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From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Toxic Agriculture Is the Problem Not the Solution
‘Modified’: A Film About GMOs and the Corruption of the Food Supply for Profit
2019 Indian General Election: Manifesto Demand for Indefinite Moratorium on GMOs
2019 Indian General Election: Manifesto Demand for Indefinite Moratorium on GMOs
2019 Indian General Election: Manifesto Demand for Indefinite Moratorium on GMOs
The GMO Issue Reaches Boiling Point in India
The GMO Issue Reaches Boiling Point in India: Interview with Aruna Rodrigues
Approaching Development: GMO Propaganda and Neoliberalism vs Localisation and Agroecology
Approaching Development: GMO Propaganda and Neoliberalism vs Localisation and Agroecology
Recolonising India: Gross Maladministration and the Illegal Entry of GMOs
Mortgaging the Public Interest: Gross Maladministration and the Illegal Entry of GMOs into...
Trump Allows GMO Crops and Harmful Pesticides in Wildlife Refuges
GMO Agriculture and the Narrative of Choice
GMO Agriculture and the Narrative of Choice
Morrissey’s bigmouth deemed to have struck too often for fans, as anti-racism protest party...
Pro-GMO Activism and Smears Masquerade as Journalism: From Seralini to Jairam Ramesh, Aruna Rodrigues...
Trump’s USDA Proposes Deceptively Cute Images for GMO Labels, But Nixes the Words ‘Genetically...
Offshoring Indian Agriculture: Is India Becoming a GMO Trash Can?
Sickening Relations: The Royal Society and the GMO-Agrochemical Sector
Fabricated Reality: Lobbying for GMO Agriculture in India
GMOs, Global Agribusiness and the Destruction of Choice
Video: Pro GMO Journalist Julie Kelly Debates Richie On Monsanto, Food Safety, Labeling &...
The Biotech Industry Is Taking Over the Regulation of GMOs From the Inside
Swiss company ordered to pay billions in reparations to Kansas farmers over GMO corn
Concerned Americans Say New GMO Regs Would Make Oversight Worse, Not Better
Enemy of Reason: Behind the Mask of Pro-GMO Neoliberal Ideology
Sweat Shops, GMOs and Neoliberal Fundamentalism: The Agroecological Alternative to Global Capitalism
Pro-GMO Scientists Blinded by Technology and Wedded to Ideology
Pro-GMO Scientists Blinded by Technology and Wedded to Ideology
Monsanto and GMO Propagandists Softening-up UK Public for GM After Brexit
GM Mustard Case Returns to Court in India: Bt Cotton Failure and Economic Distress...
Potayto, potahto: Controversial new ‘anti-famine’ GMO potato strains approved
Chinese man sentenced to 3 yrs in Iowa for stealing GMO trade secrets
The apple doesn’t fall far from the genetically modified tree: USDA approves GMO fruit
Video: ‘Entirely new name’ for ‘Monsanto’: Bayer buys leading GMO maker for $66bn
‘If You’re So Proud of This Technology, Put It on the Label’ – CounterSpin...
Donna Murch on For-Profit Punishment, Patty Lovera on GMO Labeling
GMO labeling law is ‘fake’, would not ‘truly’ expose engineered food – experts to...
How One GMO Nearly Took Down the Planet
Unauthorized GMO wheat plants found growing in Washington state
In the Shadow of Monsanto: GMO Regulation and the Right to Know
Senate Advances GMO Food Labeling Bill That Would Actually Weaken State Rules
Money tossed on Senate floor as Vermont’s Sanders and Leahy protest federal GMO bill
Back to the Future with Laverne and Shirley: The Trivialisation of the GMO Debate
Bernie Sanders stages brief protest over GMO labeling in Senate
Pro-GMO Spin Masquerading as Science Courtesy of “Shameful White Men of Privilege”
GMOs, “Biggest Fraud in the History of Science” – Some ‘Questions and Answers’
Matt Ridley’s Pro-GMO Blunders and Ignorance in the British Press
‘GMO Crops Are Tools of a Chemical Agriculture System’
From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Living in the Shadow of Global Agribusiness
GMO crops not harming human health, but not boosting yields – report
Pesticides, GMOs and Corporate Control: The Poster Child is Monsanto but Neil Young is...
Which cereal brands are whitewashing their GMO-ridden, pesticide-laden products as ‘natural’?
TTIP – current EU GMO rules to be ‘disregarded’ as EU Commission caves in...
Journalism, Pro-GMO Triumphalism And Neoliberal Dogma In India
Quaker instant oatmeal and Silk non-GMO soy creamer found contaminated with alarming levels of...
Unregulated shrooms: GMO mushroom gets clearance from USDA
Here Come the Unregulated GMOs
The Crusade in Favour of GMO: Falsehoods and Vilification will not Fool the Public
Cereal giant General Mills to start using GMO labeling nationwide
America’s mass apathy and self-destructive fatigue brought on by chemically-laced, nutrient-depleted junk foods and...
GMO and the Right to Know: But What’s Hidden Beneath the Label?
GMA, GMOs and the letter of the law: Lobbying in food-labeling initiative goes to...
Feeding the Bank Balance or Feeding the World: GMOs, Development and the Politics of...
Labeling GMO: Dems put forward new bill as Dark Act pushed on the hill
Twisted Science, Altered Truth: Inside the Church of Pro-GMO Activism
Pro-GMO Activism in India: Journalism gives way to Spin, Smears and Falsehoods
Hershey introduces GMO-free chocolate after dropping transgenic sugar beets from ingredients
Trojan Horse Arguments and the GMO Issue: Indian Food and Agriculture Under Attack
Organic Agriculture, Capitalism and the Parallel World of the Pro-GMO Evangelist
“Lies, Lies and More Lies” – GMOs, Poisoned Agriculture and Toxic Rants
Politics on the Plate: Mob Wives, GMOs and Salt
The Seeds Of Spin: Decoding Pro-GMO Lies And Falsehoods
Campbell’s will label GMOs – but still claims they’re safe
TTIP, GMOs & Pesticides Could Destroy EU Farmers
Saving the world? GMO’s only boost corporate profit while destroying health
We Applaud Campbell Soup for GMO Labeling Decision
Taiwan bans GMOs from school lunches… mandates GMO labeling nationwide… throws down gauntlet on...
GMOs used as gene-altering superweapons could make humanity extinct
Venezuela passes new law rejecting GMOs and seed patents nationwide
Organic Farmers Score New Victory in ‘David and Goliath’ GMO Fight
Yurok Tribe Adopts Ordinance Banning Frankenfish and GMOs
The GMO Issue: False Claims, Pseudo-Analysis And A Politically Motivated Agenda
GMOs and “Unremitting Fraud” in India: Petition Filed for Contempt of Court Against Members...
Video: Prove GMOs have safety standards will pay $10mn – Scientist to Monsanto
Eco Groups Take Canadian Government to Court in GMO Salmon Fight
$10mn dare: MIT grad challenges Monsanto over ‘nonexistent GMO safety standards’
Rice, wheat, mustard … India drives forward first GMO crops under veil of secrecy
Protect your body and family from the allopathic assault of cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, vaccines and...
