Saturday, March 19, 2011

U.S. Farmers use 150M Lbs. of Roundup (poison) to 100M Acres of Cropland EVERY YEAR!

Decline and death of GM with no-till farming

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Article on the decline of GM herbicide-tolerant crop/no-till farming. Worth reading to the end to see that the experts are recommending returning to farming methods that many of us will recognize as agroecological/organic.

EXCERPTS:

"In some states, they've had to move away from no-till because herbicides have been used so exclusively."

As early as 1994, outspoken South Dakota researcher Dwayne Beck said he wrote to Monsanto to warn of the likelihood of resistance developing to its popular product. The company's response was that there was no indication it would happen with proper application. It's no surprise to him now that it's a growing problem.

U.S. farmers now apply 150 million pounds of Roundup to 100 million acres of cropland every year. "It's great technology," Beck said. "But think of Roundup Ready as taking a pill rather than doing your exercise."

Beck, who hails from the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, is a blunt spoken South Dakotan. He boils it down to farmers being too easy for weeds and pests to predict. "The bottom line is a human has to be smarter than a bug," he said. "And that's a challenge." Creating new chemicals won't solve the longer-term problem of why and how herbicide resistant weeds develop, he said. And while he's not against technology, he said farmers could benefit by focusing on improved farming methods rather than on new products. "We've been given the idea that weed control is a dead simple solution: just picking the right herbicide," Harker agrees. "It has nothing to do with herbicide, it's all about good agronomics."
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Farmers look to broader strategies to battle weeds
By Candace Krebs
Ag Journal
Posted Mar 11, 2011
http://www.agjournalonline.com/features/x698043326/Farmers-look-to-broader-strategies-to-battle-weeds

Enid, Okla. - Joe Armstrong compares modern weed control strategies to the historic Pony Express which once came through his hometown of St. Joseph, Mo.

Along each leg of the mail delivery route, the goal was to mount a fresh horse and "ride it as hard as they could," before jumping on the next one.
Likewise, farmers who rely too heavily on popular herbicides eventually exhaust their usefulness and are forced to look for something new. But herbicides are costly and time-consuming to bring to market.

"We can be the example for states that have abused herbicide technology," the Oklahoma State University weed specialist said earlier this year, speaking at a conservation tillage meeting in Northwest Oklahoma. "In some states, they've had to move away from no-till because herbicides have been used so exclusively."

As farmers shift away from tillage and widely adopt Roundup Ready crops tolerant to glyphosate applications, herbicide resistant weeds are gradually emerging and increasing in number. Watching the potency of one of the most popular tools in the last half-century of farming decline is no small matter.

"It's a big concern for farmers, because it adds more expense to their weed control programs," said Phil Blandford, of Burlington, Colo., who serves on the Colorado Conservation Tillage Association board of directors.

Marestail, or horseweed, was one of the first weeds to become resistant and is one of the most widespread problems, but Italian ryegrass, palmer amaranth and kochia are others, according to Neil Harker, a weed scientist from Canada who spoke at the No Till on the Plains Annual Conference in late January.

In some cases, Roundup is pre-applied and then applied three or four times to the same field during the growing season, which creates selection pressure, Harker said.

Year after year rotations, like corn and soybeans, are a pathway to problems because they are so repetitive. On the High Plains, a "chem-fallow" practice of leaving ground idle for 24 months to build up soil nitrogen also creates an avenue to weed resistance.

Life after Roundup Ready
As early as 1994, outspoken South Dakota researcher Dwayne Beck said he wrote to Monsanto to warn of the likelihood of resistance developing to its popular product. The company's response was that there was no indication it would happen with proper application. It's no surprise to him now that it's a growing problem.

"Resistance is a natural thing," said the popular no till speaker who was on the program at the High Plains No Till Conference in Burlington, Colo., earlier this year. "If farmers want to use this technology they need to protect it. It's not Monsanto's problem to protect the technology, it's the farmers' job."

Applying it at reduced rates, at the wrong time or in the wrong way can hinder its effectiveness and give weeds the upper hand, he and other experts say.

With glyphosate in the toolkit, it's easy for farmers to get lazy. It's the closest thing they have to a magic bullet, killing a broad spectrum of plants safely with little known residual impact on the environment. Glyphosate now accounts for $5.5 billion in sales worldwide, more than all other herbicides combined.

In addition, the biotechnological development of Roundup resistant crops means farmers can quickly and easily treat entire fields without harming the plants they intend to harvest.

The miracle drug has also become more affordable: costs have come down from around $80 a gallon in the early years of Roundup Ready adoption to as low as $10 today with generic versions.

As a result, U.S. farmers now apply 150 million pounds of Roundup to 100 million acres of cropland every year.

"It's great technology," Beck said. "But think of Roundup Ready as taking a pill rather than doing your exercise."

Instead of managing their cropping systems for maximum weed control, many farmers simply apply a chemical, Beck contends, just as they would if they had a way to stay fit and keep their weight down by merely popping a pill instead of working out everyday and eating healthier.

