Posts tagged gm

If you thought Monsanto’s lack of testing on their current GMO crops was bad before, prepare to now be blown away by the latest statement by the USDA. Despite links to organ damage and mutated insects, the USDA says that it is changing the rules so that genetically modified seed companies like Monsanto will get ‘speedier regulatory reviews’. With the faster reviews, there will be even less time spent on evaluating the potential dangers. Why? Because Monsanto is losing sales with longer approval terms.

The changes are expected to take full effect in March when they’re published in the Federal Register. The USDA’s goal is to cut the approval time for GMO crops in half in order to speedily implement them into the global food supply. The current USDA process takes longer than they would like due to ‘public interest, legal challenges, and the challenges associated with the advent of national organic food standards‘ says USDA deputy administrator Michael Gregoire.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, problems like public interest (activist groups attempting to bring the dangers of GMO crops to light), legal challenges (farmers suing Monsanto over genetic contamination), and national food standards are all getting in the way of their prime goal — to helpMonsanto unleash their latest untested GMO creation. In fact, the concern is that Monsanto may be losing cash flow as nations like Brazil speed genetically modified seeds through laughable approval processes.

Steve Censky, chief executive officer of the American Soybean Association, states it quite plainly. This is a move to help Monsanto and other biotechnology giants squash competition and make profits. After all, who cares about public health?

“It is a concern from a competition standpoint,” Censky said in a telephone interview.

The same statements are re-iterated by analyst Jeff Windau in an interview with Bloomberg:

“If you can reduce the approval time, you get sales that much faster,” said Windau

If you can reduce the approval time, as in the time it takes to determine if these food products are safe, then you can get sales much faster. Is the USDA working for the United States consumer, or is it working for Monsanto?

In what appears to be a case of the rich experimenting on their version of life for a transhumanist agenda, the UK Telegraph reports that by sometime in the fall of 2012, we will be happily munching on burgers made from meat grown in a lab. Yes, that’s right.

Pro. Post said his team has successfully replicated the process with cow cells and calf serum, bringing the first artificial burger a step closer. He said: “In October we are going to provide a proof of concept showing out of stem cells we can make a product that looks, feels and hopefully tastes like meat.”

Why should we be concerned with this? After all, benefits would include slaughtering fewer animals. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Although it is possible to extract a limited number of stem cells from cows without killing them, Prof Post said the most efficient way of taking the process forward would still involve slaughter. He said: “Eventually my vision is that you have a limited herd of donor animals in the world that you keep in stock and that you get your cells from there.”

Each animal would be able to produce about a million times more meat through the lab-based technique than through the traditional method of butchery, he added.

This sounds reasonable if you want to trust your food to a lab. Oh, we already do? And just how is that working out so far? Our food supply has been adulterated by chemicals, genetic engineering, cloning, pesticides, and irradiation, courtesy of a so-called “science-based” process, which is anything but. When left to their own devices and funded by megalomaniacs, it seems that the guys in the little white lab coats like to cook up a whole host of concoctions that animals don’t even want to eat unless they are forced to. Maybe the animals are smarter than us, eh?

So, here is what they are cooking up this time:  

To produce the meat, stem cells are placed in a broth containing vital nutrients and serum from a cow foetus which allow them to grow into muscle cells and multiply up to 30 times. The strips of meat begin contracting like real muscle cells, and are attached to velcro and stretched to boost this process and keep them supple.

At the moment the method produces meat with realistic fibres and a pinkish-yellow tinge, but Prof Post expects to produce more authentically coloured strips in the near future.

He forecast that, with the right funding and regulatory approval, his method could be scaled up to industrial proportions within as little as ten years. UK Telegraph

With the right funding? Well, it seems that you already have it, Professor.

The work is being financed by an anonymous and extremely wealthy benefactor who Prof. Post claims is a household name with a reputation for “turning everything into gold.” UK Telegraph

While vegans rejoice, another agenda just might be afoot. Ponder this:

Think artificial life, transhumanism, synthetic biology, genetic engineering and cloning. Now think Cargill.

