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by Dr. Al Sears, M.D.
2012
from
AlSearsMD Website
Over the past decade, giant agribusiness
companies - aided by a labyrinth of government regulations that
stifle the efforts of organic farmers, horrified investigators and
watchdog organizations - have slowly and quietly spread their
scientifically altered seeds to so many farms nearly half of all
foods on your supermarket shelves now contain some ingredient that
has had its DNA modified by science.
The government has welcomed in, is in coalition with, and is even
directed by Big-Agribusiness.
These mega-processors make up a group of
huge but barely-known agricultural and food-processing giants who
want to control the food supply for the entire world.
Behind closed doors, in the highest places of power and in secret
lobbying meetings designed to keep you in the dark about what is
really going on, Big-Agra tightens its grip over what you eat.
Agribusiness and the companies that control it are the new "evil
empire." They are the worst force in the modern free world.
The things these people do rival the unconscionable behavior of the
tobacco companies. They tried to disguise the fact that their
product caused cancer. They had research on it, and they suppressed
the research so they could continue to sell a product they knew was
killing people.
Agribusiness is doing the same thing on a huge scale. The giants of
agribusiness are experimenting with your life. You never agreed to
take part in it. But it’s triggering infertility, tumors, kidney and
liver disease, and more.
Behind closed doors, white-coated mad scientists employed by
Big-Agra tinker happily and dangerously with the DNA of everything
from corn to baby food. They are modifying the nature of things and
inserting a pesticide in every cell of a potato. They have even
worked on creating pharmaceutical rice so you get a diarrhea drug in
every bite.
These franken-food experiments are better known as
genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
These giant agribusiness companies include,
Together, they own or control much of
the world’s food sources, yet you may not have heard of any of them.
That’s because Big-Agra companies don’t
want you to know who they are, or what they’re doing.
You’ve probably heard of Monsanto. It’s the biggest seed maker in
the world, with influence at the highest levels of government and
business. But they don’t want anyone talking about them. Monsanto’s
influence is so big book publishers routinely reject manuscripts
that mention the name Monsanto.
In complete secrecy this agra-giant engineers patented seeds that
make up 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown
in the United States.
And that number one cash crop - soy - is creeping into thousands of
products you eat every day, whether you know it or not. Because they
don’t have to tell you they’re experimenting on you with genetically
engineered foods.
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The European Union
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Japan
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China
-
Korea
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Australia
-
New Zealand,
...require GMO foods to be labeled.
But not the United States...
Giant agricultural conglomerates like
Monsanto are helping to put these untested mutations on your dinner
table, and because of their political lobbying and secretive
policies, your government has allowed them to hide the presence of
GMOs in your food.
The facts - the few we’re allowed to know - are scary.
Did you know their "mutant soy" is clinically documented to cause
depression, fatigue, infections, brain fog, nausea… even cancer? And
soy is just the start of their plans. Big-Agra is trying to control
almost every food source in the world. That includes cows, chicken
and even pigs.
The solution is easy:
Allow freedom for traditional
methods of growing food and let you choose what you want to
purchase.
But we don’t have that freedom.
I’ll Fight for
You
In this report, I’ll show you how and why this horror show is
unfolding and what you can do to avoid the crippling side effects
and take back your health from the giant corporations that are
experimenting on you.
I’ll tell you all
about Monsanto, the company that
controls nearly every food seed on earth, and I’ll show you:
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The strong-armed tactics
Monsanto uses to force farmers to either use their seeds, or
go out of business
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How Monsanto tried to take
advantage of starving Haitians after their devastating
earthquake
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How Monsanto destroyed local
businesses in Iraq with the stroke of a pen
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What they’re doing to make sure
you never have stevia, a calorie-free sugar substitute, in
its natural form in any food or drink. Ever
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How Monsanto poisoned an entire
town in Alabama for years, and hid the fact they were doing
it
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How they’re trying to make sure
you never drink milk, eat a chicken, or enjoy a Christmas
ham that they don’t own
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The tactics Monsanto uses to
frighten, threaten, and bring million-dollar lawsuits
against hard-working American farmers all through rural
America and the Farm Belt.
I also uncover the compelling studies
showing soy is no "miracle food," and give you eight simple steps to
avoid the hidden soy in your diet and how to get these Franken-foods
off your dinner table.
Who Are These Guys?