"Everyone wants to point at the biotech as the issue," Beck said. "It's like the guns: it's not the guns, it's the idiots with the guns. It's the way we use them that matters."

Weed specialists like OSU's Armstrong recommend using a cocktail of pre-emergence herbicides representing different modes of action. Getting a jump on things is important; his studies show weeds begin interfering with yields as soon as 7 days after the crop emerges.

"Because of reduced tillage, you're going to see an increase in winter annual weeds," he said. "Herbicide timing is absolutely crucial in no-till because weeds grow fast, and options for control are quickly lost."

Mixing up modes of action can reduce the speed at which resistance develops. But even that isn't a cure-all. Armstrong points to water hemp in Illinois that developed resistance to its fifth mode of action last summer, a rare example of how savvy weeds can be.

Targeting weeds more precisely might help. Dietrich Kastens, a farmer and well-known ag technology specialist from Herndon, Kan., said precision weed management — imagine a direct-injection rig that senses weed pressure as it goes across a field — has potential but is still in the very early stages of development. "That's fruit that is way up on the tree," he said. "But it's typical of the farmer mentality to throw more technology at a problem that was created by technology."

In no till circles at least, experts say farmers need to stop looking for shortcuts and instead become increasingly sophisticated managers of their resources.

"Most of us grew up in a world where we looked at each crop by itself," Kastens said. "Now we know we need to be looking at the whole system."


Beck, who hails from the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, is a blunt spoken South Dakotan. He boils it down to farmers being too easy for weeds and pests to predict. "The bottom line is a human has to be smarter than a bug," he said. "And that's a challenge." Creating new chemicals won't solve the longer-term problem of why and how herbicide resistant weeds develop, he said. And while he's not against technology, he said farmers could benefit by focusing on improved farming methods rather than on new products.

"We've been given the idea that weed control is a dead simple solution: just picking the right herbicide," Harker agrees. "It has nothing to do with herbicide, it's all about good agronomics."



What he wraps into the term "integrated weed management" includes careful seeding, fertilization and disease control to insure a competitive stand and a healthy crop canopy; diversifying not only crops and the timing of herbicide applications but alternating between spring and fall-planted crops; and careful harvesting targeted at preventing weeds and volunteer from sprouting later.

OSU precision nutrient management specialist Brian Arnall is finding in his research that poor soil pH, or acidity levels, can inhibit herbicide longevity, further implicating the health of the entire farm eco-system in effective weed control.
"We aren't letting our herbicides live the length they need to live," he said. "That's a recipe for resistance."



To till or not to till


Across portions of the High Plains, tumble windmill grass is emerging as one of few plants that doesn't capitulate to glyphosate. Atrazine-based products are effective on first-year plants, but once they mature, they become resistant even to that.
"I think the only thing successful there is very shallow sweep tillage," OSU's Armstrong said.
That brings up the question of whether weed control challenges could drive farmers back to the use of traditional tillage practices.

Northwest Oklahoma district agronomist Roger Gribble said farmers need not take a doctrinaire approach to eliminating tillage.

"Don't let anybody ever define no till for you," he said. "If there's a Bible out there, maybe somebody would subscribe to that. But I don't know of one. There are places in a no-till system where I would use some tillage."

Jimmy Wayne Kinder, an early adopter of no till from Chattanooga, Okla., said the weed issue will force producers into hard choices over whether to till or not to till, with two distinctive paths in front of them.

In his case, he's already past that fork in the road.

"I'm not going back to plowing," he said. "I've had some of my land in no till for 18 years now. I've paid my dues."
Source: http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12979-decline-and-death-of-gm-with-no-till-farming

THINK BEFORE YOU SPRAY YOUR "WEEDS!!!!"

Important court victory on Roundup/pesticide spraying in Agentina

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NOTE: The following is a rough translation and summary of an important article from the Argentine press reporting a new court ruling that upholds a 2010 ban on the spraying of glyphosate and other pesticides near homes. We would be grateful to receive a better quality English translation.

While the case concerns rice crops, the ruling will also apply to GM soy. Rice and GM soy are sprayed heavily with pesticides, often from the air, causing serious public health problems.

For more information on Roundup/pesticide spraying on GM soy and other crops, which has led to a massive public health problem in Argentina, see
http://www.gmwatch.org/component/content/article/12479-reports-reports

Health first, then commerce [Primero la salud, despues los negocios]
by Dario Aranda
Pagina12 (Argentina), 18 Mar 2011
English summary of article in Spanish:
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-164438-2011-03-18.html

An Argentine court has upheld a 2010 court injunction banning the spraying of pesticides near homes in Chaco province. The pesticides named in the case include glyphosate (Roundup), endosulfan, methamidophos, chlopyrifos, and picloram, among others.

The court banned spraying with chemicals within a thousand meters of housing if the method is terrestrial and 2000 meters if using aerial methods. The Court re-asserted the precautionary principle (with the possibility of irreversible environmental damage, it is necessary to take protective measures) and stressed that priority should be given to the health of the population over agricultural production. The court also banned spraying near waterways.

