A Must See!

A wonderful informative satire by Infomatic Films.

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Monsanto Corn Plant Losing Bug Resistance

Published on Monday, August 29, 2011 by The Wall Street Journal

Monsanto Corn Plant Losing Bug Resistance
by Scott Kilman
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/29-4

Widely grown corn plants that Monsanto Co. genetically modified to thwart a voracious bug are falling prey to that very pest in a few Iowa fields, the first time a major Midwest scourge has developed resistance to a genetically modified crop.

Corn earworm larva feasting on a corn ear. Iowa State University entomologist Aaron Gassmann’s discovery that western corn rootworms in four northeast Iowa fields have evolved to resist the natural pesticide made by Monsanto’s corn plant could encourage some farmers to switch to insect-proof seeds sold by competitors of the St. Louis crop biotechnology giant, and to return to spraying harsher synthetic insecticides on their fields.
The discovery raises concerns that the way some farmers are using biotech crops could spawn superbugs.

Iowa State University entomologist Aaron Gassmann’s discovery that western corn rootworms in four northeast Iowa fields have evolved to resist the natural pesticide made by Monsanto’s corn plant could encourage some farmers to switch to insect-proof seeds sold by competitors of the St. Louis crop biotechnology giant, and to return to spraying harsher synthetic insecticides on their fields.

“These are isolated cases, and it isn’t clear how widespread the problem will become,” said Dr. Gassmann in an interview. “But it is an early warning that management practices need to change.”

The finding adds fuel to the race among crop biotechnology rivals to locate the next generation of genes that can protect plants from insects. Scientists at Monsanto andSyngenta AG of Basel, Switzerland, are already researching how to use a medical breakthrough called RNA interference to, among other things, make crops deadly for insects to eat. If this works, a bug munching on such a plant could ingest genetic code that turns off one of its essential genes.

Monsanto said its rootworm-resistant corn seed lines are working as it expected “on more than 99% of the acres planted with this technology” and that it is too early to know what the Iowa State University study means for farmers.

The discovery comes amid a debate about whether the genetically modified crops that now saturate the Farm Belt are changing how some farmers operate in undesirable ways.

These insect-proof and herbicide-resistant crops make farming so much easier that many growers rely heavily on the technology, violating a basic tenet of pest management, which warns that using one method year after year gives more opportunity for pests to adapt.

Monsanto is already at the center of this issue because of its success since the 1990s marketing seeds that grow into crops that can survive exposure to its Roundup herbicide, a glyphosate-based chemical known for its ability to kill almost anything green.

These seeds made it so convenient for farmers to spray Roundup that many farmers stopped using other weedkillers. As a result, say many scientists, superweeds immune to Roundup have spread to millions of acres in more than 20 states in the South and Midwest.

Monsanto became the first company to sell rootworm-resistant biotech corn to farmers in 2003. The seed contains a gene from a common soil microorganism called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, from which crop biotechnology has been used to mine several genes for making insecticidal proteins.

One of the genes Monsanto developed makes a crystalline protein called Cry3Bb1. It rips apart the gut of the rootworm but is harmless to mammals, birds and most beneficial insects. Competitors, which use other Bt genes to attack the rootworm, estimate that roughly one-third of the corn grown in the U.S. carries Monsanto’s Cry3Bb1 gene.

Monsanto said it generated world-wide sales of $4.26 billion from corn seed and biotechnology traits, about 40% of its overall sales, in its last full year.

Until insecticide-producing corn plants arrived, Midwest farmers typically tried to keep pests like the corn borer and the rootworm in check by changing what they grew in a field each year, often rotating between corn and soybeans. That way, the offspring of corn-loving insects would starve the next year.

Some farmers began to plant corn in the same field year after year. The financial incentive to grow corn has increased in recent years in part because the ethanol-fuel industry’s exploding appetite for corn has helped to lift prices to very profitable levels for growers.

