GMO “Colateral Damage”: Food Soaked With Toxicity

GMO “Colateral Damage”: Food Soaked With Toxicity


While watching Gary Null’s documentary ‘GMOs Ticking Time
Bomb’, I was reminded of a run-in that I had with a transnational
agribusiness concern in India a couple of years back. It sent a popular
Indian newspaper a three page letter complaining about an article that I
had written and which had appeared as the main piece on the edit page
the day before. Claiming the article had done them ‘a lot of damage’ (as
if the company itself had not been the master of self-inflicted damage
due to its own criminal practices over the decades!), I in turn
responded to them with a four page letter.

The company had wasted little time in going through the points I had
made in the piece by contacting the editor and emailing me ‘telling’ me
to phone a certain number so I could discuss the article with them.
Arrogance comes naturally to certain corporations.



I had described in the original article how the company in question
had in the past been responsible for manufacturing polychlorinated
biphenols that cause cancer, dioxins that lead to chloracne, GM bovine
growth hormone that produces mastitis in cattle and genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) containing insect toxins, including GM corn, GM soya
and Bt cotton, which are strongly associated with a range of health
hazards. I further noted that it had also been involved in producing
Agent Orange that the US dropped on Vietnam to destroy jungle and
consequently led to mass death, disease and deformities. In June 2001,
adding insult to injury, the company was accused by farmers in Vietnam’s
Ninh Thuan province of pressuring them to use genetically modified
seeds that resulted in corn and maize crop failures and economic ruin.
One other point that I had mentioned was that the corporation had bribed
scores of government officials in Asia to have its Bt cotton released
without an environmental risk assessment.



I had also stated in the piece that the Navdanya organisation in
India had found Bt-cotton had significantly reduced vital soil enzymes
and bacteria, so much so that within a decade of planting GM cotton, or
any GM crop with Bt genes, the destruction of soil organisms could be
complete, resulting in dead soil unable to produce food.



The two representatives from the company’s offices in India who
complained about the article attacked it on a number of points. In the
piece, I had referred to a certain pesticide produced by it as being
‘controversial’. I was informed that it has been proved to be completely
safe. I was also informed that many of the claims pertaining to the
health hazards concerning their other products had not been conclusively
proven. Of course, little was said about the ‘irony’ of now trying to
bring GMOs to Vietnam, a country still reeling from the health effects
of the company’s last poisonous incursion via Agent Orange.



How does this company deem something to be safe? It says it is;
therefore it is. And because it has infiltrated the US government, not
least the Food and Drug Administration, what it says in terms of food
policy, goes. But, of course, it can always refer to its own ‘research’
to back up its claims!



The second most laughable part of the three page letter sent to the
newspaper was the criticism of Navdanya’s research which claimed that
Bt-cotton destroys soil organisms. The company was quick to jump on this
research for being methodologically unsound. This from a company with a
track record of dubious research. And I am being extremely benign by
using the word ‘dubious’.



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.



Gilles-Eric Seralini, professor of molecular biology at
the University of Caen in France, says it is absurd that only three
months of testing allowed GM corn to be approved in over a dozen
nations. Upon reviewing the raw ‘research’ data of the agribusiness that
produced the GM corn, he and his team found, among other problems,
liver damage and physiological changes into a pre-diabetic condition
among the rats which had eaten it. And that’s just from three months of
eating such food!



But who cares about science when strong arm tactics suffice? With
threats of lawsuits and UK government pressure, top research scientist
Dr Arpad Pusztai was effectively silenced over his research and comments
concerning the dangers of GM food. He was fired from his job and a
campaign was set in motion to destroy his reputation in order to protect
the reputation of biotechnology. In a similar vein, 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.



The outcome in India has been deals between the Indian government and
the US tied to opening up the agriculture sector to western
agribusiness. As a result, 250,000 heavily indebted farmers have
committed suicide, mainly in the cotton belt, where farmers planted GM
cotton and could not afford the input overheads for this
water-intensive, chemical-intensive crop, which has to be bought
annually thanks to the ‘wonders’ of profiteering terminator seed
technology.



What next? Getting the sterile/infertility inducing epicyte gene
(which powerful agribusiness concerns now own) into foodstuffs in India
in order to implement population control through the back door?



And all of this because the US Government will not back away from a
strategy it adopted some years ago. Jeffrey M Smith, Execute Director
for the Institute for Responsible Technology notes that US fast tracked
the GM industry because it thought it would increase exports and
dominate world supply. The opposite happened:Russia, China and the EU
were not the pushovers US agribusiness had hoped they would be. So
the US government spent three to five billion dollars a year to prop up
the prices of a product no one wanted. Instead of admitting it was a
failure, the US has been trying to open up markets by bullying foreign
governments. Smith rightly says that the subsidy is stealing money away
from other investing in organic agriculture.



I say the second most laughable part of the letter from the company
that complained to the newspaper was the bit about attacking Navdanya’s
research. The top prize for laughter went to it informing me that it had
paid the fines resulting from the illegal cases pertaining to bribery
in Asia. Such high mindedness, such morality, such a belief in the rule
of law. Well done!



This from a company that has in the past told us that certain of its
products were completely safe but was then convicted of poisoning the
people in the town next to its factory in the US.



Under capitalism, the aim of companies is to make money, to maximise
profit for shareholders. According to Professor Colin Campbell
of Cornell University, any safety requirements are secondary concerns,
if they are concerns at all. Therefore, in a democratic society, we
expect the state to take care of these concerns on our behalf. But how
can it when the US government, especially over the past two decades, has
become a subsidiary of agribusiness corporations by acting on their
behalf? In the US, via its control of the FDA and other federal
regulatory agencies, agribusiness is effectively in charge, telling the
public that their GMOs are safe.



But who in the world can believe this from certain players with a
track records of deceit and criminality? Who can believe this when the
revolving door between government bodies and top corporate officials
leads to policy being formed on behalf of corporate self interest?



These are not just questions that are pertinent to the good people of
the US. Given the power and reach of Bayer, Du Pont, Syngenta, Dow
Chemicals and Monsanto via their proxy, the US government, it is just as
pertinent to people elsewhere. 250,000 Indian farmers and their
families have already found this out to their cost. While the debate
in India concerning GM food rages on, the government has so far not let
GM foods into the market. Let’s hope for the sake of the population at
large, it never will. Food security and sovereignty in places
like India are not reliant on GM foods. Quite the opposite in fact (see http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117810358528978.html)




Source:-
http://www.globalresearch.ca/agribusiness-colateral-damage-gmo-food-soaked-with-toxicity/5308221