The previous 2010 court injunction was appealed by the rice producers. In September 2010, the measure was relaxed by the same court. The limit was reduced from 1000 to 500 meters and spraying over waterways was allowed again. The main arguments were an environmental impact study provided by the company (not involving independent experts) and a letter from the Epidemiology Dept of Chaco (under the Ministry of Health), which had downplayed the cases of residents with leukemia.

The latest court ruling makes clear what should be the priority of the judiciary regarding the health of the population and agricultural production: "You can not modify the relief granted (which protected the residents) giving primacy to economic productivity over the risks to health and life of the people."

The judge also questioned the evidence that allowed the relaxation of the measure in the first instance: "We understand the environmental impact study prepared by one party (the companies) should have been subjected to further evaluation by impartial government agencies," he said in his ruling.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Two Thirds of THESE OVERPRICED "WHOLE" FOODS CONTAIN GMO's??


Whole Foods and others spent a lot of time this week on their blogs and on the Internet attacking me and the Organic Consumers Association for supposedly mischaracterizing their position on "coexistence" with Monsanto. In an internal company memorandum, marked "For Internal Use Only - Do Not Distribute" January 30, 2011, Whole Foods execs basically told their employees that the OCA is spreading lies to "uniformed consumers" in exchange for money and publicity. Quoting directly from the WFM company memo:

"Why is the OCA spreading misinformation? That's a hard question for us to answer. Perhaps because we don't share their narrow view of what it means to support organics, or perhaps because we do not support them with donations. Either way, it's a shame that an organization that claims to "campaign for health, justice and sustainability" can't simply tell the truth. This just confuses consumers. Despite all their noise, no industry leaders listen to the OCA - but uninformed consumers might. Their fear-mongering tactics, combined with the OCA's lack of transparency about its funding sources, underscore the fact that it is neither credible nor trustworthy. We can only assume their activities are intended for further fund-raising. "

After bashing the OCA, Whole Foods then goes on to admit that WFM stores are filled with conventional and "natural" products that are contaminated with GMOs (they neglect to mention to their staff that these conventional and "natural" products make up approximately 2/3 of WFM's total sales). Again quoting directly:

"The reality is that no grocery store in the United States, no matter what size or type of business, can claim they are GE-free. While we have been and will continue to be staunch supporters of non-GE foods, we are not going to mislead our customers with an inaccurate claim (and you should question anyone who does). Here's why: the pervasive planting of GE crops in the U.S. and their subsequent use in our national food supply.  93% of soy, 86% of corn, 93% of cotton, and 93% of canola seed planted in the U.S. in 2010 were genetically engineered. Since these crops are commonly present in a wide variety of foods, a GE-free store is currently not possible in the U.S. (unless the store sells only organic foods.)"
Excepted from : http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22499.cfm

FRANKENFOODS : WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF

Monsanto Nation: Exposing Monsanto's Minions

My expose last week, "The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?"  has ignited a long-overdue debate on how to stop Monsanto's earth killing, market-monopolizing, climate-destabilizing rampage. Should we basically resign ourselves to the fact that the Biotech Bully of St. Louis controls the dynamics of the marketplace and public policy? Should we seek some kind of practical compromise or "coexistence" between organics and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)? Should we focus our efforts on crop pollution compensation and "controlled deregulation" of genetically engineered (GE) crops, rather than campaign for an outright ban, or mandatory labeling and safety-testing? Should we prepare ourselves for a future farm landscape where the U.S.'s 23 million acres of alfalfa, the nation's fourth largest crop, (93% of which are currently not sprayed with toxic herbicides), including organic alfalfa, are sprayed with Roundup and/or genetically polluted with Monsanto's mutant genes?

Or should we stand up and say Hell No to Monsanto and the Obama Administration? Should we stop all the talk about coexistence between organics and GMOs; unite Millions Against Monsanto,  mobilize like never before at the grassroots; put enormous pressure on the nation's grocers to truthfully label the thousands of so-called conventional or "natural" foods containing or produced with GMOs; and then slowly but surely drive GMOs from the market?

Of course "coexistence" and "controlled deregulation" are now irrelevant in regard to Monsanto's herbicide-resistant alfalfa.  Just after my essay was posted last week, the White House gave marching orders to the USDA to allow Monsanto and its Minions to plant GE Roundup-resistance alfalfa on millions of acres, from sea to shining sea, with no restrictions whatsoever.

"Bill Tomson and Scott Kilman of the Wall Street Journal reported that Vilsack's rejection of a compromise proposal - partial deregulation, which was vehemently opposed by biotech companies and only tepidly accepted by non-GE interests - was the result of an Obama administration review of "burdensome" regulations."

"Sources familiar with the negotiations at USDA, who preferred to remain anonymous, told
Food Safety News they believe the White House asked Vilsack to drop proposed regulations so the administration would appear more friendly to big business."   - Helena Bottemiller, Food Safety News

This post-holiday gift to Monsanto from the White House is ominous. After the deliberate contamination of 20 million acres of U.S. alfalfa, we can then expect Monsanto and corporate agribusiness to call for GMOs to be allowed under the National Organic Standards. But of course let us hope we get another temporary reprieve from the same federal judge in California who halted the planting of GE alfalfa previously, since the USDA has still failed to demonstrate in their current Environmental Impact Statement that Monsanto's alfalfa is safe for the environment.