According to Dr. Gassmann, the Iowa fields in which he found rootworms resistant to the Cry3Bb1 toxin had been producing Monsanto’s Bt-expressing corn continuously for at least three years. Dr. Gassmann collected rootworm beetles from four Iowa cornfields with plant damage in 2009. Their larvae were then fed corn containing Monsanto’s Cry3Bb1 toxin. They had a survival rate three times that of control larvae that ate the same corn.

Dr. Gassmann found that Monsanto’s Bt toxin still had some lethal impact on the larvae from the problem Iowa fields, and that the bugs were still highly susceptible to a rootworm-resistant corn plant from a competitor that uses a different Bt toxin, called Cry34/35Ab1.

Scientists in other Farm Belt states are also looking for signs that Monsanto’s Bt corn might be losing its effectiveness. Mike Gray, a University of Illinois entomologist, said he is studying rootworm beetles he collected in northwest Illinois earlier this month from fields where Monsanto’s Bt-expressing corn had suffered extensive rootworm damage.

The government requires that farmers who plant the genetically modified corn take certain steps aimed at preventing insects from developing resistance. Farmers are told to create a refuge for the bugs by planting non-modified corn in part of their fields. The refuge, which can be as much as 20% of a farmer’s field, is supposed to reduce the chances that two toxin-resistant bugs mate and pass along that trait to their offspring.

Dr. Gray said the confirmation of toxin-resistant rootworms in Iowa could force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to revisit its policy of allowing the size of these insect refuges to shrink to as little as 5% of a cornfield as crop biotechnology companies begin to sell seed for corn plants that can make two different rootworm-killing toxins.

Part of what has attracted some farmers to Monsanto’s new SmartStax corn line is that it allows them to plant a smaller refuge. But one of the two anti-rootworm toxins in that variety is the Cry3Bb1 protein at the center of Dr. Gassmann’s study.

The EPA said it is too early to comment on any implications arising from Dr. Gassmann’s paper.

© 2011 The Wall Street Journal

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Court rules organic farmers can sue conventional, GMO farmers whose pesticides ‘trespass’ and contaminate their fields

NaturalNews) Purveyors of conventional and genetically-modified (GM) crops — and the pesticides and herbicides that accompany them — are finally getting a taste of their own legal medicine. Minnesota’s Star Tribune has reported that the Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled that a large organic farm surrounded by chemical-laden conventional farms can seek damages for lost crops, as well as lost profits, caused by the illegal trespassing of pesticides and herbicides on its property.

Oluf and Debra Johnson’s 1,500-acre organic farm in Stearns County, Minn., has repeatedly been contaminated by nearby conventional and GMO farms since the couple started it in the 1990s. A local pesticide cooperative known as Paynesville Farmers Union (PFU), which is near the farm, has been cited at least four times for violating pesticide laws, and inadvertently causing damage to the Johnson’s farm.

The first time it was realized that pesticides had drifted onto the Johnson’s farm in 1998, PFU apologized, but did not agree to pay for damages. As anyone with an understanding of organic practices knows, even a small bit of contamination can result in having to plow under that season’s crops, forget profits, and even lose the ability to grow organic crops in the same field for at least a couple years.

The Johnson’s let the first incident slide. But after the second, third, and fourth times, they decided that enough was enough. Following the second pesticide drift in 2002, the Johnson’s filed a complaint with the Minnesota Agriculture Department, which eventually ruled that PFU had illegally sprayed chemicals on windy days, which led to contamination of the Johnson’s organic crops.

PFU settled with the Johnson’s out of court, and the Johnson’s agreed to sell their tainted products as non-organics for a lower price, and pull the fields from production for three years in order to bring them back up to organic standards. But PFU’s inconsiderate spraying habits continued, with numerous additional incidents occurring in 2005, 2007, and 2008, according to the Star Tribune.

After enduring much hardship, the Johnson’s finally ended up suing PFU in 2009 for negligence and trespass, only to receive denial from the district court that received the case. But after appealing, the Johnson’s received favor from the Appeals Court, which ruled that particulate matter, including pesticides, herbicides, and even GM particulates, that contaminates nearby fields is, in fact, considered illegal trespass, and is subject to the same laws concerning other forms of trespass.

