Coalition demands FDA deny approval of controversial Genetically Engineered Salmon

FDA Considers Approval of GE Salmon–the First GE Food Animal–Yet
Fails to Inform the Public of Environmental and Economic Risks

August 27, 2010
JOINT PRESS STATEMENT, from:

CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY

FOOD AND WATER WATCH

SALMONAID- NORTHWEST ATLANTIC MARINE ALLIANCE

ORGANIC CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION

FRIENDS OF THE EARTH

THE LIVING OCEANS SOCIETY

SMALL BOAT COMMERCIAL SALMON FISHERMEN?S ASSOCIATION

THE GEORGIA STRAIT ALLIANCE

CALIFORNIANS FOR GE-FREE AGRICULTURE

THE ORGANIC & NON-GMO REPORT

PLANETARY HEALTH, INC.

SIERRA CLUB

SAY NO TO GMOS!

CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

CANADIAN BIOTECHNOLOGY ACTION NETWORK

INSTITUTE FOR FISHERIES RESOURCES

AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION OF FISHERMEN’S ASSOCIATION MANGROVE ACTION PROJECT

FOOD FIRST / INSTITUTE FOR FOOD AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY

EDEN FOODS, INC.

THE NON-GMO PROJECT

NORTHWEST RESISTANCE AGAINST GENETIC ENGINEERING

PCC NATURAL MARKETS

AMBERWAVES

GLOUSTER FISHERMEN?S WIVES ASSOCIATION

FRESH THE MOVIE

WASHINGTON BIOTECHNOLOGY ACTION COUNCIL

OREGON PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Washington, DC August 27, 2010

A coalition of 31 consumer, animal
welfare and environmental groups, along with commercial and
recreational fisheries associations and food retailers submitted a
joint statement criticizing an announcement this week by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) that it will potentially approve the
long-shelved AquAdvantage transgenic salmon as the first genetically
engineered (GE) animal intended for human consumption.

Important! DNA Fragments from GMO plants found in animals!

Munich

A recent Testbiotech survey shows that DNA fragments from transgenic plants are increasingly found in animal tissue such as milk, inner organs and muscles. Most recently, in April 2010, scientists from Italy reported DNA sequences stemming from genetically engineered soy in milk from goats. These DNA fragments are presumably, entering the blood stream from the gut and then from there reaching the udder and the milk. Traces of specific DNA were also identified in kids fed with the goat’s milk. These findings are not the first to be reported after DNA fragments have been found in the tissue of animals fed with transgenic plants. A few years ago, DNA from genetically engineered maize was found in samples from pigs. More recently, research found traces from transgenic plants in the organs of fish, namely rainbow trout and tilapia. In fish, the gene sequences were found in nearly all inner organs.

There is however, a need for further research since for unknown reasons some enzyme activity in kids fed with goat’s milk containing specific DNA was found to be enhanced.

“Recent publications could lend support to those stakeholders in favour of labelling products such as meat, milk and eggs derived from animals fed with genetically engineered plants. If the methods for sampling DNA get even better, those traces will be found more often in future,” says Christoph Then from Testbiotech. “So far detection is not possible in each and every case. Most frequently these traces seem to occur in fish.”

Developer of genetically engineered salmon eyes Canadian regulators

Sarah Schmidt August 27, 2010

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Developer+genetically+engineered+salmon+eyes+Canadian+regulators/3446972/story.html#ixzz0xl0EAw6L

OTTAWA: The developer of genetically engineered salmon for human
consumption is now setting its sights on Health Canada, after U.S.
regulators on Wednesday announced their review of AquaBounty
Technologies Inc.’s historic application for the American market is
nearly complete.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration published details of the last
stages of its review for AquAdvantage Salmon, made from eggs produced
in a hatchery in Prince Edward Island. The genetically engineered fish
can grow at twice the normal rate, and the company, headquartered in
Massachusetts with Canadian operations in P.E.I. and Newfoundland and
Labrador, has been trying for a decade to get approval to become the
first genetically engineered animal that people would eat.