Organic Infighting

Whole Foods and others spent a lot of time this week on their blogs and on the Internet attacking me and the Organic Consumers Association for supposedly mischaracterizing their position on "coexistence" with Monsanto. In an internal company memorandum, marked "For Internal Use Only - Do Not Distribute" January 30, 2011, Whole Foods execs basically told their employees that the OCA is spreading lies to "uniformed consumers" in exchange for money and publicity. Quoting directly from the WFM company memo:

"Why is the OCA spreading misinformation? That's a hard question for us to answer. Perhaps because we don't share their narrow view of what it means to support organics, or perhaps because we do not support them with donations. Either way, it's a shame that an organization that claims to "campaign for health, justice and sustainability" can't simply tell the truth. This just confuses consumers. Despite all their noise, no industry leaders listen to the OCA - but uninformed consumers might. Their fear-mongering tactics, combined with the OCA's lack of transparency about its funding sources, underscore the fact that it is neither credible nor trustworthy. We can only assume their activities are intended for further fund-raising. "

After bashing the OCA, Whole Foods then goes on to admit that WFM stores are filled with conventional and "natural" products that are contaminated with GMOs (they neglect to mention to their staff that these conventional and "natural" products make up approximately 2/3 of WFM's total sales). Again quoting directly:

"The reality is that no grocery store in the United States, no matter what size or type of business, can claim they are GE-free. While we have been and will continue to be staunch supporters of non-GE foods, we are not going to mislead our customers with an inaccurate claim (and you should question anyone who does). Here's why: the pervasive planting of GE crops in the U.S. and their subsequent use in our national food supply.  93% of soy, 86% of corn, 93% of cotton, and 93% of canola seed planted in the U.S. in 2010 were genetically engineered. Since these crops are commonly present in a wide variety of foods, a GE-free store is currently not possible in the U.S. (unless the store sells only organic foods.)"

But of course we are not asking WFM to lie to or "mislead" their customers, to claim that all their products are GMO-free, or to sell only organically certified foods. On the contrary, we are simply asking them to abandon the "business as usual" industry practice of remaining silent on the scope and degree of contamination in the billions of dollars of non-organic food they are selling to unwitting consumers every year. What we are asking is that WFM ethically lead the way - in what is now a very unethical marketplace - by admitting publicly (not just in an internal memo) that a major portion of the non-organic foods they are selling (especially processed foods and animal products) are contaminated with GMOs. Then we want them to take the next step and announce that they will start labeling these GMO and/or CAFO foods truthfully, meanwhile pressuring their non-organic food suppliers to either reformulate products with non-GMO ingredients or start making the transition to organic.

Let us hope that WFM eventually does the right thing. It's unlikely WFM will adopt Truth-in-Labeling unless they get a massive amount of pressure from their customers, workers, and natural food competitors. But if we can build a grassroots Movement strong enough to convince WFM and other natural food stores to adopt Truth-in-Labeling practices, there will be enormous pressure in the marketplace for other larger supermarket chains to follow suit. However, if WFM and other grocery stores refuse to voluntarily label GMO and CAFO products, OCA is prepared to mobilize nationwide to press for mandatory labeling ordinances at the city, county, and state level.

To sign up as a grassroots coordinator for OCA's Millions Against Monsanto and Factory Farms Truth-in-Labeling Campaign go to: http://organicconsumers.org/oca-volunteer/

Beyond Organic Infighting

The good news this week is that WFM, Organic Valley, Stonyfield, the National Coop Grocers Association and the Organic Trade Association have been making strong statements about fighting against GMOs. In a lengthy telephone conversation two days ago with Organic Valley CEO George Sieman, George told me how angry he was at me and the OCA, but he also said that Organic Valley was going to step up the fight against Monsanto. I said I was glad to hear this. I told him that OCA was going to do the same. I told him that our Millions Against Monsanto Truth-in-Labeling campaign is already attracting thousands of volunteers all across the USA and that we weren't going to give up until grocery stores, natural food stores, and coops start labeling conventional and "natural" products containing GMOs or coming from CAFOs.

We'll certainly see Organic Valley and the rest of the organic industry's pledge to fight GMOs put to the test in the near future, when the USDA unleashes genetically engineered sugar beets for nationwide planting. But given the need for a United Front, OCA would like to stress that Whole Foods Market is not the enemy. Wal-Mart and Monsanto are the enemy. Stonyfield Farm is not the enemy. The Biotechnology Industry Association, Archer Daniels Midland, and Cargill are the enemy. Organic Valley is not the enemy. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, Kraft and Dean Foods are the enemy. OCA wants the organic community to unite our forces, cut the bullshit about "coexistence," and move forward with an aggressive campaign to drive GMOs and CAFOs off the market.

