ESSAY OF THE WEEK
Expert Opinions
The promoters and purveyors of GMOs have spent hundreds of millions of dollars portraying anyone who questions the safety of their products as ignorant, alarmist and “anti-science.”
So they’re no doubt stewing over an article written last week—by a medical doctor and a scientist—outlining in detail why these experts are so concerned about the GMO foods and ingredients that now permeate our food system.
In an article published August 20, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., and Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., present rational and reasoned, science-based evidence supporting their recommendations that 1), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not allow the use of Dow’s Enlist Duo, a toxic combo of glyphosate and 2-4,D until further study, and 2), that GMOs be labeled.
On the issue of 2,4-D, Dr. Landigran and Dr. Benbrook write:
In our view, the science and the risk assessment supporting the Enlist Duo decision are flawed. The science consisted solely of toxicologic studies commissioned by the herbicide manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s and never published, not an uncommon practice in U.S. pesticide regulation. These studies predated current knowledge of low-dose, endocrine-mediated, and epigenetic effects and were not designed to detect them. The risk assessment gave little consideration to potential health effects in infants and children, thus contravening federal pesticide law. It failed to consider ecologic impact, such as effects on the monarch butterfly and other pollinators. It considered only pure glyphosate, despite studies showing that formulated glyphosate that contains surfactants and adjuvants is more toxic than the pure compound.
And on labels?
[Labeling]is essential for tracking emergence of novel food allergies and assessing effects of chemical herbicides applied to GM crops.
Exactly.
ACTION ALERT
Wake Up & Smell the Poison
In January, you helped us induct the world’s leading bee-killer, Bayer CropScience, into the Corporate Accountability International Hall of Shame. Bayer is the leading manufacturer of neonicotinoid pesticides,identified by scientists as the primary culprit in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Since January, the plight of U.S. honeybees has grown even worse. Forty-two percent of the nation’s honeybee colonies died off between April 2014 and April 2015.
What is Bayer’s reaction to these alarming statistics? A litany of excuses and a host of tobacco industry-style public relations campaigns, including establishing its own “Bee Care” Center.
It’s time for Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers to wake up and smell the poison.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Bayer to stop manufacturing bee-killing pesticides!
ACTION ALERT
How Could It 'Bee'?
It’s been less than two months since Burt Shavitz , nature-lover, beekeeper and co-founder of Burt’s Bees died, at the age of 80.
Even though Burt sold the company years ago to Roxanne Quimby, who in turn sold itto the Clorox Co. for a cool $925 million, Burt is probably rolling over in his grave to see his beloved company supporting an expensive, glossy, public relations campaign, paid for by Bayer CropScience, for the purpose of hiding the fact that Bayer is one of the world’s most prolific killers of bees.
How could it “bee” that the once-pristine Burts Bees brand is now supporting the leading killer of bees?
Burt’s Bees is one of the companies signed on to the Pollinator Partnership, an organization that on the surface appears very concerned about the plight of honeybees. When in fact, the Pollinator Partnership is nothing more than a corporate creation whose primary purpose it is to shift the blame for Colony Collapse Disorder away from the real cause: Bayer’s (and Monsanto’s and Syngenta’s) neonicotinoid pesticides. And right there on the Pollinator Partnership’s board of directors is Craig Stevenson, vice president and general manager of the Clorox Company, who is also responsible for the Burt’s Bees product line.
In honor of Burt’s passion for all things natural, please ask Mr. Stevenson to withdraw Burt’s Bees from the phony Pollinator Partnership, and instead write the EPA a letter asking the agency to ban bee-killing neonics.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Burt’s Bees: Stop Consorting with the Bee Killers!
Post on Burt’s Bees Facebook page
SUPPORT THE OCA & OCF
Stop the Madness
A study just out this week, published in the Environmental Health Journal, says Monsanto’s glyphosate causes “massive kidney and liver gene function alterations.”
Meanwhile, doctors in Waimea, on the island of Kauai—where chemical companies Dow, BASF, Syngenta and DuPont spray 17 times more pesticide per acre than on ordinary cornfields in the U.S. mainland—report 10 times the national rate of babies born with severe heart malformations.
