150 scientists condemn Seralini GMO study retraction as attack on scientific integrity

Natural News

Scores of scientists have condemned a journal editor's retraction of a study that reported a number of serious side effects in lab rats that consumed Monsanto's genetically modified maize and Roundup herbicide.

In all, according to a press release by a group called End Science Censorship, the number of scientists decrying the retraction has climbed to 150.

The group said the editor of the Elsevier journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), Dr. A. Wallace Hayes, claimed that the retraction of a study conducted by a team headed by Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini was due to some "inconclusive" findings. But that rationale has been roundly criticized by scientists who point out that many studies contain findings that are not at all conclusive.

What is also noteworthy, they point out, is that the retraction comes just a few months after the arrival of a former Monsanto scientist on the editorial board of the scientific journal.

"It is a criminal attitude," said Dr. Mohamed Habib, a professor of entomology at the University of Campinas, Brazil, who has signed a petition opposing the retraction.

"Truth and ethical values have to be considered as more important than money. The article must be reinstated," he said, adding that the retraction appeared to indicate that powerful economic interests influenced the journal's decision.

Watchdog group powerless to do anything

A former member of the editorial board of FCT, Marcel Roberfroid, also critiqued the retraction. In a letter to the editor of the journal, he wrote, "Your decision, which can be interpreted as a will to eliminate scientific information that does not help supporting industrial interests is, in my view, unacceptable."

End Science Censorship said that, in a separate initiative, more than 1,200 scientists have promised to boycott Elsevier because of the retraction.

Nevertheless, an ethics watchdog over the scientific community appears powerless to intervene, said observers.

Critics of the retraction have noted that it violates guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics, or COPE, an organization of which FCT is a member. The journal's editor Hayes, on the other hand, has maintained that COPE's guidelines support his retraction decision.

Per the press release:

COPE has responded to a complaint from Prof GE Seralini about the retraction with an admission that it is powerless to investigate or make a judgment on the dispute, saying that the decision on how COPE guidelines are interpreted "lies with the editor and publisher".

Claire Robinson, coordinator of End Science Censorship, called COPE's response "disappointing."

"This shows the limitations of voluntary guidelines in cases of unethical or unscientific behaviour on the part of editors of scientific journals," she said. "Nothing can be enforced, so editors have 'carte blanche' to play fast and loose with scientists' research and reputations."

"In the interests of not misleading scientists who submit papers to the journal, FCT should resign from COPE, since the editor's actions are incompatible with the COPE guidelines," she added.

New push coming for GM eggplant - after retraction

Another watchdog group, Retraction Watch, accused Hayes of doing a "verbal dance" around COPE guidelines in an attempt to justify his decision.

"Claiming COPE guidelines somehow support this decision doesn't seem valid," said the organization.

The retraction has been used as a springboard for a GMO industry lobbying group, ISAAA, to push for the release of a GM pesticide-containing eggplant in the Philippines, after a court there banned field trials of the eggplant over safety concerns last year. ISAAA officials say the retraction means that the Philippine court's decision should be overturned.

"It seems that the editor of FCT, Dr Hayes, effectively did the job for the GM and agrochemical industry that the expert witnesses failed to do," said Robinson. "The witnesses couldn't demolish the study through scientific argument, so it had to be removed from the record. That is what Seralini's critics told Hayes to do; and he obliged."

Recall: Something Even Nastier than Usual Lurks in Tyson Chicken Nuggets

Nutritional Anarchy
by Daisy Luther

Just in case chicken “nuggets” aren’t disgusting enough, now Tyson has been forced to recall more than 75,000 pounds of the melded poultry parts because of “extraneous material”.

Due to an issue with some of the processing equipments, consumers may find a little something extra in their “nuggets” – little bits of plastic. The USDA reports:

The problem was discovered after the firm received consumer complaints that small pieces of plastic were found in the products. The problem was traced to a product scraper inside a blending machine.

The company has received reports of minor oral injury associated with consumption of these products. FSIS has received no additional reports of injury or illness from consumption of these products. Anyone concerned about an injury or illness from consumption of these products should contact a healthcare provider. (source)

Sadly, plastic is not the worst thing you might find in chicken nuggets. They are made when the inedible parts of the chicken are washed with ammonia to kill bacteria, “mechanically separated” which means turned into a paste, and squirted out into mini-nugget blobs or patties. The parts included are the entire carcass, the tendons, the gristle…ugh. Then artificial flavors and good old MSG are used to disguise the nasty origins of the “meat” and because it’s Pepto-pink, artificial color is used to make it look like chicken.

According to an article on Mother Jones, only 40% of that tidy little breaded nugget is actually chicken meat.

The implicit marketing pitch goes something like this: “You like fried chicken, right? How about some bite-sized fried chicken chunks, without the messy bones?” When most people think of eating chicken, they think of, say, biting into a drumstick. What they get when they do so is a mouthful of muscle—popularly known as meat

What people are actually getting from chicken nuggets is a bit different, according to a new study by University of Mississippi medical researchers. (Abstract here; I have access to the full paper but can’t upload it for copyright reasons.) They bought an order of chicken nuggets from two (unnamed) fast-food chains, plucked a nugget from each, broke them down, and analyzed them in a lab.

One of them contained just 40 percent muscle. The rest? “[G]enerous quantities of fat and other tissue, including connective tissue and bone spicules.” Mmmm, chicken bones.

The other sample had a whopping 50 percent muscle. The remainder consisted “primarily of fat, with some blood vessels and nerve present,” as well as epithelium, the stuff that glands are made of.

Now why would national fast-food chains be mixing bone and fat and whatnot into the chicken meat they grind into nuggets? I doubt anyone ever woke up and thought, “I’m craving some mechanically formed orbs of chicken parts, including meat, but also with plenty of fat, connective tissue, glands, and bone.” Offal is a lot cheaper than meat—the more you can work in, the more profit you can eke out of this popular menu item. Granted, people should eat more offal, as I’ve argued before. But (a) they have a right to know when they’re eating it; (b) one reason people eat chicken meat is because they think it’s lean—cutting it with chicken fat turns such eaters into suckers; and (c) bone matter, really? Bones are great when they’re gently boiled into highly nutritious broths and stocks. That seems like a much more reasonable use for them than hiding them in chicken nuggets. (source)

So therein lies all of the chicken bits and pieces people wouldn’t normally eat, GMO corn starch, GMO dextrose, and chemical flavors and colors. Big Food is also not well-known for its humane treatment of animals. They are raised in horrific conditions, treated with antibiotics and hormones, and fed GMO corn. Considering all of this nastiness that you can find with a seal of USDA/FDA approval in the freezer section of your grocery store, it’s gotta be bad if there is something included that ups the nastiness quotient to the point a recall is necessary. After all, in the grand scheme of revolting things to eat, are little flecks of plastic really that much grosser than the other stuff contained within that crispy coating?

If you or someone you love happens to have this stuff lurking in your freezer, you can find complete information about the recall HERE.

Our anarchist recommendation? If you are going to eat chicken, try to find a local source of free range poultry. Cook it yourself. It really doesn’t take that much longer to throw a chicken breast on a pan and put it in the oven than to shake “nuggets” out of a bag onto a pan and put it in the oven. If your kids want “friendly” shapes, you can pound the chicken thin with a meat mallet and use a stainless steel cookie cutter to make dinosaurs, butterflies, and whatnot.

GMOs could cause 'irreversible termination of life' on Earth, risk expert warns

Natural News
by Ethan A. Huff

When discussing the issues surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) -- that is, organisms bearing the genetic traits of other species or bacteria -- the focus is typically on how safe (or unsafe) these novel, food-like products are for humans. But distinguished risk engineer and two-time best-selling author Nassim Taleb thinks an even bigger problem with GMOs is their threat to the planet, and the statistical likelihood that they will eventually lead to the collapse of life on Earth.

In a new study, which is still in draft form, this professor of risk engineering from New York University uses statistical analysis to make the case that GMOs, by their very nature, will disrupt the ecosystems of this planet in ways that mankind is only just beginning to comprehend. Because they represent a systemic risk rather than a localized one -- GM traits are known to spread unconstrained throughout the environment -- GMOs will eventually breach the so-called "ecocide barrier," leading to catastrophic ecosystem failure.

"There are mathematical limitations to predictability in a complex system, 'in the wild,' which is why focusing on the difference between local (or isolated) and systemic threats is a central aspect of our warnings," Taleb is quoted as saying by Fool.com, noting that it's essentially impossible to contain the inevitable spread of GMO traits far and wide.

"The [precautionary principle] is not there to make life comfortable, rather to avoid a certain class of what is called in probability and insurance 'ruin' problems," write Taleb and his colleagues in their paper. "For nature, the 'ruin' is ecocide: an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet."

GMOs are not 'scientific,' and nearly every argument used in their defense is flawed

Besides using math and risk-based analysis to show that GMOs simply cannot coexist with nature as is commonly claimed -- GMOs will eventually contaminate the natural world around them -- Taleb also deconstructs many of the "arguments" used by GMO advocates to defend the commercial use of untested transgenic materials, including the oft-repeated lie that GMOs are no different than natural organisms.

"Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs fall squarely under [the precautionary principle]... because of their systemic risk on the system," explains Taleb. "Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.)."

"There is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from an organism and putting it into another. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become 'natural.'"

Taleb also draws attention to the deceitful strategies of biotechnology companies in trying to legitimize the continued use of GMOs through fear. Claiming that famine, starvation and widespread crop failures will occur if we all fail to adopt GMOs is no different than playing Russian roulette in order to get out of poverty, claims Taleb -- such an approach is hardly scientific or logically sound, and yet these and other tactics are the basis of the pro-GMO agenda.

"What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global," concludes Taleb and his colleagues. "I do not wish to pay -- or have my descendants pay -- for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there -- our non-naive version -- simply because we would only discover errors after considerable and irreversible environmental damage."

You can read their complete paper in draft form here.

Monsanto, McDs, Coke and Friends Mis-Educate Registered Dieticians About the “Benefits” of Processed Food

Truthstream Media
by Daisy Luther

 In the most mind-boggling conflict of interest you may have seen in quite a while, the International Food Information Council (IFIC) has put out a “fact” sheet on the “benefits” of processed foods for the members of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

First, here’s a little background on the cast of characters in this little propaganda drama.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) is “the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals” and is made up of registered dieticians and dietetic technicians. Their mission states, “The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is a multidimensional organization that strives to improve the nation’s health and advance the profession of dietetics through research, education, and advocacy.” The group claims to be ” the public’s and news media’s best source for the most accurate, credible and timely food and nutrition information” and they are committed to the ongoing education of their members and the general public.

The International Food Information Council

The IFIC is “your nutrition and food safety resource”, allegedly committed to helping out both consumers and professionals. According to their website, ”The International Food Information Council Foundation provides food safety, nutrition, and healthful eating information to help you make good and safe food choices.”

The IFIC sounds absolutely awesome until you learn who their sponsors are: ”IFIC receives funding from the usual suspects — including, but not limited to, Cargill, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, General Mills, Mars, McDonald’s, Monsanto, PepsiCo, Red Bull, and Yum! Brands (this last being the parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, and WingStreet).”

The Dietitians for Professional Integrity

Finally, we have our heroes, a group of rebel dietetic professionals. Dietitians for Professional Integrity stand for everything that is right about the field of nutrition and dietetics. They promote real food for real health. Their mission:

We are a group of concerned dietetics professionals advocating for greater financial transparency, as well as ethical, socially responsible, and relevant corporate sponsorships within the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

This website was created to let you know more about who we are and why we do not think Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, and other Big Food giants should sponsor the country’s largest nutrition organization.

Our efforts are guided by professional integrity. We believe the American public deserves nutrition information that is not tainted by food industry interests. Those of us who co-founded Dietitians for Professional Integrity are nutrition experts first and foremost; we went to school to help people achieve better health through food, not to help multinational food companies sell more unhealthy products. (source) 

Hey – The “Experts” Say that Processed Food is Not That Bad!!!!

The IFIC has put together a propaganda handout/”fact” sheet, “What Is A Processed Food? You Might Be Surprised!” for the benefit of the members of the AND. (Read it and weep RIGHT HERE.)

The professional watchdog group, Dietitians for Professional Integrity, points out the blatant dishonesty of the flyer.

[The "fact" sheet] … perfectly demonstrates how food industry front groups spin science in an attempt to assuage public concerns about their clients’ products.

Titled “What Is A Processed Food? You Might Be Surprised!”, this ‘fact sheet’ mentions that breakfast cereals, like frozen vegetables and roasted nuts, are processed. They conveniently fail to mention that, unlike most breakfast cereals, the freezing of vegetables and roasting of nuts does not obliterate nutrients. Nor do frozen vegetables and roasted nuts contribute artificial dyes, artificial flavors, chemical additives, or partially hydrogenated oils to people’s diets.

IFIC also relies on a familiar food industry tactic — absurdly tying modern-day processing techniques to traditional ones. “Food processing began about 2 million years ago, when our ancestors put flame to food”. Of course, heating food has nothing in common with partially hydrogenating oils, making aspartame, or turning corn into high fructose corn syrup. The food industry is aware that people are increasingly concerned with hyper-processed products, and trying to link the term “processed food” to chopping a carrot or cooking a piece of fish is one way of perpetuating deception. (source)

The flyer is also quick to laud the many wonders of corn (one of the major sources of toxic GMOs in the North American food supply) and to patronizingly try to convince us that we completely misunderstand the noble purposes of the food industry. They are trying to actually serve up food that is fresher by processing it until it is chemically unrecognizable as food.

Back in January, the AND received harsh criticism from another industry watchdog, Eat Drink Politics, because of corporate conflicts of interest.

Public health attorney and author Michele Simon asks: Are America’s nutrition professionals in the pocket of Big Food? While the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ 74,000-member trade group partners with the likes of Coke and Hershey’s, the nation’s health continues to suffer from poor diet.

The largest trade group of nutrition professionals—the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics—has a serious credibility problem. In a damning report released today, industry watchdog Eat Drink Politics examines the various forms of corporate sponsorship by Big Food that are undermining the integrity of those professionals most responsible for educating Americans about healthy eating.

The report details, for example, how registered dietitians can earn continuing education units from Coca-Cola, in which they learn that sugar is not a problem for children and how Nestlé, the world’s largest food company can pay $50,000 to host a two-hour “nutrition symposium” at the Academy’s annual meeting. (source)

This is a clearcut case of the foxes telling the chickens how to best build their henhouses. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics can maintain no credibility whatsoever when they are being “educated” by Big Food, who is not at all interested in consumer health, but only in health of their bottom line. AND likely started out as a positive organization dedicated to good health, but they were sidetracked along the way by all of the money that Big Food threw in their path.

If you wonder why the public is so confused about what constitutes good nutrition you need look no further than the propaganda being spouted by these so-called “experts” and beacons of ”continuing education.” There is a real problem when the people sponsoring the nutrition lessons are the very purveyors of GMO crops, potato chips, soda pop, and fast food.

Many people are out there trying valiantly to make the best possible choices for their families on limited budgets, but they must combat the constant disinformation on product labels that herald phrases “all-natural”, “heart-healthy”, and “low-fat”. These folks are being deliberately deceived by food manufacturers, but even worse, by professional societies like the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, all so the rich can get richer while the poor get sicker.

Cancer in a Can: The Shocking True Story of how ‘Pringles’ are Made

Mercola . com
By Dr. Mercola

To understand the nature of Pringles and other stackable chips, forget the notion that they come from actual potatoes in any recognizable way.

The Pringles Company (in an effort to avoid taxes levied against “luxury foods” like chips in the UK) once even argued that the potato content of their chips was so low that they are technically not even potato chips.

So if they’re not made of potatoes, what are they exactly?

The process begins with a slurry of rice, wheat, corn, and potato flakes that are pressed into shape.

This dough-like substance is then rolled out into an ultra-thin sheet cut into chip-cookies by a machine.

According to io9:

“The chips move forward on a conveyor belt until they’re pressed onto molds, which give them the curve that makes them fit into one another. Those molds move through boiling oil … Then they’re blown dry, sprayed with powdered flavors, and at last, flipped onto a slower-moving conveyor belt in a way that allows them to stack. From then on, it’s into the cans … and off towards the innocent mouths of the consumers.”

I suspect nearly everyone reading this likely enjoys the taste of potato chips. However, they are clearly one of the most toxic processed foods you can eat—whether they’re made from actual potato shavings or not.

Potato Chips are Loaded with Cancer-Causing Chemical

One of the most hazardous ingredients in potato chips is not intentionally added, but rather is a byproduct of the processing.

Acrylamide, a cancer-causing and potentially neurotoxic chemical, is created when carbohydrate-rich foods are cooked at high temperatures, whether baked, fried, roasted or toasted. Some of the worst offenders include potato chips and French fries, but many foods cooked or processed at temperatures above 212°F (100°C) may contain acrylamide. As a general rule, the chemical is formed when food is heated enough to produce a fairly dry and brown/yellow surface.

Hence, it can be found in:

Potatoes: chips, French fries and other roasted or fried potato foods
Grains: bread crust, toast, crisp bread, roasted breakfast cereals and various processed snacks


Coffee; roasted coffee beans and ground coffee powder. Surprisingly, coffee substitutes based on chicory actually contains 2-3 times MORE acrylamide than real coffee

How Much Acrylamide are You Consuming?

The federal limit for acrylamide in drinking water is 0.5 parts per billion, or about 0.12 micrograms in an eight-ounce glass of water. However, a six-ounce serving of French fries can contain 60 micrograms of acrylamide, or about FIVE HUNDRED times over the allowable limit.

Similarly, potato chips are notoriously high in this dangerous chemical. So high, in fact, that in 2005 the state of California actually sued potato chip makers for failing to warn California consumers about the health risks of acrylamide in their products. A settlement was reached in 2008 when Frito-Lay and several other potato chip makers agreed to reduce the acrylamide levels in their chips to 275 parts per billion (ppb) by 2011, which is low enough to avoid needing a cancer warning label.

