by Melissa Melton
Just days ago, RT.com reported that the U.S. Environmental “Protection” Agency is set to raise the allowable limits of Monsanto’s best-selling glyphosate pesticide Roundup in our nation’s food crops to ridiculously high levels:
Through the EPA’s new standards, the amount of allowable glyphosate in oilseed crops such as flax, soybeans and canola will be increased from 20 parts per million (ppm) to 40 ppm, which GM Watch acknowledged is over 100,000 times the amount needed to induce breast cancer cells. Additionally, the EPA is increasing limits on allowable glyphosate in food crops from 200 ppm to 6,000 ppm.
Supposedly they were able to do this because a two-month open comment period that began May 1st drew little public resistance.
This is in spite of a flurry of new studies coming out just this month demonstrating the detrimental effects of pesticide on the environment and all manner of things living in it:
July 19, 2013: Scientific American’s “How Pesticides Can Cause Parkinson’s” explained how a new study found these chemicals “may prevent the brain from disposing of its own toxic waste”.
July 21, 2013: It was reported a University of California dietary toxin study found 100% of the 364 children involved were above cancer benchmark levels for excessive arsenic, dioxin, and pesticide exposure.
July 24, 2013: In “Bees exposed to high levels of pesticides suspected in colony collapse,” the LA Times reported on yet another study which showed bee pollen from bees that service our nation’s major food crops in five different states was tainted with 35 different types of pesticide (some at lethal levels). As we’ve reported before, this will likely continue considering Monsanto purchased one of the leading bee research firms first linking glyphosate to colony collapse disorder, a firm that just so happens to also be considered a “go-to” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
July 26, 2013: The U.S. Geological Service put out a press release “PesticideAccumulation in Sierra Nevada Frogs” which found “current-use pesticides, particularly fungicides, are accumulating in the bodies of Pacific chorus frogs in the Sierra Nevada” and noted “Pesticides continue to be a suspected factor in the decline of amphibian species across the U.S. and the world.”
It is ridiculous and goes against common sense to ignore the cumulative effects that all these chemicals in our food and environment are having on us. RT summed up the wide-ranging implications glyphosate exposure has on nearly every system in the human body:
Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,” independent scientist Anthony Samsel and MIT’s Stephanie Seneff concluded in the April study. “Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Yet, with a mountain of independent evidence staring the EPA right in the face, they are going to not only raise the allowable levels of this pesticide in our food, but they are going to allow a massive increase!
Why does it appear that our government is more interested in protecting the profits of mega corporations versus the safety of its people? Why are these despicable practices allowed to continue?
One clue might lie in the grand revolving door that is our government and these same corporations.
Take William Ruckelshaus, for example, who was the first EPA head. He has also spent 12 years on the Monsanto Board of Directors. How about Linda J. Fisher who spent a decade working as Assistant Administrator of the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances before she left to head up Monsanto’s Washington lobbying team as the company’s Vice President of Government and Public Affairs…before again returning to the EPA.
And don’t forget Margaret Miller, who worked on Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone and even wrote the scientific report the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required on it’s supposed safety before taking a job as a Deputy Director the Office of New Animal Drug Evaluation over at the FDA where she would be in charge of reviewing her own report!
Here are some more shining exemplars when it comes to Monsanto and our revolving door government. If you could look up ‘conflict of interest’ in a dictionary, you would no doubt find this diagram:
In every article that necessitates a reason to show this revolving door diagram of our government and Monsanto, I will show it.
Because the government/big agra door is revolving so hard and so fast it’s about to break off its hinges, rather than admit the hardcore widespread damage these pesticides are causing, our government is just going to continue to raise the allowable “safe” limit like that even means anything.
Just like when the Fukushima nuclear reactor melted down following the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, instead of admitting the dangers and trying to fix the actual cause of the problem, the government just up and raised the acceptable radiation levels (as if there even is such a thing).
So where does that leave the rest of us living in a country where — even though we spend double per person on healthcare than other industrialized nations at an annual pricetag of $2.7 trillion — our life expectancy still continually declines and lags behind many other countries? We were ranked 38th in the world in 2011.
Where does that leave all the disappearing animals? Mother nature?
While the government is busy ‘updating’ things, perhaps someone up there in Washington can step away from their lobbyists and put down those heavy bags of cash for two seconds and go ahead and change the name of the country while they’re at it, you know, to make it a little more accurate.
The United Corporations of America sounds about right.
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