The founding fables of industrialised agriculture

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"Horticulture"

GM Watch: The founding fables of industrialised agriculture
Oct 30, 2013 | Independent Science News | Colin Tudge

"Vitamin A deficiency is now a huge and horrible issue primarily because horticulture has been squeezed out by monocultural big-scale agriculture — the kind that produces nothing but rice or wheat or maize as far as the eye can see.."

Award winning science writer Colin Tudge explains what's wrong not just with GMOs and Golden Rice but with the approach to agriculture that is driving them.

The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture
Colin Tudge
Independent Science News, October 30 2013

http://www.independentsciencenews.org/un-sustainable-farming/the-founding-fables-of-industrialised-agriculture/

Governments these days are not content with agriculture that merely provides good food. In line with the dogma of neoliberalism they want it to contribute as much wealth as any other industry towards the grand goal of “economic growth”. High tech offers to reconcile the two ambitions – producing allegedly fabulous yields, which seems to be what’s needed, and becoming highly profitable. The high-tech flavour of the decade is genetic engineering, supplying custom-built crops and livestock as GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).

So it was that the UK Secretary of State for the Environment and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, told The Independent recently that the world absolutely needs genetically-engineered “Golden Rice”, as created by one of the world’s two biotech giants, Syngenta. Indeed, those who oppose Golden Rice are “wicked”: a comment so outrageous that Paterson’s own civil servants have distanced themselves from it.

Specifically, Golden Rice has been fitted with genes that produce carotene, which is the precursor of vitamin A. Worldwide, approximately 5 million pre-school aged children and 10 million pregnant women suffer significant Vitamin A deficiency sufficiently severe to cause night blindness according to the WHO. By such statistics a vitamin A-rich rice seems eminently justified.

Yet the case for Golden Rice is pure hype. For Golden Rice is not particularly rich in carotene and in any case, rice is not, and never will be, the best way to deliver it. Carotene is one of the commonest organic molecules in nature. It is the yellow pigment that accompanies chlorophyll in all dark green leaves (the many different kinds known as “spinach” are a great source) and is clearly on show in yellow roots such as carrots and some varieties of cassava, and in fruits like papaya and mangoes that in the tropics can grow like weeds.

So the best way by far to supply carotene (and thus vitamin A) is by horticulture – which traditionally was at the core of all agriculture. Vitamin A deficiency is now a huge and horrible issue primarily because horticulture has been squeezed out by monocultural big-scale agriculture — the kind that produces nothing but rice or wheat or maize as far as the eye can see; and by insouciant urbanization that leaves no room for gardens. Well-planned cities could always be self-sufficient in fruit and veg. Golden Rice is not the answer to the world’s vitamin A problem. As a scion of monocultural agriculture, it is part of the cause. Syngenta’s promotion of it is yet one more exercise in top-down control and commercial PR. Paterson’s blatant promotion of it is at best naïve.

For Golden Rice serves primarily as a flagship for GMOs and GMOs are very big business – duly supported at huge public expense by successive governments. It is now the lynch-pin of agricultural research almost everywhere. The UK’s Agriculture and Food Research Council of the 1990s even had the words ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Food’ air-brushed out to become the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (BBSRC). We have been told that GMOs increase yields with lower inputs and have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be safe. Indeed, journalist Mark Lynas has been telling us from some remarkably high platforms that the debate on GMOs is “dead”; that there is now “a consensus” among scientists worldwide that they are necessary and safe.

In reality, GMOs do not consistently or even usually yield well under field conditions; they do not necessarily lead to reduction in chemical inputs, and have often led to increases; and contra Mark Lynas, there is no worldwide consensus of scientists vouching for their safety. Indeed, the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) has drawn up a petition that specifically denies any such consensus and points out that “a list of several hundred studies does not show GM food safety”. Hundreds of scientists are expected to sign. Overall, after 30 years of concerted endeavour, ultimately at our expense and with the neglect of matters far more pressing, no GMO food crop has ever solved a problem that really needs solving that could not have been solved by conventional means in the same time and at less cost.

The real point behind GMOs is to achieve corporate/ big government control of all agriculture, the biggest by far of all human endeavours. And this agriculture will be geared not to general wellbeing but to the maximization of wealth. The last hundred years, in which agriculture has been industrialised, have laid the foundations. GMOs, for the agro-industrialists, can finish the job. The technology itself is esoteric so that only the specialist and well-endowed can embark on it – the bigger the better. All of the technology can be, and is, readily protected by patents. Crops that are not protected by patents are being made illegal. Only parts of the EU have so far been pro-GM but even so the list of crops that it allows farmers to grow – or any of us! – becomes more and more restricted. Those who dare to sell the seed of traditional varieties that have not been officially approved can go to prison. Your heritage allotment could soon land you in deep trouble.

As GMOs spread – and governments like Britain’s would love to follow the US lead in this – they could soon become the only options; the only kids on the block. Then all of agriculture, the key to human survival, will become the exclusive property of the few huge companies that hold the patents. By every sane judgment this is a horrible prospect. Among many other things, the obvious loss of biodiversity will make the whole world even more precarious than it is right now, especially if climate changes the growing conditions year by year. Yet our government’s support for GM technology and for the thinking behind it is unswerving. Government wants agriculture to be seen as big business. Lip service is still paid to democracy (young men and women are sent to their deaths to defend the idea of it) but in truth we have rule by oligarchy: a virtual coalition of corporates and government, with establishment scientists in attendance. This monolith, and the crude thinking on which it is founded, is a far bigger threat to humanity than North Korea or “terrorism”, or the collapse of banks or dwindling oil.

Yet we have been assured, time and again, that there is no alternative; that without high tech, industrialized agriculture, we will all starve. This is the greatest untruth of all; though it has been repeated so often by so many people in such high places that it has become embedded in the zeitgeist. Whether the officially sanctioned untruths spring from misconception or from downright lies I will leave others to judge. But in either case, their repetition by people who have influence in public affairs, is deeply reprehensible.

Specifically we have been told that the world will need 50% more food by 2050. The Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, Sir John Beddington, said this in his “Foresight” report of 2012 on The Future of Food and Farming [1] His argument was, and is, that a billion out of the present seven billion are now undernourished; that numbers are due to rise to 9.5 billion by 2050; that people “demand” more and more meat as they grow richer; and that meat requires enormous resources to produce (already the world’s livestock gobble up about 50% of the world’s cereal and well over 90% of the soya). So of course we need 50% more – and some have raised the ante to 100%. Thus the message comes from on high, we must focus on production, come what may.

But others, including some far closer to the facts, tell a quite different story. Professor Hans Herren, President of the Millennium Institute in Washington, points out that the world already produces enough staple food to support 14 billion – twice the present number. A billion starve because the wrong food is produced in the wrong places by the wrong means by the wrong people – and once the food is produced, as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has pointed out, half of it is wasted. The UN demographers tell us that although human numbers are rising the percentage rise is going down and should reach zero by 2050 – so the numbers should level out. Nine and a half billion is as many as we will ever have to feed – and we already produce 50% more than will ever be needed. The task, then, is not to increase output, but to produce what we do produce (or even less) by means that are kinder to people, livestock, and wildlife; more sustainable; and more resilient.

