Tag Archives: Monsanto

How Monsanto Silences Scientific Critics

By Christina Sarich
July 10, 2015
Collective Evolution

Picture courtesy of deesillustration.com

A new survey from Pew Research Center states that two-thirds of Americans don’t believe biotech scientists. Why is this exactly?

“Altered Genes, Twisted Truth will stand as a landmark. It should be required reading in every university biology course.” – Joseph Cummins, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Genetics, Western University, London, OntarioBiotech Infiltration of Academia

Many already suspect that Monsanto and other biotech companies have bought out universities who conduct studies on GM crops with healthy endowments and even donations, which go towards building entire departments within the campuses of higher learning. When Iowa State University faculty and students called GM banana trials into question for being heavily invested in biotechnology, for example, the mainstream media simply brushed it aside.

Biotech Infiltration of Industry Journals

When a controversial study from a research group led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, was published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, it was later retracted due to industry pressure, even though it showed “no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data.” Séralini’s study showed that rats developed “colossal” cancerous tumors after eating GM corn. Only after fellow researchers went to bat for Séralini was his paper republished. (source) (source)

An Entire Department Dedicated to Debunking Critics

More recently, when Dr. William Moar was speaking at a public event for Monsanto, perhaps forgetting that he was indeed speaking to the community at large (and not a bunch of biotech industry tycoons), he revealed that Monsanto has “an entire department” dedicated to debunking science which disagrees with that of the company’s.

As Stephanie Hampton writes for the Daily Kos, “…this is the first time that a Monsanto functionary has publicly admitted that they have such an entity which brings their immense political and financial weight to bear on scientists who dare to publish against them. The Discredit Bureau will not be found on their official website.” (source)

Get the Whole Story

Now, James Corbett makes things even more crystal clear in a video showing just how Monsanto discredits any professional who tries to “out” the faulty claims backing up genetically modified organisms. Have a listen. It’s more than enlightening.

Survey: 68% of Doctors Think GMOs Should be Labeled

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Yet we’re STILL fighting for GMO labeling

By Christina Sarich
July 9, 2015
Natural Society

Most Americans aren’t waiting for doctors to support GMO labeling. We have been very clear; we want GMO labeling now, and we are even willing to go to court for it. Now, mirroring what millions of Americans have voiced over the past years, a leading network of doctor’s has voted on GMO labeling, and they overwhelmingly support it.

SERMO currently consists of 358,000 members – all verified and credentialed physicians. For the moment, they represent doctors primarily in the United States and Canada, but the network is expanding to include a global community.

Of all the doctors asked if GM foods should be labeled, a whopping 68 percent thought people should be given the right to know what is in their food – for obvious health concerns associated with genetically modified food. And of course the basic right to know what we’re really consuming.

SERMO is essentially like Facebook for doctors, where they can, according to the SERMO website, ‘talk openly and anonymously.’

That means no biotech industry infiltration, except for the likely-visiting shills and trolls which infiltrate most social media. Reportedly, an honest discussion among medical professionals can be had at this network. If that’s truly the case, the 68 percent who agree with labeling GMOs is even more significant, because it is a number which is likely more accurate than even the polls which found that 66+ percent of Americans wanted GM labeling, as reported by mainstream media.

Surveys repeatedly show that 80 percent to 95 percent of people want foods that contain genetically modified organisms to be labeled, in the least. Here is a simple breakdown of some reported polls on consumer demand for GMO labeling:

The New York Times: 93% found to be in support of labeling GMOs

MSNBC: 96% in support

Reuters/NPR: 93% in support of full labeling

Washington Post: 95% in support of full labeling

Consumer Reports: 95% agree GM animals should be labeled

ABC News: 93% want federal GM labeling mandate

What’s more, in a recently published Nielsen study of 30,000 consumers, 80 percent of respondents said they would pay more for foods that indicate a degree of healthfulness, such as those labeled ‘Non-GMO.’ Do we really need more proof that people are turning their backs on biotech-altered poison crops?

Even doctors desire GMO labeling – but you can bet the biotech industry will have a way to skew those facts as well.

The Warped World of the GMO Lobbyist

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By Colin Todhunter
July 7, 2015
Counter Punch

There’s a massive spike in cancer cases in Argentina that is strongly associated with glyphosate-based herbicides. These herbicides are a huge earner for agribusiness. But don’t worry, Patrick Moore says you can drink a whole quart and it won’t harm you. Who needs independent testing? He says people regularly try to commit suicide with it but fail. They survived – just. So what’s the problem? Perfectly safe. Patrick Moore says he is ‘not an idiot’. So he must be right. Right?

