Month: November 2017

by Colin Todhunter November 10, 2017
The GM Contamination Register database is run by Genewatch and Greenpeace and contains cases of genetically modified (GM) contamination dating from 1997. The authors of a 2014 paper, published in the International Journal of Food Contamination, analysed 400 or so cases in the database by crop and country.
GM rice accounted for about a third of contamination cases, despite the fact there is officially no GM rice grown anywhere in the world. They also focused on cases of contamination arising from unauthorised GM crops: those without any authorisation for commercial growing anywhere in the world. Nine cases were discovered of GM contamination of these unauthorised (non-commercialised) GM crops that haven’t undergone any environmental or food safety analysis. The authors argue that once GM contamination has happened, it can be difficult to contain.
Don Westfall, biotech industry consultant and vice-president of Promar International back in 2001, was at the time quoted by the Toronto Star (9 January 2001) as saying that the hope of the GM industry is that over time the market is so flooded with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that there’s nothing you can do about it; you just sort of surrender.
It is not just a vague hope. It is an intentional strategy.
GM wheat is not approved to be grown for commercial use in the US or anywhere else in the world. Yet in 2013, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that unapproved GM wheat had been found growing in an Oregon wheat field. Since 1994, Monsanto has conducted 279 field trials of Roundup Ready wheat over more than 4,000 acres of land in 16 US states. The USDA has admitted that Monsanto’s GMO experiments from 1998 to 2005 were held in open wheat fields. The GM wheat escaped and found its way into commercial wheat fields in Oregon (and possibly 15 other states), causing self-replicating genetic pollution that now taints the entire US wheat industry.
Prior to this, in 2006, the USDA granted marketing approval of GM Liberty Link 601 (Bayer CropScience) rice variety following its illegal contamination of the food supply and rice exports. The USDA effectively sanctioned an ‘approval-by-contamination’ policy.
The GMO agritech industry’s strategy has been to first spread seeds illegally or contaminate supplies and then obtain regulatory approval. It has not only happened in the US, but in India too.
Unremitting fraud in India to contamination by all means necessary
In India, four high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GM crops:
The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal;
The ‘Sopory Committee Report’ [August 2012];
The ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ [PSC] Report on GM crops [August 2012]; and
The ‘Technical Expert Committee [TEC] Final Report’ [June-July 2013]).
These reports advocate this approach because the story of GM crops in India has thus far been a case of blatant violations of biosafety norms, hasty approvals, a lack of monitoring abilities, general apathy towards the hazards of contamination and a lack of institutional oversight mechanisms.
Despite these reports, the push to get GM mustard commercialised (which would be India’s first officially-approved GM food crop) has been relentless. The case is still held up in the Supreme Court even though the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) deemed it necessary to give it the nod.
This mustard is being undemocratically forced through with flawed tests or no tests and a lack of public scrutiny: in other words, unremitting scientific fraud and outright regulatory delinquency. This crop is also herbicide-tolerant (HT) (to be reliant on Bayer’s non-selective weedkiller Basta – glufinosate, a neurotoxin), which is wholly inappropriate for a country like India with its small biodiverse farms that could be affected by its application.
Despite the ban on GM cops, in 2005, prominent biologist Pushpa Bhargava alleged that there were reports that unapproved varieties of several GM crops were being sold to farmers in India. In 2008, Arun Shrivasatava wrote that illegal GM okra had been planted in India and poor farmers had been offered lucrative deals to plant ‘special seed’ of all sorts of vegetables.
In 2013, a group of scientists and NGOs protested in Kolkata and elsewhere against the introduction of transgenic brinjal in Bangladesh – a centre for origin and diversity of the vegetable – as it would give rise to contamination of the crop in India. As predicted, in 2014, the West Bengal government said it had received information regarding “infiltration” of commercial seeds of GM Bt brinjal from Bangladesh, which that country had gone ahead with commercial releasing.
At the time, Pradeep Majumdar, agriculture advisor to State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, stated: “Commercial seeds may have infiltrated… they might have been smuggled in. We have to ascertain the various effects of Bt brinjal on local indigenous species before taking any step else farmers will suffer.”
Bt brinjal had never undergone independent safety testing but the industry’s own tests show it is toxic.
