May 2, 2008

Monsanto GMOs: The World According to Monsanto

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe for the safety of biotech food, our interest is in selling as much as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”

Phil Angell
Director of Corporate Communication – Monsanto
New York Times, Oct. 25, 1998


"Monsanto came to Arthur Anderson to look at how they wanted to position themselves, and they asked them, 'where do you want to be with Monsanto in 20 or 30 years?' And the answer was, 'We want to control the global food supply".

- Kirk Azevedo, former Monsanto employee


If you eat food, you need to watch this documentary:

The World According to Monsanto (updated: found a working source for the film)



I have never understood what the big complaints about genetically modified foods were all about. If you can breed a plant to be resistant to bugs or more fruitful, if you can get a cow to give more milk, why would that be a bad thing? People have been cross breeding plans for thousands of years. I assumed that bioengineered foods would be tested like crazy by the FDA, not allowed into the food supply if they were problematic and would be labeled as GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in the grocery store, because in this country we have to have full disclosure in the packaging of our food.

I figured that when they did come on the market, I would just avoid them for a few years to make sure that there were not problems en mass. You don’t buy a new model car the first year on the market, you don’t take a new vaccine (Gardasil) or medication as soon as it is introduced, and you don’t eat stuff that has ingredients that have not had a safety history of at least a few years, right?

On March 11th this documentary on Monsanto’s business practices and their introduction of GMOs into the food supply aired on French television. Apparently we have all been eating genetically modified foods for a decade or so. 70% of the items at the grocery store contain GM foods. They are not labeled as such, and, as I was with vaccines, apparently I was very naive about the FDA’s regulatory process.

Instead of testing GMO foods for safety, the FDA decided that they were similar enough to the original food product to just be considered equivalent to the original food product, and GMOs do not even have to go through as stringent a regulatory process as a new food dye or preservative.

As with vaccines, the FDA does not do any testing of their own, but just reviews the company’s safety studies; but just taking the word of a company that already has a history of very serious abuses of the public, like the PCB poisoning in Anniston, Alabama that Monsanto was responsible for, is monumentally foolish. Internal Monsanto documents showed that the contamination in Anniston was so serious that fish put in the local waters died in THREE AND A HALF MINUTES, but Monsanto decided to continue what they were doing because, "…we can’t afford to loose one dollar".

Watch the documentary to see what happened to the poor, black population of Anniston. (If this was done in a town full of white people with money, you probably would have heard about it long before now. We tend to draw more attention when we complain that our kids are being poisoned).

As with vaccines, the Monsanto GMO safety studies turn out to be junk, that actually claim the opposite of what a well designed study might find. (If you don’t want to find a problem, only look where you know you won’t find it!) The parallels to Verstraeten, Denmark and Fombonne and the like are obvious to anyone in our community.

This is a two hour documentary, so pick a night this week, grab your spouse and watch it. This is really important.

I lost track of how many whistle blowers, previously highly respected scientists, were fired and had their reputations trashed for reporting that their findings showed that Monsanto’s GMO products were not safe or reported the million dollar bribes that Monsanto was offering to regulators. Researchers found they caused problems in cell division, which is step one in the development of cancer, and that the bodies of animals reacted to the GMO food as a foreign substance to be attacked, stimulating the immune system. (Does this set off any alarms for anyone? More on this in my follow up post.)

I also lost track of how many cotton farmers in India had committed suicide because of Monsanto’s take over of the industry. Was it 600 last year and then another 600 so far this year? Monsanto sells the seed, which are marketed as growing plants that are resistant to a certain problematic bug, at very high prices, but it apparently doesn’t even protect against the bug, and often take on a blight and dies. Farmers, rather than being faced with the shame of loosing everything, are killing themselves by the hundreds.

And because Monsanto has flooded the market with their seeds, it is apparently next to impossible for the farmers to get a hold of regular seeds any more.

Which leads us to the craziest thing about this whole story. That Monsanto had patented seeds (how did the supreme court decide that was legal?), and by flooding the market, gotten rid of other seeds (if they are not being grown and re harvested every year, plant lines die out, and in about a decade, Monsanto has come to own like 90% of the world's seeds. Farmers using these seeds cannot save the Monsanto owned seeds from a previous crop and replant. They have to re buy them every year from Monsanto, and the corporation is suing local farmers suspected of resowing seed. Even when they haven't and can prove they bought the seed. Apparently Monsanto is now the Stalin of the Farm Belt infiltrating local farming communities, showing up incognito at local meetings and encouraging farmers to report on each other.

If a truck driving by your land accidentally drops a seed and it grows on your property, Monsanto can sue you. And apparently is suing people for seeds that have blown on to their land and taken root. Farmers are giving up fighting these law suits, that drag on for years, because they can't afford protracted legal battles, and just paying Monsanto a settlement.

Additionally, Monsanto is patenting regular seeds, seeds that have been around forever, so that they can just put them in a vault and not let anyone use them.