In a similar case, a California-based organic farm recently won a $1 million lawsuit filed against a conventional farm whose pesticides spread through fog from several miles away, and contaminated its fields. Jacobs Farm / Del Cobo’s entire season’s herb crop had to be discarded as a result, and the court that presided over the case acknowledged and agreed that the polluters must be held responsible (http://organicfood.einnews.com/arti…).

Precedent has now been set for organic farmers to sue biotechnology companies whose GMOs contaminate their crops

The stunning victories of both the Johnson’s and Jacob’s Farm / Del Cobo against their chemical-polluting neighbors is huge, in that it represents a new set legal precedent for holding conventional, factory farming operations responsible for the damage their systems cause to other farms. And with this new precedent set, many more organic farmers, for instance, can now begin suing GMO farmers for both chemical and genetic pollution that drifts onto their farms.

Many NaturalNews readers will recall the numerous incidents involving lawsuits filed by Monsanto against non-GMO farms whose crops were inadvertently contaminated by GM material. In many of these cases, the defendants ended up becoming bankrupted by Monsanto, even though Monsanto’s patented materials were the trespassers at fault.

Be sure to check out the extensive and very informative report compiled by the Center for Food Safety (CFS) entitled Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers for a complete history of Monsanto’s war against traditional American agriculture: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/…

But it appears that the tables are now turning. Instead of Monsanto winning against organic farmers, organic farmers can now achieve victory against Monsanto. In other words, farmers being infringed upon by the drifting of GM material into their fields now have a legal leg to stand on in the pursuit of justice against Monsanto and the other biotechnology giants whose “frankencrops” are responsible for causing widespread contamination of the American food supply.

Genetic traits are highly transmissible, whether it be through pollen transfer or seed spread, and organic and non-GMO farmers have every right to seek damages for illegal trespassing when such transmission takes place. It is expected that many more organic farms will step up and begin seeking justice and compensation for damage caused by crop chemicals, GM materials, and other harmful invaders.

For too long, Monsanto has been getting away with suing farmers whose crops have become contaminated by Monsanto’s patented genetic traits and chemical materials, and winning. Thankfully, the justice system seems to now recognize the severe error in this, and is now beginning to rightfully hold polluters and trespassers responsible. Monsanto, your days are numbered.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033216_GMO_contamination_lawsuits.html#ixzz1U6SqJvtA

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Whole Paycheck and Organic Food Deserts: The Challenge

By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Aug 4, 2011

After decades of grassroots public education, battles to safeguard standards, and hard work, organic food and farming has become the fastest growing sector of U.S. agriculture. Organics have surged in popularity to become a $30 billion dollar industry in the United States, representing approximately four percent of total grocery store sales and 12% of fresh fruit and vegetable sales, growing at the rate of 10-20% a year, in comparison to a growth rate of 2-3% a year for so-called “conventional” (i.e. chemical and genetically engineered) food. According to a recent poll by National Public Radio the majority (58%) of Americans now prefer organic food.

Millions of health-minded consumers, especially parents of young children, understand that cheap, non-organic, industrial food is hazardous. Not only does factory farming destroy the environment, destabilize the climate, impoverish rural communities, exploit farm workers, inflict unnecessary cruelty on farm animals, and contaminate the water supply; but the end product itself is inevitably contaminated. Routinely contained in nearly every bite or swallow of non-organic industrial food are pesticides, antibiotics and other animal drug residues, pathogens, hormone disrupting chemicals, toxic sludge, slaughterhouse waste, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), chemical additives and preservatives, and a host of other hazardous allergens and toxins.

Organics or Fast Food/Monsanto Nation?

Before we pat ourselves on the back for reaching a point where $30 billion of the U.S.’s $750 billion in yearly grocery store sales are certified organic (consumers are also buying another $51 billion worth of so-called “natural” foods and products); before we congratulate ourselves on the fact that there are thousands of well-stocked health food stores and co-ops across the country, as well as 6,132 farmers markets (up 350% since 1994), and 13,000 local CSA (community supported agriculture) buying clubs with a total of 400,000 members, let’s put our organic movement’s accomplishments in perspective. The overwhelming majority of Americans are still eating non-organic, pesticide-laden, genetically engineered, overly processed, junk foods on a regular basis, spending half of their food dollars on super-sized industrial chow in restaurants, cafeterias, and fast-food outlets. Skyrocketing rates of obesity, cancer, heart disease, and other diet-related diseases, and a devastated rural landscape of factory farms, monoculture crops, lifeless soil, polluted waterways, and depleted aquifers are a testimony to the monumental challenge that still lies ahead.

