The kidneys of males were the most affected, experiencing 43.5 percent of all the changes. The livers of females followed at more than 30 percent. Other organs may have been affected too, including the heart and spleen, and blood cells.

According to the Institute for Responsible Technology:

“The GM soybean and corn varieties used in the feeding trials ‘constitute 83 percent of the commercialized GMOs’ that are currently consumed by billions of people. While the findings may have serious ramifications for the human population, the authors demonstrate how a multitude of GMO-related health problems could easily pass undetected through the superficial and largely incompetent safety assessments that are used around the world.”

Further, the biotechnology firm Monsanto is only an FDA approval away from its latest monstrosity — soybeans that have been genetically modified to produce omega-3 fats. That FDA approval is expected this year.

Monsanto plans to include GM soybean oil in every product it can — baked goods, baking mixes, breakfast cereals, cheeses, frozen dairy desserts, pasta, gravies and sauces, fruit juices, snack foods, candy, soups, and more.

According to Forbes:

“Monsanto is so despised by environmentalists that Google’s first suggested search term for the St. Louis company is ‘Monsanto evil.’ Readers … voted Monsanto the world’s most evil corporation in a January poll, giving the corporation a whopping 51 percent of the vote.”

Scientists have also introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows in a process that they say will cause the cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk. They believe that this could provide an alternative to formula milk for babies.

Critics of GM technology questioned the safety of milk from genetically modified animals, and also its potential effect on the cattle’s health.

According to the Telegraph:

“The researchers used cloning technology to introduce human genes into the DNA of Holstein dairy cows before the genetically modified embryos were implanted into surrogate cows … [T]he researchers said they were able to create cows that produced milk containing a human protein called lysozyme.”

Source: http://www.mercola.com

CAP THE GENE SPILL from NO GMO on Vimeo.

It’s been a year since we started watching BP’s oil spew into the Gulf day after day. Although that’s been plugged and cleanup is underway, a more insidious form of pollution continues without containment, with much longer term consequences. You might think I’m talking about Fukushima’s nuclear catastrophe. Actually, the pollution I’m referring to about can outlast even thousands of years of active nuclear waste.

Watch this two-minute video Cap the Gene Spill, directed by Alex Bogusky, to find out how genes from genetically modified crops self-propagate and permanently alter the gene pool—for all future generations.

Alex is described by Fast Company as “the Elvis of advertising,” a “pop-culture Houdini,” and the “daddy of 21st-century advertising.” He designed the Truth Campaign for tobacco, brought the king to Burger King, was crowned “Creative Director of the Decade” by Adweek, and was a partner at a $1.5 billion company that Advertising Age named “Agency of the Decade,”…and then he walked away. Alex realized he could no longer speak his truth.

Now, under his own banner of The Fearless Revolution, he’s harnessing the power of truth to create “an educated and empowered consumer,” who will act as “a sudden and powerful counterbalance to corporate power.”

Alex and I would like you to know the truth about genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Enjoy this first in a series of videos, appropriately released on Earth Day.

After viewing, please consider making a donation to our Institute for Responsible Technology, which works everyday to help cap the gene spill. Your donation will be doubled this month by a generous matching grant from Nutiva.

Safe eating,

Jeffrey Smith

The following links provide examples of the runaway GMO contamination taking place around the world.

GM Contamination Register This site records incidents of contamination arising from intentional or accidental release of GMOs.

Experts: Contamination From GM Alfalfa Certain

Genetically Modified DNA Contaminates Ancient Mexican Maize

New study shows GM contamination of maize in Uruguay

Western Australia records country’s first GM contamination

Australia: Another case of GM contamination, this time caused by flooding

Genetically Modified Cotton Contamination Caused More By Mishandling Than Cross-Pollination

EU Succumbs to U.S. Pressure on GM Contamination
Bayer Admits GMO Contamination is Out of Control

Vandana Shiva

Industrial globalized agriculture is heavily implicated in climate change. It contributes to the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the use of fossil fuels, nitrogen oxide (N₂O) from the use of chemical fertilizers and methane (CH₄) from factory farming. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), atmospheric concentration of CO₂ has increased from a pre–industrial concentration of about 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of CH₄ has increased from pre–industrial concentration of 715 parts per billion to 1774 parts per billion in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of N₂O, largely due to use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture, increased from about 270 parts per billion to 319 parts per billion in 2005.

