Tag Archives | GMOs

Russia Blocks Monsanto’s GMO Corn

By majestic on September 27, 2012 in News 3

It might be grandstanding by the Russians, but the issue of Roundup being carcinogenic is nonetheless alarming. From The Register:

Monsanto’s GM corn, the centre of a storm inspired by the now-notorious French “rat tumours” study, has been banned from Russia following a decision by consumer rights regulator Rospotrebnadzor.

The ban is more symbolic than anything else: Russia doesn’t allow its farmers to plant GM corn, and is a net exporter of grains.

According to TV-Novosti site RT, Rospotrebnadzor has asked Russia’s Institute of Nutrition to review the French study, which claimed that rats developed large tumours either when exposed to the “Roundup-resistant” crop or to concentrations of Roundup in their water as low as .1 parts per billion.

According to Bloomberg, Russia had already asked the European Commission to comment on the study.

The European Food Safety Authority expects to have a preliminary review of the study completed by next week…

[continues at The Register]… Read the rest

Walmart To Sell Unlabeled GMO Corn From Monsanto

By JacobSloan on August 22, 2012 in News 18

At prices this low, how could you expect the food not to be laced with insecticide? Russia Today reports:

America’s largest bio-agriculture company and the biggest retailer in the country are joining forces. Walmart will soon be stocking their shelves with GMO corn made by Monsanto.

The retail giant says they won’t advertise which of their products are made with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, which could become a big problem very soon. Zack Kaldveer explains in an editorial published by the California Progress Report this month that Walmart will soon sell a special factory-made corn manufactured by Monsanto, which while it will allow most of Americans more easy access to affordable food, will also fill them with unknown insecticides: the very GMO crop Walmart will be selling has been genetically engineered to include chemicals right inside the corn.

Voters in California will decide later this year if retailers on the West Coast will be legally bound to correctly label all foodstuffs sold in shopping centers that are made from genetically modified foods.

… Read the rest

Monsanto Kicks Off Campaign To Prevent Genetically Modified Food Labeling

By JacobSloan on July 9, 2012 in News 8

The Monsanto-funded StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com (featuring articles such as “How California’s GMO Labeling Law Could Limit Your Food Choices and Hurt the Poor”) provides a sample of what will be rolled out as Californians mull a referendum requiring the labeling of GMO foods. Via BlackListed News:

In February, Vermont contemplated the Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. The proposed bill prohibits GMO food producers from using keywords like “natural,” “naturally made,” “naturally grown,” and “all natural” to describe GMO ingredients and products. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported that nearly 20 states were considering similar programs. Public surveys show a whopping 90 percent of the U.S. in favor of such practices.

In theory, this should make California’s GMO labeling initiative, which would require all foods within the state made with GM ingredients to carry a label stating so, a shoo-in. But let’s not get so hasty.

Leaders in the disinformation campaign launched against the labeling initiative cry out that it would be—like the infamous Proposition 65, “The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986”—a way for bounty-hunting trial lawyers to file suits against even natural food companies for supposedly selling products containing undisclosed GMOs.

… Read the rest

California To Vote On Labeling Genetically Modified Foods

By JacobSloan on June 14, 2012 in News 0

Should people have a right to know what corporations are feeding to them, or is it none of their business? The Guardian on a referendum this November which could change how food is sold across the country:

Last month, nearly 1m signatures were delivered [in] California calling for a referendum on the labeling of genetically engineered foods. If the measure, “The Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act”, passes, California will become the first state in the nation to require that GM foods be labeled as such on the package.

Lawmakers in states like Vermont and Connecticut have also proposed labeling legislation, which has gone nowhere in the face of stiff industry opposition. What makes the referendum in California different is that, for the first time, voters and not politicians will be the ones to decide. And this has the food industry worried. Understandably so, since only one in four Americans is convinced that GMOs are “basically safe”, according to a survey conducted by the Mellman Group.

… Read the rest

1913 Foresaw A Future Of Eating Giant, Irradiated Animals

By JacobSloan on June 13, 2012 in News 1

A century ago, the endless promise of radium pointed toward a future in which a monstrously large frog’s leg sat at the center of every dinner table. Via ZPi, a 1913 article from the Salt Lake Tribune heralding the impending use of radiation to breed enormous livestock of all sorts:

Professor Dawson Turner, at the recent meeting of the British Association, made the astonishing announcement that by treating a frog’s egg with radium he had bred a frog three times the normal size of the species. The application of this discovery may have several very important results for humanity. Perhaps its most obvious value is that it will furnish us with a means of increasing the food supply.

