By Jeeni Criscenzo
Monsanto’s CEO, Hugh Grant (screenshot from CBS video)
At the tail end of CBS This Morning this Wednesday, was a brief interview with Monsanto’s CEO, Hugh Grant (not the movie star), on the debate over GMO labeling. He tried to come off as a soft-spoken, reasonable man, describing his company as “…an agricultural company. We sell seeds to farmers and those farmers make harvests and those harvest end up on plates around the world.”
Cool. The man running the company that is poisoning our planet and our population is just so damn nice, what with putting all that poison (err food) on our plates!
What if we don’t want his poison? Nice Mr. Grant wants to cram it down your throat. His nice agricultural company spent over $4 million killing a GMO labeling initiative in Colorado. They spent $6 million stopping a similar effort in Oregon.
In California, Monsanto spent $8 million to defeat Prop 37 in 2012, that would have mandated labeling of genetically engineered food. In September 2012, prior to a $45 million onslaught of distorted, misleading advertising, polls showed 61% of voters in favor of the measure. The proposition lost by less than 3%.
You’d think the CEO of Monsanto would have a very strong rationale for spending huge sums of shareholders’ money on blocking passage of a regulation that 66% of Americans support. When Charlie Rose asked if he is in favor of mandatory labeling, his response was:
I’m for some sort of federal standard, I think a broad umbrella on labeling that’s based on science and based on fact, I’d welcome. My concern, Charlie, is that, I want the labeling to be, so far the labeling has been state by state and different labels in different states, and that results in confusion instead of transparency and it results in more expense and so if there was an overall standard, kind of like the organic, if you look today at the organic food standard, something like that, I’d be in favor of.
Despite the enormous resources companies like Monsanto have put on the suppression of information that proves there is good cause for consumers to be concerned, a recent Pew Research Survey found that 57% of Americans consider GMOs unsafe. And the science continues to support their concerns.
In 2012, a study by French Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, originally published in the peer reviewed, Food and Chemical Toxicology, found sever liver and kidney damage and hormonal disturbances in rats fed GM maize and levels of Roundup below those permitted in drinking water in the EU. The study was retracted a year later following a defamation campaign by pro-GMO scientists, but republished in Environmental Sciences Europe in 2014 with the same conclusions.
Now the fraud behind the retraction has been revealed. During a recent trial in a Paris Court, that fined Marianne magazine and its journalists for public defamation of a public official and public defamation of the researchers – Séralini and his team, it was revealed that the original author of the fraud accusation was American lobbyist, Henry I. Miller – the same lobbyist who tried to discredit research linking tobacco to cancer and heart disease. Somebody needs to do a study on this rat, locked in a cell with nothing but cigarettes and genetically modified food, until he croaks.
While the CEO of Monsanto can state on TV that he would support a standard based on science and fact, the corruption used to sequester scientific proof that GMOs are unhealthy reaches the highest levels of government around the world. Last week the High Court of Paris indicted Marc Fellous, former chairman of France’s Biomolecular Engineering Commission, for forgery and the use of forgery for using the signature of a scientist without his agreement to argue that Séralini and his co-researches were wrong in their assessment of Monsanto’s own studies. Séralini’s team found signs of toxicity in the raw data from Monsanto’s own rat feeding studies with GM maize.
Meanwhile, back here in the U.S., the House of Representatives passed an ass backwards bill in July with the Orwellian title of Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, that would set up a voluntary program for companies that want to disclose genetically modified ingredients. Now that’s a “standard” Mr. Grant could really support! Meanwhile, companies that want to claim their product as Non-GMO would have to submit to a certification process! The measure would ban states which have passed GMO-labeling laws (including Vermont, Maine and Connecticut) from actually enacting them. In addition, genetically modified products could be labeled as “natural”.
A recent Poll by the Mellman Group showed 90% of American’s want to know what’s in their food. But how can we know when there is so much money and power set against transparency? Here’s an idea – why don’t the 57% of Americans who think GMO food is unsafe just stop buying it. How? By only buying what we know is not GMO.
Let’s use our power as consumers to only buy food products labeled Non-GMO. Yes, that would put the onus on farmers and food processors who don’t use GMO seeds and ingredients, to document and label their products accordingly. Some already do, and for the others this might add to their costs. But if sales of Non-GMO products were to skyrocket while sales of products not labeled Non-GMO were to suddenly plummet, it would be the bean-counters pushing to switch farming practices and ingredient selection to non-GMO.
We are already seeing fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Chipotle announcing that they will be switching to non-GMO. And a number of grocery chains have announced they will not carry the new FDA-approved, genetically modified salmon. So clearly the message of consumer preference for non-GMO is getting out there.