Monsanto is among five Big-Agra giants that dominate the world seed
market.
Four companies control the vast majority
of fertilizer sales. Soybean crushing? Four. Flour milling? Only
three.
And those estimates are hard to get.
Many of these companies don’t comment on
their businesses. Cargill, for example, is privately held and
doesn’t have to say a thing to anyone about anything it does. ADM
and Bunge almost never respond to interview requests from the media.
Meanwhile, these companies you’ve never heard of are on a worldwide
campaign to crush competition. And now we have an oligarchy of just
a few companies that decide what the world is going to eat. And they
do it in secret...
The funny thing is, they think they’re doing the right thing. In
business, your number one goal is to increase market share and
profits. You want your profit margins to keep going up quarter by
quarter to keep your investors happy.
They think they’re doing their job well because they protect their
profit margin through patent protection. But what they’re doing is
the worst kind of evil. And the rest of the world is looking at the
United States as the enemy.
Let me explain.
For decades, the United States Patent and Trademark Office
had refused to give out patents on seeds. It felt that because they
are life forms, there are too many variables for anyone to claim to
be able to patent them.
For example, Herbert Boyer never got a patent for his
engineered E. coli bacteria that would produce human insulin as a
treatment for diabetes.
But in 1981, the Supreme Court ruled that any novel process or
technology created by man could be patented. That included man-made
species of living bacteria. The Patent Office granted Ananda
Chakrabarty a patent for a genetically modified Pseudomonas
bacterium that would eat up oil spills.
That set the precedent for the ability to get a patent for an animal
or organism that had been genetically modified. And this is where
Monsanto comes in.
That same year, Monsanto took advantage
of the ruling and created their Life Sciences Research Center, where
they came up with the first genetically modified plant cell.
Keep in mind, there were no genetically modified crops in the United
States before 1980. Zero. Nada.
Today, Monsanto has almost 700 biotech patents, more than anyone
else. And they enforce them like the Gestapo. They have armies of
private investigators who run around the Farm Belt threatening
anyone who they think has used Monsanto’s seeds without permission.
I’ve read stories of these guys screaming at country store owners
and farmers, and going after farmers’ co-ops with multi-million
dollar lawsuits trying to put all those good, hard-working people in
the rural farming states out of business. Or force them to buy
Monsanto seeds.
Monsanto’s investigators secretly videotape, go to town meetings to
take notes and inform on what people are saying, and take photos
when no one’s looking.1
Monsanto Is
Not Too Sweet
Originally, Monsanto was started because the founder wanted a way to
sell the new artificial sweetener saccharin in 1901.
Monsanto later became the world’s
biggest aspirin maker.
But you probably know Monsanto’s two
most recognizable products:
Roundup, by the way, is a direct
descendant
of Agent Orange, which Monsanto
also invented. Roundup is a glyphosate, which is an endocrine
disruptor (messes up your hormones), is implicated in neurological
problems, and is known to be toxic to marine mammals.
And studies show that, just like Monsanto’s first sweetener
saccharin caused cancer, aspartame has its own problems. Monkeys and
rats given aspartame were having seizures and dying. It was eating
holes in their brains. It’s even been linked to Multiple Sclerosis
and Lupus.
A study released by the Cancer Research Center in Italy found that,
once inside your body, aspartame breaks down into very dangerous
components. These by-products cause not only seizures, but cancer
and even sudden death.2
I’ve steered my patients away from aspartame for years, and told
them to use the very sweet zero-calorie herb "stevia"
instead.
Most of my patients had never heard of the herb stevia. Yet it’s far
from new. The Pre-Columbian Indian culture, the Guarani, originally
called stevia Kaa-he-he, meaning "sweet herb." Hundreds of years
later, Paraguay, Brazil, Korea, and Japan used the sweet leaf and
its extracts for sweetening herbal teas and flavoring their foods.
Unfortunately, because of Monsanto, stevia is not allowed in
the United States as a food additive.
At the time stevia was being studied in the early 90s, someone made
an anonymous complaint to the FDA that stevia was unsafe. The FDA
banned it as an additive. You’re only allowed to buy it as a
supplement.
And do you know what the local FDA office told the man who first
tried to import stevia and sell it?
"…none of us here wants to do it.
But the Washington office has demanded that we stop you from
importing your stevia concentrate... We’re not telling you
there’s anything wrong with it [or] that anybody has had a
problem.
