From Glyphosate to Front Groups: Fraud, Deception and Toxic Tactics

Colin Todhunter
Off Guardian

nvironmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal and the British Medical Association Council Chairman, Chaand Nagpaul.

Her purpose is to not only draw attention to the impact of biocides, not least that of glyphosate, on health and the environment but also to bring attention to the corruption that allows this to continue.

Along with her letter, she enclosed a 13-page document. Readers can access the fully referenced document here: European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage (or see the embedded version below).

It is worth reading in full to appreciate the conflicts of interest and the corruption that has led to the rise in certain illnesses and the destruction of the natural environment.

By way of a brief summary, the key points raised by Dr Mason and her claims include the following.

• The European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage. There has been a massive increase in the use of glyphosate in recent years. An increase in cataracts has been verified by epidemiological studies in England and by a 2016 WHO report.
• There are shockingly high levels of weed killer in UK breakfast cereals. After testing these cereals at the Health Research Institute in Iowa, Dr Fagan, director of the centre, said: “These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”
• The amount of glyphosate in tap water in South Wales has increased tenfold in a very short period.
• Glyphosate is largely responsible for the destruction of biodiversity and an increase in the prevalence of many serious health conditions.
• There are massive conflicts of interest throughout various agencies in the EU that ensure harmful agrochemicals like glyphosate come to market and remain there.
• In fact, a global industry has emerged to give ‘advice’ on biocides regulation. This results in regulatory bodies effectively working to further the commercial interests of the pesticide industry.
• The European Food Safety Authority sanctioned increased maximum pesticide residue levels (MRL) at the request of industry (Monsanto in this case, to 100 times the previously authorised MRL).
• The Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) is used by corporate backers to counter public health policies. Its members have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels. It is, however, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity. The ILSI describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”. But researchers from the University of Cambridge, Bocconi University in Milan, and the US Right to Know campaign assessed over 17,000 pages of documents under US freedom of information laws to present evidence of influence peddling.
• ILSI Vice-President, Prof Alan Boobis, is currently the Chairman of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT) (2015-2021). He was directly responsible for authorising chemicals such as glyphosate, chlorothalonil, clothianidin and chlorpyrifos that are destroying human health and creating a crisis in biodiversity. His group and others have authorised glyphosate repeatedly. He and David Coggon, the previous Chairman of CoT (2008-2015), were appointed as experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), a group allied with the agrochemical industry and is fighting for higher pesticide exposure.
• Jean-Claude Juncker the President of the European Commission who, against a petition from more than 1.5 million European citizens, re-authorised glyphosate in December 2017 for a further five years. He set up the Science Advisory Mechanism, aiming to put industry-friendly personnel on various committees.

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Planting the Seeds of Regime Change: How GMO Seeds and Monsanto/Bayer’s “RoundUp” are Driving US Policy in Venezuela

Mint Press News

CARACAS, VENEZUELA — As the political crisis in Venezuela has unfolded, much has been said about the Trump administration’s clear interest in the privatization and exploitation of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, by American oil giants like Chevron and ExxonMobil.

 

Yet the influence of another notorious American company, Monsanto — now a subsidiary of Bayer — has gone largely unmentioned.

While numerous other Latin American nations have become a “free for all” for the biotech company and its affiliates, Venezuela has been one of the few countries to fight Monsanto and other international agrochemical giants and win. However, since that victory — which was won under Chavista rule — the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition has been working to undo it.

Now, with Juan Guaidó’s parallel government attempting to take power with the backing of the U.S., it is telling that the top political donors of those in the U.S. most fervently pushing regime change in Venezuela have close ties to Monsanto and major financial stakes in Bayer.

In recent months, Monsanto’s most controversial and notorious product — the pesticide glyphosate, branded as Roundup, and linked to cancer in recent U.S. court rulings — has threatened Bayer’s financial future as never before, with a litany of new court cases barking at Bayer’s door. It appears that many of the forces in the U.S. now seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government are hoping that a new Guaidó-led government will provide Bayer with a fresh, much-needed market for its agrochemicals and transgenic seeds, particularly those products that now face bans in countries all over the world, including once-defoliated and still-poisoned Vietnam.

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Monsanto/Bayer Moving to Genome Edit Fruits and More

F. William Engdahl 
 
Not surprising, Monsanto, today hidden behind the Bayer logo, as the world leader in patented GMO seeds and the probable carcinogenic Roundup herbicide with glyphosate, is attempting to quietly patent genetically modified or GMO varieties of fruits using controversial gene-editing. The “beauty” of this for Monsanto/Bayer is that in the USA, according to a recent ruling by the US Department of Agriculture, gene-edited agriculture needs no special independent testing. The developments are not good for human health or safety, nor will it do anything to give the world better nutrition.

The agrichemical and GMO giant Monsanto, which today tries to keep a lower profile inside the German agrichemical and GMO giant Bayer, is moving into the highly controversial domain of gene-editing of new crop varieties. In 2018 as the company was being deluged with lawsuits over its use of the probable carcinogen, Roundup, Monsanto invested $125 million in a gene-editing startup called Pairwise. The link is anything but casual.

