Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Good video from Jeffrey Smith!

GMO’s in the News

Lots going on this month, including the news that Zika is caused by a Monsanto larvicide. Very sad, but not surprising… We are gaining ground though – Hershey’s is getting rid of GMO sugar beets and the more we boycott GM foods, the manufacturers will listen. Vote with your food dollars!

Love,

Mom

Argentine and Brazilian doctors name larvicide as potential cause of microcephaly

Are the Zika virus – and GM mosquitoes – being wrongly blamed? Report by Claire Robinson

A report from the Argentine doctors’ organisation, Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns,[1] challenges the theory that the Zika virus epidemic in Brazil is the cause of the increase in the birth defect microcephaly among newborns.

The increase in this birth defect, in which the baby is born with an abnormally small head and often has brain damage, was quickly linked to the Zika virus by the Brazilian Ministry of Health. However, according to the Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, the Ministry failed to recognise that in the area where most sick people live, a chemical larvicide that produces malformations in mosquitoes was introduced into the drinking water supply in 2014. This poison, Pyriproxyfen, is used in a State-controlled programme aimed at eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The Physicians added that the Pyriproxyfen is manufactured by Sumitomo Chemical, a Japanese “strategic partner” of Monsanto. Pyriproxyfen is a growth inhibitor of mosquito larvae, which alters the development process from larva to pupa to adult, thus generating malformations in developing mosquitoes and killing or disabling them. It acts as an insect juvenile hormone or juvenoid, and has the effect of inhibiting the development of adult insect characteristics (for example, wings and mature external genitalia) and reproductive development. It is an endocrine disruptor and is teratogenic (causes birth defects), according to the Physicians.

The Physicians commented: “Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added Pyriproxyfen to drinking water are not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on the Zika virus for this damage.”

They also noted that Zika has traditionally been held to be a relatively benign disease that has never before been associated with birth defects, even in areas where it infects 75% of the population.

Read the rest here:

http://gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/16706-argentine-and-brazilian-doctors-name-larvicide-as-potential-cause-of-microcephaly

New Study Shows Organic Farming To Best Feed An Overpopulated Planet

It turns out that these crops hold up better during harsh growing conditions such as droughts, which are predicted to increase in the changing face of climate change.

By Diana Erney February 10, 2016

With the world’s population predicted to peak around 9.6 billion people by the year 2050, one of the big unknowns about our collective future is how we can possibly feed all of those people.  A new study from Washington State University predicts that organic farming will lead the way.

Looking at studies from the past 40 years, researchers compared conventional agriculture with organic systems relative to production, economics, the environment, and social wellbeing. Although organic farms were found to be less productive than conventional overall, with yields averaging 8 to 25 percent lower depending upon the crop, the study found that organic crops hold up better during harsh growing conditions such as droughts, which are predicted to increase in the changing face of climate change. (Not to mention The Effects Climate Change Can Have On Our Health.) Enhancements in management methods and improved plant varieties may also help to close the production gap.

Read the rest here: http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/garden/new-study-shows-organic-farming-to-best-feed-an-overpopulated-planet

And I don’t usually post political posts, but we have ONE candidate for President who supports GMO labeling. He’s a long time Independent, although he is running on the Democratic side. Time to vote out the corporate hacks and bring back politicians that will represent us!

Bernie Sanders: The Only US Presidential Candidate Supporting GMO Labeling

Bernie Sanders is the only U.S. Presidential candidate who has come out strongly in support of GMO labeling. For this reason Sustainable Pulse has collected a few of his quotes:

Bernie Sanders Quotes on GMO Labeling

“Unlike people in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, China, Russia, New Zealand and other countries where labels are required, Americans don’t know if the food they eat has been genetically modified. People have a right to know what they are eating…”

“I think all over this country, people want to know the quality of the food they’re eating and what they’re giving to their kids is good quality. We just don’t know all that much about genetically modified food. . .”

“Monsanto and other companies are saying states can’t do it [label GMOs]. It is a federal prerogative. My amendment said if California, Vermont, Connecticut, other states want to go forward, they should have that right.”

“An overwhelming majority of Americans favor GMO labeling but virtually all of the major biotech and food corporations in the country oppose it…The people of Vermont and the people of America have a right to know what’s in the food that they eat.”

Bernie Sanders on Agriculture:

Source: berniesanders.com/issues/improving-the-rural-economy/

As someone who has represented a rural state for more than 24 years, improving the lives of rural Americans is a top priority for Senator Sanders.

