Monsanto etc toxic GM crops attack fragile genetics

[outsider]

Institute for Responsible Technology:
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

'Genetically Engineered Apples and Potatoes':
http://action.responsibletechnology.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/sign up?signup_page_KEY=9181

If TTIP (or even probably TPP) we are likely to be getting GMO apples and spuds, AND UNLABELLED!

[outsider]

They Are Biocides, Not Pesticides -- And They Are Creating an Ecocide:
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/andrew-kimbrell/2440/andrew-kimbrel l/andrew-kimbrells-blog/3911/they-are-biocides-not-pesticides--and-the y-are-creating-an-ecocide#

'.....Then there were the University of Pittsburgh researchers who a decade ago tested how Roundup might impact immature and mature frogs in ponds. This is how the researchers summarized their results: "The most striking result from the experiments was that a chemical designed to kill plants killed 98 percent of tad poles within three weeks and 79 percent of all frogs within one day." That is very effective killing indeed, but of course frogs are not pests or weeds. Argentinian researchers using animal models then linked Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate to cranial malformations and other birth defects long reported in the children of farm workers who were repeatedly exposed to the chemical. Infants are not pests or weeds. And then in March 2015, the World Health Organization's (WHO's) cancer authorities -- the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) -- determined that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans" based on multiple lines of evidence: kidney, pancreatic and other tumors in glyphosate-treated test animals; epidemiology studies showing higher rates of cancer in farmers that used glyphosate; and research showing that glyphosate damages chromosomes, one mechanism by which cancer is induced.

So Roundup is a butterfly killer, a frog killer and potentially an infant and adult human killer. And it has numerous other untold victims, to be sure. None of these are pests or weeds. So let's not continue to use misleading euphemisms. Roundup is not a pesticide or herbicide; it is a "biocide".......'

[outsider]

Center for Food Safety:
https://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1881/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?do nate_page_KEY=11905

'From Jackson County, Oregon, where we just prevailed (again) over big food and chemical corporations.

Last year, voters approved a historic ban on the farming of genetically engineered (GE) crops in the county. The opposition had Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow on their side and the largest campaign budget in our county's history, but with the expertise and support from Center for Food Safety our group of 150 family farmers beat the chemical corporations and won.

The industry hired high priced lawyers and challenged the law -- and the voter's decision -- in court. The team at Center for Food Safety brought its legal prowess to defend the law, and helped us secure a precedent-setting win that will protect family farmers like me from genetically engineered crops for decades to come.

I wouldn't do this if it wasn't important, but would you consider making a donation to CFS so that they can continue to defend us in this critical battle? Your support makes a difference!

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/jackson-county »

Thanks,

Elise Higley
Farmer and Director
Our Family Farms Coalition
Jackson County, Oregon


From: Center for Food Safety

Subject: VICTORY: GE ban upheld in Oregon!

Date: June 2, 2015

[outsider]

Gee wiz, someone is glad Cameron & Cronies are back in power (or rather, back on the ends of their puppet strings):

'Monsanto: You Can Run But You Can't Hide!':
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50865/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_K EY=1323504

They may not find that London protesters will take kindly to their presence, but I'm sure the 'City' will welcome them with open arms.
I wonder what bait has been dangled before them to coax them here? Tax 'breaks', perhaps? Access to the EU markets for their 'Frankenfoods' and pesticide poisons?

[outsider]

Well, Obama gave the Corporations 'Fast Track':
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/congress-hands-obama- major-win-on-trade-legislation?

'The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress passed major trade legislation Wednesday that was long-sought by President Barack Obama but vehemently opposed by most lawmakers in his Democratic party.

The measure would allow Obama to negotiate global trade deals that Congress could approve or reject, but not change. The administration was seeking the “fast track” as it works to complete a round of trade negotiations involving 12 nations along both sides of the Pacific Ocean, including Japan.

The 12 participating nations in the current Pacific-based talks account for 40 percent of the world’s economy, and include Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Canada and Mexico. China is not a member, and Obama says a ratified Pacific-rim pact will reassert the United States’ muscular role in international standards for commerce, treatment of workers and the environment.

Obama’s victory comes at a pivotal juncture in his second term. He is bracing for a Supreme Court ruling on his landmark health care law, and next week’s deadline is approaching for reaching a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

The measure to strengthen Obama’s hand in the Pacific Rim trade talks cleared the Senate on a vote of 60-38, and will go to the White House for his signature - less than two weeks after it was temporarily derailed in the House in an uprising of Democratic lawmakers.

A companion bill, to renew an expiring program of federal aid for workers disadvantaged by imports, passed by voice vote less than an hour later. Final approval in the House is expected on Thursday.

The rapid sequence of events capped the end of a back-and-forth struggle that played out slowly over months, with Obama, Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both Republicans, on one side, and the union-backed Democratic leadership of the House and Senate on the other.

The pace accelerated dramatically less than two weeks ago, when House Democrats prevailed in an early showdown that sent the White House and congressional Republican leaders into a rescue operation.....'

[outsider]

Tell Congress to Protect Your Right to Know: Oppose the DARK Act:
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1881/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action _KEY=14356

'UPDATE: The DARK Act will be marked up in the House Agriculture Committee Tuesday, July 14 2015. Congressman Pompeo has released a dangerous new amendment to the DARK Act that would preempt any state or county laws regulating genetically engineered (GE) crops in any way.

Congressman Pompeo and his gang of Big Food bullies are once again trying to deny consumers our right to know what we are eating and feeding our families.

The bill that would deny voters the right to pass state bills to label genetically engineered foods—and make mandatory labeling at the federal level impossible—has been reintroduced in Congress, despite hundreds of thousands of emails and phone calls from people like you opposing this corporate power-grab.

To make matters worse, Congressman Pompeo just released a dangerous new amendment to the DARK Act that would preempt any state or county laws regulating genetically engineered (GE) crops in any way.

Pompeo’s bill (H.R. 1599)—dubbed the “Denying Americans the Right-to-Know Act” (DARK Act)—would:
•Prevent states from adopting their own GE labeling laws.
•Prevent state or county laws regulating GE crops
•Prevent the Food and Drug Administration from requiring companies to label GE ingredients and instead continue a failed 14-year “voluntary” labeling policy.

The bill also seeks to create a federal certification process for voluntary non-GMO labels. While non-GMO marketing claims allow companies to distinguish themselves in the marketplace, the labeling of non-GE foods and organic foods is limited to only about 2% of products on the shelves and is not a substitute for mandatory disclosure.

GE labeling is important to Americans, with over 90% consistently supporting transparency in the marketplace through mandatory GE labeling. In 2013 and 2014 there were over 70 GE labeling bills introduced across 30 states, with laws being passed in Maine, Connecticut, and Vermont.

The DARK Act would shut down these efforts and reverse these successfully passed bills, only to be replaced with an undemocratic, hollow “voluntary” labeling scheme. In the 14 years that FDA has allowed companies to voluntarily label GE foods, a total of zero companies have done so.

This is not the solution consumers have been demanding and it is high time for Congress to wise up.

Thankfully, Congressman DeFazio and Senator Boxer have also reintroduced their bill to put in place mandatory, nationwide labeling of genetically engineered foods. Congress should focus on the labeling solutions that Americans are asking for – not legislation written by and for big food and chemical companies that only serves to keep Americans in the dark.

Tell Congress to OPPOSE the DARK Act and SUPPORT mandatory GE food labeling!

By taking action, you are signing up to receive updates and alerts from Center for Food Safety. You may unsubscribe at any time.



This will be debated today; not much we in the UK can do, but it is another
example of just how evil Monsanto, and Congressmen like Pompeo, are. They know damn well that most people would tell the Supermarkets where to stick their GMO 'Frankenfoods', so Monsanto and the like, and their bought & paid for Congressmen and Senators, push legislation to forbid states from labelling, so people don't know what's in the foods they buy for themselves and their families.

[ian neal]

Excellent reply in discussion on global food security on another network

By conventional wisdom it is excellent news. Researchers from Iowa have shown that organic farming methods can yield almost as highly as pesticide-intensive methods. Other researchers, from Berkeley, California, have reached a similar conclusion. Indeed, both findings met with a very enthusiastic reception. The enthusiasm is appropriate, but only if one misses a deep and fundamental point: that even to participate in such a conversation is to fall into a carefully laid trap.
The strategic centrepiece of Monsanto’s PR, and also that of just about every major commercial participant in the industrialised food system, is to focus on the promotion of one single overarching idea. The big idea that industrial producers in the food system want you to believe is that only they can produce enough for the future population (Peekhaus 2010). Thus non-industrial systems of farming, such as all those which use agroecological methods, or SRI, or are localised and family-oriented, or which use organic methods, or non-GMO seeds, cannot feed the world.

Dustbowl and soil erosion USA, 1935
To be sure, agribusiness has other PR strategies. Agribusiness is “pro-science”, its opponents are “anti-science”, and so on. But the main plank has for decades been to create a cast-iron moral framing around the need to produce more food (Stone and Glover 2011).
Therefore, if you go to the websites of Monsanto and Cargill and Syngenta and Bayer, and their bedfellows: the US Farm Bureau, the UK National Farmers Union, and the American Soybean Association, and CropLife International, or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, or the international research system (CGIAR), and now even NASA, they very early (if not instantaneously) raise the “urgent problem” of who will feed the expected global population of 9 or 10 billion in 2050.
Likewise, whenever these same organisations compose speeches or press releases, or videos, or make any pronouncement designed for policymakers or the populace, they devote precious space to the same urgent problem. It is even in their job advertisements. It is their Golden Fact and their universal calling card. And as far as neutrals are concerned it wins the food system debate hands down, because it says, if any other farming system cannot feed the world, it is irrelevant. Only agribusiness can do that.
The real food crisis is of overproduction
Yet this strategy has a disastrous foundational weakness. There is no global or regional shortage of food. There never has been and nor is there ever likely to be. India has a superabundance of food. South America is swamped in food. The US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are swamped in food (e.g. Billen et al 2011). In Britain, like in many wealthy countries, nearly half of all row crop food production now goes to biofuels, which at bottom are an attempt to dispose of surplus agricultural products. China isn’t quite swamped but it still exports food (see Fig 1.); and it grows 30% of the world’s cotton. No foodpocalypse there either.
Of all the populous nations, Bangladesh comes closest to not being swamped in food. Its situation is complex. Its government says it is self-sufficient. The UN world Food Program says it is not, but the truth appears to be that Bangladeshi farmers do not produce the rice they could because prices are too low, because of persistent gluts (1).