Former Monsanto Vice President for Global Biotechnology, Tom Adams, has taken the post of CEO of Pairwise. In short, this is a Monsanto gene-editing project. In a press release, Pairwise says it is using the controversial CRISPR gene-editing technology to create genetically edited produce. Among their goals apparently is a super-sweet variety of strawberry or apples, just what our sugar-saturated population doesn’t need.

CRISPR gene-editing, a stealth attempt by the global agribusiness industry to promote artificial mutations of crops and, as the world was shocked recently to hear, even humans, as in China, is being advanced, much like GMO crops falsely were, as solution to world hunger. Pairwise founder, Keith Joung, told media that their CRISPR gene-edited fruits, “will speed innovation that is badly needed to feed a growing population amid challenging conditions created by a changing climate.” How sweeter genetically-edited strawberries will solve world hunger he leaves to the imagination. Pairwise also says that gene-edited fruits would somehow also cut down on food waste. One has to be also skeptical there as well, even if it makes nice promotion copy. In addition to super-sweet strawberries, Monsanto plans to use its work with Pairwise to develop new varieties of gene-edited corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and canola crops. And because the USDA unfortunately has given the green light, the new genetically modified foods will undergo no independent testing for health and safety.

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Banana Land: Blood, Bullets and Poison

Comment: Important documentary. I'll never eat another Chiquita banana again. 

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US approves merger of Bayer & Monsanto, paving way for world’s biggest agrochemical corporation

RT

The US Department of Justice has reached a settlement that would allow Bayer AG’s $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co, requiring the German company to sell $9 billion in agricultural assets first. 

The merger as initially proposed would have harmed consumers and farmers by eliminating competition, the DOJ said. However, the Trump administration is satisfied with the terms of the settlement announced Tuesday.

“America’s farm system is of critical importance to our economy, to our food system, and to our way of life,” said Makan Delrahim, head of the DOJ’s antitrust division. “American farmers and consumers rely on head-to-head competition between Bayer and Monsanto.”

Last October, Bayer agreed to sell its Liberty herbicide brand, cotton and soybean seeds, and other seed capabilities to BASF SE, another German chemical corporation. That deal was worth €5.9 billion. Another sale to BASF was announced in April, with Bayer divesting of herbicides, wheat hybrids research and digital farming business that had combined sales amounting to €2.2 billion in 2017, according to Bloomberg.

EU regulators approved the merger in March.

Once combined, Bayer-Monsanto will be the world’s biggest agrochemical corporation, surpassing DowDuPont Inc. and China National, which acquired Syngenta AG last year.

Monsanto is the world’s leading producer of genetically modified (GMO) seeds, and has faced widespread criticism and protests over the effects its products have had on the environment and biodiversity. Roundup, Monsanto’s most popular herbicide, has been blamed for the collapse in the Monarch butterfly population as well as the “colony collapse disorder” decimating the honeybees in Europe and North America.

The company has also challenged scientific studies pointing to glyphosate, the neo-nicotinoid used in the Roundup family of herbicides, being a carcinogen.

Announcing the merger in 2016, Bayer CEO Werner Baumann said there was an opportunity for both companies to “get beyond this image and reputation thing” by rebranding Monsanto.

Agrichemical Political Power in America and Europe

Evaggelos Vallianatos
greenmedinfo.com 

In November 2014, an open letter signed by about 57 million Americans reached European politicians urging them not to follow America’s genetic engineering path in food and agriculture. Don’t use genetic engineering to modify your crops, the letter said, because GM crops have served us pretty badly here in America. We are convinced the genetic modification of crops is a hazardous and failing technology. 

Genetic engineering for the hegemony of the world

Studies show that animals fed GM foods and / or the weed killer glyphosate become ill from damaged liver, kidneys, gut tissues and gut flora. These animals also suffer from immune system disruption, reproductive abnormalities and tumors. Do we want to eat this kind of food?

With this unsettling evidence from scientific studies, you would think, the letter said, the regulators of genetic engineering in America (Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Agriculture) would be alarmed and ban any further fiddling with the nation’s food. On the contrary, these government regulators and the industry justify the modification of crops from studies funded by the biotech industry.

The letter from America went beyond warning that GM foods were not safe. It concluded that GM foods were much more than the application of genetics on food. Modifying crops was intensifying the biocidal effects of industrialized agriculture. It triggered the radical remaking of farming into a perpetual cash cow for agrichemical corporations. GM food was part of a strategy of corporate hegemony over farmers, food and the world.

The open letter put it this way:

Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system. Americans are reaping the detrimental impacts of this risky and unproven agricultural technology. EU [European Union] countries should take note: there are no benefits from GM crops great enough to offset these impacts [on human health and the environment]. Officials who continue to ignore this fact are guilty of gross dereliction of duty.

I observed the regulatory origins of this technology. It happened in the 1990s under the supervision of the Clinton administration.

EPA alone had a Biopesticides Division of about eighty scientists working feverishly on behalf of the biotech and agrichemical companies. Indeed, it was pesticide executives that invented agricultural genetic engineering. This was their scheme of extending the life of their best-selling chemicals, especially weed killers like glyphosate and 2,4-D. Naturally, duping and addicting farmers to the genetic modification of crops complemented the global ambition of giant corporations for the control of the world’s food.

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