Family farms and ranches are the backbone of rural America and the U.S. economy.  Farmers are also among our nation’s foremost stewards of our lands and water.

Throughout his career, Senator Sanders has successfully fought for innovative rural economic development initiatives, including investments in farm-to-school and farm-to-table initiatives; agri-tourism programs; school gardens; large scale bio-mass fired electric plants; shared agricultural processing and storage facilities; and anaerobic digesters to process cow manure into methane gas.

Senator Sanders understands that agriculture programs need to be counter-cyclical to assure market-derived commodity income at levels that advance and sustain family-scale farming.

Senator Sanders will fight for farm policies that will foster the entry of a new generation of owner-operators.  He will not back away from land stewardship standards that include the commonwealth of clean water for all.

As president, Senator Sanders will adopt policies that will:

• Make sure that family farmers and rural economies thrive;
• Expand support for young and beginning farmers;
• Produce an abundant and nutritious food supply;
• Establish an on-going regeneration of our soils; and
• Enlist farmers as partners in promoting conservation and stewardship to keep our air and water clean and to combat climate change.

FAMILY FARMS INSTEAD OF FACTORY FARMS

Senator Sanders believes that we need more family farms, not more factory farms.

It is unacceptable that just four corporations control 82% of the nation’s beef cattle market, 85% of soybean processing, and 63% of pork processing.  It is unacceptable that there are over 300,000 fewer farmers than there were 20 years ago.

It is unacceptable that the top 10% of farms collect 75% of farm subsidies, while the bottom 62% do not receive any subsidies.  We have to adopt policies that will turn this around.

SUPPORTING AGRICULTURE

In 1966, farmers received 40 cents for every dollar Americans spent on food. Today, they only receive 16 cents on the dollar.

As President, Senator Sanders will reverse this trend by:

1. Fighting for America’s small and mid-sized farms. Abraham Lincoln called the United States Department of Agriculture the “People’s Department” and Senator Sanders will ensure that the agency lives up to this name by expanding its services for new and underserved farmers.
2. Encouraging the growth of regional food systems. Farmers throughout the country are boosting their bottom line and reinvigorating their communities by selling directly to local consumers, institutions, and restaurants. Senator Sanders will invest in this movement, helping Americans support local farms.
3. Reversing trade policies like NAFTA that have flooded the American market with agricultural goods produced in countries with less stringent environmental, labor, and safety regulations.
4. Enforcing our country’s antitrust laws against large agribusiness and food corporations. A few large companies dominate many agricultural industries, allowing them to force unfair prices on farmers. Senator Sanders will stand up to these corporations and fight to ensure that farmers receive fair prices.

Read more here: http://sustainablepulse.com/2016/02/11/bernie-sanders-the-only-us-presidential-candidate-supporting-gmo-labeling/#.VsNhOCkmvft

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GMO’s in the News

Some interesting articles in the news this month.

The first, which I am very happy about, is that the Federation of German Scientists Whistleblower Award was given to Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini. Monsanto and the other biotech companies smeared him after his rat study demonstrated the toxic effects of Roundup. Glad to see he’s getting supported from the European scientific community.

Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini has been honoured with the 2015 Whistleblower Award by the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) and the German Section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (“IALANA”).

Prof Séralini received the award in recognition of his research demonstrating the toxic effects of Roundup herbicide on rats when administered at a low environmentally relevant dose over a long-term period. After the research was published, Prof Séralini was attacked in what the VDW and IALANA call “a vehement campaign by ‘interested circles’ from the chemical industry” as well as from the UK Science Media Centre. This smear campaign led to the retraction of his team’s paper by the first journal that published it. But Prof Séralini and his team fought back, countering the scientific arguments raised against their research and republishing their paper in another journal.

While Prof Séralini’s study was not a carcinogenicity study but a long-term toxicity study, the carcinogenic potential of Roundup was confirmed this year when the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency IARC published its verdict that glyphosate herbicides are “probable” human carcinogens.

Read more here:

http://www.gmoseralini.org/federation-of-german-scientists-whistleblower-award-goes-to-prof-gilles-eric-seralini/

GM Crops Now Banned in 38 Countries Worldwide – Sustainable Pulse Research

Sort of negates all the US biotech lies, doesn’t it…

Following the recent green wave of genetically modified (GM) crop cultivation bans across the European Union, Sustainable Pulse decided to research which countries have decided to officially ban the cultivation of GM crops around the Globe.