Your Whole Paycheck for Organic Foods?

Even if the majority of Americans have now reached the point where they say they’d prefer to buy organic foods, the majority of their purchases obviously aren’t organic. Otherwise the organic market share this year would be $400 billion, not just $30 billion. Why aren’t more people buying more organic food, if they believe it’s better for their health, as well as the health of the environment? In the NPR poll cited above, 54% of Americans said they weren’t buying organic food, or else they weren’t buying much of it, because it is too expensive.

Expanding the organic revolution will require that the organic movement offer practical solutions to the “Whole Paycheck” dilemma, so that ordinary people start to feel that the “organic premium” is a worthwhile investment in terms of health and sustainability. And for the poor, we’re simply going to have to find ways to subsidize their organic food consumption by incorporating, for example, organic food into food stamp and nutrition programs, as well as school cafeterias.

Of course, if you add up the enormous hidden costs of non-organic foods and cheap junk fare – damage to public health, environmental destruction, greenhouse gas pollution, contaminated water, dead zones in the oceans, billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to chemical and GMO agribusiness – organic food is actually much cheaper. The problem however is that the average shopper doesn’t really understand this. Standing in the supermarket aisles or at the checkout counter, economically-stressed out Americans have only a limited amount of money to spend. What can they do?

On the website of the Organic Consumers Association, there are a number of articles on how to buy organic foods on a limited budget, but offering advice for budget organic shopping is not enough. The organic movement needs to step up its public education and advocacy work. Most importantly, we need to lead by example and show our families, friends, co-workers and neighbors what the Organic Alternative really means. To influence others and train a new generation of organic advocates we must walk our talk :

(1) Stay informed and motivated. Reading through the thousands of articles archived on the Organic Consumers Association website and other websites is a good way to inspire ourselves, to give us food for thought and communication. You can use the internal search engine on the OCA website to find the specific articles that fire you up, and then spread the word. http://www.OrganicConsumers.org

(2) Prioritize your time and money. Turn off the TV or computer, turn on the tunes, and head for the kitchen or the backyard garden. We need to show people how it’s possible and enjoyable to rearrange our daily routines to make healthy food and gardening a priority. We need to break free from consumer compulsions and cut back unnecessary expenditures in order to be able to afford more organic foods and ingredients.

(3) Do it ourselves or do it with friends and family. We can all learn or re-learn the joys of cooking at home and the satisfaction of sharing communal meals, potlucks, and picnics with our organic-minded friends. Americans spend half their food dollars eating out, which is often expensive and usually unhealthy. By eating out less often, we can afford to buy more organic foods to prepare at home and invite friends over for dinner. We can also set a good example by preparing healthy organic lunches for ourselves at work and for our children at school.

(4) Filter our water, grow veggies, and bake our own bread. By buying a home water filter (which will remove fluoride, chlorine and other toxins) and carrying a stainless steel canteen, we can show people that you don’t have to buy expensive drinking water in BPA-leaching plastic bottles. We can also show people, by example, that you can grow your own organic herbs, spices, and veggies, even if you just start with potted plants on your windowsills, rooftops, porches, or patios. Buying extra organic fruits and vegetables in season and learning the traditional arts of canning or preserving are a major step forward. With a bread-making machine or some lessons in kneading our own, all of us can enjoy organic bread and pastries every day for a fraction of the cost of chemical and GMO-tainted baked goods.

(5) Simplify your diet, eliminate waste, and reduce your intake of processed foods and animal products. We can all buy organic whole grains, beans, spices, herbal teas, and cereals in bulk and cook from scratch. Learning how to use a pressure cooker will save time, money, and energy, as will careful meal planning and creative use of leftovers. Americans typically throw out and waste one-third of their food. Get in the habit of looking for recipes on the Internet, or using cookbooks.

