Info

This page lists short versions of what’s happening on the GMO scene, both politically and socially.

GM CORN

Article in Nature Biotechnology (on how biotechnology companies restrict independent research) described a study showing that a genetically modified corn killed ladybugs and that the study was suppressed by the corn’s developer, Pioneer.

Spain is the largest producer of GM maize in the European Union, with about 80,000 hectares under cultivation.

INSECT RESISTANCE

Pests such as the diamondback moth have been quick to develop resistance to BT toxin, and in 2007 swarms of mealy bugs began attacking supposedly pest-resistant Indian cotton.

MONSANTO

US-based Monsanto provides 90 percent of the world’s GM seeds — and seems set on gaining complete control of the world’s seed and food markets.

By aggressively buying up seed companies, Monsanto will ensure that natural seeds are replaced with their genetically modified crops.

A study published provides proof that Monsanto’s science does not stand up to independent peer review and highlights the need for impartial testing of GMO products.

From 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 72 million liters of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, on over one million Vietnamese civilians and over 100,000 U.S. troops.

CROP STATISTICS

91% of Soya grown in the United States is genetically modified.

In Europe, the area planted with GM crops has decreased for the fifth year in a row – a reduction of more than 10% since 2008.

In 2009, the EU’s largest member, Germany, became the sixth EU country to ban the planting of GM maize, making the area planted in the EU with GM crops less than 0.05% of total agricultural land.

Despite many decades of research there is still not a single commercial GM crop with increased yield, drought-tolerance, salt-tolerance, enhanced nutrition or other beneficial traits long promised by biotech companies.

SUPERWEEDS & CROP PROBLEMS/PESTICIDES

Canadian wheat farmers now have Round-up Ready resistant GM canola growing in their fields.

GM canola readily breeds with conventional canola and the resulting seeds are GM tainted.

GM tainted canola, the straw of which is used as animal feedstock cannot be used as fodder for organic cattle or dairy farmers.

Despite the decades of work in the courts, the media, and on the Hill, the environmental community has had disappointingly little impact on pesticide and fertilizer use in this country.

Recent US Department of Agriculture data has shown that in 2008, GM crops in the US required over 26% more kilograms of pesticides per hectare than conventional varieties.

THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE EATING!!!

BT maize, engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin, continues to produce the toxin right up until harvest, reaching the consumer at its highest possible concentrations.

Despite Bt’s purported safety for humans, no long term testing has ever been done to assure its safety.

If you read the labels you’ll find soya lecithin listed as an ingredient in many processed foods.

Sudan red in our spices.

Antibiotic chloramphenicol in our honey.

rBST in our milk.

Ethylene glycol in our pet food.

Genetically modified organisms in our non-gmo soya milk.

Sugar promoted as a way to “manage diabetes”!

Cloned meat on the FDA’s agenda in the US.

Cadmium pineapples in South Africa!

Victims who had an allergic reaction to the brazil nut gene inserted into the soyabean they unwittingly ate (no labelling!)

Syngenta failed to convincingly prove that their “maize event 3 272″ was safe for human or animal consumption. Although intended for biofuel production, the maize could easily contaminate maize meant as food.

The possibility that GM maize contains allergens cannot not be ruled out as World Health Organization evaluation guidelines were not used in assessments.

Unilever is using genetically engineered “antifreeze” fish proteins from the blood of the Ocean Pout (a polar ocean, eel-like species) in ice cream products sold in the US, Australia and New Zealand. Yummmmm….

Dagobah organic chocolate is owned by Hershey’s now. Kellogg’s owns Gardenburger, and Cascadian Farm is really General Mills. Organic companies are getting gobbled up like bar snacks.

Big Organic food manufacturers worked a back room deal in Congress so that non-organic ingredients can be used in USDA certified organic foods under “emergency situations”?

American farmers are planting more corn than ever and Americans are consuming four times as much corn sweetener as they did a generation ago.

The cost of soda and crappy fast food has been plummeting in real dollars while the cost of fruits and veggies has been skyrocketing? Did you know the US Farm Bill promotes that?

Kraft bought Cadbury which owns Green and Black Organic chocolates.

Most of use are aware of the dangers behind the artificial sweetener and excitotoxin, aspartame (known as preservative E951), but may not be aware that it is created using genetic modification.

America has one of the highest levels of GMOs in their food chain in the western world with up to 85% of its pre-packaged and processed foods coming from genetic engineering.

NATURAL SOLUTIONS GMO CAN’T FIX

Farmers in East Africa discovered that by planting a local weed amid their corn crop, they could lure pests to lay their eggs on the weed and not the crop.