Anyway, all that scare mongering about GMOs and glyphosate is a conspiracy by a bunch of whinging lavishly funded green-blob types. Former UK environment minister Owen Paterson said as much. He says those self-serving anti-GMO people are damaging the interests of the poor and are profiting handsomely. They are condemning “billions” to lives of poverty.

He voted for the illegal invasion of Iraq, which has led to the death of almost 1.5 million Iraqis. His government has plunged millions into poverty and food insecurity in the UK. He now wants to help the poor by giving them GM courtesy of self-interested, corporations and their lavishly paid executives. What was that about self-serving, lavishly funded groups? As a staunch believer in doublespeak, hypocrisy and baseless claims by self-appointed humanitarians with awful track records, Paterson’s sound-bite smears and speeches are good enough for me.

So with that cleared up, hopefully we can move on.

Then there’s all that ‘anti-capitalist twaddle’ (another pearl of wisdom from Patrick Moore) about smallholders being driven from their lands and into poverty due to a corporate takeover aimed at expanding (GM) chemical-intensive agriculture. I showed Mr Moore a paper by an economics professor who had studied the devastation caused by the above in Ethiopia. That’s where the ‘anti-capitalist twaddle’ retort came in. As I’m also a staunch believer in the power of baseless, ill-informed abuse, I was once again convinced.

What about all that rubbish about GM not having enhanced the world’s ability to feed itself? You know, all that stuff about the way it has been used has merely led to greater food insecurity. Nonsense. I watched a prime-time BBC programme recently. Some scientist in a white coat in a lab said that GM can feed the world. He’d proved it in his lab. In reality (not in a lab), the fact it hasn’t done anything of the sort over the past 20-odd years doesn’t matter. He wore a white coat and held GM patents, so he definitely knows best!

I once read that industrialised agriculture is less productively efficient than smallholder agriculture that feeds most of the world. And then I read that the world can feed itself without GMOs. According to all of this, it is current policies and the global system of food production that militate against achieving global food security.

That’s just a big old load of rubbish put together by a bunch of conspiracy mongers. Who are these people? Food and trade policy analysts, political scientists, economics professors and the like. A bunch of whining anti-capitalist promoters of twaddle. None of them have studied molecular biology so how can they possibly be qualified to talk on this? I’d rather listen to a man in a lab who says GM can feed the world. He’s much more qualified to speak on politics, trade, the environment or anthropology than a bunch of lefties who don’t know one side of a petri dish from the other.

I happen to believe a profitable techno-fix is the way to go. A techno-fix that comes courtesy of the same companies whose global influence and power are helping to destroy indigenous agriculture across the world. But this is for the good of the traditional smallholder because these companies really, really care about the poor. Okay, okay, I know the top execs over at Monsanto are bringing in a massive annual cheque – but $12.4 million per year helps motivate a CEO to get out of bed in the morning and to develop empathy with the poor – unlike that elitist, self-serving green blob lot who rake in big money – according to hero-of-the-poor, the handsomely rewarded millionaire Owen Paterson… err, let’s swiftly move on.

To divert your attention away from all that scare mongering, conspiracy theory twaddle, I want you to concentrate solely on the science of GM and nothing else. But only on the version of ‘science’ as handed down from the great lawgiver in St Louis which creates it in its own image, not least by dodging any problematic questions that may have prevented GM from going on the market in the first place. Some troublemaker recently wrote a book about that, but someone said it wasn’t worth reading – so I didn’t bother (‘Altered Genes, Twisted…’ something or other – the word escapes me; it doesn’t appear in my lexicon).

So how about joining like-minded humanitarians and the handsomely-paid people over at big bioworld? We believe in mouthing platitudes about freedom and choice while serving interests that eradicate both. And let me add that scientists know that anyone who disagrees with them is just plain dim. C S Prakash recently posted a claim that implied such on Twitter. He’s a molecular biologist, so it must be true. Of course, there are scientists who disagree with us but they are quite clearly wrong – wrong methodology, wrong findings, wrong career turn – we’ll make sure of that!

In finishing, let me make the case for GM clear, based on logic and clear-headed rationality. There are those who are just too dim to understand any of the issues to do with GM so they should put up, shut up or go away and read or write about conspiracy theories on their blogs or in their peer-reviewed non-science journals that aren’t worth the paper they are written on given that the ‘peers’ in question are probably also a bunch of left-leaning wing nuts.

