Tag Archives: GMO

Stephanie Seneff on Glyphosate – the 900 pound gorilla at our dinner table.

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Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT straddles multiple scientific disciplines and has pooled
in her resources, including jointing hands with specialists that had knowledge beyond her reach, to create tools that dots the ‘I’ and crosses the ’T’ on how Glyphosate is perhaps the most dangerous manmade product to be unleaded on the planet, as an agent of mass extinction.

It is a 45 minute podcast. The relevant points might be :

  1.  Biology, & Computer : Stephanie explains how she studied both subjects and more, and how her knowledge and expertise with both has helped her in her work.
  2. Stephanie mentions Dr. Don Huber, Dr. Anthony Samsel, as people who have done seminal work that have been important in this area.
  3. Autism – Stephanie talks about the rising tide of autism and its link with Glyphosate. Where is the autism spectrum leading ?
  4. Cancer and the sad story of the province of Punjab in India. Can Glyphosate be behind it too ? Stephanie Seneff says yes, and mentions work of Dr. Nancy Swanson in this regard, even naming the kinds of cancer that might be relevantLab test on effect of Glyphosate on individual bacteria – can be done and has been done, including studies involving E.Coli that changes its function when in contact with Glyphosate. One can also test effect indirectly with animals by study in the change of their fecal material, mentioning Judy Carman’s pig study.
  5. Cat-ions (metal ions), and minerals and enzymes – how important are they and why are our micro biota important with regard to these items? Dr. Seneff explains this big question on how our body needs many such minerals even though in small doses and how it depends on our gut bacteria to manage this function since we cannot perform them ourselves and how Glyphosate disrupts these processes by attacking these beneficial bacteria.
  6. Kids getting violent reactions from vaccines is on the rise – and Glyphosate is partially responsible for it – as Dr. Seneff explains.
  7. Autism is not only found at birth, but can increase in what is ‘regressive autism’, through causes that are linked to complex interactions between unhealthy ingredients in our food, environment as well as vaccines, and other factors.
  8. Sri-lanka story of arsenic, Glyphosate, sugarcane farming and kidney failure – Stephanie links these to explain the unfolding horror story in Sri-Lanka, which is prompting their Govt to ban the use of Glyphosate.
  9. Why do they include Aluminum and Mercury in vaccines, if these are dangerous metals?
  10. Is microbiome, or gut bacteria identical between people, or are the colony of bacteria unique for each person? It is unique for each.
  11. What is Shikimate pathway, and is it really right to say that we humans do not use it, and therefore Glyphosate is safe for us. The answer is we humans do use it, but indirectly through our micro biome and it is therefore very unsafe for us to be exposed to Glyphosate. And yet, it is approved for use. The argument that Glyphosate is safe for humans – is false.
  12. If Glyphosate in the food and the ground water is damaging to humans, can it also be damaging to wild animals, birds, insects and the living world? Yes it can, it is, and is a disaster of global proportions in the making.
  13. How does roundup ready crop survive Roundup? Also, the extra energy used by GM crop to do work as designed by the inserted gene, not take away from what the crop would otherwise do, i.e add nutrient to its seed or fruit?
  14. The story of the super weeds and the chemical treadmill.
  15. Corporate funding of science, as against public funding: Is science losing its neutrality, and objectivity ? Talks on what happened to Seralini.
  16. If Govts will not fund science, and if corporate funding is making science biased, what is the alternative?
  17. How does Roundup ready crops manage to survive when weeds and other organisms cannot ?
  18. Can super weed develop if pesticides are used continually?
  19. Is development of super weeds a more or less given? Does this mean more herbicides in quantity, more toxic herbicides will be needed? Are we on a chemical treadmill ?
  20. BIotech funding and control of Universities, journals and media. Is science losing its independence and objectivity ?
  21. If Governments will not fund science research any more and corporate funding is turning science to have a biased stance – what is the alternative ?
  22. Is Stephanie Seneff also facing corporate backlash because of her work ? Yes.
  23. Is funding for her work drying up as a result? No. She is not funded by the biotech industry, but by the computer industry, which hopes she will develop computer tools that can be used by other biologists, and other scientist to study biophysics without having her level of expertise in Computer systems.
  24. So, to study Glyphosate, does one need to be primarily in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, or biophysics and electrical engineering ? All of it and then some.
  25. Advice to listeners – go organic as if your life depends on it, and try to grow you own food, even if small quantities, because sooner or later sh*t is going to hit the fan. This may turn out to be the most important life saving skill for all young people of today.

You can play the podcast by clicking on the player at the bottom of this page, or download it to listen at leisure.

I shall be glad to hear your comment or suggestion. Send me a note at tony.mitra@gmail.com

Cheers.

Tony Mitra

Dr. Don Huber talks on his work on Glyphosate in agriculture

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Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus of Purdue University, Idaho, is a microbiologist and plant pathologist that has worked for over half a century on chemicals such as Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s patented herbicide Roundup. He is well aware of how the chemical damages plants, as well as soil organisms, and how it damages the colony of gut bacteria that perform essential symbiotic services for humans and other higher animals. IN short, Glyphosate in our environment is a disaster that will have long term effects, spanning several generations, and there seem to be no end in site of this avalanche of bad chemicals permeating our neighbourhood.

 I spoke with him a few times over the past one month, to compile a 37 minute podcast. Further, he has sent me a CD full of information of his papers and independent studies, powerpoint presentations, PDF files, charts and other material related to this subject.