The truth is that for commercial purposes – for the maximization of wealth – it is too easy to provide good food for everyone. A few years ago, after all, when the economy was tweaked a little differently, farmers in Europe and the US were embarrassed by gluts of wheat and maize; and as farmers have always known, gluts are second only to total crop failure as the route to financial disaster. The obvious and sensible solution would be to reduce production: to tailor output to need and to genuine desire. “Set-aside” was a crude stab at this. But the far more lucrative course is the one we have taken- to overproduce – and if it turns out that people really don’t need more food, then those who seek primarily to maximize wealth must pretend that they do. So the word is put around, backed by well-chosen and uncritical statistics, that we will need 50% more in the next few decades.

The resulting surpluses are then fed to livestock. Livestock that could, incidentally, be fed in more than adequate numbers if we made better use of the world’s grasslands, which account for about two-thirds of all agricultural land; or – which is a straightforward scam, though again it can be made to look respectable – the surplus wheat and maize can simply be burnt if labelled “biofuel”. “Demand” (in this scenario) is judged not by what people actually say they want (who ever said they wanted wheat-based biofuel, or cereal-fed beef rather than grass-fed beef?) but by what can be sold by aggressive PR and successfully lobbied through complaisant government.

Then we are told that the 50% increase we are said to need can be provided only by industrial agriculture and that this industry, like all human endeavour, works most efficiently when driven by the maximally competitive global market. The pious slogan that is meant to justify all this is “sustainable intensification”: more and more output per hectare, achieved by high tech. The magic bullet of GMOs is just part of the hype.

For if we really did need more food (and it would be good to produce more in some places) then the industrial high tech route is not the one to go down. As the IAASTD report [2] of 2009 pointed out – this being one of the few official reports of recent years that is truly worthwhile – the industrial farming that is supposed to be feeding the world in practice provides only 30% of the world’s food. Another 20% comes from fishing, hunting, and people’s back gardens – and the remaining 50% comes from the mostly small, mostly mixed traditional farms that the industrialists and their political assistants tell us are an anachronism; and small mixed farms can be the most productive of all, per unit area [3]. Furthermore, to produce their 30%, the industrial farms gobble up enormous quantities of oil for their industrial chemistry with immense collateral damage, not least to the climate. In contrast traditional farms are low input, and at least when properly managed, need not be damaging at all.

More yet: traditional farms worldwide typically produce only about a half or even a third of what they could produce – not because the farmers are incompetent, as Western observers like to claim, but because they lack the most basic supports. For instance, if farm prices are left to the global market, they go up and down– so that farmers who have no proper financial support from banks or governments are subjected to dumping of foreign surpluses. They then cannot afford to invest upfront in more production. So they err on the side of caution, while western industrial farmers, or at least the richest ones, have often thrown caution to the winds. A little logistic help could increase the output of traditional farms – 50% of the whole – by 100%. Heroic efforts would be needed to increase the output of high-tech western crops and livestock even by another 10%, because the 10-tonne per hectare wheat fields and the 10,000 litre-plus dairy cows are already hard up against physiological limits (while the livestock is well beyond welfare limits). But all the official effort, and our money, is poured into more industrialization. Policy, agricultural and alas scientific, goes where the money leads.

Finally, we are told that the high-tech, global market approach to food production keeps prices down. Small, mixed, traditional-style farms are said to be far too expensive because they are labour-intensive. But in fact, about 80% of what people spend on food in supermarkets goes to the middle-men and the banks (who lend the money to set up the system in the first place). So the farmers get only 20%. If those farmers are up to their ears in debt, as they are likely to be if they have gone down the industrial high-tech route, then a fair slice of that 20% goes to the banks. At most, the farm labour costs that we are supposed to try so hard to keep down probably account for less than 10% of the total food bill. It’s the 80% we need to get down. When farmers sell directly to customers they get 100% of the retail price; through farmers’ markets they typically get around 70%; and through local shops at least 30%. With different marketing the small farmers can certainly make a good living – and farming as a whole in Britain could easily soak up all the million under-25s who are presently being invited to wile away their days in the job centre. (But then, agricultural economists don’t tend to take social costs into account).

In short, agriculture in Britain and the world at large needs a sea-change – an “Agrarian Renaissance”: different ways of farming and marketing and – emphatically — different people in charge. The oligarchy of corporates, government, and compliant academe has failed. Farming that can actually feed us is innately democratic. Worldwide, the farmers know best – but the oligarchs rarely talk to them. They are content merely to impose their scientific and economic and scientific dogmas: high tech in a neoliberal market.

Mercifully, worldwide, many people are helping to bring the Renaissance into being. They range from setters-up of local farmers’ markets to organizations like ENSSER to the worldwide peasants’ movement, La Via Campesina. As many as can be fitted in congregate each year at the Oxford Real Farming Conference: the next one is in January 2014. Do come, and join the Renaissance. This is the cause of our age, for whatever else we may aspire to do, agriculture is the thing we absolutely have to get right.

1: Foresight. The Future of Food and Farming, GO-Science, 2011

2: International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), Island Press, 2009.

http://www.unep.org/dewa/Assessments/Ecosystems/IAASTD/tabid/105853/Default.aspx
3: See for example Commentary IX (UNCTAD TER 2013): Comparative analysis of organic and non-organic farming systems: a critical assessment of on-farm profitability, Noemi Nemes, FAO

Need a body clock reset? A week of camping will do it

© Lazurite
Body clocks readily reset themselves
to natural sleep patterns if given
the opportunity, the study found.

SOTT: Need a body clock reset? A week of camping will do it
Aug 22, 2013 | Hannah Valmadre Editor, The Conversation

One week of camping outdoors and eschewing all man-made light is enough to reset a person's body clock to its natural sleep rhythms, a new study has found.

Our increased use of electrical light, and reduced exposure to natural light, caused modern humans to stray from our natural circadian rhythms or sleep patterns, and may be a contributor to poor quality sleep.

The findings, published in Current Biology, show that humans' internal biological clocks will synchronise to a natural, midsummer light-dark cycle if the opportunity arises. A midsummer light-dark cycle in Colorado, in the US where the study took place, is 14 hours and 40 minutes of light, 9 hours and 20 minutes of darkness in a 24 hour period.

Relying on electrical light after sunset contributes to late sleep schedules, which disturbs natural circadian rhythms and can leave us feeling not well rested.

The new study, conducted by Dr. Kenneth Wright and colleagues from the University of Colorado in the US, found that increased exposure to sunlight, as opposed to largely relying on electric light, shifted the internal clock earlier, which could help reduce the "physiological, cognitive and health consequences of circadian disruption."

The study ran for two weeks, and included eight participants (six men, two women) who had a mean age of 30.3 years.

For the first week, participants were encouraged to perform their daily routines of work, school, social activities and self-selected sleep schedules.

For the second week, participants camped in tents outdoors with only natural light and campfires. Torches or personal electronic devices were banned.

The participants' internal circadian timing was recorded and compared for both weeks of the experiment. The study was conducted in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, in July.

Easier to wake

After a week of exposure to only natural light, our internal circadian clocks align with solar time, the study found. In other words, our internal biological night begins at sunset, and ends when we wake just after sunrise.

"After exposure to natural light, we found the timing of the circadian clock to be approximately two hours earlier and [sleep-promoting hormone] melatonin offset to occur more than 50 minutes prior to wake time, suggesting that if human circadian and sleep timing was in synchrony with the natural light-dark cycle, the circadian low point in brain arousal would move to before the end of the sleep episode, making it easier to awaken in the morning," the researchers found.

Researchers also found that the participants' average light exposure increased more than four times during the week of only natural light.

Dr Nicole Lovato, a sleep expert and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Flinders University, described the research as "a novel approach to research aimed understanding the basic physiological processes which govern our daily lives."