There’s no complaint other than the
NutraSweet Company; they are the ones who complained that you
are selling a natural sweetener that hadn’t had to go through
all the testing and so forth." 3
Many people think the complaint was made
for Monsanto by
Michael R. Taylor.
He first worked in
the FDA, then worked as a lawyer
trying to get a Monsanto growth hormone approved, and was appointed
FDA deputy commissioner in 1991 - the same year the complaint was
filed. He then worked as a vice president for Monsanto.
President
Obama
re-appointed Taylor to the FDA in 2009.
Since then, the FDA has given the OK for
Cargill and Coke’s artificial sweetener TruVia. The FDA had also
given the go-ahead for PureVia, made by Pepsi and Monsanto. Both
sweeteners are derived from… you guessed it: stevia.
Except that they’re patented versions of
only one of the two sweet compounds of stevia, Rebaudioside A. You
still can’t sell a food or beverage that has steviosides (the other
sweet compound). You can only get it, and stevia leaves, as a
supplement.
Why? Because there’s a small company that owns the patent for
manufacturing stevia in the U.S. It’s the NutraSweet company, makers
of aspartame, and owned by none other than Monsanto.4
Do you know what Monsanto did in Anniston, Alabama?
They have a chemical factory there that contaminated the entire area
with
toxic chemicals called PCBs. These
are cancer-causing industrial pollutants made from chlorine that are
used to insulate materials used in electronic devices.
For decades the Monsanto plant was releasing them into the
environment, and hiding it from the citizens. Their own internal
documents showed that they manipulated scientific studies by urging
scientists to change their conclusions to downplay the risks of PCB
exposure.
After years of being poisoned by Monsanto, 3,000 citizens of
Anniston sued Monsanto for ruining their air, lakes, rivers and
soil. A jury found Monsanto guilty and liable on all six counts:
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negligence
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wantonness
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suppression of the truth
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nuisance
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trespass
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outrage
Under Alabama law in order to be
convicted of outrage, what you’ve done has to be heinous, and
against nature itself.
The state defines what Monsanto did as,
"so outrageous in character and
extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency
so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in
civilized society."
Alabama fined Monsanto $700 million on
behalf of the Anniston residents, whose blood levels of Monsanto’s
toxic PCBs were hundreds or thousands of times the average.
One Monsanto memo explains their justification for years of lying:
"We can’t afford to lose one dollar
of business."
And do you remember what Monsanto did to
the Haitians?
After the earthquake and the starvation, the economy was in ruins,
and you have all the newly homeless people there with no place to go
or to go to work. So Monsanto makes this big, public relations
campaign about their supplying corn and vegetable seeds to the
displaced people there…
But Monsanto makes farmers sign contracts that say they wouldn’t buy
seeds from anybody else. They then find themselves forced to buy
Monsanto seeds each year. But Haitians can’t ever afford to buy
those seeds.
So essentially they were saying,
"Here, we’re giving you seeds to
plant, you can eat once, and then after that you’re going to
starve because you’re never going to be able to afford our
seeds. And we’ve just made you sign a contract that you won’t
buy seeds from anybody else."
Monsanto tried to claim the seeds were
not genetically modified.
They had a big PR campaign that the
seeds were "a fabulous Easter gift." But do you know what was in
those seeds? The hybrid corn seeds were treated with the fungicide
Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds were treated with
the pesticide thiram.
Thiram is so toxic and dangerous the EPA won’t even allow it to be
sold as a home pesticide, and won’t allow anyone to work with it
commercially who doesn’t wear protective clothing!
That’s humanitarian aid? No it’s not. It’s a crime. An atrocity.
One group of Haitians decided to burn Monsanto’s "gift." They wrote
a letter and called what Monsanto tried to do "a new earthquake" and
an attack on what was left of Haiti’s environment.
And you know, whenever you use a genetically engineered product from
one of those companies you have to sign a nondisclosure. It says
that if you find any ill effects from that food you won’t tell
anybody. That you don’t have the right to tell anybody.
Monsanto makes the farmers sign these contracts that run up to 200
pages. They commit you to only buy seeds from them, to not release
any negative information that you have about it, and all kinds of
other restrictive clauses on what you can do.
The contracts also have provisions that no one is allowed to further
modify seeds that Monsanto has already modified. Another says that
if a company that uses Monsanto’s seeds is sold, the new owners have
to destroy every single seed immediately.
