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In reply to the discussion: If you are in California, please vote YES on 37. -Updated [View all]proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)75. Terrific summary here.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/01-4
Published on Thursday, November 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
Why Monsanto Is Fighting Tooth and Nail Against California's Prop 37
by Sonali Kolhatkar and Vandana Shiva
<>
Kolhatkar: You are a scientist by background - your training is in science. Those who are against prop 37 such as Monsanto, which is a long time foe of yours, say that Proposition 37 is anti-science, because there is no evidence that GMOs harms human beings. Does one actually need evidence of harm in order to have labeling?
Shiva: Well I think the labeling question is totally separate from the scientific debate of safety. A label is just a fundamental democratic issue. It's about the freedom of citizens' right to know and choose. A certain amount of salt is not harmful for us, but we still put it on the label. Calcium is not harmful for us; we still put it on the label, just for people to make decisions on the basis of information.
Earlier this year, CODEX Alimentarius which is the highest body on food safety, said every country has a right to label. This was after a twenty year tussle where the United States had tried to block the right to label as a global right, because then they could have used labeling to sue countries, which they did with Europe.
There are of course huge scientific issues related to GMOs and tragically it is corporations like Monsanto who are pushing anti-science, non-science on the public. I have lived long enough with this issue to know what they've done across the world. I was on the first expert group set up by the United Nations to frame the bio-safety protocol and I saw how in the United Nations they tried to mislead.
The United Nations which represents countries across the world wouldn't have a protocol on bio-safety if safety had been proven. Now unfortunately the United States is not a signatory [to that protocol] and therefore it is constantly denying its citizens the rights that citizens elsewhere have.
On the Science question, what is the science of genetic engineering? It is really not a science; it is a technology of shooting a gene that doesn't belong to a plant through two means. One is a gene gun and one is an agro bacterium or a plant cancer. You don't know where it's landing; you don't have the science of prediction. You don't know what it is doing. You don't know if it is getting absorbed, that is why you add antibiotic resistance markers. You know the plant is not expressing it so you add super virulent viruses to pump up the expression. They're called promoters.
So, you have a bundle of toxic risky genes. All of the real science tells us there is a phenomenon called horizontal gene transfer in nature. Vertical transfer is where your genes are taken from your parents, so it's offspring to offspring. Horizontal transfer is when it moves across species. We know the bacteria in our food hybridize with the bacteria in our gut. We know the viruses in our food hybridize with the viruses in our gut. We know, in spite of them saying the BT toxin doesn't last, new studies in Canada show it has been found in the blood of pregnant women and in the fetuses they've given birth to.
A new 2 year feeding study in France showed high levels of cancer in mammals. A similar study had similar results, in Russia at the Academy of Sciences. These are independent studies done by scientists with absolutely no involvement in any business industry interest. They are what we call public scientists.
The UK government asked Hungarian scientist Arpad Putzai, one of the most eminent scientists to do a study on GM foods, way back around 1998 and he did it. He was actually a promoter of genetic engineering, but when he did the study, he found the following result: the rats he had fed had shrunken brains, enlarged pancreases and a collapse of immunity. He went to his director and said if this has happened with three months of feeding rats, what will happen to a lifetime of feeding human beings? He wanted to inform the public. They did, and he went all over BBC immediately.
Then, a call was made from Monsanto to Bill Clinton to Tony Blair to get rid of this top scientist who had left Hungary for freedom. And he said "I had more freedom in Communist Soviet Union, in Hungary, than in corporate ruled England." That freedom is what the US is losing and US citizens are losing as corporations take over our science, our decision-making, our food systems and our seed.
So Proposition 37 is not an insignificant proposition. It is, in a way, a reflection of the larger debate in this election. Will money run it or will the people's democratic votes run it? Will democracy in America be "of the people, by the people, for the people" or is it going to be reduced to "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations?" In which case, you have corporate rule and corporate rule means corporate dictatorship and corporate dictatorship as Mussolini said is Fascism. The convergence of political power with economic power is a very dangerous moment, but it is also a moment that pushes us to create new levels of aspiration and actions for freedom.
<>
Published on Thursday, November 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
Why Monsanto Is Fighting Tooth and Nail Against California's Prop 37
by Sonali Kolhatkar and Vandana Shiva
<>
Kolhatkar: You are a scientist by background - your training is in science. Those who are against prop 37 such as Monsanto, which is a long time foe of yours, say that Proposition 37 is anti-science, because there is no evidence that GMOs harms human beings. Does one actually need evidence of harm in order to have labeling?
Shiva: Well I think the labeling question is totally separate from the scientific debate of safety. A label is just a fundamental democratic issue. It's about the freedom of citizens' right to know and choose. A certain amount of salt is not harmful for us, but we still put it on the label. Calcium is not harmful for us; we still put it on the label, just for people to make decisions on the basis of information.
Earlier this year, CODEX Alimentarius which is the highest body on food safety, said every country has a right to label. This was after a twenty year tussle where the United States had tried to block the right to label as a global right, because then they could have used labeling to sue countries, which they did with Europe.
There are of course huge scientific issues related to GMOs and tragically it is corporations like Monsanto who are pushing anti-science, non-science on the public. I have lived long enough with this issue to know what they've done across the world. I was on the first expert group set up by the United Nations to frame the bio-safety protocol and I saw how in the United Nations they tried to mislead.