"It confirms existing knowledge regarding the effect of light exposure on the circadian rhythm, or body clock, and its timing in humans," said Dr Lovato, who was not involved int he study.

Restful camping

Dr Leon Lack, another sleep expert from Flinders University said the new study "confirms many anecdotal reports from patients who suffer from delayed sleep periods that the only time when they could get to sleep early and wake up early was while camping during the summer."

The study "suggests that controlling light exposure (decreasing evening light levels, or filtering out the shorter wavelengths such as blue and green) and increasing morning light exposure would be sufficient to treat delayed sleep problems. This is a fairly common problem in adolescents and young adults," said Dr Lack, who was also not involved in the study.

An outdoor lighting regime could temporarily correct the problems of delayed sleep phase, but it is likely these changes would be gradually lost, he said.

"This is likely to be due to those with delayed sleep phase disorder having longer period lengths of their circadian rhythms (24.8 hours instead of 24.3 hours). These people have a stronger tendency to delay with respect to our 24 hour world because their body clock ticks over more slowly."

Hannah Valmadre is an editor for The Conversation.

You Are Yin and Yang and Always Have Been

You Are Yin and Yang and Always Have Been
Oct 31, 2013 | Prevent Disease | Michael Forrester

Yin and Yang are used to describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world; and, how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. They complement each other in many ways, but many existing dualities on our planet are becoming weaker and polarity consciousness is slowly leaving the Earth to a great extent. When we fully appreciate unity consciousness within a unified reality, we realize that these two interconnected forces are actually one. The dark plays a role and so does the light, but each is critical in the growth of the other. A being cannot truly appreciate being immersed in light until the dark is present and vice versa. A flower needs light to grow, but the dark to rest. What does this mean for our Earth? Read on.

 Most people and even many energy workers have trouble coming to terms with the concept of the dark and light or the yin and yang being the same. To them, it is not possible.

They question why reality, life and consciousness on Earth has been so profoundly horrific and dark for so long? Why have billions of people and animals suffered horribly, tortured, murdered and abused over the Ages?

Moving Beyond Polarity Consciousness

The Earth is moving beyond dimensional realities that have restricted our awareness to polarity and victim-perpetrator relationships. Where we place our focus moving forward is paramount and will define our priorities while expanding our state of consciousness.

When the cause of suffering is diagnosed to be a person, it leaves one with a sense of victimhood. And along with it come anguish, resentment and a deep desire for retribution. This process continues unabated and over time becomes a stockpile of hate.

All violence, racial discord and inter-personal strife are just manifestations of this perceived 'victimization' that is derived from our obsession to somehow fix the blame. It would have been impossible for human beings at fourth density levels to ascend without experiencing a high degree of victim-perpetrator relationships and polarity consciousness at some of the highest levels.

We are now just beginning to accept events as a pattern emerging in the kaleidoscope of life, the pattern which has no bias or machinations towards any individual being.

In reacting lies a sense of insecurity, a sense of threat perception and inevitably a sense of being a victim of conspiracy. This approach only leads to further suffering. Constant threat perception is the genesis of insecurity. For hundreds of years this has induced metabolic changes in the body leading to a host of ailments. Do you think the rapid incidence and frequency of disease in the last few centuries is a coincidence? All disease starts first in the energetic plane and then manifests in the physical.

Our inner awareness of thoughts, emotions, memories, images all reflect in our reality. When extreme acts of violence occur within this reality, they may often be exploited and used to change or further reinforce our current level of awareness.

We have all programmed ourselves into believing that there are victims and perpetrators. All you are seeing is perspective. The entire universe is created from projected frequencies which change the vibrational states of all things including people. There are only transmitters of these vibrational states and their receivers. The finest components of our DNA are designed to receive these frequencies and our biology responds to them.

Realizing You are Eternal - Part of Both The Yin Yang Equation and All That Is

The Yin reveals itself as feminine, internal energy, yielding, nurturing, negative, night, passive, moon, intuitive, cold, soft while the Yang reveals itself as masculine, external energy (the physical), dominating, initiating, positive, day, active, sun, logical, hot and hard (well I told you it was male). Yes, the Yang grows and flourishes the yin.

The feminine multi-dimensional understanding of our world was pushed aside for tens of thousands of years and replaced with the linear thinking patterns of the masculine mind. The domination of the masculine has intimidated the feminine and regressed its influence, undermining the true expression of this much needed energy. The over-bearing masculine energy has trampled over the fine attributes of the feminine and forced it to play its games, and thus suppress its own presence. The feminine has patiently observed.

The dominance of the masculine has made it acceptable to develop our scientific paradigm that has tortured nature’s secrets from the feminine and thus took control over our environment. In this way our species has succeeded in largely segregating itself from the sacred interdependence of creation. It is why our scientific paradigm has insisted that nature in all its wisdom, power and glory is no match for the knowledge obtained through the tested scientific method--an assertion that is false in every respect, but our commercialized material ‘modern’ cultures have exaggerrated this sense of alienation, and the feminine has allowed this energy to suppress it.

But the Earth and its civilizations from all kingdoms have arrived at the point where the dominant masculine consciousness can no longer proceed without the feminine. In fact, the Earth was indeed scheduled to be destroyed by the masculine energy and it would have taken only twelve years from 2000-2012 to completely shut down this planet. But the two energies and collective consciousness decided to pass through a new portal and ascend to greater heights, something that has never been done in all of creation within the physical. That is where we are today. The harmonious integration of both energies, albeit we are not quite there yet.

We now have the choice of continuously resenting whatever comes our way or equanimously accepting the same. Liberation is when we accept people and circumstances as they come. A state of zero resentment. Rather than asking 'why', it is now more prudent to question ourselves 'how'. How do I fix the problem? What has been my role in my creation? Why am I experiencing this when I want something else?

Every person is leading their own life and solving their own problems. There is a balance of well-being that is certain for all of us. We all have a shared pain and part of the process of integration is the understanding of how it exists. Hatred, despair and illness are not always a sign that there is something wrong. To acclimate and integrate the new energy, many have chosen to push through these barriers first.

We are relearning the eternal nature of our being and accepting that we must stop struggling to defend and guard against all things we assume have gone wrong and that must be made right. This is where most of our pain resides. We must move from a position of being a victim to one that is empowered and responsible for every experience in our creation.

The planet is broken, but that is exactly where we need it to be. We are slowly developing concepts that were once impossible to integrate. An understanding that we don't necessarily need to fix the Earth or anybody else on it, because everything is just as it should be. We will address all the problems on our planet when consciousness is ready to completely let go of the old paradigm. We are close.

The Earth we want will come (yes in our lifetime) when we can detach ourselves from the emotional components relating to the Earth's state as a negative. The planet is now progressing, repopulating and cleansing, but it will take time for all the inhabitants of this great planet to see the results. When humanity is ready for that next step, Mother Earth will share her new baby...and she is beautiful, pure, pristine and abundant as she once was, but with fascinating upgrades that could not be revealed in the old paradigm.

The most productive direction you can move your energy towards right now is one of love, acceptance and understanding that you are abundant in every sense as are your brothers, sisters and the entire Earth. Nothing is lacking. You will make this planet into exactly what you want and need it to be on your own terms.

Never forget that you are very powerful creators playing the game of Earth as a human. You have set limits for yourselves which you will soon surpass...yet again. Know that you are loved unconditionally every second of every day and you have unlimited support in every way possible. As you feel my love, I do yours as well. Now multiply that emotion by 7 billion and you may get some idea of what you can accomplish together, united as one.

Michael Forrester is a spiritual counselor and is a practicing motivational speaker for corporations in Japan, Canada and the United States.

