory farms.

Small farms of the world provide 70 per cent of the food, yet are being destroyed in the name of low "yields". Eighty eight per cent of the food is consumed within the same eco-region or country where it is grown.

Industrialisation and globalisation is the exception, not the norm. And where industrialisation has not destroyed small farms and local food economies, biodiversity and food are bringing sustenance to people. The biodiversity of agriculture is being maintained by small farmers.

As the ETC report states in "Who Will Feed Us", "Peasants breed and nurture 40 livestock species and almost 8,000 breeds. Peasants also breed 5,000 domesticated crops and have donated more than 1.9 million plant varieties to the world's gene banks."

"Peasant fishers harvest and protect more than 15,000 freshwater species. The work of peasants and pastoralists maintaining soil fertility is 18 times more valuable than the synthetic fertilisers provided by the seven largest corporations."

When this biodiversity rich food system is replaced by industrial monocultures, when food is commoditised, the result is hunger and malnutrition. Of the world's 6.6bn, 1bn are not getting enough food; another billion might get enough calories but not enough nutrition, especially micro nutrients.

Another 1.3bn who are obese suffer malnutrition of being condemned to artificially cheap, calorie-rich, nutrient-poor processed food. 

Biodiversity of agriculture is maintained by farmers [EPA]

Half of the world's population is a victim of structural hunger and food injustice in today's dominant design for food. We have had hunger in the past, but it was caused by external factors - wars and natural disasters. It was localised in space and time. 

Today's hunger is permanent and global. It is hunger by design. This does not mean that those who design the contemporary food systems intend to create hunger. It does mean that creation of hunger is built into the corporate design of industrial production and globalised distribution of food.

A series of media reports have covered another study by a team led by Bravata, a senior affiliate with Stanford's Centre for Health Policy, and Crystal Smith-Spangler, MD, MS, an instructor in the school's Division of General Medical Disciplines and a physician-investigator at VA Palo Alto Health Care System, who did the most comprehensive meta-analysis to date of existing studies comparing organic and conventional foods.

They did not find strong evidence that organic foods are more nutritious or carry fewer health risks than conventional alternatives, though consumption of organic foods can reduce the risk of pesticide exposure. 

This study can hardly be called the "most comprehensive meta - analysis"; the researchers sifted through thousands of papers and identified 237 of the most relevant to analyse. This already exposes the bias. The biggest meta-analysis on food and agriculture has been done by the United Nations as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

Four hundred scientists from across the world worked for four years to analyse all publications on different approaches to agriculture, and concluded that chemical industrial agriculture is no longer an option, only ecological farming is.

Yet the Stanford team presents itself as the most comprehensive study, and claims there are no health benefits from organic agriculture, even though there were no long-term studies of health outcomes of people consuming organic versus conventionally produced food; the duration of the studies involving human subjects ranged from two days to two years.

Two days does not make a scientific study. No impact can be measured in a two-day study. This is junk science parading as science. 

"Ecological, organic farming is the only way to produce food without harming the planet and people's health." 

One principle about food and health is that our food is as healthy as the soil on which it grows is. And it is as deficient as the soils become with chemical farming.

Industrial chemical agriculture creates hunger and malnutrition by robbing crops of nutrients. Industrially produced food is nutritionally empty mass, loaded with chemicals and toxins. Nutrition in food comes from the nutrients in the soil.

Industrial agriculture, based on the NPK mentality of synthetic nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium-based fertilisers leads to depletion of vital micronutrients and trace elements such as magnesium, zinc, calcium and iron.

David Thomas, a geologist-turned-nutritionist, discovered that between 1940 and 1991, vegetables had lost - on an average - 24 per cent of their magnesium, 46 per cent of their calcium, 27 per cent of their iron and no less than 76 per cent of their copper (Ref: David Thomas "A study on the mineral depletion of the foods available to us as a nation over the period 1940 to 1991", Nutrition and Health, 2003; 17(2): 85-115). 