Now, let’s put the nail in the coffin of GMO by doing an opposite boycott. Let’s give Monsanto and their nice Mr. Grant a taste of their bully tactics. Combined, our billions of consumer dollars are far more powerful than theirs. So where’s the marketing genius who can get this campaign off the ground?
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Already consumers are demanding an increasing amount of organic food products which are non-GMO by definition. Although organic products can still contain pathogens like e coli, the safest way to make sure you’re not getting an unhealthy dose of Roundup in your foods is to utilize and consume only organic foods as much as possible, especially thin skinned fruits like grapes and apples. Sure you pay more, but is your health worth it?
Also, eat out in restaurants and especially fast food restaurants as little as possible because you know their foods contain whatever unnatural ingredients and poisons the law allows. And that goes for expensive restaurants unless they specifically state that their foods are organic or non-GMO.
I never considered restaurant food but I never thought of it. Thanks for the tip
Show me one person that has been poisoned by GMO food, or Roundup.
If just one person ever gets poisoned ,It will make headlines around the world.
Bees.
It will never make headlines around the world. As my article explains Monsanto and their minions use their power to control the message. Why don’t you read the article and the links or are you paid just to post your junk on anything that has the word Monsanto in it?
MS Criscenzo, unfortunately your hawking of Seralini’s work demonstrates your lack of science education. Any college freshman who passed Bio 101 should be able to point out the fatal flaws in that work to you. The science does not support your paranoid and delusional views. This is supported by thousands of studies and decades of biology research that extend far beyond agriculture.
By this point I can already hear you typing madly away at the s.h.i.l.l keys. I doubt it seems so to you, but there is no conspiracy. There are people genuinely trying to understand the world through science.
Enlighten us. Are you a psychologist and have you diagnosed paranoia and delusion? You’re calling out like you did in the schoolyard Leonard; you’re not saying what you know about science and gmo’s.
The paper was peer reviewed and republished. And the courts have ruled in his favor per defamation and the author of his defamation also tried to stop studies that linked cigarette smoking to cancer and heart disease. So you can choose to believe him but I choose to believe a peer reviewed study. Your insults roll off me like ball bearings on a playground slide.
Ms Crisenzo, I apologize if I was insulting; I didn’t know how else to interpret your article. For the record, you choose to believe one paper but ignore meta reviews like “An overview of the last 10 years of genetically engineered crop safety research” wherein 1,783 papers are reviewed and the authors conclude “The scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of GE crops”?
And if you believe Seralini’s work than you would prescribe a daily dose of Roundup for your male friends as Figure 6 of his paper clearly shows that male rats exposed to Roundup have lower mortality rates than the control rats. How would you explain the results from that figure?
Jeff Leonard, of Corvallis, Oregon sure gets around the internet. Why he’s got comments (always on GMOs/Monsanto) at the Environmental Working Group, the Harvard Crimsom, Huffington Post, Food Safety News and BlueOregon.com (for starters).
And many of those comments are snide and insulting, by the way. You’d almost wonder if he was being paid… but naw, I’m sure he’s just a concerned citizen.
Since male rats lived longer on a diet of Roundup, I’m sure that you, Mr. Leonard, should be taking a heapin’ helpin’ of Roundup every day as a dietary supplement. Then you can report that you are cancer free 20 years from now in which case I would start taking it too.
I’m sure the health benefits of Roundup will be reported in all the medical journals which heretofore have taken a dim view of the product. Once it is proven that Roundup is good for you, I feel confident that it will be used on all crops including the organics. What could be better than to get a nutritional supplement that also has the added benefit that it kills weeds?
California just dealt Monsanto a blow as the state’s Environmental Protection Agency will now list glyphosate — the toxic main ingredient in the U.S.’ best-selling weedkiller, Roundup — as known to cause cancer.
I think you have the right approach; reward producers who choose to label their foods (market influence always supersedes edicts). So many people have lost trust in the USDA since the “food pyramid”.
Doesn’t Monsanto have some sort of crony deal where they monopolize the seed market?
Monsanto invents their own seeds using genetic manipulation and patents them. They will soon be using RNA technology to do this.
And then they produce pesticides that kill all other seeds, because their seeds are genetically engineered to resist those toxic chemicals.
Stop the Dark Act from being slipped into the end of year appropriations bill. http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50865/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=17881 Act before Dec. 11 to stop any Rider to the appropriations bill that would block states’ rights to label GMOs, or allow GMO food companies to decide how to disclose information about their use of genetic engineering to consumers, rather than requiring labels on GMO packages that say, “genetically engineered.”