 Salient points of the talks are:

  • Dr. Huber has been researching and working on the ill effects of Glyphosate and other herbicides for 55 years.
  • Glyphosate is not just a herbicide but also patented as an antibiotic. Both these functions, and its ability to chelate or capture important metals and minerals – essentially deny a whole host of micro organisms that depend on those metals to do their work, and often will kill classes of bacteria even in human guts, wrecking the persons biology and health.
  • It disrupts the Shikimate pathway used by many gut bacteria for biosynthesis of important amino acids that we need. Also, while such beneficial bacteria are denied sustenance and are often killed off by Glyphosate. Not just that. Some of these bacteria prevent space for some of the harmful pathogens that are also in the plants we eat, thus protecting us from harm. However, when Glyphosate damages the good bacteria, it creates vacancy in our gut that can now be filled by the harmful pathogens which are also insensitive to Glyphosate, dealing us a double blow.
  • Dr. Samsel and Seneff have worked on how Glyphosate helps increase our susceptibility to disease. These studies should be read and understood.
  • Dr. Nancy Swanson has plotted the correlation graphs from information obtained from official sources such as Centre for Disease Control that points to identical rise of Glyphosate application and rise of chronic illnesses reported in hospitals.
  • Soybean oil has been found to have 40 ppm of Glyphosate, which will kill all sorts of useful bacteria in our gut. The herbicide will also chelate and immobilize cobalt, manganese, iron, zinc and copper that we need ourselves for our own good health. Livers are affected. A very small part 1/10 of a ppm is often enough to cause serious harm. Even illness such as E.oli, salmonella etc can rise directly proportional to the increase of Glyphosate and GMO, along with autism, leaky gut, gluten intolerance,  Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diarrhoea, and similar very major illnesses begin to come back in pandemic proportions because of the disruption and destruction of our micro-biome.
  • Once a patient’s gut bacteria has been seriously damaged, the only good cure may be fecal transplant. fecal bacteriotherapy or stool transplant. This essentially means taking stool from a healthy person and re-inserting it anally into a patient, transplanting the healthy bacteria to recolonize the gut. This has a high chance of recovery, but the patient has to onto organic diet, else he or she is likely to fall sick again.
  • Independent science research through public funding is nearly gone. Science is now mostly funded by corporations who have a vested interest in funding studies that find good effects of their technology rather than possible unwanted side effects. So, science and technology is losing its neutral position and objectivity. Normally, Dr. Huber would not get funding for his work that mostly finds the dangers of using Glyphosate. He managed to conduct his long term study by doing independent consulting work and then donating to the Purdue University as grant money to support his research on herbicides. In other words he was partially or wholly, funding himself.
  • There are written public statements of 26 scientists selected by the USDA to determine safety of genetically engineered plants, back in the 1960s. All 26 scientists wrote to the Govt. that they were unable to perform their work as the corporations would not provide access to information and were also prohibited to publish any finding to the public. Therefore they could not be objective in their investigation and without it the scientists could not do justice to the task.
  • When asked why so many diseases are increasing to pandemic levels, the official response is they do not know why. There is a perception that the relevant departments of the Govt does not want to know the cause.
  • Local troubles such as Yakima valley birth defect epidemic is a case in point where babies are still born and birth defects involving half the brain fails to develop in babies. This is suspected to be directly related to excessive application of Glyphosate in the farm and even in the water streams.
  • Some Cattle Farmers are going out of business because cattle fertility has dropped so much that half the newborns are still born and the business becomes economically unviable.
  • Europe is realizing they are in a dangerous situation with regard to Glyphosate, although their exposure is less than in USA. Yet, Dr. Huber laments that in USA people do not appear to be as alarmed as in Europe.
  • 300 million pounds  of Glyphosate is being used in agriculture annually in the US, and providing such food to animals and dumping such powerful herbicides in the environment indiscriminately – we can expect dangerous effects on our environment.
  • This is a crisis for our children. Autism is around 1 in 50 today. it is going to rise to 1 in 2 in the next seven to 14 years. Back in 1960 it was 1 or 2 in a hundred thousand.
  • Fecal transplant can be beneficial treatment for a number of illness – autism in kids, leaky guts, crone, celiac, Parkinson’s and even diabetes. Glyphosate is also related to cancer – childhood cancer. Dr. Huber does not know if fecal transplant can cure this kind of cancer once initiated by effects of Glyphosate. Seralini research is an example. Although his study was not set up to check cancer, it did show signs of cancer development in rats.
  • Regarding testing water, human blood or urine for presence of Glyphosate – Microbe Inotech Laboratories (http://www.microbeinotech.com/) can conduct these tests./ It might be useful to check with them if they also test for AMPA, especially if water sample are to be tested. IN Human Urine sample, presence of AMPA is expected to be rather small and could be ignored. AMPA is the first breakdown product of Glyphosate and is just as toxic as Glyphosate. Therefore, for testing soil or water, testing for both Glyphosate and AMPA combined would give a better result, since the percentage of AMPA can be more than 50% at times, the rest being Glyphosate that has not yet broken down.
  • If there is shortage of funds for large scale testing, then first concentrating on testing of Urine would be a better way to give an indication of exposure by humans to this dangerous herbicide.
  • How does one get rid of Glyphosate ? Detoxifying soil or water from Glyphosate is possible, through chelation. But if Glyphosate is in the human body already, it needs to be eliminated, and that can cause difficulties. Kidney failure in central America and Sri Lanka are relevant here, as Kidney shuts down and cannot handle the accumulation of Glyphosate.
  • Dr. Huber goes to Guatemala, as a consultant, regularly, as they in central America and many other countries there are trying to find ways to ban or remove Glyphosate from their environment. Their effort to ban Glyphosate is being challenged at courts, and the corporations have tried to confuse the issue and applying pressure on the Govts. A lot of farm workers in sugar plantations have died last year due kidney failure. Brasil and Argentina are also looking at banning Glyphosate. Hawaii has banned it but they are being sued now.
  • You can listen to the podcast by clicking the link below or check it up at iTunes as a podcast under my name (Tony Mitra).

Feel free to send me a note or a suggestion at  tony.mitra@gmail.com

Allan Patton’s effort of stopping GMOs through the Municipalities of Canada

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Allan Patton is the Director for Electoral Area “C” (Rural Oliver) and has been a full-time Oliver area farmer since 1981. He is a Past Director and Vice-President of the BC Fruit Growers Association, Past Director for BC Agriculture Council, Past Chair of Area “C” Advisory Planning Commission as well as Past Oliver and District Community Economic Development Society Director.

Allan Patton

He has been active in getting the Union of British Columbia Municipalities to pass the recent resolution to declare itself wishing to be GMO free. He is currently proposing a similar motion to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) who will hold its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at Niagara Falls this summer.

