permaculture

[mIEKAL aND <dtv@mwt.net>]

I just saw Jeffrey Smith speak the other day.  His talk lasted about  
an hour but after about 10 minutes you'll start thinking long & hard  
about your grocery shopping habits.  Since I work at an organic food  
company most of this is not new news but one thing I learned (or it  
hadn't occurred to me) is that Smith stated the literally 100% of  
high fructose corn syrup has gm content.  I don't really drink soda,  
but even a lot of juices are full of this.  If you get the chance to  
see him speak, it will well be worth the effort.

~mIEKAL


On Sep 27, 2007, at 10:30 AM, Laura Frazier wrote:

> Drawn from the new book 'Genetic Roulette' and Jeffrey Smith's "Seeds
> of Deception."
>
> If you go to
> http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/AboutGMFoods/ 
> DangersofGMFoods/index.cfm
> the bullet items expand to references for the research they were
> derived from.
>
> Dangers of Genetically Engineered Foods
> (Footnotes refer to pages in the book Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey M.
> Smith.)
> The following presents some of the dangers of genetically engineered
> foods and reasons why avoiding them is an important step to safeguard
> our health. The footnotes refer to page references in the book Seeds
> of Deception; there you can find meticulously documented evidence
> that leaves no doubt that GM food should never have been approved.
> For a more in-depth look at 65 health risks of GM foods, excerpted
> from Jeffrey Smith's comprehensive new book Genetic Roulette: The
> Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, click here.
> For more information, see also these articles:
>        *       Jeffrey Smith's Testimony to the EPA - June 2007
>        *       Genetically Modified Foods Are Inherently Unsafe
>        *       Genetically Engineered Foods Pose Higher Risk for  
> Children
>        *       Case Study on Industry Research: Soy Study by Monsanto
>        *       Inhaled GM Maize Pollen May Cause Disease
>        *       GM Food Promoter Transfers to Rat Cells
>        *       GM Vaccines Recombine into Unpredictable Hybrid
> Viruses in Human and Animal Cells
>        *       A Deadly Epidemic and the Attempt to Hide its Link to
> Genetic Engineering
>        *       55.6% Mortality in Rats Whose Mothers Were Fed GM Soy
>        *       Terje Traavik, PhD, responds to criticism about his  
> studies
>        *       Article update linking health problems in the
> Philippines with Bt corn
> The biotech industry claims that the FDA has thoroughly evaluated GM
> foods and found them safe. This is untrue. Internal FDA documents
> made public from a lawsuit, reveal that agency scientists warned that
> GM foods might create toxins, allergies, nutritional problems, and
> new diseases that might be difficult to identify.131-140 Although
> they urged their superiors to require long-term tests on each GM
> variety prior to approval, the political appointees at the agency,
> including a former attorney for Monsanto, ignored the scientists.
> Official policy claims that the foods are no different130 and do NOT
> require safety testing. A manufacturer can introduce a GM food
> without even informing the government or consumers.146 A January 2001
> report from an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada said it
> was "scientifically unjustifiable"136 to presume that GM foods are
> safe. Likewise, a 2002 report by the UK's Royal Society said that
> genetic modification "could lead to unpredicted harmful changes in
> the nutritional state of foods," and recommended that potential
> health effects of GM foods be rigorously researched before being fed
> to pregnant or breast-feeding women, elderly people, those suffering
> from chronic disease, and babies.263
> How could the government approve dangerous foods? A close examination
> reveals that industry manipulation and political collusion-not sound
> science-was the driving force.
>        *       Government employees who complained were harassed,
> stripped of responsibilities, or fired.77-83
>        *       Scientists were threatened. Evidence was stolen. Data
> was omitted or distorted. Some regulators even claimed they were
> offered bribes to approve a GM product.
> There are only about two dozen published, peer-reviewed animal
> feeding studies on the health effects of GM foods.
>        *       One study showed evidence of damage to the immune
> system and vital organs, and a potentially pre-cancerous
> condition.12-13 When the scientist tried to alert the public about
> these alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with
> threats of a lawsuit.18-20
>        *       Two other studies also showed evidence of a
> potentially pre-cancerous condition. The other seven studies, which
> were superficial in their design, were not designed to identify these
> details.37
>        *       In an unpublished study, laboratory rats fed a GM
> crop developed stomach lesions and seven of the forty died within two
> weeks. The crop was approved without further tests.37, 137-140
> Many industry studies appear to be rigged to find no problems. In the
> case of a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH), for
> example, researchers injected cows with only one forty-seventh the
> normal dosage before reporting hormone residues in milk.91-92 They
> heated the milk 120 times longer than standard, to report that
> pasteurization destroys the hormone.93-94 They added cows to their
> study that were pregnant before treatment, to claim that rbGH didn't
> impede fertility.89 Cows that fell sick were dropped from studies
> altogether.80-81
> With soybeans, serious nutritional differences between GM and natural