Video: GMO Anti-Labeling Law Heads to Senate After House Approval
Opt-Outs Abound as Majority of EU Says No to GMOs
With New Ban on Cultivation, Northern Ireland Joins EU’s Anti-GMO Ranks
Video: Rand Paul Campaign Head On Secret Bill Gates Meeting/ Promoting GMO’s
Watch Neil Young’s ‘Seeding Fear’ documentary exposing Monsanto’s attacks on family farmers who refuse...
Chipotle sued over GMO-free claims
NYT calls out Coca-Cola’s harmful junk food science while ignoring Monsanto’s fraudulent GMO science
Monsanto secretly gave legal defense money to GMO farmer who contaminated neighbor’s organic farm
Ethical scientific community rallies against GMOs
What can the world learn from Scotland about resistance to GMOs
Hypnotic Trance in Delhi: Monsanto, GMOs and the Looting of India’s Agriculture
Nearly 100,000 German Beekeepers Demand a Ban on GMOs
‘Corporate Influence Has Won’: House Passes Anti-GMO Labeling Bill
Experimental GMO wheat crop devoured by aphids; written off as yet another total biotech...
Who Will Bail Out Humanity If The GMO Evangelists Win?
Biotech industry uses Roundup-contaminated GMOs as control group feed in fraudulent animal studies
I Love GMO: The Warped World Of The Pro-GMO Lobbyist
Capture, Smear, Contaminate: The Politics Of GMOs
Stupidity and Intelligence: Science, GMOs and Our Food
Neil Young is Starving the Poor! The Pro-GMO Lobby’s Latest Scapegoat
Ignoring Reality, Subverting Morality: GMOs And The Neoliberal Apologists
Video: Proof The U.S. Can Have GMO Labeling
BBC Panorama Programme: Promoting GMO and Cultivating Ignorance
GMOs – Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: The Silence From The Royal Society Is Deafening
Canadian Risk Assessment Finds GMO Salmon Susceptible to Disease
Women and Biodiversity Feed the World, Not Corporations and GMOs
Interview: Challenging Corporations’ "Right" to Grow GMOs in Rural Oregon
GMOs: The Fight For Our Future
Hawaii Takes GMO Fight to Switzerland
Monsanto’s Glyphosate Blankets GMO Crops Near Schools
Unmasking The GMO Humanitarian Narrative
Obama Fights to Spread GMO Foods Throughout Europe
Who Granted The GMO Evangelists The Monopoly On Compassion?
Who Granted The GMO Evangelists The Monopoly On Compassion?
US Agribusiness, GMOs And The Plundering Of The Planet
It amounts to little more than the start of the US colonisation of Ukraine’s seed and agriculture sector. This corporate power grab will be assisted by local banks. Oriental Review says they will only offer favourable credit terms to those farmers who agree to use certified herbicides: those that are manufactured by Monsanto.
"We are here at the [US-Canadian] border to demonstrate the global solidarity of farmers in the face of globalization. The corporate takeover of agriculture has impoverished farmers, starved communities and force-fed us genetically-engineered crops, only to line the pockets of a handful of multinational corporations like Monsanto at the expense of farmers who are struggling for land and livelihood around the world."
US Agribusiness, GMOs and the Plundering of the Planet
New Report Debunks ‘Myth’ That GMOs are Key to Feeding the World
The Pro-GMO Lobby In Retreat
“Biotech companies and proponents of conventional, industrial agriculture have touted genetically engineered crops as the key to feeding a more populous, wealthier world, but recent studies show that this promise has fallen flat.”
“Biotech companies and their customers in chemical agriculture have been attempting to sell the benefits of GMOs for two decades. Between exaggerated claims about feeding the world and a dramatic escalation in the use of toxic pesticides, it is no wonder consumers are increasingly skeptical.”
“Seed companies’ investment in improving the yields of GMOs in already high-yielding areas does little to improve food security; it mainly helps line the pockets of seed and chemical companies and producers of corn ethanol. The world’s resources would be better spent focusing on strategies to actually increase food supplies and access to basic resources for the poor small farmers who need it most.”
So much for open discourse based on sound science and reasoned argument.
The Pro-GMO Lobby In Retreat
GMO critics vindicated: Biotech corporations were pushing fraud all along
Want Some GMO Easter Candy, Little Girl?
You’re being lied to – GMO labelling will NOT make food more expensive
The Great GMO Legitimation Crisis
The Great GMO Legitimation Crisis
“Greenpeace notably decides its opinions must prevail regardless of others, so it arrogates to itself the right to tear up and destroy things it doesn’t like. That is absolutely typical of people who are unable to convince others by debate and discussion and in the last century such attitudes, amplified obviously, ended up killing people that others did not like. But the same personality type the authoritarian, ‘do as I tell you’, was at the root of it all. Such groups therefore sit uneasily with countries that are democracies.”
“It would be nice if you could say you are a democrat and believe that argument is better than destruction but argument that deals with all the facts and does not select out of those to construct a misleading programme. Misleading selection of limited information is causing considerable problems in various parts of the world that leads some into very violent behaviour, particularly in religious belief. I am sure you agree that this is not a good way forward… Whatever their [farmers’] choice is… they must be allowed to make that decision… That is the nature of every democracy that I hope all will finally live under?”
“Anyone who’s seen the recent virally circulated Venn diagrams of the personnel overlap between Monsanto and USDA personnel, or Pfizer and FDA, will immediately know what I’m talking about… A model of capitalism in which the commanding heights of the economy are an interlocking directorate of large corporations and government agencies, a major share of the total operating costs of the dominant firms are socialized (and profits privatized, of course), and “intellectual property” protectionism and other regulatory cartels allow bureaucratic corporate dinosaurs… to operate profitably without fear of competition." Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society.
Science, Democracy and Choice: Responding To A Pro-GMO Scientist
Stop Twisting Truth: Scientific Bodies Should Put The Record Straight On GMOs
The Royal Society acts as a scientific advisor to the British government. The Society is Britain's Academy of Sciences, which funds research fellowships and scientific start-up companies. A self-governing fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine, its purpose is according to its website to "recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity."
- The European Commission is about to approve substantial regulatory changes in regard to GM crops.
- The UK is seriously considering allowing them to be commercially planted.
- The Society and other proponents of GM foods have inculcated the widespread illusion that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that the safety of these products has been established through rigorous testing.The following paragraphs (a) describe some of the ways in which the Society has been complicit in generating this and other false notions and (b) set forth specific steps it must take in order to start repairing the damage it has done.
Stop Twisting Truth: Scientific Bodies Should Put the Record Straight on GMOs
Not Science, Just Lies And Propaganda: The Massive Fraud Behind GMOs Exposed
This is not what the GMO industry wanted to see: banner headlines in major newspapers and across the internet exposing the fraud behind GMOs. But this constitutes much more than a PR nightmare. The story behind the headlines shakes the very foundations upon which the industry is built.
“Contrary to the assertions of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science – and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”
“convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that the new foods were safe. Yet this, as Druker points out, was clearly not true.”
“Druker describes how amazingly successful the biotech lobby has been – and the extent to which the general public and government decision makers have been hoodwinked by the clever and methodical twisting of the facts and the propagation of many myths. Moreover, it appears that a number of respected scientific institutions, as well as many eminent scientists, were complicit in this relentless spreading of disinformation.”
“It will go a long way toward dispelling the confusion and delusion that has been created regarding the genetic engineering process and the foods it creates. Although this book tells a story that’s in many ways distressing, it’s important that it has finally been told because so much confusion has been spread and so many important decision-makers have apparently been deluded.”