The 2005 report “How Potato Chips Stack Up: Levels of Cancer-Causing Acrylamide in Popular Brands of Potato Chips,” issued by the California-basedEnvironmental Law Foundation (ELF), spelled out the dangers of this popular snack. Their analysis found that all potato chip products tested exceeded the legal limit of acrylamide by a minimum of 39 times, and as much as 910 times! Some of the worst offenders at that time included:

Cape Cod Robust Russet: 910 times the legal limit of acrylamide
Kettle Chips (lightly salted): 505 times

Kettle Chips (honey dijon): 495 times

Beware: Baked Chips May Be WORSE than Fried!

If you think you can avoid the health risks of potato chips by choosing baked varieties, which are typically advertised as being “healthier,” think again. Remember that acrylamide is formed not only when foods are fried or broiled, but also when they are baked. And according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data on acrylamide levels in foods, baked chips may contain more than three timesthe level of acrylamide as regular chips!

Interestingly, the same trend holds true for other foods, too, which suggests that baking processed potatoes at high temperature may be one of the worst ways to cook them. For instance, according to the FDA’s data, Ore Ida Golden Fries contained 107 ppb of acrylamide in the regular fried version and 1,098 when baked. So remember, ALL potato chips contain acrylamide, regardless of whether they are natural or not; baked or fried. Likewise, they will ALL influence your insulin levels in a very negative way.

Acrylamide is Not the Only Danger

Acrylamide is not the only dangerous genotoxic compound formed when food is heated to high temperatures.

A three-year long EU project, known as Heat-Generated Food Toxicants (HEATOX), whose findings were published at the end of 2007, found there are more than 800 heat-induced compounds, of which 52 are potential carcinogens. In addition to their finding that acrylamide does pose a public health threat, the HEATOX scientists also discovered that you’re far less likely to ingest dangerous levels of the toxin when you eat home-cooked foods compared to industrially or restaurant-prepared foods.

Additionally, the HEATOX findings also suggest that although there are ways to decrease exposure to acrylamide, it cannot be eliminated completely. According to their calculations, successful application of all presently known methods would reduce the acrylamide intake by 40 percent at the most—which makes me wonder whether chip manufacturers have really succeeded at this point in reducing acrylamide levels to within legal limits… There’s no updated data as of yet, so there’s no telling whether they’ve been able to comply with the 2005 settlement.

For more in-depth information about acrylamide, I recommend reading the online report Heat-generated Food Toxicants, Identification, Characterization and Risk Minimization. In general however, just remember that cooking food at high temperatures is ill advised. A few of the most well-known toxins created in high-temperature cooking include:

Heterocyclic Amines (HCAs): These form when meat is cooked at high temperatures, and they’re also linked to cancer. In terms of HCA, the worst part of the meat is the blackened section, which is why you should always avoid charring your meat, and never eat blackened sections.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs): When fat drips onto the heat source, causing excess smoke, and the smoke surrounds your food, it can transfer cancer-causing PAHs to the meat.

Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs): When food is cooked at high temperatures (including when it is pasteurized or sterilized), it increases the formation of AGEs in your food. When you eat the food, it transfers the AGEs into your body. AGEs build up in your body over time leading to oxidative stress, inflammation and an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease.

The Search for a “Healthful” Chip Continues…

Like a modern-day search for the Holy Grail, chip manufacturers keep searching for methods to improve the image of their health-harming but profitable snacks. For example, by the end of 2011, about half of Pepsi’s Frito-Lay brand snacks will be reformulated with all-natural ingredients. The switch is part of PepsiCo’s master plan to tap into the healthy foods market share. The Wall Street Journal recently reported the company hopes to boost their nutrition business from $10 billion to $30 billion by 2020. The company will remove dietary hazards like monosodium glutamate (MSG), replacing it with natural seasonings, such as molasses and paprika.

Artificial colors will be replaced with beet juice, purple cabbage and carrots. All in all, about different 60 snacks are scheduled to get an all-natural makeover.

This is certainly a good example of how consumer demand can alter the direction of food manufacturers in a positive way.

The reformulated chips may end up being less bad for you than the original formulations. However, chips will never be truly healthful. All-natural chips may be the lesser of two evils, but if consumed regularly, they will still push your health in the wrong direction… There’s no getting away from the fact that modern plagues such as cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes have a dietary component, and potato chips and French fries will always be a losing bet if you want to avoid becoming another disease statistic.

How to Avoid Heat-Induced Toxins in Your Diet

Ideally, you should consume foods that are raw or minimally processed to avoid these types of toxic byproducts—the more raw food, the better. My nutrition plan emphasizes the need for at least one-third of your foods to be consumed raw. Personally, I consume about 80 percent of my food raw, and I find it is one of the most important factors that help keep me healthy. It may take you awhile to switch over to a less processed diet, but throwing out the most obvious culprits would be a great start.

These would include: French fries and potato chips, All sodas (both regular and diet, as artificial sweeteners may be more problematic than fructose, Doughnuts

Healthy Eating Made Easy

Aside from creating potentially toxic byproducts, cooking and processing also depletes the food of valuable micronutrients, which is another reason for eating as much raw food as possible. This includes protein sources such as eggs. Raw whole eggs from organic, pastured chickens are an incredible source of high-quality nutrients that many are deficient in. Raw milk is another good example of a food that is beneficial in its raw state but becomes harmful after it is pasteurized. By opting for foods that will benefit your health, such as raw, preferably organic and/or locally-grown vegetables, organic grass-fed meats, healthy oils, raw dairy, nuts and seeds, you can change your health for the better. These are the foods that are truly natural, and quite easy to prepare once you get the hang of it.

For a step-by-step guide to make the transition to a healthier diet as simple and smooth as possible, simply follow the advice in my optimized nutrition plan.

Remember, eating fresh whole foods is the “secret” to getting healthier, losing weight and really enjoying your food. It’s unfortunate that so many are under the mistaken belief that it’s “next to impossible” to create a meal without processed foods. Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough tackle this issue head-on in their book Real Food Has Curves, which is a great starting point to “relearn” the basics of how to enjoy and prepare real food.

Once you get used to it, you’ll find you can whip up a healthful meal from scratch in the same amount of time it would have taken you to drive down the street to pick up fast food. The main difference will be greater satisfaction, both physically and mentally, and perhaps even financially, as processed foods typically end up being more expensive than cooking from scratch.

Genetically-Engineered Trees?? Yes, and Why Humanity Should be Petrified

Living Maxwell
by Max Goldberg

The more time that you spend in the organic industry, the more you learn about what is truly going on and what you find is pretty scary.

While I try to remain as optimistic as possible, the reality is that the organic industry is under a constant existential threat from genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

Even though organic food has never been more popular, nearly 80% of the food on supermarket shelves contains GMOs and organic farmland is shrinking, a very worrisome trend. While 64 nations around the world require GMOs to be labeled, the U.S. does not. Why?

Because the ag-biotech industry has “purchased” agricultural policy in our country, by spending $572 million on campaign contributions and lobbying from 1999-2010.

Furthermore, we have a President who is fully on board the GMO-train, despite having made a campaign promise in 2007 to label GMOs.

Since taking office, not only has President Obama NOT labeled GMOs, but his administration has approved every single GMO-application that has been submitted to the USDA.

Among many others, one of the real problems with GMOs is that they contaminate everything around them. So, nature as we know it is disappearing, and our children’s food supply is going to be one big science experiment fraught with huge unknown risks. Yet, if you think the ag-biotech industry is solely concerned with controlling the world’s food supply, think again. As I wrote about a while ago, there is now genetically-engineered grass.

But what should really frighten all of us, because of the huge ecological risks, is the emergence of genetically-engineered trees. Yes, genetically-engineered trees.

Genetically-engineered trees are very different than GM-crops, such as soybeans or corn, because they can last for decades or centuries in the wild. Furthermore, they have the potential to spoil native forests, destroy organic ecosystems, are very flammable, and will further deplete our already small and precious water supply. (The U.S. Forest Service has released findings that certain GE-trees would use twice the water of native forests.)

Humanity relies on these native forests to serve as the “lungs of the Earth,” by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. If this were somehow jeopardized, how would we survive?

ArborGen, the leading company in this space who has has a request pending with the USDA to commercialize genetically-engineered, freeze-tolerant eucalyptus seedlings and is run by ex-Monsanto executives, doesn’t seem concerned at all about any potential side effects or risks. They see GE-trees as a way to produce paper in a more cost-effective manner, regardless of the dire environmental consequences.

To learn more about what is going on with genetically-engineered trees and the recent protests that took place in North Carolina, I STRONGLY URGE you to read this eye-opening article in Z Magazine by clicking HERE.

WHAT CAN YOU DO

There are a few immediate things that you can do to help stop the ag-biotech industry from destroying our forests and ultimately our food supply.

1) Sign the petition to stop GE-trees on the Global Justice Ecology Project’s website and donate to this organization.

2) Buy fewer paper products.

3) Donate to Washington State’s GMO-labeling intiative called I-522. This is a MUST-WIN state for us, and I will be writing about this more over the next few months.

It is imperative that we not rack up two critical losses, with last year’s Proposition 37 in California and now this Washington state ballot initiative. The future of GMO-labeling in the U.S. is truly at stake here.

