Scientist finding many negative impacts of Roundup Ready GM crops hidden by USDA

Americans fear communism ... an all powerful state controlling their lives and taking away their freedom. Well I recon you can draw many parallels between Starlin's communism and Monsanto.

DougChristian: Yes these types of practices have been at work for hundreds of years. I remember my great grandfather telling me about using a gene gun to insert dna from other organisms into plants to modify properties of the plants (sarcasm on). It is better to be thought dumb and remain silent than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!! Also i hope christian is your last name and not your religious affiliation in which case you should change your handle for the sake of your fellow Christians so as not to associate them with your blatant stupidity!!

I bet Al Gore owns stock in Roundup. LOL. Just messin' with you Jan.

I have used RoundUp to clear hillsides. Not only does it literally burn the foiliage down to the bear earth, it keeps it that way for a long time. The farmers who use the RoundUp Ready system are forced to continue buying RoundUp Ready soybeans from Monsanto for several more seasons before the RoundUp leaches out of the soil and into the water supply. Monsanto has created stranglehold on it's industry far tighter than Microsoft ever did with software. Monoculture will cause our extinction to be far quicker than the dinosaurs. Trust me on this one. I'm part Irish.

http://current.com/items/91657414_transgene-from-gm-corn-found-in-soil-dwelling-...
And I love how you take one entry here and pull it all out of context to intimate that if I post about anything in relation to healthcare, I don't care about agricultural policy, even though they are interrelated and I have posted THOUSANDS of posts about said agricultural policy and curate the Sustainable AGRICULTURE Group.

Wow, bravo. You got the Monsanto talking points down to a tee. And from your response you don't seem to know the difference between traditional breeding and genetic modification using bacteria/viruses and genes from two totally different species. Again, all you just posted were propaganda Monsanto and biotech talking points, once again saying they cannot harm without showing any substantial data. And FYI, this is damn well about healthcare as well as the effects THESE SPECIFIC crops are having on soil. It would help you if you actually read what the SCIENTIST who did this study stated.

I wish you food fighters would fight the right enemies. All the rage is targeted at genetic modification, but that is not the problem. The toxic chemical treatments and microbial resistance feedback loops are the problem. And they are a very dangerous problem.

Genetic manipulation is the basis of all agriculture. All "organic" foods that exist today are the result of it. You cross one plant with another and get a new genome. You try this a million times and you get a couple good new crops.

Genetic modification, used properly, is just a miraculous way to speed up this process. Say you want a wheat plant that can grow in a drought ridden place. You could cross wheat with plants that survive in the desert and perhaps a couple generations from now you'd get lucky and find one. With genetic modification you could isolate genes for water conservation and get your plant in a couple years or less. There is no feedback loop involved after that. It is just a wheat plant. It's not a zombie. It's no different then what you could have gotten the old fashioned way. It is a fully knowable quantity. IT CANNOT AFFECT YOUR GENES. IT CANNOT HARM YOU. Genetic modification could solve world hunger if it wasn't controlled by greedy, immoral multinational corporations.

Yes, we need proper labeling. But we also need to target our anger toward the right things. Poisoning the soil with ever more toxic herbicides and messing around with microbial evolution throuh pesticides are grave perils regardless of what kind of genetic manipulation we use for the plants themselves.

Also, despite what Jan thinks, these things are fed by our horrible agriculture policy, not our horrible healthcare policy.

A citizen's class action lawsuit. Sounds good to me. And I couldn't agree more about boycotting. I'd rather spend more for organic than eat their toxic crap and wind up spending thousands more for healthcare.
And I plan on going to Washington Dc this June to lobby for GMO labelling and a moratorium on them and these poisons. So I agree that we have to stand up.

It shouldn't be left up to the farmers, they are stressed enough as it is - now that the public is becoming aware we should rise up together.

Thanks very much for posting this.

Ban Monsanto, for starters. It's more expensive to eat organic, but cheap food is going to kill us and our environment. So what's cheap, really?

"Their thinking is that if farmers are using this (Roundup Ready) technology, USDA doesn’t want negative information being released about it. This is how it is. I think the news release is still sitting on someone’s desk."

Oh, but wait, we passed a healthcare bill in the Senate that covers this, right? No? Our government has no morals. I hope a group of farmers come together and sues Monsanto for all they 've got and this USDA as well if they are indeed deliberately keeping this information under wraps. And please, by all means, feature this on your homepage since getting out important information to safeguard the health of citizens is paramount here.

continued

What about research showing increased incidence of Fusarium in Roundup Ready GM crops?
RK: We’ve taken field surveys and seen an increase in Fusarium with the use of glyphosate. Some Roundup Ready varieties even without using glyphosate tend to be more susceptible to being impacted by Fusarium. It could be an unintended consequence of genetic manipulation that could make it more susceptible.

Your paper also mentioned the potential of glyphosate to contaminate groundwater.
RK: Yes, under certain circumstances. The big assumption for claims that glyphosate is benign is that it isn’t immediately absorbed by the soil. But research is showing that isn’t necessarily true; that it is still available in the soil.
If soil is full of phosphorous, glyphosate could leach into ground water. For example, farmers may use manure from confined animal feeding operations as a fertilizer. The soil will then contain high amounts of phosphorus, which overwhelms the soil. Any glyphosate that hits the soil will be a potential contaminant. It can stay in the soil or it might run off into streams or waterways.

What about glyphosate resistant weeds?
RK: We have eight different species of glyphosate resistant weeds in Missouri. Some species of Johnson Grass are found in fields where Roundup is used year after year. It is a very aggressive weed.
To solve the problem of weed resistance, genetic engineers are developing soybeans that tolerate Roundup and Dicamba, another herbicide. They are incorporating another gene resistant to another herbicide. When resistance happens again, will they then develop a plant resistant to five or six herbicides? It’s an illogical circle.

With so much glyphosate being used, what types of long-term impacts do you think could occur?
RK: We are already seeing glyphosate-resistant weeds. If we continue to use glyphosate in the same fields year after year, it’s a matter of time until microbial communities in the soil will shift to more detrimental species.
The use of glyphosate stimulates detrimental pathogens in the growing season but they go back down after the growing season. Eventually, they may build up in the soil and not go back down.

Are many researchers looking at the possibly negative impacts of glyphosate or Roundup Ready crops?
RK: There are a handful of researchers. There is more research looking at the production of these crops.

The papers published in the European Journal of Agronomy received no publicity in the United States. Why is that?
RK: I was working with USDA-ARS to publish a news release about these studies. I’ve gone all the way to the administrators, but they are reluctant to put something out. Their thinking is that if farmers are using this (Roundup Ready) technology, USDA doesn’t want negative information being released about it. This is how it is. I think the news release is still sitting on someone’s desk.

What about your future research?
RK: We’re looking at some methods that could be used to overcome negative effects if we continue to use Roundup Ready crops, such as supplementation of nutrients by foliar application.
I’m more interested in sustainable agriculture. More farmers are interested in using cover cropping to maintain soil quality and other organic amendments. But it’s a steep learning curve for them.