The United Nations which represents countries across the world wouldn't have a protocol on bio-safety if safety had been proven. Now unfortunately the United States is not a signatory [to that protocol] and therefore it is constantly denying its citizens the rights that citizens elsewhere have.
On the Science question, what is the science of genetic engineering? It is really not a science; it is a technology of shooting a gene that doesn't belong to a plant through two means. One is a gene gun and one is an agro bacterium or a plant cancer. You don't know where it's landing; you don't have the science of prediction. You don't know what it is doing. You don't know if it is getting absorbed, that is why you add antibiotic resistance markers. You know the plant is not expressing it so you add super virulent viruses to pump up the expression. They're called promoters.
So, you have a bundle of toxic risky genes. All of the real science tells us there is a phenomenon called horizontal gene transfer in nature. Vertical transfer is where your genes are taken from your parents, so it's offspring to offspring. Horizontal transfer is when it moves across species. We know the bacteria in our food hybridize with the bacteria in our gut. We know the viruses in our food hybridize with the viruses in our gut. We know, in spite of them saying the BT toxin doesn't last, new studies in Canada show it has been found in the blood of pregnant women and in the fetuses they've given birth to.
A new 2 year feeding study in France showed high levels of cancer in mammals. A similar study had similar results, in Russia at the Academy of Sciences. These are independent studies done by scientists with absolutely no involvement in any business industry interest. They are what we call public scientists.
The UK government asked Hungarian scientist Arpad Putzai, one of the most eminent scientists to do a study on GM foods, way back around 1998 and he did it. He was actually a promoter of genetic engineering, but when he did the study, he found the following result: the rats he had fed had shrunken brains, enlarged pancreases and a collapse of immunity. He went to his director and said if this has happened with three months of feeding rats, what will happen to a lifetime of feeding human beings? He wanted to inform the public. They did, and he went all over BBC immediately.
Then, a call was made from Monsanto to Bill Clinton to Tony Blair to get rid of this top scientist who had left Hungary for freedom. And he said "I had more freedom in Communist Soviet Union, in Hungary, than in corporate ruled England." That freedom is what the US is losing and US citizens are losing as corporations take over our science, our decision-making, our food systems and our seed.
So Proposition 37 is not an insignificant proposition. It is, in a way, a reflection of the larger debate in this election. Will money run it or will the people's democratic votes run it? Will democracy in America be "of the people, by the people, for the people" or is it going to be reduced to "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations?" In which case, you have corporate rule and corporate rule means corporate dictatorship and corporate dictatorship as Mussolini said is Fascism. The convergence of political power with economic power is a very dangerous moment, but it is also a moment that pushes us to create new levels of aspiration and actions for freedom.
<>
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Best and saddest expert analysis I have encountered on GMOs ever - discovered yesterday.
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#158
I have a scientist acquaintance whom I respect a great deal who advocates voting no for these
Brickbat
Nov 2012
#11
I strongly suspect a lot of people would turn down a product with a label that said:
jeff47
Nov 2012
#14
The public doesn't care about Hydrogen in food, they care about Genetic manipulation of their food
blazeKing
Nov 2012
#22
So your cited article shows that the toxin is lasting in the soil for 180 days vs 24 hrs
Tumbulu
Nov 2012
#129
I saved you the time of reading to the end of the thread so you can read this full article.
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#130
Related material here:“No studies to date have experimentally examined the causal relationship btwn"
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#132
Well the British people and people from Europe that I knew asked me how Americans could be misled
Tumbulu
Nov 2012
#106
if by nature, you mean Man...then yes...man has engineered corn for thousands of years...
yawnmaster
Nov 2012
#42
Because the very process of genetic modification itself creates unintended ancillary consequences.
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#155
As an aside, for health reasons the future of food is not the biotech pseudo-food variant.
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#93
Harvard, man, both of 'em. Do not mock their training, expertise, research, or integrity.
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#107
This, too (and upon reflection not my call to say which is worse re:post #75).
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#81
Exactly. The only reason for lying is because they have something to hide. nt
Live and Learn
Nov 2012
#29
I'm not decided. I'm in favor of labeling, but I'm not convinced this prop is well written.
LeftyMom
Nov 2012
#39
Monsanto have been a pestilence world-wide, suing farmers out of existence,
Fire Walk With Me
Nov 2012
#54
why not just put the chemical compounds found in the food? well...because labeling can become...
yawnmaster
Nov 2012
#43
The animals in the OP picture were fed IIRC, check the articles, 100% GMOs.
Fire Walk With Me
Nov 2012
#70
If you want to be up-to-date, you'll peruse the thread below and find your links debunked.
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#154
Scientists from AAAS - Yes: Food Labels Would Let Consumers Make Informed Choices
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#113
Check out this definitive article written twelve years ago. The argument for labeling is compelling.
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#117
doing what a majority of Californians want gives liberals a bad name?
DisgustipatedinCA
Nov 2012
#134
They've spent over $7 million dollars to block this measure in just one state, they've purchased an
Fire Walk With Me
Nov 2012
#135
Statement on Election Results from the California Right to Know Campaign
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#166
Samples of three fraudulent mailers sent to California voters provided at link below (will not C+P).
proverbialwisdom
Nov 2012
#169