Cargill just happens to be responsible for 70-75% of the hazardous waste hydrofluosilicic acid used in fluoridation programs. (Fluoride Action Network)

The U.S. government considers the basic chemical composition of hydrofluosilicic acid, a toxic waste, and fluoride to be the same when dumped in the water supply. (Farm Wars)

What do all of these things have in common? How about the obscenely rich making even more of an obscene profit off of feeding the masses with their experiments in engineering humanity the way they want to? Experiment with synthesizing flesh and muscle for future transhumans, and sell your experiments to the public as food – a win/win situation. Get paid to throw away your waste products much like Cargill does with its hazardous waste from the manufacture of fertilizer, which gets purchased and put into our water supply to supposedly prevent tooth decay, while Big Pharma rakes in the profits from inevitable illnesses that follow.

Think this is far-fetched? The wanderings of a deranged and paranoid mind? Think again. This is not science fiction, it is happening now, one piece at a time. Take for instance the spider goat genetically modified to produce bullet-proof human skin. I can’t make this stuff up. This is the transhumanist agenda, and it appears they are happily on their way to developing who knows what to unleash upon humanity without even so much as a thought about the consequences.

We are being transformed as we speak. Each time we eat a genetically engineered organism (GMO), we are eating something that was designed to horizontally/laterally transfer DNA to other cells. We have scientists busily working on the Soul Catcher chip that purports to catch a person’s every lifetime thought and sensation.

This is the end of death,” said Dr. Chris Winter, of British Telecom’s artificial life team. He predicted that within three decades it would be possible to relive other people’s lives by playing back their experiences on a computer. “By combining this information with a record of the person’s genes, we could recreate a person physically, emotionally and spiritually. Cyberbrain

Now all they need is the body, and it seems that the guys in the little white lab coats are working on just that. How long before we begin to see artificial men walking among us with flesh grown in a Petri dish? And just how will we know them? Maybe when we come face to face with a not so benevolent personality wrapped in bullet proof skin who decides that the 38 special pointed at it is nothing more than a nuisance at best. And most of all, when will we natural humans be declared an endangered species?

(Source: farmwars.info)

WikiLeaks: US targets EU over GM crops

US embassy cable recommends drawing up list of countries for ‘retaliation’ over opposition to genetic modification

The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any Euroxpean Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.

In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops.

“Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits.

“The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices,” said Stapleton, who with Bush co-owned the Dallas/Fort Worth-based Texas Rangers baseball team in the 1990s.

In other newly released cables, US diplomats around the world are found to have pushed GM crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative.

Because many Catholic bishops in developing countries have been vehemently opposed to the controversial crops, the US applied particular pressure to the pope’s advisers.

Cables from the US embassy in the Vatican show that the US believes the pope is broadly supportive of the crops after sustained lobbying of senior Holy See advisers, but regrets that he has not yet stated his support. The US state department special adviser on biotechnology as well as government biotech advisers based in Kenya lobbied Vatican insiders to persuade the pope to declare his backing. “… met with [US monsignor] Fr Michael Osborn of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, offering a chance to push the Vatican on biotech issues, and an opportunity for post to analyse the current state of play on biotech in the Vatican generally,” says one cable in 2008.

“Opportunities exist to press the issue with the Vatican, and in turn to influence a wide segment of the population in Europe and the developing world,” says another.

But in a setback, the US embassy found that its closest ally on GM, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the powerful Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the man who mostly represents the pope at the United Nations, had withdrawn his support for the US.

“A Martino deputy told us recently that the cardinal had co-operated with embassy Vatican on biotech over the past two years in part to compensate for his vocal disapproval of the Iraq war and its aftermath – to keep relations with the USG [US government] smooth. According to our source, Martino no longer feels the need to take this approach,” says the cable.

In addition, the cables show US diplomats working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto. “In response to recent urgent requests by [Spanish rural affairs ministry] state secretary Josep Puxeu and Monsanto, post requests renewed US government support of Spain’s science-based agricultural biotechnology position through high-level US government intervention.”

It also emerges that Spain and the US have worked closely together to persuade the EU not to strengthen biotechnology laws. In one cable, the embassy in Madrid writes: “If Spain falls, the rest of Europe will follow.”

The cables show that not only did the Spanish government ask the US to keep pressure on Brussels but that the US knew in advance how Spain would vote, even before the Spanish biotech commission had reported.

(Source: Guardian)