Number of Scientists Who Say GMOs Not Proven Safe Climbs to 230

Number of Scientists Who Say GMOs Not Proven Safe Climbs to 230
Oct 30, 2013 | Cornucopia.org

Developer of first commercialised GM food says debate isn’t over

European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility
Contact: Dr Angelika Hilbeck

The number of scientists, physicians and legal experts who have signed the group statement, “No scientific consensus on GMO safety”[1] has climbed to 230 in just over a week – and it’s still growing.

The number of initial signatories stood at almost 100 on the day the statement was released, 21 October. It has more than doubled since.

A recent signatory is Dr Belinda Martineau, former member of the Michelmore Lab at the UC Davis Genome Center, University of California, who helped commercialise the world’s first GM whole food, the Flavr Savr tomato. Dr Martineau said:

“I wholeheartedly support this thorough, thoughtful and professional statement describing the lack of scientific consensus on the safety of genetically engineered (GM/GE) crops and other GM/GE organisms (also referred to as GMOs). Society’s debate over how best to utilize the powerful technology of genetic engineering is clearly not over. For its supporters to assume it is, is little more than wishful thinking.” 

Another signatory, Dr Judy Carman, director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research, Adelaide, and adjunct associate professor, health and the environment, Flinders University, South Australia, said:

“Of the hundreds of different GM crops that have been approved for human and animal consumption somewhere in the world, few have been thoroughly safety tested. So it is not possible to have a consensus that they are all safe to eat – at least, not a consensus based on hard scientific evidence derived from experimental data.”

A third signatory, Prof Elena Alvarez-Buyllla, coordinator of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Plant Development and Evolution, Institute of Ecology, UNAM, Mexico, said:

“Given the scientific evidence at hand, sweeping claims that GM crops are substantially equivalent to, and as safe as, non-GM crops are not justifiable.

We must be especially cautious in the case of proposed release of a GM crop in the centre of genetic origin for that crop. An example is the planting of GM maize in Mexico. Mexico is the centre of genetic origin for maize. GM genes can irreversibly contaminate the numerous native varieties which form the genetic reservoir for all future breeding of maize varieties. In addition, maize is a staple food crop for the Mexican people. So GMO releases can threaten the genetic diversity on which food security depends, both within Mexico and globally.

Such decisions with broad implications for society should not be made by a narrow group of self-selected experts, many of whom have commercial interests in GM technology, but must also involve the millions of people who will be most affected. As things stand, in Mexico we have an ongoing uncontrolled experiment with no independent scientific or popular mandate, in which GM genes are allowed to crossbreed with native maize varieties. The inevitable result will be genetic alterations with unpredictable effects.”

A fourth signatory, Dr Joachim H. Spangenberg, faculty member at the UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany, said:

“Researchers in ecology and relevant environmental sciences have predicted negative environmental impacts from GM crops for around 25 years. Over the years, many of these impacts have been empirically documented. One example is the development of pest resistance to GM Bt insecticidal crops and weed resistance to the required herbicides for GM herbicide-tolerant crops. These resistance problems are now an increasing problem for farmers – to the benefit of the GM seed and agrochemical corporations – and are forcing farmers back to older, even more toxic chemical pesticides.

Twenty years ago, the international academic associations of ecologists and molecular biologists met at the International Council for Science. The two groups agreed that their fields of expertise were complementary and that they needed to cooperate in order to assess the ecological impacts of GM crops in a systematic way. However, many molecular biologists involved in GM crop development today persistently ignore their own blind spots and the science emerging from the complementary environmental segments of the science community, turning the application of GM technology into a social risk.”

Note to editors: Contrary to some media reports, most signatories to the statement are not members of ENSSER. ENSSER’s role has been to coordinate and publish the statement and to administer the collection of signatures

References

[1]http://www.ensser.org/increasing-public-information/no-scientific-consensus-on-gmo-safety/

Devastating Report: Cancer Misdiagnosed in Over 1.3 Million Cases

Image taken and modified from uctv.tv

Devastating Report: Cancer Misdiagnosed in Over 1.3 Million Cases
Oct 30, 2013 | Natural Society | Christina Sarich

The National Cancer Institute has just confirmed via a newly released report that the ‘war on cancer’ over the last 30 years has led to more than 1.3 million people (primarily women) being wrongly diagnosed with cancer. This is not to mention that cancer rates have been continuously rising while incredibly expensive cancer treatments are failing.

Breast cancer diagnosis has been found to be especially suspect. Many of the ‘lumps’ found in women’s breasts are completely normal and benign. What’s more, constant screening with mammography equipment actually exposes women to harmful radiation that can cause cancer, as evidenced by a UCLA study which shows how radiation treatments promotes malignancy in cancer cells instead of eradication. These breast screenings are very carcinogenic, but, as if to add insult to injury, thousands of women are misdiagnosed with breast cancer every year.

The recent study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association has a hopeful subtitle: Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment in Cancer: An Opportunity for Improvement. At least they are calling to light the obvious obsession we have had with chemotherapy and radiation for treatment of cancer. And now they have called into question the means by which it is diagnosed.

Read: 6 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer

“Over the past 30 years, awareness and screening have led to an emphasis on early diagnosis of cancer. Although the goals of these efforts were to reduce the rate of late-stage disease and decrease cancer mortality, secular trends and clinical trials suggest that these goals have not been met; national data demonstrate significant increases in early-stage disease, without a proportional decline in later-stage disease.”

The study also points out that early screenings were meant to lessen the burden of those who suffer in late stage cancer, but the screenings have simply not done their job. Not all cancers lead to death, and by being overly paranoid about the medical diagnosis, many radical treatments, including the aforementioned tools most often utilized by mainstream medicine, are often prescribed.

“The practice of oncology in the United States is in need of a host of reforms and initiatives to mitigate the problem of overdiagnosis and overtreatment of cancer, according to a working group sanctioned by the National Cancer Institute.

Perhaps most dramatically, the group says that a number of premalignant conditions, including ductal carcinoma in situ and high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia, should no longer be called “cancer.”

Instead, the conditions should be labeled something more appropriate, such as indolent lesions of epithelial origin (IDLE), the working group suggests.”

Read: Starving Cancer by Eliminating One Thing – Sugar

This study gives us an opportunity to look at alternative methods of both diagnosing and treating cancer, which are numerous. Preventative actions do not cause cancer as chemo and radiation do. Consuming more cancer-fighting foods or changing a person’s exercise habits are two methods to prevent and even reverse cancer. Not to mention the numerous herbs and phytonutrients which have proven to prevent and treat any number of cancers.

These natural solutions are probably just as effective as annual screenings, and are definitely safer. Taking better care of our health means we won’t develop cancer, and also enhances our overall quality of life in the here and now.

Additional Sources:

MedScape

Fatal Flaws in Federal Nutrition Guidelines Promote Obesity

Fatal Flaws in Federal Nutrition Guidelines Promote Obesity
Oct 26, 2013 | Mercola.com | Dr. Mercola

Total Video Length: 42:14

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According to a new study¹ by the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, 40 years of the NHANES American nutrition research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be completely invalid.

The reason for this, the researchers say, is because the method used to collect the nutrition data is seriously flawed. According to the study’s lead author, exercise scientist and epidemiologist Edward Archer:²

“These results suggest that without valid population-level data, speculations regarding the role of energy intake in the rise in the prevalence of obesity are without empirical support.”