The motion states :

——————————

Claude Dauphin, President
Federation of Canadian Municipalities
24 Clarence Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 5P3
 
WHEREAS The Okanagan Tree Fruit Industry and the Canadian Horticultural Council Apple Working Group are very concerned about protecting Food Safety and CanadaGap requirements and Asian and European export Markets;
 
AND WHEREAS Certified Organic producers and retailers have expressed grave concerns on the continued existence of their industry;
 
AND WHEREAS the public are expressing increased scepticism on the purported benefits of GE food and animal feed crops;
 
AND WHEREAS the Union of BC Municipalities, at their 2013 Annual General meeting, carried a resolution “to ask the Provincial Government to legislate the prohibition of importing, exporting and growing plants and seeds containing genetically engineered DNA, and raising GE Animals in BC and to declare through legislation that the Province o BC is a GE Free area in respect to all plants and animal species” and an identical addendum to send it to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for similar consideration by the Federal Government;
 
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities recommend to the Government of Canada that:
A moratorium be placed on all present and future Food and Animal Feed Genetically Engineered registration application, subject to:
– a non-partisan review be undertaken by Parliament to assess all aspects of GE crops now in existence.
– a public and consumer input and consultation process be developed and undertaken across Canada with recommendations presented to parliament for consideration.

If you need any further information regarding this item please call Christy Malden, Deputy Corporate Officer at (250)-490-4146

Mark Pendergraft
RDOS Board Vice Chair

——————————

I spoke with District Director Allan Patton about his efforts to see that this motion does get tabled at the coming FCM and go to a vote, and does not get rejected and end up under the carpet.

I also asked him what the listeners, or the people of Canada might do, to help this motion along.

This is one more example of democracy working from the bottom up. The municipalities are the lowest level of Government and the closest to the people, and it is through them, rather than through the provincial or federal Government, that the voice of the people may get heard.

You can hear the podcast by clicking on the play button at the bottom of this page. You may also save it through my podcast channel in iTunes (search Tony Mitra) and play it through your music player off line.

I would welcome feedback – at tony.mitra@gmail.com

Thank you.

Sheryl McCumsy of Alberta and her efforts to ban lawn pesticides

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I met Sheryl in December 2013 during the GE Foods Talk event at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is among the many ordinary citizens of Canada attempting to engage in extra-ordinary work, of singly and collectively trying to wrench Canadian democracy back from the clutches of lobby power, in the field of food, health and environment.

Sheryl McCumsy

It has been my perception that this war on our soil, water and air by an unending avalanche of toxic GMO and pesticides in the name of corporate profit, will be won or lost not so much by bigwigs, famous people, NGOs, politicians, scientists or activists, but by the ordinary people like Sheryl McCumsy that are coming out of the woodwork everywhere, in their effort to do something to resist this menace.

Sheryl is a homemaker and a student with a background in microbiology. She intends to meet with the Municipality of Edmonton, Alberta, to enquire and cajole them into adopting a by-law that bans use of harmful cosmetic lawn pesticides. This is something that has been done by hundreds of Municipalities across Canada, but not so much in Alberta and not in Edmonton. She also intends to work with groups such as Albertans for food safety, to further take on the issues of Municipalities adopting resolutions to declare themselves to be GMO free.

I spoke with Sheryl on phone on December 22, 2013, to prepare this podcast of her hopes and plans. It is a 20 minute podcast. You can listen to it by directly clicking the player at the bottom of this page. You can also subscribe to it through iTunes, where my podcasts are available under my name – Tony Mitra – save it on your iPod, iPhone or other music players, and listen to them at leisure. The logo of my podcast in iTunes is shown at right.

Harold Steves – and his battle to save British Columbia from GMO attack

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British Columbia, as much as all of Canada, needs a a few saviours that will stand tall, and fight long and hard, to save this land from the ravages brought on by mindless greed that brings toxicity into our food, our water, our air, and our lives, through GMO and its associated pesticide culture.

Harold Steves

And just like weeds and organisms are known to develop resistance to poison over time, some people seem to rise to challenge this newfangled toxic invasion in our lives.

Harold Steves of Richmond, BC is one such – a hero just in time, whose singular vision and effort may yet save British Columbian farmlands, as well as residents, from the ravages of GMO, and who efforts are being recognized and copied across the land, within and without British Columbia.

It is our hope, that Canada produces scores of Harold Steves across the land, and return Canada to what this country was decades ago, a land so beautiful and pure that it compared with our notions of Gods own land.

Apart from being an organic farmer that raises grass fed beef, Harold has been a city Councillor for Richmond, BC, continuously since 1977. His efforts to move the region against further encroachment of Genetically Engineered Organisms is an excellent example of how democracy can be taken back by the people, community by community, and municipality by municipality, from the clutches of Industrial greed, lobby power of the biotech corporations, and corrupt politicians.

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Gene Revolution – by Thierry Vrain

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Retired genetic engineer Dr. Thierry Vrain deconstructs the biotech myth that GMO plants :

  • reduce pesticide use
  • have no effect on environment
  • have improved yield
  • are safe to eat

One of a shrinking pool of scientists not yet muzzled by the Governments or the biotech scientific community, he shows how GMO technology is faulty to start with, and were not really designed to provide any benefit to mankind, and were basically produced to increase the sale of dangerous chemicals.

Drs Vrain and Chopra with local support group in Squamish, BC

Dr. Vrain and Health Canada scientist and scientist Dr. Shiv Chopra are on a cross country talking tour in Canada starting in November 2013 to alert the people about how the biotech industry is engaged in a campaign of misinformation, and their efforts are often helped by a corrupt political system in North America, where national regulatory systems fail to protect the people and allow what amounts to untested and potentially unhealthy foods to be marketed.

In this video, Dr. Vrain presents his case – Gene Revolution, a tale of two molecules, in the beautiful hill town of Squamish on November 20 at Sea to Sky Hotel. The event was organized by residents and health food promoters who wish to see Squamish declare itself GMO free.

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And here is Shiv Chopra – presenting his case about the Corruption in Health Canada and what people should be doing to snatch democracy back from the clutches of corporatocracy.

Why Canada is failing to protect itself from GMO

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Why Canada is failing to protect itself from GMO

I have been thinking of writing a few eBooks on the GMO, vaccine and stuff – and have decided to dip my toe into it within the next month. This will not be the first time I created an eBook, but it would be the first time it will be put up on the web, for purchase by prospective readers. Price – 1 dollar, or perhaps 99 cents, if that is possible.