This research has led to the discovery that there is a growing swell of government level support worldwide for bans on GM crop cultivation for both health and environmental reasons.

Thirty eight (38) countries worldwide have officially banned the cultivation of GM crops and only 28 actually grow GM crops. The picture painted by the Biotech industry and the U.S. government that GM crops have been accepted by the majority of countries worldwide is therefore quite obviously wrong.

In fact many countries have recently started to put in place regulations to protect their population and environment from the environmental and health damage caused by GM crops.

Read more here:

http://sustainablepulse.com/2015/10/22/gm-crops-now-banned-in-36-countries-worldwide-sustainable-pulse-research/#.VjD2PqQmvfs

Study Exposes AquaBounty’s Bogus Growth Claims on GMO Salmon

For those of you who have read the Mary Shelley novel “Frankenstein,” you remember that the name refers to the scientist Victor Frankenstein, not the monster he constructed from body parts found in the local cemetery. The story has captured the public’s imagination for nearly 200 years, and “franken” has become a common prefix—and a pejorative—for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are made with cut-and-pasted genetic material from different species of plants, animals and microorganisms.

GMO salmon—or franken-fish, as it is sometimes called—is an Atlantic salmon whose DNA has been re-engineered with a “growth-hormone gene construct” made from genetic material of other fish. One of these fish, the ocean pout, is only as closely related to Atlantic salmon, taxonomically speaking, as a human is related to a porcupine or a platypus. This recombination of genetic material would never happen in nature.

Beyond being designed and engineered by humans and created in a laboratory, GMO salmon and Frankenstein’s monster may also share another defining feature—larger-than-normal proportions. AquaBounty Technologies, the company behind GMO salmon, has always insisted that its fish grow much faster than normal Atlantic salmon—but not larger. This is one of the most frequent claims the company makes—to journalists and even to financial regulators at the Securities Exchange Commission.

But, according to a recently released scientific review from the Canadian government, AquaBounty doesn’t have a shred of evidence supporting this claim. This is more than a little odd because AquaBounty calls GMO salmon the “most studied fish in the world.”

If it turns out that GMO salmon do grow larger than normal salmon, it would almost certainly provoke even further consumer opposition to the fish while also compromising the company’s pending risk assessment with the FDA. As Canadian government scientists note, a larger-than-normal Atlantic salmon would be able to eat larger-than-normal prey fish, and this expanded diet could expand the environmental impact of escaped GMO salmon.

Other important risk-assessment questions also emerge: What happens to the health of a GMO salmon that reaches ever-large proportions? What happens to the nutritional content of the fish for consumers? What happens to the hormone levels of this fish, which is engineered with a growth-hormone gene construct?

Read more here:

http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/22/gmo-salmon-aquabounty-claims/

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Very worth watching and a this goes for vaccines as well.  Mom

GMO’s in the News   2015

Here’s our first new update for 2015.

Below is a new book coming out next week that I am buying. Link below.

Some other important news as well.

Mom

The Massive Fraud Behind GMOs Exposed

by COLIN TODHUNTER

This is not what the GMO industry wanted to see: banner headlines today in major newspapers and across the internet exposing the fraud behind GMOs. But this constitutes much more than a PR nightmare. The story behind the headlines shakes the very foundations upon which the industry is built.

‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’ is a new book by the US public interest lawyer Steve Druker. The book is the result of more than 15 years of intensive research and investigation by Druker, who initiated a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that forced it to divulge its files on GM foods. Those files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 but only because the FDA covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers, lied about the facts and then violated federal food safety law by permitting these foods to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

If the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, Druker says that the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.

He also argues that that many well-placed scientists have repeatedly issued misleading statements about GM foods, and so have leading scientific institutions such as the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the UK’s Royal Society.

Druker states that contrary to the claims of biotech advocates, humans have indeed been harmed by consuming the output of genetic engineering. The technology’s first ingestible product (a food supplement of the essential amino acid, L-tryptophan) caused dozens of deaths and seriously sickened thousands of people (permanently disabling many of them). Moreover, the evidence points to the genetic alteration as the most likely cause of the unusual contamination that rendered the supplement toxic.

He explains that laboratory animals have also suffered from eating products of genetic engineering, and well-conducted tests with GM crops have yielded many troubling results, including intestinal abnormalities, liver disturbances, and impaired immune systems.