By comparison, unlike those self-serving ideologues, we are totally non-political. Okay, we might be firmly supporting a neoliberalism that is dominated by unaccountable big corporations which have captured policy-making space nationally and internationally, but any discussion of that is to be avoided by labelling those who raise such matters as politically motivated. We get you to focus on ‘the science’ – that is ‘our science’ – and nothing else. The fact that some of us tend to label anyone who disagrees with us as anti-science, anti-capitalist, socialists or enemies of the poor (or even ‘murdering bastards‘) says nothing at all about our political agenda.

And the lavish funds and powerful strategic position of big agribusiness means the pro-GMO lobby can smear, exert huge political influence and also restrict choice by preventing the labelling of GM food. You see, too much choice confuses people. We take the public for fools who will swallow anything – hopefully GMOs and our sound-bite deceptions.

So rests the case for GMOs. Eloquently put? I certainly think so. But I would say that, wouldn’t I? I’m paid to.

Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.

New Study Finds GMO Corn Makes Rats Infertile

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Unlike GM corn, non-GMO corn doesn’t cause sterility

By Christina Sarich
July 01, 2015
Natural Society

Still think GMOs and their non-GMO counterparts are equivalent? Think again. Unlike GM corn, non-GMO corn doesn’t cause sterility. A new study released by Egyptian scientists found that rats fed a GMO diet suffer from infertility, among other health issues.

Researchers from the Food Technology Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Anatomy and Embryology, and Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt, have found that several unsavory changes occur when rats were fed GM corn.

The rats’ organs/body weight and serum biochemistry were altered, indicating potential adverse health and toxic effects.

“GM corn or soybeans leads to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys. In addition they found other organs may be affected too, such as heart and spleen, or blood cells. The kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes, the liver of females followed with 30.8%”

Additionally, by day 91, many of the rats fed a GM diet were completely sterile.

As reported by Sustainable Pulse:

“In the third study, histopathological examination was carried out on the rats fed the GM maize, and the results were compared with rats fed non-GM maize. The study found clear signs of organ pathology in the GM-fed group, especially in the liver, kidney, and small intestine. An examination of the testes revealed necrosis (death) and desquamation (shedding) of the spermatogonial cells that are the foundation of sperm cells and thus male fertility – and all this after only 91 days of feeding.”

Read: GMO Soy Linked to Sterility, Birth Defects, Infant Mortality

How long do you think this effect will take to show up in human beings who eat GM food?

The study abstract reads:

“This study was designed to evaluate the safety of genetically modified (GM) corn (Ajeeb YG). Corn grains from Ajeeb YG or its control (Ajeeb) were incorporated into rodent diets at 30% concentrations administered to rats (n= 10/group) for 45 and 91 days…General conditions were observed daily…and serum biochemistry were measured. The data showed several statistically significant differences in organs/body weight and serum biochemistry between the rats fed on GM and/or Non-GM corn and the rats fed on AIN93G diets. In general, GM corn sample caused several changes by increase or decrease organs/body weight or serum biochemistry values. This indicates potential adverse health/toxic effects of GM corn and further investigations still needed.”

This study simply corroborates previous findings, proving the same deleterious effects. Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov and his colleagues found that Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction – in many cases, causing infertility. Animals who ate GM soy were sterile by the third generation.

Years ago, Natural Society unveiled proof that hamsters fed Monsanto’s GM soy for two years had growth and development abnormalities, and also – became sterile.

If you don’t see a pattern here, you might need to look again.

Christina Sarich is a humanitarian and freelance writer helping you to Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga.

“Intolerable Levels” of Monsanto’s Glyphosate (Roundup) Found in Breast Milk

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By Christina Sarich
June 30, 2015
Natural Society

baby-breast-milk-735-350 After testing 16 women from different regions all over Germany, the Green Party has found that traces of the chemical glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Round Up, are appearing in breast milk at ‘intolerable levels’ that could harm a developing baby and the mother.

The weed killer traces in breast milk were found to be between 0.210 and 0.432 nanograms per millilitre (PPB). Drinking water is allowed to have no more than 0.100 nanograms of glyphosate.

Irene Witte, professor of toxicology at the University of Oldenburg, described the findings as “intolerable.”

Witte stated:

“I would never have guessed that the quantities are so high.”

Though the sample size in these initial tests was small, and Witte believed it should be expanded, it is still indicative of a major problem. These 16 women indicate that larger sections of the population are being poisoned with glyphosate – a substance which the WHO has called carcinogenic. If Monsanto is allowed to keep selling these chemicals, it amounts to mass-murder.

