Spermicidal Breakfast Cereal

By Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, ZNet.

What would happen if contraceptive corn or antibiotic wheat accidentally made it to the supermarket? Nobody knows, but that isn't stopping agribusiness from pursuing these crops.

This article was translated from the Spanish by Miguel Alvarado.

Just when the global diatribe over food and genetically modified crops (GM) is heating up in tone and breadth, the corporations that create them are staging a showcase for a fresh batch of transgenics.

These new GM crops, known as biopharmaceuticals, or biopharms for short, produce industrial and pharmaceutical chemicals within their tissues. The plants, including soy, rice, corn and tobacco, are genetically altered to produce substances such as growth hormones, curdling agents (coagulants), vaccines for humans (as well as farm animals), human antibodies, industrial enzymes, contraceptives and even pregnancy deterrents.

Scientists and corporations alike embrace biopharmaceuticals with glee: "Imagine being able to harvest enough globulin (a compound that fights arthritis) for the whole world in all of fifty acres?" writes Dr. William O. Robertson for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Imagine being able to find the protein healthy people use to prevent arthritis or breast cancer and being able to produce it in large quantities in rice and tobacco."

ProdiGene, a leader in the field, calculates that by the end of this decade, 10% of the corn produced in the US will be biopharmaceutical. The volume of biopharmaceutical drugs and chemicals could reach the $200 billion figure, according to Dow AgroSciences' Guy Cardinau.

Warnings

But some scientists and ecologists are concerned. Will it be possible to contain and segregate such crops, fruit and seed, in order to avoid a biological Chernobyl?

Is there any guarantee that these products won't accidentally end up at the supermarket? And how can we keep their pollen from fertilizing other fields and reproducing out of control?

"One single mistake from a biotechnology company and we'll be having someone else's prescription medicine for breakfast in our cereal," warns Larry Bohlen, spokesman for Friends of the Earth, an international ecology organization.

"What will happen if the pollen of a transgenic plant containing some kind of drug fertilizes a nearby edible crop?" argues the Erosion, Technology and Concentration Action Group (ETC) in a report published in 2000.

The report continues to ask: "How will the soil microorganisms and insects which benefit agriculture be affected by crops genetically designed to produce industrial and pharmaceutical chemicals? What will happen if animals eat the biopharmaceutical crops? Will the biopharmaceutical proteins be altered during the various stages of growth, harvest and storage? Will they cause allergic reactions?

According to biologist Brian Tokar, professor at the Institute for Social Ecology, the most serious problems concern cross-pollination and unknown effects to insects, soil microorganisms and other native life-forms.

A Little Mishap In Nebraska

There have been mistakes with these crops already. In November 2002, at an agricultural cooperative in Aurora, Nebraska, 500,000 bushels of soy were contaminated with biopharmaceutical corn. One of the coop members harvested an experimental batch of corn for ProdiGene the year before and then proceeded to plant a crop of soy for human consumption in the same field.

During a routine inspection, federal officials from the Department of Agriculture found the corn stalks for ProdiGene growing among the soy plants. By the time they made the discovery, soy from that field was already being stored mixed with the soy of other coop members. Fortunately, the authorities were able to segregate the contaminated grain just before it reached the supermarket aisles.

The company was slapped with a $500,000 fine for negligence; yet, and in spite of such gross near disaster, the government still allows the corporation to continue with biopharmaceutical research as well as keeping the precise nature of the contaminating batch in Nebraska a trade secret. Mark Ritchie, president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, describes the incident as the "Three Mile Island" of biotechnology, in reference to the emergency caused by a nuclear reactor in the 70s.

After the ProdiGene scandal, two industrial corporations which had so far supported transgenic research began to reconsider their positions. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, a group which represents supermarket distributing companies, expressed concern about the possibility that biopharmaceuticals could end up contaminating food supplies; such concern was also shared by the National Food Processors Association. The president, John Cady, requested strict and mandatory regulations in order to protect food products from being contaminated by biopharms.