Industrial agriculture is also more vulnerable to climate change which is intensifying droughts and floods. Monocultures lead to more frequent crop failure when rainfall does not come in time, or is too much or too little. Chemically fertilized soils have no capacity to withstand a drought. And cyclones and hurricanes make a food system dependent on long distance transport highly vulnerable to disruption.

Genetic engineering is embedded in an industrial model of agriculture based on fossil fuels. It is falsely being offered as a magic bullet for dealing with climate change.

Monsanto claims that Genetically Modified Organisms are a cure for both food insecurity and climate change and has been putting the following advertisement across the world in recent months.

9 billion people to feed.
A changing climate
Now what?
Producing more
Conserving more
Improving farmers lives
That’s sustainable agriculture
And that’s what Monsanto is all about.

All the claims this advertisement makes are false.

GM crops do not produce more. While Monsanto claims its GMO Bt cotton gives 1500 Kg/acre, the average is 300–400 Kg/acre.

The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate resilience is a multi–genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide resistance or Bt. Toxin increases the “yield” of toxins, not of food or nutrition.

Even the nutrition argument is manipulated. Golden rice genetically engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves.

The false claim of higher food production has been dislodged by a recent study titled, Failure to Yield by Dr. Doug Gurian Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was former biotech specialist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and former adviser on GM to the U.S Food and Drug Administration. Sherman states, “Let us be clear. There are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield. Similarly there are no GM crops on the market that were engineered to resist drought, reduce fertilizer pollution or save soil. Not one.”

There are currently two predominant applications of genetic engineering: one is herbicide resistance, the other is crops with Bt. toxin. Herbicides kill plants. Therefore they reduce return of organic matter to the soil. Herbicide resistant crops, like Round Up Ready Soya and Corn reduce soil carbon, they do not conserve it. This is why Monsanto’s attempt to use the climate negotiations to introduce Round Up and Round Up resistant crops as a climate solution is scientifically and ecologically wrong.

Monsanto’s GMOs, which are either Round Up Ready crops or Bt toxin crops do not conserve resources. They demand more water, they destroy biodiversity and they increase toxics in farming. Pesticide use has increased 13 times as a result of the use Bt cotton seeds in the region of Vidharbha, India.

Monsanto’s GMOs do not improve farmers’ lives. They have pushed farmers to suicide. 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last decade. 84% of the suicides in Vidharbha, the region with highest suicides are linked to debt created by Bt–cotton. GMOs are non–renewable, while the open pollinated varieties that farmers have bred are renewable and can be saved year to year. The price of cotton seed was Rs 7/kg. Bt cotton seed price jumped to Rs 1,700/kg.

This is neither ecological nor economic or social sustainability. It is eco–cide and genocide.

Genetic engineering does not “create” climate resilience. In a recent article titled, “GM: Food for Thought” (Deccan Chronicle, August 26, 2009), Dr. M.S. Swaminathan wrote “we can isolate a gene responsible for conferring drought tolerance, introduce that gene into a plant, and make it drought tolerant.”

Drought tolerance is a polygenetic trait. It is therefore scientifically flawed to talk of “isolating a gene for drought tolerance.“ Genetic engineering tools are so far only able to transfer single gene traits. That is why in twenty years only two single gene traits for herbicide resistance and Bt. toxin have been commercialized through genetic engineering.