Witte explained that if the chemical has been proven to cause cancer, then no amount should be tolerated in our food supply. As a reminder, the World Health Organization recently delivered a huge blow to Monsanto, pronouncing that glyphosate – and subsequently Monsanto’s Round Up – is ‘probably carcinogenic.’ The organization also recent declared 2 other pesticides – Lindane and DDT – as being cancer-causing to humans.

Further commenting on the glyphosate residues found in breast milk, Witte said:

“There is not upper limit you can then put on the quantity. Every molecule could cause cancer.”

The chair of the Environmental Committee in the Bundestag (German parliament) Bärbel Höhn of the Green Party said:

“The government needs to take glyphosate out of circulation until the question of its links to cancer has been cleared up.”

Sadly, past studies have found similar results to this. The herbicide has been found in breast milk, urine, and even blood:

One study conducted by a German university found very high concentrations of glyphosate in all urine samples tested.

A piece of research found that the toxic ingredient is actually found in the breast milk of women, leading to damage to underdeveloped human beings.

In addition to being found in urine and breast milk, glyphosate has also been found in people’s blood in 18 different countries.

The link is clear. It’s time to stop these biotech companies, now.

Learn how to test for Glyphosate Residues, here.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister: GMOs Will Not be Tolerated

Ignoring Reality, Subverting Morality: GMOs and the Neoliberal Apologists

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By Colin Todhunter
June 14, 2015
Global Research

Monsanto is often called one of the most ‘evil’ companies on the planet. It has a history of knowingly contaminating the environment and food with various poisons, cover ups and criminality (see this, outlining the company’s appalling history). In recent times, there has been much focus on its promotion and patenting of GMOs, the deleterious impacts of its glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup and how GMOs pose a threat to human and animal health, ecology and the environment (see this, for example).

Campaigners and activists have described how global agribusiness players like Monsanto are threatening food security and food democracy. Monsanto and others have been able to capture or unduly influence government regulatory/policy agendas, important trade deals and global trade policies via the WTO. Monsanto is a major player and wields enormous political influence and receives significant political support.

Little wonder then that we now have campaigns specifically targeting Monsanto. While it is laudable and correct to highlight the actions of Monsanto and indeed its partners like The Gates Foundation, we should not be side tracked from developing a wider analysis to understand the underlying forces that drive companies like Monsanto.

A recent piece by Christina Sarich shows that any shares held by Gates or the individuals at the top of the Monsanto corporate structure like CEO High Grant or CTO Robb Fraley are dwarfed by those held by institutional shareholders, such as Vanguard, Capital Research and State Street.

While it is difficult to specify the individuals behind these entities and others like them in the financial-corporate world, existing research (and in the absence of data, informed speculation) indicates the name Rothschild crops up time and again along with Goldman Sachs, Loebs Kuhn, Lehmans, Rockefeller, Warburg, Lazard and Israel Moses Seif. Moreover, the eight largest US financial companies (JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, US Bancorp, Bank of New York Mellon and Morgan Stanley) are entirely controlled by 10 shareholders and four companies appear as shareholders in these many of these: Black Rock, State Street, Vanguard and Fidelity. In fact, these four appear to be major stock holders in many major US and European companies. (See this broader breakdown of big money and ownership.)

Some try to divert your attention from these highly concentrated and overlapping patterns of ownership and the influence it brings by saying it all belongs in the realm of conspiracy theory and merely mouth tired cliches about ‘democracy’, but many of the families and individuals who own or control the world’s biggest corporations have not been sitting idly by. In some cases, they and their ancestors have been amassing wealth and exerting their power over a period of centuries. They haven’t appeared overnight, it’s taken them a long time for them to get to this stage and mold or set up institutions like the IMF, World Bank or WTO to do their bidding. So much so in fact that David Rothkpf estimates there are between 6-7,000 individuals who now form a global superclass.

Rothkopf is former managing director of Kissinger Associates and deputy undersecretary of commerce for international trade policies. In 2008, he published his book ‘Superclass: the Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making’:

“The superclass constitutes approximately 0.0001 percent of the world’s population. They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream/private jet–flying, money-incrusted, megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world, people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid. They are 94 percent male, predominantly white, and mostly from North America and Europe. These are the people setting the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, G-8, G-20, NATO, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. They are from the highest levels of finance capital, transnational corporations, the government, the military, the academy, nongovernmental organizations, spiritual leaders and other shadow elites. Shadow elites include, for instance, the deep politics of national security organizations in connection with international drug cartels, who extract 8,000 tons of opium from US war zones annually, then launder $500 billion through transnational banks, half of which are US-based.” Project Censored (Exposing the transnational ruling class)

Although we must not assume that this elite is a unified entity, there is an interlocking directorate of state-corporate entities that have a unity of interest in maintaining its wealth, power and the economic and political structures that facilitate this, while eradicating challenges to its power.

