Cancer of Corruption, Seeds of Destruction

Cancer of Corruption, Seeds of Destruction: The Monsanto GMO Whitewash

By F. William Engdahl

Global Research, December 19, 2012 - Region: Europe

Theme: Biotechnology and GMO, Science and Medicine


Because of the power vested in the EU Commission in Brussels,
Belgium, with command over a space encompassing 27 nations with more
than 500 million citizens and the largest nominal world gross domestic
product (GDP) of 18 trillion US dollars, it’s perhaps no surprise in
this era of moral promiscuity that powerful private lobby groups such as
the tobacco industry, the drug lobby, the agribusiness lobby and
countless others spend enormous sums of money and other favors—legal and
sometimes illegal—to influence policy decisions of the EU Commission.

This revolving door of corrupt ties between powerful private
industry lobby groups and the EU Commission was in full view recently
with the ruling of the European Food Safety Administration (EFSA) trying
to discredit serious scientific tests about the deadly effects of a
variety of Monsanto GMO corn.

Cancer of Corruption

In September 2012, Food and Chemical Toxicology, a serious
international scientific journal, released a study by a team of
scientists at France’s Caen University led by Professor Gilles-Eric
Seralini. Before publication the Seralini study had been reviewed over a
four-month period by a qualified group of scientific peers for its
methodology and was deemed publishable.

It was no amateur undertaking. The scientists at Caen made
carefully-documented results of tests on a group of 200 rats over a
two-year life span, basically with one group of non-GMO fed rats, a
so-called control group, and the other a group of GMO-fed rats.

Significantly, following a long but finally successful legal battle
to force Monsanto to release the details of its own study of the safety
of its own NK603 maize (corn), Seralini and colleagues reproduced a 2004
Monsanto study published in the same journal and used by the European
Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for its 2009 positive evaluation of NK603.

Seralini’s group based their experiment on the same protocol as the
Monsanto study but, critically, were testing more parameters more
frequently. And the rats were studied for much longer—their full two
year average life-time instead of just 90 days in the Monsanto study.
The long time span proved critical. The first tumors only appeared 4 to7
months into the study. In industry’s earlier 90-day study on the same
GMO maize Monsanto NK603, signs of toxicity were seen but were dismissed
as “not biologically meaningful” by industry and EFSA alike. It seems
they were indeed very biologically meaningful.

The study was also done with the highest number of rats ever measured
in a standard GMO diet study. They tested also “for the first time 3
doses (rather than two in the usual 90 day long protocols) of the
Roundup-tolerant NK603 GMO maize alone, the GMO maize treated with
Roundup, and Roundup alone at very low environmentally relevant doses
starting below the range of levels permitted by regulatory authorities
in drinking water and in GM feed.” [1]

Their findings were more than alarming. The Seralini study concluded,
“In females, all treated groups died 2–3 times more than controls, and
more rapidly. This difference was visible in 3 male groups fed
GMOs…Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often
than and before controls; the pituitary was the second most disabled
organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup
treatments. In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were
2.5–5.5 times higher. This pathology was confirmed by optic and
transmission electron microscopy. Marked and severe kidney nephropathies
were also generally 1.3–2.3 greater. Males presented 4 times more large
palpable tumors than controls…” [2]

Four times meant four hundred percent more large tumors in GMO fed
rats than in normally fed ones of the control group. Because rats are
mammals, their systems should react to chemicals or, in this case GMO
corn treated with Monsanto Roundup chemical herbicide, in a similar way
to those of a human test subject. [3]

In
their study the Seralini group further reported, “By the beginning of
the 24th month, 50–80% of female animals had developed tumors in all
treated groups, with up to 3 tumors per animal, whereas only 30% of
controls [non-GMO-fed—w.e.] were affected. The Roundup
treatment groups showed the greatest rates of tumor incidence with 80%
of animals affected with up to 3 tumors for one female, in each group.” [4]

Such alarming results had not yet become evident in the first 90
days, the length of most all Monsanto and agrichemical industry tests to
date, a clear demonstration of how important it was to conduct
longer-term tests and apparently why the industry avoided the longer
tests.