“Contrary to the assertions of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science – and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”
“Steven Druker’s investigation into the history of fraud and deceit that ushered in the era of GM deserves serious consideration before we take actions that will irreversibly alter the European food supply.”
Not Science, Just Lies and Propaganda: The Massive Fraud Behind GMOs Exposed
Consumers Want GMO Labels, Not Barcodes
GMOs And Green Blob Hallucinations: The Twisted World Of Mr Paterson
Speaking last week in Pretoria, former UK Environment Minister Owen Paterson described critics of GMOs as comprising part of a privileged class that increasingly fetishizes food and seeks to turn their personal preferences into policy proscriptions for the rest of us. He called them backward-looking and regressive. He claimed their policies would condemn billions to hunger, poverty and underdevelopment because of their insistence on mandating primitive, inefficient farming techniques.
“… the ‘Green Blob’ – a reference to a 1950s Sci-Fi movie starring Steve McQueen in which a blob-like alien attacks Earth and swallows everything in its path: the environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interest of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely.”
“There are many impediments standing between the vision of agricultural progress and Africa, of course, but none is more pernicious than the Blob. It is supported by massive funding provided by the EU itself, as well as numerous church and humanitarian groups, and the well-meaning but misguided generosity of the privileged classes in Europe and elsewhere. It has undue influence in the media, government and international institutions. Unfortunately, few question either its credentials or motives.” (see the full text of the speech here)
Paterson then proceeded to proclaim the virtues of GMOs and laid out a series of slurs, falsehoods and cherry-picked proclamations that anyone would be forgiven for thinking had come straight from the pen of a GMO agribusiness employee. But it wouldn’t have been the first time would it? In the case of this bit of poetry that Paterson likes so much, it came courtesy of Syngenta.
No, such practices are commonplace. Indeed, across the globe uncaged corporate parrots seem to be perched on the highest of ledges:
“We have had the National Academies of Science give a clean chit of biosafety to GM crops — doing that by using paragraphs lifted wholesale from the industry’s own literature! Likewise, Ministers in the PMO who know nothing about the risks of GMOs have similarly sung the virtues of Bt Brinjal and its safety to an erstwhile Minister of Health. They have used, literally, 'cut & paste' evidence from the biotech lobby’s 'puff' material. Are these officials then, 'uncaged corporate parrots'?” Aruna Rodrigues, writing about the situation in India here in The Hindu.
Some points to consider for any rational thinking person
You would if you are the US government, which has done exactly that, as described in Drukers new book 'Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government and Systematically Deceived the Public' (Clear River Press, March 2015).
“It is these powerful corporations (not a ‘green blob’), whose owners are part of the privileged class that seek to turn their vested interests into policy proscriptions for the rest of us. It is this backward-looking and regressive class whose policies have already condemned tens of millions to hunger, poverty and underdevelopment. It is this privileged class (not a ‘green blob’) that has swallowed up everything in its path facilitated by public officials who are well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and ‘green revolution’ rhetoric. This tangled triangle of unelected, unaccountable corporations claims to have the interest of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely. There are many impediments standing between the vision of agricultural progress and Africa, of course, but none is more pernicious than this group that is supported by massive profits often secured from fraudulent practices and by often well-meaning but gullible people who buy into its rhetoric. It has undue influence in the media, government and international institutions. Fortunately, there are many who question its credentials and motives.”
Readers are urged to read this to appreciate why Paterson has got is so wrong.
GMOs And Green Blob Hallucinations: The Twisted World Of Mr Paterson
Eat at Your Own Risk: Flawed FDA Risk Assessments Strengthen Arguments for Labeling GMOs
Why Are Government Subsidies Forcing GMO Baby Formula on Low Income Mothers?
So You Want To Help Africa Mr Paterson? Then Stop Promoting Ideology And Falsehoods...
According to Mathew Holehouse in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper (here), former UK Environment Minister Owen Paterson will this week accuse the European Union and Greenpeace of condemning people in the developing world to death by refusing to accept genetically modified crops. Speaking in Pretoria, South Africa, on Tuesday, Paterson will warn that a food revolution that could save Africa from hunger is being held back and that the world is on the cusp of a green revolution, of the kind that fed a billion people in the 1960s and 1970s as the world’s population soared.
"This is also a time, however, of great mischief, in which many individuals and even governments are turning their backs on progress. Not since the original Luddites smashed cotton mill machinery in early 19th century England, have we seen such an organised, fanatical antagonism to progress and science. These enemies of the Green Revolution call themselves ‘progressive’, but their agenda could hardly be more backward-looking and regressive… their policies would condemn billions to hunger, poverty and underdevelopment. And their insistence on mandating primitive, inefficient farming techniques would decimate the earth’s remaining wild spaces, devastate species and biodiversity, and leave our natural ecology poorer as a result.”
“We don’t have a goal of developing GM products here or to import them. We can feed ourselves with normal, common, not genetically modified products. If the Americans like to eat such products, let them eat them. We don’t need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food.” (see here)
“We strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly nor economically beneficial to us. We do not believe that such companies or gene technologies will help our farmers to produce the food that is needed in the 21st century. On the contrary, we think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for millennia, and that it will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves.”
“… the statements that they [supporters of GMOs] use such as “thousands die of hunger daily in India” are irresponsible and baseless scare-mongering with a view to projecting GM as the only answer. When our people go hungry, or suffer from malnutrition, it is not for lack of food, it is because their right to safe and nutritious food that is culturally connected has been blocked. That is why it is not a technological fix problem and GM has no place in it.”
“The problem is that the poor have no money to buy food and increasingly, no access to land on which to grow it… GM is a dangerous distraction from real solutions and claims that GM can help feed the world can be viewed as exploitation of the suffering of the hungry. GM crops do not increase yield. Nor are there any GM crops that are better than non-GM crops at tolerating poor soils or challenging climate conditions. Thus it is difficult to see how GM can contribute to solving world hunger… The two major GM crops, soy and maize, mostly go into animal feed for intensive livestock operations, biofuels to power cars, and processed human food – products for wealthy nations that have nothing to do with meeting the basic food needs of the poor and hungry.”
"In the morning, you make porridge from maize and send the kids to school. For lunch, boiled maize and a few green beans. In the evening, ugali, [a staple dough-like maize dish, served with meat]… [today] it’s a monoculture diet, being driven by the food system – it’s an injustice.” (see here and here for the sources that quote Maingi and other commentators mentioned below).
“It’s a system designed to benefit agribusinesses and not small-scale farmers.”
“What the World Bank has done, the International Monetary fund, what AGRA and Bill Gates are doing, it’s actually pretty wrong. The farmer himself should not be starving”.
“… take capitalism and business out of farming in Africa. The West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology, education and infrastructure and stand in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.” Daniel Maingi, Growth Partners for Africa.
“The “economic therapy” imposed under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction is in large part responsible for triggering famine and social devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, wreaking the peasant economy and impoverishing millions of people. With the complicity of branches of the US government, it has also opened the door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces by US biotech corporations, which behind the scenes have been peddling the adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise of emergency aid and famine relief. Moreover, under WTO rules, the agri-biotech conglomerates can manipulate market forces to their advantage as well as exact royalties from farmers. The WTO provides legitimacy to the food giants to dismantle State programmes including emergency grain stocks, seed banks, extension services and agricultural credit, etc.), plunder peasant economies and trigger the outbreak of periodic famines.” See the full article (‘Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia’) from which this extract is taken here.