Related:  EU plans 2-year carcinogenicity study on NK603 maize

Genes Are Not The Problem, It's The Food Genius

Prevent Disease
by Karen Foster

Two-thirds of disease would vanish if society could revert to the way it did certain things just 100 years ago. The emphasis on faulty genes is misplaced and a misguided attempt to cast blame on a culture that has lost its way in terms of survival. Genes are not the problem since their products are largely dependent on lifestyle choices. Our quality of food, activity levels and family structure is essentially killing this generation of human beings.

Our food supply has been completely adulterated over the past few decades alone, more drastically than during any other time in history. Although our genes have hardly changed, our culture has been transformed almost beyond recognition during the past ten thousand years, especially in the last century. We have strayed so far from our ancestral diets and lifestyles that the human metabolism has been unable to adapt and modern diseases have flourished.

Food is the raw material for our cells and even our very thoughts could not have arisen without these building blocks. Food even controls the very expression of our genes. We are connected to our food and where it comes from in ways that we have not yet fathomed. The 'prophylactic' removal of of body parts due to what is considered faulty genes is a disturbingly popular trend, and despite the lack of scientific evidence for the effectiveness of this approach, it is increasingly being celebrated in the mainstream media and medical establishments as a reasonable choice. But genes are not the problem...it's the food!

Ancient peoples and even isolated hunter-gatherer cultures that still exist today ate wild, fresh foods in their natural state with minimal processing and certainly without synthetic chemicals. Their lifestyles were also very different from ours. They cooperated as family units to source and prepare food and with that came a level of activity that does not exist today. They did not suffer the same rates of degenerative diseases that plague modern society.

The majority of food we spend our money on is packaged, processed, sweetened, chemically-altered and genetically modified foods. It may resemble food, but it certainly is not real food. It is virtually devoid of nutrients. Food manufacturers oftentimes must add vitamins and minerals that have been lost during the processing back into the food. Enriched flour is really just refined flour that has had a few nutrients re-added to it, but not enough to make any food made from this nutritionally worthy. Enriched vitamins and minerals are artificial and unrecognizable by the body as nutrients that can be assimilated.

These synthetic vitamins and minerals, usually isolated from their natural forms, act more like anti-nutrients than nutrients in these foods, adding to the body’s chemical burden. Modern methods of food preparation and processing have effectively depleted many nutrients and co-factors necessary for the absorption and utilization of foods that in order for the body to process these modern foods, it must use its own store of nutrients.

When talking about our food system, we are referring to everything from the farm to the plate--food production, harvesting, processing, marketing and distribution. Industrialization describes the increasing tendency of economists, policymakers and agribusiness companies to treat farms as rural factories, with off-farm inputs (energy, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified seed) marshaled in the service of producing caloric energy (feed corn and starches, soybeans and refined flour). Industrialization also describes a system in which economic return is paramount--more important than concern for the public’s health, the potential health effects of pesticide exposure, the long-term resilience of the land where crops are grown, and the methods by which food is processed and delivered.

Most of the calories we consume come from the added fats, sugars and refined grains commonly found in highly processed foods and junk foods. These specific types ofl calories have overwhelmingly come from genetically modified sources including corn (corn starches, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, feed corn fed to livestock), soybeans (soy proteins, vegetable oils, salad oils, partially hydrogenated oils, and fryer oils in fast-food restaurants) and wheat (refined flour) which has been defined as the perfect chronic poison by experts. These three crops account for the vast majority of crop acreage planted in the United States.

Factory farms and monoculture are responsible for most of the food that makes it to your plate. Consider factory farms -- the animals from these operations are given massive doses of drugs not only to stave off disease in such conditions but to increase their growth as well. They are fed unnatural diets and have little or no access to their natural environment leaving them prone to disease and suffering. Their meat is unhealthy and should not even be considered fit for human consumption. Agriculture has been around for thousands of years, but the way it exists now is a far cry from what has existed before this modern age. Intensive farming and monoculture has left our soil depleted resulting in poor quality plant foods, which then affect the nutrient composition of animal foods. Also, with today’s technology, we are able to manipulate the genes of plants and animals, something that nowhere near resembles selective breeding techniques used by our ancestors.

The hallmark of any system is that--for better or for worse--it functions as a complex whole, making it impossible to easily divorce one part from another. The plethora of problems in and related to our food system do not exist in isolation. They are intimately connected. Put another way, the healthfulness of our food, the health of the natural world (the soil, water, bacteria and genetic resources that gives rise to it), and the health of our patients cannot be considered apart from one another.

More than 60% of disease would vanish if we would start focusing on food as our medicine. We don't have to live in a medicated world, but we certainly choose to even though there are natural counterparts to almost every prescribed drug in the world. At one time, it was thought that cancer was a “disease of civilization,” belonging to much the same causal domain as “neurasthenia” and diabetes, the former a nervous weakness believed to be brought about by the stress of modern life and the latter a condition produced by bad diet and indolence. It turns out all may be true since our food convenience is at the root of our health woes.

But we cannot place all the blame on food manufacturers because we play a part in the food system. We demand convenience and cheaper foods and that’s what we got. We must examine the cultural and socio-economic factors that spurred the demand for convenience foods. For example, considering the busy lives most people have nowadays, it often becomes difficult to prepare homemade meals for the family (much less yourself) every breakfast, lunch and dinner. It ultimately boils down to our priorities. If we place high priority on our health and understand that what we eat determines and shapes not just our physical characteristics but also our personalities as well, we’d all take what we eat much more seriously.

We have an abundance of food that is easily accessible at any time of the day whereas our ancestors did not have this luxury. They hunted and gathered their food and farmed later on, allowing nature to do most of the work but they also expended a certain amount of energy in food preparation. The family meal may be more important than ever and mothers play a critical role. Researchers speculate that maternal attitudes towards the importance of family meals may reflect a broader respect for good nutrition. This might extend to practices such as keeping healthy foods in the house or limiting the amount of times their children can eat "junk food." People who are more concerned about family meals are also more concerned about nutrition.

We have lost the family connection at it all starts there. A higher incidence of family meals is associated with a better nutrient intake and healthier meals. If we want to reverse the disease trend and stimulate a health trend, we must transform the food supply to one that relies on fresh nutrient dense foods free from chemical alteration, from start to finish, and place a greater emphasis on family which fosters a dependence on health rather than sickness.

Top US Brand of Children's Vitamins Contains Aspartame, GMOs, & Other Hazardous Chemicals

GreenMedInfo
by Sayer Ji

The #1 Children's Vitamin Brand in the US contains ingredients that most parents would never intentionally expose their children to, so why aren't more opting for healthier alternatives?

Kids vitamins are supposed to be healthy, right? Well then, what's going on with Flintstones Vitamins, which proudly claims to be "Pediatricians' #1 Choice"? Produced by the global pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, this wildly success brand features a shocking list of unhealthy ingredients, including:

Aspartame
Cupric Oxide
Coal tar artificial coloring agents (FD&C Blue #2, Red #40, Yellow #6)
Zinc Oxide
Sorbitol
Ferrous Fumarate
Hydrogenated Oil (Soybean)
GMO Corn starch

On Bayer Health Science's Flintstones product page designed for healthcare professionals they lead into the product description with the following tidbit of information:

82% of kids aren't eating all of their veggies. Without enough vegetables, kids may not be getting all of the nutrients they need.

References: 1. Lorson BA, Melgar-Quinonez HR, Taylor CA. Correlates of fruit and vegetable intakes in US children. J Am Diet Assoc. 2009;109(3):474-478.

The implication? That Flintstones vitamins somehow fill this nutritional void. But let's look a little closer at some of these presumably healthy ingredients....

ASPARTAME

Aspartame is a synthetic combination of the amino acids aspartic acid and l-phenylalanine, and is known to convert into highly toxic methanol and formaldehyde in the body. Aspartame has been linked to over 40 adverse health effects in the biomedical literature, and has been shown to exhibit both neurotoxicity and carcinogenicity. What business does a chemical like this have doing in a children's vitamin, especially when non-toxic, non-synthetic non-nutritive sweeteners like stevia already exist?

CUPRIC OXIDE

Next, let's look closer at Cupric Oxide, 2mg of which is included in each serving of Flinstone's Complete chewable vitamins as a presumably 'nutritional' source of 'copper,' supplying "100% of the Daily Value (Ages 4+), according to Flintstones Vitamins Web site's Nutritional Info.

But what is Cupric Oxide? A nutrient or a chemical?

According to the European Union's Dangerous Substance Directive, one of the main EU laws concerning chemical safety, Cupric Oxide is listed as a Hazardous substance, classified as both "Harmful (XN)" and "Dangerous for the environment" (N). Consider that it has industrial applications as a pigment in ceramics, and as a chemical in the production of rayon fabric and dry cell batteries. In may be technically correct to call it a mineral, but should it be listed as a nutrient in a children's vitamin? We think not.

COAL TAR ARTIFICIAL COLORING AGENTS

A well-known side effect of using synthetic dyes is attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. For direct access to study abstracts on this topic view our Food Coloring research page. There is also indication that the neurotoxicity of artificial food coloring agents increase when combined with aspartame, making the combination of ingredients in Flintstones even more concerning.