Read the rest here: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/06/the-massive-fraud-behind-gmos-exposed/

New Study: Huge Increase in US Chronic Diseases Linked to Glyphosate Herbicides

A new correlation study published on Friday in the Journal of Organic Systems has linked the world’s number one herbicide, glyphosate, to a huge increase in the incidence of  chronic diseases across the United States.

In the most detailed analysis yet performed on the correlation between the use of glyphosate-based pesticides and rates of chronic diseases, a team including Dr. Nancy Swanson and the President of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), Andre Leu, identified a serious link between the increase in the use of glyphosate in the U.S. and diseases such as diabetes, obesity, lipoprotein metabolism disorder, Alzheimer’s, senile dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and autism.

What is Glyphosate?

PCBs, DDT and Agent Orange all had very harmful effects on women, men and children across the Globe in the 20th Century. Glyphosate-based herbicides have been identified as the next dangerous widely used chemical on this list. It is time for some real action to be taken to find out the full extent of the harm being caused to the environment and human health by glyphosate the world’s number one weed killer.

Glyphosate, or N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine, is a broad-spectrum herbicide, meaning it kills all plant life. Glyphosate was developed by John E. Franz of Monsanto Company. It was first introduced in 1974.

Glyphosate-containing herbicides are now the top-selling herbicides in the world and are sold under trademarks such as Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’.

Numerous glyphosate-based herbicide formulations (e.g. Roundup, Clearout 41) are now produced by at least 100 manufacturers worldwide.

Glyphosate herbicides are used by farmers to kill weeds in crop fields. But their use is not restricted to farming. Public authorities spray them along roads, on pavements, and in public parks to control weeds. Even home gardeners use them. They are sold in supermarkets and garden centres.

The new study  states:

“Within the last 20 years there has been an alarming increase in serious illnesses in the US, along with a marked decrease in life expectancy (Bezruchka, 2012). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the cost of diabetes and diabetes-related treatment was approximately $116 billion dollars in 2007. Estimated costs related to obesity were $147 billion in 2008 and cardiovascular diseases and stroke were $475.3 billion in 2009. Health care expenditures in the US totaled 2.2 trillion dollars in 2007 (CDC, 2013a). The onset of serious illness is appearing in increasingly younger cohorts. The US leads the world in the increase in deaths due to neurological diseases between 1979-81 and 2004-06 for the 55-65 age group (Pritchard et al., 2013).

“These mental disorder deaths are more typical of the over 65 age group. There have been similar findings for obesity, asthma, behavior and learning problems, and chronic disease in children and young adults (Van Cleave et al., 2010). Type II diabetes in youth is being called an epidemic (Rosenbloom et al., 1999). The rate of chronic disease in the entire US population has been dramatically increasing with an estimated 25% of the US population suffering from multiple chronic diseases (Autoimmunity Research Foundation, 2012). These findings suggest environmental triggers rather than genetic or age-related causes.

“During this same time period, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of glyphosate applied to food crops and in the percentage of GE food crops planted (Benbrook, 2012). We undertook a study to see if correlations existed between the rise of GE crops, the associated glyphosate use and the rise in chronic disease in the US.”

Read the rest and find the link to the paper here:

http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/11/07/new-study-huge-increase-us-chronic-diseases-linked-glyphosate-herbicides/#.VQMhv2bOWS0

Kellogg’s Froot Loops Tests Positive For GMOs and Weedkiller
In 2013, GMO Free USA sent a sample of Froot Loops to a certified lab to test for the presence of GMO material. The quantitative PCR test verified, by DNA analysis, that 100% of the corn in the Froot Loops was GMO, containing DNA sequences known to be present in insecticide producing Bt and Roundup Ready corn.  The soy contained DNA sequences known to be present in Roundup Ready GMO soy. This year we plan to continue testing for the presence of GMOs in various food products and now we have expanded our testing to include glyphosate. GMO Free USA plans to further expand testing to include 2,4-D, dicamba, atrazine, and neonicotinoid insecticides.

Read more here:

http://www.gmofreeusa.org/food-testing/kelloggs/kelloggs-froot-loops/

End double standards in evaluating GMO safety studies – say scientists

Europe’s food safety agency only criticises studies that find risk, new analysis shows

ENSSER Press release

The controversy about the Séralini et al. study, which reported negative health effects of Monsanto’s NK603 GM maize and Roundup herbicide fed to rats over the long term,[1] is still going on. According to a new review published in Environmental Sciences Europe, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) used unscientific double standards to dismiss the Séralini study on genetically modified (GM) maize.[2]

The publication of this latest review comes just days after the retraction of the Séralini paper by Elsevier, the publisher of Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), on the unprecedented grounds of the “inconclusive” nature of some of the findings. ENSSER condemned the retraction[3] .