Even at its present stage of development the experiment is capable of greatly reducing living expenses. Frog’s legs are delicious, succulent food similar in taste to fine chicken, and in many ways superior to the choicest quality beef.

… Read the rest

How California Could Force the Rest of the U.S. to Label GMO Foods

By Easy Rider on June 3, 2012 in News 7

Reports Tom Philpott on Mother Jones:

In November, California voters will decide on a ballot initiative that would require labeling of all foods containing ingredients from genetically modified crops. The initiative made it to the ballot after almost 1 million Californians signed a petition in favor of it—nearly double the 504,760 signatures needed under the state’s proposition rules. The campaign that organized the push to get the measure on the ballot focused on possible health effects of GMO foods.

This news will not likely be applauded by my friends over at Croplife America, the main trade group of the GM seed/agrichemical industry. The big GMO crops—corn, soy, sugar beets, and cotton—are processed into sweeteners, fats, and additives used widely by the food industry. Everything from high fructose corn syrup-sweetened Coke to soybean oil-containing Hellman’s mayo would have to bear a label reading something like “Contains GMO ingredients.”…

Eating This Could Turn Your Gut into a Living Pesticide Factory

By majestic on May 30, 2012 in News 11

Dr. Mercola sounds the alarm on the latest unintended consequence of permitting genetically-modified organisms into the food supply:

A new generation of insect larvae is eating the roots of genetically engineered corn intended to be resistant to such pests. The failure of Monsanto’s genetically modified Bt corn could be the most serious threat ever to a genetically modified crop in the U.S.

And the economic impact could be huge. Billions of dollars are at stake, as Bt corn accounts for 65 percent of all corn grown in the US.

The strain of corn, engineered to kill the larvae of beetles, such as the corn rootworm, contains a gene copied from an insect-killing bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.

But even though a scientific advisory panel warned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the threat of insects developing resistance was high, Monsanto argued that the steps necessary to prevent such an occurrence — which would have entailed less of the corn being planted — were an unnecessary precaution, and the EPA naively agreed.

… Read the rest

Guerrilla Labeling Of GMO Foods

By majestic on May 25, 2012 in News 7

When your government is so beholden to agribusiness that it won’t listen to overwhelming consumer demand for foods to be labeled if they contain genetically modified organisms, what do you do? Create your own labels and hit the supermarket! Amy Harmon and Andrew Pollack report for the New York Times:

Great Barrington, Mass. — On a recent sunny morning at the Big Y grocery here, Cynthia LaPier parked her cart in the cereal aisle. With a glance over her shoulder and a quick check of the ingredients, she plastered several boxes with hand-designed stickers from a roll in her purse. “Warning,” they read. “May Contain GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms).”

For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — cereals, snack foods, salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory. Regulators and many scientists say these pose no danger.

… Read the rest

Farmers & Food Co’s Rally Against GM Seeds & Chemicals

By majestic on April 19, 2012 in News 4

The dangers of using bio-engineered seeds and chemical pesticides in agriculture have been warned against by activists for many years, but now many farmers and food companies are sounding the alarm too, calling for government intervention. From Reuters via Yahoo Finance:

A coalition of more than 2,000 U.S. farmers and food companies said Wednesday it is taking legal action to force government regulators to analyze potential problems with proposed biotech crops and the weed-killing chemicals to be sprayed over them.

Dow AgroSciences, a unit of Dow Chemical, and Monsanto Co. are among several global chemical and seed companies racing to roll out combinations of genetically altered crops and new herbicides designed to work with the crops as a way to counter rapidly spreading herbicide-resistant weeds that are choking millions of acres of U.S. farmland.

Dow and Monsanto say the new chemical combinations and new crops that tolerate those chemicals are badly needed by corn, soybean and cotton farmers as weeds increasingly resist treatments of the most commonly used herbicide – glyphosate-based Roundup.

… Read the rest

Monsanto Threatens to Sue Vermont if Legislators Pass GMO Labeling Bill

By Good German on April 8, 2012 in News 23

Will Allen and Ronnie Cummins write on AlterNet:

The world’s most hated corporation is at it again, this time in Vermont.

Despite overwhelming public support and support from a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.

The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members support passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote.

Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run out the clock until the legislative session ends in early May.

… Read the rest

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