ZINC OXIDE

Each serving of Flinstones Complete Chewable vitamins contain 12 mg of zinc oxide, which the manufacturer claims delivers 75% of the Daily Value to children 2 & 3 years of age. Widely used as a sun protection factor (SPF) in sunscreens, The EU's Dangerous Substance Directive classifies it as an environmental Hazard, "Dangerous for the environment (N)." How it can be dangerous to the environment, but not for humans ingesting it, escapes me. One thing is for sure, if one is to ingest supplemental zinc, or market it for use by children, it makes much more sense using a form that is organically bound (i.e. 'chelated') to an amino acid like glycine, as it will be more bioavailable and less toxic.

SORBITOL

Sorbitol is a synthetic sugar substitute which is classified as a sugar alcohol. It can be argued that it has no place in the human diet, much less in a child's. The ingestion of higher amounts have been linked to gastrointestinal disturbances from abdominal pain to more serious conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.

FERROUS FUMARATE

The one clear warning on the Flinstone's Web site concerns this chemical. While it is impossible to die from consuming iron from food, e.g. spinach, ferrous fumarate is an industrial mineral and not found in nature as food. In fact, ferrous fumarate is so toxic that accidental overdose of products containing this form is "a leading cause of fatal poisoning in children under 6." The manufacturer further warns:

Keep this product out of reach of children. In case of accidental overdose, call a doctor or poison control center immediately.

HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL

Finding hydrogenated oil in anything marketed to children is absolutely unacceptable. These semi-synthetic fatty acids incorporate into our tissues and have been linked to over a dozen adverse health effects, from coronary artery disease to cancer, violent behavior to fatty liver disease.

GMO CORN STARCH

While it can be argued that the amount of GMO corn starch in this product is negligible, even irrelevant, we disagree. It is important to hold accountable brands that refuse to label their products honestly, especially when they contain ingredients that have been produced through genetic modification. The 'vitamin C' listed as ascorbic acid in Flintstones is likely also produced from GMO corn. Let's remember that Bayer's Ag-biotech division, Bayer CropScience, poured $381,600 of cash into defeating the proposition 37 GMO labeling bill in California. Parents have a right to protect their children against the well-known dangers of genetically modified foods and the agrichemicals that contaminate them, don't they? GMO corn starch is GMO, plain and simple. We'd appreciate it if Bayer would label their "vitamins" accordingly.

In summary, Bayer's Flintstone's vitamin brand is far from a natural product, and the consumer should be aware of the unintended, adverse health effects that may occur as a result of using it.

Frankenapple: Bad News No Matter How You Slice It

Organic Consumers Association
by Katherine Paul and Ronnie Cummins

Thanks to the biotech industry’s relentless quest to control our food, McDonald’s, Burger King and even school cafeterias will soon be able to serve up apples that won’t turn brown when they’re sliced or bitten into. A new, almost entirely untested genetic modification technology, called RNA interference, or double strand RNA (dsRNA), is responsible for this new food miracle. Scientists warn that this genetic manipulation poses health risks, as the manipulated RNA gets into our digestive systems and bloodstreams. The biotech industry claims otherwise.

Of course, like any non-organic apple, the new GMO Arctic® Apple will be drenched in toxic pesticide residues, untested by the U.S. Food & Drug Association (FDA) and likely unlabeled. And of course these shiny new high-tech apples will be cheap, priced considerably lower than a pesticide-free, nutrient-dense, old-fashioned organic apple that turns a little brown after you slice it up.

When the Biotech Industry Organization gathers next week in Chicago for the 2013 BIO International Convention, BIOTECanada will present its “Gold Leaf Award for Early Stage Agriculture” to Okanagan Specialty Fruits, Inc. (OSF), purveyor of the Arctic® Apple, slated for approval in the U.S. this year. We hate to upset the biotech apple cart, but a pesticide-intensive GMO apple, produced through a risky manipulation of RNA, doesn’t deserve a place on our grocery shelves, much less in the agriculture hall of fame.

That said, the Arctic “Frankenapple” is expected to be approved this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), responsible for protecting agriculture from pests and diseases. It does not require approval by the FDA, which is responsible for human food and animal feed.

Just one more bad apple

Apples, that is, apples that haven’t been certified organic, already are on the list of Should-Be-Forbidden fruits. They reliably top the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list, for both the volume and the stunning array of pesticides consistently found on them. According to the Pesticide Action Network’s analysis of the most recent USDA data, apples tested positive for 42 pesticides, including organophosphate and pyrethroid pesticides. Both are endocrine disruptors, both have suspected neurological effects, and both are considered especially toxic for children. (Organophosphates are the basis for nerve gases used in chemical warfare, and have been linked to the development of ADHD in kids.)

Given the grim report card of non-organic apples, some might say it really doesn’t make any difference if we start tinkering with the apple’s genetic RNA. After all, unlike the case with GMO corn or salmon, scientists aren’t injecting pesticides or genes from foreign plants or animals into the genes of apples to create the Frankenapple. While most existing genetically engineered plants are designed to make new proteins, the Arctic Apple is engineered to produce a form of genetic information called double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). The new dsRNA alters the way genes are expressed. The result, in the Arctic Apple’s case, is a new double strand of RNA that genetically “silences” the apple’s ability to produce polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that causes the apple to turn brown when it’s exposed to oxygen.

Harmless? The biotech industry, OSF and some scientists say yes. But others, including Professor Jack Heinemann (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), Sarah Agapito-Tenfen (from Santa Catarina University in Brazil) and Judy Carman (Flinders University in South Australia), say that dsRNA manipulation is untested, and therefore inherently risky. Recent research has shown that dsRNAs can transfer from plants to humans and other animals through food. The biotech industry has always claimed that genetically engineered DNA or RNA is destroyed by human digestion, eliminating the danger of these mutant organisms damaging human genes or human health. But many biotech scientists say otherwise. They point to evidence that the manipulated RNA finds its way into our digestive systems and bloodstreams, potentially damaging or silencing vital human genes.

There are indirect health consequences, too. Turns out the chemical compound that is shut off in the engineered fruit through RNA manipulation, in order to make it not oxidize or brown, is a chemical compound that also fights off plant pests. What happens when the apple’s ability to fend off insects is compromised? Growers will need to spray greater amounts, of possibly even more toxic pesticides, on a crop already saturated with at least 42 types of pesticides. Those pesticides will eventually find their way into our bodies, either because we ingested the fruit, or breathed the air or drank the water where the pesticides were sprayed.

Testing? What testing?

So what’s the trade-off? Non-organic apple growers will prosper as more moms buy more apples for more kids who will, the industry alleges, be the healthier for it. It makes for a good public relations story, but no matter how you wrap it up or slice it, taking apples that are already saturated in pesticides, and genetically engineering them for purely cosmetic purposes, does not a healthy snack make.

The pro- and anti-GMO movements will debate whether or not the GMO apple is safe for human consumption. The fact is, we’ll never know until they are properly labeled and safety-tested. As with every other GMO food ingredient or product sold in the U.S., the Arctic Apple will undergo no independent safety testing by the FDA or the USDA. Instead, the USDA will rely on OSF’s word that the apple is safe for human consumption. And without any state or federal mandatory GMO labeling laws in place, OSF will not be required to label its Frankenapple, meaning that consumers or children harmed by the dsRNA modified apple will have great difficulty identifying the mutant RNA that harmed them.

The controversy and debate surrounding dsRNA and the Arctic Apple has just begun. But there is no longer any debate about the dangers that pesticides and pesticide residues on non-organic apples pose to humans, whether we directly ingest these toxic residues by eating an apple, or whether we’re exposed to them through contaminated air and groundwater as a result of acres of orchards being sprayed to control increasingly resistant insects and diseases.

What about the argument that a kid eating a few slices of apples can’t consume enough of any one of these pesticides to cause any real risk to their health? Debunked. Recent studies reveal that during apple season, kids exhibit spikes in the level of pesticides found in their urine, spikes that exceed the U.S. government’s “safe levels.” Kids who live in apple-growing regions show even higher spikes. And those 42 varieties of pesticides? The government establishes “safe levels” for each one – but it doesn’t test for the potential effect of ingesting 42 different pesticides, all chemically interacting with each other, and ingested all at once.

From biodiversity to monoculture

How did we get to the point where it takes 42 pesticides to keep an apple crop healthy? Michael Pollan best explains it in his book Botany of Desire. Turns out that apples have an extreme tendency toward something called heterozygosity, which means genetic variability. This trait accounts for how, left to its own devices, the apple can “make itself at home in places as different from one another as New England and New Zealand, Kazakhstan and California.” Pollan writes: “Wherever the apple tree goes, its offspring propose so many different variations on what it means to be an apple – at least five per apple, several thousand per tree – that a couple of these novelties are almost bound to have whatever qualities it takes to prosper in the tree’s adopted home.”

Today, you’d have to visit the apple orchard museum in Geneva, New York, to find all the varieties of apples that used to thrive in the wild. Over time, in our quest to control the taste, texture and appearance of apples, we’ve eliminated all but a relative few varieties. We’ve gone too far, says Pollan. By relying on too few genes for too long, the apple has lost its ability to get along on its own, outdoors.