It’s no secret that childhood obesity has become a lethal epidemic in the US and many other parts of the world. The trend is so serious, some food advocates, like British chef Jamie Oliver,³ are taking more “dramatic” measures to inspire a collective and cultural U-turn.
Above is the first episode of Oliver’s TV show Food Revolution, which began airing in 2010. A major part of the problem, which Oliver addresses head-on, is that our food culture has changed so drastically over the last 30 years that a majority of today’s youth do not know what fresh, whole food is.

They don’t know where food comes from, or what the food they do eat is made of. Even many adults are at a loss when it comes to understanding the difference between synthetic chemicals added to foods during processing, and bioavailable nutrients found in unprocessed foods.
Tackling one town at a time, Oliver is on a mission to reeducate the masses about what real food is, and how to cook meals that will promote health and longevity rather than obesity and chronic disease. I’m hard-pressed to think of a more noble effort. But as you will see, it’s not an easy task.

Resistance to change—even positive, life-affirming change—can be fierce, and when it comes to altering school lunches, it’s made worse by having to adhere to federal nutritional guidelines that are fatally flawed in more ways than one.

According to the featured study, caloric intake has been under reported for the past four decades, and the rise in obesity isn’t necessarily a side effect of increasing calorie consumption—it might just be an artifact of slight improvements in the reporting.

If that’s true, then what is really at the root of the obesity problem? Not addressed in this study is the fact that the entire “calorie in/calorie out” hypothesis is a myth as well! You don’t get fat because you eat too many calories. You gain weight because you eat the wrong kind of calories, which I’ll get into in a moment.

Federal Nutrition Data Found to Be 'Physiologically Implausible'

In the US, nutrition and health data is compiled by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).⁴ It collects self-reported food and beverage consumption data of children and adults, along with physical examinations to evaluate the health status of the participants. This information is then used by researchers studying the effects of nutrition and diet on the health of Americans.

Now, researchers evaluating the NHANES data and collection methods have concluded that the data is simply “not physiologically credible,” and that blaming obesity on excessive calorie consumption is “without empirical support.” According to the featured article:⁵

“The study⁶ examined data from 28,993 men and 34,369 women, 20 to 74 years old, from NHANES I (1971 - 1974) through NHANES (2009 - 2010), and looked at the caloric intake of the participants and their energy expenditure, predicted by height, weight, age and sex.

The results show that - based on the self-reported recall of food and beverages -- the vast majority of the NHANES data 'are physiologically implausible, and therefore invalid,' Archer said. In other words, the 'calories in' reported by participants and the 'calories out,' don't add up and it would be impossible to survive on most of the reported energy intakes.

This misreporting of energy intake varied among participants, and was greatest in obese men and women who underreported their intake by an average 25 percent and 41 percent (i.e., 716 and 856 calories per-day respectively).”

The failure to provide accurate estimates of Americans’ habitual caloric consumption can have far-reaching ramifications when it comes to federal nutritional guidelines. First of all, it points out the limited ability to create public policy that accurately reflects the connections between diet and health.

It also suggests that much of the nutritional research produced over the past four decades is unreliable at best, as it’s not an accurate reflection of people’s actual calorie intake. According to Archer:

"The nation's major surveillance tool for studying the relationships between nutrition and health is not valid. It is time to stop spending tens of millions of health research dollars collecting invalid data and find more accurate measures."

Reality Check—Health Is Dependent on Real Food

I agree we should stop wasting money on collecting invalid data. The question is, what would constitute “more accurate measures”? I’ve long advocated against counting calories at all, as they’re a poor way to evaluate the actual healthfulness of your meal.

You’re not going to improve your health by eating fewer cookies than you did before if your entire diet consists of different kinds of pastries. If you really want to lose weight and, more importantly, improve your health, then you must replace “empty” calories from processed, denatured foods with nutrients from real, whole foods—especially healthful fats, which I’ll address below.

Three decades ago, the food available was mostly fresh and grown locally. Today, the majority of foods served, whether at home, in school or in restaurants, are highly processed foods, filled with sugars and chemical additives. During that same time, childhood obesity has more than tripled. In the US, more than one-third of children and adolescents are now overweight or obese.

Regardless of whether our federal nutrition guidelines are based on accurate calorie intake or not, cutting down on calories alone is not going to fix the problem of childhood obesity and the alarming rise of chronic disease in children and teens. Children need to be fed properly, and Oliver’s TV show clearly pinpoints what’s wrong with the American diet.

Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work

In a nutshell, it’s FAR more important to look at the source of the calories than counting them. Contrary to popular belief, you do NOT need 45-65 percent of your daily calories in the form of carbs, as recommended by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.⁷
It’s these kinds of nutritional guidelines that are responsible for promoting obesity in the first place! It would be one thing if the recommendation was that half of your diet should consist of vegetable carbs, but that’s not the case. No, the federal recommendations for carbs touted by health agencies and nutritionists around the country include starches, fiber, grains, sugar alcohols, and naturally-occurring and added sugars—the very things that drive obesity and chronic disease rates skyward... According to the 2010 Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans,⁸ the top 10 sources of calories in the American diet are:

1. Grain-based desserts (cakes, cookies, donuts, pies, crisps, cobblers, and granola bars), 139 calories a day	6. Alcoholic beverages
2. Yeast breads, 129 calories a day	7. Pasta and pasta dishes
3. Chicken and chicken-mixed dishes, 121 calories a day	8. Mexican mixed dishes
4. Soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks, 114 calories a day	9. Beef and beef-mixed dishes
5. Pizza, 98 calories a day	10. Dairy desserts

Looking at this list, it should be fairly easy to see the dietary roots of the American weight problem. Four of the top five sources of calories are carbs—sugars (primarily fructose) and grains—just as recommended. And while soda has dropped down to number four (it used to be number one), I still believe a lot of people, particularly teenagers, probably get a majority of their calories from sugary beverages like soda.

To Optimize Your Health, Pay Attention to the SOURCE of Your Calories

In order to curb the current obesity epidemic, we do not need more accurate reporting of calories; we need to start focusing on eating the right kind of calories. I firmly believe that the primary keys for successful weight management and optimal health are:

1. Severely restricting carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains) in your diet
2. Increasing healthy fat consumption
3. Unlimited consumption of non starchy vegetables. Because they are so low calorie, the majority of the food on your plate will be vegetables
4. Limit the use of protein to less than one half gram per pound of body weight

Healthful fat can be rich in calories, but these calories will not affect your body in the same way as calories from non-vegetable carbs. As explained by Dr. Robert Lustig, fructose in particular is "isocaloric but not isometabolic." This means you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count. Eating dietary fat isn’t what’s making you pack on the pounds. It’s the sugar/fructose and grains that are adding the padding.

So please, don’t fall for the low-fat myth, as this too is a factor in the rise in chronic health problems such as heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Your brain, heart and cardiovascular system need healthy fat for optimal functioning. In fact, emerging evidence suggests most people need at least half of their daily calories from healthy fat, and possibly as high as 70 percent. My personal diet is about 60-70 percent healthy fat. Add to that a small to medium amount of high-quality protein and plenty of vegetables. You actually need very few carbs besides vegetables; so you see, the federal guidelines are about as lopsided as they could be... pushing you toward obesity and poor health, if you follow them.