Navdanya’s recent report titled, “Biopiracy of Climate Resilient Crops: Gene Giants are Stealing farmers’ innovation of drought resistant, flood resistant and salt resistant varieties,” shows that farmers have bred corps that are resistant to climate extremes. And it is these traits which are the result of millennia of farmers’ breeding which are now being patented and pirated by the genetic engineering industry. Using farmers’ varieties as “genetic material,” the biotechnology industry is playing genetic roulette to gamble on which gene complexes are responsible for which trait. This is not done through genetic engineering; it is done through software programs like athlete. As the report states, “Athlete uses vast amounts of available genomic data (mostly public) to rapidly reach a reliable limited list of candidate key genes with high relevance to a target trait of choice. Allegorically, the Athlete platform could be viewed as a ‘machine’ that is able to choose 50–100 lottery tickets from amongst hundreds of thousands of tickets, with the high likelihood that the winning ticket will be included among them.”

Breeding is being replaced by gambling, innovation is giving way to biopiracy, and science is being substituted by propaganda. This cannot be the basis of food security in times of climate vulnerability.

While genetic engineering is a false solution, over the past 20 years, we have built Navdanya, India’s biodiversity and organic farming movement. We are increasingly realizing there is a convergence between objectives of conservation of biodiversity, reduction of climate change impact and alleviation of poverty. Biodiverse, local, organic systems produce more food and higher farm incomes, while they also reduce water use and risks of crop failure due to climate change.

Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the Orissa Super Cyclone of 1998, and the Tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed seeds of saline resistant rice varieties as “Seeds of Hope” to rejuvenate agriculture in lands reentered saline by the sea. We are now creating seed banks of drought resistant, flood resistant and saline resistant seed varieties to respond to climate extremities.

Navdanya’s work over the past twenty years has shown that we can grow more food and provide higher incomes to farmers without destroying the environment and killing our peasants. Our study on “Biodiversity based organic farming: A new paradigm for Food Security and Food Safety” has established that small biodiverse organic farms produce more food and provide higher incomes to farmers.

Biodiverse organic and local food systems contribute both to mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Small, biodiverse, organic farms especially in Third World countries are totally fossil fuel free. Energy for farming operations comes from animal energy. Soil fertility is built by feeding soil organisms by recycling organic matter. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Biodiverse systems are also more resilient to draughts and floods because they have higher water holding capacity and hence contribute to adaption to climate change. Navdanya’s study on climate change and organic farming has indicated that organic farming increases carbon absorption by upto 55% and water holding capacity by 10% thus contributing to both mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

Biodiverse organic farms produce more food and higher incomes than industrial monocultures. Mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity and increasing food security can thus go hand in hand.

Words: Vandana Shiva

USDA senior scientist sends “emergency” warning to US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on a new plant pathogen in Roundup Ready GM soybean and corn that may be responsible for high rates of infertility and spontaneous abortions in livestock Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

An open letter appeared on the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance founded and run by Judith McGeary to save family farms in the US [1, 2]. The letter, written by Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University, to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, warns of a pathogen “new to science” discovered by “a team of senior plant and animal scientists”. Huber says it should be treated as an “emergency’’, as it could result in “a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

The letter appeared to have been written before Vilsack announced his decision to authorize unrestricted commercial planting of GM alfalfa on 1 February, in the hope of convincing the Secretary of Agriculture to impose a moratorium instead on deregulation of Roundup Ready (RR) crops.

The new pathogen appears associated with serious pervasive diseases in plants – sudden death syndrome in soybean and Goss’ wilt in corn – but its suspected effects on livestock is alarming. Huber refers to “recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.”

This could be the worst nightmare of genetic engineering that some scientists including me have been warning for years [3] (see Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare, ISIS publication): the unintended creation of new pathogens through assisted horizontal gene transfer and recombination.

Huber writes in closing: “I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.”

The complete letter is reproduced below:

Dear Secretary Vilsack:

A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn-suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!