The African stalkborer is thousands of years old, and has a mutual co-existence with indigenous grasses and local ecology. Africans used a natural spray to combat the bug, and no resistance to this spray was ever an issue. Within 4 years of introduction to GM Bt maize, the stalkborer is now resistant and ravaging Africa, and is compromised beyond repair.

THIRD PARTY RESEARCH AND STUDIES

2010: Russia does long term testing on GM soy and hamsters. By the second generation, they began to show signs of smaller sizes and inability to reproduce. Those that could went on to third generation, but all hamsters were sterile. Read more…

In 1998, Scottish scientists found damage to every single internal organ in rats fed blight resistant GM potatoes.

In a 2006 experiment, female rats fed on herbicide-resistant soybeans gave birth to severely stunted pups, of which half died within three weeks. The survivors were sterile.

In 2006, Indian news agencies reported that thousands of sheep allowed to graze on BT cotton crop residues had died suddenly. Further cases of livestock deaths followed in 2007. There have also been reports of allergy-like symptoms among Indian labourers in BT cotton fields.

In 2002, the only trial ever to involve human beings appeared to show that altered genetic material from GM soybeans not only survives in the human gut, but may even pass its genetic material to bacteria within the digestive system.

A three-year study of 87 villages in India found that non-BT cotton consistently produced 30 per cent higher yields than the (more expensive) GM alternative.

It is now widely accepted that GM soybeans produce consistently lower yields than conventional varieties.

In 1992, Monsanto’s own trials showed that the company’s Roundup Ready soybeans yield 11.5 per cent less on harvest.

Later Monsanto studies went on to reveal that some trials of GM canola crops in Australia actually produced yields per cent below the non-GM national average.

Eddie from Ficksburg stated that whilst his GM maize yields are higher and his pesticide use is lower he has noticed that his cows (that are being fed on GM maize) are more sickly.

STUPID RESEARCH

Alba, transgenic glowing bunny with jelly fish genes: Died age 4 instead of 12.

Most biotechnology foods in the United States are not formally approved for human consumption.

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM IMPORTANT PEOPLE

“We are confronted with the most powerful technology the world has ever known, and it is being rapidly deployed with almost no thought whatsoever to its consequences”, says Dr Suzanne Wuerthele, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) toxicologist.

IT’S TOO LATE

GM Canola is now in the wild and we’re yet to learn what all the unintended side-effects of this will be in future.

Evidence of Increasing Antibiotic Resistance Gene Abundances in Archived Soils since 1940

U.S., Canada and Australia–all major wheat-producing countries–announced their support for genetically modified wheat and pledged to work toward synchronized commercialization of wheat biotech traits. February 2010

Gone to Seed reports, for the first time, that the traditional seed supply for important food crops is contaminated with DNA from genetically engineered crops. UCS tested six traditional varieties each from three crops—corn, soybeans, and canola—and found that most of them carry pieces of DNA from genetically engineered varieties.

The next wave of new products will be crops—often food crops—engineered to produce drugs and industrial products like plastics. These so-called pharm and industrial crops have been field tested in the open in the United States for over a decade and in theory could have contaminated our seed supplies.

Spanish farmer Eduardo Campayo Garcia was forced to abandon growing maize as his fields in central Castilla had been contaminated by GMO crops.

The cultivation of GM soy to feed factory farmed animals is contributing to widespread deforestation in South America.

Genetically-modified crops have the potential to cross-breed with native crops, altering the evolution of the entire population.

ETC Group, an international watchdog that has raised complicated questions about synthetic biology since its earliest days, also warns of the potential for “bio-error”: what unintended and unimaginable consequences might result from deploying all these freely reproducing, totally novel organisms into the world? What if those living machines don’t work exactly as planned?

GOVERNMENT STUPIDITY

Millionaire corn farmers get subsidized by tax dollars.

A Japanese company was forced to pull GMO L-Tryptophan off the market in 1989 after thousands of people became severely ill with many developing an extremely rare blood disorder called, Esinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome (EMS), although the FDA never publicly mentioned that GMO contamination was the true cause of the recall.

CORPORATE STUPIDITY

Swiss food giant Nestle directly contributes to the impoverishment of (Indonesian) farmers and malnutrition, particularly among babies, through their control of production and pricing in the dairy sector.

MONSANTO and “others” LAWSUITS

During 2005 and 2006, Monsanto had shipments of soy meal from Argentina impounded in Amsterdam. Tests showed they contained some of the patented seed traits and Monsanto sued the importers for infringement, ending in a settlement.

Genetically Modified Rice Cases Continue to Plague Bayer – January 15, 2011: In the first federal case set for trial since four bellwether trials, Bayer has agreed to an $873,000 settlement with Mississippi farmers over alleged contamination from genetically modified rice.