In 2017, the illegal cultivation of a GM food crop – GM soyabean – which is HT, has been reported from Aravalli district in Gujarat. Bhartiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), a national farmers organisation, has claimed that Gujarat farmers have been cultivating HT crop illegally as there is no clearance from the government for any GM food crop. There are also reports of HT cotton illegally growing in India too, prompting calls for probes into the workings of the GEAC and other official bodies.
The Times of India reports BKS general secretary Badrinarayan Chaudhadry as saying: “The HT soyabean was cultivated this year in three villages in the Modasa taluka in Aravalli district in Gujarat. The farmers produced three tonnes of the soyabean. Someone had given the farmers a buy back guarantee at four times the price of the soyabean in the market. This became the talk of the town and BKS came to know about it. We informed the state agriculture department which enquired into the issue and seized the seed material on Diwali day. The test results by government lab were found to be positive for the Roundup (glyphosate-the herbicide) of Monsanto.”
Chaudhary said that BKS had also alerted the GEAC, but the committee has taken no notice.
In the same report, Coalition for GM Free India (CGMFI) spokesperson Kavitha Kuruganti said that the regulators have been caught sleeping. She says that India’s first GM crop cultivation – Bt cotton – was discovered in 2001 growing on thousands of hectares in Gujarat, spread surreptitiously and illegally by the biotech industry. The GEAC was caught off-guard when news about large scale illegal cultivation of Bt cotton emerged, even as field trials that were to decide whether India would opt GM crops were still underway. In March 2002, the GEAC ended up approving Bt cotton for commercial cultivation in India. To this day, no liability was fixed for the illegal spread which presented a fait accompli to the regulators.
Once the GM genie is out of the bottle, there could no going back. The genetic core of food crops will have been irreversibly changed. Lead petitioner in the Supreme Court for a moratorium on GM crops Aruna Rodrigues says, “This technology is a classic case of ‘unforeseeable systemic ruin’, which means that we will know we are ruined after it happens. As they say, the dead cannot make a comeback.”
The CGMFI says:
“The regulatory system in the country is in tatters. Incident after incident shows that with the current regulatory regime, citizens’ interests cannot be protected. If the regulators had acted decisively in the past with severe deterrence against illegal Bt cotton and later HT cotton cultivation and other illegal imports of GM foods, this situation could have been prevented. The government has to think of a serious overhaul of the entire set-up and significant improvements in the inter-agency coordination are required to ensure that no illegal GM cultivation or sales takes place in the country.”
It continues:
“GM HT soy cultivation in other countries is well documented to cause numerous problems–agri-chemical usage increase, soil health effects, impact on beneficial organisms like bees and monarch butterflies, health impacts from glyphosate used on the HT crop, increase in resistant ‘super weeds’, farmers caught in the trap of proprietary/patented treadmill technologies and decrease in yields. In India, the additional socio-economic issue of huge employment loss for poor agricultural household by the deployment of herbicide-tolerant seed technology is also an important matter of concern. Numerous official committees have repeatedly recommended against the introduction of such HT crops in the country, keeping all of this in mind.”
There are strong calls to make seed suppliers and regulators legally liable.
Certain pro-GMO activists want to celebrate the current state of affairs, saying that farmers have taken the decision to act in favour of GM crops in response to official dithering caused by the anti-GMO faction in India. This position says as much about their contempt for democracy and democratic procedures as it does for their ignorance of the reality of farming in India.
Professor Glenn Stone has noted where GM cotton has been concerned, any decision by farmers to plant GM seeds was not necessarily based on objective decision-making. There was no experimentation or the testing of seeds within agroecological contexts by farmers as has been the case traditionally. Farmers found themselves at the mercy of seed vendors who sold whatever seed they had in stock, regardless of what the farmers wanted. Without agricultural support services from trusted non-governmental organisations, farmers had to depend on local shopkeepers. They believed they were buying the latest and best seeds and created a rush on whatever supplies were available.
In other words, traditional knowledge, testing and evaluations by farmers in the field has been undermined or has broken down and seems to have given way to an unregulated industry-orchestrated free for all. All the more alarming now that we are dealing with HT crops and the possible runaway use of dangerous biocides.
Given the failure to win the debate on GM and the democratic pushback against this technology, isn’t the current situation what the GM agritech industry have wanted all along? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that the not-so-hidden hand of powerful agri sector players have set out to profit from the destruction of Indian agriculture.
Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/10/gm-food-crops-illegally-growing-in-india/