(6) Shop at farmer’s markets, consumer coops, or join a Community Supported Agriculture project in your area. This way you can get your organic fruits and vegetables at the most affordable prices. Also look for fruits and vegetables and other foods that are in “Transition” to organic. Start a home garden or join a community gardening project. Eat as many salads and raw foods as possible.

(7) Join or organize an organic and non-GMO wholesale discount food-buying club. This buying club might include just your household or combine the buying power of several households. OCA will be announcing a new national distribution system for organic discount food buying clubs next week. This buying club network will address the Whole Paycheck and Organic Food Desert problems by offering non-perishable organic and non-GMO foods at an average 30-40% discount off retail prices, delivered directly to your door.

Organic Food Deserts, Highways, and Byways

Most American restaurants – where people spend half of their food dollars – are, in effect, organic food deserts, offering little or no organic fare. The same goes for school and workplace cafeterias, hospitals, universities, hotels, motels, and convenience stores. The United States interstate highway system can only be described as one enormous organic food desert, where low-grade restaurant chains, big box stores, and fast food outlets dominate the landscape.

In the NPR poll cited above, a significant proportion (21%) of Americans say that organic foods are not readily available or accessible in their towns or neighborhoods. In effect, large areas of the U.S., including rural communities, small towns, and low-income urban communities are “organic food deserts” with little or no access to natural food stores or farmers markets. If we want to move organic food and farming from being a 4% niche to the norm, we’re going to have to “green” these deserts, but not the way Michele Obama has suggested, by bringing Wal-Mart stores into every urban community. Instead, to green America’s food deserts we need to “get political” and change public food policies. In the meantime, food buying clubs, CSAs, and co-ops can lay down the foundation for organic retail storefronts.

Who Will Grow the Organic Food of the Future?

We’ve got 25,000 organic farmers and ranchers working hard and, in many cases, starting to make a decent living across North America, but we need a million organic producers if we are to make organic foods readily accessible and more affordable for the majority of consumers. We’ve got eight million acres of U.S. cropland and pastureland under organic management – producing nutrient-dense, healthy food, enriching the soil, preventing erosion, and restoring the soil’s capacity to sequester billions of pounds of greenhouse gases, but this amounts to only 1% of agricultural acreage. We’ve got thousands of young farm apprentices working on organic farms and CSAs, but we need hundreds of thousands. We’ve got scores of organic farm schools, but we need thousands, one or more at least, in each of the 3200 counties in the U.S. We’ve got a handful of universities and high schools teaching students about organic farming and animal husbandry, but we need every school and college to offer these programs, starting with elementary school.

We’ve got a half a million budding backyard organic gardeners, but we need millions, and we need more and more backyard farmers to expand into market gardening or mini-farms. At the end of the Second World War, half of America’s fruits and vegetables (and 30% in the UK) were coming from backyard, school, and community gardens, tended by millions of women, seniors, and youth, called Liberty Gardens. In this era of climate change, Peak Oil, and food insecurity, we’re going to need to scale up our “grow your own” efforts exponentially, and turn 60 million acres of chemical-intensive, non-edible lawns into organic gardens, mini-farms, and orchards. We’re also going to have to build a Main Street to Manhattan grassroots infrastructure of greenhouses and hoop houses, root cellars, food buying clubs, and neighborhood canning facilities.

The Myth of So-Called “Natural” Foods and Products

One of the major reasons why organic food sales and the acreage of organic farmland are still relatively small is the fact that millions of consumers have been hoodwinked into believing that so-called “natural” foods are “almost organic.” Of course the advantage in the marketplace of these so-called “natural foods” is that they are considerably cheaper than organic foods. This is the main reason why Americans buy $50 billion worth of foods and grocery items every year that are marketed as “natural,” while only buying $30 billion worth of organic products. Several recent polls indicate that the majority of health and green-minded consumers don’t know the difference between “natural” or “all natural” and organic foods. If they did know the difference, we’d likely be looking at $80 billion worth of organic foods and products sold every year, not just $30 billion.