Enter the agro-chemical companies. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Agricultural Chemical Use Program, apple growers in states surveyed in 2011 applied carbaryl to 46 percent of their acreage, at an average rate of 1.566 pounds per acre for the crop year; chlorantraniliprole to 45 percent; and chlorpyrifos to 44 percent. Apple growers applied glyphosate isopropylamine salt to 25 percent of acres at an average of 1.604 pounds per acre for the crop year. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The Arctic Apple has been in development for over a decade, the company says. OSF submitted a petition for deregulation to the USDA in May 2010. The USDA, which must hold two public comment periods, concluded the first on Sept. 11, 2011. It’s expected to open the second public comment period this spring or summer, and OSF hopes the GMO apple will be approved for growing and selling in the U.S. this year.

The Organic Consumers Association will hold a press conference and set up a picket line at the Biotechnology Industry Organization Convention in Chicago, at Noon on April 23, to protest OSF’s GMO apple.

Related:  Poison Apples: “Organic” Fruit can be Tainted by Antibiotics until Fall 2014

6 Proofs Food Makers Don’t Care About Children (or You)

McD's 

Natural Society
by Elizabeth Renter

If follow natural healing along with some truth news, you know all too well that processed and fast food giants care very little about the weight and overall wellbeing of children. As a health-conscious parent, you must fight tooth and nail to counteract the bombardment of advertising and marketing tricks these companies use to ensure their health-compromising products sell. But this is more than a parental issue, as unhealthy kids are everyone’s responsibility.

So, just how do food makers encourage ill health and obesity among the youngest of us? There are several ways. And all of it begins with marketing.

According to the Prevention Institute, fast food companies spend more than $5 million each day targeting kids with unhealthy foods. The food and beverage industry as a whole spends more than $2 billion each year on marketing to children. And these commercials, print ads, and colorful boxes aren’t being used to sell healthful foods.

Just 6 Ways the Food Industry is Hurting Our Children

Television advertisements for food directly affect a child’s food intake. Scientists found that a group of children eating in front of a television show with food advertisements ate 50% more calories than those who didn’t have any commercials. They determined that at this rate, the commercials could lead to a 10-pound weight gain throughout the course of a year.

The food industry invade the schools. School systems often aren’t necessarily wealthy, and when a giant corporation offers to help in exchange for advertising or vending machines, it’s hard for these educational institutions to pass up the offer. As a result, your child is targeted everywhere they go.

Despite pledging to do better, the companies simply don’t. A 2011 review of such pledges and promises made by food companies found that these vows are largely empty and fail to protect children at all. One recent pledge (sort of) brought forth by Coca-Cola deals with the company’s claims of fighting obesity and bettering the nation by offering low-calorie and sugar-free products. But in reality, they are fueling obesity and feeding disease with some of the most popular beverages on the planet. About 98% of food advertisements that children see are for products that are high in fat, sugar, or sodium.

Food makers know that people identify them with nurturing. At a young age, American children identify food labels and company names with comforting feelings and these food companies seek to capitalize on this through feel-good commercials and filling foods devoid of nutritional integrity. This is equally true with the presentation of various symbols and characters such as the McDonald’s golden arches or Toucan Sam.

Using words like “wholesome”, “made with natural ingredients”, and “part of a good diet” are used despite having no real meaning. These words make parents feel like the prepackaged and prepared foods aren’t that bad after all, that they can feel okay about giving their children a meal in a box.

Food makers don’t care about children. They care about their bottom line. If they truly cared about health, we would see free toys offered with fruits and vegetables and exciting, high budget commercials for whole, natural foods. But we don’t.

Because the food makers could care less, it’s up to parents and role models to take the reins. If your child watches television, at least make them mute the commercials and do your best to fight the misinformation your child might be receiving from web-ads, billboards, food product placement in stores, and even their teachers.

Dead, Lifeless Food

FDA aims to sterilize our food through the Food Safety Modernization Act

Food Riot Radio
by Brad Jordan

After two years of delay, the Food Safety Modernization Act is finally about to go into effect. The FDA is moving forward with rules that are supposed to make food in the United States the safest in the world.

Hailed as the most sweeping overhaul of farm and food policy since the Great Depression, some fear the law will actually make our food supply less safe by regulating small, organic farmers out of business and leaving it in the hands of a few mega farmers and processors.

“So what exactly is the government going to do to make our food safer?” I was wondering the other day. While I hoped for the labeling of GMO’s and the removal and the word “natural” from products that aren’t natural, I knew the FDA would come up with an idea like putting port-a-potties with sinks in the middle of farm fields. And sure enough, that’s exactly what they did. With that, they also want food heated at higher temperatures to kill any bacteria that may be present, good or bad, and a host of other ill-conceived ideas that will prevent us from accessing nutrient-dense foods.

I recently spoke with Judith McGeary, founder of Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rights of independent farmers, ranchers, and homesteaders. Judith is also an attorney, a farmer, and a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader in Austin, Texas.

McGeary has been following the Food Safety Modernization Act since it was first proposed a couple of years ago. Initially she feared the coming food safety regulations would be so costly for small farmers that they’d go out of business. Since then, farms with less than half a million dollars in annual sales have been exempted from the legislation.

But after reviewing the FDA’s proposed rules, she is still leery for several reasons.

Pay up, I’ll protect you

First, half a million dollars in sales might sound like a lot, but farmers only keep 10 to 15 percent of that in profits. That means it could cost farmers making as little as $50,000 a year as much as $10,000 annually to comply with the new rules. That’s a fifth of their income eaten up by regulation.

Second, the state, with all its power, could wave its magic wand and declare an “outbreak or emergency” and “un”exempt farmers earning even less than $50,000.

Third, on top of the cost in dollars, the law will cost farmers time. Farmers, especially small farmers who can’t afford legal counsel, don’t have time to mull through and comply with 1200 pages of new rules and regulations, many of which are vague and poorly written. Tracking the origin and destination of every crop sold, for example, isn’t going to benefit the farmer or the consumer of local foods. It may help the government hire another unnecessary worker to come and check the farmers’ books though, so why not?

As if filling out paperwork wasn’t bad enough, the agency wants to tell farmers what they can and cannot use to fertilize their crops, right down to the type of compost they can use.

“The FDA seems to be scared of anything that was ever part of an animal. If you don’t follow their instructions to the letter, which includes extensive documentation of how the compost was made, you have to treat compost — including worm castings — as if it were raw animal manure and wait 9 months in between putting the compost down and harvesting the crop. In practice, this is a death knell for the use of many types of compost, which are vital to growing food sustainably,” McGeary said.

This intrusive, restrictive approach to compost is a stark contrast to the agency’s attitude about the spraying of toxic chemicals on food, which doesn’t seem to concern it much at all.

What does all this mean for consumers? Well, expect local, sustainable food prices to go up. Thanks FDA, for making their lives harder and mine more expensive.

If it’s alive, they want it dead

The FDA’s solution to eliminating any possibility of dangerous pathogens is to kill everything. In addition to pasteurizing juices and other processed and packaged foods, the agency would like all “fresh” fruits and vegetables to be irradiated. Yes, that means zapped with radiation. While potentially killing deadly bacteria, this process also kills living enzymes and good bacteria that help build our immune systems. Is this what consumers really want? A bunch of irradiated bags of lettuce that have gone through a giant processing plant, leaving green leaves stripped of the nutrients they once contained? I for one, don’t.

It seems, as usual, the government is making things worse instead of better. A simple way to curb contamination would be to stop subsidizing the mega farms that are causing the problem. Let the free markets figure it out. I think I know what type of farm would win. The local, sustainable farmers have more incentive to do what is right for the consumer and the environment, because they rely on the consumer – not government subsidies – for their paychecks.

If more people took ownership of themselves, and the food they were eating, we wouldn’t need government officials intervening. Yes, that means, getting up off of your ass and visiting the farmer, or at least giving him a call to discuss how your food is being made. If more consumers started talking to their farmers directly and holding them accountable, they’d have more of an incentive to provide good quality, nutrient-dense foods. I mean if I walked on to the farm and saw chemicals being sprayed on the crops, I wouldn’t buy his products. If, after talking to a few people who worked on the farm, I learned the smell in the air was coming from a shit lagoon up around the bend, I wouldn’t buy his products. See where I’m going?

It all starts with food

After reading Harry Brown’s book this weekend, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, I realize bold action is required in order for change to occur in our lives. So, if you’re eating irritated, chemically fabricated, pre-packaged foods, take action today, and start eating nutrient dense, non-processed, whole foods. Visualize how it will feel and taste eating homemade stews made from real bone stock, butter from freshly milked grass-fed cows, and pasture raised chicken eggs cooked in lard on your cast iron skillet. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. If you can’t visualize how fantastic these foods will taste, visualize a Lean Cuisine cooking away in your microwave, with its rubber stamped FDA approval. Then ask yourself if bold action is required. Is it time for a change? Is it time to eat free or die?