Monsanto's Minions: The White House, Congress, and the Mass Media

The United States is rapidly devolving into what can only be described as a Monsanto Nation. Despite Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton's) campaign operatives in 2008 publicly stating that Obama supported mandatory labels for GMOs, we haven't heard a word from the White House on this topic since Inauguration Day. Michele Obama broke ground for an organic garden at the White House in early 2009, but after protests from the pesticide and biotech industry, the forbidden "O" (Organic) word was dropped from White House PR.  Since day one, the Obama Administration has mouthed biotech propaganda, claiming, with no scientific justification whatsoever, that biotech crops can feed the world and enable farmers to increase production in the new era of climate change and extreme weather.

Like Obama's campaign promises to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; like his promises to bring out-of-control banksters and oil companies under control; like his promises to drastically reduce greenhouse gas pollution and create millions of green jobs; Obama has not come though on his 2008 campaign promise to label GMOs. His unilateral approval of Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa, overruling the federal courts, scientists, and the organic community, offers the final proof: don't hold your breath for this man to do anything that might offend Monsanto or Corporate America.

Obama's Administration, like the Bush and Clinton Administrations before him, has become a literal "revolving door" for Monsanto operatives. President Obama stated on the campaign trail in 2007-2008 that agribusiness cannot be trusted with the regulatory powers of government.

But, starting with his choice for USDA Secretary, the pro-biotech former governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, President Obama has let Monsanto and the biotech industry know they'll have plenty of friends and supporters within his administration. President Obama has taken his team of food and farming leaders directly from the biotech companies and their lobbying, research, and philanthropic arms:

Michael Taylor, former Monsanto Vice President, is now the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods. Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto-funded Danforth Plant Science Center, is now the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Islam Siddiqui, Vice President of the Monsanto and Dupont-funded pesticide-promoting lobbying group, CropLife, is now the Agriculture Negotiator for the US Trade Representative. Rajiv Shah former agricultural-development director for the pro-biotech Gates Foundation (a frequent Monsanto partner), served as Obama's USDA Under-Secretary for Research Education and Economics and Chief Scientist and is now head of USAID. Elena Kagan, who, as President Obama's Solicitor General, took Monsanto's side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready alfalfa case, is now on the Supreme Court. Ramona Romero, corporate counsel to DuPont, has been nominated by President Obama to serve as General Counsel for the USDA.

Of course, America's indentured Congress is no better than the White House when it comes to promoting sane and sustainable public policy. According to Food and Water Watch, Monsanto and the biotech industry have spent more than half a billion dollars ($547 million) lobbying Congress since 1999. Big Biotech's lobby expenditures have accelerated since Obama's election in 2008. In 2009 alone Monsanto and the biotech lobby spent $71 million. Last year Monsanto's Minions included over a dozen lobbying firms, as well as their own in-house lobbyists.

America's bought-and-sold mass media have likewise joined the ranks of Monsanto's Minions. Do a Google search on a topic like citizens' rights to know whether our food has been genetically engineered or not, or on the hazards of GMOs and their companion pesticide Roundup, and you'll find very little in the mass media. However, do a Google search on the supposed benefits of Monsanto's GMOs, and you'll find more articles in the daily press than you would ever want to read.

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers' right to know what's in their food. In a decade of Congressional lobbying, the OCA has never seen more than 24 out of 435 Congressional Representatives co-sponsor one of Kucinich's GMO labeling bills. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the outrageous "Citizens United" case gave big corporations like Monsanto the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Keep in mind that one of the decisive Supreme Court swing votes in the "Citizen's United' case was cast by the infamous Justice Clarence Thomas, former General Counsel for Monsanto.

To maneuver around Monsanto's Minions in Washington we need to shift our focus and go local. We've got to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace, at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to voluntarily label their products; while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels. And while we're doing this we need to join forces with the growing national movement to get corporate money out of politics and the media and to take away the fictitious "corporate personhood" (i.e. the legal right of corporations to have all the rights of human citizens, without the responsibility, obligations, and liability of real persons) of Monsanto and the corporate elite.

Monsanto's Minions: Frankenfarmers in the Fields

The unfortunate bottom line is that most of the North American farmers who have planted Monsanto's Roundup-resistant or Bt-spliced crops (soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, sugar beets, or alfalfa) are either brain-washed, intimidated (Monsanto has often contaminated non-GMO farmers crops and then threatened to sue them for "intellectual property violations" if they didn't sign a contract to buy GMO seeds and sign a confidentiality contract to never talk to the media), or ethically challenged. These "commodity farmers," who receive billions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies to plant their Frankencrops and spray their toxic chemicals and fertilizers, don't seem to give a damn about the human health hazards of chemical, energy, and GMO-intensive agriculture; the cruelty, disease and filth of Factory Farms or CAFOs; or the damage they are causing to the soil, water, and climate. Likewise they have expressed little or no concern over the fact that they are polluting the land and the crops of organic and non-GMO farmers.