Walk down the aisles of any Whole Foods Market (WFM) or Trader Joe’s and look closely. What do you see? Row after row of attractively displayed, but mostly non-organic “natural” (i.e. conventional) foods and products. By marketing sleight of hand, these conventional foods, vitamins, private label items, and personal care products become “natural” or “almost organic” (and overpriced) in the natural food store setting. The overwhelming majority of WFM products, even their best-selling private label, “365” house brand, are not organic, but rather the products of chemical and energy-intensive farm and food production factories. Test these so-called natural products in a lab and what will you find: pesticide residues, Genetically Modified Organisms, and a long list of problematic chemicals. Trace these products back to the farm or factory and what will you find: climate destabilizing chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides, not to mention exploited farm workers and workers in the food processing industry. Of course there are many products in WFM and Trader Joe’s that bear the label “USDA Organic.” But the overwhelming majority of their products, even their best selling private labels, are not.

What does certified organic or “USDA Organic” mean? This means these products are certified 95-100% organic. Certified organic means the farmer or producer has undergone a regular inspection of its farm, facilities, ingredients, and practices by an independent Third Party certifier, accredited by the USDA National Organic Program (NOP). The producer has followed strict NOP regulations and maintained detailed records. Synthetic pesticides, animal drugs, sewage sludge, GMOs, irradiation, and chemical fertilizers are prohibited. Farm animals, soil, and crops have been managed organically; food can only be processed with certain methods; only allowed ingredients can be used.

On the other hand, what does “natural” really mean, in terms of farming practices, ingredients, and its impact on the environment and climate? To put it bluntly, “natural,” in the overwhelming majority of cases is meaningless, even though most consumers do not fully understand this. Natural, in other words, means conventional, with a green veneer. Natural products are routinely produced using pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, genetic engineering, and sewage sludge. Natural or conventional products – whether produce, dairy, or canned or frozen goods – are typically produced on large industrial farms or in processing plants that are highly polluting, chemical-intensive and energy-intensive. “Natural,” “all-natural,” and “sustainable,” products in most cases are neither backed up by rules and regulations, nor a Third Party certifier. Natural and sustainable are typically label claims that are neither policed nor monitored. (For an evaluation of eco-labels see the Consumers Union website). The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service provides loose, non-enforced guidelines for the use of the term “natural” on meat – basically the products cannot contain artificial flavors, coloring, or preservatives and cannot be more than minimally processed. On non-meat products, the term “natural” is typically pure propaganda.

The bottom line is that we must put our money and our principles where our values lie. Buy Certified Organic, not so-called natural products, today and everyday. And tell your retail grocer or co-op how you feel.

Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of the Organic Consumers Association.

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EPA knowingly allowed bee-killing pesticide onto the market

A leaked document from the EPA shows that the agency has knowingly allowed a highly toxic pesticide for bees, to be sold and used nationwide by Bayer, the third-largest producer of pesticides in the world.

Below is an except from Tom Philpott’s in-depth Grist.org article on the recent leak which came into the hands of a Colorado beekeeper.

“An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.”

Shocking is the clarity of their scientists language in the leaked study itself–

“Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis.”

Read the rest of this article.

 

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Food for a Rooted Future

Our search for rootedness has brought us back to the Philippines, back to communities in the south where Robin spent a year over three decades ago.

We spend time with the family of a rice farmer, Delia, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Delia, her husband Romulo, two daughters, one son, and three grandchildren live in a simple but roomy house on the edge of their rice field. Behind the house is a tilapia-filled fish pond with papaya trees growing on one side. A few pigs are housed by the fish pond, and fifteen chickens have free range of the property. Vitamin-rich greens grow at the far edge of the pond, and two towering jackfruit trees provide shade as well as ingredients for delicious meals. Theirs is an example of what we call a “rooted” life; among other things, they eat mainly what they grow and raise.

