Look out for genetically modified sugar in a shopping aisle near you by next Fall! American Crystal, a large Wyoming-based sugar company, has announced it will be sourcing its sugar from genetically engineered sugar beets. However, the increasing presence of GM crops in the US food chain has led to a growing resistance movement: several activists groups have filed lawsuits in California calling for the USDA to review its approval of the GM sugar beet, while planting of Monsanto's alfalfa, also genetically modified to resist Roundup, has been delayed after a major campaign against the crop in 2006 calling for a federal environmental review.  

GMO sugar beet seeds, supplied by Monsanto, have an inserted gene to make the plant resistant to the company's Roundup herbicide. Monsanto already once postponed intro of the sugar beet (ready since 2004) when candy makers and other companies fretted - rightly so - that consumers would reject products with sugar from the beets.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can raise my hackles. But only sometimes. Other times, I'm delighted by the creativity, ingenuity, and smarts of the technology and its scientists.

What scares me most, I've discovered while working on a related project, is idle blurring of the various issues involved with "Genetic Modification." When we speak as if it's all the same, and worse, when our leaders polarize the issue, then society is the worse for it. We need to acknowledge that it's not necessarily the process, but rather the implementation that is at issue.

On the one hand, you can have stupid GMO, as we have seen with Monsanto's proprietary "roundup ready" crop seeds -- corn, soybeans, and a few other crops they've developed, which can withstand Monsanto's herbicide Roundup™.

If the human species has one unique characteristic, it may well be the propensity to kill things it doesn't like or that simply displease.  Other species destroy to sustain themselves; humans just do it because they can.  

Now there's big money in it. One of the biggest money makers is Monsanto, the organization that brought us Agent Orange, dioxin, RoundUp and, most recently, acquired the company, Delta&Pine Land, that developed, together with the Department of Agriculture, the terminator gene.

Like the other monopolistic clients (Walmart and Tyson Foods) of the Stephens Group of Little Rock, Arkansas, Monsanto is not flamboyant and not keen on random publicity.  Which is probably why they declined to be interviewed for the French documentary on their achievements.

Video below the fold.

A diary that made the rec list yesterday and is still on it as of this writing concerns Monsanto, the maker of RoundUp (glyphosate), and creator of genetically modified (GM) crops that are not killed by application of this herbicide.  Monsanto and similar companies also create varieties of crop plants that have been genetically manipulated in other ways.  

The diarist claims that the "myth," "charade," or outright "lie" perpetrated by Monsanto that GM crops produce higher yields than conventional crops and are therefore the "answer" to world hunger has been busted by a "definitive" study that disproves this assertion.  A link is provided, but not to the study that purportedly lays waste to Monsanto's claim.  Rather, the link is to an article in a British tabloid [edit: strike that characterization].  The actual article can be found here.

A major study out of Kansas has now dispelled the myth (lie? charade?  PR scam?  boondoggle?)  that Monsanto has been using for years to promote its GMO crops - that GM crops produce greater yields.  It then slathers that manure ... no, manure is too real and valuable to work as an analogy ... that synthetic crap, with an even more synthetic concern for the world's poor and starving.  And thus evil disguised as goodness, worms its way in where it should never have gotten.

   This Earth Day let’s put forth some proposals to make significant change.  Perhaps one of the most polluting things humans do is bury our dead, and the worst aspect of this is to embalm them.  In her book The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford explained how embalming has nothing to do with sanitation, but everything to do with profits for undertakers and chemical manufacturers.  Another important problem we face is the way we produce food.  New techniques of seed preparation, fertilizing the soil and of preserving foods are using biotechology and radiation.  We need to carefully consider the consequences.

The missing back story to the Pennsylvania primary is milk.

Dairy farmers are critical to Pennsylvania and the state is fighting two milk bans - on labeling of milk, and on raw milk - but no one is talking about Hillary Clinton and her experience with milk.  Or the risk the unlabeled milk poses to women and girls.  Or what it means for a politician - particularly a woman - to be working closely with a corporation which not only created that risk but is going state to state to keep people in the dark about even "where" its product is.

Few people know:

The film "King Corn" will be aired on PBS this week. I'm looking forward to it. I love corn. I just don't like what we do with corn. In honor of "King Corn" I came up with some reasons to just say NO to corn.

What do the cost of food,  the food riots, overweight Americans, drug resistant disease and possibly the die off of bees all have in common?

Disclaimer: This is a biased post. I am pro small family farms and I am pro honey bees.  I belong to a CSA. I am a lifetime honey eater. I go through a large jar of the stuff every month. I am firmly opposed to High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Update: Here is a link to a more thorough diary on corn written earlier this week by CSI Bentonville: http://www.dailykos.com/...

Something to think about on this tax day... where will more than a quarter trillion dollars go over the next few years?

^{Answer: The [Food &] Farm Bill.}

The corn kernels you eat, whether on the cob, frozen or canned is sweet corn and is less than 2/10th of 1% of the corn grown.