Carrots had lost 75 per cent of their calcium, 46 per cent of their iron, and 75 per cent of their copper. Potatoes had lost 30 per cent of their magnesium, 35 per cent calcium, 45 per cent iron and 47 per cent copper.

To get the same amount of nutrition, people will need to eat much more food. The increase in "yields" of empty mass does not translate into more nutrition. In fact it is leading to malnutrition.

The IAASTD recognises that through an agro-ecological approach "agro-ecosystems of even the poorest societies have the potential through ecological agriculture and IPM to meet or significantly exceed yields produced by conventional methods, reduce the demand for land conversion for agriculture, restore ecosystem services (particularly water) reduce the use of and need for synthetic fertilisers derived from fossil fuels, and the use of harsh insecticides and herbicides".

Our 25 years of experience in Navdanya shows that ecological, organic farming is the only way to produce food without harming the planet and people's health. This is a trend that will grow, no matter how many pseudo-scientific stories are planted in the media by the industry.

Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers' rights - winning the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1993.

Original Article Here

Basu: Is help from corporate agriculture beneficial?

Iowans are regularly reminded of our role in helping to feed the world’s hungry, and from a technological perspective, we have certainly played an important role. An Iowan launched the so-called Green Revolution, and the World Food Prize that he created annually honors others who have made important innovations in agriculture. Iowa today is in the vanguard of the biotech revolution.

So it may be hard to contemplate the paradox that even as we have helped block world hunger, we might also inadvertently be contributing to it. There is growing evidence around the world that high-yield technologies that require costly and potentially harmful chemical fertilizers and other inputs squeeze small farmers out in favor of large conglomerates, resulting in impoverishment or suicides.

Recent weeks have brought a few occasions to think about this. Members of the Des Moines Occupy movement announced plans to protest the World Food Prize events this fall. Instead of “pro-corporate agribusiness recipients who support GMO crops and the use of harmful pesticides and chemicals,” the prize should honor people “who advocate sustainable, safe, local agriculture in the U.S. and abroad,” the group said in a statement.

Occupy also noted that corporate agribusiness has gone beyond controlling food supplies to also controlling “governments, laws, and patents.”

That might sound like a conspiracy theoryuntil you consider the Tanzania land deal negotiated by an Iowa Board of Regents member, which was the subject of a recent complaint to the state ethics board. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement filed the complaint, alleging that Bruce Rastetter, the founder and managing director of AgriSol Energy Corp., had a conflict of interests with a deal involving Iowa State University.

AgriSol would have paid the Tanzanian government a mere 25 cents an acre for the right to cultivate 800,000 acres, by evicting some 160,000 Burundian refugee farmers. For decades, they had been growing a variety of crops, producing more than 40 percent of the district’s food on just 4 percent of the land. Under the AgriSol deal, they would be given $200 apiece and the land would be turned over to corn and soybeans.

AgriSol stood to make $300 million. And the corn and soybeans wouldn’t necessarily feed Tanzanians.

AgriSol’s consultant was advising the company to seek a guarantee from the government that it could export all the food it produces — even if there were a food shortage in Tanzania.

Critics, including former CBS news anchor Dan Rather, called it a “land grab.” Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement alleges Rastetter used his status as a regent and big donor to get Iowa State University involved, falsified a financial disclosure statement with the state ethics board, and didn’t disclose the land deal to the regents until six weeks after joining the board — after it was reported in the press.

If the theory is accurate, Rastetter’s $1.75 million gift to ISU’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences may have opened some doors for him there. In 2007, officials traveled to Tanzania with him. Even the person who had been in charge of the refugee camps was evidently co-opted into being a legal adviser to AgriSol.

Rastetter was appointed to the Board of Regents by Gov. Terry Branstad after being his largest 2010 campaign contributor. Rastetter recused himself from the project last September, and ISU later said it would stop advising AgriSol on the project. But Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement asked for Rastetter’s resignation from the regents.

