Ban GMOs Now – Health & Environmental Hazards Especially in the Light of the New Genetics
Biodiversity, GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by I-SIS June 18, 2013
The most exhaustive, and up-to-date summary of the dangers of GM agriculture for 2013. GM agriculture is a recipe for disaster, as this report will make clear. It is also standing in the way of the shift to sustainable agriculture already taking place in local communities all over the world that can truly enable people to feed themselves in times of climate change.
Order your copy now. (Executive Summary here, Contents page here).
GM agriculture is failing on all counts while hazards to health and the environment are coming to light. Opposition to GMOs is gaining momentum worldwide but the expansionist GM corporate agenda continues undiminished. GM agriculture is a recipe for disaster as this report will make clear. It is also standing in the way of the shift to sustainable agriculture already taking place in local communities all over the world that can truly enable people to feed themselves in times of climate change. Take action now to ban environmental releases of GMOs, locally in communities, villages, towns, municipalities, regions, as well as nationally and globally. We the people need to reclaim our food and seed sovereignty from the corporate empire before they destroy our food and farming irreversibly.
Comments (0)Unapproved Monsanto Crop (Wheat) Found Growing in Oregon, Whilst “Monsanto Protection Act” Sneaks Into Law
GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Stefan Boone June 14, 2013
Comments (2)A genetically modified strain of wheat that was never approved by the United States Department of Agriculture as been discovered growing in Oregon, triggering a federal probe that is now spanning several states. The GMO wheat was made by biotech company Monsanto and was tested in parts of the US until 2006, at which point Monsanto stopped pursuing the USDA’s approval. Investigators are now trying to figure out why the pesticide-resistant crop was still growing years later, and it couldn’t come at a worst time for Monsanto. Backlash against the company continues to grow, and over the weekend millions of people around the world participated in anti-Monsanto demonstrations. Meanwhile, a so-called "ag-gag" law being proposed in North Carolina would make it illegal to expose any wrongdoings committed by Monsanto and other agriculture companies. Andy Stepanian of Sparrow Media joins Meghan Lopez to discuss. — YouTube
March against Monsanto: A Huge International Success
GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Jeffrey M. Smith
Our movement to end the genetic engineering of the food supply just entered a whole new era. On May 25th, two million people in 436 cities and 52 countries banded together to express their outrage over GMOs and Monsanto’s attempted takeover of seeds and agriculture.
Read more.
Comments (1)Seeds Of Death – Unveiling the Lies of GMOs (Documentary)
GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Gary Null
The leaders of Big Agriculture — Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta — are determined that the world’s population remains ignorant about the serious health and environmental risks of genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture. Deep layers of deception and corruption underlie both the science favoring GMOs and the corporations and governments supporting them.
This award-winning documentary, Seeds of Death, exposes the lies about GMOs and pulls back the curtains to witness our planet’s future if Big Agriculture’s new green revolution becomes our dominant food supply.
Comments (0)Farmed Fish Production Overtakes Beef
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Food Shortages, Health & Disease, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Earth Policy Institute
Janet Larsen and J. Matthew Roney, Earth Policy Institute
The world quietly reached a milestone in the evolution of the human diet in 2011. For the first time in modern history, world farmed fish production topped beef production. The gap widened in 2012, with output from fish farming—also called aquaculture—reaching a record 66 million tons, compared with production of beef at 63 million tons. And 2013 may well be the first year that people eat more fish raised on farms than caught in the wild. More than just a crossing of lines, these trends illustrate the latest stage in a historic shift in food production—a shift that at its core is a story of natural limits.
As the global demand for animal protein grew more than fivefold over the second half of the twentieth century, humans began to press against the productivity constraints of the world’s rangelands and oceans. Annual beef production climbed from 19 million tons in 1950 to more than 50 million tons in the late 1980s. Over the same period, the wild fish catch ballooned from 17 million tons to close to 90 million tons. But since the late 1980s, the growth in beef production has slowed, and the reported wild fish catch has remained essentially flat. (See Excel data.)
Comments (2)Prince Charles Attacks Monoculture Food Production Systems – A Speech at the Langenburg Forum on Regional Food Security, Germany
Economics, Health & Disease, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Prince Charles June 12, 2013
May 27, 2013: Ladies and Gentlemen, if I may say so, this is a very important conference. I am sure what you have heard so far about the problems we face and the obstacles to tackling them has given you a clear context in which to be able to consider what comes next this afternoon.