Why ? Well, the trend these days is to have printed matter no more printed but available online. Also, this brings down cost of publication, and removes the need to have a middleman (publishing house), while, properly advertised (think Global) – it can have wide reach – from pole to pole and from pillar to post. Hahh !

Corporate encroachment into public health through corrupt politicians has been an engaging topic – but I have not had much chance to discuss how these could be turned into eBook this with anybody, barring perhaps Shiv Chopra.

There are lots of people that write important articles – Debal Deb, Jagannath Chatterjee and Devinder Sharma of India come to mind. There are many others across the world. Or one could consider the case of MP Alex Atamanenko of BC. He is serving his third term. He has been a friend of the farmers, or sustainable living, and of resisting degradation to environment and against encroachment of GMOs. He has issued bill after bill to try and stop the GMO juggernaut. But the bills don’t pass because not all MPs share his principles, nor ability to rise above parti politics and corporate pressure and to judge issues on their own merit, and keep focus on what serves the constituent’s best interest.

And now, Alex is retiring from politics. He did not make a public comment on the real reason for his retirement. Age of course is a factor. But, I suspect, he lost heart because of the level of corruption that has entered politics.

We can draw a lesson here – good politicians are either leaving, or converting to bad politicians. And this is Canada – not a Mickey mouse country five miles long.

You can consider David Suzuki’s comments on the Harper Government. You could discuss issues till the cows come home. But instead of discussing, I though tI would place them on the web and let the experience teach me if it was a good idea, or if the format, the content, the length, language or tone etc – needs to be altered for higher penetration and sale.

There are, of course, lots of people with lots of opinion on GMO. Take mainstream media – every Tom Dick and Harry, as well as every other name in between, are busy writing about it, whether they understand the wider effect of the issue or not. But mainstream writers have one major advantage and a major drawback. The advantage is that they get corporate funding. The disadvantage ? The same. I, on the other had stand on the opposite end – with a disadvantage (no corporate fund) and an advantage – free from the clutches of corporate diktat.

Mainstream writers do it for their job – so they can and do write crap. I do it because I care for the planet. OK, so the mainstream is taken care of. But how about others that also write on passion?

Look, I am fairly well versed on the eBook and Audio Book scene. I am a heavy consumer of both. There are NO good eBooks or audio Books on GMO, or on sustainable agriculture, or the menace behind biotech promoted vaccines, or the biotic control of the medical practices. There are a small number of audio books out there – such as “A town that food saved”. But these are like needles in a haystack. Not enough by any count.

Besides, not many can write outside of their comfort zone of a single nation, a province, a continent, or a sector. Very few have a global perspective on food security or agribusiness and the element of exploitation that goes with it. People like Vandana Shiva are a rarity. But even Vandana, who I have spoken with at length once to create an audio podcast – does not have a single audio or eBook.

Besides – Vandana writes what I consider to be a more generic and single minded attack on the biotech corporations, along with a necessary promotion of seed ownership and supporting local farmers. But she does not dwell on the unpopular task of why the resistance to GMO is having such a hard time. That the biotech industry is steamrolling across the planet is known to any serious observer. But why is that happening, especially in the west where “democracy” is supposed to be well entrenched ? Why ? The clue must point to a fault in the functioning of that democracy. The fault, ultimately, must lie at the feet of the people.

Monsanto may not be as big a culprit for hijacking the worlds agriculture, as the common man is, for allowing Monsanto to get away with it.

But, the common man is today hard to define – it is not a homogenous body, even in the North American continent. I would rather look at the groups that exist just above the lowest strata – various organizations whose projected goal is to protect the people, from such abuse of power from the big. These organizations, both public funded and private – are failing in their primary duty. It makes one think why and how these organizations – Government departments at federal, provincial and municipal level, are failing in their duty. How private NGOs and various sustainable groups are failing in their duty.

Nobody admits they are failing – but then none of them produce any record, any analysis, of what the situation was, say with regard to GMO, last year and how it is this year, and thus, has the situation changed for the better or the worse. This analysis should be simple to make, and by that, one should be able draw a conclusion on if these organizations are making any meaningful difference, or not. To me, pretty much every organization within Canada that claims to work towards safeguarding Canadian food, health and environment, is failing and it know it is failing.

And yet, business as usual is the norm. The NGOs and groupings keep passing posters, pamphlets and postcards, they keep asking folks to sign petitions. They keep asking for volunteers and for donations. And while all these noble tasks are underway, Canadian food and health is literally being raped, by biotech corporations that dictate terms with the politicians.

Some even believe that kicking out Stephen Harper will change things for the better. They spend their energy to that end. I shall leave it to you to decide if they are making any headway.

Folks in the US thought kicking out the Republicans and bringing in Obama, will solve all their problems. Even the Nobel committee did the extraordinary thing of awarding the Nobel peace prize to Obama, not because of his achievements, but merely on the promise he made, and subsequently failed to follow through.

Changing the political head did not make a difference in the past, and my guess is – it will not make much of a difference if the current leaders are booted out. These are not leaders – they are just masks of leaders, like puppets. One needs to think who the puppeteers are.

Stephen Harper is not why Canada is being massacred with GMO. It is not about Conservatives, or liberals or NDP. It is not about CBAN or The Council of Canadians, or Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya or David Suzuki’s foundation or GE free BC. None of them are going to make any difference while all of them will ask you for donations and support.

Canadians are scared to face truth. Americans are scared to face truth. People like Vandana, or David, due respect to their great achievements, who have become public icons, make lot of noise noise in an already noisy place. A thousand Vanadnas and a thousand Davids will make no difference except increase the din.

And that is where the crux, in my thinking, lies. It is the Canadian public that have failed themselves.

My writings will dwell on these. Of course, I could be wrong. I could be an opinionated so and so. But I intend to write all that down and place it on the web as essays on an eBook. This is going to be perhaps the first chapter of the book, or the prolog. It took me 35 minutes to write. I usually dislike checking spelling or grammar but would do so before the eBook is put online in a store. Spelling and grammar are important, but not more important than the message itself.

We are crossing the ’T’s and dotting the ‘i;s to death, so our literature about the dangers of GMO are linguistically perfect, and functionally useless on the street and deserving to stay in a library for ever.