Instead of destroying all their seeds, small companies give up and
sell out to Monsanto itself, giving them even more control.
Monsanto has scooped up almost 25
companies this way, just in the United States Farm Belt, and just in
the past few years!5
Monsanto Goes
Cow Tipping
After seeds, Monsanto’s next target was farmers who produce milk.
You see, Monsanto developed and sells recombinant
bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST).
This genetically engineered hormone forces cows to artificially
increase milk production by 10 to 15 percent.
In cows, rBGH is known to cause lameness, disorders of the uterus,
increased body temperature, digestive problems and reproductive
difficulties.6
And no one knows what this stuff is doing to the people drinking the
milk. Could it be that some of the women’s reproductive problems
we’ve seen over the past 20 years are caused in part by rBGH in the
milk women are told to drink for its calcium? Who knows!
Monsanto doesn’t have to tell you. In fact, the only reason this
stuff was even approved was because the FDA was shown Monsanto’s own
study on its safety. They saw exactly one study, administered by
Monsanto, in which rBGH was tested for only 90 days on only 30 rats.
The study was never published, and the FDA stated the results showed
no significant problems.
But in Canada, where Monsanto originally tried to strong arm the
Canadian government into approving rBGH, scientists did their own
rBGH study.
They found that 20 percent to 30 percent
of the rats that ingested high doses of the hormone developed
antibodies to it, a sign that it was active in the bloodstream. And
some of the male rats developed cysts on their thyroids and
abnormalities in their prostates.7 It can also cause
mastitis, an infection brought on by inflammation that can cause pus
and blood to be secreted into the milk.
The problem begins with cows no longer being fed their natural diet
of grass. They’re fed grains and corn instead. This causes an
inflammatory reaction in the cow.
What’s worse is that they don’t get enough selenium, which comes
from eating grasses. What that does is affect the cow’s udder in
that it doesn’t have enough protective keratin. This makes them more
susceptible to inflammation.
The hormone adds to the inflammation, causing mastitis.
Health Canada determined the use of rBGH increases the risk of
mastitis by 25 percent. This is one of the reasons they have to dump
antibiotics into cows these days… to stop the sickness brought on by
hormones.
Milk produced from cows injected with rBGH also has high levels of
insulin growth factor-1, or IGF-1. Normally, you would break down
excess amount of IGF-1 in your stomach, but casein, a protein in
milk, prevents it. IGF-1 then continues on into your blood.
Numerous studies, from prestigious journals like The Lancet and
Science have shown elevated IGF-1 is linked to prostate and breast
cancer.8
And no one has to label the milk, or tell you where it came from,
thanks to the FDA’s approval.
Some producers who don’t use Monsanto’s hormone are starting to
label their milk "rBGH-free." But aside from them, you’d never know
whether you were drinking milk made from cows injected with the
hormone or not. No one has to tell you.
Why wouldn’t any of this be public knowledge?
It almost was… until Monsanto forced Fox News to kill the
investigative report done by award-winning reporter Jane Akre.
Fox then prohibited any of its reporters from revealing Monsanto’s
own damning internal documents. And they fired Jane’s husband
Steve Wilson who helped her with the report.
Akre and Wilson would have revealed the risks of rBGH, including
links to breast cancer, as well as other negative health risks to
humans and animals. Akre sued, and won $425,000 from Fox.
After fighting for years to win approval in Canada, and after a
14-year battle with organic milk farmers over rBGH labeling,
Monsanto gave up.
It sold its rBGH business to drug maker
Eli Lily… for $300 million.
Grain, Then
Cows, Now Chicken…
Monsanto’s newest target is chickens.
Did you know that most chicken farmers don’t own their chickens?
Big-Agra does. They don’t choose what to feed them and they don’t
choose the medicines they might receive.
About the only things they do own are the coop and the poop.
When chicken farmers buy fertilized eggs, they also have to buy food
from them, but they won’t tell you what’s in the feed. So they’re
feeding chickens and selling them to their customers without knowing
what they’re feeding the chickens, and they don’t have any right to
know.
And that’s how they got away - with these chickens that instead of a
year for maturity they mature in eight and a half weeks - with
saying that they’re doing it without hormones.
All the chicken farmers swear on a stack
of Bibles,
"No, we don’t add any hormones"
because they’re ignorant of it.
