At the intersection of cocaine and Roundup in rural South America, Monsanto and the U.S. government are struggling to keep up appearances. That’s becoming more and more difficult as the unanticipated hazards of genetic modification become clearer.

Back in April, Argentinean embryologist Andrés Carrasco gave an interview with a Buenos Aires newspaper describing his recent findings suggesting the chemical glyphosate, a chemical herbicide widely used in agriculture as well as in U.S. anti-narcotic efforts, could cause defects in fetuses in much smaller doses than those to which peasants and farmers in his country were already being exposed. Loud calls for a ban on the substance were issued by Argentinean environmental lawyers, and the country’s Ministry of Defense banned the planting of glyphosate-resistant soya crops in its fields.

Then came the backlash. An article in an Argentinean paper recently reported that Carrasco was assaulted in a way he described as “violent” by four men associated with agricultural interests:

Two of the men were said to be members of an agrochemical industry body but refused to give their names. The other two claimed to be a lawyer and notary. They apparently interrogated Dr. Carrasco and demanded to see details of the experiments. They left a card Basílico, Andrada & Santurio, attorneys on behalf of Felipe Alejandro Noël.

It’s still unclear who these people are. But the interest in keeping such information quiet or discrediting Carrasco and his findings are strongest with Monsanto, the agricultural company who first patented a glyphosate product (sold as Roundup) and also created genetically-modified crops specifically to resist the herbicide.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/analysis/894

The Pitchfork Rebellion founder involved in a 2008 police conflict puts Monsanto “on trial”

BY KAREN MCCOWAN
The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Sunday, Aug 30, 2009

News Updates: Story

The Pitchfork Rebellion, organized to restrict or halt aerial herbicide spraying on Oregon’s forests, went to the local doorstep of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Saturday to lampoon what they said were the agency’s ties to pesticide manufacturer Monsanto.

Triangle Lake area resident Day Owen, a co-founder of the activist group, donned a jester’s hat to preside over mock trials of Monsanto and the state Department of Forestry before a crowd of more than 100 people.

Owen’s wife, his daughter and neighbor Maya Gee also said they were personally affected after helicopters sprayed the Monsanto product Round-Up on forests near their farms in 2007. The women said they were sickened by their exposure to drifted spray, immediately suffering breathing problems and muscle weakness, followed by diarrhea, early and painful menstrual cycles, and muscle and joint pain lasting for months.

Owen accused the St. Louis-based multinational company of covering up evidence that the herbicide poses human health risks. According to Monsanto’s Web site, increased sales of Round-Up helped the corporation post record net sales of $11.4 billion in 2008.

Monsanto’s Web site also states that regulatory agencies around the world, including the United States Environmental Protection Agency, have concluded that glyphosate herbicides such as Round-Up “pose no unreasonable risks to human health and the environment when used according to label directions.”

Rally organizers set a nonviolent tone early in Saturday’s event, with Owen inviting attendees to walk in a circle around the building’s plaza to the song “We Are All in This Together.” Before beginning the music, he addressed several law enforcement officers monitoring the rally from inside the building, saying the song’s “we” included Eugene police and Homeland Security officers.

The last public encounter between Owen and those agencies did not end peacefully.

Owen was among several people arrested at a downtown Eugene anti-pesticide rally in May 2008, when a Eugene police officer used a Taser to apprehend a University of Oregon student later convicted of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Owen said he was slammed to the grand and knocked unconscious after he questioned a different Eugene officer about use of the Taser when the student, Ian Van Ornum, was already face down on the ground.

Owen, who was never charged with a crime, said he was also kicked in the knee by a Homeland Security officer assisting in his arrest. Owen has filed an excessive use of force complaint with Eugene’s police auditor.

Eugene police testified at Van Ornum’s trial that they had been summoned to the downtown protest by a Department of Homeland Security agent monitoring the May 2008 demonstration. The agent, Tom Keedy, testified that he was there because Owen, a featured speaker, had urged people attending a March 2008 rally at the federal courthouse to “commit acts of civil disobedience … in a peaceful, nonviolent revolution.”

Owen on Saturday disputed that reason, charging that the federal agency was monitoring him because of the title of his talk at the May 2008 rally: “The Need to Reform Homeland Security.” He also said top officials at Homeland Security don’t want him to publicize what he alleges are ties between Homeland Security and Monsanto, including what he says is the agency’s financing of the development of genetically engineered food by Monsanto.