Unfortunately, these Frankenfarmers, Monsanto's Minions, have now been allowed to plant GMO crops on 150 million acres, approximately one-third of all USA cropland. With GE alfalfa they'll be planting millions of acres more.

The time has come to move beyond polite debate with America's Frankenfarmers, and their powerful front groups such as the American Farm Bureau, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association. "Coexistence" is a joke when you are dealing with indentured Minions whose only ethical guideline is making money. When I asked a French organic farmer a few years ago what he thought about the idea of coexistence with GE crops and farmers, he laughed. "If my neighbor dared to plant Monsanto's GM crops, I'd hop on my tractor and plow them up." Thousands of European farmers and organic activists have indeed uprooted test plots of GMOs over the past decade. Unfortunately if you get caught destroying Frankencrops in the USA, you'll likely be branded a terrorist and sent to prison.

Apart from direct action, it's time to start suing, not just Monsanto and the other biotech bullies, but the Frankenfarmers themselves. Attorneys have pointed out to me that the legal precedent of "Toxic Trespass" is firmly established in American case law. If a farmer carelessly or deliberately sprays pesticides or herbicides on his or her property, and this toxic chemical strays or "trespasses" and causes damage to a neighbor's property, the injured party can sue the "toxic trespasser" and collect significant damages. It's time for America's organic and non-GMO farmers to get off their knees and fight, both in the courts and in the court of public opinion. The Biotech Empire of Monsanto, Dow, Dupont, Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta will collapse if its Frankenfarmers are threatened with billions of dollars in toxic trespass damages.

Monsanto's Minions: Retail Grocery Stores, Factory Farms, Restaurants, and Garden Supply Stores

It's important to understand where GMOs are sold or consumed, and who's selling them. Twenty-five percent of GMOs end up in non-labeled, non-organic processed food, the so-called conventional or "natural" foods sold in grocery stores or restaurants; while the remaining 75% are forced-fed to animals on non-organic farms, factory farms, or CAFOs (Confined Animal Feedlot Operations); or else sold internationally, often without the informed consent of overseas consumers. This means we need to identify and boycott, not only so-called conventional or "natural" foods containing soy, soy lecithin, corn, corn sweetener, canola, cottonseed oil, and sugar beet sweetener, but all non-organic meat, dairy, and eggs that come from factory farms or CAFOs. Once Truth-in-Labeling practices are implemented it will be relatively easy for consumers to identify and avoid products that are labeled "May Contain GMOs" or "CAFO."

Although most of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide sales are directly to farmers, a considerable amount of Roundup is sold in garden supply stores, supplying backyard gardeners, landscapers, and golf courses. Municipal and state governments also spray Roundup in parks and along roadways, while the DEA sprays large amounts of Roundup in rural villages in Colombia and the Andes, part of the insane and murderous War on Drugs.

Monsanto's Minions: Consumers

Millions of health, climate, and environmental-minded consumers are starting to realize that we must vote with our consumer food dollars if we want health, justice, and sustainability. Unfortunately, millions of others are still mindlessly consuming and over consuming processed foods, junk foods, and cheap, contaminated meat and animal products. The only guaranteed way to avoid GMOs completely is to buy organic foods or to grow your own, and stay away from restaurants (unless they are organic) and fast food outlets. Otherwise, if you are contemplating the purchase of a conventional or "natural" food check the ingredients panel carefully. Avoid all non-organic products that contain soy, soy lecithin, corn, corn sweetener, canola, cottonseed oil, and sugar beet sweetener.

Millions Against Monsanto

We must draw hope from the fact that Monsanto is not invincible. After 16 years of non-stop biotech bullying and force-feeding Genetically Engineered or Modified (GE or GM) crops to farm animals and "Frankenfoods" to unwitting consumers, Monsanto has a big problem, or rather several big problems. A growing number of published scientific studies indicate that GE foods pose serious human health threats.  Federal judges are finally starting to acknowledge what organic farmers and consumers have said all along: uncontrollable and unpredictable GMO crops such as alfalfa and sugar beets spread their mutant genes onto organic farms and into non-GMO varieties and plant relatives, and should be halted. 

Monsanto's Roundup, the agro-toxic companion herbicide for millions of acres of GM soybeans, corn, cotton, alfalfa, canola, and sugar beets, is losing market share. Its overuse has spawned a new generation of superweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as 2,4, D and paraquat. Moreover, patented "Roundup Ready" crops require massive amounts of climate destabilizing nitrate fertilizer. Compounding Monsanto's damage to the environment and climate, rampant Roundup use is literally killing the soil, destroying essential soil microorganisms, degrading the living soil's ability to capture and sequester CO2, and spreading deadly plant diseases.

In just one year, Monsanto has moved from being Forbes' "Company of the Year" to the Worst Stock of the Year. The Biotech Bully of St. Louis has become one of the most hated corporations on Earth.

The biotech bullies and the Farm Bureau have joined hands with the Obama Administration to force controversial Fankencrops like alfalfa onto the market. But as African-American revolutionary Huey Newton pointed out in the late 1960's, "The Power of the People is greater than the Man's technology." Join us as we take on Monsanto and their Minions. Our life and our children's "right to a future" depend upon the outcome of this monumental battle.