So You Want to Help Africa Mr Paterson? Then Stop Promoting Ideology and Falsehoods...
Corporate Power Grab: The Wild Claims And PR Spin Of The Pro-GMO Lobby
“Unfortunately, many members of the media, and even some scientists, have been snookered by PR firms about a supposed scientific consensus on GMOs that doesn’t exist.”
“Assembling big lists of studies supposedly providing overwhelming evidence of the safety of GMOs has become common practice by GMO proponents… The success of the tactic depends on the reading public failing to examine the actual studies and seeing what they say.” Claire Robinson (here).
“… authors should re-learn the basic scientific principle of citing a specific data point to support each claim they make about GMO safety. The problem for them is that doing so would cause their entire house of cards to collapse.”
“…the totality of scientific research outcomes in the field of GM crop safety is nuanced; complex; often contradictory or inconclusive; confounded by researchers’ choices, assumptions, and funding sources; and, in general, has raised more questions than it has currently answered… [Decisions on whether to continue and expand GMO crops should] be supported by strong scientific evidence… obtained in a manner that is honest, ethical, rigorous, independent, transparent, and sufficiently diversified to compensate for bias… [rather than based on] misleading and misrepresentative claims by an internal circle of likeminded stakeholders that a ‘scientific consensus’ exists on GMO safety.”
Corporate Power Grab: The Wild Claims and PR Spin of the Pro-GMO Lobby
Demonizing Scientists And Opponents Of GMOs: The Cheap Propaganda Of The Pro-GMO Lobby
Demonizing Scientists and Opponents of GMOs: The Cheap Propaganda of the Pro-GMO Lobby
Why Does the Dairy Industry Oppose GMO Labels?
Monsanto on the Menu: Science, Power and GMOs
There is NO scientific consensus on GMO safety
GMO Biotech Companies and Compliant Politicians: Infiltrating India Using Baseless Claims and Deception
‘Uncaged Corporate Parrots’ and the GMO False Narrative
The Government’s Drive to Force GMOs into Britain Against the Will of the People...
GMO Seeds of Profit, Power and Geopolitics
GMO-labeling initiative defeated by Monsanto-sponsored groups
Farmers, Consumers Challenge Monsanto-Backed GMO Bill Designed to Keep Public in the ‘DARK’
The Pro-GMO Lobby: Anti-science and a Politically Motivated Agenda
“Motivated by greed with a complete disregard for food safety and biodiversity.” Why Food Sovereignty...
‘This Is Only the Beginning’: Oregon GMO Labeling Measure Heads to Recount
Tell Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz: Stop Supporting Efforts to Kill GMO Labeling Laws
57 Million Americans Warn UK About GMO Dangers
Food Fascists: GMO and Pesticide Manufacturers Down and Dirty
Monsanto’s GMO Creations Caused 291,000 Suicides in India
Countering The Emotional Blackmail And Bogus Claims Of The GMO Lobby
Monsanto sues Hawaii county over GMO ban
Monsanto to pay $2.4mn to farmers over 2013 GMO-wheat scare
The Straw Man Anti-GMO Activist: Irrationalism Masquerading As Informed Debate
Duma approves tougher GMO labeling rules
$25 Million GMO and Pesticide Safety Study Launched in London
Maui v. Monsanto: Hawaii County Voters Defy Agriculture Giant’s Spending to OK Landmark Ban...
How Monsanto Keeps Halting GMO Labeling Despite Over 96% Approval
GMO Crops Are Destroying Farmland, And Monsanto Doesn’t Want You to Know
“The GMO Deception”: How Big Ag and the Government Are Putting Your Food at...
Plenty of Evidence of Possible Harm From GMOs
UK GMO lobby wants “genome edited” products to escape GMO regulation and labelling
GMO safety cannot be proven — new peer-reviewed study
GMO backlash: Syngenta faces mounting lawsuits over genetically-modified seeds
Monsanto Spends Millions in Bid to Defeat Local GMO Labeling Initiative
“The Future of Food” – GMOs, Gene Patenting, and the Corporatization of Our Food...
The Ongoing Propaganda War Behind GMOs Exposed
The Ghost in the GMO Machine
The GMO Biotech Lobby’s Emotional Blackmail and Bogus Claims
Cultivated lie? Most US food labeled ‘natural’ contains GMOs, watchdog says
Monsanto Scandal Causes Reopening of US Investigation of GMO Wheat
Monsanto Announces “Global Center” for Developing GMO Corn
First GMO Mosquitoes: Now Oxitec Wants to Release GMO Moths in New York
Don’t let trade trump GMO labeling
Monsanto GMO Wheat Contamination Discovered In Montana
‘Organic Ready’ Corn to Replace Monsanto’s GMO Corn, Cross-Pollination
How your Tax Dollars are Helping Distort the GMO-Labeling Debate
GMOs and Searching for the Crashless Car
German Supermarket Giants Demand Return to GMO-Free Fed Poultry
Hawaii’s GMO Battle: Federal Judge Strikes Down Kauai’s Pesticide Regulations
Hillary Clinton Spreads Misinformation About GMO’s
End of the line: GMO production in China halted
The Truth About Organic Food & GMO’s
New GMO Poised for Approval Despite Public Outcry
Landmark? Major Corporation Calling GMOs ‘All Natural’ Targeted for False Advertising
Food Fascists: GMO and Pesticide Manufacturers Down and Dirty
A New Reason Why Wheat And GMOs Can Destroy Your Health
Monsanto’s PR Makeover: Lubricating The Wheels Of The GMO Trojan Horse
Fight Continues Over Moratorium of GMO Crops on Hawaii’s Big Island
GMO Corn No Longer Resistant to Bugs
Brazil Farmers Say GMO Corn No Longer Resistant to Bugs
GMO Food Crops in India: BJP Government Grants the “Green Light” to Monsanto and...
The Truth About GMO’s
5,000+ Schools at Risk of Toxic Pesticide Exposure if EPA Approves New GMO Pesticide
Hilary Clinton supports GMOs
GMO Insulin Causes Type 1 Diabetes In Type 2 Diabetics, Study Finds
GMO Labeling Bill Moves Forward in Oregon
Acquiescing to Big Biotech: The Relentless Drive to Force GMOs into Britain
EPA Drops the Ball on 2,4-D for GMO Crops
Peace Out GMOs: California and GMO Ground Zero Hawaii Organizations Unite to Peacefully Protest...
