MONSANTO EMPLOYEE ADMITS TO AN ENTIRE DEPARTMENT DESIGNED TO DISCREDIT SCIENTISTS

Monsanto Employee Admits An Entire Department Exists to “Discredit” Scientists

by Christina Sarich / Natural Society
Tuesday April 7, 2015
Dare to publish a scientific study against Big Biotech, and Monsanto will defame and discredit you. For the first time, a Monsanto employee admits that there is an entire department within the corporation with the simple task of ‘discrediting’ and ‘debunking’ scientists who speak out against GMOs.
The WHO recently classified glyphosate, a chemical in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup, as carcinogenic – news that is really heating things up with biotech. So Monsanto has been demanding that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) retract their statements about the poisons’s toxicity to human health.
The company demands this even though a peer-reviewed study published in March of 2015 in the respected journal, The Lancet Oncology, conducted a analysis proving that glyphosate was indeed ‘probably carcinogenic.’
Monsanto’s vice president of global regulatory affairs Philip Miller told Reuters the following in interview:

“We question the quality of the assessment. The WHO has something to explain.”

It has already been explained, Mr. Miller. The study states:

“Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides. It is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties. Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There WAS limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.
Glyphosate has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption. Soil microbes degrade glyphosate to aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA). Blood AMPA detection after poisonings suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans. Glyphosate and glyphosate formulations induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro. One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations.”

In a recent talk attended mostly by students hoping to get decent paying internships in their field, a student asked what the company was doing to negate “bad science” concerning their work.
Monsanto’s employee, Dr. William “Bill” Moar, who gives talks on Monsanto’s products to reassure everyone that they are safe, perhaps forgot the event was public when he openly revealed that Monsanto had:

“An entire department” (waving his arm for emphasis) dedicated to ‘debunking’ science which disagreed with theirs.”

Likely, this is the first time a Monsanto employee has publicly admitted that they have immense political and financial weight to bear on scientists who dare to publish against them. Of course they don’t list this discrediting department anywhere on their website.
The company will stop at nothing to discredit and devalue the contributions of unimpeachably respected Lancet and the international scientific bodies of WHO and IARC, among others.
The stakes are high – after all, an entire industry of GMO seed (for which they currently hold more than a three-fourths monopoly share) is based on being Roundup ready. Glyphosate is their hallmark product, and it accounts for billions in sales when you account for the seed they sell to go with their best-selling herbicide.
In a single publicly made phrase, Moar has admitted that the Monsanto-funded science is sheer propaganda – essentially that they indeed have dozens, if not hundreds of employees out making sure that no science which tells the truth about their cancer-causing products ever garners any credibility whatsoever in the information age.
Monsanto has also held up the findings of regulatory bodies, particularly in the United States where the revolving door between agrochemical corporations and government seems never ending.

Source:   http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2015/04/07/monsanto-employee-admits-an-entire-department-exists-to-discredit-scientists/

DROUGHT? BIG AG STEALING CALIFORNIA WATER FOR PROFIT

Sunday, April 05, 2015

by

Common Dreams

Californians Point to Big-Ag, Unrestrained Development as Drought Culprits

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

20 Comments

The nearly-dry Uvas Reservoir. (Photo: Ian Abbott/flickr/cc)

As residents adapt to recently imposed water restrictions and California's historic drought continues, experts are closely examining the dry spell's exacerbating factors—from thirsty agribusiness operations to unrestrained development—and saying a fundamental shift is in store for the Golden State.
In an analysis published Sunday, the New York Times suggests that the drought will "force a change in the way the state does business."

"Much like the Gold Rush more than 150 years ago or the rise of Silicon Valley, the assumption of cheap and abundant water has been a crucial part of California’s identity, history and economy," write Times journalists Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy, and Nelson D. Schwartz.

They continue:

And until recently, it seemed that the California dream was sustainable: booming cities, wide lawns in the suburbs, green golf courses in an otherwise parched landscape and, above all, a vibrant agricultural sector in places not much wetter than a desert.

But no longer.
According to the Times piece, "California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth," the mandatory water restrictions announced by Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday will bring about not just lifestyle adjustments but cultural change.
It argues that the "punishing drought—and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption—is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature."
Still, the Times notes—as environmental groups did last week—that "even a significant drop in residential water use will not move the consumption needle nearly as much as even a small reduction by farmers. Of all the surface water consumed in the state, roughly 80 percent is earmarked for the agricultural sector."
Adam Scow, California director of Food & Water Watch, said Wednesday: "It is disappointing that Governor Brown’s executive order to reduce California water use does not address the state’s most egregious corporate water abuses. In the midst of a severe drought, the Governor continues to allow corporate farms and oil interests to deplete and pollute our precious groundwater resources that are crucial for saving water."
News outlets have reported that reductions in water supplies for farmers are likely to be announced in the coming weeks, and there is also likely to be increased pressure on the farms to move away from certain water-intensive crops, like almonds or beef.
But in an appearance on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Brown defended the state's powerful agricultural sector.
"The farmers have fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of land," Brown told ABC host Martha Raddatz. "They're pulling up vines and trees. Farm workers who are very low end of the economic scale here are out of work. There are people in agriculture areas that are really suffering."
He argued against cracking down further on big-ag operations or factory farms, saying: "If you don't want to produce any food and import it from some other place, of course you could do that. But that would displace hundreds of thousands of people and I don't think it's needed."
Another group not shouldering its share of the water-shortage burden is California's wealthy class, the LA Times reported Sunday:

As California gears up for the first mandatory water restrictions in its history, a long-standing class divide about water use is becoming increasingly apparent.
Beverly Hills and other affluent cities use far more water per capita than less-wealthy communities, prompting some to cast them as villains in California’s water conservation effort.
Water usage in Los Angeles was 70 gallons per capita. But within the city, a recent UCLA study examining a decade of Department of Water and Power data showed that on average, wealthier neighborhoods consume three times more water than less-affluent ones.

Stephanie Pincetl, who worked on the UCLA water-use study, told the LA Times that wealthy Californians are "lacking a sense that we are all in this together."
She added: "The problem lies, in part, in the social isolation of the rich, the moral isolation of the rich."
And others underscored why the four-year drought is much more than a local or state-level problem.
The Detroit Free Press editorial board on Sunday reminded readers that "those of us living in the other 49 states won't be exempt from the fallout. California farmers, who provide about half the country's fruits and vegetables, have already lost hundreds of thousands of acres of previously productive farmland. The impact on produce prices at your local grocery store will only intensify if the drought, already reckoned the worst in California's recorded history, persists."
The editorial continued:

Our proximity to abundant supplies of freshwater may give many Michiganders a false sense of security, at least until they wander into the produce aisle. But Brown's emergency edict makes it clear that the consequences of climate change are growing less theoretical, and more concrete, with each passing season.

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