All the gorillas were dying…

Over 50 years of trying to breed gorillas in zoos and nothing was working. It didn’t matter where they tried — San Diego, Cincinnati, St. Louis — not even the best zoos in the country could get these gorillas to reproduce.
They were facing extinction.

And everyone simply accepted that it was impossible to breed gorillas in zoos.
That was until one caretaker took a closer look at what the gorillas were eating. For decades, zoos fed the gorillas what they called gorilla biscuits.
But, on top of being unable to reproduce, the gorillas were developing diseases like heart disease, diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.
In short, gorillas were not made to eat “biscuits.”

It’s a bit scary to think how you and I find ourselves in a similar situation.
I see it more and more in my clinic patients every year. People are getting sick. They’re struggling with weight, diabetes, heart disease… the list goes on and on.

And the only answer they can get from mainstream doctors is that it’s genetic.
Well I’m here to tell you, just like the gorillas, there is nothing wrong with you. You were made perfect. But the world you live in was not. And you are suffering from today’s abnormal environment.

Mainstream medicine has failed you. They can’t see that every chronic disease is connected by this one common thread that I call Syndrome Zero.

And the biggest culprit is the massive overload of starches in our industrialized, processed, grain-based Western diet. The nutrition-less, modern food supply has wrecked our metabolisms and made our body’s react in a way nature never intended.

Syndrome Zero begins with too much insulin which hijacks your metabolism into making too much fat. It robs your cells of energy. So our cells get weak and our bodies get sick.

You can take back your health and reverse Syndrome Zero, but you have to take action today.

The best step you can take right now is starting my Zero diet. A Zero diet will help return your body to its natural healthy state.

Reverse Syndrome Zero with a Zero Diet
When I work with patients, I don’t focus on lowering blood sugar. Instead, I help my patients improve insulin receptors that have been overwhelmed with a bad diet. For that, I recommend the Zero diet.

A Zero diet is moderate in protein, very high in fat and very low in carbohydrates. When you eat this way carbs don’t trigger insulin.
A Zero diet is your first line of defense against Syndrome Zero. Here are the basic guidelines:

Zero Glycemic. The glycemic index (GI) measures how the carbohydrates in foods increase your blood sugar. Foods with a high GI will spike your blood sugar. Foods with a low GI have carbohydrates that break down slowly, releasing a more manageable trickle of glucose into your bloodstream. On the Zero diet you can eat as many foods with a zero rating on the GI as you want. Here are all the vegetables with a zero score:

Eggplant
Asparagus
Snow peas
Cabbage
Artichokes
Cucumber
Peppers
Cauliflower
Spinach
Zucchini
Mushroom
Celery
Summer squash
Lettuce
Broccoli

Choose the right fats. Strictly avoid trans fats and vegetable oils like corn, sunflower, safflower, soy and canola. Instead, choose fats like olive oil, coconut oil, avocado, butter, ghee and heavy cream.

I also recommend MCT (medium chain triglycerides) oil for a zero diet. Your liver converts it directly into energy. My favorite is coconut oil. You can use it to make mayonnaise and salad dressings, or add it to smoothies.