Monsanto Tries to Patent & Control Natural, Non-GMO Tomatoes
GMO Crops in India, The Profit Driven Destruction of Agriculture
GMOs, Corporatocentrism And Economic Plunder: The Right To Challenge And Refuse
“We can draw many very good lessons from the early period of the Industrial Revolution… independent farmers were being driven into the industrial system. Men and women… bitterly resented it… The people driven into the industrial system regarded it as an attack on their personal dignity, on their rights as human beings. They were free human beings being forced into what they called ‘wage labor,’ which they regarded as not very different from chattel slavery.” [16]
A similar process is occurring in many countries today and is underpinned by an arrogance that privileges the dominant mode of ‘development’ over indigenous knowledge and practices that have by and large allowed people to live sustainably with nature and the environment for thousands of years. Chomsky says:
“This is the first time in human history that we have the capacity to destroy the conditions for decent survival. It is already happening. Look at species destruction. It is estimated to be at about the level of 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit the earth, ended the period of the dinosaurs and wiped out a huge number of species. It is the same level today. And we are the asteroid… There are sectors of the global population trying to impede the global catastrophe. There are other sectors trying to accelerate it. Take a look at whom they are. Those who are trying to impede it are the ones we call backward, indigenous populations - the First Nations in, the aboriginals in Canada , the tribal people in Australia . Who is accelerating it? The most privileged, so-called advanced, educated populations of the world.” India
“Corporations as the dominant institution shaped by capitalist patriarchy thrive on eco-apartheid. They thrive on the Cartesian legacy of dualism which puts nature against humans. It defines nature as female and passively subjugated. Corporatocentrism is thus also androcentric - a patriarchal construction. The false universalism of man as conqueror and owner of the Earth has led to the technological hubris of geo-engineering, genetic engineering, and nuclear energy. It has led to the ethical outrage of owning life forms through patents, water through privatization, the air through carbon trading. It is leading to appropriation of the biodiversity that serves the poor.” [17]
Criminalising Dissent against GMOs and Monsanto
Criminalising Dissent In India Against GMOs And Monsanto
Before being voted out of office this year, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance administration sanctioned open-field trials of 200 GM food crops in
“The IAASTD was the work of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was twice peer reviewed. The report states we must look to small-holder, traditional farming (not GMOs) to deliver food security in third world countries through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable. Governments must invest in these systems. This is the clear evidence.”
“The Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) promotes public-private-partnerships with the biotechnology industry. It does this with the active backing of the Ministry of Science and Technology. The MoA has handed Monsanto and the industry access to our agri-research public institutions placing them in a position to seriously influence agri-policy in. You cannot have a conflict of interest larger or more alarming than this one. Today, Monsanto decides which Bt cotton hybrids are planted and where. Monsanto owns over 90 per cent of planted cotton seed, all of it Bt cotton.” India
“We have had the National Academies of Science give a clean chit of biosafety to GM crops - doing that by using paragraphs lifted wholesale from the industry’s own literature! Likewise, ministers who know nothing about the risks of GMOs have similarly sung the virtues of Bt Brinjal and its safety to an erstwhile Minister of Health. They have used, literally, “cut & paste” evidence from the biotech lobby’s “puff” material. Are these officials then, “un-caged corporate parrots?”
"Here is a real foreign hand that informs the IB report. Cornell University, where Dr Herring works, was one of the main forces, along with USAID and Monsanto, behind the making of Bt brinjal in India." (13)
“… the biggest foreign hand by ‘STEALTH’ and official ‘COVER-UP’ will be in GMOs/GM crops if introduced into Indian agriculture. All that stands between a corporate takeover of our seeds and agriculture is the committed and exemplary work by the not-for-profit sector… In conspiring with deeply conflicted institutions of regulation, governance and agriculture… to introduce GM crops into India, the IB will in fact aid the hand-over of the ownership of our seeds and foods to multi-national corporations. This will represent the largest take-over of any nation’s agriculture and future development by foreign-hands… (and)… will plunge India into the biggest breach of internal security; of a biosecurity threat and food security crisis from which we will never recover…. GM crops have already demonstrated no yield gain, no ability to engineer for traits of drought, saline resistance etc and have some serious bio-safety issues which no regulator wishes to examine.”
“This ‘VALUE CAPTURE’ for Monsanto which was contrived and approved by our own government mortgaging the public interest has ensured that in a short 10 years, 95% of cotton seeds in the form of Bt cotton are owned by Monsanto… It is Monsanto now that decides where cotton should be planted and when by our farmers… The Royalties accruing to Monsanto that have been expatriated are approximately Rs 4800 Crores in 12 years, (excluding other profit mark-ups)… The IB is thus conspiring with global corporate interests to hemorrhage India’s agricultural economy… We call for an investigation on the foreign influence in writing the GMO section in the IB report.”
“If India’s intelligence agencies become instruments of global corporations working against the public interest and national interest of India, our national security is under threat. This IB report is deeply anti-national and subversive of constitutional rights of citizens in our country. It does India no credit.”
"We believe that this report is designed to muzzle and silence civil society who raise their voices against injustices to people and the environment by asking uncomfortable questions about the current model of growth." (16)
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The GMO Biotech Lobby Is Kicking Open The Door To Europe
The proposal to hand back some decision powers to member states of the European Union regarding GMO approvals is currently being discussed (1). It will be voted on by member states on 12 June. According to Corporate Europe Observatory, biotech firms regard it as an opportunity to break the stalemate and finally get their GM crops growing in
“This is all about getting more GM crops into the ground more quickly. Collective decision making hasn’t allowed GM crops to be grown widely in the EU because the majority of EU countries don’t want them.”
“If member states back down from highlighting the environmental harms of RoundUp Ready GM crops, these could be fast-tracked into the ground in some parts ofEurope … We need to be improving the GM risk assessments not facilitating contamination of food, feed and seed in the European market with GM crops that nobody wants.”
“The idea of individual countries being able to ban GM sounds appealing, but sadly it won’t work. Pollen and seed don’t respect national boundaries any more than they give way on a roundabout, and experience shows that once the GM genie is out there we cannot put it back in the bottle. The costs can be huge.”
“GM supporters, including our own Environment Minister Owen Paterson, are throwing away the whole concept of a common market to further their own support for a technology that raises far more questions than it answers. Their refusal to first put in place a reasonable, clear liability regime to protect the food system and the environment speaks volumes.”
“Ministries, least of all ‘promoting’ Ministries, should not have the authority to allow the novel technology of GMOs into Indian agriculture bypassing authentic democratic processes. Those processes require the widest possible and transparent consultation… After all, it is every woman, man and child, and our animals, an entire nation that will quite literally have to eat the outcome of a GM policy that delivers up our agriculture to it: if a GMO is unsafe, it will remain irreversibly unsafe. And it will remain in the environment and that is another dimension of impact.” (17)
China protects its massive Army from GMOs

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The Social Cost of GMOs – Paul Craig Roberts
The Social Cost of GMOs Paul Craig Roberts Ecological economists such as Herman Daly write that the more full the world becomes, the higher are the social or external costs of production. Social or external costs are costs of production…
The post The Social Cost of GMOs — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
Is there a GMO-chemtrail connection?

The Double Standards And Crumbling Myths Of The GMO Biotech Setor
“We are forced to conclude that the decision to withdraw our paper was based on unscientific double standards applied by the editor. These double standards can only be explained by pressure from the GMO and agrochemical industry to force acceptance of GMOs and Roundup. The most flagrant illustration is the appointment of Richard Goodman, a former Monsanto employee, onto the FCT editorial board, soon after the publication of the NK603 study. Worse, this pro-industry bias also affects regulatory authorities, such as EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), which gives favourable opinions on risky products based on mediocre studies commissioned by the companies wishing to commercialize the products, as well as systematically dismissing the findings of independent scientists which cast doubt on their safety.”
“The GMO debate is far from being over, as some GMO proponents claim. Instead the evidence of risk and actual harm from GM foods and crops to health and the environment has grown in the two years since we brought out the first edition. The good news is that GMOs are not needed to feed the world. The report shows that there are far better ways of ensuring a safe and sustainable food supply.”