The aim here is to think through how we might create a much more local model of food production and distribution. But also, how that might fit with producing healthy food using far more sustainable methods and how we might do all of this without damaging business. Indeed, how this could improve business.
Comments (6)Living Soil Saves Lives!
Aid Projects, Biodiversity, Community Projects, Food Shortages, Health & Disease, Rehabilitation, Salination, Soil Biology, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Structure, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Tejal Heblekar June 6, 2013
A non-profit teaches a soil education program to combat the farmer suicide epidemic in rural India.
By Tejal Heblekar, and edited by Eileen Mello
A few kilometers from the Bay of Bengal in the Indian state of Orissa, rural farmers have gathered around a microscope to see what lies hidden in the ground. The Hummingbird Project, an American based non-profit organization, has equipped a soil laboratory with a microscope and resources for visiting farmers to test the quality of their farm’s soil and learn specific organic methods for improving its health. Farmers are eager to use the lab resources to test their samples and excitedly look from the microscope to the computer, watching the enhanced images of microbes moving throughout the soil. Proud chemical farmers are shocked to discover their samples — white and chalky with synthetic fertilizer salts and residues and reeking like chemicals — have no biodiversity like that found in samples from farms employing organic techniques.
Comments (3)Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide – Featuring the Darth Vader Chemical
GMOs, Health & Disease — by Jeffrey M. Smith
Duration: 1:05:42
It was “supposed” to be harmless to humans and animals — the perfect weed killer. Now a groundbreaking article (520kb PDF) just published in the journal Entropy points to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, and more specifically its active ingredient glyphosate, as devastating — possibly “the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies.”
That’s right. The herbicide sprayed on most of the world’s genetically engineered crops — and gets soaked into the food portion — is now linked to “autism … gastrointestinal issues such as inflammatory bowel disease, chronic diarrhea, colitis and Crohn’s disease, obesity, cardiovascular disease, depression, cancer, cachexia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and ALS, among others.”
Comments (7)Wellbeing Gardening – Gardening for the Body, Mind & Spirit
General, Health & Disease — by Angelo Eliades June 5, 2013
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more. — John Burroughs (1837-1921), American naturalist and writer
Gardening is a very healthy hobby, on so many levels. It’s not just about filling our tummy either, there’s a lot more to be had from a well designed garden than a tasty meal!
If we properly understand our relationship to plants and Nature itself, we can create more comprehensive garden designs that offer way more benefits than what we may previously have thought possible.
In this article we’ll first explore the health benefits of gardening as supported by recent scientific research, and then we’ll look at how we can expand the scope of our permaculture designs to derive maximum health benefits from our gardens.
Why Gardening is Good for You
Studies show that gardening promotes physical health, mental health through relaxation and satisfaction, and better nutrition. In the first part of this article we’ll explore just that, the many well-researched and documented health benefits of gardening – the reasons why we should be doing any kind of gardening!
Comments (0)GM Crops and Water – A Recipe for Disaster
GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by I-SIS May 7, 2013
A fully referenced and illustrated version of this article is posted on ISIS members website and is otherwise available for download here.
Genetically modified foods are a threat to our dwindling water supplies; they are less water-efficient and contaminate fresh water
Genetically Modified (GM) crops are widely recognised for their potential to damage both human health and the environment. Evidence is now accumulating of the contamination of streams, rivers, rain, as well as groundwater with GM-associated chemicals including Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide, while genetic elements such as antibiotic resistant genes are emerging in water-borne microbes. Further, GM crops have been shown to be less water efficient, corroborating farmer’s reports of failing GM crops during droughts. Industrial farming in general has been shown to be ill-adapted to extreme weather events such as hurricanes as well as droughts; and GM crops are not expected to do any better.
The Providential Principle
Biodiversity, Economics, Health & Disease, Insects, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by George Monbiot May 2, 2013
Amazingly, the UK government has not defined the precautionary principle and appears to have no idea what it is.
Click for larger view
Here’s something remarkable I stumbled across while researching my column on Monday, but did not have room to include. I hope you’ll agree that it is worth sharing.
I was trying to understand the context for the new chief scientist’s cavalier treatment of scientific evidence, in an article he wrote opposing a European ban on neonicotinoid pesticides. These are the toxins which, several studies suggest, could be partly responsible for the rapid decline in bees and other pollinators.