The Séralini study triggered an immediate storm of criticism by scientists and organisations, most of whom are known for their support of GMOs and their pleas for sweeping deregulation of GM plants in the EU and relaxation or even abandonment of risk assessment standards.[4]

Retrospective and selective application of new standards by EFSA

In September 2012, the European Commission asked EFSA to review the Séralini study. EFSA did so by retrospectively applying new standards released in 2011 to scientific work that Séralini planned and started in 2008.[5] EFSA concluded that the Séralini study was “inadequate”.[6]

But EFSA did not apply these same standards retrospectively to the original rat feeding study by Monsanto, even though the underlying design for the Monsanto study was later repeated by Seralini.[7] The Monsanto study concluded that this same GM maize was safe to eat, resulting in the approval for consumption of this GM crop by millions of animals and EU citizens in 2005.

EFSA review undermined the basic principles of science

Hartmut Meyer, one of the authors of the new review, said, “Use of such double standards is a common response from scientists calling for GMO deregulation and, somewhat surprisingly, also from some government authorities, to studies that show negative environmental and health effects of GMOs. Only those studies that find problems are subjected to excessive scrutiny and rejected as defective. This approach appears to be a tactic to avoid dealing with ‘inconvenient’ results, whilst selecting for ‘convenient’ results.”

The new review then applied the same criteria used by EFSA to reject the Séralini study to 21 other 1-2-year feeding studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals during the last 20 years. Those studies did not test feed derived from GM plants but mostly chemicals, used the same strain of rat, similar low numbers of tested animals and likewise modified protocols that extended or diverged to some degree from the strict OECD protocols and EFSA criteria as both Seralini and Monsanto did.

Restore scientific principles of objectivity

Angelika Hilbeck, the second author of the new review and chair of the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER), said, “ENSSER wants to see scientific objectivity restored. We are calling for an end to the use of double standards, particularly by EFSA, in the evaluation of scientific research on substances that may pose risks to public health. We need a reasoned, respectful debate with the aim of reaching a consensus on the evaluation standards that must be consistently applied to all toxicity and carcinogenicity trials, regardless of whether they have findings that are ‘inconvenient’ for certain parties. EFSA should take the lead here.”

“It’s time to stop selectively attacking methods and begin to deal with the results.”

Double standards used to claim GMO safety

Another example of selective scrutiny of study methods in order to avoid dealing with the results is a review of GMO safety studies conducted by Snell et al. (2012)[8]. In their review of 24 animal feeding trials with GM plant-derived feed, the authors noticed severe methodological shortcomings in a majority of the analysed publications, e.g. isogenic lines as controls were only used in 10 studies. However, Snell et al. used these shortcomings as arguments to dismiss those studies stating negative effects – but not those stating safety. Based on this asymmetrical, result-triggered approach, the review incorrectly concludes that no health hazards were found in 24 analysed publications.

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Thyroid Sessions event – presented by Sean Croxton

I am really looking forward to this event! Details and a link for free registration, and discounted purchase price, if you’d like to buy it,  below.

Love,

Mom

GMOs in the News

Haven’t done a news update in awhile. Isn’t it amazing, when we started Moms for Safe Food in 2009, barely anyone had heard of GMOs. But thanks to Pamm Larry and CA Prop 37, and Jeffrey Smith from the Institute of Responsible Technology and many others we are finally joining together to get GMOs labeled and out of our food supply.

Monsanto and their biotech cronies keep telling the same lies (feed the world, safe, blah, blah blah)  and their starting to use what used to be the liberal press to pass along their lies – I no longer trust Mother Jones or NPR – seems like they’ve both been bought out by Biotech.

Keep it up – we are gaining momentum and WILL win this fight!

Love,  Mom

Argentina stalls Monsanto corn project on environmental concerns

on 12 February 2014.

Following an historic court victory in which Argentine protestors won a court injunction halting construction of a Monsanto GMO seed plant, local authorities have rejected the company’s environmental impact assessment.

More about the protestors’ court win:

http://gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15246

Argentina stalls Monsanto corn project on environmental concerns – update

Shane Romig

Wall St Journal, 11 Feb 2014

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20140211-715316.html

Monsanto Co. hit another roadblock in its plans to build a 1.5 billion peso ($192 million) corn-seed production plant in Argentina’s Cordoba province after local authorities rejected Monsanto’s environmental impact assessment.

