tagged w/ RoundUp is poison
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Media Prepares Public to Accept Defeat of Prop 37 to Label GMOs.
Is the fix in for California’s Prop 37 before the polls even close later this evening?
Supposedly unbiased papers mirroring mega-corporate interests have lined up by the dozens to uncritically regurgitate the phony claims that GMO food is ‘tested’ and ‘safe’ throughout the election cycle. Now, they are celebrating their own success over cries to Californians to go back to sleep and ignore the public’s right to know, systematically campaigning to dull the senses and avoid sparking a movement that could have qucikly spread across the United States to demand labeling and greater transparency with genetically modified organisms on the market.
After weeks of the “No on 37″ crowd – Monsanto, DuPont, Pepsico, etc. – spending upwards of $46 million, and reportedly $1 million per day, to lobby against the food labeling initiative, with media lapdogs in tow, the MSM are reporting that Prop 37 may indeed fail.
Polls were initially clear, with over 60% of California voters clearly in favor of knowing what’s in their food. But a deluge of heavily-financed propaganda has sadly whittled that support down, with support for labeling (Yes on Prop 37) dropping to only 39% according to current reports.
Fudging poll numbers has its own science, as well as art, so it’s difficult to know if these numbers really represent Californians, but it is clear that it is influencing them to accept defeat before the fact. On election day, anyone combing the news is given the impression that Prop 37 has become a hopeless measure, even if the public in general have made clear that they want to know what is in the food they are eating.
But without a doubt, op-eds and even supposedly objective reports have boldly claimed that Prop 37 is not only much ado about nothing (there are already ways to choose organic, they say) but potentially costly and even damaging (by way of supposedly encouraging frivolous lawsuits over labels). The L.A. Times has predictably led the charge in this effort. Yesterday’s “Proposition 37 campaign is about everything but the meat,” blamed pro-labeling activists for trying to hold the other side accountable for misrepresenting quotes from the FDA, instead insinuating that the activists were the misleading ones. It further argues that Prop 37 is poorly written and would be ineffective, and this bunk argument is entirely typical.
These talking points are appearing all across the media in the final hours leading up to this election. The Christian Science Monitor asks suggestively if Prop 37 is really about ‘Safer food or invitation for lawsuits?‘ while Slate published ‘Delusions of Danger: Why the food movement’s demonization of genetically modified crops isn’t just scientifically baseless—it’s politically stupid.’ Meanwhile, others pen articles giving the misleading perception that biologists have been surveyed, and indeed ‘say ‘No’ on GMO Labels Proposition 37.‘ Indeed, there are many scientists against Prop 37, but at study of their ties to Big Agra would be very revealing of where their interests lie.
The Daily Nexus ridiculously argues ‘Don’t Let Frankenfoods Scare You.’ Patrick Allen, admittedly imaginative, argues the literary point, writing, “Perhaps if proponents of Prop 37 had access to a library they would realize how ironic the term “Frankenfood” (used to describe GMOs) is. The Frankenstein monster was actually an intellectually benign monster until he became hated by a hysterical mob.” The implication is clear – the right to know crowd is somehow hysterical, and themselves to blame for demanding food labels and sufficient testing for GMOs.
None of these and plenty of other dirty tricks are new, and bought out media has been a continuing problem for the movement trying to achieve food accountability.
Just days ago, the New York Times was engaged in trashing activists urging the Department of Justice to investigate the misrepresentation of the FDA’s position and misuse of their official logo by the ‘No on 37′ camp.
Monsanto & friends have formed their disinformation campaign around the issue of consumer wallets, deceitfully claiming that Prop 37 would cost people $400 per year in the handed-down costs of labeling, despite the fact that food companies have painlessly adapted to changes in labeling requirements over the years, such as nutritional content, and have jumped at opportunities to brag about supposed beneficially ingredients contained in their products. As if GMO mega-corps hellbent on domination really care about saving consumers money! Their effort is quite clearly a massive deception to fight transparency and keep herd-like Americans in the dark about the takeover of food staples with experimental crops....
Continued at:
http://www.infowars.com/is-the-fix-in-for-californias-prop-37/Media Prepares Public to Accept Defeat of Prop 37 to Label GMOs.
Is the fix in for... more
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Dagum
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added this
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6 months ago
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A report released Wednesday by the Washington- based Food and Water Watch (FWW) on the destructive impacts of GMOs added fuel to a two-decades-long fight by farmers, economists and experts against the FDA's conclusions.