So Monsanto is basically poised to own food. All food. It is like something out of a movie, but apparently Monsanto is more clever than Hollywood, because not even the X-Files came up with a conspiracy plot to own all the food in the world.

Oh and by the way their food may cause cancer and autoimmune disorders.

I can’t even explain all the problems that this documentary brings to light in the US, the UK, Canada, Mexico, Argentina and India. Monsanto declined to be interviewed for the documentary and has not commented on it, but their web site assures us that they are working ethically.

For anyone who criticizes the autism community for their mistrust of the federal regulators, big pharma and the revolving door between the two where one day someone is working for the government on vaccine safety, the next they are a high paid pharma employee and next year they are back in government regulation (or even doing both at the same time), this documentary shows in living color that our mistrust is not only founded, but probably not distrustful enough.

This story is our story. Replace Merck for Monsanto, replace FDA/CDC for the FDA and replace vaccine for food, and this is what parents like me have been bitching about.

Our kids are getting sick, and when we look into how the sausage that is being injected into our kids is made, this is the junk we are finding.

Our sick babies are the canaries in the coal mine of this toxic world. It is long past time for us all to wake up and realize that we might have been wise to listen to those crazy, drama club drop out hippies screaming about FrankenFoods in the 1990’s. They might have been crazy and dramatic, but they might not have been wrong.



This documentary has brought up a specific question for me that I will address in part 2 of this series: Monsanto GMOs: My Questions about Monsanto’s GMOs and Autism

UPDATE: In the mean time... if you want more information, check out Mercola's post on the subject.

ANOTHER UPDATE: If you have Netfix, go watch the 2004 documentary "The Future of Food". It serves as a prequel to this documentary.

Interestingly, one man is featured in both films. He is one of the fired researchers in The World According to Monsanto, but was still employed during The Future of Food. He was a professor at Berkley. Berkley for petes sake! When Berkley starts firing professors for standing up to corrupt multinationals for the sake of indigenous foods and rural farmers who grow them, that is pretty much a sign of the end times.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here is a 2007 Documentary called Genetically Modified Organisms - Unnatural Selection:















It's a Monsanto UPDATE weekend:

Monsanto is currently applying to patent pigs.

You heard me right, they want to own all pigs.

Last year they applied for a patent on a gene that is found in pigs. A pre-existing gene that has always been in pigs and that Monsanto had absolutely nothing to do with, and if it is granted, they will own almost all pigs everywhere. If this is legal, then anyone with enough money and hubris can walk into the patent office and claim the rights to a gene sequence in any living thing, whether they created it or not, and they could become the legal property of said entity and anyone using them must pay a licensing fee to the patent holder.

Further, if two pigs get the natural urge to get funky and do what pigs do and they make a little piglet, the pigs will have violated Monsanto's patent because only Monsanto would be allowed to say who can make little piglets and how. Said owner of the two pigs could then be sued by Monsanto. And we know that Monsanto LOVES to sue farmers. They have threatened thousands of farmers with lawsuits, sued hundreds and reaped millions in settlements. They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers.

They have already done it with seeds, now they have moved on to livestock. Where exactly does that end? If they patent a gene that is in my kidney, do I have to pay them every time I go pee pee?

Watch this 2007 German documentary.











I wish there were not so much info out there to UPDATE with:

Hillary Clinton's ties to Monsanto.

I am just going to keep UPDATEs coming:

Monsanto bullies Fox News into pulling a Bovine Growth Hormone story and Fox fires the journalists because they would not change the story to conform to Monsanto's demands:



More UPDATEed milk information:



UPDATE:

Monsanto GMO's and food allergies, toxic foods (new toxins never seen before) and inadequate and missing testing.







UPDATE:

Some one sent me this... Political Friendster. See who Monsanto's friends are.

UPDATE:

MY PEOPLE!!! Maine Town Bans Genetically Modified Crops

UPDATE:

Vanity Fair's big article on Monsanto from February:

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're not paranoid if they're really out to gettcha!

Thanks for this Ginger, it's just brilliant!

I'm putting a link from my site to yours...

I have to go throw up now.

Rene said...

Ginger, I have been a reader here for some time but I've never commented before.

One of the first red flags (if not the first) from the scientific community re: the potential safety risks of GM foods came in the form of a study in the late 1990's by two widely respected lectin scientists - Dr. Arpad Pusztai and Dr. Stanley Ewen. They "transferred" (sorry, I don't know if my terminology is correct) the snowdrop lectin into potato plants to see if it would help with pest resistance. They
specifically chose the snowdrop lectin because though it is toxic to insects, it is not supposed to be toxic to humans and other animals. However, when they fed the GM potatoes to rats, they found that they drastically altered the rat's intestines. http://www.bioemit.math.ntnu.no/meetings/pusztailancet.pdf
In any case, the study (which was not alarmist, but cast a potential shadow on GM food safety) was published in the Lancet - and
brought down the wrath of The Powers That Be on the two scientists. I don't know about Dr. Ewen, but Dr. Pusztai lost his position and had his reputation trashed as a result of this study.