After the FDA’s special veterinary medicine committee convenes next
month to consider issues of animal health, food safety, environmental
concerns, and data validating the claim that AquAdvantage Salmon grow
faster than their conventionally bred counterparts, the Center for
Food Safety and Applied Nutrition will lead a public hearing to
consider legal issues around labelling, should the AquAdvantage Salmon
be approved in the next few months.

“We’re very encouraged,” AquaBounty president and chief executive
officer Ronald Stotish said in an interview Wednesday of the FDA review.
“This is the first food animal, we hope the world’s first FDA-approved
genetically modified food animal.”

New weed strategies needed, scientists say

Washington, D.C. – The spread of weeds resistant to Roundup herbicide is bringing new scrutiny to the government’s regulation of biotech crops.

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, a longtime critic of the biotech industry, said the U.S. Agriculture Department has been too quick to approve new varieties of herbicide-tolerant crops and other biotech products.

“Now, more than ever, farmers need to have a Department of Agriculture that takes care to preserve and protect the farming environment for generations to come,” Kucinich said during a House hearing he chaired Wednesday on the spread of Roundup-resistant weeds.

One weed scientist, David Mortensen at Penn State University, said the government should restrict the use of herbicide-tolerant crops and impose a tax on biotech seeds to fund research and education programs.

The resistant weeds cannot be killed by the sole use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, which has become broadly popular with farmers with the advent more than a decade ago of soybeans, cotton, corn and other crops that are immune to the chemical. The weeds now infest about 11 million acres, a fivefold increase in three years, Mortensen said.

Generation “M” – Monsanto

By Ronnie Cummins, Founder and Director of Organic Consumers Association

Gen-M, “Generation Monsanto,” the first generation of humans force-fed genetically modified foods, hasn’t reached reproductive age yet (they were born in the late 1990s). But, if a critical mass of animal feeding studies are any indication, the millennial generation, reared on Food Inc.’s unlabeled “Frankenfoods” can look forward to a long-term epidemic of cancer, food allergies, sterility, learning disabilities, and birth defects.

Corn (85% of U.S. production is GM), soy (91% GM), cotton (88% GM), canola (85% GM) and sugar beets (95% GM) are all genetically engineered by Monsanto to withstand massive doses of the company’s glyphosate herbicide RoundUp, or else to exude their own pesticide, Bacillus Thuriengensis (Bt). RoundUp, the favorite weedkiller poison of non-organic farmers and gardeners, causes brain, intestinal and heart defects in fetuses. And scientists warn that RoundUp, the most extensively used herbicide in the history of agriculture, “may have dire consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils infertile, crops non-productive, and plants less nutritious.” In addition, hundreds of thousands of US dairy cows are injected with genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (developed by Monsanto) in spite of studies linking rBGH with cancer, and longstanding bans on the drug in the EU, Japan, Canada, and most industrialized nations.

New Study Links Monsanto’s Roundup to Cancer

By the Organic Consumers Association

A recent study by eminent oncologists Dr. Lennart Hardell and Dr. Mikael
Eriksson of Sweden [1], has revealed clear links between one of the
world’s biggest selling herbicide, glyphosate, to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form
of cancer [2].

In the study published in the 15 March 1999 Journal of American Cancer
Society, the researchers also maintain that exposure to glyphosate
‘yielded increased risks for NHL.’ They stress that with the rapidly increasing use
of glyphosate since the time the study was carried out, ‘glyphosate
deserves further epidemiologic studies.’

Glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup, is the world’s most widely used
herbicide. It is estimated that for 1998, over a 112,000 tonnes of
glyphosate was used world-wide. It indiscriminately kills off a wide
variety of weeds after application and is primarily used to control annual
and perennial plants.