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Jacobs Farm/Del Cabo Win Appeal and $1 Million Damage Award Stands in Historic Pesticide Drift Case

California’s Sixth Appellate District Court upheld the right of Jacobs Farm/Del Cabo to sue Western Farm Service for damages caused four years ago when organophosphate residues moved via fog from nearby conventional vegetable fields onto Jacobs Farm organic herbs destined for Whole Foods.

This precedent-setting decision has significant ramifications for all organic farmers, nearby conventional farmers, and both the seed and biotechnology industries. In short, the court upheld the right of an organic farmer to sue and win damages to cover economic losses even when a conventional production input (in this case, insecticides) is applied legally and in accord with all requirements.

In short, when an applicator applies a pesticide, the applicator henceforth owns responsibility for any adverse impacts associated with the application. In many similar cases involving pesticide drift or off-target movement, applicators and/or farmers have successfully used the defence that they followed the label, and hence should not be held accountable.

The agrichemical industry hired top-notch attorneys and submitted amicus briefs before the appellate court in the hope of overturning the decision. They were unsuccessful, and must now decide whether to appeal the case to the California Supreme Court.

Source: Kurtis Alexander, “Appeals court: Organic farm can seek damages from pesticide company,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, December 22, 2010

 

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Study maps chemical residues in European children’s diets

• Pascale Santi
• Guardian Weekly, Tuesday 28 December 2010 14.00 GMT
• Article history

A study of food bought from a French supermarket, to form part of a balanced diet, showed an alarming number of chemical residues. Photograph: PAIn a single day, a 10-year-old child in Europe may be exposed throughfood to 128 chemical residues of 81 different substances. Forty-two of these substances are classified as “possibly or probably carcinogens“, and five as “certainly carcinogens”. No fewer than 37 substances areendocrine disruptors (ED).

This is the conclusion of a study published this month by a partnership of environmental groups based in France and Belgium: Générations Futures, the Health and Environment Alliance (Heal), Réseau Environnement Santé (RES) and WWF-France. The authors of the study bought food in supermarkets in Oise, north of Paris, and in the French capital, sufficient to give a typical 10-year-old three meals a day and a snack. The food was not organic but was consistent with a balanced diet.

The authors then asked independent laboratories to analyse the food, checking for possible residues of pesticides, dioxins, heavy metals,plasticisers (phthalates, bisphenol A or perfluorinated compounds [PFC]) and for food additives.

Read the rest of this article.

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USDA Recommends “Coexistence” with Monsanto: We Say Hell No!

“If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.”
Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994

“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 FDA’s job.”
Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998

After 16 years of non-stop biotech bullying and force-feeding Genetically Engineered or Modified (GE or GM) crops to farm animals and “Frankenfoods” to unwitting consumers, Monsanto has a big problem, or rather several big problems. A growing number of published scientific studies indicate that GE foods pose serious human health threats. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) recently stated that “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. The AAEM advises consumers to avoid GM foods. Before the FDA arbitrarily decided to allow Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) into food products in 1994, FDA scientists had repeatedly warned that GM foods can set off serious, hard-to-detect side effects, including allergies, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged long-term safety studies, but were ignored.

Federal judges are finally starting to acknowledge what organic farmers and consumers have said all along: uncontrollable and unpredictable GMO crops such as alfalfa and sugar beets spread their mutant genes onto organic farms and into non-GMO varieties and plant relatives, and should be halted.

Read the rest of this article.

 

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WikiLeaks: US Ambassador Planned “Retaliation” Against France Over Ban on Monsanto Corn

The former United States ambassador to France suggested “moving to retaliation” against France and the European Union (EU) in late 2007 to fight a French ban on Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) corn and changes in European policy toward biotech crops, according to a cable released by WikiLeaks on Sunday.

Former Ambassador Craig Stapleton was concerned about France’s decision to suspend cultivation of Monsanto’s MON-810 corn and warned that a new French environmental review standard could spread anti-biotech policy across the EU.

“Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits,” Stapleton wrote to diplomatic colleagues.

President George W. Bush appointed Stapleton as ambassador to France in 2005, and in 2009, Stapleton left the office and became an owner of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. Bush and Stapleton co-owned the Texas Rangers during the 1990s.

Monsanto is based in St. Louis.

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