And here in the U.S., our government, in its infinite wisdom, spends $1 billion a year on Monsanto’s glyphosate and other poisons, to fight non-native, so-called “invasive” plants—many of which are actually beneficial and some have been around for centuries.
When will it end? When we demand it.
It’s clear that our politicians aren’t listening to the scientists and physicians. That’s why our staff is working around the clock, meeting with members of the U.S. House and Senate, to let them know that we in this country—the country that allows more glyphosate residue on food than any other in the world, the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t at the least require labels on GMO foods—have had enough.
It’s up to us to stop the madness. Thank you for supporting this work.
Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)
Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our GMO labeling legislative efforts)
NEW STUDY
Corn Farms Are Cooking the Planet
As if we needed another reason to rid the world of millions of acres of pesticide-drenched GMO corn—about 85 percent of which is used to make ethanol fuel or feed animals on factory farms.
As it turns out, nitrogen fertilizer doesn’t just pollute water, as the people in Toledo, Ohio, learned the hard way, when their water became so polluted the city had to shut it off. A large portion of the nitrogen in agricultural fertilizer, according to a new study, escapes into the atmosphere as nitrous oxide—a greenhouse gas greenhouse gas with nearly 300 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide, as reported in a recent article in Mother Jones.
According to Tom Philpott, reporting on a new study by a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, Yale, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), when researchers measured nitrous oxide emissions at 19 streams over a two-year period in southeastern Minnesota, they found that “standard greenhouse gas emission measures, such as those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have been undercounting these ‘riverine’ emissions sources by a factor of nine; and overall N2O emissions from the area are underestimated by about 40 percent.”
Should you stop eating corn? Yes, if it’s in the form of GMO high fructose corn syrup. And we should all stop eating meat or cheese, or drinking milk, that came from animals fed GMO corn. But the problem isn’t with corn itself, if the corn is grown from non-GMO seeds, using organic regenerative farming practices. The problem is with how we grow most of the world’s corn today—and how much of it we grow that way.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Fenway . . . Farms?
The Boston Red Sox may not be killin’ it this year. But the garden on Fenway Park’s rooftop sure is.
Urban gardening is all the rage, and rooftop gardens are sprouting up everywhere. But on top of a ballpark?
Yes, apparently. And it’s the envy of everyone who sees it: thousands of square feet of squash, beans, tomatoes, herbs and eggplant. In fact, Fenway Farms and has already turned out more than three thousand pounds of produce.
TRAVEL PROMO
Cuba—Up Close & Personal
Looking for a way to celebrate the end of the growing season? Or a new way to celebrate Thanksgiving?
Mark your calendars for November 20-29, 2015, for the fifth trip to Cuba organized in partnership with Vía Orgánica, the Center for Global Justice and the Organic Consumers Association.
The relationship between Cuba and the U.S. has changed significantly since President Obama first announced big policy changes in December 2014. Times are also changing for Cuba’s agroecological farmers. (Check out this article about Fernando Funes, a friend of the OCA, who is doing amazing work in organic production.)
Sign up for our November trip, and you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at what the food production and cooperative scene really looks like in Cuba. The trip will include visits to a variety of food-related groups and enterprises and cooperatives, as well as other experiences that puts Cuba in context. You’ll discover that Cuba doesn’t have it “all figured out.” At the same time, you’ll be inspired by new reflections that will transform your vision on sustainable food chains and cooperatives.
This trip is ideal for folks who are passionate explorers and researchers (formal and informal) in quest of the answer to “how do we transform our world?” Your experience will be enriched by your amazing fellow travelers—all professionally related to food production, policy and cooperatives.
Find out more and reserve your spot now!
LITTLE BYTES
Essential Reading for the Week
Science Is No Longer Truth: Death of Democracy and Knowledge
Unique Roundup Study Shows Massive Kidney and Liver Gene Function Alterations
Pesticides in Paradise: Hawaii's Spike in Birth Defects Puts Focus on GM Crops
There Is Poop in Basically All Hamburger Meat
Gerber Lil’ Crunchies Veggie Dip Toddler Snack Full of Insecticidal GMOs
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