Please sign up now as a volunteer grassroots coordinator for OCA's Millions Against Monsanto and Factory Farms Truth-in-Labeling Campaign: http://organicconsumers.org/oca-volunteer/

HUMILTIY -VS- FRANKENFISH HUBRIS

March 17, 2011, 8:30 pm

Frankenfish Phobia


Timothy EganTimothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.
At a time when the shell of the earth has cracked and the ocean heaved a mortal wave upon a shore of vulnerable nuclear plants, a small miracle is playing out in the biggest river of the American West. Spring Chinook salmon, the alpinists of the maritime world, are following biological imperative and climbing their way up the Columbia to spawn and die.
They are returning from a life in the distant Pacific, swimming home to a grave in gravel, some going almost 1,000 river miles inland. Chinook are the largest salmon, easily the most tasty, and perhaps the most imperiled.
Given the demand for salmon, it is no surprise that a Frankenfish has emerged — a lab-created hybrid that could soon become the first genetically engineered animal approved by the Food and Drug Administration for human consumption. The company behind these manufactured fish promises that they will not affect ones from an ancient and wild gene pool.
Here we go again. It is human to think we can trick nature, or do it one better. It is human to think a tsunami would never knock out a nuclear plant, a hurricane would never bury a city and a deepwater oil drill would never poison a huge body of water. In the gods of technology we trust.
Until they fail. And then, we feel helpless and small and wonder what they — or we — were thinking.

The fate of wild salmon and a panic over power plants that no longer answer to human commands would not seem to be interlinked. But they are, in the belief that the parts of the world that have been fouled, or found lacking, can be engineered to our standards — without consequence. You see this attitude in the denial caucus of Congress, perhaps now a majority of Republicans in power, who say, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that climate change is a hoax.
The AquAdvantage Salmon with a non-transgenic Atlantic salmonAquaBounty TechnologiesThe “AquAdvantage Salmon,” in the background, with a non-transgenic Atlantic salmon of the same age.
The newfangled fish comes from AquaBounty Technologies, a company in New England, where many species of the water world are now extinct. They have patented an “AquAdvantage Salmon,” a sterile Atlantic female with a Chinook gene that can “grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon,” says the company.
Consumer groups, and a bipartisan cluster of Congress that has not forsaken reason, are fighting fast-track Food and Drug Administration approval. They are also insisting that if the Frankenfish comes to market, the new salmon would have to be labeled transgenic — over the company’s objections.
Wild salmon require so much work: they need clean water, a bountiful ocean and restraint to ensure that they aren’t fished out of existence. Vigilance, and a small amount of sacrifice — what a drag.
The alternative, some feel, is to create something under human control. What AquaBounty would do is to take the Chinook gene and splice it into a farm-raised Atlantic. A third fish, an ocean pout, which looks like an eel on a bad fin day, would provide the genetic code that allows AquAdvantage Salmon to grow so fast. Voila: fast fish from the factory, without the hassle of habitat preservation.
I’m not reflexively afraid of living better through chemistry. Genetically modified corn and soybeans have been around for some time. If we can grow food and fiber with less demand on water and nutrients, that’s often worth pursuing.
But the Frankenfish is a much bigger step, and not just because it opens the door to federal approval of all kinds of freaks from the farm. Splice a breast-heavy chicken with a pellet-loving pig and you’re into some seriously modified “other white meat.”
With wild salmon, many people wonder what all the fuss is about. In the Northwest, salmon is our symbol, even if we’ve so mismanaged their spawning grounds with dams and overfishing. Where once there were perhaps 20 million salmon returning to the Columbia, that number now is barely a million in some years.
Alaska has done much better. They have the world’s largest wild salmon runs because they’ve protected habitats, kept water quality fairly good and regulated fishermen.
These new salmon, AquaBounty says in its pleadings before the government, will not harm the ones handed down by the ages. There is “virtually no possibility of escape and interaction with the wild population,” company officials say.
Why do I not feel reassured? The last quarter century has bred skepticism into me, beginning with a personal experience in 1986. We were in Italy, my wife pregnant with our first child, when the Chernobyl nuclear plant blew. The Soviets lied, and covered up the accident.
But what soon became clear — that a runaway reactor had spewed more than 400 times the amount of radioactivity into the environment than that released by the atomic bomb over Hiroshima — made us tremble. For days, along with the rest of Europe, we watched the pattern of a huge radioactive plume, as officials warned that pregnant women were at particularly high risk.
Luckily, the radioactive cloud never came our way. But given the choice between the hard work of trying to respect the laws of nature, and the engineered solution, I’ll take the seasonal miracle of wild salmon — and try to learn something about humility.
Source: NY Times

Monday, March 14, 2011

WHICH IS WORSE?????

Is Sugar Really Healthier Than Corn Syrup?