Big and informative hell-raising. I hope you keep on drilling here,
Criscenzo, there’s probably more to say.
This article and comment thread gives me glee. This pretty much sums up the bankruptcy of the ideas of the anti-GMO movement. I’ll explain.
Step 1. Cite the retracted and discredited Seralini study.
Step 2. Call ANYONE who disagrees with you a shill
Step 3. Repeat
It’s sooooo boring. Come on! Can you please try something fresh? A new argument? So really, the overwhelming majority of scientists, FDA, WHO, all think GMOs are safe, but anyone who agrees with them is a shill. It is incredibly paranoid thinking.
As far as Seralini, stop. It was thoroughly and roundly discredited because of its faulty methodology. And even if it wasn’t a bad study (which it was) it still is one small rat study, which as you may or may not know is only the very initial stage of scientific evaluation. Rats have been shown to respond to all kinds of affects that don’t apply to humans. You have to replicate the studies and eventually do human trials. None of these apply. It is one study alone on an island, discredited for terrible design. This is easily accessible information. Dont take my word for it. Look it up!
California just dealt Monsanto a blow as the state’s Environmental Protection Agency will now list glyphosate — the toxic main ingredient in the U.S.’ best-selling weedkiller, Roundup — as known to cause cancer.
Fun facts:
Glyphosate is less toxic than caffeine or table salt. Continually calling things toxic and poison with no scientific basis is just plain ignorant.
Eat red meat? It’s listed in the same category as glyphosate by the IARC (class 2a). Eat organic apples? They have formaldehyde, listed as class 1. The dose makes the poison.
The California EPA made a bad call, but that’s not scientific data, which your side doesn’t have, and it pales in comparison to the overwhelming scientific consensus and medical/food groups that have declared it safe.
The overwhelming fact is that chemical engineers are trying to corner the food market with seeds that only they produce and biochemical pesticides that kill competing and naturally evolved foods to ensure that artificial product. Most all the Monsantans in these comment chains make simple allegations like you do, Max Tuber, which assert fact and use no sources as authority. Tuber, you root phony, your real name is Strangelove, inn’t?
Nailed it, Bob Dorn. Ignore the trolls and stop eating GMO. Eventually they will get the message. I have been to Monsanto- locked up better than the White House- they know they have products that are not for the public interest. Thankfully they have a magnificent seed bank of heritage seeds and plants that eventually will have to replace the GMOs that are no longer lucrative.
Great job, Jeeni.
I have looked it up and carefully weighed the evidence. The tests required by the FDA for GMO foods are really nonexistent. They rely on assurances from Monsanto that the food is “safe and wholesome” and the “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) status put into place as a political move (not a scientific finding) in the early 1990s. Although science has since proven that wrong, they still stand by it (and cannot revise the finding or they will have to include that new science). They say the policy was made correctly “based on the information regulators knew at the time”. Unfortunately, this is the way law works but is not the way science should work.
There are two big concerns here:
1. Bt toxins incorporated into corn, soy, and other foodstuffs and ingested without adequate testing of the toxin when it gets to the human intestine, most particularly subtle endocrine-system altering effects (i.e. we are not looking at whether it kills people but if it is wholesome and good).
2. Roundup Ready GMO foods and the associated increase in the use of pesticides like Roundup. They use a sleight of hand here by talking about glyphosate which is considered the active ingredient in terms of the effect on plants, but it is not used in isolation and the other ingredients are much more (55x) toxic when applied to animals.
Just think of the criteria used by the food industry to evaluate whether something is good or not. They only ask if someone died or got cancer. I think wholesomeness is much more subtle than that.
We allowed transfats for 100 years until they were just recently banned. I didn’t see any proof that transfats will immediately kill you or cause cancer, but they are not good for people to eat them. So please stop with the “show me one person who died” routine.
See more information on the toxic effects of Glyphosate vs other ingredients of Roundup at this link:
http://www.copswiki.org/Common/M1627
When I see comments like ‘paranoid’ and ‘delusional’ along with denials of basic science peer-reviewed facts, I know that Monsanto is using their money like they used it to stop GMO labeling.
More and more of us are wise now to Monsanto shills.
Insults and lies are their favorite weapons.
Hey John –
Denials of basic science? How about overwhelming scientific consensus? 88% of AAAS agreed that GMOs are safe (http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/), compared to 87% that climate change is mostly due to human activity. So the consensus is STRONGER that GMOs are safe than for climate change.
