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Check out the Institute for Responsible Technology. They have a pretty good non GMO shopping Guide.
Nothing dramatically new there. The basic four tips are pretty common:
- Buy Organic (or Local whenever you can). Organic growers are not allowed to use GMOs
- Look for non GMO labels on products
- Avoid at Risk ingredients (like Corn, Soybeans, Canola, Cotton seeds, etc
- Buy products on their Non-GMO Shopping Guide
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I watched the movie Gasland last week on HBO.
This is yet another eye opening feature on the impact that man has on Nature and something as basic as having safe drinking water. Until now I was not really into buying drinking water when we have “decent” tap water to drink. I mean when you think of all the carbon footprint and the impact of purchasing something as basic as drinking water, it does not really make sense.Until now, we had been using a filter to drink our NYC tap water (until now…)
The movie explains the impact that the method used to extract natural gas (“Hydraulic Fracturing”) has on our drinking water supply:
Hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well.
Horizontal hydrofracking is a means of tapping shale deposits containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by conventional drilling. Vertical hydrofracking is used to extend the life of an existing well once its productivity starts to run out, sort of a last resort. Horizontal fracking differs in that it uses a mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of gallons of water per frack. This water then becomes contaminated and must be cleaned and disposed of.
For more information on fracking, check out the Gasland FAQ web site here
After looking at this movie, you are really starting to question:
1) how safe is our drinking water (who has never had “funny” tasting tap water???)
2) what are some people thinking and how far would people go to make money?
I wish this types of movies would be shown on regular cable and not only on HBO. I think this is important information that should be shared and passed around. Once again, people: Education is key. Educate yourselves and educate the people around you. We can make a difference.
Check out Gasland’s web site and pass it around. They have some petitions on the site that can be sent to our local officials to try to prevent gas companies from starting to drill gas wells around the NYC reservoirs. It is not too late but everyone needs to make their voice heard. You can contact your local elected officials right here.
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I saw the movie “Food Inc” again recently on PBS and I can not recommend it enough. This movie should be on every gift list. While the movie is rather scary during the first 2/3, the overall message is one of Hope.
Most of the movie talks about the scary state of the food industry in the US, how “processed food” sold in US supermarkets seems more and more like “food to avoid” at all costs:
- from burger meat washed in Ammonia to remove e-Coli germs (yes yes you read right),
- to corn being produced so cheaply to force feed the cattle industry that it is now being used in virtually 90% of all processed food in the US,
- not to forget Monsanto’s grip on the seed industry, the way they bully farmers into settling patent suits against them because they can not afford to pay legal fees and the way most of today’s top executives leading the FDA, USDA or EPA are former Monsanto employees (which seems surreal…)
This does not make for a very reassuring story.
However there are great messages of Hope:
from WallMart (yes WallMart) getting on the Organic Bandwagon by now selling Stoneyfield products in their stores to the increase demand for locally grown products, the clear message is that salvation will come in the form of the consumers (aka us !!!) voting with their wallets:
it has become clear that appealing to the large food companies to produce better quality food without Genetically modified ingredients for example will never lead to any results. The power of their lobbyists is so strong that consumers should not expect any miracles coming from their elected officials either (one example: Obama and his Organic garden naming Monsanto’s former VP of Public Policy as Senoir Advisor to the FDA….)
The only way consumers will make their voices heard will be by no longer buying their products. In the movie, a WallMart buyer says it clearly: “we made the decision to offer Stoneyfield’s products because consumers wanted it”. The overnight impact for organic milk producers was incredible!
There is a great analogy in the movie about how the food industry is like the tobacco industry 30 years ago: for the longest time the powerful tobacco lobby was able to sell its products without facing any consequences and by denying the health impact of their products. Eventually consumers got the politics to get their act together and change the laws to make them accountable. There is hope that we might be able to do the same with this oh-so essential food industry.
Watch the movie; buy it for a friend; pass it around. You can even watch the movie for free on PBS so not excuses!