Greenpeace activists quarantine illegal GE crops in Italy

Press release – July 30, 2010

Pordenone, Italy – Greenpeace activists from Italy, Austria, Germany and Hungary are quarantining illegal Genetically Engineered (GE) crops being grown in Italy. Wearing safety equipment to protect against contamination, the activists are isolating, cutting and securing the top of the GE maize plants, the part that contains the pollen.

Last week, Greenpeace took samples from the field in Friuli, northern Italy to a certified laboratory for analysis. The results confirm without doubt that the maize being grown in these fields is a patented Mosanto GE maize type, MON810. GE crop cultivation without a permit is illegal in Italy (1). There is considerable documentation highlighting the threats posed by MON810 to biodiversity, including the accumulation of toxins in soil, and negative impacts on species such as butterflies and moths (2).

“Greenpeace has taken action today to prevent any further contamination from these hazardous and illegal GE crops,” said Federica Ferrario, Greenpeace Italy Agriculture campaigner. “For days these crops will have been contaminating not only neighbouring fields, but countryside further away as well, as insects and winds disseminate their pollen.”

Monsanto’s Permit to Poison Us

By Ronnie Cummins, Founder and Director of Organic Consumers Association

Dan Quayle couldn’t spell potato, but he made sure they’d be genetically engineered. Here’s how Monsanto got their permit to poison us:

Genetically Engineered Fish in your food chain this year?

From Aol News

(Aug. 4) — A major U.S. fish research company has tampered with the DNA of Atlantic salmon by adding a quick-growth gene that allows the fish to eat year-around and grow more quickly. And the Food and Drug Administration is about to allow these genetically engineered salmon to head to market, the company says.

But food safety activists insist that the FDA doesn’t have adequate tests and regulations to ensure the safety of modified seafood, and others question whether consumers are even ready for it.

AquaBounty / MCT

An AquaBounty salmon rests in a tank behind a standard salmon that is the same age.

“Far from being a benefit to consumers or the environment, this merely allows factory fish farms to double production rates,” said George Kimbrell, senior attorney for the Center for Food Safety.

US Unsure if Cloned Meat Has Been Sold in North America

Lucy Sharratt: Please note there have already been 2 food contamination cases in Canada with experimental GM pigs : In 2002 experimental Enviropig piglets at the University of Guelph were accidentally sent to a
rendering plant and turned into animal feed instead of being destroyed
as biological waste. The GM pigs were not approved for animal feed but
contaminated 675 tonnes of poultry feed that was sold to egg farmers,
turkey farmers and broiler chicken producers. In 2004, experimental
genetically engineered pigs from the Quebec firm TGN Biotech were
accidentally turned into chicken feed instead of being incinerated.
The pigs were engineered to produce a pharmaceutical compound, (the
company no longer exists). You can write to the Minister of Health
instantly from http://www.cban.ca/enviropigaction

U.S. unsure if cloned meat has been sold in North America

By Sarah Schmidt, Postmedia News August 10, 2010
http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/unsure+cloned+meat+been+sold+North+America/3382347/story.html

OTTAWA: The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture on Tuesday said he doesn’t
know whether cloned cows or their offspring have made it into the
North American food supply.

But Tom Vilsack, in Ottawa to talk trade with food exporters and
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, emphasized that if they have, the
animals are safe to eat.

“I can’t say today that I can answer your question in an affirmative
or negative way. I don’t know. What I do know is that we know all the
research, all of the review of this is suggested that this is safe,”
Vilsack told reporters, pointing to an assessment of the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration.

List of Bee-happy non-GM flowers

April: This is a good chart for those that plant flowers for bees. These flowers are non-GM (so far). I also provide links to articles on GM flowers currently in the lab. Bees are a vital component to our survival: GM pollens could be partly to blame for CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Help the bees: plant for them as well as your nose!