This is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies. On the other hand, this new organism may already be responsible for significant harm (see below). My colleagues and I are therefore moving our investigation forward with speed and discretion, and seek assistance from the USDA and other entities to identify the pathogen’s source, prevalence, implications, and remedies.

We are informing the USDA of our findings at this early stage, specifically due to your pending decision regarding approval of RR alfalfa. Naturally, if either the RR gene or Roundup itself is a promoter or co-factor of this pathogen, then such approval could be a calamity. Based on the current evidence, the only reasonable action at this time would be to delay deregulation at least until sufficient data has exonerated the RR system, if it does.

For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.

A diverse set of researchers working on this problem have contributed various pieces of the puzzle, which together presents the following disturbing scenario:

Unique Physical Properties
This previously unknown organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified. There is strong evidence that this infectious agent promotes diseases of both plants and mammals, which is very rare.

Pathogen Location and Concentration
It is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.

Linked with Outbreaks of Plant Disease
The organism is prolific in plants infected with two pervasive diseases that are driving down yields and farmer income-sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn. The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).

Implicated in Animal Reproductive Failure
Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of this organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.

The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.

For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlege experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlege, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.

Recommendations
In summary, because of the high titer of this new animal pathogen in Roundup Ready crops, and its association with plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions, we request USDA’s participation in a multi-agency investigation, and an immediate moratorium on the deregulation of RR crops until the causal/predisposing relationship with glyphosate and/or RR plants can be ruled out as a threat to crop and animal production and human health.

It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders. To properly evaluate these factors, we request access to the relevant USDA data.

I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.

Sincerely,

COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)
References

1. “Researcher: Glyphosate (Roundup) or Roundup Ready Crops May Cause Animal Miscarriages”, Jill Richardson, La Vida Locavore, 18 February 2011
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/4523

2. “Researcher: Glyphosate (Roundup) or Roundup Ready Crops May Cause Animal Miscarriages”, 18 February 2011, http://farmandranchfreedom.org/gmo-miscarriages

3. Ho MW. Genetic Engineering Dream of Nightmare? The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, Third World Network, Gateway Books, MacMillan, Continuum, Penang, Malaysia, Bath, UK, Dublin, Ireland, New York, USA, 1998, 1999, 2007 (reprint with extended Introduction). http://www.i-sis.org.uk/genet.php

There’s just one problem with all this: It’s all a big lie.

Here are the ten biggest lies that have been promoted about S.510 by the U.S. Congress, the food industry giants and the mainstream media:

Lie #1 – Most deaths from food poisoning are caused by fresh produce

Here’s a whopper the mainstream media won’t dare report: Out of the 1,809 people who die in America every year from food-borne pathogens (CDC estimate), only a fraction die from the manufacturer’s contamination of fresh produce. By far the majority of food poisoning is caused by the consumption of spoiled processed foods, dead foods and animal-human transmission of pathogens.

For example, one of the largest food-borne killers according to the CDC is Toxoplasma gondii, a disease that people acquire from cat feces coming into contact with their food, which can happen right in their own homes (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/Vol5n…). Salmonella poisoning accounts for 553 deaths a year. As a reference for relative risk, over 42,000 people die each year from road accidents in the USA, meaning driving a car has a roughly 7600% higher chance of killing you than eating fresh produce. (http://www.driveandstayalive.com/in…)

In terms of food-borne illness, many of the deaths come from things like spoiled tomato sauce, spoiled canned foods and spoiled pasteurized milk. S 510, of course, does absolutely nothing to address these food contamination deaths, since those foods are considered “sterilized” at the time of sale.

Lie #2 – Under S.510, the FDA would only recall products it knows to be contaminated

Not true. S.510 merely requires the FDA to have “reason to believe” a food is contaminated. So right there, that means all raw milk will be targeted by the FDA because even without conducting any scientific tests at all, the FDA can say it has “reason to believe” the milk is contaminated merely because it is raw.