Seralini and associates continued to document their alarming
findings: “We observed a strikingly marked induction of mammary tumors
by R (Roundup) alone, a major formulated pesticide, even at the very
lowest dose administered. R has been shown to disrupt aromatase which
synthesizes estrogens (Richard et al., 2005), but to also interfere with
estrogen and androgen receptors in cells (Gasnier et al., 2009). In
addition, R appears to be a sex endocrine disruptor in vivo, also in
males (Romano et al., 2010). Sex steroids are also modified in treated
rats. These hormone-dependent phenomena are confirmed by enhanced
pituitary dysfunction in treated females.” [5]

Roundup herbicide, by terms of the license contract with Monsanto,
must be used on Monsanto GMO seeds. The seeds are in fact genetically
“modified” only to resist the weed-killing effect of Monsanto’s own
Roundup, the world’s largest-selling weed-killer.

In plain language, as another scientific study led by Prof. Seralini
noted, “GMO plants have been modified to contain pesticides, either
through herbicide tolerance or by producing insecticides, or both, and
could therefore be considered as ‘pesticide plants’” [6]

Further, “Roundup Ready crops [such as Monsanto NK603 maize-w.e.]
have been modified in order to become insensitive to glyphosate. This
chemical, together with adjuvants in formulations, constitutes a potent
herbicide. It has been used for many years as a weed killer…GMO plants
exposed to glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup…can even
accumulate Roundup residues throughout their life…Glyphosate and its
main metabolite AMPA (with its own toxicity) are found in GMOs on a
regular and regulatory basis. Therefore, such residues are absorbed by
people eating most GMO plants (as around 80% of these plants are Roundup
tolerant).” [7]

Suspiciously enough, Monsanto had repeatedly refused scientific
requests to publish the exact chemicals used in its Roundup aside from
one—glyphosate. They argued that it was a “trade secret.” Independent
analyses by scientists indicated, however, that the combination of
glyphosate with Monsanto’s “mystery” added chemicals created a highly
toxic cocktail that was shown to toxically affect human embryo cells in
doses far lower than used in agriculture.[8]



What was more than alarming in the context of Seralini’s first
long-term independent study of the effects of a GMO diet on rats was
that it took place some twenty years after US President George H.W. Bush
gave the commercial release of GMO seeds the green light and mandated
no government safety tests before release. Bush did so following a
closed-door meeting with top officials of Monsanto Corporation, the
world’s largest GMO concern.

The US President decreed then that GMO seeds were to be permitted in
the United States with not one single independent precautionary
government test to determine if they were safe for human or animal
consumption. It became known as the Doctrine of Substantial Equivalence.
The EU Commission dutifully aped the US Substantial Equivalence
Doctrine of “hear no bad effects, see no bad effects…hear no evil, see
no evil.”

EFSA ‘science’ exposed

What the Seralini study has set off has been the scientific
equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. It exposed the fact that the EU
“scientific” controls on GMO were nothing other than accepting without
question the tests given them by the GMO companies themselves. As far as
the irresponsible bureaucrats of the EU Commission were concerned, when
it came to GMO, the Monsanto fox could indeed “guard the hen house.”

Suddenly, with worldwide attention to the new Seralini results,
clearly the EU Commission and its EFSA was under fire as never in their
history and how they reacted was worthy of a bad copy of an Agatha
Christie murder novel. Only it was no novel but a real-life conspiracy
that evidently involved some form of collusion between Monsanto and the
GMO agrichemical cartel, EU commissioners, the GMO panel members of
EFSA, complacent major media and several member governments of the EU,
including Spain and Holland.

The Brussels EU scientific food regulatory organization, EFSA, was
under the gun from the damning results of the long-term Seralini study.
EFSA had recommended approval of Monsanto’s NK603 Roundup-tolerant maize
in 2009 without first conducting or insuring any independent testing.
They admitted in their official journal that they relied on “information
supplied by the applicant (Monsanto), the scientific comments submitted
by Member States and the report of the Spanish Competent Authority and
its Biosafety Commission.” EFSA also admitted that the Monsanto tests on
rats were for only 90 days. Seralini’s group noted that the massive
toxic effects and deaths of GMO-fed rats took place well after 90 days, a
reason why longer-term studied were obviously warranted. [9]

The Spanish report cited by EFSA was itself hardly convincing and was
anything but independent. It stated, “according to the current state of
scientific knowledge and after examining the existing information and
data provided by the Monsanto Company, the Spanish Commission on
Biosafety could give a favorable opinion to the commercialization in the
EU of maize NK603…” And the scientific comments submitted by Member
States seemed to include Spain and Holland which applied to license the
Monsanto seed in the first place. [10]