Other people don't share such concerns. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, a group that represents biotech companies, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, an organization dedicated to Big Farming, are currently lobbying in Washington to obtain support from the federal government in order to weaken biopharmaceutical regulations.

Biological contamination

Transgenic products unfit for human consumption have already contaminated the food chain. At the end of the year 2000, environmental and consumer advocacy groups in the United States discovered that hundreds of american products in the supermarkets had been contaminated with traces of Starlink, a genetically enhanced GM corn that was declared unfit for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Although the Starlink strain was farmed in just 0.04% of the US corn production area, and was only meant for farm animal consumption, it ended up tainting 430 million bushels and to this day keeps showing up regularly in US exports.

"The Starlink discovery in Japan and South Korea, two of the most important US corn consumers, indicates that it could be found anywhere," remarks Meena Raman, from Malaysia, coordinator in Asia for Friends of the Earth Transgenics Program. "Until the US and Aventis (the biotechnology company that created Starlink) controls contamination, no other countries should allow corn imports."

A more severe case of genetic contamination is taking place in Mexico, where the presence of GM corn has been documented since 2001. It continues to show up in rural farming communities, both peasant and indigenous, sown by small farmers who are not aware of the transgenic threat; and it is proliferating rapidly, across wild and mixed varieties, in spite of the Mexican government's ban on transgenic crops, in effect since 1998. This contamination deeply concerns environmentalists, scientists and farmers, since Mexico is the cradle of corn and axis of its diversity, rendering the long term consequences on the environment and human health uncertain.

In Mexico, people are distressed by the possibility that biopharmaceutical corn could be introduced in the country. Silvia Ribeiro, of the ETC organization, expresses great annoyance about the California-based company Epicyte, which ostentatiously declared having developed a spermicidal corn to be used as a contraceptive.

Ribeiro stated in La Jornada: "The potential of spermicidal corn as a biological weapon is outrageous, since it easily interbreeds with other varieties, is capable of going undetected and could lodge itself at the very core of indigenous and farming cultures. We have witnessed the execution of repeated sterilization campaigns performed against indigenous communities. This method is certainly much more difficult to trace."

We cover the world

Where are biopharms cultivated? All over the world. At the molecularfarming.com website, investors solicit the collaboration of farmers willing to lease their land for biopharmaceutical experiments anywhere in the world. They have signed agreements in Brazil, Ireland, Australia, Greece, Zimbabwe, Panama and many other countries.

Activist Beth Burrows first denounced the claims at the Molecular Farming's website. Burrows is president of the Edmonds Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to bioethics and biosecurity issues.

Award-winning journalist Devinder Sharma, an expert in agricultural and nutritional matters who lives in India, comments on molecularfarming.com: "This is part of a global scheme to transfer dirty industries onto the Third World."

"First came the exporting of toxic and industrial recycled waste to developing countries in Africa and Southeast Asia. Now comes the biopharms. In the US there's a huge problem regarding these crops. What are they gonna do? Transfer dirty technology."

Don't worry, be happy

In spite of all this, biopharming advocates assure us that they're perfectly safe. Doctor Allan S. Felsot, an environmental toxicologist at Washington State University considers the use of plants to produce pharmaceuticals and other chemicals "not even a new concept, if we take into account that we've used medicinal plants for centuries."

Felsot insists there's nothing unusual about our breeding human proteins in the tissues of transgenic plants. "The proteins (in question) are the same found in our bodies. Most of them are used as medicine through cellular fermentation. They are very well defined and have been subject to exhaustive research and clinical trials on humans."

Doctor Robertson adds: "The possibilities boggle the mind, the opportunities are impossible to grasp in their totality and the risks appear minimal when they're compared with the risks we have encountered in medicine throughout the years."

What's ahead?

"What will have to happen before the Department of Agriculture takes seriously the fact that millions of people almost ended up consuming experimental drugs and chemicals?" asks Brandon Keim, of the Council for Responsible Genetics in reference to the ProdiGene scandal. "A few sensational deaths? Maybe an increase in debilitating disorders which will only be noticeable some decades later, when it's already too late?"