I intend to collate a few such writings together and put up the first eBook on the web, and try charging a dollar for it, and tell folks I know to help sell a few, even if it criticizes them. They in turn are free to call me an opinionated son of a gun or whatever. I had already sent out a sample of this writing on an email to one of my group lists. It had some 400 recipients from around the world. about 25 responded within a few hours – mostly encouraging. One of the briefest but cutest support note came from Felix Padel. Some day, I shall have to write something about that mystic Englishman that made India his home. Meanwhile my friend Rose Stevens from Manitoba, who I sometimes refer to as the Fire-Eating-Woman, promises to be the first to buy the eBook and to promote it. Shiv Chopra sent a note – calling this an inexpensive gem, and the idea very well worth exploring. Each of these people and the others who respond, have their own followings, their own circles – word can spread – about an opinionated so and so writing dollar novels as eBooks, where the hero and the heroine are undefined, but the villains are in sharp focus.

The whole proceeds of the sale are not to go in my pocket. My idea at the moment is to split the proceeds half and half, with half going to my own upkeep and the other half going towards charity work relating to resisting GMO in unconventional ways. What the ways are – I have not the faintest clue at this time, except that it has to be legal, and grassroots, and different from whatever folks are doing right now. Whatever everyone is doing now – is not working. More of the same will not solve anything. SO this is my first chapter, or rather – the prolog.

How do you like it so far ? Tony Mitra

tony.mitra@gmail.com

Dark halo behind Golden Rice

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It is always a pleasure and enlightening, to speak with good people. There are those that have an unbiased knowledge and analytical prowess. These abilities help them to peer through the smoke and mirror of industry spin and the cobwebs created by science, pseudo-science and voodoo science. Looking through all that, some can still emerge with clear thinking that cuts to the bone of an issue without circling around in the periphery. It is even better when such a person is not afraid to call a spade a spade, and do not sanitize a topic to the extent that it loses its texture and depth, to become a politically correct blend of bland gray that is both confusing and misleading, to the casual public.Devinder Sharma

Devinder Sharma is among those few. And it is a privilege to speak with him.

 I called Devinder the other day to ask about Golden Rice. I have spoken with Debal Deb once about it, and created a podcast and a video, which one can find on my blog (www.tonu.org). I had checked with others too on the issue. But lately, the subject has resurfaced partly due to the famous televised debate between Canadian school girl and young anti-GMO crusader Rachel Parent and Kevin O’Leary where she blew away the industry shills, where the issue of Golden Rice was touched upon by Kevin, using an emotional pitch that poor kids in Asia are going blind and dying due to vitamin deficiency, which this Golden Rice will solve etc. This sentimental pitch is the worst kind of emotional blackmail that the media savvy people try to use to befuddle the listeners. But Rachel did not fall for it and cut him short stating that Golden rice does not even work, so lets stop talking about it.

The issue is of course a lot deeper than that, and encompasses the whole gamut of malnutrition and hunger on a global scale, and if that is because there is insufficient food, or there are too many middlemen making a buck and ensuring food prices remain high, even going waste if it has to, so the middlemen can make a profit, which the poor starve because they cannot afford the artificially jacked up high cost of food.

It is ironic that India has stockpiles of excess cereals, and exports large quantities of it, while there are more hungry children in India than likely in any other country. The reason for this is – some folks make money through the export, and it increases GDP and stock market values of nations and corporations. This helps investors with spare cash get richer. And if in the bargain there are millions of people starve – then why not use that as a tool to gain further access into the market, so some of the middle men can make even more money?

Food as a commodity is subjected to the same calculations that go beyond creation of a smart phone or an automobile – how to make more money out of it. These commodities are not designed to solve world hunger, or planet ecology, and national economy, or food security. These are created to make corporations and their stock holders rich. Period.

Food needs to be de-commoditized. Agriculture universities and colleges need to be funded by the public and not by biotech industries. It is better for the public taxes to be spent to safeguard public interest, than to hand over the stewardship of public policy making into the hands of corporations that created half the problems of the world to start with.

Like Einstein had said – the kind of logic that became the cause for subsequent problems, cannot be used to solve those problems. New logic and a different mindset is needed here.

Lately some documents on Golden Rice is being circulated in Canada for distribution among the sceptics of GMO. But I find the critic to be lukewarm and bypasses most of the serious issues behind it – including the exploitative philosophy behind the very creation of transgenic foods including Golden Rice. Even more importantly, Canadians, I feel, are in dire need to save themselves first from the bad-food epidemic that is sweeping across the nation, instead of pondering difficult issues of the third world and what Golden Rice can or cannot do.

The statistics of obesity, dramatically rising percentage of overweight people, of people with rising levels of various hitherto less known ailments and autism – should be life and death issues for Canadians. Let them concentrate on their own pathetic situation and leave the third world alone to solve their problems. Without intentional and unintentional western meddling, the third world can and will likely solve their own problems without having to be enslaved to western corporate interests.

Anyhow, Devinder Sharma provides another fresh outlook on the issue of Golden Rice. Important issues here might be :

  • How western media is used to present muddied and misguiding news about technological breakthrough in agriculture. One good example is the case with DDT which drew cover page rave reviews on the most famous western magazines, only to be banned across the planet a generation later, but not before it did irrecoverable damage to the planet.
  • How Ingo Potrykus, the creator of Golden Rice, had a less than pleasant exchange with Devinder Sharma.
  • How Ingo Otrykus was against independent verification of the value and utility of Golden Rice.
  • The humbug of Pro-tato, Po-mato and all other kinds of similar absurdities.
  • The famous case of agricultural development model pushed in India and exposed by Devinder Sharma and others, where nutritious human food grown in India was to be exported as cattle feed for the west, and cattle food grown in the west was to be imported into India for human consumption – all in the name of development and westernization.
  • The food storages are full in India, and yet the poor do not have access to it. The issue of hunger is not related to quality or quantity of food. it is related to structural injustice where the food is out of reach of the poor due to distribution issues and profiteering. Biotech cannot solve that – in fact biotech products are designed to increase profiteering by the middle man.
  • World Food summit followed up by the World Hunger Summit in Bonn around 2001, which Devinder attended, and how the conferences goal of abolishing half of world hunger by 2015 – was a joke and only helped muddying the issue of hunger – and displays part of the international dishonesty, in dealing with world hunger.
  • Last year, the world produced enough food for 13 billion people, almost twice the current population and higher than the projected maximum world population (2060) before it starts coming down. So, the world has far in excess of what food it needs for its people – now and generations into the future.
  • The hunger is a product of the systems put in place large through western efforts into the pricing, subsidy, trade negotiations and arm twisting in creating a warped distribution and trade infrastructure. There is a whole lot of bogus talk and untruths going around in the name of helping the poor.