Education is key ! Eat Organic (when or if you can) ! Buy locally grown (if and when you can) ! stop buying from the major food processing companies (if you leave in a large city, it is surprisingly easier than you think)
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“A new earthquake” is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto’s seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation’s presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.
In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds … and on what is left our environment in Haiti.”(1) Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto’s offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMOs.
Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto’s director of development initiatives, called the news that the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved the donation “a fabulous Easter gift” in an April email.(2) Monsanto is known for aggressively pushing seeds, especially GMOs seeds, in both the global North and South, including through highly restrictive technology agreements with farmers who are not always made fully aware of what they are signing. According to interviews by this writer with representatives of Mexican small farmer organizations, they then find themselves forced to buy Monsanto seeds each year, under conditions they find onerous and at costs they sometimes cannot afford.
The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram.(3) Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing.(4) Monsanto’s passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.
Haitian social movements’ concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto’s arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.
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The Monsanto Co. is leading Big Ag’s PR offensive against Food Inc., the searing documentary on industrial agriculture that opened Friday. That’s not surprising. The chemical giant comes off as the biggest bogeyman in the film, which focuses on the company’s genetic seed patents, alleged bullying of farmers and efforts to influence politicians.
What is surprising is that Monsanto is tying its response to the movie to a discredited front group called the Center for Consumer Freedom. It seems too obviously payback for at least $200,000 that Monsanto has contributed to the supposedly nonprofit organization.
The company’s PR offensive against Food Inc. is no ham-handed reaction. It includes a very slick (of course) web page featuring an interactive seven-question quiz and the following characterization of the movie:
Food, Inc. is a one-sided, biased film that the creators claim will “lift the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer.” Unfortunately, Food, Inc. is counter-productive to the serious dialogue surrounding the critical topic of our nation’s food supply.
A couple of points may undermine Monsanto’s message, however. A core theme on the company’s site is that Food Inc. “demonizes American farmers.” But the movie actually positions itself as siding with family farms against agribusiness and accuses the ag industry of doing precisely what Monsanto is doing in response to the movie: conflating its interests with those of small farmers.
Maybe this is smart on Monsanto’s part. Both sides in the Great Food Debate brandish the “family farmer” as a talisman against the claim that they’re elitists. But Monsanto inherently will have a more difficult time maintaining that it’s the friend of farmers — especially, family farmers — at the same time it’s aggressively going after farmers in lawsuits.
And that standing-up-for-the-little-ol’-farmer line gets a bit harder to take when you consider that Monsanto is directing readers from its own website to the Center for Consumer Freedom. The center is one of a dozen or so front groups created by Washington lobbyist Rick Berman to push the interests of some of America’s least popular industries.
You may have read about Berman earlier this year, when his son, former Silver Jews front man David Berman, quit his band on the same day that he wrote a statement calling his father “a despicable man” and “sort of human molester” for the “evil” work he does.
He props up fast food/soda/factory farming/childhood obesity and diabetes/drunk driving/secondhand smoke.
He attacks animal lovers, ecologists, civil action attorneys, scientists, dieticians, doctors, teachers.
His clients include everyone from the makers of Agent Orange to the Tanning Salon Owners of America.
Among other causes, Rick Berman has fought against minimum wage increases, tougher drunk-driving laws and tobacco regulations. He’s claimed the nation’s rising obesity rate is a “myth” created by “food police” and that there’s a “lack of evidence that second-hand smoke causes cancer.”
Berman specializes in going for the opposition’s jugular on behalf of unpopular causes. His targets have included such feel-good organizations as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Human Society of the United States, and a host of independent scientists. But he’s secretive about the groups that fund him. As he told 60 Minutes:
You’re just not going to get a lot of companies who want to say that ‘I’m funding Rick Berman to go after you.’ … Take a deep breath and get over it. I’m not going away.
According to The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Berman’s nonprofits also have caught flack for funneling money back to his own lobbying firm. But his clients appear perfectly happy with that setup (maybe, it’s because they can get tax benefits for contributing to a “nonprofit” groups when what they’re really engaging in is public relations).