Fig 1. Chinese net food exports (Dr. Jikun Huang, Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy)
Even some establishment institutions will occasionally admit that the food shortage concept – now and in any reasonably conceivable future – is bankrupt. According to experts consulted by the World Bank Institute there is already sufficient food production for 14 billion people – more food than will ever be needed. The Golden Fact of agribusiness is a lie.
Truth restoration
So, if the agribusiness PR experts are correct that food crisis fears are pivotal to their industry, then it follows that those who oppose the industrialization of food and agriculture should make dismantling that lie their top priority.
Anyone who wants a sustainable, pesticide-free, or non-GMO food future, or who wants to swim in a healthy river or lake again, or wants to avoid climate chaos, needs to know all this. Anyone who would like to rebuild the rural economy or who appreciates cultural, biological, or agricultural diversity of any meaningful kind should take every possible opportunity to point out the evidence that refutes it. Granaries are bulging, crops are being burned as biofuels or dumped, prices are low, farmers are abandoning farming for slums and cities, all because of massive oversupply. Anyone could also point out that probably the least important criterion for growing food, is how much it yields. Even just to acknowledge crop yield, as an issue for anyone other than the individual farmer, is to reinforce the framing of the industry they oppose.
The project to fully industrialise global food production is far from complete, yet already it is responsible for most deforestation, most marine pollution, most coral reef destruction, much of greenhouse gas emissions, most habitat loss, most of the degradation of streams and rivers, most food insecurity, most immigration, most water depletion, massive human health problems, and so on (Foley et al 2005; Foley et al 2011). Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that if the industrialisation of food is not reversed our planet will be made unlivable for multi-cellular organisms. Our planet is becoming literally uninhabitable solely as a result of the social and ecological consequences of industrialising agriculture. All these problems are without even mentioning the trillions of dollars in annual externalised costs and subsidies (Pretty et al. 2000).
So, if one were to devise a strategy for the food movement, it would be this. The public already knows (mostly) that pesticides are dangerous. They also know that organic food is higher quality, and is far more environmentally friendly. It knows that GMOs should be labeled, are largely untested, and may be harmful. That is why the leaders of most major countries, including China, dine on organic food. The immense scale of the problems created by industrial agriculture should, of course, be understood better, but the main facts are hardly in dispute.
But what industry understands, and the food movement does not, is that what prevents total rejection of bland, industrialised, pesticide-laden, GMO food is the standard acceptance, especially in Western countries, of the overarching agribusiness argument that such food is necessary. It is necessary to feed the world.
But, if the food movement could show that famine is an empty threat then it would also have shown, by clear implication, that the chemical health risks and the ecological devastation that these technologies represent are what is unnecessary. The movement would have shown that pesticides and GMOs exist solely to extract profit from the food chain. They have no other purpose. Therefore, every project of the food movement should aim to spread the truth of oversupply, until mention of the Golden Fact invites ridicule and embarrassment rather than fear.
Divide and Confuse
Food campaigners might also consider that a strategy to combat the food scarcity myth can unite a potent mix of causes. Just as an understanding of food abundance destroys the argument for pesticide use and GMOs simultaneously, it also creates the potential for common ground within and between constituencies that do not currently associate much: health advocates, food system workers, climate campaigners, wildlife conservationists and international development campaigners. None of these constituencies inherently like chemical poisons, and they are hardly natural allies of agribusiness, but the pressure of the food crisis lie has driven many of them to ignore what could be the best solution to their mutual problems: small scale farming and pesticide-free agriculture. This is exactly what the companies intended.
So divisive has the Golden Fact been that some non-profits have entered into perverse partnerships with agribusiness and others support inadequate or positively fraudulent sustainability labels. Another consequence has been mass confusion over the observation that almost all the threats to the food supply (salinisation, water depletion, soil erosion, climate change and chemical pollution) come from the supposed solution–the industrialisation of food production. These contradictions are not real. When the smoke is blown away and the mirrors are taken down the choices within the food system become crystal clear. They fall broadly into two camps.

Vegetables growing. (Credit: Sisters of St Francis, Oldenburg)
On the one side lie family farms and ecological methods. These support farmer and consumer health, resilience, financial and democratic independence, community, cultural and biological diversity, and long term sustainability. Opposing them is control of the food system by corporate agribusiness. Agribusiness domination leads invariantly to dependence, uniformity, poisoning and ecological degradation, inequality, land grabbing, and, not so far off, to climate chaos.
One is a vision, the other is a nightmare: in every single case where industrial agriculture is implemented it leaves landscapes progressively emptier of life. Eventually, the soil turns either into mud that washes into the rivers or into dust that blows away on the wind. Industrial agriculture has no long term future; it is ecological suicide. But for obvious reasons those who profit from it cannot allow all this to become broadly understood. That is why the food scarcity lie is so fundamental to them. They absolutely depend on it, since it alone can camouflage the simplicity of the underlying issues.

Soil erosion, USA, 1935
Reverse PR?
Despite all this, the food and environmental movements have never seriously contested the reality of a food crisis. Perhaps that is because it is a narrative with a long history. As early as the 1940s the chemical and oil industries sent the Rockefeller Foundation to Mexico to “fix” agriculture there. Despite evidence to the contrary, the Rockefeller scientists derived a now-familiar narrative: Mexican agriculture was obviously gripped by a production deficit that could be fixed by “modern” agribusiness products (The Hungry World, 2010). This story later became the uncontested “truth” that legitimised the green revolution and still propels the proliferation of pesticides, fertilizers, GMOs and other agribusiness methods into every part of the globe.
Yet in the age of the internet it is no longer necessary to let an industry decide where the truth resides. It is possible to restore reality to the global discussion about food so that all potential production methods can have their merits fairly evaluated (IAASTD, 2007). Until this is done agribusiness and chemical industry solutions will always be the default winner, alternative agriculture will always be alternative, if it exists at all.
The evidence with which to contradict the lie is everywhere; but in an unequal and unjust system truth never speaks for itself. It is a specific task that requires a refusal to be intimidated by the torrents of official misinformation and a willingness to unembed oneself from the intellectual web of industry thinking. (That will often mean ordinary people acting alone.)
The task requires two things; the first is familiarity with the basic facts of the food system. Good starting points (apart from the links in this article) are Good Food for Everyone Forever by Colin Tudge or World Hunger: Twelve Myths by Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset and Frances Moore Lappe.
Power, lies, and consent
The second requirement is a shift in perception. The shift is to move beyond considering only physical goals, such as saving individual species, or specific political achievements, and to move towards considering the significance of the underlying mental state of the citizenry.
Companies and industries pay huge sums of money for public relations (PR). PR is predicated on the idea that all human behaviour is governed by belief systems. PR is therefore the discovery of the structure of those belief systems, mainly through focus groups, and the subsequent manipulation of those belief structures with respect to particular products or other goals.
Thus human reasoning, which asks questions like: Is it fair? What will the neighbours think? can be accessed and diverted to make individuals and groups act often against their own self-interests. Two important general rules are that it works best when people don’t know they are being influenced, and that it comes best from a “friendly” source. PR is therefore always concealed which creates the widespread misunderstanding that it is rare or ineffective.
Anyone who desires social change on a significant scale should seek to understand this, and its corollary, that the food crisis lie is far from the only lie. As philosopher Michel Foucault documented for madness and also criminality, many assertions constituting supposed “reality” are best understood as establishment fabrications. Those described by Foucault mostly have deep historical roots; but others, such as the genetic origin of disease, or the validity of animal experiments, are untruths of recent origin. The function of these fabrications is always social control. As Edward Bernays, the father of modern PR, long ago wrote:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
The possibility of manipulating habits and opinions, which he also called “the engineering of consent” was not an idle boast.
Foucault, who was concerned mostly with the power held by governments, considered that the fabrications he had identified were not conspiracies. They were emergent properties of power. Power and knowledge grow together in an intertwined and mutually supportive fashion. He argued that knowledge creates power but is also deferential to power and so is deformed by it. An example is when US newspapers decline to use the word “torture” for when torture is used by the US government. These newspapers and the US government are together doing what Foucault theorised. The US government gets to torture and gains power in the process while the public is simultaneously deceived and disempowered. In this way the preferred language of the powerful has historically and continuously evolved into the established public truth, to the disadvantage of the people.
Bernays, however, worked mainly for corporations. He knew, since some of them were his own ideas, that many of the more recent fabrications were not emergent properties but were intentionally planted.
The essential point, however, is to appreciate not only that companies and others deliberately engineer social change; but also that when they do so it begins with the reordering of the “reality” perceived by the people. The companies first create a reality (such as Mexican hunger) for which their desired change seems to the people either obvious, or beneficial, or natural. When it comes, the people therefore do not resist the solution, many welcome it.
The structure of “reality”
Dictators and revolutionaries provide an interesting lesson in this. The successful ones have achieved sometimes extraordinary power. As always, they have done so first by changing the opinions of the people. The dictator, like any corporation, must make the people want them. As a general rule, dictators do this by creating new and more compelling false realities on top of older ones.
Hitler, to take a familiar example, harnessed a newly synthesised idea (German nationalism) to a baseless scientific theory (of racial genetics) and welded this to pre-existing “realities” of elitism and impugned manhood (the loss of WWI). These ideas were instrumental in his rise to power. But the important lesson for social change is that none of the ideas used by him possessed (now or then) any objective or empirical reality. They were all fabrications. It is true Hitler also had secret money, bodyguards, and so on, but so did others. Only Hitler found the appropriate combination of concepts able to colonise the minds of enough German people.
But Hitler is not known now for being just another leader of Germany. He is infamous for two events, the holocaust and World War II. The same lessons apply. Millions fought and died for almost a decade in a struggle to assert ideas that could have been destroyed by the intellectual equivalent of a feather. But that is how powerful ideas are.
The lies told in more democratic societies are not so very different to those used by Hitler in the sense that the important ones have predictable properties that can be categorised and sorted. What the food scarcity lie has in common with Hitler’s use of race, and with myths of nationalism, or of modern terrorism, and many others, is the creation of a threat, in this case of famine and possible social breakdown. The creation of an internal or external threat is thus the first category of lies.
The second category recognises the necessity of “efficient government”. No government can issue direct and separate orders to all the people all the time. Nor can it possess the resources for physical enforcement of those orders. It must therefore find ways to cause the people to govern, order, and regiment themselves, in exquisite detail. Therefore, governments supply and support guiding principles in the form of artificial unifying aspirations, such as “progress” or “civilisation”. Typically, they also strongly encourage the desirability of being “normal”; and especially they reinforce elitism (follow the leader), and so on.
Another structural category follows from the recognition that the effective operation of power over others, unless it is based on pure physical force or intimidation, usually requires an authoritative source of ostensibly unbiased knowledge. The population must be “convinced” by an unimpeachable third party. This function is typically fulfilled by either organised religion or by organised science. Scientific or religious institutions thus legitimate the ideas (progress, hierarchy, normality, inequality, etc.) of the rulers. These sources conceal the use of power because they combine the appearance of authority, independence and disinterestedness. These qualities are all or partly fictions.
Another category are fabrications intended to foster dependence on the state and the formal economy. These aim to undermine the ancient dependence of individuals on the land and each other, and transfer that dependence to the state. Thus the worship of competition, the exaggeration of gender differences, and genetic determinism (the theory that your health, personality, and success derive only from within) are examples of fabrications that sow enmity and isolation among the population.
Another important category, which include the myths of papal infallibility, or scientific and journalistic objectivity, exist to reinforce the power of authority itself. These fabrications act to bolster the influence of other myths.
The above list is not exhaustive, but it serves to introduce the idea that the organising of detailed control over populations of millions, achieved mostly without resorting to any physical force, requires the establishing and perpetual reinforcement of multiple interlocking untruths. This itself has important implications.
The first and most important implication is that if the lies and fabrications exist to concentrate and exercise power over others (and then conceal its use), then it also follows that genuinely beneficial and humanitarian goals such as harmony, justice, and equity, require retrieval of the truth and the goals will follow naturally from that retrieval.
The task of anyone who wants harmony, justice, peace, etc to prevail therefore becomes primarily to free the people from believing in lies and thus allowing them to attain mastery over their own minds. At that point they will know their own true needs and desires; they will no longer “want” to be oppressed or exploited.
The second implication of this entwining of knowledge with power is that, when properly understood, goals of harmony, understanding, health, diversity, justice, sustainability, opportunity, etc., are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. Rather, they are necessarily interconnected.
The third implication is that an empire built on lies is much more vulnerable than it seems. It can rapidly unravel.
Given that resources are limited, the problems of achieving broad social justice, of providing for the people, and of restoring environmental harms consequently become that of discerning which of the lies (since there are many) are most in need of exposing; and perhaps in what order.
Conclusion
Thus the necessary shift in perception is to see that, as in most wars, the crucial struggle in the food war is the one inside people’s heads. And that the great food war will be won by the side that understands that and uses it best.
This food war can be won by either side. The natural advantages of the grassroots in this realm are many. They include the power of the internet–which represents a historic opportunity to connect with others; second, that it takes a lot less effort to assert the truth than it does to build a lie-many people only need to hear the truth once; and thirdly, that in this particular battle the non-profit public-interest side doesn’t necessarily need a bigger megaphone because, unlike the industry, they are (broadly) trusted by the public.
Consequently, it is perfectly possible that a lie that took several powerful industries many decades to build up could be dismantled in months. It is necessary only to unleash the power of the truth and to constantly remember the hidden power of the people: that all the effort industries put into misleading them is an accurate acknowledgement of the potential of that power.
There are many writers and NGOs, such as Pesticides Action Network, IATP, the EWG, the Organic Consumers Association, the Center for Food Safety, and others, who are aligned with the grassroots, and who are doing a good and necessary job of explaining the problems and costs of industrial agriculture. But these arguments have so far proven inadequate. Agribusiness knows why that is.
But by combining these arguments with a refutation of the food crisis they can help destroy the industrial model of agriculture forever. And when that happens many of our worst global problems, from climate change and rainforest destruction down, will become either manageable or even negligible.
It is all in the mind.

[outsider]

Bought and payed for Senators sell out the people, yet again; Congress likely to follow suit:

' The DARK Act just SAILED through the House Agriculture Committee without any debate -- and it’s headed to a full vote in the conservative House of Representatives ANY DAY NOW.