Through its control or membership of powerful think tanks, directorships, board memberships, horizontal and vertical integration of parent/sister corporate entities and cross-ownership, this club ensures the corporate media says what it wants it to say, opposition is muzzled, controlled or subverted, wars are fought on its behalf and the corporate control of every facet of life is increasingly brought under its influence – and that includes food: what is in it, who grows it and who sells it. Fail to understand the set up described here and you will fail to grasp that companies like Monsanto are but a tentacle of elite interests.

Jon Rappaport highlights how this interlocking directorate works on a company level by looking at Monsanto and Whole Foods. He shows that five out of the top 10 shareholders for each company – the holders of the most stock – are the same. The five are investment funds and they buy stocks in many companies. But this should not be regarded as some kind of conscious conspiracy to control the food market, although such a practice should not be discounted. Rappaport says these funds make automatic purchases of stocks, based on computer calculations and based on the rankings of companies.

The point is that when you focus solely on Monsanto, you may be failing to grasp the fact that if it weren’t Monsanto, or if Monsanto were to disappear, another company would appear because in a world of vulture corporations, profit compulsion and market capture, there is money to be made from GMO technology, markets to be ‘exploited’ and indigenous agriculture to be uprooted. The Rockefeller family and US agribusiness corporations realised this when they facilitated the ‘green revolution’ just as institutional speculators in land or commodity crops know it today.

Monsanto is integral to a system of globalisation that benefits Western oligarchs, which is underpinned by an increasingly powerful military-industrial complex that ensures these interests are served if other means fail (watch John Perkins here discussing his time as an economic hitman). And the result has often been highly profitable on the back of economic and social devastation. Look no further than Michel Chossudovsky’s analysis of Somalia or Ethiopia to see how agribusiness made a killing from policies that destroyed local economies and farming. The US and its corporations, facilitated by the IMF and WTO, effectively dismantle agrarian economies and then offer the problem as the cure.

Ultimately, the GM issue is not about ‘marching against Monsanto’, labelling or ‘choice’ – as important as all of that is – it is about the geopolitics of food and agriculture and challenging an increasingly integrated global cartel of finance, oil, military and agribusiness concerns that seek to gain from war, debt bondage and the control of resources, regardless of any notions relating to food security, good health and nutrition, biodiversity, food democracy, etc.

Instead of being informed about any of this, the public must listen to slick corporate mouthpieces like media-savvy Mark Lynas, or watch TV programmes like BBC Panorama that play fast and loose with facts and viewers’ emotions that tell us all is safe with GMO and this technology can rid the world of hunger. You see, it’s all about the ‘science’ (or debasement of it) and ‘helping the poor’ (while betraying a colonialist mindset) and nothing else, so we should just put up and shut up.

That’s the way they like it. Because any type of critical analysis that links the GMO issue with the system these neoliberal mouthpieces defend and which touches on the concerns outlined in this article is met with mockery and name calling from them – it’s all ‘anti-capitalist’ twaddle or conspiracy theory mouthed by a bunch of ‘green blob’, immoral, self-serving hippies, so they say.

They seem to think projection passes for debate. It doesn’t.

Monsanto Now Billing Itself as a “Sustainable Agriculture Company”

The Monsanto We Know and “Love” Could Soon Be “Dead”. CEO Says Name Change Could Be Coming Soon

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By Nick Meyer
June 12, 2015
Alt Health Works, June 9, 2015

The Monsanto Company has set an unofficial record for most people united against it, with over 2 million people marching in the streets annually each May as part of the March Against Monsanto movement.

The name Monsanto has become a burden to virtually anyone involved with it, at least in many different public sectors, but the moniker could be a thing of the past if a possible merger with Switzerland-based agrochemical giant Syngenta goes down.

According to this article from the website NationofChange.org, Monsanto ranked 58^th out of 60 companies in a Harris Poll in “reputation quotient,” making it the third-most hated company polled.

There’s an unmistakably high level of vitriol toward Monsanto and its globally recognized name.

But according to Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, that sentiment won’t factor in to a monumental possible change that could happen soon with the company.