Independent Lens will be showing the documentary film, King Corn (lots of really good stuff to explore at that link) which was released last October. About a couple guys who buy an acre to see what it takes to grow corn. This is an important film (and pretty fun) since the [Food &] Farm Bill is currently in Congress being reconciled (not too late to call).

 THE PROFIT DRIVEN INDUSTRIAL FOOD COMPLEX
There's actually a huge deficit in nutrition since corn has been tampered with. It's bred for energy (starch) but not actual food value. It gets cows and other animals fat in a hurry which is good for other food industries on the bottom line (though they too are nutritionally deficient in comparison to their more humanely raised counterparts)

So, what do we really think industrial corn does for us whether eaten directly or indirectly via a factory farmed animal? We end up fat yet still hungry. Why? We need to eat more to meet our bodies vitamin and mineral needs.

I've been calling that, Starving Obesity.

~~~~

The following is slightly reworked from another comment I made several weeks ago and have recycled several times threatening each time to turn it into a diary. One thing I've learned in life is don't make empty threats so here goes:

In 1948 George Kennan, who at the time was a senior US State Department planning official, wrote:

We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.

To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

Later on, in April of 1974 President Gerald Ford, who had replaced Nixon, issued National Security Study Memorandum 200. The title was Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests. President Ford signed an Executive Order making NSSM 200 official US Government Policy. It dealt with food policy, population growth and strategic raw materials. The NSSM was the work of Henry Kissinger and was secret at the time it was issued.

I am not a biologist but the recent reports of bat die offs as reported by the New York Times on March 25 sound very familiar to the Colony Collapse Disorder of bees. They both may be related to poor nutrition during hibernation.

The New York Times recently carried the die off of bats in NY, VT, and MA:  http://www.nytimes.com/... A researcher interviewed by the Times speculated that the bats were not getting enough nutrition that created the brown fat to enable the bats to last through the winter.

And from Brit Amos at Global Research on how GMO may cause the CCD in bees:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/...  A quote from the article:

When the flower pollen becomes genetically modified or sterile, the bees will potentially go malnourished and die of illness due to the lack of nutrients and the interruption of the digestive capacity of what they feed on through the summer and over the winter hibernation process.

When I was in first grade we put a bean in a Styrofoam cup. The root went down and the leaves went up and it was almost like magic.
Now I think about non-target species, resistance and I wear Personal Protective Equipment. I sprayed an anole with orthene last week.  I promptly washed it off and hoped it survived my poison rain. It was easier when I didn't know how to use paraquat or any of the other chemicals that are in my arsenal.

When I lived in Wisconsin, a big issue was Wisconsin's low "tipping fees." A tipping fee is the cost paid to dump a truck full of trash into a landfill. WI's tipping fees were low, which meant we were the lucky recipients of the entire region's trash. It's kind of like the off-shoring of jobs, except domestically, and with garbage.

The issue I'm pissed about now is similar - but this time it's not merely a domestic issue. You know how they call free trade a "race to the bottom" because whichever country has the lowest minimum wage, environmental standards, and labor regulations gets the manufacturing jobs? America loses on that one (thank goodness!) because the Republicans have not (yet) lowered our minimum wage to equal China's.

Well, here's one where we win: loose GMO regulation. Can't do your GMO experiment in your own country? Come to the USA! Pollute our crops' gene pools and kill our ecosystems! Everyone's welcome here!

I received this from India and thought people might be interested in what is going on there.

EVERY TRICK IN THE BOOK
(all information taken from the new report: THE MARKETING OF BT COTTON IN INDIA)

In Madhya Pradesh.

FAKE FARMERS

Posters appeared in many places in Madhya Pradesh before sowing time, featuring a person who claimed to have gained great benefits from using Bt Cotton seed. These advertisements urged other farmers to benefit similarly from the use of Bt Cotton.

Investigations revealed that this "farmer" was actually a paan dabbahwala (the owner of a little shop selling betel leaves and cigarettes) who is not even a farmer, let alone a Bt Cotton farmer!!!

crossposted from unbossed

Today we got good news. The Monsanto astroturf scheme to take away the rights of the citizens of Pennsylvania to know how their milk was produced lost . . .  mostly. The Department of Agriculture issued a notice removing the gag rule, but with lots of caveats.

But more important than the milk labeling is what this this battle says about democracy and how fragile it is.

crossposted from unbossed

This is part of a series on the ban on milk labeling.

Yesterday the good guys won - mostly - on the milk labeling ban, but the battle will continue, and we need to study what happened.

Terry Etherton participated in a discussion of Pennsylvania's milk labeling on WHYY, Tuesday's Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. If you listen to the show (here via real player) you will hear him make certain claims over and over - when he wasn't shouting to try to keep the other guest, Consumer's Union Michael Hansen, from making important points about the weakness of Etherton's claims. You could almost gauge just how much Etherton's ox was gored by the level of his yelling.

Etherton was right on message with the behind-the-scenes propaganda campaign to make the world safe for Posilac a/k/a rBST. Wanna see what I mean?

Hello all,
 
  Not only does the FDA approve the sale of cloned meat but says it does not have to be labeled either.