Our months-long fight against Monsanto’s bill has been leading up to right now. This is our LAST CHANCE to stop this dangerous legislation from passing the House.

We need to tell the House of Representatives to OPPOSE Monsanto’s DARK Act and protect our consumer rights -- before it’s too late.

Grab your phone right now and dial 1-877-796-1949. You’ll hear more information about the DARK Act, and then you’ll be automatically connected to your Representative’s office.

You already know what’s at stake: Under the DARK Act, it would be illegal for states to implement GMO labeling requirements.

This legislation has Monsanto’s fingerprints all over it. They want to hide the facts and keep consumers in the dark about what we’re actually putting into our bodies. And they’re lobbying their hardest to push this bill straight through Congress in order to protect their corporate profits.'


Paige Richardson
Director, Oregon Right to Know

[outsider]

Latest on Monsanto's push to get GMO labelling made ILLEGAL:

'House Ag Committee Says ‘No’ to GMO Labeling, What’s Next?':
https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/house-ag-committee-says-%E2%80%9 8no%E2%80%99-gmo-labeling-what%E2%80%99s-next

'With no debate and only a voice vote, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture today (July 14, 2015) passed out of committee H.R. 1599, a bill to preempt states’ rights to label GMOs. Within hours, it was announced that the bill will go straight to the House floor, as early as next week, with no vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

If we don’t stop it in the House next week, the fight to stop this “Mother of All Monsanto Protection Acts” will take place next in the U.S. Senate, by early fall. In his opening statement this morning, Committee Chairman Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) (who shortly after today’s vote said he will co-sponsor H.R. 1599) couldn’t have sounded more like a Monsanto employee if he’d tried. Conaway nailed the biotech industry’s favorite talking points and mistruths, beginning with this one:

In testimony before this Committee, multiple representatives of the food and agricultural sectors commented on the cost burden that would be placed on our food system if we were to allow the 50 States, more than 3000 counties and nearly 20,000 towns and cities in the United States to establish their own laws regulating interstate commerce.

Time and again, independent experts have stated that the cost of labeling GMO foods and ingredients, to manufacturers, retailers and consumers, would be negligible here in the U.S., just as it has been in the more than 60 countries that already require labeling. GMO labels are costless, as pointed out in this Washington Post article. Companies regularly update their food packaging as they come up with new designs or marketing strategies.

And then there was the ultimate lie about GMOs, that they have been “proven safe:”

We all recognize that the overwhelming consensus within the science community is that these biotech products are safe. We likewise understand that each and every biotech product in the marketplace today has been reviewed thorough a voluntary food safety consultation process at the Food and Drug Administration.

Wrong. Ever since GMOs were introduced into the food system in the 1990s, without adequate, independent, pre-market safety testing, there have been scientists and an increasing volume of of research indicating that these genetically engineered foods and the toxic chemicals that accompany them are hazardous to human health and the environment. The American Medical Association believes GMO foods should be subjected to pre-market safety testing. And there is surely no consensus, as hundreds of scientists worldwide have confirmed, on the safety of GMOs that have already been approved. That is a flat-out lie.

Conaway spoke instead about the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s “voluntary food safety consultation process” as if that were a valid means of proving safety.

Glaringly absent from Conaway’s statement was any mention of the toxic chemicals used to grow GMO crops, and allowed to remain as residue on GMO foods. Not one word was spoken about the World Health Organization’s recent determination that glyphosate, the chemical used on more than 80 percent of GMO crops, is a probably human carcinogen.

None of these statements, coming from a lawmaker with ties to Big Ag, were particularly surprising. But what should concern any consumer ,voter, citizen or just plain common-sense thinking human being, is that Conaway’s statement clearly focused on how to promote the profits of corporations, rather than on how to protect people from foods that have not been proven safe, and the arsenal of toxic chemicals used to grow them. It was all about “marketing,” and how we need a government program for food producers who want to voluntarily label their products as GMO-free, or containing GMOs.

USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service has long been in the business of assisting producers to develop programs and tools to take advantage of market opportunities. The Biotechnology, Horticulture and Research Subcommittee recently examined the programs of the Agricultural Marketing Service. The Subcommittee concluded that the agency has the resources and expertise to develop and administer a robust marketing program for those wishing to notify consumers of the presence or absence of genetically engineered ingredients in their food products. What the agency doesn’t have is the law to make it work uniformly across the country like we did 25 years ago when we passed the Organic Foods Production Act.

Not one word on the devastation to the environment. Not on word on how chemical-intensive, fossil-fuel-intensive industrial agriculture is one of the largest contributors, if not the largest contributor, to global warming—and how if we don’t fix this system, we can’t be serious about averting a climate disaster.

As Pope Francis said recently, on the topic of genetic engineering and its use of toxic pesticides:

It creates a vicious circle in which the intervention of the human being to solve a problem often worsens the situation further. For example, many birds and insects die out as a result of toxic pesticides created by technology, they are useful to agriculture itself, and their disappearance will be compensated with another technological intervention that probably will bring new harmful effects… looking at the world we see that this level of human intervention, often in the service of finance and consumerism, actually causes the earth we live in to become less rich and beautiful, more and more limited and gray, while at the same time the development of technology and consumerism continues to advance without limits.

H.R. 1599 is an assault on consumer rights, an assault on democracy and states’ rights. And if passed, it will only escalate the assault on our health, and the health of Planet Earth.

Please help us continue to fight this disastrous and undemocratic piece of legislation.'

My local Waitrose sells Monsanto's 'Roundup' Glyphosate in their small gardening section.

'Glyphosate is a 'probably carcinogenic' pesticide. Why do cities still use it?':
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/21/glyphosate-probably-carc inogenic-pesticide-why-cities-use-it

'Cities use glyphosate to control weeds in parks and along verges. Now that the WHO says the pesticide is ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’, is it time to stop?....'

'.....Several European countries, including Holland, Denmark and Sweden, have banned or restricted the use of glyphosate herbicides by local authorities, because of alleged links with a variety of health problems – not just cancer – ranging from birth defects and kidney failure to celiac disease, colitis and autism.


Another study, in Argentina, suggests a correlation between glyphosate use and the decline in activity in honeybee colonies. And in New York, an environmental group is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for ignoring the dangers of glyphosate which, it claims, has resulted in the demise of the monarch butterfly population.

Defenders of glyphosate say it is biologically degraded over time by soil microorganisms into materials that are naturally occurring, including carbon dioxide and phosphate.


But in 2013, Friends of the Earth Europe commissioned an independent laboratory in Germany to test urine samples from people in 18 countries for glyphosate. The results showed traces of the chemical in 44% of samples on average.


Glyphosate has been a resident of cities since it started life in the 1960s as a pipe-descaling agent. In 1969, it was re-patented as a herbicide by biotech giant Monsanto. It’s now the main active ingredient in the world’s best-selling weedkiller, Roundup – available, most likely, at a garden centre near you.


But glyphosate is also used extensively in farming. Monsanto developed “Roundup Ready” crops in the mid-1990s, embedding an engineered gene into a seed that means the resulting plant can survive applications of the weedkiller. Monsanto’s patent expired in 2000, but the technology remains a key driver of its $16bn annual sales.....'

'....Monsanto’s well-oiled rebuttal machine has been quick to condemn the IARC report. “IARC’s conclusion conflicts with the overwhelming consensus by regulatory bodies and science organisations around the world,” it contends, pointing to a US Environmental Protection Agency declaration that “glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans”, along with endorsements from agencies in Canada, Australia and Argentina.

Yet in Argentina, which is one of the biggest cultivators of genetically modified soybeans, the Physicians Network of Sprayed Towns has been mapping cancer incidence since 2010. Co-ordinator Dr Medardo Ávila-Vázquez, a paediatrician at the National University of Córdoba, published a report in February suggesting 30% of deaths in the most intensive agricultural areas of the country are from cancer, compared to a national average of 20%. He also noted that cancer death rates had increased since 2000. “Significantly, the date coincides with the expansion in the use of glyphosate and other agrochemicals massively applied in those areas,” he wrote......'

[outsider]

Stop HR 1599: the Ultimate Monsanto Protection Act!:
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/stop_HR_1599_the_Ultimate_Mons anto_Protection_Act_in_the_Senate/?t=1&akid=1625.863753.lu-soC

'Breaking: Last week the House passed a dangerous new bill, H.R. 1599, to kill GMO labeling, we need your help today to stop the Ultimate Monsanto Protection Act in the Senate! In a stunning display of arrogance, the House voted 275 to 150 to pass a bill into law that would kill mandatory state GMO labeling efforts and replace it with a gutted version that will preempt states' rights and give the illusion of oversight. Now, this Orwellian named bill, the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act” (H.R. 1599) would make it illegal for states to pass common sense GMO labeling laws and prohibit states or counties from banning or regulating GMOs in any way.

A vote in the Senate could take place as early as September and we need all hands on deck to stop the Ultimate Monsanto Protection Act and convince members of the Senate not to violate states' rights. This plan is so devious that it radically speeds up the approval process for new GMO crops; limits the FDA's and USDA’s ability to conduct premarket safety reviews; declares GMO foods “safe” and allows GMOs to be labeled "natural".

If the Senate passes the bill, the President could sign it into law this fall to prevent Vermont's GMO labeling bill from ever taking effect! This is a blatant power grab to deny Americans their basic right to mandatory GMO labeling and protect flawed GMO products - and we can’t allow them to get away with it. We need your help today. Every voice counts!...'

[outsider]

Call to ban glyphosate on milling wheat:
http://www.fwi.co.uk/arable/call-ban-glyphosate-milling-wheat.htm

'Organic farming campaigners have called for glyphosate to be banned as a pre-harvest spray on milling wheat – amid warnings from scientists linking the chemical to cancer.

Glyphosate use in UK farming has increased by 400% in the past 20 years, according to figures published by the Soil Association on Wednesday (15 July). Nearly one-third of UK wheat and barley crops were sprayed with glyphosate, it said.

A report by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently concluded that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen. Report co-author Professor Christopher Portier said: “Glyphosate is definitely genotoxic. There is no doubt in my mind.”

See also: Monsanto hits back at glyphosate study’s cancer claims

Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett said farmers could easily choose not to use glyphosate as a pre-harvest management tool. “The Soil Association is calling for the immediate ending of the use of glyphosate sprays on wheat destined for use in bread,” he said.

Glyphosate was among three pesticides regularly found in routine testing of British bread, said the association. Although it acknowledged that the quantities found were below official safety levels, the association said the limit was agreed before the latest scientific findings.

The association has written to Defra, the NFU, the National Association of British and Irish Flour Millers, major supermarket chains and bread manufacturers calling on them to ensure no British milling wheat is sprayed with glyphosate before this year’s harvest.

But the Crop Protection Association, which represents agrochemical manufacturers, said there was a big difference between hazard and risk. Risk assessments ensured crop protection products were only approved when shown to be safe for humans and the environment, it added.

CPA chief executive Nick von Westenholz said: “It is disappointing to see pressure groups misrepresenting the science in using this classification to promote their own agenda, whipping up concern among the public despite glyphosate’s excellent safety profile.”

He added: “Let’s not forget that the IARC has made similar assessments of items such as coffee, mobile phones, pickled vegetables and aloe vera, products we are quite capable of using in our day-to-day lives while managing any risk. Crop protection products are no different.”


NOTE: It's also used on barley (beer!).

[outsider]

GMOs, Herbicides, and Public Health:
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/gmos-herbicides-and-public-healt h

'....The vast majority of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States are now genetically engineered. Foods produced from GM crops have become ubiquitous. And unlike regulatory bodies in 64 other countries, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require labeling of GM foods.

Two recent developments are dramatically changing the GMO landscape. First, there have been sharp increases in the amounts and numbers of chemical herbicides applied to GM crops, and still further increases — the largest in a generation — are scheduled to occur in the next few years. Second, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified glyphosate, the herbicide most widely used on GM crops, as a “probable human carcinogen”1 and classified a second herbicide, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), as a “possible human carcinogen.”2

The application of genetic engineering to agriculture builds on the ancient practice of selective breeding. But unlike traditional selective breeding, genetic engineering vastly expands the range of traits that can be moved into plants and enables breeders to import DNA from virtually anywhere in the biosphere. Depending on the traits selected, genetically engineered crops can increase yields, thrive when irrigated with salty water, or produce fruits and vegetables resistant to mold and rot.