Does this scenario sound strangely familiar to anyone?

Here's a blow-by-blow account of the whole fiasco by another lectin scientist:
http://plab.ku.dk/tcbh/Pusztaitcbh.htm
(Some of the links are out of date, unfortunately.)

There are more related GM links in the files of this group, which I moderate:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/lectins_in_autism/

Thanks again for another great post, Ginger. I look forward to watching that documentary. Well, "look forward" is a bit of a misnomer. You know what I mean.

Monsanto is pure evil.

Ginger Taylor said...

Rene,

That is in the documentary and that is the exact thing that I am writing my second post about.

You just helped me out a bit. Thanks!

Rene said...

Ginger, let me know if you need any more information on the Pustai case. I have quite a pile of it.

Glad to be of help. :-)

Ginger Taylor said...

Rene, can you email me?

Anonymous said...

Ginger,

The links not working.

Kelli

Anonymous said...

charlieinwonderlanddotcom,

I am with you. I have to go throw up now, too.

Monsanto isn't "poised" to own food; they already own it. Ninety percent of it.

The Mark of the Beast.

Terri Lewis

concerned heart said...

The "Doomsday Vault" where the elites store all the natural seeds really scares me. Make loads of money, destroy seeds and farmers, cause disorders and disease and hide the natural seed in a very secure vault for the very few. It's a horror movie.


From the BBC:
The final design for a "doomsday" vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government.

The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole.

Anonymous said...

I just watched this series and the one overpowering thought was *Man Playing God* which is doomed for failure. Arrogance beyond imagination. There's just no other description for it.

One of the all-time best statements came from James Maryanski, the Biotech Coordinator at the FDA from 85-06 in reference to a question the reporter asked about the validity of safety studies that Monsanto submitted to the FDA:

"It's not in a company's interest to try and design a study that in some way would mask results."

Are you frickin kidding me?????

What planet is this guy living on?

After his bullsh** remark, the reporter goes on to state that she did a Google search on "Monsanto and flawed studies" and got 174,000responses!!!!!

As I watched this, I literally thanked God that He was in control because otherwise, I just don't know how I could get up every day and face the absolute evil that some men are capable of inflicting upon innocent people.

Kelli

Anonymous said...

Okay. I promise what I'm about to say is absolutely true as God is my witness.

My previous post was to the original video that Ginger posted at the top of the page.

Afterwards, I watched the videos that she added to the blog piece.
I seriously, out loud, was saying over and over and over again, "Stupid, stupid, idiots!"

I just couldn't believe the absolute arrogance. I was praying because I was LIVID at what I was watching.

I wrote down Andrew's information (he's the lawyer here in DC from the Center for Food Safety) because I have every intention of speaking to him and telling him I think he rocks!

Anyways, after I finished watching the video, I flipped open my Bible and I *KID YOU NOT* this is what I started to read from Isaiah 55:8-11:

For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are My ways higher than your ways,

And My thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

And do not return there without watering the earth,

And making it bear and sprout,

And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;

So shall my word be which goes forth from My mouth;

It shall not return to Me empty,

Without accomplishing what I desire,

And without succeeding in the manner for which I sent it."

NO LIE.

Now, I don't know about you, but I couldn't have *picked* a better scripture in the whole Bible to better reflect what I was feeling and praying while watching these videos!

Bottom Line: God IS in control and man is absolutely STUPID to think he can even *attempt* to mimic God’s unique creation!

Anonymous said...

OrganicConsumers.org keeps an excellent log of news related to Monsanto.

Jim said...

Links about the pigs:

http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=20

PDFs
"Swine patent WO2005-015989A1" (5.4 MB)
http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/images/documents/monsanto_swine_wo2005-015989a1.pdf
"Swine patent WO2005-017204A2" (2.7 MB)
http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/images/documents/monsanto_swine_wo2005-017204a2.pdf
"Monsanto Ammendments" (3.3 MB)
http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/images/documents/monsanto_amendments-dec06.pdf

Greenpeace article
"Monsanto files patent for new invention: the pig"
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111

"A Greenpeace researcher who monitors patent applications, Christoph Then, uncovered the fact that Monsanto is seeking patents not only on methods of breeding, but on actual breeding herds of pigs as well as the offspring that result.

"If these patents are granted, Monsanto can legally prevent breeders and farmers from breeding pigs whose characteristics are described in the patent claims"

Unknown said...

Thank you for the comprehensive list of GMO documentaries. Its true that GMO documentary films like "Seeds of Freedom", "The World According to Monsanto", "Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food", "Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives" , "Genetically Modified Food: Panacea or Poison?" and "The Future of Food" are amazing eye openers on GMO food debate. Let's all reject GMO foods and use organic food instead!. Let's all arm ourself & get the right information on hazardous GMO Foods.