And you say peer reviewed facts – you do realize that first the Seralini study was retracted and discredited, right? And then when it was re-published in a new (much less prestigious journal) it was NOT subjected to another peer review? http://retractionwatch.com/2014/06/26/republished-seralini-gmo-rat-study-was-not-peer-reviewed-says-editor/
So for all scientific purposes it has NOT been peer reviewed as the initial peer review is invalidated by the retraction.
So again if you have any arguments or facts to present, please do. Otherwise, you can continue to demonstrate your lack of argument by putting your fingers in your ears and calling everyone a shill.
More than half of the European Union’s 28 nations plan to prohibit the cultivation of a group of genetically modified crops awaiting EU regulatory approval, marking the first use by individual governments of a new right to go their own way on the planting of biotech foods.
Nineteen EU countries have demanded that all or part of their territory be shielded from eight pending applications to grow gene-altered crops in the bloc, according to the European Commission. One application is a request for renewed authorization to cultivate Monsanto Co.’s MON810 corn variety, which was approved in 1998 and is the only biotech food grown commercially in the EU.
All European countries require labeling of GMO products something Monsanto has been able to defeat legislatively in the US.
Europe requires the precautionary principle for new food products. They have to be proven safe first before they can be put on the market. The US only requires that they not be proven unsafe. So they can be sold as long as they haven’t been proven unsafe.
You’re right about food approval in the US but that applies to all food, not just GMO. So if you’re opposed to that, fine but that’s not an argument against GMO, that’s an argument against US food policy in general.
But also, GMOs have been around for decades. There have been hundreds, maybe over 1000 studies. None of them has shown harm in humans. Noone has ever been shown to be harmed by GMO, and basically the sum of all that research says that so far GMOs are shown to be incredibly safe. That’s a stunning amount of evidence already existing. The only study your side continually brings up is one small (discredited) rat study. That’s th balance of evidence on both sides we’re talking about.
You see, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t fear monger and call something poison and toxic without a shred of evidence, and then say, ‘hey we just want to know what we’re eating’. The anti GMO movement has completely poisoned the public perception of GMOs without any scientific basis. So now, if you label something a GMO, the public is being misinformed, because they think that means it is unsafe or junk food or processed food. GMO corn is corn. A GMO apple is an apple. Nutritious, tasty, and there’s no plausible scientific reason why a GMO apple would harm you. Gene transfer is actually a very precise and targeted version of the sexual gene transfer that happens more sloppily and unpredictably in the wild.
There’s a difference between GMO apples and GMO apples sprayed with Roundup. It may not be that the GMO apple itself is bad for you, but the reason for it in the first place is so that it can be sprayed with herbicides and pesticides without killing it. The apple then absorbs this poison which you then eat. So your argument has to be essentially that Roundup and other pesticides and herbicides, which are the reasons the GMO apples and other GMO fruits and vegetables exist in the first place, are good for you.
John, unfortunately your comments show how completely uneducated you are about the whole topic. Arctic apples (the only engineered apples) have nothing to do with herbicides. They are in fact down regulated for polyphenol oxidase (PPO).
I noticed that at least three of the commenters on this thread are in fact staff of the San Diego Free Press. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that you all live in the San Diego area. You are fortunate to have a number of great educational institutions in the area. You would be well served to start taking a few science and statistics classes.
For example, your claim above that the EU requires proof of safety for GMOs. That is impossible as it only possible to show elements of risk. You won’t understand this immediately but if you visit this site it may explain it to you; http://www.biofortified.org/2015/05/prove-gmos-are-safe/
Also, the EUs requirements have nothing to do science, rather politics.The European Food Safety Authority in fact said “The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies.’
Undoubtedly you will deny this, claim that it was bought off by Monsanto etc. Scientists are forced to live with the data however, and the EFSA abstract accurately represents the educated opinion of tens of thousands of scientists, from countries all over the world in academia and public institutions with no financial involvement whatsoever who have devoted their careers to understanding the nature of the world.
OK. I’ll give you Arctic apples which were engineered so that they wouldn’t brown rather than that they would be herbicide resistant.
However, this is unlike many other genetically modified foods, which insert genes from other species for the purposes of pesticide tolerance or insect resistance.
So the apples are the exception not the rule for GMOs. And non-browning apples may not be such a good thing in the sense that Nature indicates that an apple may not be good for you if it’s brown. Non-browning apples don’t indicate that the apple may be spoiled.
GMOs are created so pesticides and herbicides can be sprayed with wild abandon on them and the surround weeds and plants. Eat all you want. I’ll pass and eat organic thank you.