The podcast can be listened to by clicking on the play button at the bottom, or finding it on iTunes by searching my name among the podcasts.

The original talk with Devinder covered more than an hour. Here the topic of Golden Rice is covered in 30 minutes.

I shall be glad to hear your comments on it. You may respond back to tony.mitra@gmail.com

A talk with Devinder Sharma – Part 1

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Devinder Sharma

Mr. Devinder Sharma is an agricultural scientist, journalist, writer and policy analyst who is well known around the world.

He had been called as an expert to be part of a working group in Geneva to prepare the groundwork on rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, conducted in July 2013. Mr. Sharma had presented his paper there, and some of his points appears to have been adopted into the background paper since published by the Geneva Academy, of which I have a copy for personal study.

The first paragraph of the last page of the report by Christophe Golay on the Legal Reflections on the rights of peasants and other working groups in rural areas, prepared based on the above meeting of the working committee states :

  • The negotiation that begins within the working group mandated to elaborate a UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas is a new exercise for peasant organizations, and in particular La Via Campesina. But it is not a new exercise for the UN and states that have been engaged in similar negotiation in the last 40 years, when they drafted international instruments protecting the rights of women, children, migrant workers and members of their families, persons belonging to minorities, human rights defenders, persons with disabilities, and indigenous peoples. 

Sharma had started out studying Plant Breeding and Genetics and holds a Masters degree. He has been working for ten years with a mainstream Indian newspaper as an agricultural expert. During this time, the newspaper encouraged him to go to remote corners of India and spend sufficient time there to soak in the ambience and lifestyle, and the trials and tribulations of rural India, before composing his articles on what works and what might not, to improve rural Indian agriculture, lifestyle or economy.

 This is something the media did in the past, as a social duty. This is also what the media does not engage with any more, ever since corporate moguls began controlling most of the world media, and kept profit as the main goal for their existence – quality and breadth of news delivered was no more to be the focus.

The first part of the talk covers basically the following points:

  • Extreme bias towards the west and high-tech solutions within the Indian education system, and the thinking of both the educated class and the policy makers. This is pushing India towards economic dependence and subservience to the west. India will have to find its own solutions by thinking outside of the western box. Unfortunately, not enough folks are listening. This however, is a global problem, and not just an Indian problem. I can relate to this sitting in Canada.
  • Exploitation of the rural landscape by the urban culture: this was noted and eloquently penned by Tagore a century ago. This has been the topic of discussion between greats of the time, including conversation between Tagore and Gandhi, towards seeking a solution for a free India of the future. Tagore had rightly realized that pushing the British out would not solve the problem of exploitation, which was systemic, and would need a change in paradigm – a new thinking and a new system to redress the relationship between urban and rural societies. Mr. Devinder Sharma has pointed out that this exploitation has not only not been eradicated by Independent India after the end of British Rule – it has in fact increased. While exploitation was limited to the labour of the rural population, now it has expanded to the resources lying under the feet of Rural india, and also to the very land they had been using for millennia. Everything is now being stolen. Again, this is not just a problem of India – but a global problem, created by free trade, corporatocracy and a hegemony of the west.
  • Biodiversity – this is the saddest story of all – how the worlds biodiversity and richness of natural biomass or poorer nations is being stolen and those life forms being patented by foreign nations and corporations, with collusion and help from the very elite of those nations. How the Indian elite is knowingly or unknowingly being used as pawns to hand over their national resources to foreign corporations and governments. The extent of this mechanism created for international long term exploitation is both mind boggling, and depressing.

 That is life, and that is what has been covered so far with the interview with Mr. Devinder Sharma of India. It was interesting to hear Mr. Sharma mention Vavilov of the Soviet Union, a brilliant man that attempted to collect food plant samples from around the world, and identified the Indian subcontinent as one of the hot spots of biodiversity. Stalin eventually got him killed in prison, because Vavilog’s ideas on genetics did not fit the then prevalent Communist ideas, where people’s or plants biological heritage was not supposed to matter, and excellence was solely to be saught from after-birth factors, and that all plants, like all men, were created equal. That, of course, was outside of the scope of this discussion, and was not covered.

You can find the talk listed at the bottom of this page. It can be playing directly by clicking on it. You can also find it in iTunes, if you look for a podcast under the name of Tony Mitra, and go through the list of episodes. It can be identified by the logo at left.

 i hope the readers will like this podcast and will look forward for the rest of it.

BRAI bill – India’s Monsanto protection act

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Ex Health Canada Scientist and whistleblower Dr. Shiv Chopra had stated that the war on GMO, along with that of vaccines, might be won or lost in India. Following the same view, Teresa Lynn, a mother and a grandmother born and raised in British Columbia, sends a letter to the Government of India, requesting it to reject the newly proposed BRAI bill.

Crop circle in protest against BRAI bill
Crop circle in protest against BRAI bill

Bt. Cotton enters India through the backdoor

Bt.Cotton entered India through the back door. By the time the Government had the item on its table, to approve of disapprove, the crop was already all over the place. Hence the Govt approved it, belatedly. In fact, it was suggested that the Govt might as well approve it, since it is already present everywhere.

The story of the cotton farming in India is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster as well as a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, with over a quarter million farmer suicides recorded in the past decade, mostly in the cotton belt, and driven by a debt spiral and economic collapse of the small farmers.

Bt. Brinjal is halted

IN the background of that episode, came the issue of bt.Brinjal (Bt.Eggplant). Brinjal (eggplant) originated in India. India enjoys the highest diversity of the plant, more than six thousand varieties of it. IN some areas, every twenty miles presents a different kind of Brinjal, evolved and hybridized over long experimentation to suit that soil, air, temperature, rainfall and humidity.