All this points to the broader potential for U.S. companies, with compliant or even corrupt governments, to exploit small farmers in the developing world under the guise of helping them. We may not be able to control what their governments do, but we should take a closer look at what our own companies pass off as “help.”

Rastetter and others had claimed the deal would help Tanzanians improve their food production techniques. But the large-scale, high-yield, monoculture model would not have suited the farmers it displaced in order for American investors to get rich.

Many Iowa small hog farmers lost their livelihoods when corporate agribusinesses like Heartland Pork displaced them. Now, in the face of skyrocketing prices, some of the same principals have turned to Africa, where land can still be had cheaply. Rastetter previously owned Heartland Pork.

It is hard to challenge corporate agriculture in this state. It’s promoted by targeted state university research, and its principals fund the political campaigns of elected officials — who might return the favor with plumb appointments.

So it falls to grassroots groups like Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement to call for an investigation. Some of its members lost their own hog farms to Heartland Pork.

Branstad won’t even wait until the outcome of the state ethics board complaint to voice his confidence in Rastetter’s judgment — a clear signal to the board. But the board should show its independence by conducting a thorough investigation.

Original Article Here

Farmers call for promoting genetically-modified crops

Agricultural scientists on Thursday urged the government for policy interventions and promoting biotechnology and genetically-modified crops to meet the challenges of food security. They warned that the country's population would double in two decades and said that it would exert an immense pressure on the existing land and water resources. 

Addressing a one-day seminar on 'Challenges and opportunities in GMOs for Agriculture', they said that about 58 percent of the country's population was reported to be food insecure. He said that crop-related agriculture was the backbone of food security which was all about making food accessible, affordable and available for all people all the time. 

Speakers include President of Farmers Associate of Pakistan Dr Tariq Bucha, former provincial minister for livestock Mumtaz Khan Manhais, UAF's Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan, Dr Kausar Abdullah Malik, Professor Bruce Alberts of te University of California San Francesco. The seminar, in which about 36 agriculturist and journalists from across the country participated, was arranged by the Directorate of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation with the courtsy of Monsanto at the Video Conference Room of the University. 

Professor Bruce Alberts emphasised to keep the science healthy as it is a torch that illuminates the world beyond geographical distribution. Advocating GMOs, Dr Bruce said that the technology the only way forward to meet food security challenges in the coming years. 

The UAF Vice-Chancellor said that the seminar would pave a way for creating awareness about GMOs and future prospects of agriculture in the country. Describing the media a powerful tool for making awareness about various daunting Highlighting the university's academic programmes, he said that the UAF was going to offer bachelor's programmes in microbiology and biotechnology, adding that PhD in genetics and ecology was also on the cards. Dr Ahmad said that over the past 50 years, UAF had produced around 969 PhDs, adding that half of them had been produced over the past five years. 

Vowing to establish more regional centres in the province, he said that UAF scientists had developed a red rot-resistant sugarcane variety, which would be distributed after getting government approval and certification. Former Livestock Minister and progressive farmer Mumtaz Khan Manhais underscored the need for promoting corporate farming comprises collective farm mechanisation, quality and balance input application to reduce the cost of production by promoting participatory approaches of ownership by all the participating farmers. 

Urging the agricultural journalists to highlight the significance of $350 billion Halal market, he said that Saudi Arabia imported sacrificial animals from Australia by spending more than Rs 40 billion. Expressing dismay over the burning of wheat straw worth Rs 48 billion every year in the province, he said that it could be made productive by converting it into animal feed and silage. 

Copyright Business Recorder, 2012

PCFS expose corporate capture of African, Asian agriculture

BY GerryAlbert

PCFS expose corporate capture of agriculture in Africa and Asia; calls for rejection of green economy agenda in the Rio+20

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 16, 2012. The People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty spoke at the Plenary 3 on Water, Food and Agriculture at the Cupula dos Povos’ Blue Pavilion. The delegates shared their country context on corporate agriculture and expounded on how the green economy agenda will worsen land and water grabs, landlessness, food insecurity and poverty.