The EFSA concluded at the time of its approval in 2009 that, “the molecular data provided [by Monsanto-w.e.]
are sufficient and do not raise a safety concern.” The Brussels
scientific panel further declared amid scientific-sounding verbiage
that, “The EFSA GMO Panel is of the opinion that maize NK603 is as safe
as conventional maize. Maize NK603 and derived products are unlikely to
have any adverse effect on human and animal health in the context of the
intended uses.” [11]

Now, in September 2012, three years after the commercial introduction
of Monsanto GMO maize in the EU, Seralini showed, complete with ghastly
photos, that Monsanto’s GMO maize demonstrably caused severe rates of
cancerous tumors and early death in rats.

The EU Commission in Brussels had guidelines that were as revealing
for what they did not say as for what they did say about what
precautions are taken to insure public health and safety from exposure
to GMO plants and their paired toxic herbicides: “Toxicological
assessments on test animals are not explicitly required for the approval
of a new food in the EU or the US. Independent experts have decided
that in some cases, chemical analyses of the food’s makeup are enough to
indicate that the new GMO is substantially equivalent to its
traditional counterpart…In recent years, biotech companies have tested
their transgenic products (maize, soy, tomato) before introducing them
to the market on several different animals over the course of up to 90
days. Negative effects have not yet been observed.” [12]

Because of US Government arm-twisting and of the obviously powerful
lobby power of the Monsanto-led GMO agrichemical lobby in the US and EU,
as of the time of the Seralini study, no regulatory authority in the
world had requested mandatory chronic animal feeding studies to be
performed for edible GMOs and formulated pesticides. The only studies
available were a tiny handful of 90 day rat feeding trials carried out
by the biotech industry and no studies longer than that, apparently on
the principle that conflict of interest in an area as important as the
safety of food should not be taken as a serious matter.

Revealingly, the EU stated publicly their seemingly reassuring
policy: “GMO critics claim that feeding studies with authorized GMOs
have revealed negative health effects. Such claims have not been based
on peer-reviewed, scientifically accepted evaluations. If reliable,
scientific studies were to indicate any type of health risk, the
respective GMO would not receive authorization.” [13] That was the EU official line until the 2012 Seralini bomb exploded in their faces.

EU Commission deception, coverup

The
September 2012 Seralini study was peer-reviewed, and it was published
in a highly respected international scientific journal after such
review. What was the response of the EU Commission and the EFSA? Nothing
short of fraudulent deception and coverup of their corruption by the
Monsanto GMO lobby.

On November 28, 2012, only a few weeks after the study was published,
EFSA in Brussels issued a press release with the following conclusion:
“Serious defects in the design and methodology of a paper by Séralini et
al. mean it does not meet acceptable scientific standards and there is
no need to re-examine previous safety evaluations of genetically
modified maize NK603.” Per Bergman, who led EFSA’s work, said: “EFSA’s
analysis has shown that deficiencies in the Séralini et al. paper mean
it is of insufficient scientific quality for risk assessment. We believe
the completion of this evaluation process has brought clarity to the
issue.” [14] Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

At the very minimum, the precautionary principle in instances
involving even the potential for grave damage to the human population
would mandate that the EU Commission and its EFSA should order immediate
further serious, independent long-term studies to prove or disprove the
results of the Seralini tests. That refusal to re-examine its earlier
decision to approve Monsanto GMO maize, no matter what flaws might or
might not have been in the Seralini study, suggested the EFSA might be
trying to cover for the GMO agrichemical lobby at the very least.

Instead of clarity, the EFSA statement once more fed EFSA critics who
had long argued that the scientists on EFSA’s GMO Panel had blatant
conflicts of interest with the very GMO lobby they were supposed to
regulate. Corporate Europe Observer, an independent EU corporate
watchdog group noted about the EFSA response, “EFSA failed to properly
and transparently appoint a panel of scientists beyond any suspicion of
conflict of interests; and it failed to appreciate that meeting with
Europe’s largest biotech industry lobby group to discuss GMO risk
assessment guidelines in the very middle of a EU review undermines its
credibility.” [15]

More damaging for the shoddy EFSA coverup on behalf of Monsanto was
the fact 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 authorization, had conflicts of interests with
the biotech industry.[16]

A report by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) found that more than
half of the GMO panel experts who signed the approval had conflicts of
interest.