Hunger Can Be Used as a Guide to Determine How Much Fat You Need

Many do not realize this, but frequent hunger may be a major clue that you're not eating correctly and are using carbs as your primary fuel. Not only is it an indication that you're consuming the wrong types of food, but it's also a sign that you're likely consuming them in lopsided ratios for your individual biochemistry, and the timing of your eating may benefit from adjustment. Fat is far more satiating than carbs, so if you have cut down on carbs and feel ravenous, thinking you "can't do without the carbs," remember this is a sign that you haven't replaced them with sufficient amounts of fat. So go ahead and add a bit more. You do want to make sure you're adding the correct types of fat though. And vegetable oils like canola and corn oil, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommends is NOT on the healthy list… Sources of healthy fats include:

Olives and olive oil	Coconuts and coconut oil	Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
Raw nuts, such as almonds or pecans	Organic pastured egg yolks	Avocados
Grass-fed meats	Palm oil	Unheated organic nut oils

Another healthful fat you want to be mindful of is animal-based omega-3. Deficiency in this essential fat can cause or contribute to very serious health problems, both mental and physical, and may be a significant underlying factor of up to 96,000 premature deaths each year. For more information about omega-3s and the best sources of this fat, please review this previous article.

Healthy Eating Starts at Home

Home used to be the heart of passing on food culture. This rarely happens anymore, and children are suffering the consequences. School lunches also used to be far more nutritious. Today, as evidenced in the video above, most of the food served at school is processed food, requiring only to be reheated.

Sadly, many parents today don’t even know how to cook with fresh ingredients, because their parents embraced the novel convenience of the TV dinner back in the 50s. I’ve said this for many years, and it’s worth repeating many times over because it’s one of the main solutions to the obesity epidemic—Cook your food from scratch, at home!

Many people are under the mistaken impression that cooking from scratch is an extremely complicated affair that takes lots of time and costs more than they could possibly afford. Part of Jamie Oliver’s mission is to show the fallacy of this kind of thinking. There are plenty of sources for simple recipes, many of which are free if you have access to the internet. In a previous article, Colleen Huber offers a list of helpful guidelines on how to cook whole food from scratch while keeping your day job.

It does require some pre-planning in many cases, but remember that learning to plan your meals may actually reduce your stress levels rather than increase them! Many people resort to fast foods and processed foods simply because they’re too frazzled at the end of their work day to figure out what to cook. Planning a menu and shopping ahead could actually turn meal time into a more relaxed time spent with family.

Also, remember that whatever money you think you’re saving now by using processed foods, you’ll end up paying many times over later on when your health begins to fail. Proper nutrition, consisting mainly of whole, fresh foods, really is your number one health insurance policy. Likewise, children will not know which foods are healthy unless you, as a parent, teach it to them. Please, understand that poor eating habits at home, combined with poor food selections at school, may set your child up for long-term physical and behavioral problems.

Are You Trying to Eat Healthy on a Budget?

While it may not be immediately obvious for people who have grown up relying on ready-made, pre-packaged foods and snacks, you can replace those foods with something equally satisfying that will support, rather than wreck, your health. This requires some strategy, especially if you're working with a tight budget, but it can be done:

1. Identify a person to prepare meals. Someone has to invest some time in the kitchen. It will be necessary for either you, your spouse, or perhaps someone in your family prepare the meals from locally grown healthful foods. This includes packing lunches for your kids to take to school.
2. Become resourceful: This is an area where your grandmother can be a wealth of information, as how to use up every morsel of food and stretch out a good meal was common knowledge to generations past. Seek to get back to the basics of cooking – using the bones from a roast chicken to make stock for a pot of soup, extending a Sunday roast to use for weekday dinners, learning how to make hearty stews from inexpensive cuts of meat, using up leftovers and so on.
3. Plan your meals: If you fail to plan you are planning to fail. This is essential, as you will need to be prepared for mealtimes in advance to be successful. Ideally, this will involve scouting out your local farmer's markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly, but you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales. You can generally plan a week of meals at a time, make sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare if you're short on time in the evenings.
   It is no mystery that you will be eating lunch around noon every day so rather than rely on fast food at work, before you go to bed make a plan as to what you are going to take to work the next day. This is a marvelous simple strategy that will let you eat healthier, especially if you take healthy food from home in to work.
   
4. Avoid food waste: According to a study published in the journal PloS One, Americans waste an estimated 1,400 calories of food per person, each and every day. The two steps above will help you to mitigate food waste in your home. You may also have seen my article titled "14 Ways to Save Money on Groceries." Among those tips are suggestions for keeping your groceries fresher, longer, and I suggest reviewing those tips now.
5. Buy organic animal foods. The most important foods to buy organic are animal, not vegetable, products (meat, eggs, butter, etc.), because animal foods tend to concentrate pesticides in higher amounts. If you cannot afford to buy all of your food organic, opt for organic animal foods first.
6. Keep costs down on grass-fed beef. Pasture-finished beef is far healthier than grain-fed beef (which I don't recommend consuming). To keep cost down, look for inexpensive roasts or ground meat. You may also save money by buying an entire side of beef (or splitting one with two or three other families), if you have enough freezer space to store it.
7. Buy in bulk when non-perishable items go on sale. If you are fortunate to live near a buyer's club or a co-op, you may also be able to take advantage of buying by the pound from bins, saving both you and the supplier the cost of expensive packaging.
8. Frequent farmer's markets or grow your own produce. You may be surprised to find out that by going directly to the source you can get amazingly healthy, locally grown, organic food for less than you can find at your supermarket. This gives you the best of both worlds: food that is grown near to you, cutting down on its carbon footprint and giving you optimal freshness, as well as grown without chemicals, genetically modified seeds, and other potential toxins.

Just as restaurants are able to keep their costs down by getting food directly from a supplier, you, too, can take advantage of a direct farm-to-consumer relationship, either on an individual basis or by joining a food coop in your area. Many farmer's markets are also now accepting food stamps, so this is an opportunity most everyone can join in on.

Scientific American disinformation on GMOs

© scientificamerican.com

Scientific American disinformation on GMOs
Oct 14, 2013 | Dr Mae Wan Ho, Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji & Prof Peter Saunders | Institute of Science in Technology

America's most trusted science magazine is spreading disinformation on behalf of a failing and desperate industry, in utter disregard of scientific integrity and the overwhelming evidence of hazards to health and the environment .

Deceptively authoritative pronouncements not backed up by evidence, scientific or otherwise

A recent editorial in Scientific American entitled "Labels for GMO Foods are a Bad idea" caught most people by surprise. In beguilingly authoritarian tone and without providing references for any of its confident-sounding assertions, it tells us that labelling GM Foods ^[1] "would only intensify the misconception that so-called Frankenfoods endanger people's health." If anything, the editorial itself is guilty of spreading disinformation regarding GMOs, which is very disappointing for a normally trustworthy and serious science magazine. We feel obliged to expose some of the major misconceptions in the editorial.

The piece begins with the tired old pronouncement used by industry to reassure the public since the early 1990s that humans have been "tinkering" with crop genomes since the beginning of time through the process of conventional breeding, implying that genetic modification is no different. In reality, there is no longer any doubt that genetic modification is distinct from conventional breeding and introduces new risks, as fully acknowledged in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety for regulating GMOs under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity ^[2], which was adopted by the international community on 29 January 2000 and entered into force on 11 September 2003.

The assertion that genetic engineering is more "precise" than natural plant reproduction flies in the face of abundant evidence documenting extensive mutations and scrambling (rearrangements) of the host genome as the result of genetic modification, with new transcripts and harmful proteins found in the rare cases that were subjected to further investigations ^[3].

Using American citizens as guinea pigs for the past 20 years is another common justification for GM food. The claim that they are eating it without evidence of harm is not based on science, as without GM labelling it is impossible to tell who has eaten GM food and who has not or in what amounts. The only way one could tell if GM food has any effect on the health of American citizens is to compare their health status before and after GM food was introduced.

