For many years big agro has treated the world's health as an economic externality, a problem for somebody else that did not affect its own bottom line. That is starting to change, most recently in Argentina.
In a developing news piece just unleashed by a courthouse news wire, Monsanto is being brought to court by dozens of Argentinean tobacco farmers who say that the biotech giant knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children. The farmers are now suing not only Monsanto on behalf of their children, but many big tobacco giants as well. The birth defects that the farmers say occurred as a result are many, and include cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness.
But this is once again far away in a small country of which we know nothing, right? Wrong:
The farmers come from small family-owned farms in Misiones Province and sell their tobacco to many United States distributors. The family farmers say that major tobacco companies like the Philip Morris company asked them to use Monsanto's herbicides and pesticides, assuring them that the products were safe. Through asserting that the toxic chemicals were safe, the farmers state in their claim that the tobacco companies ”wrongfully caused the parental and infant plaintiffs to be exposed to those chemicals and substances which they both knew, or should have known, would cause the infant offspring of the parental plaintiffs to be born with devastating birth defects.”
Still, it must be some obscure poison only sold in the third world, right?
Wrong:
The majority of the farmers in the area used Monsanto's Roundup, an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate that has shown to be killing human kidney cells. What's more, the farmers say that the tobacco companies pushed Monsanto's Roundup on the farmers despite a lack of protective equipment. In other words, these farmers — many in dire economic conditions — were being directly exposed to Roundup in large concentrations without any protective gear (or even experience or skills in handling the substance). Still, the farmers say the tobacco giants required the struggling farmers to ‘purchase excessive quantities of Roundup and other pesticides’.
That would be the same Roundup that farmers use around here all the time, without protective equipment. The Roundup we already knew was
First, the company had been selling Roundup for years without any
problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the company's
scientists had just spent more than a decade, and many millions of
dollars, trying to create the Roundup-resistant plants that they
desperately wanted — soybeans and cotton and corn. It had been
incredibly difficult. When I interviewed former Monsanto scientists
for my book on biotech crops, one of them called it the company's
"Manhattan Project."
Considering how hard it had been to create those crops, "the
thinking was, it would be really difficult for weeds to become
tolerant" to Roundup, says Rick Cole, who is now responsible for
Monsanto's efforts to deal with the problem of resistant weeds.
So they thought small scale would be the same as saturating
90+% of every corn, soybean, peanut, and cotton field in the U.S.
and numerous other countries with virulent poisons.
Because they wanted the money.
“We were very much surprised by our findings. Until now, it
has been thought almost impossible for Bt proteins to be toxic to
human cells. Now further investigations have to be conducted to find
out how these toxins impact the cells and if combinatorial effects
with other compounds in the food and feed chain have to be taken
into account,” says Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University
of Caen, who supervised the experiments. “In conclusion, these
experiments show that the risks of Bt toxins and of Roundup have
been underestimated.”
The toxicity of the corn itself may have been a surprise,
but not that of Roundup:
These findings are in accordance with several other investigations
highlighting unexpected health risks associated with glyphosate
preparations.
Previous studies,
including ones by Dr. Séralini,
already showed exposure to glysophate (the active ingredient in Roundup)
to be "a risk factor for developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma",
and to be toxic to human umbilical, placental, and placental cells with a
that
"is far below agricultural recommendations and corresponds to low levels
of residues in food or feed."
In Argentina,
Prof. Andrés Carrasco has demonstrated birth defects in amphibians
and there is increasing evidence of human birth defects.
Now we have even more hard evidence of the toxicity of Monsanto's GM corn
and of Monsanto's Roundup.
The journal article
is available through Wiley online.
A recent study conducted by a German university found very high
concentrations of Glyphosate, a carcinogenic chemical found in
herbicides like Monsanto's Roundup, in all urine samples tested. The
amount of glyphosate found in the urine was staggering, with each
sample containing concentrations at 5 to 20-fold the limit
established for drinking water.
So, we now know what
pesticides are doing to bees.
What are they doing to humans?
Well, we know that, too:
lower IQ in children, organ disruption, miscarriages, birth defects, and
infertility.
Conventional farmers use chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels.
Then they mess with the dirt to make the plants grow.
They do this because they've stripped the soil from all nutrients
from growing the same crop over and over again.
Next more harmful chemicals are sprayed on fruits and vegetables.
Like pesticides and herbicides to kill weeds and bugs.