The project has been on hold since September after clashes with protesters led the St. Louis biotech company to halt construction after completing about 30% of the work.

Monsanto’s environmental assessment didn’t “identify the relevant impacts and resulting mitigation measures,” the office of Cordoba Governor José Manuel de la Sota said in a statement late Monday.

The company said Tuesday it accepted the findings and would move to bring the project in line with the new requirements.

Monsanto “is starting from scratch with the whole process, and preparing a new environmental assessment with new standards,” Pablo Vaquero, Monsanto’s director of sustainability and corporate affairs for Latin America South, said in an interview.

It will take a month or two to analyze the air, soil, and water at the site and prepare a new assessment, Mr. Vaquero said.

A small group of environmental activists have camped out in front of the Cordoba construction site since September, blocking the road and preventing vehicles from coming in or out.

“The reality is that the environmental groups are opposed to Argentina’s farming model,” Mr. Vaquero said.

Those protesters celebrated the rejection of the environmental-impact assessment.

“We’re overjoyed,” Matías Marizza, a member of the Malvinas Fight for Life Assembly told Cordoba radio station FM Las Higueras on Tuesday. “There’s no turning back. Monsanto has to go,” he said.

Read more here:

http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15300-argentina-stalls-monsanto-corn-project-on-environmental-concerns

California State Senator Introduces New GMO Labeling Bill

by Maureen Nandini Mitra – February 25, 2014

SB 1381 is a cleaner version of Prop 37, say bill proponents

California’s gearing up for round two of the GMO labeling debate. This time though the battle will be duked out in the state legislature rather than in the public arena.

Photo courtesy Senator Evans’ OfficeLast Friday, state Senator Noreen Evans, a Democrat from Santa Rosa, introduced a new bill
to label GM foods sold in California.

On Friday, state Senator Noreen Evans, a Democrat from Santa Rosa, introduced a new bill to label GM foods sold in California. SB 1381 would require food sold in state grocery stores to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients. The bill’s proponents say it is basically a cleaner, more streamlined version of Prop 37, the 2012 ballot initiative to label GMOs that was defeated at the polls.

Sponsored by a coalition of 17 environmental, consumer, food groups, and small businesses called Californians for GE Food Labeling, SB 1381 provides more protections for farmers and retailers, and places limits on potential litigation. The bill will most likely be assigned to the California senate health committee by mid-March.

“This legislation provides more clarity on who’s responsible for labeling or mislabeling,” says Rebecca Spector, West Coast director of the Center for Food Safety, the group that was lead author of the legislation. “The retailer is only responsible for labeling fresh produce at point of purchase. The bill also makes it clear that farmers are not liable unless they have intentionally misled retailers.” The Center, incidentally, had also co-authored Prop 37.

California voters rejected the ballot initiative in 2012 by a less than 3 percent margin. Spector says post-election polling showed that 21 percent of all California voters who voted against Prop. 37 reported they support labeling of GE foods but were confused about certain provisions of the initiative. Also certain provisions in Prop 37, such as banning any processed food from being labeled as natural, had alienated groups like the Natural Products Association, which should typically have been allies.

The new bill, Spector says, doesn’t include this provision. It also minimizes the risk of farmers, food manufacturers, and retailers being sued. “If a company is notified of a violation it will have a 60-day period to correct their labeling prior to a lawsuit moving forward, and there’s no fixed penalty,” Spector says.

The bill has strong support from the district Senator Evans represents, SD2, which spans over one-third of the Northern California coast from Santa Rosa to Eureka and has a huge sustainable farming community. “Those folks are very engaged,” says Teala Schaff, spokesperson for Senator Evans. Schaff says “a lot people from across the nation” too, have been calling since Friday to express support for SB 1381 which she described as “a strong consumer protection bill.”

“People want to know if their food is organic, they want to know how much salt or fat is there…  this is no different. It’s not precluding these products from being available in the market,” Schaff says.

Indeed, polls have shown that 93 percent of US citizens want GM foods labeled and the push for labeling has gathering momentum lately. Last year most than half of US states introduced GMO labeling bills, though only two such bills passed in Connecticut and Maine. This year, a GMO labeling bill was just passed by Vermont’s agricultural committee. In March, Albany, NY, and Annapolis, MD, will be holding public hearing on GMO labeling bills, and voters in Oregon will likely vote on a similar initiative this fall.