Diery Gaye from Conseil National de Concertation et de Coopération des Ruraux (CNCR) shared on the policy reforms in food and agriculture in Senegal in the context of the water crisis. According to him, “agriculture and food security in Senegal are threatened by foreign land deals that also grab scarce water resources from small farmers.”

Hakim Baliraine of the Eastern and Southern African Farmers Forum (ESAFF) talked about adaptation practices of farmers in Uganda to counter the effects of climate change. Zakaria Nana of ROSSAD from Burkina Faso shared the key points of the African CSO declaration for the Rio+20 which called for a rejection of corporate green economy and calledfor a rights-based approach to sustainable development.

Sylvia Mallari of the Asian Peasant Coalition, on the other hand, exposed how extractive industries which are being repackaged as ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ such as mining, lead to land grabbing and devastate the farmlands, fisheries, water supply and health of their host communities.

Azra Sayeed of the Roots for Equity and co-chairperson of the PCFS talked about the impacts of the recent floods in Pakistan which ironically, were worsened by the dams. Landlords builtsmall dams in the mountains to prevent water from flooding their own lands but diverted the water and drowned the agricultural lands of small farmers.

Antonio Tujan, Jr., director of IBON International and co-chair of PCFS exposed how agriculture is being restructured for corporate green control. The not-so-smart ‘climate smart agriculture’ agenda promotes genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to produce ‘climate smart crops’ will place food production further under the control of corporations. Green economy which promotes the privatization of nature will worsen landlessness and push small farmers and peasants into deeper poverty.

Tujan also warned that Northern countries affected by the financial crisis will use the green economy agenda to resuscitate corporations and demand new structural adjustment conditionalities attached to official development assistance (ODA) provided to developing countries.

The Cupula dos Povos or the People’s Summit in Rio+20 is an alternative spaced organized by the global civil society to celebrate people’s struggles for genuine sustainable development and reject green economy being promoted in the official process of the UNCSD.

PCFS is a growing network of various grassroots groups of small food producers particularly of peasant-farmer organizations, consumer movements and their support NGOs, working towards a People's Convention on Food Sovereignty.

Original Article Here

Genetically Modified Organisms... The good, the bad, and the scary.

By: John K

First, some definitions:

Genetically Modified Organism (GMO): An organism (life form) whose DNA has been altered using genetic engineering.

Genetically Engineered Organism (GEO): Another name for GMOs.

Transgenic Organisms: A type of GMO that has DNA inserted from another species.

Jurassic Park?  Yes.  Fiction?  No.

GMOs have been around for well over 30 years.  What I want to do today is briefly give some basic information using actual GMO life forms as examples.

Click on this link for more information on the production of insulin from E. coli

The Good

Genentech, in 1978, created a bacteria that could produce human insulin.  Before that time, people with insulin-dependant diabetes mellitus (a.k.a. Diabetes) had to use insulin from the pancreas of animals.  Herbert Boyer took the genes from a human that produced human insulin, and he was able to insert them into a bacteria, E. coli.  The bacteria produced mass quantities of human insulin that was easy to refine.  Currently, almost all insulin used for diabetes is produced from GMO E. coli. To me, this is one example of the good that genetic engineering can do for humanity.  While nothing is truly "safe", this is about as safe an application as you can get, and the benefits, in my opinion, do outweigh the risks.

The Bad

Monsanto, a multinational agricultural biotech corporation, has created many types of GMO food plants.  One of the most well known is the genetically modified Roundup-Ready Canola.  Roundup is a very strong herbicide - a chemical used to kill plants.  Canola is a cultivar (developed variety) of Rapeseed, and canola plants gives us canola oil.  Monsanto makes Roundup, and a number of years ago they genetically engineered a type of canola to be resistant to Roundup.  Farmers can plant Roundup-Ready Canola, and when the weeds start to interfere with the canola's growth, the farmer can spray the fields with Roundup.  Every plant in the field exposed to Roundup dies leaving the canola to keep growing unhindered.  For years, the Roundup label stated that Roundup degrades over time, but, interestingly, this was recently taken off the label.