If your answer is yes to any of the following, do some research, find out where you can get raw milk (email me, if you have to) and pasture-raised chicken eggs. Once you have these items, take a deep breath, and realize your life is about to change. Crack open an egg and disregard the white that surrounds the golden orange yolk, and put that yolk in a blender, add another if you’re feeling wild. Pour in a couple cups of fresh, grass fed, milk from your bottle, where the cream sits a couple inches on top. Blend up some of nature’s most perfect foods.

Now, pour that concoction into a glass and walk in front of mirror. Put on a podcast from foodriotradio.com. I recommend the Mark Baker interview, for extra inspiration. Now look at yourself, with your beady little eyes. Realize this is the beginning. This is the first day of the rest of your life. Grab that glass with both hands because they’ll be sweaty and you’ll be anxious and you don’t want to drop what you’ve worked so hard for. Throw that drink back and take a big swallow. Set it down and look at yourself again. See the sparkle in your eye? Feel the change taking place in your body? Now you feel the power of food. It feels good, doesn’t it? You feel alive for the first time in years. The awakening has occurred. You’ve been baptized into the real food movement. Now go spread the word to others and grow the revolution because its message is finally here. Freedom baby, freedom.

Listen to Brad’s interview with Judith McGeary here.

Food Manufacturers are Fraudulently Diluting High-Quality Food with Inferior Quality Junk

Washington's Blog

In a predictable trend, food manufacturers are fraudulently diluting high-quality food with inferior quality items.  As ABC News reports:

A new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

“Food products are not always what they purport to be,” Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

In addition, 70% of all ground beef was found to contain “pink slime”.

Butchers use “meat glue” to create “bigger” cuts of beef, chicken, lamb and fish, even though it leads to much higher levels of food poisoning:


British hamburgers were found to contain horse meat and pork … and it could happen in the U.S. as well.

Indeed, modern red meat is arguably not really meat at all.

And selling genetically modified food without labeling them as such is arguably food fraud as well, since a large majority of Americans want genetically modified foods to be labeled, genetically engineered foods have been linked to obesity, cancer, liver failure, infertility and all sorts of other diseases (brief videos here and here), and the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even test the safety of such foods.

Bad Policy Made Food Fraud Predictable

This trend was predictable because food manufacturers have been trying to hide food inflation in various ways.

The inflation in food prices, in turn, has been caused by quantitative easing – printed in an attempt to hide bank fraud – and the use of the printed money for wild speculation by the big banks has driven up food and related commodity prices.

And – instead of fighting for safer food – the Department of Justice and FDA often target whistleblowers and do everything they can to cover up wrongdoing. The Department of Agriculture is no better. And the Feds are treating people who expose abuse in factory farms as potential terrorists … and the states want the same power.

Top US Healthcare Giant: GMOs Are Devastating Health

Natural Society
by Anthony Gucciardi

Just days after a leading genetically modified organism (GMO) researcher spoke out against GMOs and how many pro-GMO ‘scientists’ are in bed with Monsanto or carry their own GMO patents, the largest managed healthcare provider in the United States is now publicly speaking out against GMOs. In a recent newsletter, the Kaiser Permanente company discussed the numerous dangers of GMOs in a recent newsletter and how to avoid them.

Explaining how GM ingredients have been linked to tumors and organ damage in rats in the only lifelong rat study available, the newsletter highlighted how the only real long- term research indicates that GMOs are a serious health danger. The newsletter, which you can view here, states:

“Despite what the biotech industry might say, there is little research on the long-term effects of GMOs on human health. Independent research has found several varieties of GMO corn caused organ damage in rats. Other studies have found that GMOs may lead to an inability in animals to reproduce.”

Top Health Giant Says Buy Organic for Proper Health

The newsletter then goes on to tell readers how they can avoid GMOs in their food through buying high quality organic and looking for other non-GMO indicators. It is important to remember the organic labeling meanings when shopping organic, however, which this newsletter unfortunately does not address. Make sure you know which ‘level’ of organic you are consuming:

Products labeled ‘100% organic’ – These items are made with 100% organic ingredients and are the highest quality organic products you can purchase. No GMOs are allowed.

Labeled ‘organic’ — These products are to contain at least 95% organic ingredients overall. Still no GMOs are allowed. ‘Made with ‘organic ingredients’ — This is the lowest form of organic content. This label is only required to contain 70% organic ingredients, meaning that the remaining 30% can be conventional. The conventional items, however, are not allowed to contain GMOs. These products don’t qualify for the USDA seal, whereas the previous two do. You can also look for the ‘Non-GMO Verified’ logo on food items to be sure that they are GMO free.

But why does a major corporation care that you are eating GMOs? Well the fact of the matter is that the research (and common sense — eating pesticide factories mixed with the DNA of viruses isn’t going to end well) indicates GMOs are causing problematic health conditions across the board. Of course the issue lies in the fact that GMOs are not immediately considered as a cause and actually influence disease through a series of complications that are not easy to trace. But as the only lifelong study has showed us, 50% of male and 70% of female rats died prematurely when consuming GMOs.

And the bottom line is that this is costing Kaiser Permanente. If members of the healthcare juggernaut were to switch to high quality organic foods free of GMOs, pesticides, mercury-containing high-fructose corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners, then Kaiser would be dishing out millions upon millions less for healthcare costs.

More and more organizations and individuals alike are speaking out against GMOs and the effects of GMO consumption as the evidence becomes more and more clear on a daily basis. Perhaps next time Monsanto tries to push a new outlandish creation into the food supply they will be met with crushing opposition thanks to a global increase in awareness

Berlin protests focus on farming and food safety

CBC News World

Thousands of people braved the cold and demonstrated in the streets of Berlin as politicians and policymakers met to discuss changes to global agricultural policies.

Under the slogan, “We are fed up,” the protesters called for an end to food scandals, genetic engineering and animal cruelty in industrial livestock farming.

“We are from the Friends of the Earth and we demonstrate for the peace of animals, small farmers, ecological farming, non-genetic produce animals and non-genetic food,” Viola Wagner said, as she marched and chanted.

Demonstrators marched through Berlin's shopping and government districts. (Karen Pauls/CBC)

“We got up at 4 o’clock to come six hours by bus. I’m here for my children and my grandchildren, to make sure they have a future and good food.”

More than 120 groups representing farmers, industry, and animal rights and environmental activists organized the demonstration. It was timed to coincide with International Green Week, the Agriculture Ministers' Summit and the Global Forum for Agriculture, which are all taking place in Berlin this week.

The event also comes as another scandal in Germany has shaken consumer confidence in the safety and quality of the country’s food. Animal feed fats contaminated with the carcinogenic compound dioxin has again been discovered in the food chain, causing some countries to block German pork and egg imports.

Organizers said 22,000 people came from all over Germany, although police estimated turnout closer to 15,000.

Following about 50 tractors, they marched from Berlin’s main train station, along one of the main shopping streets, through the government district, and ended with a rally in front of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices.

“The current dioxin scandal has suddenly highlighted the backlog of reforms in agricultural policy,” Hubert Weiger, chairman of BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany), said in a speech.

In her weekly video message on Saturday, Merkel said the government would tighten controls in the animal feed industry.

Meanwhile, some demonstrators also called for changes to Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which is responsible for approximately 40 per cent of the total EU budget. Policymakers are currently deciding how to reform the CAP, which expires at the end of 2013.

“The politicians don’t respect enough the environmental issues,” said Moritz Steinbeck, of Young Friends of the Earth.

Demonstrators want changes to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, which expires at the end of 2013. (Karen Pauls/CBC) Factory farms disregard animal welfare, and the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is harming the environment and threatening biodiversity, he said.

“We want to send a message to the German politicians, but also to the European Union because the CAP reform is now being discussed. I hope [they will listen] and I think they do because if you look at the anti-nuclear movement, it was quite powerful in Germany and had an effect on the politicians and the politics that were made.”

Across town, more than 80 agriculture ministers, representing 70 per cent of the world’s population, discussed new strategies for global food security.

The main issues included reduced resources, a growing population, and the problem of one billion undernourished people around the world, German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said.

German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner says the world food supply is alarming, when considering population growth. (Karen Pauls/CBC)

“We try here at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture — together with representatives from the political, economical realms as well as regular citizens, to find solutions on how to best deal with investments into agriculture and rural regions for better solutions on how to supply food to the world,” she said, adding CAP is not on the agenda.

“We will not be discussing European agriculture politics here.”

CAP is of interest to countries like Canada because, in the past, it has been an export subsidy for European agricultural products, providing direct payments to farmers based on how much land they had in production in a base year, said Harald von Witzke, a professor of agriculture economics and president of the Humboldt Forum for Food and Agriculture.

The original idea was to help farmers make up for the competitive disadvantage of having to meet stricter quality and environmental regulations than other countries, he said.

Moritz Steinbeck says politicians don't care enough about environmental issues. (Karen Pauls/CBC)

“Now the question is whether the level of these subsidies should be reduced because the CAP is the single most important budget item of European Union. And the second is whether it should be more equitable because now the West European member countries get higher payments than the East European member countries,” he said.

“But the most controversial is the so-called “Greening” – idling for environmental reasons of 7 per cent of the acreage, and this during a time of very high agricultural commodity prices. This will drive up prices even more.”

