GMO

Mexican Farmers Oppose Expansion Of GMO Crops

July 16, 2014 Emilio Godoy, www.ipsnews.net Resist! Beans, Food and Agriculture, GMO, Mexico

Bean grower Manuel Alvarado is part of the majority of producers in Mexico who consider it unnecessary to introduce genetically modified varieties of beans, as the government is promoting. “There is no study showing superior yields compared with hybrid or regional seeds. People are still unaware of what transgenic products are, nor the effects they have, but some of the things that are known about them are not good,” said Alvarado, the head of Enlaces al Campo, a bulk beans sales company in the city of Fresnillo, in the northern state of Zacatecas. "There can be no biosecurity with transgenics: they cause genetic erosion (loss of genetic diversity)." -- Silvia Ribeiro Genetically modified organisms (GMO) may cause a number of problems, among them the possibility that “transgenics will contaminate native and hybrid seeds, which have higher germination rates than transgenics,” Alvarado told IPS. Bean farmers in Mexico face a context of overproduction, low prices and increasing imports, in a country where there are 300,000 bean producers, half of them small scale farmers.

India: Leaked Intelligence Report Calls NGOs Threat

July 12, 2014 Paromita Pain, www.occupy.com Resist! Activism, GMO, India, National Security, NGO

What do oil and reports have in common? They can both sometimes leak and cause great unrest. In India last month, a furor erupted over a leaked intelligence bureau (IB) report which claimed that NGOs and civil society organizations like Greenpeace were a threat to national security. Other organizations named in the report included the Indian Social Action Forum, Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, Popular Education and Action Centre, Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, India For Safe Food and Navdanya. Not surprisingly, all of the organizations are involved in mobilizing Indians to demand a GMO- and nuclear-free future. The Navdanya GMO Free Campaign, for example, is leading the country's movement against the planting of GMO crops in the country.

Why Are We Boycotting The Kellogg Company?

July 7, 2014 GMO Free USA, www.gmofreeusa.org Organize! boycott, Cereal, GMO, Kellogg

Part of GMO Free USA’s mission is to foster consumer rejection of GMOs, until they are proven safe. We aim to speak collectively to force food manufacturers to come clean with the ingredients they use in their products, and to remove untested and potentially harmful genetically modified organisms (GMO). If they won’t remove GMOs, we will boycott them until they do. We will begin with one industry leader until our numbers grow large enough to expand our boycotts. Kellogg states, “At Kellogg we believe that when you start with a great breakfast, great things can happen. That’s why we make foods that you and your family know, trust and enjoy.” After repeated attempts to get them to be transparent and cooperative on the issue of GMOs, in the interest of the health and well being of their customers, we only got the cold shoulder. We began with and targeted Kellogg, an American icon since 1906, because of its heavy marketing to children and its wholesome family image. While all people – children, teens, and adults – should be concerned with their health, children are most vulnerable because their bodies are still developing. Increasing evidence suggests that long term consumption of GMOs is harmful and that the escalated use of toxic herbicides and pesticides in GMO agriculture is compounding the problem. Additionally, Kellogg was chosen because they sell the same products abroad, in countries that require the labeling of genetically engineered foods, but without using genetically engineered ingredients. Americans deserve the same.

Hillary Clinton Goes To Bat For GMOs

July 4, 2014 Max Ocean, www.commondreams.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, GMO, Hillary Clinton, Monsanto

Speaking at a conference in San Diego last week for the world's largest trade organization of biotechnology firms, potential presidintial candidate Hillary Clinton backed GMOs and Big Ag, further displaying her allegiance to the industry in the eyes of sustainable food and organic advocates. While trumpeting her endorsement of GMO seeds when she served as Secretary of State, Clinton told the crowd that the term "'genetically modified' sounds Frankensteinish," and thus turns people off to GMOs. "Drought resistant sounds really like something you'd want," she said, encouraging the industry to improve their semantics. “There’s a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are.” "If Hillary Clinton intends to run for office in 2016, she should think carefully about supporting a food and farming system that is proven to be detrimental to public health." —Katherine Paul, Organic Consumers Association Clinton's certainty concerning the safety of GMO foods stands in stark contrast to public opinion. A Consumer Reports poll in June found that 92 percent of Americans favor labeling the foods. U.S. campaigners rejecting the industry's push for genetically-modified crops have been pushing hard to get states to pass labeling laws.

DC: Free Test For Monsanto Herbicide, March With Moms July 4th

July 1, 2014 Organic Consumers Association, www.salsalabs.com Resist! GMO, health, Monsanto, Protest, Washington DC

Zen Honeycutt and Moms Across America are back in D.C. to follow up on their historic meeting with the decision-makers at the Environmental Protection Agency who have the power to Recall Roundup. The group is offering free glyphosate (the key ingredient in Roundup) testing on Wednesday, July 2, and leading a contingent of anti-GMO activists on July 4, in a Fourth of July parade. July 2: Glyphosate Testing Monsanto’s Roundup has been linked to the explosion of illnesses plaguing this generation, including infertility and birth defects, allergies and gastrointestinal problems, obesity and diet-related diseases, Alzheimers and Parkinsons, asthma, auto-immune problems, autism-spectrum disorder, liver disease and cancer. Yet despite the fact that Roundup is the most widely used herbicide in the world, until recently, it’s been impossible to test you or your family for the presence of glyphosate—making it impossible to know if exposure to glyphosate might be behind illnesses you or your family are experiencing. But that changed in April, when Moms Across America released results of a preliminary round of tests that found glyphosate in breast milk, urine and water.