1) The report debunks the claims by pro-GMO lobbyists that 1,700 studies show GM foods are as safe. The studies show nothing of the sort. Many of them not only show evidence of risk, but the review also excludes or glosses over important scientific controversies over GMO safety issues. (See page102 of the new report.)
2) A review purportedly showing that GM foods are safe on the basis of long-term animal studies actually shows evidence of risk and uses unscientific double standards to reach a conclusion that is not justified by the data. (p. 161)
3) A laboratory study in human cells shows that very low levels of glyphosate (the main chemical ingredient of Roundup herbicide, which most GM crops are engineered to tolerate) mimicked the hormone estrogen and stimulated the growth of breast cancer cells. The level of glyphosate that had this effect was below the level allowed in drinking water in Europe and far below the level allowed in the USA . It was also below the level found in GM glyphosate-tolerant soy, which is imported into Europe for animal feed and human food. If confirmed in animal studies, this finding would overturn regulatory assumptions of safe levels of glyphosate. (p. 221)
4) Séralini’s study is far stronger and more detailed than many industry studies that are accepted as proof of safety for GMOs. The European Food Safety Authority had to reject the study in order to protect its own previous opinions on this and other GMOs, for reasons explained in the report. The findings of this study, if confirmed, would overturn regulatory assumptions of safe levels of glyphosate and Roundup. (pp. 94, 147)
“There is evidence that Roundup, even at the low levels permitted in food and drinking water, could lead to serious effects on health over time, such as liver and kidney toxicity. Based on this evidence, it appears that the levels of exposure currently held as safe by regulators around the world are questionable.”
“The GMO industry is built on myths. What is the motivation behind the deception? Money. GM crops and foods are easy to patent and are an important tool in the global consolidation of the seed and food industry into the hands of a few big companies. We all have to eat, so selling patented GM seed and the chemicals they are grown with is a lucrative business model. GMO Myths and Truths offers a one-stop resource for the public, campaigners, policy-makers, and scientists opposing the GMO industry’s attempts to control our food supply and shut down scientific and public debate.”
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British Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Owen Paterson is a staunch supporter of the GM sector (1). Despite criticisms of him being an industry puppet (2) and content to ignore the devastating, deleterious health, environmental, social and agricultural impacts of GMOs (3), both he and other officials like the EU’s chief science advisor Anne Glover (4) have been more than happy to act as mouthpieces for the GM sector by making false statements and claims about the benefits and safety of GMOs that fly in the face of scientific findings.
Civil servants hosted a meeting with industry leaders in June 2013 to decide how to present the government’s agri-tech strategy. Officials at the Business, Innovations and Skills (BIS) department even emailed the ABC asking for advice on how to promote the policy. Poulter writes that one BIS official asked for “any ideas you may have that will showcase agri-tech – as you are aware it will need to be eye-catching but reflect the main themes of the strategy.”
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“Not one case of harm from GMOs”

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Anne Glover recently declared that there is no evidence pertaining to the adverse impacts of GMOs. This is an extremely disturbing statement. It’s extremely disturbing because it is not only patently wrong, but also because Anne Glover ischief scientific adviser of the European Commission.
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In the latest development in the ongoing fight to label GMOs in the state of Washington, State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Grocery Manufacturers Association for illegally collecting millions of dollars in their campaign against GMO labeling.
(Photo via Flickr / Steve Rhodes / Creative Commons License) The GMA, the biggest processed food trade group in the U.S., has already set a record for the most money ever raised in Washington state to fight a public initiative—over $7 million so far—all in an effort to defeat Initiative 522, set for the ballot in November.
And that money, Ferguson argues, has been funneled through the GMA illegally.
As the Seattle Times reports, the lawsuit alleges that the GMA "solicited big money from its members specifically for the anti-GMO-labeling campaign, yet illegally concealed the identity of those donors from the public by failing to register and file reports as a political committee."
Seattle Times has more:
"GMA is now doing industry's dirty work by donating on behalf of its members and possibly violating Washington State's lobbying rules in the process." – Michele Simon, Eat Drink Politics
Ferguson said unless the GMA immediately discloses its donors, his office will ask a judge for a temporary restraining order to force the grocery association to register as a political committee and reveal its donors so that voters will have the information as they cast their ballots for or against I-522. He added the state will seek civil penalties and attorney’s fees from the group.
The state’s lawsuit cites internal GMA communications in which the group’s leaders planned their big-money effort to fight GMO labeling measures while protecting its corporate members from criticism.
In a Feb. 18 memo obtained by the Attorney General’s office, Pamela Bailey, CEO of the grocery association, discussed creating a new GMA fund, subsequently called the Defense of Brand Strategic Account, “to combat current threats and better shield individual companies from attack that provide funding for specific efforts.” That memo specifically mentioned the need “to fight Washington state’s ballot measure.”
As Michele Simon, who runs the Eat Drink Politics blog, explained earlier this week:
The main goal of a lobbying organization like GMA is to pool the massive resources of its members, which include heavy hitters such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and General Mills; each has a huge stake in this fight. While last year in California, these companies donated millions to stop Proposition 37, this year, the game plan has changed. GMA is now doing industry's dirty work by donating on behalf of its members and possibly violating Washington State's lobbying rules in the process.
“They don’t want to tell us whats in their food and they don’t want tell us who is paying for their ads,” said Delana Jones, campaign manager for the Yes on 522 campaign, adding that the GMA's campaign ads should be taken off the air until their donors are revealed.
“In our view it’s a clear violation. It’s an important violation, particularly given the size and amount of dollars that we’re talking about,” Ferguson said at a news conference in Seattle.
Earlier this month, the group Moms for Labeling lost a similar legal challenge against the No on 522 Campaign and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) for illegally concealing the identity of the campaign's donors.
In addition to losing the case, the group was fined $10,000 in a counter legal attack by the GMA.
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Of all the GMO controversies around the world, the saga of Bt cotton in India continues to be one of the most interesting and important. In the latest chapter, reported by the Business Standard, cotton yields have dropped to a 5-year low, setting off a fascinating round of finger pointing.
India approved Bt cotton in 2002 and within a few years yields were up dramatically. There are different sets of data out there, but let’s use the India Ministry of Textiles data since it’s this weeks news story. This chart shows the national trends in cotton yield (kg per hectare).
If you follow GMO debates you will have heard several years of kennel barking about how these figures show a “remarkable success.” But as I have pointed out (in my blog and in EPW), most of the rise in productivity had nothing to do with Bt cotton; in fact it happened before Bt cotton became popular.
Check it out: the biggest rises were from 2002/3 to 2004/5, when yields rose 56% from 302 to 470 kg. But by 2004/5, only 5.6% of India’s cotton farmers had adopted Bt. Do the math: if those 5.6% of planters were really responsible for a 56% rise in yields, then they must have been harvesting 3,288 kg/ha.
Data from the India Ministry of Textiles.
So Bt didn’t explain the big rise in yields, and since Bt has taken over, yields have been steadily worsening. What are we to make of this? Well, two things, according to the Business Standard and the Monsanto spokesperson who was their main informant. One has to do with what has gone wrong, the other with what we need to get out of this mess.
1. What Went Wrong? (the farmers screwed up?)
It seems the bollworms — the voracious pests that that Bt cotton is designed to kill — are developing resistance. But resistance, according to Monsanto, is “natural and expected.”