Since 1990, Monsanto has sued 145 farmers for "patent infringement".  Monsanto claims that farmers are using their GMO plants without paying for them.  Many of these lawsuits have involved farmers who saved a small portion of their seeds from one harvest and planted them the next growing season.  Monsanto claimed that they owned any life form that contains their Roundup Ready genes.  All these farmers lost the lawsuits.  They lost a lot of money.  Sometimes they lost their farms.  One of these farmers who refused to destroy the seeds he saved spent eight months in prison.

Probably the most well known lawsuit involved Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian canola farmer.  The details are rather fuzzy, as usually happens in a long and drawn out court case, but the farmer claims not to have planted Monsanto canola in his field.  His neighbors did.  Monsanto obtained samples of Schmeiser's canola, and they contained the genes that Monsanto had created in their labs.  The farmer claims that his neighbor's Roundup Ready Canola genes spread... as plant genes often do - it's part of botanical sexual reproduction called pollination!  The judge ruled in favor of Monsanto.  This spurred a March 2011 lawsuit involving over 60 farmers in the U.S. and Canada.  The farmers were pre-emptively suing Monsanto to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement just in case their land ever became contaminated with Monsanto's genetically modified seeds, plants, or genes.

The Scary

Monsanto's GMO Corn has been linked to liver and kidney failure.  Monsanto's GMO corn has already been approved by the U.S. and Europe.  The International Journal of Biological Sciences article author, Gilles-Eric Seralini, wrote in a response  "Our study contradicts Monsanto's conclusions because Monsanto systematically neglects significant health effects in mammals that are different in males and females eating GMOs, or not proportional to the dose. This is a very serious mistake, dramatic for public health. This is the major conclusion revealed by our work, the only careful reanalysis of Monsanto crude statistical data."  This is current and disturbing.  Keep watching this to see where it goes.

How about "Malaria-Resistant Mosquitoes"?  Sounds wonderful when you realize that almost a million people are killed each year by mosquitos.  But what happens when these mosquitos develop a new strain of malaria?  What if that strain in a "resistant" mosquito is now resistant to all the antibiotics that we use to treat malaria?  Malaria consistently becomes resistant to our current antibiotics.  I can't imagine an antibiotic-resistant malaria... terrifying.

Universities and corporations have already created genetically engineered pigs (that produce less phosphorus), salmon (with a growth hormone to grow twice as fast), strawberries (that have fish genes to make them frost resistant; a.k.a. "fishberries"), cows (that produce human milk instead of cows milk).  These animals, plants, or combinations of the two, actually exist right now.  What happens if these genes "contaminate" wild populations of animals or plants?  What are the consequences?  The bottom line is that we just don't know. 

Arguments for GMOs

GMOs are just an extension of traditional breeding.

Not even close.  As you can see from above, you could never traditionally develop a strawberry with fish genes!

GMO plants will feed the world.

Proudly touted by GMO corporations, but also false.  A common fact understood by those in international humanitarian work is that there is plenty of food in the world to feed every human being.  It is the governments and the wars and the tribes and the people who prevent the food from getting to the hungry.  Hunger will not be solved by genes, but by people working together.

GMOs are safe.  The FDA and USDA and EPA allow them.

I won't go into a lengthy list of all the things that were previously allowed and then caused hundreds and thousands of deaths (asbestos and agent orange, anyone?)  A government agency allowing something does not mean it is safe.

Unless you are growing all your own food or you are going out of your way to research and buy only non-GMO food, then you are likely eating some GM food.  It is almost inevitable.  Almost.  I'm not going to say too much on this right now, but there are some interesting things on the horizon that may make avoiding GMOs easier.  Stay tuned.

Original Article Here