Say NO to GMOs // Current TV

Global hunger is a "crisis in democracy"

When you have workers and farmers growing tons of grain that go to biofuel, animal... more

JanforGore
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Organics can feed Africa: UNEP

Organic farming is truly best suited to the environment, soil, and economy of Africa.... more

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Fighting GMO contamination around the world

Ever since GMOs were first introduced in the mid-1990s, farmers’ groups and NGOs have warned that they would contaminate other crops. This has happened, just as predicted. In this article we look at how communities in different parts of the world that have experienced contamination are developing strategies to fight against it.

[Three videos accompany this article which can be viewed here: http://www.grain.org/videos/?id=195]

When GM crops are planted they contaminate other crops with transgenic material. In places where GM crops are grown on a large scale, it has already become almost impossible to find crops of the same species that are free of GM material. And the contamination spreads even to areas where GM crops are not officially permitted. [1] The GM Contamination Register, managed by GeneWatch UK and Greenpeace International, has documented more than 216 cases of GM contamination in 57 countries over the past 10 years, including 39 cases in 2007. [2]

Monsanto and the other biotech corporations have always known that their GM crops would contaminate other crops. Indeed, it was part of their strategy to force the world into accepting GMOs. But around the world people are refusing to lie down and accept genetic modification as a fact of life; instead they are struggling against it, even in places subject to contamination. In fact, some communities experiencing contamination are developing sophisticated forms of resistance to GM crops. These usually begin with short-term strategies to decontaminate their local seeds, but often seek over the long term to strengthen their traditional food and agricultural systems.

We look at the experiences of communities in different parts of the world in dealing with GM contamination to see what insights they can offer others faced with similar situations. Each situation is unique, and gives rise to different processes. Common to all of them is the primary importance of collective action – of communities working at the grassroots to identify their own solutions and not depending on courts or governments, which, without strong social pressure, tend to side with industry.Ever since GMOs were first introduced in the mid-1990s, farmers’ groups and NGOs... more

JanforGore
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30-Day Healthier Eating Non-GMO Challenge

The Institute for Responsible Technology’s (IRT) 30-Day Healthier Eating... more

cyn_cyn
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Campaign against GM crops stepped up

People in India are aware of the dangers of GM crops and standing up to them. We have... more

JanforGore
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Monsanto's roundup residues in GM food cause cell damage

We cannot and must not relent on the USDA to do all in it's power to reverse the... more

JanforGore
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GMOs not the answer to the food crisis: top Vatican official

Wow, I actually agree with something the Vatican says. Hmm, and he called those using... more

JanforGore
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Study finds GM corn disturbs immune system of mice

Another test, and other findings against GM corn. And yet, even though the majority of... more

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Genetically modified organisms no solution to global hunger

In 1998 the GM giant Monsanto launched an aggressive advertising campaign to persuade reluctant Europeans they should accept GM foods: "As we stand on the edge of a new millennium, we dream of a tomorrow without hunger… Worrying about starving future generations won't feed them. Food biotechnology will."

Such claims drew a critical response not just from many development organizations with decades of on the ground experience of helping the poor and hungry in the developing world, but even from the head of GM firm Syngenta UK (then Novartis Seeds UK), Steve Smith. Smith told a public meeting, "If anyone tells you that GM is going to feed the world, tell them that it is not…To feed the world takes political and financial will.

Delegates from 20 African Countries to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN also responded sharply to Monsanto’s PR campaign, issuing a joint public statement in which they declared: “We strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly nor economically beneficial to us."

But a decade later, in the face of massive food price inflation affecting some of the poorest countries in the world, claims that GM crops are the silver bullet that can deliver cheap and abundant food for all are once again being made. The evidence to support such claims, however, is scant to non-existent, as noted by the recently concluded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a process involving 400 scientific experts initiated by the World Bank with the co-sponsorship of the United Nations.

The IAASTD process involved a thorough sifting of the evidence about agriculture and food production, and took four years to complete. Its 2500-page report, based on peer reviewed publications, concluded that the yield gains in GM crops "were highly variable" and in some cases, "yields declined". The report also noted, "Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable." Asked at a press conference whether GM crops were the simple answer to hunger and poverty, IAASTD Director Professor Bob Watson (former director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and as of 2008, chief scientist at Defra) replied, "I would argue, no ". The UK Government approved the IAASTD report on 9 June 2008.

The report not only brought into question GM's claims to be the solution to global poverty and hunger but also to be a solution to climate change. In fact, GM crops are seen by many as reinforcing an outdated model of agriculture, unsuited for dealing with the conditions that climate change and expensive scarce oil bring for global food security. Many also see GM crops as anti-innovation, because they involve patents which restrict the sharing of knowledge and technology.