But there have to be hormones in there
for them to grow that damn fast!
Plus, you can tell from the nature of the chicken. You go and buy a
chicken from an old-fashioned local farmer and you remember what
chicken used to taste like. And then you go and buy these things at
the grocery store and they’re these mushy, big-breasted steroid
balls… the consistency is wrong. The meat isn’t stringy any more.
You bite into it and the fibers of the
muscle are gone. It’s a big white puffy mess like you’re biting into
a doughnut.
When you eat a real chicken you remember how the meat was darker,
and stringy. There are striations to the meat that you feel when you
pull the meat off the bone. It strips off in one direction and you
can’t just bite it and bite through it. And if you went to cut it,
you would only be able to cut along the striation and not across the
meat. Now you slice through it like you’re slicing a piece of cake.
Your Thanksgiving turkey is like a big loaf of bread.
And think about it… that’s what bodybuilders on steroids are like.
That’s why they become injured. They’re big steroid puff balls.
That’s what you’re eating.
Do you know what Monsanto did to the Iraqis? Have you heard of
Paul Bremer’s
"Order 81"?
Order 81 was implemented after the United States took over Iraq. One
of the first things Big-Agra did was get their buddies in government
to mandate that Iraq’s commercial-scale farmers were required to
purchase "registered" seeds.
According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], Iraqis were prohibited
from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from
licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.
The paragraph states,
"Farmers shall be prohibited from
re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned
in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this
chapter."
Written in massively intricate legalese,
paragraph [B] of Article 4 states any variety that is different from
any other known variety may be registered as a protected seed.
Which sounds good… except that what it means in reality was that
natural seeds developed through thousands of years of Iraqi
agriculture could no longer be saved and planted again. They had to
be destroyed, and Iraqis would have to buy new "protected" seeds
every year.
The same thing that happened in Haiti.
So each year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and
repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines,
penalties and/or jail time. And guess who those seeds were available
from? Only giants
like Monsanto, and the privately
owned Cargill and the World Wide Wheat Company.
Another Big-Agra company, Tyson, dumped chicken legs on the Iraqi
market and drove down the price so far that local chicken producers
were ruined.
Between what Monsanto did in Haiti, in Iraq, and in South America
with stevia, it’s no wonder people around the world are looking at
the United States as the enemy.
When I traveled to Peru I often heard
things like,
"It’s those damn gringos doing it to
us again."
Monsanto’s
Pig-Headedness
Monsanto’s plan to patent the pig is no hogwash.
Monsanto has sought patents not only on methods of breeding, but on
actual breeding herds of pigs as well as their offspring.
The patents are for simple procedures, but are so wide ranging that
it would give Monsanto the right to stop anyone from breeding pigs
that have characteristics described in their patents. Or force
farmers to pay huge dollars in royalties.
One thing Monsanto wants to do is to screen for gene sequence in
various pig populations to find out which animals are likely to
produce more pork per pound of feed.
Then they’ll give them genetically engineered feed grown from
genetically engineered seed raised in fields sprayed with Roundup -
all made by Monsanto.
Then they want the patent on all pigs and herds derived from this
method. The pigs, the offspring and any information available from
the genetic breeding will be wholly owned by Monsanto.
The reality of Monsanto’s plan is that they want to drive crops and
animals farther and farther away from what nature intended, so they
can patent them and own it all.
That is the same as poisoning and destroying the planet, and causing
famine and sickness… disguised, as their website says, as trying to
"help" farmers by "using fewer resources to grow more food."
They Know What GMO
Foods Can Do to You
Their "food" is nothing like what nature intended you to eat.
And it’s not like they don’t have
research on the harm GMO foods can cause. Big-Agra does lots of
research on genetically engineered crops, but they don’t release it.
For example, they find that when you put crossed genes in food and
feed it to mice, it causes inflammatory reactions, and some of the
mice die. But they don’t release the studies - and they release the
food anyway.
You know, you can’t even find the research on genetically engineered
food because it’s proprietary.
The companies can withhold information
about it. So they do their own research, and they just release what
they want, and what they don’t want the people eating that stuff to
know, the people have no right to get. You can’t have access to it.
It’s legal for them to suppress it because of the patent right over
the food. Because it’s something that they created, they get to
decide if they’re going to release the study or if they’re going to
bury it.