In other words, the FDA no longer needs science to outlaw a food product. It merely needs an opinion.

Is this “reason to believe” section really true? Yep, and here’s how it was amended:

SEC. 208. ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION OF FOOD.

23 (a) IN GENERAL. – Section 304(h)(1)(A) (21 U.S.C.24 334(h)(1)(A)) is amended by

(1) striking ”credible evidence or information indicating” and inserting ”reason to believe”;

(http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi…)

In other words, in negotiating this bill, the U.S. Senate removed the requirement that the FDA needed “credible evidence” in order to recall a product and, instead, replaced that with the FDA only needing “reason to believe.”

It is utterly amazing that the U.S. Congress would give the FDA to conduct large-scale product recalls and even imprison people based entirely on what the agency “has reason to believe.”

Last time I checked, the FDA held some pretty bizarre (if not downright moronic) beliefs, including this jaw-dropping whopper: The FDA literally believes that there is no food, no herb, no vitamin or supplement that has any ability to prevent disease of any kind. They don’t even believe limes can prevent scurvy, and you’d have to nutritionally illiterate to believe that.

The FDA believes foods are inert and that all the amazing phytonutrients in those foods (carotenoids, antioxidants, therapeutic fats like omega-3 and so on) are utterly useless for human biology.

This belief, held by the FDA that has now been put in charge of the food supply, is the belief system of an insane government agency that has completely lost touch with reality while abandoning nutritional science.

Lie #3 – They didn’t tell you that nearly 70% of grocery store chickens are contaminated with salmonella every day

Yep, it’s true: Amid all the fear-mongering over salmonella, everybody forgot to notice that the vast majority of fresh chickens sold at grocery stores every single day are widely contaminated with salmonella (http://www.naturalnews.com/028661_c…). Yet S 510 does absolutely nothing to address this. It’s not even mentioned in the bill.

In fact, it is these contaminated chickens that end up cross-contaminating the fresh produce in many kitchens across America. So the so-called “food poisoning” that’s often blamed on spinach or onions often originates with the contaminated chicken meat people bring home and slice on their kitchen cutting boards.

Lie #4 – S.510 will exclude and protect small farmers

The Tester Amendment, which was finally included in S.510, excludes farmers who sell less than $500,000 worth of food each year from the more onerous paperwork and compliance burdens described in the bill. But this dollar amount is not indexed to inflation, meaning that as the U.S. dollar continues to lose value due to the Federal Reserve counterfeiting machine running at full speed (more “quantitative easing,” anyone?), food prices will continue to skyrocket — and this will shift even small family farms into the $500,000 sales range within just a few years.

In fact, a single-family farm with just four people could easily sell $500,000 worth of fresh produce a year right now, even before inflation. Remember, $500,000 is not their profit, but rather the gross sales amount. The profits on that might be only $50,000 or even less.

Furthermore, this $500,000 threshold means that small, successful farms that are doing well and would like to expand will refuse to hire more people or expand their operations. To avoid the tyranny of S 510, small farms will try to stay small, and that means avoiding the kind of business expansion that would create new jobs.

Lie #5 – The FDA needs more power to enforce food safety

The FDA already has the power to effectively recall foods by publicly announcing a product has been found to be contaminated. The FDA already has the power to confiscate “misbranded” products, too, and it could easily use this power to halt the sale of contaminated food items.

But the FDA simply refuses to enforce the laws already on the books and, instead, has sought to expand its power by hyping up the e.coli food scares. The ploy apparently worked: Now in a reaction to the food scare-mongering, the FDA is being handed not just new powers, but more funding, too! And you can bet it will find creative new ways to put this power to work suppressing the health freedoms and food freedoms of the American people.

Lie #6 – Fresh produce is contaminated because of a lack of paperwork

There is no evidence that requiring farms to fill out more paperwork will make their food safer. The real cause of produce contamination is the existence of factory animal farms whose effluent output (huge rivers of cow feces, basically), end up in the water supply, soils and equipment that comes into contact with fresh produce.