Criminalizing Dissent In India

June 22, 2014 Collin Todhunter, www.4thmedia.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, GMO, India, Monsanto

A recent Intelligence Bureau (IB) leaked report, ‘Impact of NGOs on Development’, has a special section on GMOs and is clearly supportive of the introduction of GM crops into Indian agriculture. The IB said foreign NGOs and their Indian arms were serving as tools to advance Western foreign policy interests in various areas, of which GMOs comprise one aspect. In response to the report, Aruna Rodrigues, Vandana Shiva and Kavitha Kuruganti, who were all mentioned in the report, released a statement that turned the tables on the IB by saying that it is conspiring with global corporate interests to haemorrhage India’s agricultural economy (12). The report quotes Dr Ronald Herring of Cornell University, who is a known promoter of genetically-modified organisms and Monsanto’s monopoly. Speaking to The Statesman newspaper in India, Aruna Rodrigues said: “Here is a real foreign hand that informs the IB report. Cornell University, where Dr Herring works, was one of the main forces, along with USAID and Monsanto, behind the making of Bt brinjal in India.”

Thoughts On Avoiding GMO Contamination

June 1, 2014 Diane Desenberg, www.groundbreakingroots.com Create! Food and Agriculture, GMO, Monsanto

As more and more crops are targeted for GMO adaptation and then commercialized, the decision to not grow a crop represents a loss. It is a loss of choice, leaving fewer and fewer crops from which to choose. In 2013, GMO-soy comprised 93% of the soy U.S. crop. Deciding to grow non-GMO soy in a soybean growing area would be a lost cause. A North Dakota farmer quoted in the Food and Water Watch survey, states The loss of crop options is not a direct cost, but a real one. We cannot, for example, grow organic canola as we are surrounded by hundreds of acres of GM canola - pollinated by insects - no buffer is big enough to contain cross pollination. GMO-wheat has not yet been commercialized, but when it is, another major crop might be off-limits to organic farmers.

USDA Approves GMO Grass: No Tests Needed Just Sell It!

May 23, 2014 Jeremy Bloom, www.organicconsumers.org Educate! GMO, Monsanto

Uh oh. If you’ve been following the issue here at RGB, you’re aware of the fact that the US Department of Agriculture has been making life very easy for Monsanto, the big agriculture behemoth that controls a huge share of US (and global) seed production. They’ve approved a number of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) crops already this year. But the latest development blows the doors off what has happened so far. The USDA slipped through an innocuous-looking press release about Kentucky bluegrass late Friday afternoon before the Fourth of July weekend. It’s GMO bluegrass, engineered to resist Monsanto’s nasty plant-killer, Roundup, so you can plant it on your lawn and then douse the whole joint with their chemical weedkiller. The USDA ruled that there was no danger, so they don’t need to do any tests. Just start selling. “It’s a blatant end-run around regulatory oversight,” said George Kimbrell, senior lawyer at the Center for Food Safety. Bye-bye, dandelions, hello birth defects. (See: It’s official: Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide causes birth defects.) But hey, lots of people would be willing to exchange their firstborn child for a truly pristine, weed-free lawn, right? Although the company’s main target is golf courses. (Henceforth pregnant women will be advised to abstain from cigarettes, alcohol, and golf…).

Oregon Voters Say No To GMO Crops

May 22, 2014 Organic Consumers Association, www.organicconsumers.org Resist! Food and Agriculture, GMO, Organic

On Wednesday, May 20, voters in two counties in Oregon passed ballot initiatives to ban the growing of genetically engineered crops. Jackson County’s Measure 15-119 passed overwhelmingly, by 66 percent to 34 percent. Proponents of the ban raised only $375,000 compared with a record nearly $1 million raised by the opposition, which included agribusiness giants Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont Pioneer. Voters in Josephine County passed Measure 17-58 by a vote of 58 percent to 42 percent. However, the ban will be tested in court because the state passed a controversial law in October 2013, stripping counties of the right to pass GMO bans. The Jackson County measure is exempt from the state law because it had already qualified for the ballot prior to the passage of S.B. 863. Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), and the Organic Consumers Fund which mobilized its members and donated $50,000 to the Oregon campaigns, issued this statement today: “The passing of these two GMO bans in Jackson and Josephine Counties should send a clear signal to politicians that citizens not only reject unregulated and hazardous GMOs, but are willing to defy the indentured politicians who pass laws, like Oregon’s S.B. 863, that take away county rights to ban GMOs and obliterate a 100-year tradition of home rule and balance of powers between counties and the state.

The Battle For Healthy Food Escalates

May 19, 2014 Ronnie Cummins, www.organicconsumers.org Resist! Food and Agriculture, GMO, Monsanto, Organize, Protest

Defying repeated threats of a lawsuit from Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), on May 8, Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont, signed a historic bill requiring food manufacturers to label genetically engineered (GE) foods, and to drop the practice of labeling GE foods as “natural” or “all natural.” On May 9, true to its word, the GMA confirmed that it will sue Vermont in federal court to overturn H. 112. Vermont is prepared to fight back. The state has already established a “food fight” legal defense fund. Legal analysts say Vermont will likely win. Vermont isn’t the only state up against the multi-billion dollar lobbying group. The GMA, whose 300-plus members include Monsanto and Dow, Coca-Cola and General Mills, is pushing a bill in Congress that would preempt all states from passing GMO labeling laws. It’s time for consumers in every state to band together to defeat the GMA’s full-on assault, not only on Vermont, not only on consumers’ right to know what’s in our food, but on states’ rights and on our basic freedoms to protect our health and our communities.

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