Flower Chart for Bees

GM flowers for better scent: http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/24/genetically-modified-flowers-that-can-smell-like-anything-coming-soon/

Trends in plant science: http://www.finegardening.com/pages/g00094.asp

GMO Plants establish in the wild

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News
6 August 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10859264

April: David Suzuki has been speaking out about this issue for years. Eventually “volunteer” GM plants will become part of the wild environment. Because the majority of them are Roundup Ready, meaning they can be sprayed with pesticides and survive, weed management will carry a new set of problems. Weed control on roadsides will cost more. It’s simple. And who will bear this cost? The taxpayer, likely. Not Monsanto. Dr. Suzuki has stated for years, that should Terminator plants spread into our forests and begin to destroy natural plants, who is responsible (to pay) for the damage? How can you even begin to control and eradicate the damage? Here in BC, we have been privy to the Japanese pine beetle, a small insect that bores into pine trees and kills them. We have not been able to manage the forests and keep up with the problem, so we now have millions of acres of dead forests and a logging industry that took the hit. We need to stop and think about the ramifications of GM plants and their technology in the wild environment. It has been proven, time and time again, that GM genes do indeed transfer to non-GM species. These stray GM plants also travel for miles, and move into Organic and non-GM fields, quietly altering the DNA of every crop. While it may appear fine and dandy for farmers to make higher yields, somewhere, somehow, there will be a price to pay. Look beyond the obvious: this is what we are fighting for. We see the future, and it’s not pretty…

Researchers in the US have found new evidence that genetically
modified crop plants can survive and thrive in the wild, possibly for
decades.

A University of Arkansas team surveyed countryside in North Dakota for
canola. Transgenes were present in 80% of the wild canola plants they
found.

They suggest GM traits may help the plants survive weedkillers in the
wild.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Ecological
Society of America in Pittsburgh.

Over time, the build-up of different types of herbicide resistance in
feral canola and closely related weeds could make it more difficult to
manage these plants.

Robbins Geller LLP Files Class Action Suit against Monsanto Company

BOCA RATON, Fla., Jul 29, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP (“Robbins Geller”) (http://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases/monsanto/) today announced that a class action has been commenced on behalf of an institutional investor in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on behalf of purchasers of the common stock of Monsanto Company (“Monsanto” or the “Company”) /quotes/comstock/13*!mon/quotes/nls/mon (MON 57.84, -0.07, -0.12%) between January 7, 2009 and May 27, 2010, inclusive (the “Class Period”), seeking to pursue remedies under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”).

If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than 60 days from today. If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, please contact plaintiff’s counsel, David J. George of Robbins Geller at 800/449-4900 or 619/231-1058, or via e-mail at djr@rgrdlaw.com. If you are a member of this Class, you can view a copy of the complaint as filed or join this class action online at http://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases/monsanto/. Any member of the putative class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member.

The complaint charges Monsanto and certain of its officers and executives with violations of the Exchange Act. Monsanto is a provider of agricultural products for farmers including seeds, biotechnology trait products, and herbicides, most notably Roundup(R).

The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, defendants failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s true financial condition, business and prospects. Specifically, the complaint alleges that defendants failed to disclose: (i) that demand for the Company’s herbicide products was substantially declining as competition from Chinese producers of generic glyphosate products was causing a collapse in the prices of glyphosate products; (ii) that the Company would be unable to maintain herbicide prices as defendants knew that they had to cut prices significantly to be able to compete with the avalanche of generic herbicide products that were entering the market; and (iii) that, as a result of the foregoing, defendants’ positive statements about the Company, its earnings, prospects and financial condition were lacking in a reasonable basis and materially misleading.

Choosing healthy foods now called a mental disorder

April: While Big Corporations continue to discredit those that work to keep this planet in balance, we come up against some pretty interesting ways of being “attacked”. This one should give a few of you a laugh…

From: (NaturalNews) In its never-ending attempt to fabricate “mental disorders” out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they’ve invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you’re “mentally diseased” and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, “Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder” and goes on to claim this “disease” is called orthorexia nervosa — which is basically just Latin for “nervous about correct eating.”

But they can’t just called it “nervous healthy eating disorder” because that doesn’t sound like they know what they’re talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn’t). That’s where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means “bones with holes in them”).