GMOs have a shaky track record and have never been proven safe. And
the test results that reveal the real dangers never see the light of
day.
When you eat them, you’re taking part in
a global Franken-foods experiment.
Big-Agra Connections
in the White House
Monsanto and other Big-Agra fat cats are at the highest levels of
power.
Linda Fisher spent five years as Monsanto’s top Washington
lobbyist. She also managed Monsanto’s political money. In 2001,
George W. Bush chose her to be
deputy administrator of the EPA, the agency’s second-highest post.
The EPA has regulatory authority over
plants genetically altered to contain pesticides. Monsanto is the
leading producer of those altered plants.9
And look at Obama’s choices to head the United States Department of
Agriculture and the FDA:
-
Tom Vilsack and Michael Taylor
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Vilsack is a long-time supporter
of GMOs. And Michael Taylor, the "food safety czar," is the
proverbial fox guarding the henhouse
Taylor has a long history of lobbying
for, and being employed by, Big-Agra companies with a vested
interest in GMOs. Not only was Taylor a vice president at Monsanto,
he was one of the FDA officials who signed off on a policy stating
that GMOs don’t need safety testing.
Some other Big-Agra bigwigs in government include:
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Roger Beachy, former director of
the Monsanto-funded Danforth Plant Science Center, is now
the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and
Agriculture
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Islam Siddiqui, vice president
of the Monsanto and Dupont-funded pesticide-promoting
lobbying group, CropLife, is now the agriculture negotiator
for the U.S. Trade Representative
-
Rajiv Shah, former
agricultural-development director for the pro-biotech
Gates Foundation (a frequent Monsanto
partner), served as
Obama’s USDA Under Secretary for Research Education and
Economics and Chief Scientist and is now head of USAID
-
Ramona Romero was a corporate
counsel to DuPont, was nominated by President Obama and now
serves as general counsel for the USDA
Monsanto’s
Long Arm of Corruption Reaches Around the Globe
Back in 2000, Monsanto wanted to plant more than 49,000 acres of
genetically modified cotton in Indonesia.
But hours before the agreement with
Indonesia’s government was to be signed, it was shot down by the
Ministers of Economy and Environment. There had been no
environmental assessment, as required by Indonesian law.
But just five months later, the Minister of Agriculture signed the
agreement with Monsanto, without the required environmental
assessment.
Why? As it turns out, a $50,000 bribe from a Monsanto employee did
the trick.
But that $50,000 was just the tip of the iceberg. As it turned out
in U.S. court, Monsanto had paid some $700,000 in bribes to
Indonesian officials, and wound up slapped with a $1.5 million fine.10
According to a report in the Asia Times, 140 Indonesian officials
received bribes from Monsanto over the deal, including a former
Minister of Agriculture, whose wife received a house worth $373,990.
Now, I realize that Indonesia was known at the time for official
corruption. But if the genetically modified crop were really safe,
wouldn’t it be easier to simply prepare the required assessment?
Even more disturbing is an earlier United States government policy
that cleared the way for us to become unwilling lab rats.
Government Steps in
to Hide the Danger of GMOs
When giant agricultural corporations wanted to flood the market with
genetically modified seeds, there was a problem.
"Not a problem," announced the federal
government.
As long as these Franken-foods are "substantially equivalent" to the
real thing, the GMO products would be deemed safe - and made
available for sale.
So, if a genetically modified food - or other plant - is
"substantially equivalent" in composition and nutritional
characteristics, it doesn’t have to be tested for safety.
Responsible scientists were quick to point out the problems with
substantial equivalence. Geneticists will tell you that the entire
basis for genetic engineering is bogus in the first place.
They say there’s no way the paltry number of genes that allow
something to be claimed as "equivalent" make any engineered product
even close to equivalent. That small number of genes could not
possibly code for the over 200,000 known cellular proteins. So
there’s no equivalency whatsoever.
Not to mention the fact that our gene splicing techniques are
primitive and it isn’t even known what mutations and consequences
can occur.
In 1998, Geneva’s Center for Environmental Law argued against
the World Trade Organization accepting "substantial equivalence" as
a standard for GMO safety.
They pointed out it was inadequate to prove safety and would
undermine meaningful standards in those countries, and that it
ignored scientific research that showed "substantially equivalent"
genetically modified foods had significant negative health impacts.11
Unfortunately for all of us, commercial interests won out over
science.