Read more here:

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/california_state_senator_introduces_new_gmo_labeling_bill

Nine Dirty Little Secrets About GMOs

Posted: 02/20/2014 9:03 am EST Updated: 02/20/2014 6:59 pm EST

By Robyn O’Brien

More:

Label GMOs GMO Farmed and Dangerous Monsanto Food for Thought Food News

This blog is part of a series that explores the themes and issues raised in Farmed and Dangerous, a 4-part satirical web series exploring issues related to the food system and industrial agriculture. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, please contact us at FoodForThought@huffingtonpost.com.

Transparency is sexy. Misleading people, not so much.

If you had no idea that ingredients, labeled by the EPA as pesticides, are hiding in your food, you’re not alone.

Here are nine dirty little secrets about GMOs that impact everyone from farmers to families to the financials of our economy:

1. Shh, don’t mention the food waste: “We need this technology to feed to world,” is the marketing cry of the big chemical companies. In truth, they do need this technology to feed the expectations of shareholders, but it turns out that more than one-third of the food produced in the world goes to waste. That amounts to 1.3 billion tons every year, costing us economically. In this country alone, we throw away 96 billion pounds of food every year, or 27 percent of the total amount of available food. That’s 3,000 pounds of food a second. With the United Nations on record saying that we need more than just genetically engineered food tools in the toolbox, it appears what we also need is a smarter distribution model to address this waste.

2. Forget Big Tobacco, it’s Big Razor’s playbook: Gillette will practically give away the razor to get people hooked on buying the razor blade. It’s a smart strategy for chemical companies, too. They offer the genetically engineered seed at a discount, then get farmers on the hook for buying the chemicals and suite of chemical products required to make their seeds grow. Pesticide application is up 527 million pounds since the introduction of these genetically engineered crops.

3. EPA now regulates this genetically engineered corn as a pesticide. Seriously, if you had the choice on your kitchen table or at a BBQ between a corn regulated by the EPA as a pesticide and one that wasn’t, which would you choose? No brainer. We should know which one is the pesticide and which foods it is going into.

4. Pre-treated seeds doused in chemicals: It’s called an accelerating agent, and seeds are pretreated before they are ever even put in the ground. Is it any wonder that farmers using these seeds are increasingly worried about what it is doing to the quality of their soil?

5. Pouring on the Pesticides: The latest analysis shows that genetically engineered crops have driven up overall pesticide use across the country, contributing to a 527 million pound increase in herbicide use between 1996 and 2011. And last year alone, genetically engineered crops used 20 percent more pesticides on average than non-GE crops. Who pays for that? Farmers and the people that eat them. Who benefits? The chemical companies selling the seeds engineered to withstand these increasing doses. It goes straight to the bottom line and into the bank.

6. Patent the Chemicals as a Drug: The increasingly controversial weed killer, glyphosate, has been patented an antibiotic: Who knew that the patent had been filed? Apparently the US Patent and Trademark Office. As a growing number of farmers express concern over what this chemical is doing to their soil as headlines around the world express concern over what it is doing to humans, you have to ask yourself: given the 21^st century technology we have today, is it time to make this 20^th century, chemically intensive operating system, obsolete?

7. Patents protect intellectual property: “The development of genetic engineering of plants in the 1980s was accompanied by a sequence of increasingly specific confirmations of the patentability of various types of life forms, provided that they met the standard patent criteria of novelty, utility and nonobviousness.” Nonobviousness is pretty discreet. So let’s say a pediatric cancer or autism group wanted to study if these crops and chemicals are contributing to the rates of cancer or autism. They’d have to go to Monsanto or the other big chemical companies for permission. It’s worth considering that just as Big Tobacco did before it, these chemical companies just might possibly be relying upon concealment of its documents from the public under intellectual property law to avoid liabilities and to evade regulation.

8. Technology Stewardship Agreements lock farmers into contracts for genetically engineered seeds. Want to break the contract? They’ll sue you. A farmer in Iowa is living testament to this happening. Once he realized that the details of that contract locked him into purchasing Monsanto’s suite of products for the life of the farm, it felt like a noose. When he wanted out, they made a point of showing the farming world that it wasn’t an option and sued.

9. Labels mean liability: Right now the companies using these genetically engineered foods want a ban on state labeling and are trying to stop a growing call for mandatory national labeling. Why? Because without labels, this “GMO Buyers Club” can claim that there is no evidence that these crops have ever caused any harm. And guess what? Without labels, they are right, there is no evidence. Labels would bring accountability, traceability and liability. It’s no wonder that the food industry is so allergic to labeling these genetically engineered ingredients in the United States. An allergic reaction to food sends someone to the ER once every three minutes.