Still, bits and pieces are known about Berman’s sponsors. Cigarette maker Philip Morris provided $600,000 in seed money for center (which was at first called the Guest Choice Network) and has provided at least $2.95 million to Berman’s groups over the years, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. In addition to Monsanto, agribusiness companies that gave at least $200,000 to the Center for Consumer Freedom include Cargill, Coca-Cola and Tyson’s Food; the parent companies of Wendy’s, Arby’s and White Castle were among the fast-food sponsors.
The fact that the center keeps its fiscal information secret does raise an obvious question: Did Monsato and company pay extra to get Berman and company to say stuff like this?
… Buying organic foods will hurt your pocketbook more than it will help your health or the environment. Wishing for more laws and regulations won’t make them any easier to write or enforce. And shaking a fist at the companies who provide millions of Americans with access to affordable foods won’t change anything.
By tying its cause to a group that calls itself Consumers for Free Choice, when “consumers” have nothing to do to with the group, Monsanto is associating its own argument with a bit of a charade. Regardless of the merits the of the Great Food Debate, the company’s lack of credibility now becomes the issue.
Activists call such organizations “Astroturf,” after the fake grass, because they pose as grass-roots organizations but actually are the products of corporate investments. Get it? Hmm … wait a second … what big chemical company invented Astroturf in the first place?
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USDA has released for public comment its draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on Monsanto’s genetically engineered, Roudup Ready alfalfa, and unfortunately, USDA has not done its job. USDA has ignored the real-life concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, dairies, exporters, retailers and consumers. Despite public outcry, USDA’s determination is to once again approve GE alfalfa without any limitations or protections for consumers, the environment, or farmers’ right to sow the crop of their choice without fear of contamination and rejection of their products. Incredibly, USDA claims that consumers don’t care if organic and conventional farmers’ crops are contaminated!
In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Department of Agriculture (USDA) on behalf of farmers and others for its illegal approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa and won, banning GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed its impacts on the environment, farmers, and the public. However, the resulting EIS is woefully inadequate, leaving farmers and consumers unprotected while Monsanto goes on with business as usual.
This is the first time the USDA has done this type of analysis for any GE crop, so the final decision will have broad implications for all GE crops and for the future of organic agriculture—that is why it’s so important that USDA hear from YOU. USDA is only accepting comments on this EIS through February 16, 2010, so please take action today!
Tell USDA that protecting farmers and consumers is its job and demand they reject approval of Monsanto’s GE alfalfa!
Tell USDA That You DO Care About GE Contamination of Organic Crops and Food!
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A good article from Gina-Mary Cheeseman on why Monsanto is posing a health risk.
Also check out this link to a petition to the FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, urging the FDA to “immediately investigate and at least temporarily rescind approval for all three varieties of corn while research continues.”
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Monsanto has abandoned its ambitious plans for two types of a so-called “second generation GM crop” rather than accede to a request from European regulators for additional research and safety data.
Monsanto has informed the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that it no longer wishes to pursue its application for approval of GM maize LY038 and the stacked variety LY038 x MON810. Both of these varieties were designed to accelerate the growth rate of animals. Two letters were sent to EFSA from the Monsanto subsidiary company Renessen at the end of April this year confirming the withdrawal of its applications originally submitted in 2005 and 2006. The letters cite “decreased commercial value worldwide” and state that the high-lysene varieties “will no longer be a part of the Renessen business strategy in the near future.” There has been no announcement of these decisions on the Monsanto web site, and there are no mentions on EFSA or European Commission web sites either.
In other words, there is a conspiracy of silence involving both the applicants and the regulators.
The two letters sent to EFSA in April requested the return of all dossier material (varietal characterization, experimental protocols, and test results) which was submitted with the applications for cultivation, animal feed and human food. EFSA acceded to this request, making it impossible for any future independent researchers to analyse the Monsanto / Renessen data.