The conflicts ranged from receiving research funding from the biotech
industry, being a member or collaborator in a pro-biotech industry
association, to writing or reviewing industry-sponsored publications.
Some conflicts revealed a conflict of scientific interests, with some
panel members involved in working on the creation of transgenic plants –
including potatoes – with antibiotic-resistant marker genes – including
nptII.[17]

Secondly, although none of EFSA’s GMO panel members were medical
experts in the use of antibiotics in human medicine, they decided that
neomycin and kanamycin were antibiotics with “no or only minor
therapeutic relevance”. The World Health Organisation (WHO) classified
these antibiotics as “critically important” in 2005.

Dutch scientist Harry Kuiper, chair of the EFSA GMO panel who had
close links to the biotech industry, played a key role in the framing of
this disputed key scientific advice.

Kuiper himself is an open advocate of less controls on GMO seed
proliferation in the EU. He has led the EFSA GMO panel since 2003,
during which time EFSA went from no GMO approvals to 38 GMO seeds
approved for human consumption. The criteria for approval were developed
by Kuiper for EFSA in cooperation with Monsanto and the GMO industry
and a Monsanto pseudo-scientific front group called ILSI, the
Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute, between 2001 and
2003. The board of the noble-sounding ILSI in 2011 was comprised of
senior people from Monsanto, ADM (one of the world’s biggest purveyors
of GMO soybeans and corn), Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods (major proponent of
GMO in foods) and Nestle, another giant GMO food industry user. [18]

One critic of the blatant conflict of interest in having the top EU
food safety regulator in bed with the industry whose practices he is
mandated to objectively assess noted, “During that period, Harry Kuiper
and Gijes Kleter (both members of the EFSA GMO Panel) were active within
the ILSI Task Force as experts and as authors of the relevant
scientific publications. It is a scandal that Kuiper has remained as
Chair of EFSA’s GMO Panel since 2003, and that he is still Chair in
spite of the massive criticism directed at the Panel from NGOs and even
from the Commission and EU member states.” [19]

The brazen conflicts of interest between Monsanto and the
agribusiness lobby and the EFSA went further. In May 2012 Professor
Diána Bánáti was forced to resign as Chairman of the EFSA Management
Board when it was learned she planned to take up a professional position
at the Monsanto-backed International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) in
Washington. The same Diána Bánáti had been forced to resign, not as EFSA
chairman but as a simultaneous Board Member of ILSI in 2010. Public
interest groups made calls for her to resign from EFSA but to no avail. [20]
At ILSI she will be able to use expertise and contacts gained from
working for the EFSA to help GMO companies like Monsanto and other food
industry companies influence policy across the world.

In sum, it came as no surprise to those familiar with the notorious
“revolving door” in Brussels between the GMO industry and the regulatory
body entrusted with making independent decisions on the risks of GMO in
the EU, that EFSA condemned the Seralini study results. Most telling
however of the brazen pro-GMO industry bias of EFSA’s GMO Panel members
was the fact that the final ruling statement by the EFSA GMO Panel
reviewing Seralini’s results announced, “Serious defects in the design
and methodology of a paper by Séralini et al. mean it does not meet
acceptable scientific standards and there is no need to re-examine
previous safety evaluations of genetically modified maize NK603.” [21]

The EFSA is not the only source of blatant and reckless pro-GMO
sentiment in Brussels. Some weeks before release of the embarrassing
Seralini study, Anne Glover, chief scientific adviser of the EU
Commission, said in an interview on 24 July, 2012, “There is no
substantiated case of any adverse impact on human health, animal health
or environmental health, so that’s pretty robust evidence, and I would
be confident in saying that there is no more risk in eating GMO food
than eating conventionally farmed food.” She added that the
precautionary principle also no longer applies, which means the EU
should not err on the side of caution on the approval of GMOs.[22]

Were there any pretense of scientific responsibility in the clearly
corrupt EFSA panel, or Professor Glover’s office, they would have
immediately called for multiple, independent similar long-term rat
studies to confirm or disprove the Seralini results. They and the
Monsanto GMO lobby influencing them clearly had no desire to do anything
but try to slander the Seralini group with vague accusations and hope
the obedient international media would take the headline and close the
embarrassing story. It was typical of the entire history of the spread
of patented GMO seeds and paired toxic herbicides like Roundup.


Source:-
http://www.globalresearch.ca/stench-of-eu-corruption-in-monsanto-gmo-whitewash/5316294