> soy were omitted from a published paper.35-36 Feeding studies masked
> any problems by using mature animals instead of developing ones and
> by diluting their GM soy 10 to 1 with non-GM protein.34
> There are no adequate tests to verify that GM food will not create
> dangerous allergic reactions. While an international organization
> developed testing standards to minimize the possibility of allowing
> allergenic GM varieties on the market, GM corn currently sold in the
> U.S. has not been subjected to those tests and would most certainly
> fail them. One of these tests, for example, uses a test tube
> simulation to evaluate how long a potential GM allergen can last
> inside the digestive system before being broken down. Compared to the
> recommended international standards, however, one biotech company
> used a far stronger acid concentration and more than 1,250 times the
> recommended amount of a digestive enzyme to make the claim that their
> protein degrades too quickly to cause a reaction.179
> The only human feeding trial ever conducted confirmed that
> genetically engineered genes from soy transferred to the bacteria
> inside the digestive tract. (The biotech industry had previously said
> that such a transfer was impossible.) The World Health Organization,
> the British and American Medical Associations, and several other
> groups have expressed concern that if the "antibiotic resistant
> marker genes" used in GM foods got transferred to bacteria, it could
> create super-diseases that are immune to antibiotics.59-60 More
> worrisome is that the "promoter" used inside GM foods could get
> transferred to bacteria or internal organs. Promoters act like a
> light switches, permanently turning on genes that might otherwise be
> switched off. Scientists believe that this might create unpredictable
> health effects, including the potentially pre-cancerous cell growth
> found in the animal feeding studies mentioned above.37
> The biotech industry says that millions have been eating GM foods
> without ill effect.This is misleading.
>        *       About 100 people died and 5-10,000 to fell seriously
> ill when they consumed the food supplement L-tryptophan. Only those
> who consumed the variety that was genetically modified became ill.
> That brand had minute, but deadly contaminants that would easily pass
> through current regulations today. If the disease it created had not
> been rare and acute, with crippling and deadly symptoms, the GM
> supplement might never have been traced as the cause. Once
> discovered, however, industry and government covered up facts and
> diverted the blame. Even the FDA testimony before Congress withheld
> vital information.107-125
> For a summary of the L-tryptophan issue, click here. For an in-depth
> presentation of the issue, see Toxic L-tryptophan: Shedding Light on
> a Mysterious Epidemic, by William E. Crist.
>        *       Milk from rbGH-treated cows contains an increased
> amount of the hormone IGF-1, which is one of the highest risk factors
> associated with breast and prostate cancer, among others.94-97
>        *       Soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% in the UK,
> coinciding with the introduction of GM soy imports from the
> U.S.160-161
> According to a March 2001 report, the Center for Disease Control says
> that food is responsible for twice the number of illnesses in the
> U.S. compared to estimates just seven years earlier. This increase
> roughly corresponds to the period when Americans have been eating GM
> food. Could that be contributing to the 5,000 deaths, 325,000
> hospitalizations, and 76 million illnesses related to food each year?
> Might it play in role in our national epidemic of obesity or the rise
> in diabetes or lymphatic cancers? We have no way of knowing if there
> is a connection because no one has looked for one.
> One of the most dangerous aspects of genetic engineering is the
> closed thinking and consistent effort to silence those with contrary
> evidence or concerns. Just before stepping down from office, former
> Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman admitted the following:
> "What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that
> the technology was good, and that it was almost immoral to say that
> it wasn't good, because it was going to solve the problems of the
> human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked... And there was
> a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you're against
> it, you're Luddites, you're stupid. That, frankly, was the side our
> government was on... You felt like you were almost an alien,
> disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view"152-153
> Contrast this with the warning by the editors of Nature
> Biotechnology: "The risks in biotechnology are undeniable, and they
> stem from the unknowable in science and commerce. It is prudent to
> recognize and address those risks, not compound them by overly
> optimistic or foolhardy behavior." 137
> The biotech industry and the government have been foolhardy indeed.
> Blinded, perhaps by the baseless myth that GM foods are needed to
> feed the world,250-251  they gamble with our health and support their
> safety claims on obsolete or unproven assumptions. Accepting their
> vacuous assurances by eating these dangerous foods or serving them to
> your customers may likewise be overly optimistic or foolhardy.
> Please read the evidence amassed in the book Seeds of Deception by
> Jeffrey M. Smith. The meticulously documented facts leave no doubt
> about a massive injustice. The topic is too important to put this off
> until tomorrow.
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