He called Monsanto and clear-cutting timber companies “the real bioterrorists.”

Rally participants were invited to launch a boycott of all crops treated with Round-Up and to sign a petition calling for aerial spraying buffer zones around homes and schools.

The following article is from GRAIN, also found at Organic Consumers Association website;

“Scientist Warning of Health Hazards of Monsanto’s Herbicide Receives Threats”

GRAIN: Seeds of Information, July 2009

Straight to the Source

“I expected a reaction but not such a violent one”

“In April 2009 Andrés Carrasco, an Argentinian embryologist, gave an interview to the leading Buenos Aires newspaper Página 12, in which he described the alarming results of a research project he is leading into the impact of the herbicide glyphosate on the foetuses of amphibians. Dr Carrasco, who works in the Ministry of Science’s Conicet (National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations), said that their results suggested that the herbicide could cause brain, intestinal and heart defects in the foetuses. Glyphosate is the herbicide used in the cultivation of Monsanto’s genetically modified soya, which now covers some 18 million hectares, about half of Argentina’s arable land. [1]

Carrasco said that the doses of herbicide used in their study were “much lower than the levels used in the fumigations”. Indeed, as some weeds have become resistant to glyphosate, many farmers are greatly increasing the concentration of the herbicide. According to Página 12, this means that, in practice, the herbicide applied in the fields is between 50 and 1,540 times stronger than that used by Carrasco. The results in the study are confirming what peasant and indigenous communities – the people most affected by the spraying – have been denouncing for over a decade. The study also has profound consequences for the USA’s anti-narcotics strategy in Colombia, because the planes spray glyphosate, reinforced with additional chemicals, on the coca fields (and the peasants living among them).

Three days after the interview, the Association of Environmental Lawyers filed a petition with the Argentine Supreme Court, calling for a ban on the use and sale of glyphosate until its impact on health and on the environment had been investigated. Five days later the Ministry of Defense banned the planting of soya in its fields. This sparked a strong reaction from the multinational biotechnology companies and their supporters. Fearful that their most famous product, a symbol of the dominant farming model, would be banned, they mounted an unprecedented attack on Carrasco, ridiculing his research and even issuing personal threats. He was accused of inventing his whole investigation, as his results have not yet been peer-reviewed and published in a prestigious scientific journal.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/30/18620188.php

Egypt has been enforcing some stringent food quality standards, and now they’re talking about banning all imports and exports of genetically modified foods (GMOs).

Over the summer, Egyptian officials rejected several import shipments of wheat, saying they were unfit for human consumption. Since then, the parliament has been pushing for stricter food standards. It looks like they got their wish.

Banning GMOs is tricky business. Even farms that raise GMO-free crops can’t necessarily avoid cross contamination from neighboring fields. Egypt’s Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza says they will determine food quality through testing and that “no agricultural products especially wheat, corn and soya bean would enter except after examining samples from the cargo.” He’s also calling for certification on imports and exports:

…it was necessary that all crops imported from abroad and exported from Egypt be accompanied by a certificate from the country of origin stating they are free of genetically modified materials.

Since Egypt is one of the world’s biggest wheat importers, could this ban send a message to farmers considering the switch to Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Wheat?

http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2009/08/27/egypt-bans-gmos/

Insane Food Bill 2749 Passes House On 2nd Try.

HR 2749: Totalitarian Control Of Our Food Supply

A new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. The bill needs to be stopped. HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency. The bill would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse. HR 2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food supply. The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need of effective regulation, but the bill does not specifically direct regulation or resources to these areas.

To read a detailed account of the bill, go to The Farmer-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (Read the section on tracing. That is NAIS, isn’t it?  highly disguised yet triggered by the word “trace.” )

Alarming Provisions: Some of the more alarming provisions in the bill are:

* HR 2749 would impose an annual registration fee of $500 on any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. [isn't this every home in the US, every garden?] Although “farms” are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly. [What is the definition?] And people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic times. [Yes. There are laws against this corporate-size-destroys-the-little-guy policy, aren't there? Are home bread or cheese or lacto-fermented vegetable makers who make for their own families included in this?]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested. It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers. [This astounding control opens the door to CODEX. WTO "good farming practices" will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry's products. They will be slaves on the land, doing the work they are ordered to do - against their own best wisdom - and paying out to industry against their will. There will be no way to be frugal, to grow one's own grain to feed the animals, to raise healthy animals without GMO grains or drugs, to work with nature at all. Grassfed cattle and poultry and hogs will be finished. So, it's obvious where control will take us. And weren't these the "rumors on the internet" that were dismissed but are clearly the case?]

* HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area, including “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area.” [This - "that has been used to transport or hold such food" - would mean all cars that have ever brought groceries home so this means ALL TRANSPORTATION can be shut down under this. This is using food as a cover for martial law.] Under this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut down, even if they are not the source of the contamination. The agency can halt all movement of all food in a geographic area. [This is also a means of total control over the population under the cover of food, and at any time.]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to make random warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers, without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. [If these bills cover all who "hold food" then this allows for taking of records of anyone at any time on no basis at all.] Even farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of customers. [NAIS for animals and all other foods?]

* HR 2749 charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with establishing a tracing system for food. Each “person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, or holds such food” [Is this not every home in the US?] would have to “maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food,” and “establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons.” The bill does not explain how far the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient foods. With all these ambiguities, [with all these ambiguities, it is dangerous, period, separate from the money] it’s far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers. [It is massive and absurd and burdensome beyond the capacity of people to comply - is this not fascism? - so it is a set up for being used to impose penalties endlessly and/or to eliminate anyone at will.]

* HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals. [Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a defined set of "crimes"? Or is it entirely ambiguous and left to the whim and sole power of "the Administrator"? Who is that person set to be? Is it Michael Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and executive, as Food Democracy has said? That is, do these bills set up an agency by which the entire US food supply will be turned over to the control of a multinational corporation under WTO regulations (and not to US farmers and not to US laws under the Constitution), with boundless freedom to do what it wants, and one infamous for harm to farmers and lack of safety of food?] If it was not clear before how frightening these bills were, this small section of provisions, should make their actual fascism clear now. It goes way beyond “food safety” to absolute control over farms, animals, food, and us, including our movements and access to food at all.

Action to Take: Contact your Representative now! Ask to speak with the staffer who handles food issues. Tell them you are opposed to the bill. Some points to make in telling your Representative why you oppose HR 2749 include:

The bill imposes burdensome requirements while not specifically targeting the industrial food system and food imports, where the real food safety problems lie. Small farms and local food processors are part of the solution to food safety; lessening the regulatory burden on them will improve food safety. The bill gives FDA much more power than it has had in the past while making the agency less accountable for its actions. HR 2749 needs to be defeated!! Please take action NOW.

To contact your Representative, use the finder tool at www.Congress.org or send a message through the petition system (the petition will be on our website this evening) athttp://www.ftcldf.org/petitions_new.htm. Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

To check the status of HR 2749, go to <http://www.Thomas.gov and type “2749″ in the bill search field.

Source: Farm Wars

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_56515.shtml

http://farmwars.info/?p=1115

In a word, yes. To learn more, read on.

Mention the word organic and many people immediately see dollar signs. They may understand that organic products are grown without pesticides, are not genetically modified, and do not come from chemically fertilized fields. But they may not realize what those words really mean and certainly still do not understand or realize the added health benefits of eating this cleaner, more nutritious food. Mention organic milk or dairy products and the average consumer will cringe. That’s because organic dairy products typically cost a significant amount above conventional dairy and people still do not understand that there is more to think about than just the cost of the product.

According to an article in the New York Times from earlier this year, there is a glut of milk. This, obviously, affects the price paid to the farmer and ultimately the price paid for the product. In this economy many people welcome the slowly lowering price of dairy products. The difficulty comes from not understanding the difference between the types of products available. Conventional milk comes from cows who are confined to feedlot operations, crowded and not given access to fresh pasture. They are also still fed products that are pesticide, herbicide and drug laden as well as having genetically modified organisms (GMO) in their food. They may also be given large amounts of antibiotics. Natural milk comes from cows who are not given growth hormone (which increases their production of milk) however all the other conventional practices apply from crowding in feedlots to chemicals and GMO feed. Organic milk comes from cows who have none of the above. They are required to be pastured for at least part of the day and to have clean feed and a clean environment. This costs more and is part of the reason for the increased cost of the end product.