Monsanto and its Indian partner attempted to introduce the transgenic Bt.Brinjal in 2010, and the food security activists, farmers unions, sustainable agriculture promoters, and concerned citizens started a mega-mvoement to protest introduction of Bt. Brinjal. The movement got so big that the environment minister went into a fact finding spree and a public discussion with scientists and experts – to arrive at the decision that Bt. Brinjal posed an unacceptable risk to India’s food security and biodiversity, and blocked its introduction by a moratorium.

The citizens of India had won the day.

Provincial versus Federal Jurisdiction

While official introduction of GMO was halted, what remained was field trials of some GMO. Here the ministry of Agriculture maintained that field trials cannot be stopped. Needless to say, the Ministry of Agriculture, just like the Ministry of Science and Technology, is pushing for GMO, and show scant concern for either biosafety or food security.

However, when field tests were being planned, seven provincial Governments complained to the centre, that such field tests were planned in their territory without consulting with the provincial Government, and this was resisted by the state Government.

Subsequent to such pressure, the Federal Government passed a directive that the Provincial Governments should be consulted, and their approval obtained, before initiating field trials of GMO. Seven provinces did not agree to field trials. These are: Kerala, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal, basically provinces of the South, centre and east of India. These are heavy in agriculture. As a result, even field trials became restricted. Future of GMO in India got into the doldrums.

Cartagena Protocol

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international agreement which aims to ensure the safe handling, transport and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health. It was adopted on 29 January 2000 and entered into force on 11 September 2003.

This Protocol apply to the transboundary movement, transit, handling and use of all living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health. It calls for setting up risk management systems to ensure transgenic organisms imported into the country are going to be safe.

India is a signatory since 2003. Among many other provisions within the Protocol, one is exampled here –  Article 23, which deals with public awareness and participation in Government decision making with regard to GMO.

ARTICLE 23 – PUBLIC AWARENESS AND PARTICIPATION

1. The Parties shall:

(a) Promote and facilitate public awareness, education and participation concerning the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms in relation to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health. In doing so, the Parties shall cooperate, as appropriate, with other States and international bodies;

(b) Endeavour to ensure that public awareness and education encompass access to information on living modified organisms identified in accordance with this Protocol that may be imported.

2. The Parties shall, in accordance with their respective laws and regulations, consult the public in the decision-making process regarding living modified organisms and shall make the results of such decisions available to the public, while respecting confidential information in accordance with Article 21.

3. Each Party shall endeavour to inform its public about the means of public access to the Biosafety Clearing-House.

BRAI bill

The GMO promoters, which included the big money, corporate world, finance, banking and almost the entire political hierarchy of Delhi, got into higher gear to find ways and means to introduce GMO patented by foreign corporations.

Thus, the BRAI (Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India) bill came to be written – and awaits passage in Parliament. The details of this bill is regressive and is already being called India’s own Monsanto Protection Act. It tries to create a single window clearing house for approval of GMO, placing the regulatory (risk assessment) and the promotion of GMO under the same ministry (of Science and Technology) – a clear and deliberately created conflict of Interest.

The Government announced the bill on June 10, giving the public one month (till July 10) to respond to it.

Meanwhile, the Indian civil society has learned, that to ward off GMO in India, the public needs to exert sustained strong pressure to counter the GMO lobby, and be ever vigilant against it.

And thus, the civil society and the activist groups are gearing up again to counter this threat.

Public Response

There are two motions already unrolled by various groups. The first is to write a rebuttal to the Government, asking them to scrap the BRAI bill.

The second is a petition to allow more than one month, for the public awareness and participation. I wrote a letter to the Govt. of India, as did Teresa Lynn of British Columbia, Canada. My letter is copied here. Teresa’s letter is presented as an audio podcast at the bottom of this blog, and also in iTunes.

My letter to the Govt of India

I have sent my letter to the Govt. Of India by email, as below:

———————————————————————————

Mr. Alok Chatterjee, Director, Rajya Sabha Secretariat , Room # 005, Ground Floor, Parliament House Annexe, New Delhi 110001, India

Telephone +91-11-2303 4597, Fax +91-11-2301 5585,

Email : rsc-st@sansad.nic.in

Subject : Response to the proposed BRAI bill

Dear sir,

I am a non resident Indian citizen residing in Canada. I write this letter in response to the Governments invitation for feedback from the public regarding the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India act, published by the Govt. Of India on the 10th of June, 2013.

I believe this bill is regressive instead of progressive towards safety, and if implemented is going to be more harmful for the Indian public as well as its environment, than if the bill did not exist. Therefore, I believe this bill should be rejected. The reasons for the same are briefly listed below.

1. Wrong science

The biotechnology behind the creation of GMO is 70 years old, backdated, and proven to be faulty. The technology is based on the assumption that one gene in a plant genome codes for one protein and nothing else. Therefore, if that gene can be exchanged with another gene from another organism, then the implanted gene would only do what it was doing in its original host organism, and nothing more. This has proven to be wrong in the last ten years, ever since the human genome project was completed in year 2002. Everybody was expecting human genome to have over 100,000 genes, because it was known that the human body requires and produces, over 100,000 proteins. However, the genome project proved that humans have only around 20,000 genes and a lot of unrecognized “junk DNA”. Now it is understood that the junk DNA is not junk at all, but some sort of a control mechanism, the brain, of the DNA ecosystem, that tells individual genes what protein to produce and what not to, depending on situation. In other words, a gene first of all produces a lot more than a single protein, and secondly, what it may or may not produce is controlled often not just by the gene alone, but the entire genome ecosystem or control mechanism of the organism. Subsequently, independent studies have indicated that there are a lot of collateral DNA damage and unintended consequences in GMO crops, and that proteins that were not intended may also be produced as a side effect. A lot of proteins are very toxic, such as snake or scorpion venom. Independent study seems to indicate severe adverse effect on animals exposed either to GM crop or to accompanying GM herbicide. Also, detrimental side effects of consuming such crops can lead to all kinds of problems over the long term, sometimes evident after decades, or even in the next generation of children.