The food contamination problem is an UPSTREAM problem where you’ve got to reform the factory animal operations that now dominate the American meat industry. S.510, however, does absolutely nothing to address this. Factory animal farms aren’t even addressed in the bill!

Lie #7 – The American people are dying in droves from unsafe fresh food

The truth is that Americans are dying from processed food laced with toxic chemical additives, not from fresh, raw produce. Partially-hydrogenated oils, white sugar, aspartame, MSG and artificial food colors almost certainly kill far more people than bacterial contaminations.

The American public is also dying from pharmaceuticals — anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 people a year are killed by FDA-approved drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/001894.html), most of which have been approved under the guise of blatantly fraudulent science and drug company trickery. The FDA doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, it has been a willful co-conspirator in the scientific fraud carried out by Big Pharma in the name of “medicine.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/027851_h…)

To think that the FDA — the very same agency responsible for the Big Pharma death machine — is now going to “save us” by controlling food safety is highly irrational.

Lie #8 – The FDA just wants to make food “safer”

Actually, the FDA wants to make the food more DEAD. Both the FDA and the USDA are vocal opponents of live food. They think that the only safe food is sterilized food, which is why they’ve supported the fumigation, pasteurization and irradiation efforts that have been pushed over the last few years.

California almond growers, for example, must now either chemically fumigate or pasteurize their almonds before selling them (http://www.naturalnews.com/021776.html). This has destroyed the incomes of U.S. almond farmers and forced U.S. food companies to buy raw almonds from Spain and other countries.

Lie #9 – Food smuggling is a huge problem in America

One of the main sections of S.510 addresses “food smuggling.” Yep — people smuggling food across the country. If you’ve never heard of this problem that’s because it’s not actually a problem.

Not yet anyway.

But there’s a reason why they put this into the bill: Because they’re probably planning on criminalizing fresh produce and then arresting people for transporting broccoli with the “intent to distribute.”

Yep, farmers bringing fresh produce to sell at the weekend farmer’s market could soon be arrested and imprisoned as if they were drug smugglers. Hence the need for the “food smuggling” provisions of S.510.

Soon, we will all have to meet in secret locations just to trade carrots for cash.

Lie #10 – S.510 will make America’s food supply the safest in the world

Actually, even with S.510 in place, America’s food supply is among the most chemically contaminated in the world, second only to China. You can find mercury in the seafood, BPA in the canned soup, yeast extract (MSG) in the “natural” potato chips, and artificial petrochemical coloring agents in children’s foods.

Eating the “Standard American Diet” is probably the single most harmful thing a person can do for their health. It’s the fastest way to get cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Every nation in the world that begins to consume the American diet starts to show record rates of degenerative disease within one generation. This is the “safe food” that the U.S. Senate is now pushing on everyone.

Remember, with S.510, SAFE = DEAD. And the FDA says it wants to keep everybody safe.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030587_Senate_Bill_510_Food_Safety.html#ixzz16tPTM4Ew

Article credit: Mike Adams, Natural News.

Borlaug grew up in a remote corner of rural Iowa – a place with twelve- grade one-room schools from which most youngsters dropped out by the eighth grade, a place with one car, no telephones, no electricity, but the Iowa Corn Song ,3 proudly sung like the Star-Spangled Banner at the start of every school day:

There was no future, other than growing corn, but “Norm Boy’s” grandfather had another vision, and inculcated the boy with a determination to obtain a higher education. He arrived at the University of Minnesota at age 20, “as a student athlete [whose] ability to do university work was questioned” 4 but left years later clutching a Ph.D in plant pathology,.