No one from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is attending the meeting, but the department is monitoring the CAP discussions, a spokesperson said in an email.

Genetic Engineering and the GMO Industry: Corporate Hijacking of Food and Agriculture

Global Research
by Colin Todhunter

“I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle” – Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, “The Spirit of Enterprise”, 1934.

When rich companies with politically-connected lobbyists and seats on government-appointed bodies bend policies for their own ends, we are in serious trouble. It is then that our democratic institutions become hijacked and our choices, freedoms and rights are destroyed. Corporate interests have too often used their dubious ‘science’, lobbyists, political connections and presence within the heart of governments, in conjunction with their public relations machines, to subvert democratic machinery for their own benefit. Once their power has been established, anyone who questions them or who stands in their way can expect a very bumpy ride.

The power and influence of the GMO sector

The revolving door between the private sector and government bodies has been well established. Over the past few years in Britain, the media has occasionally shed light on the cosy and highly questionable links between the armaments industry and top people in the Ministry of Defence. In the US, many senior figures from the Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) industry, especially Monsanto, have moved with ease to take up positions with the Food and Drug Administration. Author and researcher William F Engdahl writes about a similar influence in Europe, noting the links between the GMO sector within the European Food Safety Authority. He states that over half of the scientists involved in the GMO panel which positively reviewed the Monsanto’s study for GMO maize in 2009, leading to its EU-wide authorisation, had links with the biotech industry.

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job” – Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications. “Playing God in the Garden” New York Times Magazine,October 25, 1998.

When corporate interests are able to gain access to such positions of power, little wonder they have some heavy-duty tools at their disposal to (attempt to) fend off criticism by all means necessary.

Take the GMO sector, for instance. A well-worn tactic, certainly not exclusive to that sector, has been to slur and attack figures that have challenged the ‘science’ and claims of the industry. With threats of lawsuits and UK government pressure, some years ago top research scientist Dr Arpad Pusztai was effectively silenced over his research concerning the dangers of GM food. A campaign was set in motion to destroy his reputation. Similarly, a WikiLeaks cable highlighted how GMOs were being forced into European nations by the US ambassador to France who plotted with other US officials to create a ‘retaliatory target list’ of anyone who tried to regulate GMOs. Now that clearly indicates the power of the industry!

Champions of the poor: GM frontier technology

What the GMO sector fails to grasp is that the onus is on them to prove that their products are safe. And they have patently failed to do this.

No independent testing was done before Bush senior allowed GMOs onto the US market. The onus should not be on what Professor Shantu Shantharam, a leading figure in the GMO sector, calls the “anti-GM brigade” to prove it is safe (or unsafe). (Deccan Herald website).

Now that scientists such as Professor Seralini at the University of Caen in France are in a sense playing catch-up by testing previously independently untested GMOs, he is accused of “lies” and “deceit.” In fact, Professor Shantharam claims that:

“You people (the ‘anti-GM brigade’) have no shame. You are all disgusting enemies of the poor farmers around the world by trying to block a safe product of a frontier technology…”

Little mention there of the 250,000 poor farmers who took their own lives in the Indian cotton belt because they became indebted due to this “frontier technology” not delivering the results that the GMO industry has said it would. It is easy to thus conclude that if there is a ‘disgusting enemy’ it is the profiteering corporate-controlled terminator seed technology of the GMO industry that has resulted in mass suicides and the destruction of traditional farmer-controlled agricultural practices developed over thousands of years.

But this is symptomatic of the industry: it says a product is safe, therefore it is. We are expected to take its claims at face value, not least because the industry has gained an air of pseudo respectability: the US FDA sanctions such products. I use the word ‘pseudo’ because the revolving door between top figures at Monsanto and positions at the FDA makes it difficult to see where the line between the two is actually drawn. People are rightly suspicious of the links between the FDA and GMO industry in the USand the links between it and the regulatory body within the EU.

The impact of the corporate hijacking of food and agriculture

The corporations currently forwarding their GM agenda represent the so-called “Green Revolution’s” second coming. Agriculture has changed more over the last two generations than it did in the previous 12,000 years. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva notes that, after 1945, chemical manufacturers who had been involved in the weapons industry turned their attention to applying their chemical know-how to farming. As a result ‘dwarf seeds’ were purposively created to specifically respond to their chemicals. Over the coming years, agriculture became transformed into a chemical-dependent industry that has destroyed biodiversity. What we are left with is a monoculture, which according to Shiva reflects a monoculture of thinking. In effect, modern agriculture is part of the paradigm of control based on mass standardization and a dependency on corporate products: corporate monoculture.

The implications have been vast. Chemical-industrial agriculture has proved extremely lucrative for the oil and chemicals industry and has served to maintain and promote Western hegemony, not least via ‘structural adjustment’ and the consequent uprooting of traditional farming practices in favour of export-oriented policies, dam building to cater for what became a highly water intensive industry, loans, indebtedness, etc.

Apart from tying poorer countries into an unequal system of global trade and reinforcing global inequalities, the corporate hijacking of food and agriculture has had many other implications, not least where health is concerned.

Dr Meryl Hammond, founder of the Campaign for Alternatives to Pesticides, told a Canadian parliamentary committee in 2009 that a raft of studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals point to strong associations between chemical pesticides and serious health consequences, including endocrine disruption and fertility problems, birth defects, brain tumours and brain cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, childhood leukemia, cancer clusters in communities, gastric or stomach cancer, learning disabilities, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and canine malignant lymphoma.

Then there is Shiv Chopra, a top food advisor to the Canadian government. He exposed how all kinds of food products that were known to be dangerous were passed by the regulatory authority and put on the market there due to the power of the food industry.

Given the amount of hormones, antibiotics, food additives, preservatives and colourings, artificial sweeteners, aluminium, sulphur, flavour enhancers and heavy metals being put into what we eat, is it any wonder that we are becoming sick? Severe anemia, permanent brain damage, Alzheimer’s, dementia, neurological disorders, reproductive problems, diminished intelligence, impaired immune system, behavioural disorders, cancers, hyperactivity and learning disability are just some of the diseases linked to our food.

Of course, just like cigarettes and the tobacco industry before, trying to ‘prove’ the glaringly obvious link will take decades as deceit is passed off as ‘science’ or becomes institutionalized due to the hijacking of government bodies by the corporations involved in food production.

In ‘GMOs Ticking Time Bomb’, Rima E Laibow, Medical Director of Natural Solutions Foundation, argues that every single independent study conducted on the impact of GMOs shows they damage organs and cause infertility, immune system failure, holes in the GI tract and multiple system failure when eaten. She argues that they cause a variety of changes, some of which we can’t even guess at as new proteins are coded due to altered DNA – some which we’ve never seen before. Laiblow concludes we are playing with genetic fire. Yet, they are on the commercial market in the US and elsewhere.

We are standing in the way of progress!

Science has become a political football. Anyone who questions the safety of GMOs is “clueless” and indulges in “scare mongering” and “falsehoods.”In fact, Shatharam says about such people that all they know “is to stop progress and US agriculture is doing fine and thanks to the absence of scientists like Seralini and Pushpa Bhargava. These two so called scientific jokers will not allowed set foot in the real world of science in North America. They have a hey day in countries like India because of ignoramuses.”

He talks of progress. What he means is the progress of his industry and the raping and contamination of the natural environment for profit.

But can we expect much better from an industry that has a record of smearing and attempting to ruin people who criticise it? Are those of us who question the political links of the GMO industry and the nature of its products ready to take lessons on ethics and high-minded notions of ‘human progress’ from anyone involved with it?

This is an industry that has been responsible for the best part of 250,000 farmer deaths in India, an industry that has contaminated crops and bullied farmers with lawsuits in North America, an industry whose companies have been charged with and most often found guilty of contaminating the environment and seriously damaging health with PCBs and dioxins, an industry complicit in concealing the deadly impact of GM corn on animals, an industry where bribery seems to be second nature (eg Monsanto in Indonesia), an industry associated with human rights violations in Brazil and an industry that will not label its foods in the US. And that is a much shortened list.

“The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded [with GMOs] that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender” – Don Westfall, biotech industry consultant and vice-president of Promar International, in the Toronto Star,January 9 2001.

As Vandana Shiva has noted, the 2005 US-India nuclear deal (allowing India to develop its nuclear sector despite it not being a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pushed through with a cash for votes tactic in the Indian parliament!) was linked to the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, which was aimed at widening access to India’s agricultural and retail sectors. This initiative was drawn up with the full and direct participation of representatives from various companies, including Monsanto, Cargill and Walmart.

When the most powerful country comes knocking at your door seeking to gain access to your market, there’s good chance that once its corporate-backed jackboot is in, you won’t be able to get it out. In India, the pressure is building to release GM food onto the market.

Writer Marie-Monique Robin has famously stated that whoever controls the food business controls the world. While the GMO sector hides behind notions of democracy, human progress and champions of the poor, scratch beneath the surface and the ugly face of corporate self-interest lurks for all to see.

”What you are seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain” – Robert Fraley, co-president of Monsanto’s agricultural sector 1996, in the Farm Journal. Quoted in:FlintJ. (1998) Agricultural industry giants moving towards genetic monopolism. Telepolis, Heise.