Scientists who have followed these two applications are quite convinced that the “decisions to withdraw” have nothing to do with commercial considerations and everything to do with food safety. In other words, the varieties are too dangerous to be allowed onto the open market. Objections came from scientists at the Canterbury University’s Centre for Integrated Research in Biosafety (INBI), New Zealand, who warned that the new corn was not safe for humans when cooked. They also expressed concerns about unpredictable health effects, increased levels of toxins in high- lysene corn, and possible allergies and links to cancer.
INBI’s concerns were supported by some European countries, which prompted the EFSA to ask for new trials and adherence to the rules of the Codex Alimentarius, thus forcing Monsanto to withdraw its request under the pretext of a “decreased commercial value”.
Source: Greenplanet.net
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article by Felicity Lawrence from The Guardian (oct 16, 2009)
Consumers said no to the GM farming giants a decade ago, but that didn’t stop millions of tonnes of their soya entering the food chain.
Ten years ago, when the genetic modification of food was first offered to the British public, it responded with a resounding no, and politicians and the food industry said GM would not be foisted on reluctant consumers. As far as most people are concerned, that is still the situation today; they think their diet remains GM-free. A report from the Royal Society to be published on Wednesday will spark an intense new phase in the GM debate, however, during which the public may be surprised to discover how far GM has already penetrated our food supply.
The report’s contents are strictly embargoed but it’s a safe bet that its authors, many of whom work in biotechnology research, will argue that we need to put aside any suspicions and embrace GM if there is to be any chance of feeding the world’s growing population in the face of climate change and growing scarcity of water and land.
The government has been waiting for the report since a cabinet meeting at the turn of the year. Back then the prime minister, all secretaries of state with responsibilities that touch upon food, the chief scientist Sir John Beddington, and the then chair of the Food Standards Agency Dame Deirdre Hutton, got together to discuss what they saw as an urgent dilemma: they believed that the official line on GM had become untenable, according to a well-placed source.
Of the 2.6m tonnes of soya imported into the UK last year, nearly two-thirds was genetically modified. The vast majority of this came from the Americas and was used as animal feed, although most people remain unaware of it. GM soya oil is also now used in quantity in the catering industry, according to government reports.
“We are living a lie”, is how one senior food industry executive put it in discussions with Whitehall officials.
“My wake up and worry moments are about high levels of GM being found in the UK feed chain where it’s claimed to be GM-free,” a leading retail figure has told the Guardian.
Shipping in GM soya is perfectly legal, so long as the varieties imported are ones that have been authorised by the EU. The variety of GM soya that currently dominates global production, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready, has been authorised by the EU. However, some newer varieties have not yet been approved here. Importing even trace levels of unauthorised varieties is illegal, and industry has been pushing hard to have the approval process speeded up. Any GM food sold directly to the consumer also has to be labelled.
With so much imported GM soya in the system, a senior official told us: “It seems increasingly unlikely that food on the shelves in the UK is free of GM. Identity-preserved chains [in which manufacturers and retailers track the source of their soya at every stage back to non-GM plantings] are becoming very, very difficult and there is just so much GM coming in, the probability is that, if you tested food from the supermarket shelf, you would find traces of GM in it. There is great anxiety about it.”
In fact a special report on food commissioned by the prime minister from the Cabinet Office strategy unit highlighted GM as an immediate domestic issue back in the summer of 2008. It said: “Consumer confidence in UK regulations, regulators and food supplies might be prejudiced if GM feed was found in systems claiming to be GM-free or if non-authorised varieties were detected in the UK food chain. If non-authorised material is found, there are also significant cost implications associated with recall.”
Perhaps fortunately for industry and government, almost no GM testing of food products is currently conducted. To keep ahead of a crisis, the cabinet meeting decided that the independent Royal Society report would represent an opportunity for a respectable shift in government position.
Several departments have been persuaded that GM will be needed to tackle the pressures of population growth and climate change. Many scientists have also argued that GM research could make some contribution to calming the “perfect storm” threatening global food supply that Beddington has warned we face in the coming decades. It was also agreed that the Food Standards Agency should reopen the debate with the public about GM – which it did last month by announcing new research on consumer opinion. Announcements from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) over the summer also began to frame GM as a new moral imperative in feeding the world.