The National Academy of Sciences has twice reviewed the safety of GM crops — in 2000 and 2004.3 Those reviews, which focused almost entirely on the genetic aspects of biotechnology, concluded that GM crops pose no unique hazards to human health. They noted that genetic transformation has the potential to produce unanticipated allergens or toxins and might alter the nutritional quality of food. Both reports recommended development of new risk-assessment tools and postmarketing surveillance. Those recommendations have largely gone unheeded.

Herbicide resistance is the main characteristic that the biotechnology industry has chosen to introduce into plants. Corn and soybeans with genetically engineered tolerance to glyphosate (Roundup) were first introduced in the mid-1990s. These “Roundup-Ready” crops now account for more than 90% of the corn and soybeans planted in the United States.4 Their advantage, especially in the first years after introduction, is that they greatly simplify weed management. Farmers can spray herbicide both before and during the growing season, leaving their crops unharmed.

But widespread adoption of herbicide-resistant crops has led to overreliance on herbicides and, in particular, on glyphosate.5 In the United States, glyphosate use has increased by a factor of more than 250 — from 0.4 million kg in 1974 to 113 million kg in 2014. Global use has increased by a factor of more than 10. Not surprisingly, glyphosate-resistant weeds have emerged and are found today on nearly 100 million acres in 36 states. Fields must now be treated with multiple herbicides, including 2,4-D, a component of the Agent Orange defoliant used in the Vietnam War.

The first of the two developments that raise fresh concerns about the safety of GM crops is a 2014 decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to approve Enlist Duo, a new combination herbicide comprising glyphosate plus 2,4-D. Enlist Duo was formulated to combat herbicide resistance. It will be marketed in tandem with newly approved seeds genetically engineered to resist glyphosate, 2,4-D, and multiple other herbicides. The EPA anticipates that a 3-to-7-fold increase in 2,4-D use will result.

In our view, the science and the risk assessment supporting the Enlist Duo decision are flawed. The science consisted solely of toxicologic studies commissioned by the herbicide manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s and never published, not an uncommon practice in U.S. pesticide regulation. These studies predated current knowledge of low-dose, endocrine-mediated, and epigenetic effects and were not designed to detect them. The risk assessment gave little consideration to potential health effects in infants and children, thus contravening federal pesticide law. It failed to consider ecologic impact, such as effects on the monarch butterfly and other pollinators. It considered only pure glyphosate, despite studies showing that formulated glyphosate that contains surfactants and adjuvants is more toxic than the pure compound.

The second new development is the determination by the IARC in 2015 that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen”1 and 2,4-D a “possible human carcinogen.”2 These classifications were based on comprehensive assessments of the toxicologic and epidemiologic literature that linked both herbicides to dose-related increases in malignant tumors at multiple anatomical sites in animals and linked glyphosate to an increased incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in humans.

These developments suggest that GM foods and the herbicides applied to them may pose hazards to human health that were not examined in previous assessments. We believe that the time has therefore come to thoroughly reconsider all aspects of the safety of plant biotechnology. The National Academy of Sciences has convened a new committee to reassess the social, economic, environmental, and human health effects of GM crops. This development is welcome, but the committee's report is not expected until at least 2016.'



'Germany Starts Move to Ban GMO Crops - Ministry Letter':
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/germany-starts-move-ban-gmo-crop s-ministry-letter

'......German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt has informed German state governments of his intention to tell the EU that Germany will make use of new "opt-out" rules to stop GMO crop cultivation even if varieties have been approved by the EU, a letter from the agriculture ministry seen by Reuters shows.

A new EU law approved in March cleared the way for new GMO crops to be approved after years of previous deadlock. But the law also gave individual countries the right to opt out by banning GMO crops even after they have been approved as safe by the European Commission.

Widely-grown in the Americas and Asia, GMO crops have divided opinion in Europe. Britain is among those in favour of them, while France and Germany are among those opposed.
('Cameroon' - 'Chuckle - GMO's well help deal with our overpopulation problem!' Guffaws all round.)

Previously, when the EU approved crops as safe to produce they had to be permitted for cultivation in all EU states.

In the letter, the ministry stressed that Schmidt is continuing a previously-announced policy to keep a ban on GMOs in Germany.'

[outsider]

Monsanto’s Tobacco Files: University Scientists Caught Conspiring With Biotech Industry to Manipulate Public Opinion on GMOs:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/09/12/scientists-conspire-monsanto-gmos/

'What happens when a private company with a long history of producing some of the most toxic chemicals on the planet and now produces our food starts facing public pressure from a growing national grassroots movement to label their products to conform with basic principles of democracy and transparency?

Well, if the company in question is Monsanto, then you take a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook and hatch a secret plan to enlist public university scientists to bury the potential harm of your genetically engineered crops by whitewashing negative studies and systematically demonizing your opponents in the media to mislead elected officials and the American public about the safety of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and their accompanying toxic pesticides.

Here’s a little history lesson, in the 1940s, tobacco companies ran ads with doctors proclaiming smoking cigarettes were perfectly safe. In 1946, the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company ran a now infamous campaign called “More Doctors” recommend Camels after “surveying” more than 113,597 doctors “from every branch of medicine.” In reality, the tobacco company’s advertising agency employees questioned doctors at medical conferences and their offices and used these fake results to deceive a generation of smokers.





Today, Monsanto and the biotech industry are copying the same tactics, this time hiding behind the façade of public university scientists and hiring major PR firms to promote GMOs and the toxic weedkiller glyphosate, the main chemical ingredient in Roundup, which some scientists are offering to drink on Twitter and in front of classrooms of students to “prove” its safety and hide the fact that it is harmful to humans and the environment.

Last weekend, the New York Times released a stunning expose of how Monsanto and the biotech industry enlisted allegedly independent public university scientists in a deceptive campaign to lobby state legislators in Pennsylvania, interfere with ballot initiatives in Oregon and Colorado and paper over risks of high pesticide usage on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

According to New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton, as the GMO labeling debate was coming to a boil in America in the past three years, Monsanto and their “industry partners retooled their lobbying and public relations strategy to spotlight a rarefied group of advocates: academics, brought in for the gloss of impartiality and weight of authority that come with a professor’s pedigree.”

And why would Monsanto want to do this? Because independent scientist from public university come with a major halo effect, something that Monsanto’s top lobbyists mention repeatedly in the recently released emails to public university scientists.

Shining a Light on Monsanto and the Corruption of Public University Scientists

Lipton’s story details how a University of Illinois professor and longtime GMO promoter Bruce Chassy used his Monsanto connections to lobby the Environmental Protection Agency to abandon its efforts to tighten regulations on insecticidal GMO seeds. If you take a dive into the emails, you can see how Chassy enlisted the help of former advisor to George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton, Nina Federoff in his efforts to influence the EPA’s policies.

In the emails, Chassy’s efforts to lobby the EPA for looser regulations were encouraged by a Monsanto lobbyist even as Chassy was negotiating the release of his grant from the company.





For background on how this current story originally broke, you have to go back to Aug. 6, when the international science journal Nature reported that more than 4,600 pages of emails from University of Florida plant scientist Kevin Folta “reveal his close ties to the agriculture giant Monsanto … and other biotechnology-industry interests.”

The Nature article set off a minor firestorm on social media, when University of Florida professor and Monsanto promoter Kevin Folta’s emails were leaked to Nature’s Keith Kloor for damage control.

While Folta has not yet been charged with scientific misconduct or wrongdoing, these emails reveal a close relationship and financial ties to Monsanto for the first time publicly. The new reports of financial ties and Folta’s regular communication with Monsanto executives and lobbyists contradict Folta’s previous repeated denials of any relationship or conflict of interest with the St. Louis, Missouri based biotech seed and chemical giant responsible for mass producing such toxic cancer-causing chemicals as PCBs, Agent Orange, dioxin and now 80 percent of the genetically engineered crops that appear in our food supply.

“The documents show that Monsanto paid for Folta’s travel to speak to U.S. students, farmers, politicians and the media,” according to Nature’s Keith Kloor. As reported, Folta received a $25,000 “unrestricted” grant from Monsanto in 2014, which a Monsanto representative stated could be used by Folta at his “discretion in support of your research and outreach projects.”

The information regarding Monsanto’s $25,000 donation only became public as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the public advocacy group U.S. Right to Know, who made the request after noticing Folta’s frequent responses on a pro-GMO industry run website, which is funded by the members of The Council for Biotechnology Information and includes BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta.

According to the emails released by the New York Times, Kevin Folta appears eager to please Monsanto’s executives, telling them, “I’m glad to sign on to whatever you like, or write whatever you like” and, in order to get his $25,000 check cleared Folta claims, “I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment.” What kind of investment was Monsanto really making?

Two days later, Monsanto confirmed payment to Kevin Folta in an official letter.

In addition, the emails reveal a near constant communication between Kevin Folta, Monsanto’s top lobbyists, the crisis public relations firm Ketchum and a handful of U.S. scientists working behind the scenes to manipulate public perception on the safety of GMOs and Monsanto’s flagship herbicide Roundup dating back to at least 2013.

The emails between Folta, Monsanto and Ketchum PR are especially damning as they indicate that agents from the New York crisis management PR firm wrote answers specifically for Folta that he then cut and paste and posted on the GMO Answers website under his own name. A quick search of Folta’s public responses on the industry run website show that he began responding to questions about GMO technology on the website in July of 2013.

GMO Answers, lists Folta as an “Independent Expert” and a professor and chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida. One wonders what Professor Folta or the University of Florida would do if they caught Monsanto and Ketchum PR agents writing papers or scientific studies for their students which they submitted under their own names. In most cases this would result in plagiarism charges for the students and a potential dismissal from the university, but for Kevin Folta posting canned PR responses resulted in Monsanto writing a $25,000 check for what Folta claims is for his personal “science communication” fund.

For the past several years, Kevin Folta has made repeated claims that he was not linked, in any way, to Monsanto and he has made vicious attacks on anyone who insinuated otherwise on social media. But the content of these emails reveals otherwise.

Folta’s Deceptive Claims of No Relationship with Monsanto Do Not Add Up

In a recent June 4 interview with actor/comedian Joe Rogan, Folta was so bold as to claim “I have nothing to do with Monsanto” and “I am not a shill,” which produced a hearty chuckle from Rogan and a knowing grin from Folta himself.

By this time, Folta had been in close communication with Monsanto’s top lobbyists and executives for more than 3 years and had already started spending the $25,000 “unrestricted grant” from Monsanto. So why the cover-up?

Why Monsanto’s Hidden Conflict of Interest with Public University Scientists Harms Science and Open Discourse

While Folta proclaims independence, his public comments exactly mirror Monsanto talking points. This past spring, when the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate, the main chemical ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, to be “probably carcinogenic to humans,” Monsanto immediately called this new report “junk science”.

Rather than look at the new report objectively, Kevin Folta sneeringly dismissed it and then offered to drink a pint of glyphosate in front of a class of students at Iowa State University that he was supposedly educating with his “science communication” skills. As an Iowan, I’m pretty sure that the ISU students were too smart to fall for this stupid stunt.

(The students should have taken up the offer, but stipulated THEY would provide the Glyphosate - methinks Filta would have run a mile (outsider).

According to the British watchdog group GMWatch, which has documented Folta’s repeated attacks on GMO critics and false statements his claims about the safety of glyphosate are simply dead wrong.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if Folta was just another self-promoting blowhard on the Internet, but with Monsanto’s backing and close ties to a PR firm like Ketchum, these compromised public university scientists now have big media access and are being used as pawns to promote the safety of Monsanto and the biotechnology industry’s products.

For the first time now, with these public records requests, Americans concerned about how their food is produced are getting a firsthand look at the secret tactics of how corporations like Monsanto use PR firms and public university scientists to put a deceptive spin on potential safety issues of GMOs and pesticides.

In reality, this recently revealed collusion between Monsanto and public university scientists poisons the public dialogue and puts the health and safety of the American public at risk by using tobacco industry tactics.

In 1994, seven tobacco executives testified in front of Congress denying they manipulated their brand’s formula to make cigarettes addicting and mislead members of Congress about the scientific evidence linking their products to cancer. Exactly twenty years later, on December 10, 2014, a group of biotech industry apologists followed the same script while testifying in Congress to try to block reasonable and common sense GMO labeling laws, which more than 90 percent of Americans regularly support in public opinion polls.

Make no doubt about it, Monsanto’s current efforts to recruit public university scientists are not about communicating science, but to manipulate public opinion just like the tobacco industry.