"Genetically Engineered Food: An Overview" details how the genetic engineering of seeds, crops and animals for human consumption is not the foolproof answer long championed by agribusiness and biotechnology industries to feeding the world.
To the contrary, the study found that genetically engineered/modified (GE/M) organisms do not out-perform their natural counterparts, and their proliferation into vast tracts of cropland have caused a slew of environmental and health crises, and actually increased poverty by forcing millions of farmers to "buy" patented seeds at exorbitant prices.
snip
According to the report, over 365 million acres of GE crops were cultivated in 29 countries in 2010 alone, representing 10 percent of global cropland.
"The United States is the world leader in GE crop production, with 165 million acres, or nearly half of global production," Patty Lovera, assistant director of FWW, told IPS.
"From only seven percent of soybean acres and one percent of corn acres in 1996, GE cultivation in the U.S. shot up to 94 percent of soybean and 88 percent of corn acres in 2011," she added.
The bulk of these crops came from seeds owned by Monsanto.
"Eighty-four percent of GM crops in the world today are herbicide- resistant soybeans, corn, cotton or canola, predominantly Monsanto's 'Roundup Ready' varieties that withstand dousing with herbicide," Bill Frees, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and author of 'Why GM Crops Will Not Feed the World', told IPS.
"Pesticide and chemical companies like Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow and Bayer have bought up many of the world's largest seed companies, and now call themselves biotech companies - this represents a historic merger of the pesticide and seed industries, which allows them to profit twice by developing expensive GM seeds that increase use of the company's herbicide products," he added.
Seed patents, an off-shoot of the "agro-biotech revolution" that also spawned GE/M, have had two negative consequences since their original issuance by the U.S. Patent Office in the mid-1990s, Frees told IPS: "They enticed pesticide companies to buy up seed firms; and they led to criminalisation of seed-saving."
"Farmers have saved seeds from their harvest to replant the next year for millennia," he added. "Monsanto is changing that. The company has already sued thousands of farmers in the U.S. for saving and replanting its patented seeds and won an estimated 85 to 160 million dollars from farmers, in lawsuits that have ruined farmers' lives, and (partially explains) why we have ever fewer farmers in America."
The pushback
Ray Tricomo, a mentor at the Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity in Minnesota, told IPS, "People of colour must re-radicalise themselves and go on the offensive including the return to land bases, from Turtle Island to Africa and Asia."
"Ancient knowledge systems are to be painstakingly recovered, even if it takes centuries," he added.
And this is exactly what is happening.
Despite the deep pockets and aggressive efforts of Big Agro, a major pushback from a broad coalition of forces has limited 80 percent of GE/M planting to just three export-oriented countries: the U.S., Brazil and Argentina.
Nearly two dozen other countries, including the European Union and China, have passed mandatory GE/M labeling, and millions around the world are refusing seed patenting and developing seed banks to protect, share and preserve their seeds.
In Florida, the 4,000-strong Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is organising to resist farm wage-slavery and "seed-servitude". The Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil has organised 400,000 peasants to join forces with the nearly half-billion farms around the world that are responsible for producing 70 percent of the world's food.
Navdanya, an organisation in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, has united 500,000 farmers in their struggle to fight chemical dependency and save indigenous seeds, including preserving over 3,000 varieties of rice.
"For five years, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (CSD) had indigenous farmers from all over the globe come to speak against destructive farm practices and GMOs," King told IPS.
"During the Indigenous People's Permanent Forum, there were complaints about the harm caused by industrial agriculture and the acts in the name of agribusinesses. Farm workers like the (CIW) are protesting their fate," she added.
"They are picketing companies like Trader Joes and Whole Foods, letting the public know that their tomatoes were picked from workers who are basically slave labour."
"Third World Network is fighting back by exploring the problem of GMOs and publishing findings that scientists working on GMOs are capitalists using humans as guinea pigs in a global lab experiment," she added.
"[Numerous] deaths and disabilities have been traced back to a GM product emulating tryptophan. It took nearly 20 years to find the source of the problem," King told IPS.
"GM technology is antithetical to an agroecological approach to agriculture, our only hope for truly sustainable food production," Frees told IPS.
"Without radical change we will continue to have famines," he added. "Haiti is a good example of what happens when a country's farmers are put out of business by cheap, subsidised imports from a rich producer nation (here the U.S.)."
More at the linkA report released Wednesday by the Washington- based Food and Water Watch (FWW) on the... more
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