Increase in GMOs parallels deterioration of health in the United States

Dr Nancy Swanson, retired scientist of the US Navy, used data from official sources -including the Centers for Disease Control, National Cancer Institute, National Kidney and -Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse and US Renal Data System - to find out if the status of health of US citizens has changed since GM crops were introduced ^[4]. According to Swanson, the data revealed a "marked deterioration of health" with the introduction of GM crops. The incidence of diseases and adverse conditions that have gone up in parallel with the increase in GM crops and the use of glyphosate herbicide since 1994 (first year of commercialization of GM crops) include thyroid cancer, liver and bile duct cancer, obesity, high blood pressure, hospitalizations for acute kidney injury, diabetes, and end stage renal disease. As Swanson points out, correlation does not necessarily imply cause and effect, and there may be other factors, i.e., a long list of environmental endocrine disruptors and toxic substances including food additives and preservatives. "GMOs may be pushing us off the cliff." She said.

"Certainly more research should be done to firmly establish causality."

Although the epidemiological findings do not establish cause and effect, there is now overwhelming evidence from laboratory studies on cells and animals documenting damages to practically every organ system from exposure to GMOs and/or glyphosate herbicides, confirming what farmers have been experiencing for years in the fields (see our comprehensive report ^[5] Ban GMOs Now).

GM crops do not increase yield

A common myth perpetrated by the pro-GM lobby is that GM crops increase yield, which is blatantly untrue. A recent study based on yield data from United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showed that the US staple crop system has been failing since the adoption of GMOs and is being overtaken by predominantly non-GM Europe in all respects including yields, resilience, pesticide use, and genetic diversity ^{[6, 7]} (US Staple Crop System Failing from GM and Monoculture, SiS 59).

The Scientific American editors tell us that ^[1] "a seven-year study of Indian farmers show that those growing a genetically modified crop increased their yield per acre by 24 percent and boosted profits by 50 percent." This was a real surprise, as the failures of Bt cotton in India were documented by many grassroots organisations and widely publicised as was its role in accelerating farm suicides (see ISIS review ^[8] Farmer Suicides and Bt Cotton Nightmare Unfolding in India, SiS 45). As recently as April 2013, the agriculture minister of Maharashtra (one of the main cotton states) openly admitted that Bt cotton was a failure ^[9]. He stressed the need for agriculture officials to be more proactive. Bt cotton spread has increased to 95 %. "Cotton yields in Vidarbha [in India's cotton belt] remains an abysmal 177 kg per acre." The agriculture minister said. "Even Pakistan was doing 400 kg average yield." He noted that Bt cotton was benefiting seed companies more than farmers and wondered why agriculture scientists and officials failed to promote time-tested traditional varieties and indigenously developed hybrids.

So what is the Sci Am editors' assertion based on?

Our investigation turned up a paper ^[10] published in top journal Science (which has long become the apparent mouthpiece of the GM industry). The main author Martin Qaim at University of Bonn in Germany is notorious for having previously co-authored a paper published in the same journal in 2003 claiming even greater (80%) yield increases from Monsanto's GM cotton ^[11]. That paper drew a storm of protest and derision, as Monsanto had provided the data, and the findings were completely at odds with reports coming from Indian farmers and grassroots organisations. Dr Devinder Sharma, a food policy expert, called the paper a "scientific fairytale" ^[12].

Bt cotton has been an unmitigated disaster for India in exacerbating farm suicides, with an ecological and agronomic nightmare still unfolding in plagues of secondary and novel pests, pest resistance, novel diseases, and soils so depleted in nutrients and essential microorganisms that they will no longer support the growth of any crop ^[8].

Beneficial GM crops that do not exist

In order to put a beneficent gloss over GM crops - now consisting of two major categories Bt and glyphosate tolerant both damaging to health and ecosystems and benefiting no one else but the companies ^[5] - the pro-GM lobby is conjuring crops supposedly good for health and the environment out of thin air.

The most publicised is the GM golden rice, engineered to make pro-Vitamin A, which the editors tell us ^[1] will curb vitamin A deficiency that "blinds as many as 500,000 children worldwide every year and kills half of them." But "Greenpeace and other anti-GMO organizations have used misinformation and hysteria to delay the introduction of Golden Rice to the Philippines, India and China."

The truth is that Golden Rice does not exist, at least not as a variety that is ready for commercialization.

Golden Rice (GR1) was created as a public relations exercise nearly 14 years ago ^[13] (see 'Golden Rice' - an exercise in how not to do science, ISIS/TWN Report). It produced so little pro-vitamin A that you would have to eat buckets every day to get enough. Golden Rice staged a comeback as GR2 in 2008 with a special feature in Science ^[14], which revealed that Tufts University in Boston USA has been carrying out 'clinical trials' of Golden Rice on children. More than 30 senior scientists and academics signed an open letter (16 February 2009) condemning the work ^[15] (Scientists Protest UnethicalClinical Trials of GM Golden Rice) as being in breach of the Nuremberg Code of Ethics. Two of the studies involved children 6-10 years old. Furthermore, the Golden rice in the trials (GR2) was not one identifiable variety. Instead it was a collection of experimental transgenic events still in the laboratory ^[16] (The Golden Rice Scandal Unfolds, SiS 42), not characterized in terms of basic molecular genetics or biological and biochemical properties, not tested pre-clinically on animals, or subjected to any other safety assessment. The Tufts University scientist and the Chinese scientists involved in the trials have been reprimanded by Tufts University authorities and the Chinese government respectively since ^[17].

The editors tell us that for the past 20 years, Americans have been eating plants genetically modified to "tolerate drought" ^[1]. Actually, a GM crop claimed to be drought tolerant is commercially available for the first time in 2013 ^[18].

But it is the GM cassava that gets the prize for disinformation. The editors wrote ^[1] "An international team of researchers has engineered a variety of cassava - a staple food for 600 million people - with 30 times the usual amount of beta-carotene and four times as much iron, as well as higher levels of protein and zinc." Our investigation failed to locate any such GM cassava, except as stated intentions, or at best in experimental varieties subjected to "contained" field trials ^[19], all created with the Agrobacterium vector system that's especially hazardous for health and the environment (see ^[5]). The only GM cassava created by the Donald Danforth Plant Research Center in St. Louis Missouri and actually described in a paper published in 2011 was retracted in September 2012 because ^[20] "an institutional investigation revealed that significant amounts of data and supporting documentation that were claimed to be produced by the first author could not be found" and "the validity of the results could not be verified."

Instead, great strides have already been made in improving cassava through conventional breeding, including three varieties of b-carotene rich cassava that are being widely released in Nigeria ^[21] (How Non-GM Cassava Can Help Feed the World, SiS 59).