The tragedy of this scenario is that taxpayers are indirectly helping fund a public disinformation campaign that is ultimately bent on denying them their basic right to know what’s in their food and derail the national movement to label genetically engineered foods. One wonders how much longer Big Tobacco would have been able to deceive Congress and the American public with a few more “independent scientists” like Chassy and Folta on hand.

Dave Murphy is the founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots movement of more than 650,000 American farmers and citizens dedicated to reforming policies relating to food, agriculture and the environment.'

[outsider]

Bit of good news for a change:

'Ask your local environmental protection agency to label Monsanto's Roundup as cancer-causing':
https://community.sumofus.org/efforts/ask-your-local-environmental-pro tection-agency-to-label-monsanto-roundup-as-cancer-causing/petitions/n ew?akid=13566.1189620.7xyio6&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=1

'..... The California Environmental Protection Agency announced that it plans to label glyphosate - the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide - as a chemical “known to cause cancer.” This is a huge win for people in California.....'

[outsider]

And MORE good news!:

'French Court Finds Monsanto Guilty of Chemical Poisoning':
http://ecowatch.com/2015/09/11/monsanto-guilty-chemical-poisoning/

'An appeals court in Lyon, France has upheld a 2012 ruling against Monsanto, in which the agribusiness giant was found guilty of the chemical poisoning a farmer named Paul François.

The grain grower said that in 2004 he became ill due to Monsanto’s weedkiller, Lasso. François claimed he suffered from neurological problems, memory loss, headaches and stammering after inadvertently inhaling the herbicide.

In François’ case, doctors determined the cause of his ill health was monochlorobenzene, a highly toxic substance that made up 50 percent of Monsanto’s herbicide, according to teleSUR. The substance sent François to the hospital, where he entered in a coma. Subsequent tests showed that the farmer suffered permanent brain disease, teleSUR reported.





In 2012, he filed suit against Monsanto for not providing a warning on the product label and won. Monsanto appealed the decision shortly after.

Yesterday’s ruling, however, stamps another victory for the farmer. The appeals court said Monsanto was “responsible” for the intoxication and ordered the company to “fully compensate” François, Reuters reported.

“It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a (pesticide) maker is found guilty of such a poisoning,” François Lafforgue, François’ lawyer, told the news agency.

RT reported that the farmer (pictured above in 2011) was happy with the outcome, adding: “David can win against Goliath. … And a giant like Monsanto is not above the law.”

Monsanto’s lawyer Jean-Daniel Bretzner said the company plans to take the case to France’s highest appeal court.

“The decision is very surprising given the inaccuracies and errors that dot Paul François’ evidence,” Bretzner said. “But this is just another step and the discussion is going to go on and the fight will go on.”

According to Reuters, Bretzner also said that the potential compensation for the farmer would be decided after the highest court makes a decision. Nonetheless, he said, the award amount would be very low.

“We are speaking about modest sums of money or even nonexistent. He already received indemnities (by insurers) and there is a fundamental rule that says that one does not compensate twice for a loss, if any,” Bretzner said.

Lasso, the herbicide in question, was banned in France as well as in all other European Union member countries in 2007. The product has been phased out in the U.S.

However, another active ingredient in Lasso, alachlor, is still the second most widely used herbicide in the country, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It so happens that the odorless, white chemical is heavily used on corn and soybeans in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Its rampant use is confounding, as even the EPA says alachor “has the potential to cause damage to the liver, kidney, spleen, nasal mucosa and eye from long-term exposure.” The agency also considers it an endocrine distruptor and a carcinogen.

Lasso is not the only Monsanto product considered harmful. In March, the World Health Organization’s cancer arm—the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)—listed glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s wildly popular weedkiller Roundup, as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Monsanto maintains the safety of their products and has also demanded a retraction from the IARC.

In related news, just this week, California’s Environmental Protection Agency issued plans to label glyphosate as known to cause cancer, the first state in the country to do so.'

[outsider]

Our old 'friend' EPA ('The air is safe to breathe') again:

Monsanto May Be Involved in a 40 Year Cover-Up:
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c831a061922edc31f4d65eaa2&id=9656e ea717&e=44324bbb8e

'Monsanto May Be Involved in a 40 Year Cover-Up

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared that glyphosate—the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup and other pesticides—a “probable carcinogen.” What’s more: there is evidence to suggest that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actually classified Roundup as a carcinogen thirty years ago and then mysteriously reversed the decision. Now, there’s a new advancement in the plot to uncover the truth about glyphosate.

This time, there’s alleged evidence to suggest that, while Monsanto maintains that Roundup is safe and environmentally-friendly, the company may have conducted research dating back to the 1970s which showed that Roundup caused serious health issues. According to the scientists who are releasing this information to the public, Monsanto may have tampered with the evidence it sent to regulators.

An independent and well-known research scientist and member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Anthony Samsel, attempted to obtain the research and data Monsanto submitted to the government through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) without success. He then enlisted the help of his senator and his co-investigator Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT. They successfully received over 15,000 pages of documents in response. Since reviewing the thousands of pages of Monsanto data, Samsel has come forward and stated in an interview with Dr. Gary Null on the Progressive Radio Network that “Monsanto misrepresented the data...and deliberately covered up data to bring the product [glyphosate] to market.”

Keep reading to discover the many serious illnesses that may be linked to Roundup and Bt Corn......'

[outsider]

Yesterday’s hearing on H.R. 1599 (passed https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/house-passes-bill-ban-gmo-labeli ng-law in July by the U.S. House of Representatives) pretty much resembled a puppet show: conducted by politicians, attended by GMO apologists, with Monsanto and Big Food pulling the strings.

Seven out of eight https://www.organicconsumers.org/press/organic-consumers-association-c alls-senate-hearing-gmo-labeling-travesty of the witnesses allowed to testify at the hearing, held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry​, were nothing more than industry mouthpieces spouting corporate propaganda.

Witnesses included a Vermont dairy farmer https://www.cabotcheese.coop/the-farm-at-wheeler-mountain who falsely claimed that the genetically engineered crops she uses to feed her dairy herd have reduced the amount of pesticides poisoning Vermont’s soil and waterways. We know the reverse http://earthopensource.org/gmomythsandtruths/sample-page/5-gm-crops-im pacts-farm-environment/5-2-myth-gm-crops-decrease-pesticide-use/ is true. Joanna Lidback, representing the Farm at Wheeler Mountain in Barton, Vt., also used the same old Cornell University study, funded by (and the intellectual property of) the biotech industry, to claim that labels on GMO foods will cost consumers $500 a year. Another claim we know to be false, based on numerous, independent studies http://www.ewg.org/key-issues/food/ge-foods/price .

And then there was the panel’s “consensus” that GMO foods are safe. Of course, no such consensus exists in the real world http://earthopensource.org/gmomythsandtruths/sample-page/2-science-reg ulation/2-2-myth-independent-studies-confirm-gm-foods-crops-safe/ .

So far, thanks to all of you who have called your Senators, met with your Senators and written to your Senators, a Senate version of H.R. 1599 has yet to be introduced.

But that doesn’t mean a Senate version isn’t coming. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told PoliticoPro (a paywalled site) that she is “working with Republicans” on a Senate bill, because we “need a federal solution by the end of the year.” Sen. Stabenow said she doesn't support H.R. 1599 (the DARK-Deny Americans the Right to Know Act). But she isn't signed on to the S.511 (The Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) either. So we're not sure what she has in mind.

Will Stabenow's “federal solution” require GMO foods be labeled? Or will it just be another lukewarm, loophole-riddled, voluntary labeling scheme?

Clearly, we still have our work cut out for us between now and December 31. And as always, we appreciate your support.

Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)

Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our GMO labeling legislative efforts)

Read OCA’s press release on the Senate hearing
https://www.organicconsumers.org/press/organic-consumers-association-c alls-senate-hearing-gmo-labeling-travesty

Watch the Senate hearing
http://www.ag.senate.gov/hearings/agriculture-biotechnology-a-look-at- federal-regulation-and-stakeholder-perspectives

[outsider]

I put this on 'Campaigning' also; I'm pretty sure a lot of you will think 'immediatement', 'Monsanto':


Drilling in the Arctic. Mass producing toxic chemicals. Buying elections. Every day, global corporations do immense harm to our environment, our public health, and our democracy. Now, it’s time to take a stand. You have the power to decide which corporation will join our shameful roster of the world’s worst corporations. Which one will you choose?

Cast your vote now for the worst corporation of 2015:
http://act.stopcorporateabuse.org/content_item/corporate-hall-shame-20 15

The competition in the Corporate Hall of Shame this year is stiff. Nestlé recklessly bottles water in California while the state suffers through one of the worst droughts in history1. Dow pours millions of dollars into lobbying for its toxic chemicals, including an herbicide used in Agent Orange2. Koch Industries floods U.S. elections to undermine environmental protections while being the top foreign leaseholder of Canadian tar sands3. And those are just three of the 10 nominees this year.

Which corporation will you choose?

Remember, your vote matters. After you decide the worst corporation of the year, we’ll work alongside allies to mobilize grassroots action to challenge that corporation’s egregious practices. We’ll turn up the heat and speak out in the media to put enormous public pressure on the corporation that receives the most votes. Your vote today will determine which corporation we take on.

We can’t -- and won’t -- stand by as global corporations like Koch Industries wreak havoc on the environment and corporations like Dow threaten our health. If you’re as outraged as I am by global corporate abuse, join me in taking action.

Cast your ballot right now in the Corporate Hall of Shame to choose this year’s worst of the worst. And if there's another corporation you think should be inducted into the Hall of Shame, you can write in your own nominee and ask your friends to do the same.

Thanks for challenging corporate abuse,

Patti Lynn
Executive Director
Corporate Accountability International

1. http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2015/03/05/bottling-water-californ ia-drought/24389417/
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/dow-chemical-and-monsant o_b_6041802.html
3. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-indu stries and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/20/the-biggest- land-owner-in-canadas-oil-sands-isnt-exxon-mobil-or-conoco-phillips-it s-the-koch-brothers/

[outsider]

Two big successes for 'We The People':

E.P.A. Revokes Approval of New Dow Herbicide for G.M.O. Crops:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/business/epa-revokes-approval-of-new -dow-herbicide.html?_r=0

'The Environmental Protection Agency, in a surprising move, has decided to revoke the approval of a herbicide that was made to be used on a new generation of genetically modified crops.

The agency’s decision could delay the introduction of corn, soybeans and cotton developed by Dow Chemical to be resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D. But Dow said it did not anticipate a significant delay.

In a court filing on Tuesday, the E.P.A. said it had discovered new information suggesting that the herbicide, which Dow calls Enlist Duo, could be more toxic than previously believed.

“E.P.A. can no longer be confident that Enlist Duo will not cause risks of concern to nontarget organisms, including those listed as endangered, when used according to the approved label,” the agency said in its filing to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.

Well: Eating Organic Lowers Pesticide Levels in ChildrenOCT. 8, 2015

Two planes fumigated fields of coca, the basis for cocaine, in Colombia in 2006. Some fear the chemical causes cancer.

Defying U.S., Colombia Halts Aerial Spraying of Crops Used to Make CocaineMAY 14, 2015

Glyphosate being sprayed on a field in Suffolk, England. Introduced in the 1970s, it is the most widely used herbicide in the world.

Weed Killer, Long Cleared, Is DoubtedMARCH 27, 2015

Most of the corn, soybeans and cotton grown in the United States are genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, also known by the brand name Roundup. That allows farmers to spray the chemical on their fields to kill weeds without hurting their crops.

But because of overuse of glyphosate, many weeds have evolved to be resistant to it, so that strategy does not work so well any more. Dow’s new crops, which are resistant to both glyphosate and the older herbicide 2,4-D, were eagerly awaited by some farmers, who would be able to spray 2,4-D over their crops to kill weeds that are not killed by glyphosate alone.

“There’s been a lot of optimism around this, particularly in light of the fact that we have widespread resistance we’re dealing with,” said Jason Norsworthy, a professor of weed science at the University of Arkansas. He said farmers were calling him on Wednesday worried that introduction of the technology would now be delayed.

But 2,4-D is prone to drifting, and some vegetable farmers in the Midwest worried that the chemical would drift and kill their crops, which would not be engineered to withstand it. To assuage those concerns, Dow developed Enlist Duo, which contains a new formulation of 2,4-D that is less prone to drifting. It also contains glyphosate.

Groups opposed to genetically modified crops hailed the E.P.A.’s decision. “This is a roadblock to the entire next generation of corn and soy in this country,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety.