We label the inside parts of our cars, our cell phones and our computers, so why is the chemical industry so cloaked about what goes into our food?

Can you imagine if Intel operated this way? There would be no Intel Inside and no way of knowing which parts of the operating system were functioning as promised and which parts might be detrimental to the system.

We’ve got GMO Inside our food, but no label to tell us.

The chemical industry argues that labeling would drive up food costs, and they would have to pass these added expenses on to consumers. But it doesn’t ring true, especially when you look at how American food companies label these ingredients in the products that they sell overseas and at the number of label changes for pink ribbons, Easter Bunnies or holiday packaging.

Without labels on genetically engineered ingredients, the industry can claim “no evidence of harm.” And they are right. Without labels, there is no traceability, accountability and liability. No way for these companies to be held accountable for the costs that they are externalizing onto society, our farmers, their farms and our economy.

But if the tobacco industry is any indication, it is only a matter of time before these externalized costs come back onto the financial statements of the chemical companies. Farmers and families are being impacted, and there is an antecedent here: it is Medicaid Third Party Liability (TPL) recovery obtained from “Big Tobacco,” totaling $240 billion.

As the number of food companies opting out of these ingredients grows, so too, does the number of attorneys who have children that are impacted by food allergies and other conditions.

The food awakening is on, and the companies that are opting out of genetically engineered ingredients and willing to be transparent with the consumers are capturing market share.

That is sexy to shareholders.

Hiding your ingredients and making food dirty with GMOs and lots of chemicals? Not so much.

Farmed and Dangerous was produced by Chipotle and production company Piro. Chipotle is the sponsor for the Food For Thought initiative.

From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robyn-o/nine-dirty-little-secrets_b_4808630.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

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Here’s a great video remembering Prop 37.  We will not give up!

Happy New Year!

Mom

Subject – Real Food Con: So You Don’t Miss Out…

From the wonderful Sean Croxton:

It’s Saturday, so I’ll be brief.

Just wanted to send you a quick reminder that Real Food Con officially kicks off tomorrow at 8am PT/11am ET, with amazing presentations from Katie the Wellness Mama, Abel James, and Christa Orecchio.

Plus, Chef Lance teaches you how to prepare the most delicious roasted duck, liver pate, and wilted greens with a splash of bone broth.

All four of tomorrow’s videos will be available for FREE viewing on the Real Food Con website for a 24-hour period.

Be on the lookout for daily emails with information about each day’s presentations, as well as the inside scoop on product giveaways and discount codes from our favorite real food companies.

In fact, tomorrow you’ll find out how you can win a 5-jar sampler pack of Nikki’s Coconut Butter, including their new pumpkin spice donut flavor. Yum!

Speaking of yum…

Today is your LAST CHANCE to take advantage of our limited time Real Food Con Cookbook bonus when you order the early bird All Access package — with instant lifetime access to all 22 video and audio presentations, over 200 pages of transcripts, and 7 HD cooking classes with accompanying follow-along recipe guide — at a special discounted price (50% off).

The 123-page cookbook is jam-packed with 61 gluten- and dairy-free recipes from our real food friends, including Christa Orecchio, George Bryant, Amy Densmore, JJ Virgin, Cynthia Pasquella, Leanne Ely, and more.

Click here to download your complimentary 28-page cookbook preview. http://realfoodconbonusesandcookbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Real_Food_Con_Cookbook_Preview.pdf

This offer ends tomorrow (Sunday) at 8am PT/11am ET, precisely when the Real Food Con doors open.

Click here to get a 50% discount on the All Access package, plus your FREE cookbook bonus.

See you tomorrow. Tons of real food fun coming your way!

Sean Croxton’s pre-sale deal for his Real Food Con event –
which features 29 of the world’s greatest living authorities
on the healing power of food – is almost over.

And I’d HATE for you to miss out on all the incredible gifts
he’s giving away during this sale, including the Real Food
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It’s dozens and dozens of the most savory, most
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with step-by-step instructions that make it easy for you to
prepare each one.

Click the image below to learn more:

Real Food Con All-Access

And take a look at all the cool stuff Sean is giving away to
those who pre-order.

The cookbook is awesome, but it’s the only the beginning of
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I highly encourage you to take advantage of this deal, while
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Nothing is more important than your health…

And these are some incredible tools for getting healthier –
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