Why everything you've been told about sweets is wrong.
Mon Mar. 14, 2011 2:30 AM PDT
It's been ages since I've reached for a Mountain Dew, but when PepsiCo introduced its Throwback line of "retro" sodas in 2009, I was tempted. Its "real sugar" sweetener seemed much more appealing than the high-fructose corn syrup that's been ubiquitous in sodas since the mid-1980s. Clearly, I wasn't alone. Catering to the sensibilities of the marketplace, Starbucks, Snapple, Kraft, and food giant ConAgra have all recently ditched HFCS in favor of sugar. This sea change hasn't escaped the notice of the Corn Refiners Association. Last September, after blowing more than $30 million on ads aimed at saving corn syrup's faltering rep (if you think HFCS is any worse than sugar, "You're in for a sweet surprise!"), the trade group finally threw in the towel and petitioned the FDA to let it rebrand its product as "corn sugar."*
This earned the refiners plenty of flak, but you can hardly blame them for trying. After years of flogging by nutritionists and foodies, HFCS has become, well, a four-letter word. This wasn't always so. Back in the '70s, table sugar (a.k.a. sucrose) was the bad guy. People associated it (rightly) with tooth decay and diabetes, whereas fructose, the predominant sugar in fruit, seemed a more natural option. Gary Taubes, author of the nutritional bestseller Good Calories, Bad Calories, explains that manufacturers of items like Snapple and sweetened yogurt didn't want sugar in the first few ingredients, because it made their products appear unhealthy. So corn-syrup marketers capitalized on fructose's good reputation, and by the '80s, food and beverage manufacturers were switching to HFCS in droves.
Now the pendulum has swung back: Corn syrup is the demon, while sugar (sometimes cleverly disguised as "evaporated cane juice") is back in vogue. But all this back-and-forth makes little sense since, nutritionally speaking, the two sweeteners are practically identical. Yes, fructose is bad for you. (More on that later.) But every nutritionist I spoke with agreed that table sugar—a molecule composed of one part fructose to one part glucose—is no better, really, than food-grade HFCS, which contains the same ingredients in a roughly 55/45 ratio. The main distinction is that the fructose and glucose units are joined in sugar and detached in corn syrup. But since the small intestine promptly breaks that bond, it doesn't matter.
Most common sweeteners, including many fruit-juice concentrates, cane juice, maple syrup, and honey, have a fructose-to-glucose ratio around 50/50. Notable exceptions include brown rice syrup and kitchen corn syrups like Karo, which contain no fructose, and certain kinds of agave nectar—which contains up to 92 percent fructose. (Agave is the sweetener du jour for the Whole Foods crowd, thanks in part to its low glycemic index—which measures how fast your blood sugar spikes after you eat a given food.)
Unlike glucose, which the body stores in various tissues for use as fuel, fructose is sent to the liver for processing. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California-San Francisco, has shown that it causes a buildup of fats there, triggering a host of health problems including diabetes, gout, and heart disease. Most worrisome, Lustig says, it can lead to insulin resistance, a hormonal snafu that makes you feel hungry even when you're full. "The way fructose is metabolized leads you to want to eat more," he explains—no great revelation to anyone who's ever slain a pint of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting.
Prior to 1900, about 4 percent of America's calories came from fructose, while today's teens get roughly 12 percent of their calories that way. Since sugar and corn syrup are equally efficient as fructose delivery vehicles, the obvious conclusion is simply that we're consuming too many sweets. As for the HFCS-vs.-sugar smackdown, you might as well debate whether whiskey is healthier than rum. "In high-enough quantities, they're both poison," says Lustig.
Some nutritionists have even argued that fructose should be regulated like a drug. Good luck with that. In 1986, around the time the beverage industry switched over to corn syrup, the FDA convened a task force to assess various sweeteners—including sugar and HFCS. It concluded that sugars "do not have a unique role in the etiology [origin] of obesity," and the issue of regulation hasn't come up since. (The report's lead author, Walter H. Glinsmann, is now a paid consultant for the Corn Refiners Association.)
Being against sweets "is like being against Christmas," Lustig concedes, but the Big Gulp portions and child-oriented marketing are bad news; Similac now sells a heavily sweetened infant formula, and a 2005 study linked obesity in Harlem toddlers to WIC-subsidized juice. A new study in the journal Obesity suggests that some beverage makers may even be using souped-up HFCS formulas. University of Southern California researchers analyzed sweet drinks from L.A. markets and fast-food joints, and found several (namely bottled Pepsi, Coke, and Sprite) with fructose-to-glucose ratios approaching 65/35—a result yet to be replicated widely.
Lustig recommends that the average adult consume no more than 50 grams of fructose per day—about five Mrs. Field's chocolate-chip cookies—and preferably not all at once. A 20-ounce soda containing 37.5 grams of fructose is "going to be a shock to the liver if you drink it all in one sitting," he says. Ideally, your fructose should come with plenty of fiber, which slows its entry into the bloodstream. One place where the two are ingeniously packaged together: an apple. Talk about a throwback.
Source: http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/03/fructose-sugar-hfcs