Therefore, precautionary principle calls for independent and rigorous test of the products for ill effects on humans and the environment, and not depend on test results provided by the patent holding biotech industry itself, which has a vested interest to see its product approved.

2. Wrong Ministry

The testing of bio-safety should be under the ministry of environment, and away from the ministry of Science and Technology. This product poses a serious and possibly irreversible threat to India’s biodiversity. The ministry of science has a mandate, to promote GMO without putting in place any mechanism to independently test GMO by labs and institutions that cannot be influenced by the ministry, or the industry.

3. Wrong examples : Canada’s example is what India should not follow

Here in Canada, the cross pollinated contamination of GM canola is so complete across the entire country that it is now virtually impossible to get organic, non-contaminated canola seed for a farmer. As the organic product becomes difficult to produce, and the regulations tend to promote GM crops and make it economically harder for farmers to produce traditional variety, the number of small farmers are decreasing, and agriculture is taken up by large agri-corporations that spray the fields with pesticides from the air, and raise mechanized GM crop, large cutting labor cost, and enjoying a temporary economic benefit of economics of scale. But in due course, insects and weeds develop resistance to the GM crops, thence requiring several times more pesticide, or stronger pesticide, all of which are patented and comes at a high cost.

By losing the organic Canola, Canada is lost a huge export market to the EU, who will not touch GM canola.

Today, less than 1 percent of Canadian population is engaged in farming. Average age of Canadian farmer is above 60. Half of the farmers will retire within the next five years. 75% of the farmers have no succession plan. Farmers in Canada is going extinct, to be replaced by robotic mechanized, industrial scale, chemical dependent, unnatural GM harvest, which is heading for a disaster, both for health and for environment.

Grassroots resistance is rising across the nation and may become a political issue in the coming election.

India cannot afford to make its farmers extinct and need not follow the Canadian, or Australian or the US trend. Natural, non GM farming is labor intensive and can employ a huge population – which has proven to be good for india. India does not need to change that model and push farmers out of farming.

4. Wrong security: Food security sacrificed

India should not hand over its food security to patent held in foreign corporations and take away the farmers rights to replant their seeds, like they have done for the past ten thousand years. India does not need to mortgage its food security to corporations.

This bill is dangerous for food security of a nation of over a billion people, and plays with the livelihood of hundreds of millions of farmers.

5. Wrong ecology : Loss of biodiversity

India is enormously rich in its biodiversity, all of it either naturally evolved or is a result of collective effort of generations of farmers across the land and across time. This rich heritage will prove useful and key for survival. GM crops promote mono-culture, where thousands of kinds of a plant go extinct and only one patented kind remains. This is a recipe for disaster. Climate change, loss of water resource, excess pesticidal toxins in the soil, extinction of beneficial insects bees and micro-organisms are all going to cumulatively make the GM crop unsustainable and India faces a crisis of a kind it may overcome only by using the heirloom seeds that have been specifically raised to deal with difficult conditions such as draught, flood, or incursion of saline or brackish water due sea level rise etc.

India had over 100,000 strains of rice a few decades ago. Today, it hardly has 2,000 strains and those too are disappearing rapidly, thanks to excessive dependence on an unsustainable agricultural model ever since the false green revolution. This is a crisis that is irreversible. Those special strains were generated through hit and trial on special conditions over millennia of experimentation and cannot be reproduced in a hurry, and certainly not by the biotech industry.

6. Wrong policy : Public discussion and access to information

By being signatory to the Cartagena Protocol, India has agreed to put in place various safeguards against inadvertent damage to the nations bio-safety through introduction of GMO. This included engaging in public debate and placing all relevant details in the public domain, so that independent verification can be done by people and institutions that do not have a conflict of interest. This bill attempts to bypass the public discourse as well as curtail access of bio-safety and other information because of proprietary confidential information of the patent holder. Safety information for public should always take precedence over proprietary intellectual property rights. If the biotech firm is not willing to divulge all details of the product and its safety tests for public scrutiny, then the products should be automatically considered unsafe and unsuitable.

7. Wrong characteristics : GMO do not increase yield

Despite being touted as the solution to population increase, GMO are not produced for higher yield. GMO are specifically produced so that their accompanying pesticide can be applied in greater quantity, thus increasing sale of the patented pesticide and herbicide. Besides, hunger is a function of poverty and not of availability of food. India itself is a good example of producing enough food but making to expensive for the poor man, thus allowing hunger and malnourishment to persist. GMO only accelerates the same – food will get most expensive, and the farmers get poorer and more debt ridden.

8. Wrong power : Concentration of authority in the hand of the Union Government

The control of bio-safety needs to be de-politicized and de-centralized. But the bill attempts to do the opposite and concentrates power within the science and technology ministry, so the regulators and the promoters of GMO are under the same roof and in the same bed – a serious conflict of interest and unacceptably dangerous concentration of power.

9. Wrong priority : GM crops being promoted for plants that do not need to be changed.

Plants that have no problem with pesticide or production and originated in the region and has the maximum diversity, do not need to be replaced by GMO. There has to be first of all an analysis of if the plant at all needs to be improved. Such “NO need evaluation” should be mandatory. Bt. Brinjal example highlights this case amply.

10. Wrong risk management

The bill proposes no risk management mechanism.

It is for all these reasons that I strongly urge the Government to reject his bill outright.

If one needs to create a bill for safety against GMO, suggest follow Norways “Act of 2nd April 1993 No. 38 Relating to the Production and Use of Genetically Modified Organisms, etc. (Gene Technology Act)”. It provides a good example of ensuring public and environmental safety with relation to GMO.

Thanking you

(name and address added)

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Teresa Lynn‘s letter is included here as a podcast, linked at the bottom of this blog page. A lady born and raised in British Columbia, she believes, like Dr. Shiv Chopra mentioned, that this is a global struggle against GMO and India is a key battlefield where the war might be won or lost. And so, we lent her time, and her voice, in joining countless others in requesting the Government of India not to abandon its citizens, its food security, its ecology and its biodiversity, in favor of corporate profit. You can listen to this 4.5 minute podcast by clicking the triangular play button at the bottom of this page. You can also find  it in iTunes, by searching for podcasts under my name  – Tony Mitra. The logo of the iTunes podcast is shown at at left.

 

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