My post on the how to keep Monsanto out of your home garden seems to have really hit a nerve with supporters of GM foods.
This morning, I received an email from the CEO/President of a large soybean seed company in the Midwest who writes:
I just read your article “The Four Steps Required To Keep Monsanto Out of Your Garden”. I favor choice when it comes to the food you eat and agree with you on that part . I do not agree that it is right to attack Monsanto and all the good work that they are doing to increase yields for farmers to keep the price of food low enough so the poorest of the poor can afford to eat. If we all had to eat organic many people in this world would starve due to the higher cost of food and lower production.
I respect your views but attacking Monsanto is not in the interest of poor people and world food production. GMO’s are not bad and have passed all the standards set by regulatory systems around the world and are proven safe. Thanks for listening.
My word for word email response?
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid my friend.
GMOs are far from “proven safe” as this CEO claims and the sob story that Monsanto is somehow helping the poor and starving people of the world is nothing but a PR stunt that while effective, has no basis in truth or reality.
As Mark Twain once said, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”
There are many highly capable and obviously intelligent people that have completely bought the scam that GMOs are safe and going to feed the world baloney.
Perhaps this most recent news out of Europe will give them a much need kick in the pants to wake them up to the reality of the situation.
Independent Experts Find GM Foods Contain Dangerous Gene
The European Union’s official, independent food watchdog group, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), is reporting that the approval process for GM crops failed to identify a poisonous gene discovered in 54 of 86 GM plants.
Most alarmingly, this viral gene known as “GENE VI” was discovered in the most widespread GM crops, notably corn and soy, which are heavily used in animal feed for livestock producing meat, milk, and eggs.
How did the viral gene get into the GM crops in the first place?
The problem starts right in the laboratory where GM foods are synthesized by an army of scientists playing God with millions of unsuspecting guinea pigs blithely buying unlabeled GM laced products at the supermarket.
These scientists insert foreign genes from other organisms (plant or animal) into a target plant using a technique which allows these foreign genes to “piggyback” on common soil or plant based viruses.
Assumption is the Mother of Error it seems as these scientists had expected that the virus genes transporting the foreign genes into the target plant would not be present once the GM plant was actually grown in the field.
The EFSA research (Independent Science News) has now conclusively shown that this major assumption upon which the supposed “safety” of GMOs is based is not the case.
Not. Even. Close.
How the presence of this viral gene could have been missed by the biotech companies, government regulators, and even university scientists is beyond comprehension.
The EFSA research indicated the following:
This situation represents a complete and catastrophic system failure.
There are clear indications that this viral gene might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.
A reasonable concern is that the protein produced by Gene VI might be a human toxin. This is a question that can only be answered by future experiments.
Dr. Julian Little, chairman of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC) which represents the biotech companies, had this to say in response:
... nearly three trillion meals containing GM ingredients have been eaten without a single substantiated case of ill-health. The combination of these two facts can give consumers a huge amount of confidence in the safety of GM crops.
I guess Dr. Little isn’t really paying attention to the skyrocketing cases of food allergies and digestive complaints in the past decade or so, particularly allergies to corn and soy, the top two GM crops.
It’s always easier to just continue with business as usual and hide behind PR campaigns focusing on starving children and fudged reports about the “safety” of frankenfoods when the corporate bottom line (and the McMansion mortgage payment) is at stake, isn’t it Mr. CEO?
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources
Uncovered, the “toxic” gene hiding in GM crops: Revelation throws new doubt over the safety of foods
nearly three trillion meals containing GM ingredients have been eaten without a single substantiated case of ill-health………
YET!!!!!!
How about Morgellons disease? This fun malady where weird colored fibers grow from skin lesions, and nobody seems to be able to determine the origin of these fibers, which seem almost not-of-this-world. Many health professionals are pointing the finger at GMO contamination of our bodies’ DNA. Morgellons is spreading, and even the famous are getting it. Ask Joni Mitchell.
It’s astounding how the MYTH of Monsanto saving people with GM Crops even is believed by intelligent people.
Here’s the reality GM Crops are engineered to be STERILE which means that after one season, they DIE and you have to BUY new seeds to feed your nation again the next year.
This will Create MORE starvation in poor nations, who won’t be able to replace what little ability they have now to grow food, when they replace all their crops with those that require them to buy seeds from Monsanto FOREVER.
The worst plan ever – and I can’t believe that anyone falls for this.
I have a family friend is wealthy and has invested in Monsanto. He truly believes in his heart that they are helping the world. He had no idea, until I told him, that their seeds are sterile. He didn’t do his homework.
STOP the plant to make the world dependent on a corporation for our food.
Control the food, and you control the people. That’s Monsanto’s unspoken mantra.
I think you have missed one part. I watched a documentary on how Monsanto forces farmers to buy their seeds!! Being sued by Monsanto because they use machines that pull the seeds they need to plant again for the following year!! Because Monsanto is huge, and can afford top lawyers, the farmers loose the fight!! It’s either cave to Monsanto or loose their farms!! It’s sick really!! This is about a monopoly and greed!! This company needs to be broke up!! Simply put, their profits mean more than anyone’s health!! Ask yourself why a CEO of Monsanto wouldn’t drink Glysophate, the main proponent in round up, and the answer would be that he knows it’s toxic!!! Thanks for reading!! Kris N
There’s a heartbreaking documentary (or maybe it was an NPR report, or a report ABOUT the documentary—!) about the Indian Farmers who commit suicide when they learn they’re being sued by Monsanto, because they attempted to go back to planting corn they could save seed from, as most farmers do. Once they used the Monsanto seeds, they were warned that if a single Monsanto seedling popped up in the traditional field in a year that they hadn’t bought seeds from Monsanto, they would be sued and ruined financially. Part of the report revealed that indeed Monsanto actually does send out investigators to find and examine random (possibly bird-planted) seedlings. As stated above, a poor Indian farmer, just doing the work he knows, trying to feed his family and a hungry Nation, is powerless against such a big corporation. Monsanto probably goes no further than making the threat. They don’t care about that Farmer. I think there may have been allusion to the possibility of rigged “evidence” the farmer was threatened with. It truly disgusts me. Thank you or your good work on this issue; I wish more people would pay attention.
My pediatrician told me to make sure that my son who has several food allergies, does not eat any GMO’s. That is coming from a Doctor who has been around for a long time…I take those words of wisdom to heart! Thank you for sharing on this topic.
This a bit off topic, but a wide variety of microorganisms can be found in normal soil. These microorganism (bacteria) can cause disease in severely immunocompromised individuals, just as probiotics sold over the counter can also do likewise in immunocompromised individuals. If this be the case, I am to assume that normal soil based vegetables ( excluding Monsanto) are safe for immunocompromised individuals?
Monsanto uses the cspB gene from bacillus subtilis. Bacillus subtilis is a soil based organism and a beneficial probiotic which is included in a few over the counter products, Primal Defense, Bio-Kult and a few others. The isolated gene was researched and deemed non-pathogenic. I believe bacillus subtilis to be beneficial, but I’m not familiar with isolating gene components, so I can’t speak to it’s usefulness or whether there is a difference.
Ok. I’m sure they abstracted a gene from this natural bacteria and altered it etc etc….wow you are a troll