But Dow said in a statement that the concerns of the E.P.A. could be resolved in time for the 2016 growing season.

“We continue to prepare for commercial sales of Enlist Duo for the 2016 growing season with enthusiastic grower adoption,” said Tim Hassinger, the president of Dow AgroSciences, the company’s agricultural division.

The E.P.A. had approved Enlist Duo in October 2014 for use in six of the top corn-producing states, and in March of this year for use in nine more states. The crops themselves have been approved by the Agriculture Department.

Dow has been planning to begin selling at least the Enlist corn seeds in 2016, pending regulatory approval from China, a major export market. Some environmental and consumer groups, including the Center for Food Safety, had sued the E.P.A., seeking to reverse the approval of Enlist Duo. The E.P.A. filing saying that it would vacate its approval came in this lawsuit. The court must still accept the E.P.A.’s request, and Dow will have a chance to comment before that decision.

The agency said that it had initially concluded, based on information from Dow, that the two herbicides in Enlist Duo were not synergistic, meaning the toxicity of the two ingredients combined was not greater than expected based on the properties of the individual chemicals.

But the agency said it had found a patent application from Dow claiming just such a synergy. That could mean the measures included in Enlist Duo’s label to prevent damage from herbicide drift were inadequate, the agency said.

“Here, E.P.A. has learned that it did not have all relevant information at the time it made its registration decision,” the agency said in its court filing.

Shares of Dow fell nearly 3 percent on Wednesday. Dow’s chief executive, Andrew N. Liveris, has said that the company is evaluating the future of Dow AgroSciences, meaning it might be sold to another company.

The setback to Enlist Duo could be good news for Monsanto. It is developing its own next generation of crops resistant to dicamba, another old herbicide. Monsanto shares rose 4 cents on Wednesday to $95.60.

This week’s setback is the second recent one for Dow AgroSciences and the E.P.A. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated in September the E.P.A.’s approval of a Dow pesticide called sulfoxaflor, after beekeepers and others said the agency had not adequately studied the risk of the chemical to bees.'



Tell Consumers What They Are Eating:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opinion/tell-consumers-what-they-are -eating.html

'In approving genetically engineered salmon as safe to eat and safe for the environment, the Food and Drug Administration rejected petitions from environmental and food safety groups asking that companies selling this salmon be required to label it as genetically engineered. Congress should overturn that decision. Consumers deserve to know what they are eating.

The salmon, made by AquaBounty Technologies of Maynard, Mass., has genes inserted that allow it to grow to market size twice as fast as wild salmon. The F.D.A.’s approval permits the engineered salmon to be raised only in land-based hatchery tanks in two facilities — one in Canada, where genes are injected into the eggs of Atlantic salmon, and a facility in Panama, where the fish are grown to market size. Each site has physical barriers to prevent the escape of eggs and fish.

The salmon will be made sterile so that should they escape, they will be unable to breed with other salmon or establish populations in the open sea. Still, such safeguards may not be 100 percent foolproof. The F.D.A. and the Canadian and Panamanian governments will conduct inspections to make sure the safeguards are working. A major concern is what might happen if the technology spreads to larger-scale commercial operations around the world that might have weaker confinement barriers. At least one consumer group has announced plans to sue the F.D.A. to overturn its approval of the engineered salmon.

It will take about two years for these salmon to reach market size, and the Panama facility can produce about 100 tons of fish a year, a tiny amount compared with more than 200,000 tons of Atlantic salmon imported each year. Some leading grocery chains, responding to consumer concerns, have said they won’t sell the genetically engineered salmon.

The F.D.A. said there is no reason to mandate labeling because there is no material difference between engineered and natural fish on qualities like nutritional content. But the value of that information should be left to consumers to decide.

Vermont enacted a law last year that will require labeling of genetically engineered foods starting next July unless a suit filed in June 2014 by four industry trade groups derails it. Other states with strong consumer movements may try to follow.

The House passed a bill on July 23, 2015, that would pre-empt states from requiring such labeling, and industry groups are pressing the Senate to attach similar language as a rider to an omnibus spending bill. The Senate should rebuff that tactic and allow states to adopt mandatory labeling laws if they wish.'

[outsider]

Mitrochondrial Dysfuntion and GMOs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFX6vgVugew

Published on 8 Dec 2015
Jeffrey Smith interviews Dr. Alex Vasquez and Stephanie Seneff about the effects of glyphosate on human health.

[outsider]

Mark Ruffalo: ‘Monsanto Chief is Horrible’:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/12/04/mark-ruffalo-monsanto/?

Why Are We Being Fed By A Poison Expert?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhNryOPSJ0

Erin Brockovich: The Biotech Industry is Jeopardizing Our Health:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/12/05/erin-brockovich-consumed-gmos/?

90% of American Moms Want Labels on GMO Food:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/12/02/moms-gmo-food-labels/

[outsider]

The DARK Act: You Slayed It—For Now!:
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/dark-act-you-slayed-it%E2%80%94- now

'....There were very few Democrats who voted for the DARK Act: Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).

There were also a few Republicans who broke ranks: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.)

If these DARK Act opponents stay strong, they can defeat this bill, and Vermont’s GMO labeling law will take effect on July 1.

Once Vermont’s law takes effect, our movement will snowball, passing laws across the country and forcing food companies to give every American our right to know about GMOs. We’ll finally have mandatory food labels requiring the words “produced with genetic engineering” to be printed on the package.

What compromise lurks?

Unfortunately, an uncompromising win is far from guaranteed. There is still the danger that pro-GMO Democrats will decide to stab us in the back.

Politico reports that Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) is floating an alternative to the DARK Act. While the text of the proposal has not been made available, reporter Jenny Hopkinson says Stabenow's sponsorship of the measure could provide” enough cover” for Democrats to vote to preempt state GMO labeling laws......'

[outsider]

GMO Soybeans Compared to Conventionally Grown and Organic Soy:
http://nutritionfacts.org/2016/07/05/gmos-safe-case-roundup-ready-soy/  ?

'....Monsanto’s roundup-ready soybeans are the number one GM crop, genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide, Roundup—also sold by Monsanto. This allows farmers to spray fields with the Roundup herbicide glyphosate, which then kills the weeds while leaving the soy standing.

Monsanto maintains that roundup ready soybeans are compositionally equivalent to that of conventional soy, a concept that is used to argue that GMO foods are therefore as safe as non-GMO. Monsanto did not report the level of pesticide residues, however. In fact, some of the comparison tests were done on Roundup-ready soybeans that hadn’t been sprayed at all, which is the whole point of having Roundup-ready plants. In contrast to real-life samples from the market, transgenic crops intended for scientific studies are often produced without the application of herbicides or at doses lower than those typically used by farmers. It wasn’t until a study published in 2014 when the full composition of ready-to-market soybeans was analyzed.

You can see the analysis in my video, Are GMOs Safe? The Case of Roundup Ready Soy. There was a significant amount of glyphosate found in the GMO beans, along with a glyphosate breakdown product called AMPA. There was no glyphosate or AMPA found in organic soy. What about conventional non-GMO soy where glyphosate is just sprayed on the soil to kill weeds between crop cycles? Also none. So GMO soybeans are really not equivalent, they appear to have substantially more pesticide residues. The debate then shifts from the safety of Roundup ready soybeans, to the safety of Roundup itself.

I discuss whether or not the glyphosate residues on GMO soy are something to be concerned about in my video Is Monsanto’s Roundup Pesticide Glyphosate Safe?....'

'Monsanto did not report the level of pesticide residues, however. In fact, some of the comparison tests were done on Roundup-ready soybeans that hadn’t been sprayed at all, which is the whole point of having Roundup-ready plants'.

As Oliver North would say: 'Neat trick!'

[outsider]

Monsanto and DuPont Announce New Weed Killer for GMO Crops:
http://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-dupont-weed-killer-gmo-crops-19108768 05.html

'One of the biggest concerns about the cultivation of genetically modified crops is the rise of superweeds caused by the overuse of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's best-selling Roundup and other pesticides.

So, in an effort to beat back these herbicide-defying weeds, Monsanto and DuPont have agreed to sell an even stronger weed killer to go with their genetically modified seeds.

he rival seed and agrichemical companies have signed a multi-year supply agreement for the weed killer dicamba in the U.S. and Canada, Reuters reported. The new product, DuPont FeXapan herbicide plus VaporGrip Technology, will go with Monsanto's new Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans which are genetically altered to resist dicamba and glyphosate.

It's clear that Monsanto has high hopes for its latest project. According to Reuters, the company invested more than $1 billion in a dicamba production facility in Luling, Louisiana, to meet the demand it predicts. Xtend soybeans were planted on 1 million acres in the U.S. this year, but the company expects 15 million acres to be planted with the GMO soybeans next season and 55 million acres by 2019....'

Glyphosate approval: EU governments should begin glyphosate phase-out following Commission intransigence:
http://www.greens-efa.eu/glyphosate-approval-15743.html

'EU health commissioner Andriukaitas this evening confirmed that the European Commission would be granting a temporary 'technical extension' of the EU approval of the herbicide glyphosate, despite the proposal having failed to secure the support of the necessary qualified majority of EU governments again last week (1). Commenting on the decision, Green environment and food safety spokesperson Bart Staes stated:

"This decision by the Commission to extend the approval of glyphosate in spite of last week's vote shows a disdain for the opposition by the public and EU governments to this controversial toxic herbicide. As perhaps the first EU decision after the UK referendum, it shows the Commission is failing to learn the clear lesson that the EU needs to finally start listening to its citizens again. This temporary extension must be the beginning of the end for glyphosate; we would now urge EU governments and regions to exercise their rights to impose significant restrictions on its use, so we can begin the process of phasing-out glyphosate (2).

"There are clear concerns about the health risks with glyphosate, both as regards it being a carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor. Moreover, glyphosate's devastating impact on biodiversity should have already led to its ban. The process of phasing-out glyphosate and other toxic herbicides and pesticides from agriculture must begin now, and this means reorienting the EU's Common Agricultural Policy towards a more sustainable agricultural model and a Common Food Policy.”.....'

[outsider]

Sign the petition: Tell Burger King to commit to keeping GMO apples out of its meals.
http://action.foe.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=14649

The GMO apple -- known as the “Arctic Apple®” -- was genetically engineered to not turn brown when cut. Of course, browning in apples can be prevented naturally by applying lemon juice or another source of vitamin C -- making this GMO apple completely unnecessary.

What’s more, these apples may look fresh when they are actually decaying and they may be more vulnerable to pests. That means if farmers grow these new apples, they may have to increase their pesticide use. And conventional apples already have some of the highest levels of toxic pesticide residues of any fruit.

So why is the Arctic Apple® being produced? So Intrexon, the synthetic biology company that owns the GMO salmon, the GMO mosquito and the GMO apple, can make more profits!

This GMO apple was genetically engineered using a new, virtually untested experimental technique called RNA interference. Many scientists are concerned that this process may have negative unintended impacts on human health and the environment. The evidence is clear: This apple has no place in our food system!

Tell Burger King that its customers don’t want GMO apples!

Late last month, President Obama signed the DARK Act -- a discriminatory bill that prevents real GMO labeling -- into law. That means that if these apples make it to the market, we may have no way of knowing if we’re eating them!

So who stands to benefit from the GMO apple? Definitely not apple growers, who have been opposing this apple all along. And not the rest of us, our food system or our planet. The only benefits will go to Intrexon.

The good news is, Burger King’s competitors have already taken action. McDonald’s, Wendy’s and baby food giant Gerber have all listened to your concerns and confirmed that they have no plans to sell GMO apples. Their commitments will help send a message that there is no demand for this risky product.

You can convince Burger King to join its competitors and say NO to GMO apples!

It’s not too late to keep GMO apples off our plates: Tell Burger King to say no to this rotten idea.

Standing with you,
Dana Perls,
Food and technology campaigner,
Friends of the Earth

[outsider]

What is it going to take to WAKE THE SHEEPLE UP?
Probably, a bunch of mushroom clouds, and by then, of course, it will be too late.

'Millions of Honeybees Killed in Attempt to Prevent Zika':
http://www.ecowatch.com/honeybees-killed-zika-1995151657.html

'While 43 Zika cases have been reported in the state, all but one were from travelers who were infected abroad. The other was a sexually transmitted case. No one in South Carolina has been locally infected by a mosquito. Nevertheless, county officials sprayed a 15-square mile area early Sunday morning. Dorchester County officials said they announced the spraying on Friday and via a Facebook post on Saturday, but many residents said they received less than 10 hours notice.