When it rains, these chemicals seep into the ground,
or rise into our waterways, poisoning our water, too.
His personal goal:
A while back, I wanted to be an NFL footall player.
I decided I'd rather be an organic farmer instead.
[applause]
That way I can have a greater impact on the world.
He's got a turn of phrase:
We can either pay the farmer, or we can pay the hospital.
Huber was unavailable to respond to media inquiries in the weeks following
the leak, and thus unable to defend himself when several colleagues
from Purdue publicly claiming to refute his accusations about Monsanto's
widely used herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) and Roundup Ready crops. When
his letter was finally acknowledged by the mainstream media, it was
with titles like "Scientists Question Claims in Biotech Letter," noting
that the letter's popularity on the internet "has raised concern among
scientists that the public will believe his unsupported claim is true."
Now, Huber has finally spoken out, both in a second letter, sent to "a
wide number of individuals worldwide" to explain and back up his claims
from his first letter, and in interviews. While his first letter described
research that was not yet complete or published, his second letter cited
much more evidence about glyphosate and genetically engineered crops based
on studies that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Many if not most pesticides are sprayed on crops genetically modified
to resist them. Ban GM crops and reduce spraying. Two states in Mexico
prove it can be done. Mexico, the country where corn was originally
domesticated could lead the way back to healthy agriculture.
The Mexican States of Tlaxcala and Michoacán each passed legislation
banning the planting of genetically modified corn to protect natural
plants from further contamination of transgenes. Together, both states
produce about a third of all of Mexico’s corn. Below this story is a
detailed timeline of genetic contamination and legislation in Mexico.
The timeline is a long saga including intimidation of scientists
attempting to research the problem.
The Mexican federal government caved in to big agro,
but two Mexican states are fighting back anyway.
It's not just the pesticides, it's the crops themselves.
Gilles-Eric Séralini and colleagues surveyed the state
of research and found
GMOs Linked to Organ Disruption in 19 Studies,
as Jeffrey Smith reports for the Institute for Responsible Technology.
...consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant
organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys.
...9% of the measured parameters, including
blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses
(histopathology), were significantly disrupted in the GM-fed animals. The
kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver
of females followed, with 30.8%. The report, published in Environmental
Sciences Europe on March 1, 2011, confirms that "several convergent
data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO
diet effects." The authors point out that livers and kidneys "are
the major reactive organs" in cases of chronic food toxicity.
And these were the corn and soybeans that people eat.
There are only two applications that have been commercialized
in these twenty years of genetic engineering.
One is to make seeds more resilient to herbicides,
which means you get to spread more Roundup,
you get to spread more Glysophate,
and you get to spread more poison.
Not a very desirable trait in farming systems.
Especially since what Monsanto will call weeds
are ultimately sources of food.
It gets even better from there.
These are illusions that are being marketed
in order for people to hand over the power to decide what we eat
to a handful of corporations.
The documentary points out many products in German stores that
include GM soy.
In Argentina, it's even worse, with increasing numbers of birth defects.
They interview
Prof. Andrés Carrasco about his research on amphibians:
"The hemispheres do not separate, like you can see here.
If you look closely you can see one brain.
Glyphosate can cause this kind of mechanisms, for it is an enzymatic toxin."
"To human cells glyphosate is already toxic in a very low dose.
A farmer uses a much higher dose on the field.
Roundup is even more toxic than glysophate,
for that is only one of the ingredients in Roundup."
Roundup says none of this applies to humans and Roundup is safe.
Seralini
says:
Who should you believe?
A corporation repeatedly convicted of deception,
or scientists who say that GM crops
cause liver and kidney damage in animals,
according to research using Monsanto's own data.
courthouse news wire, Monsanto is being brought to court by dozens of Argentinean tobacco farmers who say that the biotech giant knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children. The farmers are now suing not only Monsanto on behalf of their children, but many big tobacco giants as well. The birth defects that the farmers say occurred as a result are many, and include cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness.
The majority of the farmers in the area used Monsanto's Roundup, an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate that has shown to be killing human kidney cells. What's more, the farmers say that the tobacco companies pushed Monsanto's Roundup on the farmers despite a lack of protective equipment. In other words, these farmers — many in dire economic conditions — were being directly exposed to Roundup in large concentrations without any protective gear (or even experience or skills in handling the substance). Still, the farmers say the tobacco giants required the struggling farmers to ‘purchase excessive quantities of Roundup and other pesticides’.
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