As the American Academy of Environmental Medicine points out,
GMOs have been linked to:
-
Infertility
-
Weakened immune system
-
Accelerated aging 12
-
Genetic problems with
cholesterol, insulin control, cell signaling and protein
formation
-
Changes in the liver, kidney,
spleen and gastrointestinal system 13,14
These Franken-foods may be
"substantially equivalent," but the research shows they’re
substantially more dangerous, too.
There’s plenty of solid evidence. Take a look at some of the studies
I’ve found…
85% of the Food on
Store Shelves Contains GMOs
In the rush to please the Big-Agra giants, our government has sold
us out. Today, as many as 85 percent of the processed foods on store
shelves contain genetically modified ingredients.15
And that’s not good, if the few studies on GMOs can be believed.
In 2008, Italian researchers found that GMOs had a negative impact
on the immune systems of mice. 16 Turkish scientists
found evidence of liver and kidney disease in rats fed genetically
modified corn.17 And Danish researchers found enough
differences in rats fed genetically modified rice to question its
safety. 18
So where are the studies? A medical researcher in Spain found that
there’s an almost complete lack of proof that GMOs are safe.19
And there’s a good reason why.
No One Is Allowed to
Test GMO Crops…
So where is all the research on genetically modified crops? It’s
hard to come by.
And there’s a good reason for that. The manufacturers won’t allow
it.
That’s right. Monsanto - and the handful of other big producers of
genetically modified crops - don’t allow scientific testing.
If you want to get your hands on GMO seeds, you have to sign an
"end-user agreement," just as if you were buying software. And these
end-user agreements ban testing and comparisons to other products.
The only testing that happens is testing that the manufacturers
approve.
As Scientific American points out, the only tests approved are those
that the manufacturers decide are "friendly."20
So, are GMOs safe for you to eat? Sorry… That’s on a need-to-know
basis. And the manufacturers have decided that you don’t need to
know. And in the case of soy, what you don’t know can hurt you.
Soy is one of the most widespread and successful GMOs in history.
All soy is genetically modified and it’s
in thousands of products you eat every day.
The Great Soy Hoax:
"Miracle Food" Exposed as Toxic Burden
For years now, you’ve been hearing about the miraculous benefits of
soy-based products as a "healthy" meat substitute.
In 1999, the FDA endorsed soy protein as a way to lower saturated
fats and cholesterol in the American diet, leading to an explosion
in the food industry’s use of soy-based products.
But let me ask you a question:
-
Would you willingly eat
something that causes nausea, gas pains and indigestion?
-
That leads to hormonal
imbalance, thyroid problems, gout and even cancer?
-
That contains "bad" fats and
other unhealthy substances?
-
That has no positive effect
whatsoever on heart health?
Of course, you wouldn’t.
But beneath all the soy-health hoopla, I’ve found studies strongly
suggesting that many of these products pose a number of serious
health risks.
REVEALED - The 5 Big
Dangers of Soy
In the journal Circulation, the American Heart Association announced
that soy has little effect on cholesterol and is unlikely to prevent
heart disease.
This isn’t meant to suggest that all types of soy are unhealthy. But
it proves that soy isn’t the "miracle food" the FDA and the food
industry would have you believe.21
But that’s only the beginning of the deception.
The problem is soy-based products are everywhere in today’s American
diet. You may not realize it, but soy crops up in unexpected places
in your fridge and cupboard, from ice cream and yogurt to pasta and
cereal. Not to mention the frying oil used in fast food.
How did this happen?
Because the FDA endorsed it, the food industry jumped on the soy
bandwagon in a big way. By 2004, 80 percent of all vegetable oils
were derived from soy, and nearly all processed foods now contain
some form of it.
Here are five reasons why that’s very bad news for your health.
-
Indigestion and Blockage of Key
Nutrients:
The problems start with the
soybean itself. In raw form, it’s poisonous to the human
body. In fact, eating raw soy can cause stomach aches,
nausea, cramping and gas. Other soy ingredients prevent the
body from absorbing essential minerals. Ironically, soy also
makes it more difficult for the body to digest protein, the
very thing soy was supposed to provide as an alternative to
meat protein.