A Defra spokeswoman said today: “We have not yet seen the report, but we look forward to its release and will read it with interest. Our top priority is to safeguard human health and the environment and always follow the science. We recognise that GM crops could offer a range of potential benefits over the longer term.”
Up for a fight
The anti-GM lobby meanwhile have been squaring up for a fight over the Royal Society report ever since the project was conceived. A group of development and environmental charities wrote an open letter last October, accusing the Royal Society of failing to look at the real causes of the global food crisis. They said that the new work would be “of limited value” if it focused on “proprietary technologies” controlled by agribusiness. They also asked why it was needed when a UN-sponsored four-year review, involving more than 400 international scientists and chaired by Defra’s own chief scientist, Professor Robert Watson, had already concluded that GM technologies were unlikely to have more than a limited role in tackling global hunger.
According to the Watson-led review, the scientific evidence on the claimed benefits of GM suggests they are variable, with increases in yield in some areas but decreases in others, and both greater and lesser pesticide use in different contexts. But crucially it concluded that global hunger is as much to do with power and control of the food system as with growing enough food.
Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London’s City University and government adviser on sustainable development, says: “There is no technical fix to the huge issue of food security. If there were a “people’s GM”, I wouldn’t be against it. But the problem with GM is the way it has been introduced, primarily as a way of maintaining the sales of pesticide companies.”
The concentration of corporate power in commercial seed and agrochemical production is unprecedented, as is its crossover with the powerful US-based commodity trading corporations Cargill, ADM and Bunge.
In the space of less than three decades, intellectual property rights have been applied to 82% of the global seed market, according to data collected by campaign group ETC.
Three companies now control nearly half of the total global market in proprietary seeds, worth $22bn (£13.5bn) a year. In 2007, the US-based Monsanto accounted for nearly a quarter of the total global market (23%), followed by another American company, DuPont (15%) and Swiss-headquartered Syngenta (9%).
Just six companies –the above three plus Bayer, BASF and Dow AgroSciences – control three-quarters of the global agrochemical market. Until recently they were often engaged in bitter litigation with each other – DuPont is currently claiming that Monsanto operates an illegal monopoly in the US, an allegation denied by Monsanto and being investigated along with soya seed price hikes by the US department of justice. But the more recent trend has been to form strategic alliances. For example, in 2007 Monsanto and Syngenta dropped litigation over intellectual property rights against each other and agreed cross-licences instead.
For John Fagan, chief scientist at Cert-ID, it is this corporate concentration and the realities of global trade that are at the heart of the UK government’s perceived dilemma over GM. Fagan does not believe the dilemma is a real one. His company is the leading US certifier of non-GM soya for import from Brazil to Europe and the idea that GM-free chains of supply are too hard to maintain is “garbage” he says. Brazil has more than enough GM-free soya to keep the UK going and, despite the fears of the food and farming industry and Whitehall departments, will continue to plant non-GM so long as it gets paid to keep different supplies segregated.
“The big US agricultural commodity traders Cargill, ADM and Bunge have major biotech seed research projects of their own,” said Fagan. “They have deep alliances with Monsanto and Syngenta. They want US GM soya to be accepted uncritically in Europe and they would prefer every soya bean on the planet to be equal to every other soya bean because that’s what profitable commodity trading is about.”
There is unease among scientists too that agribusiness restricts the kind of research on GM that might actually spread any potential benefits. An editorial in Scientific American magazine complained recently that it was “impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised”.
“Agritech companies have given themselves the power of veto of the work of independent researchers. Under threat of litigation, scientists cannot compare seeds … [or test whether] crops lead to unintended environmental effects … Only studies the seed companies have approved see the light of day,” it said.
The Royal Society report looks certain to walk into a perfect storm all of its own.
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Great victory in San Francisco this week:
A federaljudge ruled that the US Government had failed to properly assess the environmental impact of GM sugar beets. This could lead to a ban of planting of the beets, which are already widely adpoted by farmers across the US. This could set an incredible precedent.
Read the entire article on the New York Times HERE