Eat the right protein. Beef, shellfish, organ meats, fish, and eggs are your best sources of protein. If possible, eat grass-fed beef and wild-caught fish. Choose eggs from pastured chicken. Other good sources of protein include chicken, turkey, wild-caught salmon and other cold-water fish. Nuts and seeds such as almonds, peanuts, cashews, sunflower and pumpkin seeds also have plenty of protein.

To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS

P.S. The Zero diet is your first step toward living Syndrome Zero-free, but there are many more. To discover your next steps in reversing this pandemic, watch my free video series: Syndrome Zero: The Root of All Chronic Disease. Click here to register now.
https://marketing.alsearsmd.com/acton/ct/28028/s-0206-1711/Bct/l-01c1/l-01c1:4921e/ct1_0/1?sid=TV2%3AiiBInJlYi

“A ‘cold’, a viral infection, or anything that disturbs immune responses can result in subtle changes in the gram negative bacterial flora of the the gut, stimulating them to produce endotoxin. This is absorbed into the blood stream, not adequately detoxified, and results in inflammatory responses in the mucous membrane linings of the middle ear… …that endotoxin is the initial cause of the inflammatory response in acute otitis media…. …Dr Robert Reisinger in America had first alerted me to this group of substances and their relationship to SIDS……The reason why proper breast-feeding provides a known and large amount of protection against otitis media becomes obvious. Breast-feeding tends to prevent the overgrowth of abnormal forms of intestinal organisms that tend, under certain conditions, to produce endotoxin… …Finally, there are two substances that are known to be effective as rapid detoxifiers of endotoxin – Vitamin C and erythromycin -they are both in ‘Archie’s triple injection’. The relationship between SIDS, sudden unexplained shock, sudden unexplained unconsciousness, and otitis media is worthy of consideration. If endotoxin is the ‘cause’ of otitis and also the ‘cause’ of SIDS, sudden unexplained unconsciousness and unexplained shock — as I now know (at least there is a association), then otitis media should be found in a significant number of SIDS cases. That this is so is clearly demonstrated in a number of reported studies. ” Dr Archie Kalokerinos MD (p311 Medical Pioneer)
“One bottle of formula is enough to change a baby’s gut dramatically, and it takes two weeks of breastfeeding to return the gut back to normal. (Personal communication, Dr Robert Reisinger) How can this happen? E Coli is the main culprit. This bacteria is a putrefactive protein loving bacteria. The protein content of human breast milk is lower than in any other mammal, and the protein content of formula or any other milk supplement has a direct influence on the numbers of E Coli in the gut . Not only does the acid gut and very low protein content of breastmilk provide a more hostile environment for E Coli, but breastmilk also contain neutralising factors against E Coli.
Several studies have shown that babies who died of SIDS have a high prevalence of E Coli in the flora of the gut. Some suggest that the E coli “have acquired a plasmid which confers toxigenicity” (Med J Aust, 1989, Vol 151, pg 538) But E. Coli is intrinsically toxic. The outer coating (lipopolysaccharide) is the toxic component, but the key to the toxicity level is the speed with which it can multiply, given the right circumstances. These factors include bottle feeding (which results inmore gram negative bacteria, and a protein and alkaline level favouring E Coli), stress, overheating, viruses, vitamin deficiencies AND the suppressive actions of vaccines on the reticuloendothelial system.
In 1974, Dr Robert Reisinger presented a paper at an International SIDS conference. He quoted many authors who found SIDS predominantly among bottle-fed babies. Included in the authors quoted (but not referenced) was Shirley Tonkin from New Zealand:
“Tonkin reported that in her series of 86 SIDS cases, only two were breast-fed. Since twenty-five percent of her control population were breast fed, she should have had 21 cases of SIDS in breast-fed infants if the risk were the same in both breast-fed and bottle-fed.”
“Coombs stated that if SIDS were relatively as common in the breast-fed as in the bottle-fed infant he should have had 17 breast-fed cases in his series, whereas at that time he had not one.” Hilary Butler