“You Won’t Have Monsanto to Kick Around Anymore…”

According to Grant, who was quoted in a letter released today about the the merger, Monsanto “would also propose a new name for the combined company to reflect its unique global nature.”

Grant did not mention anything about the worldwide protests against his company, however.

At least one consumer advocate has already called Monsanto out, saying that the company is doing it mainly to avoid the scrutiny, boycotts and movements against it.

“Monsanto wants to escape its ugly history by ditching its name,” said Gary Ruskin, who is the co-director of U.S. Right to Know.

“This shows how desperate Monsanto is to escape criticism: of its products, which raise environmental and health concerns, as well as concerns about corporate control of agriculture and our food system.”

Whether or not the merger happens is still up in the air. But it appears as if the company may be taking a page out of the playbook of two other companies with similar public perception crises: Blackwater, the infamous mercenary group that changed its name to Xe, and Philip Morris, the cigarette corporation that changed its name to Altria.

Seeing as how virtually no one on the streets would recognize the names Altria and Xe, yet Blackwater and Philip Morris are household names, it’s easy to see why Monsanto is so eager to complete this deal, having recently offered billions to complete the Syngenta merger.

Will the new name and a possible new location in the UK allow Monsanto to hide from its past? That much is up to the media, and the grassroots activists who put them in this position in the first place.

Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scientist Speaks Out Against GMOs

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While hundreds more scientists realize the dangers

By Christina Sarich
June 9, 2015
Natural Society, June 7, 2015

A former senior scientist from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been speaking out against GMOs, but his voice is especially noteworthy among the many scientists who talk about genetically modified organisms. Why? Because he studied the impacts of altered crops on the environment. Read on to find out what this expert has to say about a genetically modified world and the ‘pesticide treadmill’ that biotech has us all running on.

Dr. Ramon Seidler’s credentials are nothing to sneeze at. He was a professor of microbiology at Oregon State University for 16 years before he worked at the EPA. He holds many honors, too, including being listed by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England as one of the 2,000 outstanding World Scientists of the 20th Century.

During Seidler’s tenure at the EPA, he (along with other scientists) conducted GMO experiments that were contained in indoor environments. The experiments were meant to mimic what happens outside, just as if a farmer had planted a GM crop in Idaho, Michigan, or California. The gene transfer capabilities and survival rates of genetically modified seed were observed. He also observed transgenic DNA and Bt toxin products in agricultural ecosystems.

What he and his scientific peers found was that GE bacteria survived for years in soil, even after it was removed from the plants.

He also points out that one-third of the world already has the choice to ‘opt-out’ of GMOs because their food is labeled, and though Americans overwhelmingly want GM foods to be labeled, they are not.

As other scientists have pointed out, Seidler mentions the fact that very little true research has been conducted by independent scientists at any American universities. Biotech has restricted these studies by requesting that professors sign an agreement prior to the research being completed which forces them to send all results to the biotech companies before being published – ostensibly – to be vetted and discounted should it paint their GM seed in any negative light.

Ramon Seidler, Ph. D. // Photo credit: Non-gmoreport.com

The former scientist says this is nothing short of censorship, and individuals who have conducted years of research are unable to publish their findings in any reputable journals because biotech would simply veto the results.

Seidler also details how the biotechnology industry has parroted the claim that “pesticide use has declined’ since they introduced GMOs, but he states this is absolutely untrue. He commented:

“Initially, insecticide use declined due to the effectiveness of Bt toxin in controlling pest insects. However, as time went on glyphosate use increased some 13-fold to control weeds and other non-genetically engineered synthetic chemicals were introduced to control insects as the Bt toxin became ineffective.

Glyphosate has been extensively applied to hundreds of millions of acres of genetically engineered crops, and the residues are in our air, water, and human bodies.

Now virtually all of genetically engineered seeds are coated with insecticides and fungicides and these chemicals have increased some 10-fold in the last 10 years.

When seed coated pesticides are added to those pesticides that are injected into the soil at seed planting, pesticide use climbed back to where it was approximately 10-12 years ago.”

This ‘pesticide treadmill’ as Seidler has dubbed it, has all of us sick, and our soil contaminated.

To read more about a former EPA’s stance on GMOs, read the entire interview here.

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Tag Archives: Monsanto

“Intolerable Levels” of Monsanto’s Glyphosate (Roundup) Found in Breast Milk

Russian Deputy Prime Minister: GMOs Will Not be Tolerated

Biotech Infiltration of Industry Journals

An Entire Department Dedicated to Debunking Critics

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