Large sections of the IAASTD report favoured truly innovative approaches to improving agriculture and increasing food production. These involve techniques suited to small farmers that minimize the use of increasingly expensive fossil fuel-derived inputs like fertilisers and pesticides. These approaches to cultivation and pest control recognise the value, particularly to the poor and hungry, of low-cost practices using locally available materials and technologies in an environmentally sensitive manner. They include integrated pest management (IPM) and agroecological, or even fully organic, methods.In 1998 the GM giant Monsanto launched an aggressive advertising campaign to persuade... more

JanforGore
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Bush-s environmental legacy on GMOS

In a few hundred thousand years, after all weather effects of 21st century climate change have disappeared from the earth-s surface, after our quietly smoldering nuclear waste has been extinguished, two destructive impacts traceable to George Bush-s policies will yet remain.

The first is extinctions. Species that have died out, including the subset resulting from Bush-s environmental policies, will forever deprive our evolving biosphere of their contribution.

The second is genetically modified organisms (GMOs) -- animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses, whose DNA have been mixed and mangled by insertions from foreign species. Once released into the ecosystem, by intention or accident, the genetic pollution self-propagates. No recall by the Obama administration can clean up Mexico-s indigenous corn varieties, now contaminated by our genetically modified (GM) corn. No executive order can remove or even identify the wild mustard plants now carrying altered genes bestowed on it by the pollen from its cousin, GM canola.

We all know stories that illustrate the exponential effects of invasive species. Here-s my favorite, recalled in my book Genetic Roulette:

On Christmas Day 1859, the Victorian Acclimatization Society released 24 rabbits into the Australian countryside so that settlers could hunt them for sport and feel more at home. The rabbits multiplied to well over 200 million, spreading out over 4 million square kilometers. That Christmas present now costs Australian agriculture about $600 million per year.

http://geneticroulette.com/

Will GMOs of today show up as the Australian rabbits of the future? While their impact on our ecosystem and diet is largely unstudied, that has not stopped the current and past administrations from presiding over the release of millions of acres of GM crops. Not only does each plant carry a gene from bacteria or viruses, its DNA has hundreds or thousands of mutations resulting from the disruptive process of genetic engineering. Reports suggest that the side effects of GMOs are quite dangerous. http://geneticroulette.com/

Bush policies institutionalize GMO contamination

If we were to ban GMOs today, as is more than justified, some contamination from commercialized GM food crops will nonetheless carry forward in the gene pool of those (and related) species. This includes contaminants from our largest farmed GM crops, including soybeans, yellow corn, cotton, and canola, as well as the smaller crops: Hawaiian papaya, zucchini, and crookneck squash. Newly added--in this year-s harvest--are GM sugar beets and white corn. There are also GM tomatoes and potatoes no longer on the market, but whose genes and seeds, to some degree, continue to persist out there. But the dirty laundry list actually includes over 100 different experimental GM crops, field trialed at more than 50,000 sites in the US since 1986.

Although the government is supposed to make sure that these trials won-t contaminate the surrounding environment, a 2005 report by the USDA Office of Inspector General harshly condemned the USDA-s abominable oversight. Current regulations, policies, and procedures, said the report, do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of agricultural biotechnology. The agency-s weaknesses increase the risk that regulated genetically engineered organisms will inadvertently persist in the environment.

But George Bush-s pro-biotech response was to further weaken the agency-s GMO oversight--and he-s trying to do it quickly, before Obama steps in. The proposed ruling makes gene escape more likely, even from GM crops designed to produce pharmaceutical drugs and industrial chemicals.

^^In a few hundred thousand years, after all weather effects of 21st century climate... more

JanforGore
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Obama, like Bush, may be ag biotech ally

Looks like the letters, petitions, and protests will have to get louder on this from... more

JanforGore
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Hawaii bans genetically modified taro and coffee on Big Island

The genetic modification of taro and coffee on the Big Island is now a banned... more

JanforGore
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3 years ago
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Monsanto and Michael Pollan talk about creating a world that can feed itself

This is like 36 minutes long, but it's definitely worth watching...

Kati_kat
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tagged w/ Say NO to GMOs

Global hunger is a "crisis in democracy"

Organics can feed Africa: UNEP

Fighting GMO contamination around the world

30-Day Healthier Eating Non-GMO Challenge

Campaign against GM crops stepped up

Monsanto's roundup residues in GM food cause cell damage

GMOs not the answer to the food crisis: top Vatican official

Study finds GM corn disturbs immune system of mice

Genetically modified organisms no solution to global hunger

Bush-s environmental legacy on GMOS

Obama, like Bush, may be ag biotech ally

Hawaii bans genetically modified taro and coffee on Big Island

Monsanto and Michael Pollan talk about creating a world that can feed itself

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