-
Boost of Feminizing Estrogen:
Even more serious, soybeans
contain substances called "isoflavones" that mimic estrogen,
the female hormone. Eating enough soy can disrupt a woman’s
menstrual cycle. One researcher calculated that, based on
body weight, feeding your baby exclusively on soy formula is
like giving it five birth control pills a day! 22
-
Gout and Thyroid Disruption:
As if that weren’t enough,
there’s a chemical in soy that can cause gout and thyroid
enlargement. Eating as little as 45 grams of soy products a
day (about three-quarters of a cup of tofu, for instance)
can cause thyroid malfunction within three months in healthy
adult men and women.23
-
Cancer and Harmful Fats:
Soy causes cancer in animal
studies.24 (By the way, soy makes its way into
most industrial animal feed, which means it’s also making
its way to your table.) It’s also high in omega-6 fatty
acids - up to 18 percent of the whole bean. This is the kind
of fat we’re supposed to reduce in our diet.
-
Dangerous Clotting of Red Blood
Cells:
Another chemical in soy makes
red blood cells cluster together. Among other dangers, this
prevents the body from absorbing oxygen.
There’s Only
One Safe Way to Eat Soy…
The Asian diet is famous for its heavy use of soy-based products
like tofu and soy sauce.
So why aren’t the Japanese suffering
from these ill effects? The answer lies in the way soy in Asian
countries is traditionally processed.
For thousands of years, Asian farmers used soy as a fertilizer,
not as food. They recognized that you would never want to eat
raw soy.
The Chinese introduced soy into the human diet only after
discovering that natural fermentation processes rendered it edible.
Fermented soy-derived foods like tempeh, miso and natto do not
contain significant amounts of soy’s toxins.
Tofu, also a staple in traditional Asian cuisine, is not a fermented
soy product. The process of making tofu removes most of the harmful
toxins in a different way.
Like some cheeses, tofu is made from the pressed "curds" of the
bean, while the "whey," or liquid left over after the pressing, is
thrown out - and most of the toxins along with it.
Compare this with the modern industrial processing soy undergoes in
the West to produce soy oil, flour and other soy by-products
contained in most processed foods:
Does that sound appetizing to you?
What’s more, soy in this country is genetically modified. The jury
is out on how this may affect human health. What we do know is that
some industrial processing techniques leave trace amounts of
aluminum in soy products.
Dietary aluminum leads to dementia and
Alzheimer’s, according to some studies.
8 Simple Steps to
Help You Avoid Harmful Soy By-products and "Franken-Food" GMOs
Avoid processed foods whenever possible.
This should go without saying, but I
always recommend eating whole foods, grass-fed beef and other
minimally processed food products across the board. These energize
your body and result in vigor, strength and long-term health.
Check the label. Soy by-products are everywhere, and they go by many
(FDA-approved!) names.
Here are the ones to look out for and
avoid:
I’m not saying small amounts of this
stuff will kill you, but it’s best to be aware of how much you’re
consuming, given the potential health hazards.
If you find these ingredients on the
label, try to find substitutes without them.
-
Limit your overall soy intake to
a maximum of 25 grams per day. This isn’t as easy as calorie
counting, but again, it’s worth watching how much soy and
soy-based products are finding their way into your diet.
-
Stick to traditional soy foods.
Tofu (in moderation), tempeh, miso, natto and soy sauce are
all fine. Other kinds of foods that substitute soy for meat,
like soy-based hot dogs, aren’t healthy alternatives.
-
Whenever possible, buy organic.
The safest foods are U.S. certified-organic foods. If your
grocer doesn’t carry organic foods, let them know you’ll
shop elsewhere if they don’t begin stocking them.
-
For dairy products and other
packaged foods, look for a "non-GMO" label. This can be
tricky, because the manufacturers of genetically modified
foods are lobbying hard to get "non-GMO" labels banned. But
for now, they’re still legal. And, in my opinion, a good
sign that these foods are safer.
-
When you can, "grow your own."
Non-GMO seed companies have moved much of their seed
production to Europe and Asia, where contamination is less
likely. American agribusiness giants have less clout in
these countries, and untainted seeds are still available.
-
Let your members of Congress and
Senators know you’re concerned about this issue and demand
that genetically modified crops be banned until proven safe.
For more on soy, GMOs and how you can
protect yourself, visit my website:
www.AlSearsMD.com.
You’ll find over 600 articles and links
to practical solutions you can use RIGHT NOW to prevent disease,
extend your life, hit your ideal weight and boost your energy
levels.
Download this article in
PDF Format.
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