References

1. The Editors. Labels for GMO foods are a bad idea. Scientific American, accessed 8 October 2013,
2. Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Convention on Biological Diversity, accessed 7 October 2013,
3. Latham JR. Wilson AK and Steinbrecher RA. The mutational consequences of plant transformation. J Biomed and Biotech 2006, 1-7.
4. Swanson NL. Genetically modified organisms and the deterioration of health in the United States. First published as a series of articles on Seattle examiner.com. [PDF]
5. Ho MW & Sirinathsinghji E. Ban GMOs Now. Health and Environmental Hazards Especially in Light of the New Genetics. ISIS Special Report, 2013.
6. Heinemann JA , Massaro M, Coray DS, Agapito-Tenfen SZ, Wen JD. Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 2013,
7. Sirinathsinghji E. US Staple crop system failing from GM & monoculture. Science in Society 59, 12-13+17, 2013.
8. Ho MW. Farmer suicides & Bt cotton nightmare unfolding in India. Science in Society 45, 32-39, 2009.
9. "Vikhe-Patil wants agri officers to be proactive", Ramu Bhagwat, TNN, Times of India, 30 April, 2013,
10. Kathage J andQaim M. Economic impacts and impact dynamics of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton in India. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2012 109, 11652-6.
11. Qaim M and Zilberman D. Yield effects of genetically modified crops in developing countries. Science 2003, 299, 900-2.
12. Sharma D. Response to latest Qaim and Zilberman "fairytale".
13. Ho MW. 'Golden Rice' - An Exercise in How Not to Do Science, ISIS/TWN Report, 2002,
14. Enserink M. Tough lessons from Golden Rice. Science 2008, 320, 468-71.
15. Scientists Protest Unethical Clinical Trials of GM Golden Rice, Open Letter, 12 February 2009, for complete list of signatories see here.
16. Ho MW and Cummins J. The Golden Rice scandal unfolds. Science in Society 42
17. "Golden rice not so golden for Tufts", Martin Enserink, Science Insider, Science, 18 September 2013,
18. Monsanto.com, accessed 05th October 2013
19. Sayre R, Beeching JR, Cahoon EB, et al. The biocassava plus program: biofortification of cassava for sub-Saharan Africa. Annu Rev Plant Biol 2011, 62, 251-71.
20. GM Cassava study retracted over 'missing data'. Scidev.com, accessed 5th October 2013
21. Saunders P. How non-GM Cassava can feed the World. Science in Society 59, 22-24, 2013

RELATED:

Soy Mafia and GMO Assassins Aided and Abetted by Scientific American

Monsanto and DuPont Spent Nearly $9 Million to Defeat GMO Labeling in Washington

Monsanto and DuPont Spent Nearly $9 Million to Defeat GMO Labeling in Washington
Oct 27, 2013 | The Daily Sheeple | Melissa Melton

More than half of the states in this country are currently fighting to mandate GMO labeling; if voters say yes to Initiative 522, Washington could be the first in the nation to force companies to give consumers some sort of clue if what they are eating has been genetically modified.

Now Bloomberg is reporting that Monsanto and DuPont, two of the nation’s largest producers of GMO seeds in the U.S. have given a combined $8.7 million towards I-522′s defeat — nearly half of the $18.1 million raised against the labeling initiative so far.

This should come as no surprise, considering the two biotech giants also happened to be the two biggest contributors toward the defeat of California’s similar prop 37 labeling initiative last year. Five million is more than Monsanto has spent lobbying the government thus far this year, which is about $3 million (although the year is not over yet).

Since tossing their millions into the anti-labeling pot, I-522′s 45% lead in the polls has dropped dramatically to a depressing 4%.

In addition, Natural News is reporting a whole host of major food labels have financially joined the fight against their customers’ basic right to know what’s in their food, including:

Bimbo Bakeries USA
Bumble Bee Foods, LLC
Campbell Soup Co.
Cargill Inc.
The Clorox Co. (owner of Burt’s Bees brand)
The Coca-Cola Co. (owner of Odwalla)
ConAgra Foods
Dean Foods Co. (owner of Horizon milk)
Del Monte Foods Co.
General Mills, Inc. (owned of Larabar)
The Hershey Co.
The Hillshire Brands Co.
Hormel Foods Corp.
The J.M. Smucker Co.
Kellogg Co. (owner of Pop-Tarts)
Land O’Lakes, Inc.
Mondelez Global, LLC. (formerly Kraft Foods)
Nestle USA, Inc.
Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.
PepsiCo, Inc. (owner of Naked Juice)
Sunny Delight Beverages Co.
Welch Foods, Inc.
(click here for complete list to boycott)

Why are these food companies so utterly unwilling to just tell their customers what is in the food they are selling? Many of the businesses on this list have also dropped GMO ingredients in Europe because of such strong opposition and labeling laws; but apparently here in the good ‘ol U.S.A., it’s cheaper to just keep putting GMOs in the food and not telling anyone about it.

Why? Because they know they can get away with it here.

Ultimately, these mega food conglomerates know they can save money in the long-run by buying a bunch of anti-labeling propaganda to fool voters to upholding these companies’ ability to keep right on using cheaper (and potentially dangerous) ingredients without admitting it.  It’s a financially safer bet to make than not getting involved and possibly losing the GMO labeling fight.

If people actually knew how much of the average American grocery store has been genetically engineered — some estimates say as much as 90% — there might be an uproar leading to a real food revolution where companies would be forced to spend more money using better ingredients in their products.

That’s the only thing that makes any sense; otherwise, why are major biotech companies like Monsanto and DuPont and their major food company customers so blatantly afraid to allow for labeling? So scared that they are willing to shell out millions upon millions of dollars to keep from having to just label already? If these companies are so proud of their wonderful products, shouldn’t they be thrilled to have the ingredients clearly listed for everyone to see?

Why is this even a fight? It’s a basic right we’re talking about here. The argument for labeling GMO doesn’t even have to be health and safety related at this point (even though independent studies — as in the ones not bought and paid for by the very biotech companies that stand to profit from positive results — show a whopping 65 health risks associated with genetically modified foods).

If you buy something you are going to put not just on but into your body, something that could have consequences on your health now or in the future, you have a right to know what’s in it. Period. It’s about being allowed to know what is in your food and the food you feed your family, your children. That way you can make an informed decision about whether or not you actually want to eat that. If you do, fine. If you don’t, however, that should be fine, too.

Either way, the decision should be yours — and right now, it isn’t.

Sadly, we live in a society where people have just grown so accustomed to being forced to do things whether they like it or not.

We’re forced to be treated guilty until proven innocent when we go to an airport and subject ourselves to TSA molestation and radiation just to get on an airplane in this country. The government is about to force us to buy health insurance and buy into the allopathic medicine system (health insurance, by the way, that it helped create with the very pharmaceutical and insurance companies who stand to profit from it in backroom, off-the-record deals).

When it comes to our food, we’re apparently just expected to sit there and swallow it, no matter what “it” actually is. Food packaging and labels change all the time for even pointless aesthetic reasons with little-to-no care for costs. These companies know, and common sense makes it abundantly clear, that adding one little line of printed text to inform consumers that their food has been genetically altered in and of itself will not shave much off the bottom line (if at all). While these companies threaten that prices will go up if the ingredients changed, it’d only be in the short term because if the majority of people in this country actually demanded better food and not nutritionally vapid junk, the price of that better food would actually go down.

The real financial detriment to these companies is people actually being allowed to make an informed decision not to eat something if they don’t want to. If given that choice, these companies ultimately know what everyone should by now — that a lot of people probably won’t want to knowingly eat it.

More people just might begin turning to certified organic, or worse for these mega corporations, we as a nation might begin to reverse the dangerous trend of centralized food, where something like 96% of the entire population is entirely dependent on the other 4% to grow and supply them with their food.

People might start putting their money where their mouth is, literally — voting with their dollars. Boycotting the unpalatable. Forcing accountability. Taking a little bit of their own power back and growing more of their own food. A true movement that could really start to turn things around in the United Corporations of America.

Of course, with a former Monsanto Vice President of Public Policy as our current Food Safety Czar and people oh-so-willing to allow biotech-bought propaganda to do their common sense thinking for them, I guess we really shouldn’t get our hopes up too high.

About the Author

Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media. Wake the flock up!