Comments (1)New GM Nightmares with RNA
GMOs, Health & Disease — by I-SIS
Small double-stranded RNA (dsRNAs) that aim to interfere with specific gene expression are increasingly used to create GM crops; unfortunately they have many off-target effects and can also interfere with gene expression in all animals exposed to the crops.
Genetic modification by RNA interference
Most commercially grown genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to produce foreign proteins, but new ones are increasingly engineered to produce RNA of a special kind – double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) – that aims to interfere with the expression of a specific gene, usually to silence the gene [1] (Table 1).
Table 1 GM crops with dsRNA commercially approved or in the approval pipeline
| Product | Company | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Flav Savr tomato | Monsanto | Withdrawn from market |
| High oleic acid soybean lines G94-1, G94-19 and G168 | Monsanto | FSANZ* approved 2000 Withdrawn from market |
| New Leaf Y and New Leaf Plus Potato | Dupont Pioneer | FSANZ* approved 2001 Withdrawn from market |
| High oleic acid soybean lind DP-305423-1 | Dupont Pioneer | FSAMZ* approved 2010 |
| Herbicde tolerant, high oleic acid soybean Line MON87705 | Monsanto | approved 2011 |
| Golden mosaic virus resistant pinto bean | Embrapa* | Brazil approved 2011 |
| Papaya ringspot virus resistant papaya | Hawaii University | USA 1996, Canada 2003, Japan 2011 |
| Altered grain starch wheat | CSIRO* | Approved for field trials & feeding experiment |
*CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization
*Embrapa Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation
*FSANZ Food Standards Australia New Zealand
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The Counter-Enlightenment
Biodiversity, Health & Disease, Insects, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by George Monbiot April 30, 2013
How government science advisers misrepresent science.
What happens to people when they become government science advisers? Are their children taken hostage? Is a dossier of compromising photographs kept, ready to send to the Sun if they step out of line?
Comments (4)Tackling “Monoculture of the Mind”
Biodiversity, GMOs, Health & Disease — by Vandana Shiva April 25, 2013
Billionaires forgo iron-rich crops in push for GM bananas in India
Nature has given us a cornucopia of biodiversity rich in nutrients. Malnutrition and nutrient deficiency result from destroying biodiversity. The Green Revolution has spread monocultures of chemical rice and wheat, driving out biodiversity from our farms and diets. And what survived as spontaneous crops — like amaranth greens (chaulai) and chenopodium (bathua) that are rich in iron — were sprayed with poisons and herbicides. Instead of cherishing them as iron- and vitamin-rich gifts, these vegetables were treated as “weeds”.
The “monoculture of the mind” treats diversity as disease and creates coercive structures to remodel this biologically and culturally diverse world of ours on the concepts of one privileged class, one race and one gender of a single species. As “the monoculture of the mind” took over, biodiversity disappeared from our farms and food. It’s the destruction of biodiverse rich cultivation and diets that has led us to the malnutrition crisis.
Comments (1)“Stunning” Difference of GM from non-GM Corn
GMOs, Health & Disease — by I-SIS April 22, 2013
A comparison of US Midwest non-GM with GM corn shows shockingly high levels of glyphosate as well as formaldehyde, and severely depleted of mineral nutrients in the GM corn.
The results of a comparison
of GM and non-GM corn from adjacent Midwest fields in the US that first
appeared on the Moms Across America March website [1] are reproduced in Table
1.
Table 1 Comparison between GM and non-GM corn grown side by side*
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| Parts per million (ppm) | ||
| Ingredient | GM corn | Non-GM corn |
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| Glyphosate | 13 | 0 |
| Formaldehyde | 200 | 0 |
| Nitrogen | 7 | 46 |
| Phosphorus | 3 | 44 |
| Potassium | 7 | 113 |
| Calcium | 14 | 6 130 |
| Magnesium | 2 | 113 |
| Sulphur | 3 | 42 |
| Manganese | 2 | 14 |
| Iron | 2 | 14 |
| Zinc | 2.3 | 14.3 |
| Copper | 2.6 | 16 |
| Molybdenum | 0.2 | 1.5 |
| Boron | 0.2 | 1.5 |
| Selenium | 0.6 | 0.3 |
| Cobalt | 0.2 | 1.5 |
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