Whoa — that’s not what the farmers were told to expect. I was there when Bt cotton was being rolled out and they were told repeatedly and confidently that they wouldn’t have to spray any more. In fact we were all being told that “genetic farming is the easiest way to cultivate crops. All that farmers have to do is to plant the seeds and water them regularly. The genetically modified seeds are insect resistant, so there is no need to use huge amounts of pesticides.”
All the farmer has to do is plant and water the seeds… and then wait around for resistance, which is natural and expected. But wait there’s more: when it does appear, it’s the Indian farmers’ fault. Monsanto’s spokesman explains:
Among the factors that may have contributed to pink bollworm resistance to the Cry1Ac protein in Gujarat are limited refuge planting and early use of unapproved Bt cotton seed, planted prior to GEAC approval of Cry1Ac cotton, which may have had lower Bt protein expression levels, he added.
A “refuge” is a strip of non-Bt seeds farmers are asked to plant around their Bt fields, basically to raise bollworms that aren’t resistant to Bt, so they can hopefully breed with any resistant bollworms.[1] Very few Indian farmers actually do this, because it’s a lot of extra work for no return. Here’s an insight from 30 years of research on farming: if you’re pushing a technology that is only sustainable if farmers follow practices that require extra work for no return, you are pushing an unsustainable technology.
The other Monsanto suggestion is that the farmers are to blame for planting unapproved seeds. Sorry, that dog don’t hunt. Those unapproved seeds were Navbharat-151 and they have been much written about; they were better than the approved seeds, and their Bt levels were apparently sky high. Gujarat, where they were planted, has had India’s biggest rises in yields.
But while we’re blaming Indian farmers, why stop there? Monsanto also explains that
farmers have been constantly educated to adopt measures such as need-based application of insecticide sprays during the crop season and adoption of cultural practices like keeping the field clean of cotton stubble and crop-leftovers, ploughing of land after harvest so that the resting stages of the insects in the soil could be destroyed.
I have yet to bump into the educators who are giving farmers constant remediation on spraying, plowing, and field clearing. But I do bump into a lot of biotechnology people who pontificate on the wisdom of the Indian farmer. The farmer has long been seen as backward, tradition-bound, and inept. “We need to teach proper tillage,” a Monsanto executive explained to me years ago. But farmers are obstinate, and in fact this was one of the arguments for GM seeds:
for years people have tried to change cultural practices of these farmers, and it just hasn’t worked. It has been a complete failure, because you have to modify infrastructure, you have to re-educate them as to how to modify their farming practices themselves. But with biotech, the technology is in a seed. All you have to do is give them the seed. (-biotechnologist Martina McGloughlin)
But as soon as Indian farmers adopted GM seeds, we were told that “we should leave the choice of selecting modern agricultural technologies to the wisdom of Indian farmers” and that “farmers are excellent businessmen who aren’t persuaded by anything or anybody that doesn’t make their job easier or more profitable.” [2]
So don’t question the wisdom of the farmer! He is a genius — at least when he is buying GM seeds. But otherwise, he has to be told how to plant, spray, plow, and clear fields!
2. Now What? (More innovation?)
So despite all the GM seeds, India’s cotton yields keep on dropping. (In some states, they are now lower than they were before Bt seeds became popular.) So what’s the way forward?
To me this is a very hard question, but not to the Business Standard, which simply reports the news that
continuous R&D and innovation to develop new value-added technologies is imperative to stay ahead of insect resistance. To support such innovation, Monsanto demanded government policies’ support to encourage investment in R&D which will result in Indian farmers having a wider choice of better and advanced technologies translating thereby, higher yield.
No kidding — innovation from Monsanto is going to keep us ahead of the insects and guarantee higher yields. But lets take a look at the facts, at least as reported by the industry-friendly ISAAA. Yields started dropping after 2007/8. But that was just after new genetic constructs started appearing: a new 2-gene technology in 2006/7, and by 2009, six different constructs were approved. And these rapidly proliferating technologies were appearing in dizzying numbers of seed products. After 2006/7, the number of Bt hybrid seeds being offered to farmers jumped from 62 to 131 to 274; by 2009/10 there were 522.
There you have it: Indian cotton farmers today are being pelted with a hailstorm of new gene technologies and seed products, their yields steadily dropping, and the way forward is clear to the Business Standard: invest in Monsanto innovation.
Glenn Davis Stone is Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Over the past 30 years he has studied and written about food, farming, and biotechnology. He has conducted extensive research in West Africa, India, and the U.S., with additional fieldwork in So. Africa, Viet Nam, Thailand, and England, and laboratory work at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. He is president of the Anthropology & Environment Society of the American Anthropological Assn.
Notes
[1] Further explanation: A field full of Bt plants puts selective pressure on bollworm populations favoring worms with natural resistance to Bt. The resistant bollworms would thrive and spread the resistance trait, while the Bt-vulnerable bollworms die off. The plants in the refuge are non-Bt, so Bt-sensitive worms are supposed to thrive there; they are supposed to mate with the Bt-resistant worms and water down the resistance trait.
[2] Pinstrup-Andersen, P., and E. Schioler 2000 Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press; Fumento, M. 2003 BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is Changing Our World. San Francisco: Encounter Books.

Conneticut and Hawaii Take Up GMO Labeling Fight
Activists on the island of Mokokai, Hawaii staged a 'Decontamination Event' along the side of the road to warn drivers of Monsanto’s toxic ways. (Photo: occupy_monsanto)The fight to label genetically modified (gmo) foods is now on in Hawaii and Connecticut signaling that, despite big agriculture's defeat of California's Proposition 37 in November, proponents of seed and food sovereignty refuse to back down.
On Thursday, the group GMO Free CT held a press conference at the state's legislative office to launch a new anti-GMO initiative calling on the Connecticut Legislature to support and pass a bill to label genetically engineered food in the state, the New Haven Register reports.
Calling the use of GMOs in food "a very large, uncontrolled experiment with human health," William Duesing, Executive Director of the Connecticut branch of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), spoke before the group. "The vast amount of GMO crops are designed as sales tools for specific herbicides. The majority of those sales tools are for Roundup (which) kills most green plants that haven’t been engineered to resist it,” he said.
Among those present at the event included bill-sponsor Representative Phil Miller (D-Essex), Food and Water Watch Executive Director, Wenonah Hauter, as well as a number of local activists and farm-to-table chefs and proponents.
Backing the effort, the group Food Democracy Now! has put together a letter of petition for Connecticut residents to send to their local representatives and Governor Dan Malloy encouraging them to support the legislation.
Food activists in Hawaii won a partial victory this week when the House Committee on Agriculture passed a measure to require labeling on genetically modified food.
Originally, House Bill 174 required any food product that is produced or sold in Hawaii to have a label saying it contains or was made using genetically engineered materials, but Thursday's committee hearing amended the requirements so it only applies to produce imported from outside Hawaii, Associated Press reports.
Despite this provision, Hawaii is a ripe battleground for new legislation. According to the anti-GMO organization Hawai'i Seed, "Hawai‘i is the genetic engineering experimental capital of the world," with thousands of acres of arable farmland being used to test seed crops for agriculture giants, including Monsanto.
Last month, pioneering anti-GMO activist Dr. Vandana Shiva visited the islands. Speaking before hundreds at a rally in Honolulu on the opening day of the 2013 Hawaii State Legislature, she said:
What could be more stupid than putting toxic genes in our food? What could be more obscene then saying, 'After I put in these toxic genes, I am the creator of life on Earth and now I will collect rent from nature, farmers', making us all poorer.