43 cases of Zika reported in South Carolina to date.
Credit: South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control

The scenario reprises the days of DDT spraying that prompted Rachel Carson's seminal book, Silent Spring. The 1962 book by the former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service writer detailed the disastrous effects on birds from the widespread use of synthetic pesticides following World War II. The leading culprit, DDT, was shown to cause reproductive failure in bald eagles, ospreys, brown pelicans and peregrine falcons. Indiscriminate aerial spraying laid a film of the pesticide where birds would pick it up.

Naled, the pesticide used in South Carolina, is an organophosphate first registered for use as a pesticide in 1959. Organophosphates were developed in the 1940s as biological warfare agents. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently authorizes use of naled for mosquito control. It is currently being applied by aerial spraying to 16 million acres of the mainland U.S., including highly populated areas. The EPA says that the chemical does not pose risks to people, although it recommends staying indoors during aerial spraying.

However, the agency appears to underplay the risks to honeybees. Its website states:

Applications made between dusk and dawn, while bees are not typically foraging, can reduce exposure to honey bees.

Although we do not anticipate significant exposure to bees, beekeepers can reduce exposure to bee colonies even more by covering colonies and preventing bees from exiting colonies during designated treatment periods, or if possible, relocating colonies to an untreated site. Providing clean sources of food (supplemental sugar water and protein diets) and clean drinking water to honey bee colonies during application can further reduce exposure.

Contrary to the EPA's recommendation, however, the spraying in South Carolina took place from 6:30 - 8:30 a.m.

Toxipedia, the online toxicology encyclopedia, is far more circumspect on the potential dangers of naled. They call it a severe skin and eye irritant, and cite a study that showed exposure to the chemical resulted in chronic nervous system damage in dogs and rats. Toxipedia also states that naled is "highly toxic to many bird species especially Canadian geese" and affects reproduction in Mallard ducks. They also note that its use "puts many endangered species at risk." With respect to honeybees, they couldn't be more clear:

It is toxic to bees and stoneflies (#EXTOXNET, 1996).

In April, EcoWatch reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was silencing its own bee scientists. A Feb. 7, 2014 story documented the EPA's approval of two other pesticides known to be highly toxic to bees. The EPA's action came despite the concerns of beekeepers facing colony collapse.....'

(EPA - remeber them from 9/11? 'The air is safe to breathe').


'USDA Silences Its Own Scientists' Warnings About the Dangerous Effects of Pesticides on Bees':
http://www.ecowatch.com/usda-silences-its-own-scientists-warnings-abou t-the-dangerous-effects--1891083535.html

'Environmental group seeks greater protection for USDA scientists':
http://www.reuters.com/article/usda-petition-idUSL2N0WT1TQ20150327

[outsider]

Glyphosate Found in Childhood Vaccines:
http://www.ecowatch.com/glyphosate-vaccines-1999343362.html
By Zen Honeycutt

'Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's flagship herbicide Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, has been found in vaccines. Moms Across America received preliminary screening results from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri, which showed:
MMR II (Merk) vaccine had 2.671 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate
DTap Adacel (Sanofi Pasteur) vaccine had 0.123 ppb of glyphosate
Influenza Fluvirin (Novaris) 0.331 ppb of glyphosate
HepB Energix-B (Glaxo Smith Kline) 0.325 ppb of glyphosate
Pneumonoccal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23 (Merk) had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate
The MMR II vaccine had levels up to 25 times higher than the other vaccines. Following our test, additional independent tests have confirmed these findings at or above the same levels. The tests were conducted using the ELISA method.

Vaccines contain many ingredients that could be genetically modified (GMO). More than 80 percent of GMOs are genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate-based herbicides and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows glyphosate on 160 non-organic food and feed crops. These facts made us wonder if glyphosate could be contaminating not only our water, urine, breast milk, food, soil, beer and wine, but also vaccines.
According to MIT scientist Dr. Stephanie Seneff, "Glyphosate could easily be present in vaccines due to the fact that certain vaccine viruses including measles in MMR and flu are grown on gelatin derived from the ligaments of pigs fed heavy doses of glyphosate in their GMO feed. Gelatin comes from collagen which has lots of glycine. Livestock feed is allowed to have up to 400 PPM [parts per million] of glyphosate residues by the EPA, thousands of times higher than has been shown to cause harm in numerous studies."
French scientist and glyphosate expert Gilles-Eric Séralini has shown in his research that glyphosate is never used alone. It is always used with adjuvants (co-formulants/other chemicals) and he has found those adjuvants to make Roundup 1,000 times more toxic. The detection of glyphosate in vaccines with this methodology would indicate the presence of other co-formulants which are also toxic.
On Aug. 31, Moms Across America sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, EPA, National Institutes of Health, California Department of Health and Sen. Barbara Boxer requesting that they make it a priority to test vaccines for glyphosate, recall contaminated vaccines and the EPA revoke the license of glyphosate to prevent further contamination.
"This calls for independent scientists, without financial ties to Monsanto, to investigate these findings, and if verified, immediate regulatory and legislative action," said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., co-founder of The Mercury Project. "Lawyers litigating against Monsanto should be looking into the company's awareness of this contamination and its effect on children. The public needs to be ready for Monsanto and vaccine manufacturer backlash by their PR machines on this potentially grave information."
Dr. Toni Bark, founder and medical director of the Center for Disease Prevention and Reversal and co-producer of the movie BOUGHT, had this to say after reviewing the test results:
"I am deeply concerned about injecting glyphosate, a known pesticide, directly into children. Neither Roundup nor glyphosate has been tested for safety as an injectable. Injection is a very different route of entry than oral route. Injected toxins, even in minute doses can have profound effects on the organs and the different systems of the body. In addition, injecting a chemical along with an adjuvant or live virus, can induce severe allergic reactions to that substance as vaccines induce the immune system to create antibodies to whatever is included in the vaccine. Since glyphosate is heavily used in corn, soy, wheat, cotton and other commodities, we can expect to see more severe food allergies in the vaccine recipients. In addition, chemicals in ultra low doses, can have powerful effects on physiology behaving almost as hormones, stimulating or suppressing physiological receptors."
Zen Honeycutt is founder and executive director of Moms Across America.'

[outsider]

More About Glyphosate (RoundUp):
https://gmo-awareness.com/resources/glyphosate/

'Presented below are ten sobering facts about Glyphosate (the key ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp weedkiller, which the majority of Monsanto’s seeds are genetically engineered to withstand):
Soybean leaves diseased1) Glyphosate causes disease and biological / physiological disorders in crops

Fifteen years of research by the USDA indicates that the chemical glyphosate, the key ingredient in RoundUp herbicide, is linked to fungal root disease in plants.

Article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/13/us-usa-gmos-regulators-idUST RE63C2AJ20100413
Purdue Report about biological/physiological disorders: http://www.btny.purdue.edu/weedscience/2011/GlyphosatesImpact11.html

2) Glyphosate is no longer effective at killing weeds

Article about Superweeds: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.h tml
International Database on Glycines (Glyphosate family): http://www.weedscience.com/summary/MOA.aspx?MOAID=12
Iowa State: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/CropNews/2011/0120hartzler.htm
University of Arkansas: http://bumperscollege.uark.edu/test_cses2012/1946.php
National Academy of Sciences Report: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12804

TRAUDT AERIAL SERVICE
3) Glyphosate use is increasing steadily

According to the USGS, more than 88,000 tons of glyphosate were used in the United States in 2007, up from 11,000 tons in 1992. Since the advent of “super weeds,” the use of glyphosate (and other even stronger weed killers) has risen significantly.

Article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/31/us-glyphosate-pollution-idUS TRE77U61720110831
roundup-ready-crops
4) Glyphosate is not breaking down as promised

In 1996, New York’s attorney general sued Monsanto over the company’s use of “false and misleading advertising” about RoundUp. That case ended with Monsanto agreeing to stop calling Roundup “biodegradable,” and to pull ads claiming that Roundup was “safer than table salt,” “practically nontoxic,” and “stayed where you put it.”

Two decades after the advent of “RoundUp Ready” crops and their dominance in the agricultural marketplace, the evidence of their falsehoods abound: multiple studies have found significant levels of glyphosate in streams, soil, air, rainwater, and groundwater:

Wastewater: http://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate_wastewater.html
Rain and Streams: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2909
Groundwater: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22101424
Soil: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/124999079/Effects-of-Glyphosate-and-Foliar -Amendments-on-Soil-Microorganisms (slideshow; see presentation here; view report here)
Atmosphere, Soil and Surface Water: http://environment.gov.ab.ca/info/library/6444.pdf
Mississippi and Iowa Streams: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_162346.htm
Mississippi Air and Rain: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24549493
51 Midwestern Streams in 9 states: http://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate02.html

In our food: a recent study found that Glyphosate residues in the main foods of the Western diet – sugar, wheat, and genetically modified corn and soy – inhibit critical enzymes in mammals [which] manifests slowly over time, as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Source: http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

In humans (study #1): No surprise, a study done in Germany in 2012 found glyphosate in all of the urine samples it took from non-agricultural workers in Berlin, at levels 5-20 times the limit for drinking water. Source: http://www.ithaka-journal.net/herbizide-im-urin?lang=en

In humans (study #2): in June 2013, another study found traces of glyphosate in the urine samples of individuals across 18 countries in Europe. Summary: http://gmoevidence.com/dr-hans-wolfgang-hoppe-glyphosate-found-in-huma n-urine-across-europe/ Original Study Report: http://gmoevidence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/glyphosate_studyresu lts_june12.pdf

In humans and animals (study #3): in January 2014, researchers from Germany and Egypt discovered that animals fed GM feed had much higher levels of glyphosate in their urine and organs than animals fed non-GM or organic feed, which translated into higher levels of the toxic chemical in humans as well. Source: http://omicsonline.org/open-access/detection-of-glyphosate-residues-in -animals-and-humans-2161-0525.1000210.pdf
rat tumor5) Glyphosate causes birth defects, tumors, and reproductive disorders in animals, as well as sharp declines in beneficial insects

And often at dilutions far lower than the concentrations used in agricultural and even home garden spraying…

Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20695457
Study: http://www.scribd.com/doc/57277946
Study: http://sustainablefoodtrust.org/2012/09/.pdf
Study: http://www.mlmp.org.pdf
Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23820267
Study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/abstract

A June 2011 report assembled by an international team of scientists revealed that studies done as early as the 1980s by biotech and ag-industry corporations (including Monsanto) all showed that Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate causes birth defects in laboratory animals… again, at very low exposures. Read a related article here.

Glyphosate test charts
6) Glyphosate is a genotoxic endocrine disruptor to human cells and gut bacteria

Human Cells: http://www.barnstablecounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/gasnier-tox icology-elsevier-262-184-191-glyphostae-ed-human-cell-lines2.pdf

Human Placental Cells: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257596/?report=classic#b3 6-ehp0113-000716

Gut Bacteria: our gut bacteria was recently discovered to contain the very same metabolic pathway in plants that is being targeted and disrupted by Glyphosate—in direct opposition to Monsanto’s claims that the human body did not contain this pathway: http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416 (watch a full video presentation on this topic).

sprayweeds roundup
Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp weedkiller, along with other “inert” ingredients that are potentially even more dangerous. Use vinegar instead!
7) Glyphosate is linked to cancer and deadly kidney disease in humans

Three studies have linked glyphosate exposure with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma:

2001: http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/10/11/1155.long
2002: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12148884
2003: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1740618/

And a recent study linked glyphosate exposure to kidney disease in multiple countries:

2014: http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/news/sri-lanka,-kidney-disease-link ed-to-glysophate,-phosphate-fertilizer/2081217214

DNA damage
Glyphosate causes DNA damage

Inhalation of glyphosate was observed to cause DNA damage after short exposure to concentrations that correspond to the 450-fold dilution of spraying most commonly used in agriculture:

Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331240

EPA crop
9) The EPA is still working on Glyphosate’s human risk assessment

Although the EPA has found the time to establish a National Acceptable Daily Intake of glyphosate (5.5% per day; as cited in the study done on pregnant women), long-term human risk assessment studies are slow to emerge.