Dean Foods has now taken over a well-respected organic brand, Horizon. They are planning to change their production process and offer a “natural” product line aimed at young children. Dean Foods claims that this natural product will be less expensive and that they are providing a service to help consumers. The question is with a well-known, well-respected, profitable organic label already on the market why are they trying to adulterate the brand?

Unfortunately Dean’s previous foray into tampering with a well-respected organic brand, Silk organic soy milk, did not go well. According to an article found in the Organic Consumers Association newsletter Dean switched from organic, USA-grown to Chinese-sourced conventionally grown soy beans, relied on the name, and charged the same price. All without mentioning anything to consumers or retailers. In fact many of the retailers only noticed when their customers began to complain. Not only did Dean not lower the price of their reformulated “natural” soy products, they then turned around and raised the price on the organic soy that they were producing. One wonders how long it will be until they try the same profiteering methods with Horizon dairy. It is one way of increasing profits in the face of a glut of product.

In the end it all comes back to remaining vigilant and concerned about what you eat. Read the labels. That point is so important it bears repeating. Read the labels. Because you never know when a profit hungry huge agri-business producer will attempt to capitalize on brand identity to make a change that negatively affects your food and your health.

For more information:

Why chose organic milk
Organic Consumers Association

A fight for the public good: Prologue and Appeal
Daily Kos – Berkeley,CA

Regular readers of this and other liberal websites know Bob Trivette’s enemy all too well.  He’s fighting against the Monsanto Company, dubbed by some “the world’s most evil company.”  And Monsanto is spending all that it can to destroy Bob, in order to make an example of him, and ultimately in the pursuit of ever-expanding hegemony over the world’s food supply.

About ten years ago, Robert Trivette decided to upgrade a portion of his soybean crop, about 20 acres’ worth, to the latest thing in farming:  Monsanto’s exciting new Roundup Ready® soybean technology.  Monsanto promised a revolution in farming.  Rather than fighting weeds with specific, often toxic and highly regulated herbicides, Monsanto’s genetically engineered seeds grew into plants that would resist Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide, glyphosate, which it sold under the name Roundup.

Spraying his crops with Roundup would kill the weeds and leave the healthy soybean plants behind.  Although Roundup Ready seed was more expensive than conventional seed, Monsanto promised greater yields, less chemical expense, and an easier time in the fields.  But these advances, to the extent that they came about at all, came at a heavy price.

Dressing up dangerous Codex as “food safety”
Daily Kos – Berkeley, CA

The article below is from Thailand, where herbs such as turmeric, ginger and chili are being suddenly being called “hazardous.”

The “food safety” bills here do the same thing, redefining normal as hazardous and putting it under government control or requiring licensing which, by its costs, would put it out of reach. Normal seeds are being treated in this way in the EU.  The “food safety” bills here would put seeds out of reach by suddenly redefining  such normal things as agricultural water, manure, harvesting, transporting and seed cleaning equipment, and seed storage facilities as “sources of contamination” and from there, raising the standards for their use to a level farmers couldn’t meet.

Vandana Shiva: Our Corporate Farming System Is to Blame for …

AlterNet – San Francisco, CA

Last month, the world got a glimpse of an epidemic that has hit India in the last decade when news reports alerted readers to the suicides of 1,500 farmers in the Indian state of Chattisgarh.

But this has been only a fraction of the suicides committed by farmers since 1997, says Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., a physicist, environmentalist, feminist, science policy advocate and director ofNavdanya and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

While initial news reports blamed the recent suicides on falling water levels, Shiva explains that the suicide epidemic in India is a lot more complicated and far-reaching.

“Rapid increase in indebtedness is at the root of farmers’ taking their lives,” she wrote recently. “Debt is a reflection of a negative economy. Two factors have transformed agriculture from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.”

At the heart of this is a circle of indebtedness that has resulted from the so-called Green Revolution, which exported industrial agricultural practices to places like India and in doing so, made seeds, a once-renewable resource for farmers, into something that had be bought from corporations.

“In 1998, the World Bank’s structural-adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta,” Shiva wrote. “The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm-saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved. … The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture.”

In an interview with AlterNet, Shiva explained how Monsanto’s Bt cotton has exemplified what can go wrong with industrial agriculture; what happens to farming communities when traditional farming methods are replaced by corporate sponsored mono-cropping; and how to stem the tide of farmer suicides.