This is a slavery system in new garb. Worse than any slavery that's ever been known, because it is enslaving the future, it is enslaving nature.
At the end of the speech the crowd chanted in response, “ʻAʻole GMO!,” Hawaiian for No GMO!

GMOs: Changing the Human Genome One Meal at a Time
GMO Scandal: The Long Term Effects of Genetically Modified Food on Humans
One of the great mysteries surrounding the spread of GMO plants around the world since the first commercial crops were released in the early 1990’s in the USA and Argentina has been the absence of independent scientific studies of possible long-term effects of a diet of GMO plants on humans or even rats. Now it has come to light the real reason. The GMO agribusiness companies like Monsanto, BASF, Pioneer, Syngenta and others prohibit independent research.
An editorial in the respected American scientific monthly magazine, Scientific American, August 2009 reveals the shocking and alarming reality behind the proliferation of GMO products throughout the food chain of the planet since 1994. There are no independent scientific studies published in any reputed scientific journal in the world for one simple reason. It is impossible to independently verify that GMO crops such as Monsanto Roundup Ready Soybeans or MON8110 GMO maize perform as the company claims, or that, as the company also claims, that they have no harmful side effects because the GMO companies forbid such tests!
That’s right. As a precondition to buy seeds, either to plant for crops or to use in research study, Monsanto and the gene giant companies must first sign an End User Agreement with the company. For the past decade, the period when the greatest proliferation of GMO seeds in agriculture has taken place, Monsanto, Pioneer (DuPont) and Syngenta require anyone buying their GMO seeds to sign an agreement that explicitly forbids that the seeds be used for any independent research. Scientists are prohibited from testing a seed to explore under what conditions it flourishes or even fails. They cannot compare any characteristics of the GMO seed with any other GMO or non-GMO seeds from another company. Most alarming, they are prohibited from examining whether the genetically modified crops lead to unintended side-effects either in the environment or in animals or humans.
The only research which is permitted to be published in reputable scientific peer-reviewed journals are studies which have been pre-approved by Monsanto and the other industry GMO firms.
The entire process by which GMO seeds have been approved in the United States, beginning with the proclamation by then President George H.W. Bush in 1992, on request of Monsanto, that no special Government tests of safety for GMO seeds would be conducted because they were deemed by the President to be “substantially equivalent” to non-GMO seeds, has been riddled with special interest corruption. Former attorneys for Monsanto were appointed responsible in EPA and FDA for rules governing GMO seeds as but one example and no Government tests of GMO seed safety to date have been carried out. All tests are provided to the US Government on GMO safety or performance by the companies themselves such as Monsanto. Little wonder that GMO sounds to positive and that Monsanto and others can falsely claim GMO is the “solution to world hunger.”
In the United States a group of twenty four leading university corn insect scientists have written to the US Government Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanding the EPA force a change to the company censorship practice. It is as if Chevrolet or Tata Motors or Fiat tried to censor comparative crash tests of their cars in Consumer Reports or a comparable consumer publication because they did not like the test results. Only this deals with the human and animal food chain. The scientists rightly argue to EPA that food safety and environment protection “depend on making plant products available to regular scientific scrutiny.” We should think twice before we eat that next box of American breakfast cereal if the corn used is GMO .
F. William Engdahl is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be contacted via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
Seeds of Destruction
The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, 2007 ISBN 978-0-937147-2-2
by F. William Engdahl
This skillfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
Engdahl’s carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all those committed to the causes of social justice and World peace.
What is so frightening about Engdahl’s vision of the world is that it is so real. Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this new age of “free markets”, everything– science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds– have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food production. (Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute Institute, Scotland)
If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda –why biotech corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World– you should read this carefully researched book. You will learn how these corporations want to achieve control over all mankind, and why we must resist… (Marijan Jost, Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, Croatia)
The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in which four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no hesitation to use GMO to gain control over our very means of subsistence… (Anton Moser, Professor of Biotechnology, Graz, Austria).
Order now: Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
by F. William Engdahl
or click shopcart banner below

Farmers demand an appeal in Monsanto GMO case
AFP Photo / Philippe Huguen
A group of farmers are in Washington, DC this week to demand that the federal court reconsiders a case against biotech giants Monsanto.
Last February, District Court Judge Naomi Buchwald dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association in which the plaintiffs sought legal protection from Monsanto, a billion-dollar corporation that has grown exponentially in recent years to become a dominating figure in the American agricultural market. Small time farmers say there is a reason for that, though, and they want the courts to do something about it.
Before Judge Buchwald rejected their plea, the plaintiffs wanted the government to step in to make sure small time farmers would no longer be sued by Monsanto, a company that has introduced a number of lawsuits in recent years against independent growers.
In addition to being a titan in the agricultural field, Monsanto is also known for patenting genetically modified seed types that can spawn crops that rival the ones made by Mother Nature. While those products are a hot commodity among some farmers, others aren’t fortunate enough to add them to their fields. That isn’t to say the occasional wind gust or other method doesn’t move those GMO seeds onto unlicensed farms, though, and Monsanto has spent millions to sue farmers that infringe, even accidently, on their costly patent.
When the plaintiffs hoped for federal protection last year, Judge Buchwald told them it wouldn’t be possible. This week, however, the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association is back in the nation’s capital to file an appeal.
“The District Court erred when it denied the organic seed plaintiffs the right to seek protection from Monsanto’s patents,” Dan Ravicher, an attorney representing plaintiffs with the Public Patent Foundation, says in a statement. “At the oral argument on January 10, we will explain to the Court of Appeals the District Court’s errors and why the case should be reinstated.”
Carol Koury, a farmer that operates Sow True Seeds in Asheville, North Carolina, made the trek to Washington this week to show support. Before any news emerged from federal court, though, she was outside the White House to rally for justice.
"We want and demand the right of clean seed not contaminated by a massive biotech company that's in it for the profit," Koury told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was joined by around 200 others outside of the president's residence Thursday morning.
In Judge Buchwald’s original ruling, the justice stated, "there is no evidence to suggest that plaintiffs are infringing defendants' patents, nor have plaintiffs suggested when, if ever, such infringement will occur.” In Washington this week, though, the Public Patent Foundation’s Ravicher directly challenged that decision.
"If our clients don't have standing today to seek protection, when will they have standing? Do they have to wait to be contaminated?" he asked.
Commenting on the case in an official statement, Monsanto says attempts to drag them back into court are without merit.
“The district court ruling dismissing this case noted it was simply a transparent effort by plaintiffs to create a controversy where none exists,” says Tom Helscher, Monsanto’s director of corporate affairs. “Farmers who have no interest in using Monsanto’s patented seed products have no rational basis to fear a lawsuit from Monsanto, and claims to the contrary, to quote from the district Court, are ‘groundless’ and ‘baseless.’ As was stated in the court, it has been, and remains, Monsanto’s policy not to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patents are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means.”
When Ravicher was in court last year to take on Monsanto, he said something quite the opposite.
“It seems quite perverse that an organic farmer contaminated by transgenic seed could be accused of patent infringement, but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement, so we had to act to protect the interests of our clients,” the attorney insisted.
Monsanto announced earlier this month that profits during the first quarter of fiscal year 2013 had more than doubled. Pierre Courduroux, the company’s chief financial officer, tells Bloomberg he expects a gross profit in 2013 of $7.65 billion for the company.