Glyphosate Detected in Pregnant Women: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22261298
EPA Study Outline and Schedule: http://pesticidetruths.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Reference-glypho sate-2009-12-00-Final-Work-Plan-EPA.pdf

GMO Crop charts
10) Glyphosate resistance is the primary purpose of genetic crop engineering

GM crops have been responsible for a 527 million pound increase in herbicide use in the United States over the first 16 years of commercial use of GM crops (1996 – 2011).

Article in Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/02/us-usa-study-pesticides-idUS BRE89100X20121002
Article compiling facts researched by Nature Magazine: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/01/the-rise-of -genetically-modified-crops-in-two-charts/
Study Report containing multiple source links: Benbrook, C. 2009. Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years..'

[outsider]

'Bayer to Buy Monsanto Creating World's Largest Seed and Pesticide Company':
http://www.ecowatch.com/bayer-buys-monsanto-2004657068.html

'Monsanto has finally agreed to be purchased by Bayer AG in a historic $66 billion all-cash takeover. The agreement, which both corporations have confirmed, will form the largest seed and pesticide company in the world.

The German pharmaceuticals and chemicals giant had been courting the St. Louis-based seed maker for roughly four months, with the aspirin-maker sweetening the pot with ever-growing sums of money. Bayer finally plans to pay $128 a share for Monsanto, up from its initial May offer of $122 a share.

Not only is this the largest foreign corporate takeover ever by a German firm, it's the largest cash bid on record, as Reuters reported. A successful merger would create the world's largest agrichemical firm, which will control more than one-fourth of the combined global market for seeds and pesticides.

According to Bloomberg, "The deal gives Bayer more than 2,000 varieties of seeds for crops such as corn, soybeans, and wheat. Adding that portfolio to its own vegetable, rice, cotton and oilseed offerings give Bayer a virtually unassailable position at the head of the market."

The Monsanto-Bayer combination is yet another example of the rapidly consolidating agricultural industry, with only a handful of companies controlling the sector. Alongside slumping crop prices, DuPont Co. and Dow Chemical Co. have agreed to merge, as did China National Chemical Corp. and Syngenta AG.

Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and Monsanto Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant, appeared in a joint announcement of the proposed combination on their "Advancing Together" website. In their statements, both chiefs echoed Big Ag's oft-repeated sentiment that biotechnology helps increases crop yields in an environmentally friendly way and is one solution to feeding a growing global population.

"We are fully committed to helping solve one of the biggest challenges of society, and that is how to feed a massively growing world population in an environmentally sustainable manner," Baumann said. "What we do is good for consumers. We help produce efficient, safe, healthy and affordable food. It is also good for our growers because they have better choices to increase yields in a sustainable way."

Dave Murphy, the executive director of Food Democracy Now!, refutes this belief. "Agricultural biotechnology has never been about 'feeding the world,' but enriching the bottom line of toxic chemical corporations that have had a long history of producing chemicals that are deadly to human populations and the environment," he told EcoWatch.

Monsanto, the world's largest producer of genetically modified (GMO) crops and maker of the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, has faced mounting controversy and numerous lawsuits in recent years over the health and environmental impacts of its products.

Bayer has also been subject to criticism over its widely used insecticide, imidacloprid, which belongs to a controversial class of chemicals called neonicotinoids that's linked to widespread deaths of pollinators.

On today's landmark news, Murphy said: "Now the most evil company in Europe has absorbed the most evil company in America. Monsanto and Bayer's new corporate motto should be 'Killing bees and butterflies for fun and profit.'"

The Monsanto takeover is an interesting move for the German company. Although GMOs are widely grown in the U.S. and in other countries, the topic is fraught with contention in Europe. Many European Union countries have strict laws against GMOs due to public health and environmental concerns. Germany itself discourages the cultivation of GMO crops.

The BBC reported that farming groups are concerned that the deal could lead to fewer choices and higher prices for farmers.

"Bayer's acquisition of 'Frankenstein' crop producer Monsanto could be a horror story for both Bayer and its customers: the farmers," professor John Colley of Warwick Business School in England told the publication. "The farmers will lose out as product ranges are rationalized and attempts are made to increase prices."

Several consumer advocates and environmental organizations have denounced the acquisition for similar reasons.

"Today, Bayer announced it has agreed to buy Monsanto, another devastating merger that's bad for farmers, the environment and consumers," Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Watch, said. "Consolidation in the agrochemical industry means that farmers get paid less for their crops, more pesticides are used and there are fewer options for consumers at the grocery store. It's past time for the Department of Justice to do its job and enforce anti-trust measures to support healthy competition in the ag industry."

"With this deal Big Biotech gets bigger; it means monopoly power for Bayer-Monsanto, just like the previous mergers of Dow and DuPont and Syngenta and ChemChina," Ken Roseboro, the editor and publisher of The Organic & Non-GMO Report, told EcoWatch. "These three companies will dominate the global seed and pesticide markets and will likely drive up costs for farmers. The Justice Department should stop these mergers because they are bad farmers, bad for agriculture, and bad for consumers."

Critics of the tie-up have noted that Monsanto's poor image was a factor in its decision to be bought.

"The merger of Bayer and Monsanto should make the connection between Big Pharma, Big Biotech and Big Food all the more apparent to consumers," Ronnie Cummins, the international director of the Organic Consumers Association, told EcoWatch. "This may be a move to take pressure off the manufacturer of glyphosate, the most profitable pesticide in the world. But it really doesn't matter who manufactures or sells glyphosate, or any other dangerous chemical. The damage to human health and the environment remains the same, as does our commitment to getting these chemicals out of our food system."

Dr. Vandana Shiva, the executive director of the Navdanya Trust, recently wrote about the controversial histories of both companies.

"MoBay supplied ingredients for Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Around 20 million gallons of MoBay defoliants and herbicides were sprayed over South Vietnam. Children are still being born with birth defects, adults have chronic illnesses and cancers, due to their exposure to MoBay's chemicals," she wrote. "Monsanto and Bayer's cross-licensed Agent Orange resistance has also been cross-developed for decades. Wars were fought, lives lost, nations carved into holy lands — with artificial boundaries that suit colonization and resource grab—while Bayer and Monsanto sold chemicals as bombs and poisons and their brothers provided the loans to buy those bombs."

"More recently, Bayer CropScience AG and Monsanto are believed to have entered into a long-term business relationship," Shiva continued. "This gives Monsanto and Bayer free access to each other's herbicide and paired herbicide resistance technology. Through cross-licensing agreements, mergers and acquisitions, the biotech industry has become the I.G. Farben of today, with Monsanto in the cockpit."

Monsanto and Bayer intend to file relevant materials with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Analysts are now turning their attention to the legality of the purchase and whether or not it could escape regulatory hurdles. Bayer, which expects to close the deal by the end of 2017, will pay Monsanto a break-up fee of $2 billion if the deal is not completed.

According to Reuters, Bernstein Research analysts believe that the merger has only a 50 percent chance of securing regulatory clearance. However, they cited a survey among investors that pushed the likelihood to roughly 70 percent.

"We believe political pushback to this deal, ranging from farmer dissatisfaction with all their suppliers consolidating in the face of low farm net incomes to dissatisfaction with Monsanto leaving the United States, could provide significant delays and complications," they wrote in a research note.

Meanwhile, Monsanto's tribunal at The Hague next month is still on deck. The Organic Consumers Association, IFOAM International Organics, Navdanya, Regeneration International and Millions Against Monsanto, joined by dozens of global food, farming and environmental justice groups are putting the transnational corporation on trial for crimes against nature and humanity and ecocide.

"The proposed buyout of Monsanto by Bayer does nothing to alter or weaken the upcoming Monsanto Tribunal, which will take place Oct. 15-16 in The Hague," Cummins said. "The buyout won't be completed by then. More important, the advisory opinions that will be issued by the five international judges will be applicable to all agribusiness companies, including Bayer."

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Well, 'Adolph's body lies a mouldering in his grave, but the 4th Reich still marches on'.

'IG Farben – Bayer sponsored Adolph Hitler reign and was the biggest profiteers of WWII':
http://beforeitsnews.com/war-and-conflict/2013/05/ig-farben-bayer-sopn sered-adolph-hitler-raign-and-was-the-biggest-profiteers-of-wwii-24468 40.html

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Bayer's $66bn takeover bid of Monsanto called a 'marriage made in hell'
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders leads outcry over merger, saying deal is ‘a threat to all Americans’ and should be blocked by regulators

Bayer headquarters in Germany
Rupert Neate in New York
@RupertNeate
Wednesday 14 September 2016 21.19

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/14/bayer-takeover-monsan to-66-billion-deal?0p19G=c

German chemical giant Bayer’s $66bn (£50bn) deal to buy controversial US agrochemical giant Monsanto and create the world’s largest seeds and pesticides company is “a threat to all Americans” and should be blocked, Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday.

Speaking shortly after the deal was announced, the Vermont senator, who ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, said: “The attempted takeover of Monsanto by Bayer is a threat to all Americans.”

“These mergers boost the profits of huge corporations and leave Americans paying even higher prices. Not only should this merger be blocked, but the Department of Justice should reopen its investigation of Monsanto’s monopoly over the seed and chemical market.”

He called for the proposed takeover to be blocked and for a fresh investigation into Monsanto’s current control of the seed market.

The proposed deal, the biggest corporate takeover deal so far this year, follows a wave of consolidation in the seeds and agriculture industry and has raised concerns among politicians, scientists, regulators, farmers and activists who called the deal a “marriage made in hell”.


Bayer raises Monsanto cash takeover offer to $65bn
Read more
Werner Baumann, chief executive of Bayer, which is most famous for developing aspirin, said “the combination of our two great organizations [will] deliver substantial value to shareholders, our customers, employees and society at large”.

But farmers and environmentalists warned the deal could lead to a reduction in seed variety, an increase in genetically modified crops and higher seed costs and therefore crop and food prices.

The proposed takeover is likely to face intense regulatory scrutiny in the US and Europe, particularly as it quickly follows two other mega-deals in the agriculture industry and would leave control of almost two-thirds of the world’s seeds and pesticides in the hands of three firms.

Analysts at Bernstein Research said they thought there was only a 50:50 chance of the deal winning regulatory clearance. “We believe political pushback to this deal, ranging from farmer dissatisfaction with all their suppliers consolidating in the face of low farm net incomes to dissatisfaction with Monsanto leaving the United States, could provide significant delays and complications,” they said in a research note. Because of the difficulties expected in getting the deal through, Bayer has agreed to pay Monsanto $2bn if the tie-up falls apart because of competition concerns.

Friends of the Earth described the takeover, which will see Bayer pay $128 per share – a 44% premium on Monsanto’s share price before the proposed deal was first revealed in May, as a “marriage made in hell”.

— Adrian Bebb (@AdrianBebb)
September 14, 2016
Bayer-Monsanto takeover a 'marriage made in hell'. #glyphosate #GMO #neonics #bees https://t.co/dIb6QIySFm pic.twitter.com/JSe05H0kTw

Adrian Bebb, Friends of the Earth’s food and farming campaigner, said the proposed takeover “threatens to further lock in industrialised agriculture at the expense of nature, farmers and the wider public” and warned that “this mega corporation will be doing its best to force damaging pesticides and GM seeds into our countryside”.

Campaigners promised further protests, which have already been held around the world since Bayer made its first approach for Monsanto in May.

They are concerned that the deal could lead to Monsanto, which has been described as “the most evil company in the world” for its role in developing deadly herbicide Agent Orange in the 1960s and more recently its role at the forefront of genetically engineered crops, could introduce GMO seeds in Europe.

Hugh Grant, Monsanto’s Scottish chief executive, hit out at environmentalists saying their concern about GM crops “drives me a little bit nuts” and said they should be more worried about how to feed a fast-growing global population while using less water as global temperatures rise.

“You think about two billion new citizens, you think about a warming planet. You think about water. These are appropriate conversations,” he said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday. “The thing that drives me a little bit nuts. The frustrating piece is this is such a polarized debate. And I don’t think it should be because we’re going to need all these kinds of agriculture.”

John Colley, professor of international business at Warwick Business School said: “Bayer’s acquisition of ‘Frankenstein’ crop producer Monsanto could be a horror story for both Bayer and its customers: the farmers.”

“Apart from Monsanto’s shareholders, who have hit the jackpot, this looks like a lose-lose bid. Bayer have been forced into paying too much and face major integration and competition authority risks.

“The farmers will lose out as product ranges are rationalised and attempts are made to increase prices.”

Bayer’s shares were up 1.3% to €105.60 in afternoon trading in Frankfurt, and Monsanto shares were 1.1% higher at $107.20 in New York.