Biopharmaceuticals are in an experimental stage but the corporations producing them anxiously await the day when federal authorities give them the go-ahead to enter the market.

Carmelo Ruiz is a journalist and a research associate of the Institute for Social Ecology. He has previously published in Grist, E Magazine, the New York Daily News, Corporate Watch, IPS and other media.

http://www.alternet.org/story/18154/

Also Read:

GMO - the real story

GMO Corn Makes Men Sterile

Now do you want labels on your GMO foods?

Click here to take action.

GMO - The Real Story: Spermicides added to grain for population control

Would a chemical corporation knowingly put spermicides into genetically modified crops? Joel Salatin says they do.

 

Last December at the ACRES USA conference in St. Louis I ran into a guy who knew one of the executives at Monsanto. He told me about a conversation he'd had with this fellow regarding genetically modified organisms. The long and short of it was that one of the primary goals of GMOs was as a population control mechanism. I assumed the conversation had been embellished due to paranoia..

So last Friday I had dinner in Minneapolis and met a fellow and his family who are farming north of the twin cities. He had attended Purdue University in Indiana, was an excellent student, and Dow Chemical hired him right out of college. He described the fancy trucks, the fancy dinners, the fancy resort conventions that the company supplied.

His team was working on GMOs and he found out one day that they were putting spermicides into grain to ship strategically to countries around the world where U.S. foreign policy wanted population control. This is part of the U.S. foreign aid package. Appalled at this discovery, he asked the other team members if they had a problem with what was going on--everyone else was fine with it. He handed in his resignation that day.

In the news lately, the world community reels in horror with the revelations of Nazis sterilizing thousands of half Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables. So how many innocent people around the world are being unknowingly sterilized as a result of this audacious plan? And through pollen drift, this grain can contaminate food globally. It can't be contained.

It is time to understand that these global corporate elite agendas are not just about personal preference. They are evil. U.S. foreign policy is evil. To unleash something as potentially ubiquitous as GMO human-sterilizing grains is terrorism pure and simple. When our little kiddies are encouraged to get a good enough education to go work for one of these outfits, what does this say about our value system?

Let's not dance around the issue. An evil food system exists, and a righteous food system exists. We need to be patronizing and promoting the righteous one.

Joel Salatin

The Farm Blog

Connecting farmers with patrons

http://polyfaceyum.blogspot.com/2009/02/gmo-real-story.html

 

Also read:

 

Spermicidal Breakfast Cereal

GMO Corn Makes Men Sterile

A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto. More here.

Now do you want labels on your GMO foods?

Click here to take action.

SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN FDA PRE-EMPTION

By Byron J. Richards, CCN
March 6, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

In a stunning and unexpected 6-3 ruling the right-leaning Supreme Court went against the wishes of the last president, took the wind out of the sails of health care reform of the current president, sent irresponsible Big Pharma a major wake up call, and bluntly told the arrogant FDA that they are indeed not above the rule of law. It is a major victory for every American citizen.

Central to the issue is a power struggle between the federal government and states, which in this situation meant the federal government authority to pre-empt your state rights to sue if you are injured by a drug. The FDA, acting on behalf of the Bush administration and on the side of Big Pharma, has helped tie up thousands of drug injury lawsuits across the country. The FDA, who is supposed to be protecting consumers from drug injury and ensuring a correct risk/safety picture for any person taking a drug, was instead trying to shirk their responsibility and simply claim that Americans had no right to sue.

This convoluted attempt by the FDA to undermine consumer safety was one of the main themes in my 2006 book, Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America. The Bush Administration had intentionally appointed anti-safety people in high positions within the FDA, starting with its Chief Counsel, Daniel Troy (and continued as a legal philosophy after Troy was forced out for his Big Pharma connections). Troy set in motion the legal problem the Supreme Court just decided.

During the final years of the Bush administration cancer industry insider Andrew von Eschenbach, MD, was appointed to run the FDA, and Wall Street insider, Scott Gottlieb, MD, was second in command. These individuals sought to fully implement the FDA label as senior to any rights of citizens. Their intention was to make sure that new biotech drugs would be protected from lawsuits, as the FDA wanted to speed new and even more dangerous drugs onto the market so as to foster the development of the biotech industry. In essence, the FDA management wanted to turn the American public into one large clinical experiment, with no right of recourse when injured.

This was occurring against a backdrop wherein the FDA couldn’t even name all the drugs currently on the market, had failed to demand required aftermarket follow up safety testing on drugs, and had intentionally withheld safety information on existing drugs from the public. The current situation with drugs is that almost no drug, even blockbusters and those in use for decades, have an accurate risk/benefit profile.

Americans who use medications are already taking risks of unknown magnitude, which is a main reason over 100,000 Americans are killed every year and over 3 million are injured so seriously they need hospital care (ironically, over half those injuries occur while already in the hospital).

The FDA knows full well that when a drug is approved for the market the full extent of the side effects won’t be known for years. History shows us time and again that Big Pharma actively hides risk data from the FDA and pays for “science” that distorts reality. This irresponsible behavior goes along with closed-door negotiations with the FDA, and has resulted in numerous drug disasters like Vioxx. FDA managers oftentimes go against the wishes of their own safety scientists and then move on to six figure salaries in the industry they regulate. Doctors are not apprised of the actual risks and consumers are in the dark.

Currently, there are 450,000 additional new cases of heart failure every year in Americans over 65, a fact that parallels the increased use of heart-weakening statins in this older group. It is only a matter of time before the shoe drops on the 20-billion-dollar-a-year statin industry.

The FDA insistence that a drug label, based on what is known at the time of approval, should supersede citizen’s states rights to sue if they were injured, has almost nothing to do with consumer safety. Rather, it is a federal power grab that is in the best financial interests of Big Pharma and Big Biotech, industries that do not have consumer safety as their top priority.

By the way, don’t think President Obama is on the side of the citizens. In the health care section of the stimulus bill, there is specific pre-emption language. If the federal government is in charge of health care it will be named in future lawsuits when patients are injured from the care it doles out or doesn’t allow.

The current Supreme Court ruling will undermine any system of federal health care wherein the drugs being used are injuring people. Experts believe this system is so badly broken, due to gross FDA management incompetence, that it will take 10 years of studies and many billions of dollars just to understand the actual risks of the drugs Americans are already taking.

In writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens put Big Pharma on notice. The defendant in this case, Wyeth, had argued that it could not comply with both federal and state law. Stevens told them they had a fundamental misunderstanding of regulation and were trying to hide behind the FDA, going on to say that it is a central premise of federal drug regulation that the manufacturer bears responsibility for the content of its label at all times. That is not the news Big Pharma wanted to hear.

Stevens went on to write that there was no merit in the argument that the FDA’s labeling decisions could supersede state law, saying that this argument was “an untenable interpretation of congressional intent and an overbroad view of an agency’s power to pre-empt state law.” He pointed out that the FDA tried to push this on the public without any opportunity for comment from the public or from states, all done against a backdrop wherein the FDA is not able to keep up with safety issues in the first place, meaning that the FDA position lacked “thoroughness, consistency and persuasiveness.” Stevens stated that under such lacking standards the Bush position “is entitled to no weight.”

This is a major victory for all Americans and for states. While the case itself is on the topic of Big Pharma and the FDA, the ruling is sweeping in nature and will extend far beyond prescription drugs. States have just been handed a major legal ruling against the ever-growing incursion of federal power.

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© 2009 Wellness Resources, Inc. - All Rights Reserved

Byron J. Richards, Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist, nationally-renowned nutrition expert, and founder of Wellness Resources is a leader in advocating the value of dietary supplements as a vital tool to maintain health. He is an outspoken critic of government and Big Pharma efforts to deny access to natural health products and has written extensively on the life-shortening and health-damaging failures of the sickness industry.

His 25 years of clinical experience from the front lines of nutrition have made him a popular radio guest who callers find impossible to stump. He has personally developed 75 unique nutraceutical-grade nutritional supplement formulas with a focus on thyroid nutrition, healthy weight loss supplements, cardiovascular nutrition, and stress management.

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