Assigned during World War II to Dupont, where he helped to develop DDT as part of the war effort, Borlaug was offered the sky, but given the choice between Dupont and sub-subsistence science for sub-subsistence Mexican farmers, he chose the. latter, working. with the Rockefeller Foundation, in a project to stave off a looming food crisis in overpopulated Mexico.5

THE AGRICULTURAL END OF FOOD PRODUCTION USES STAGGERING AMOUNTS OF WATER. AS AN ILLUSTRATION, HERE’S A RECIPE FOR A QUARTER-POUND CHEESEBURGER

The project goal was to breed strains of wheat that could withstand adverse climates, survive wheat’s fungal diseases, and produce prodigiously on dwarf plants, then convince tradition-bound farmers to adopt forthwith the new hybrids and the technology that accompanied them.. It was a race against time, and an extraordinarily demanding task in the pre-DNA era. Borlaug set up field operations in two locations with disparate climates and growing seasons so he could have plants accustomed to multiple climates, and could grow two generations of seedlings each year.

Borlaug shortly achieved his goal, and Mexico’s food crisis was over in a decade. On to Asia, where the same thing was happening: overpopulation, courtesy of modern medicine.. India was home to some of the poorest people in the world. Famine was widely forecast for the mid-seventies. It was the era of Ehrlich’s Population Bomb. Stanford professor Ehrlich was an icon for the rising environmental movement, but overnight, stubborn farm boy Borlaug appeared to prove him wrong. In a few short years, the Green Revolution turned a land of undernourished millions into the second largest wheat producer in the world. Borlaug became the hero of millions of peasants, and also of those who spoke for unlimited growth, and in the next twenty years The Population Bomb disappeared from the environmentalist lexicon, leaving the population boom unquestioned.

The Green Revolution, which was to go on producing wonder strains for other crops and other countries, had three central parts. The other two were irrigation and chemical fertilizer. These changed agriculture fundamentally, from a primarily solar-energy craft dependent upon local weather and soil conditions, to a fossil-fuel technology designed to force the land to produce mightily regardless of its natural limitations. Borlaug, summarizing in his Nobel lecture, warned that the new hybrids had not resulted in major yield improvements without both irrigation and “a strong responsiveness and high efficiency in the use of heavy doses of fertilizers.”6 Plentiful water, plentiful chemical fertilizer – that’s the secret to how in the last half century India – and California – turned arid lands almost instantly into wildly productive garden baskets. It may not be a sustainable solution, but at the time, the world needed a quick fix.

In his Nobel lecture, Borlaug talked proudly about how the new practices had given near-starving subsistence farmers surpluses they could sell, the money to buy oil-driven water pumps and tractors, and the influence to insist upon doors opening to the broader world. If you’ll permit me a broad brush, the Green Revolution had doubled and tripled grain production for multi-millions who had been on the brink of starvation, but turned locally self-sustaining agriculture into hydroponics. And it turned subsistence farmers, dependent on the whims of the soil, sun and rain, into small-time contractors dependent on the whims of the discount rate, the commodities markets and the petrochemical industry.

It weakened their umbilical cord to Mother Earth, and eased a process in which millions would find themselves drawn to seek their fortunes in the cities, providing cheap labor to run the Indochinese economic machine. But those were events far in the future when Borlaug performed his magic, and it’s hard to quibble when several hundred million people are about to die of starvation..

The agricultural end of food production uses staggering amounts of water. As an illustration, here’s the author’s recipe for a quarter-pound cheeseburger:

Ingredient /Water used in production

Lettuce (1/4 cup)…………………………0.8 gal

Bun (2 bread slices equiv) …………………….. 22.0 gal

Tomato (1 oz paste equiv) ……………………. 6.1 gal

Cheese (1 oz.)……………………………………… 58.3 gal

Ground beef (4 oz) ………………………………..641.2 gal

TOTAL………………………………… 728.4 gal

8-oz. Glass of milk……………………… 50.0 gal 7

The reason water consumption for meat and dairy products is so much higher than for vegetables and grain, is that, very approximately, it takes two pounds of grain to produce a pound of chicken, five pounds to produce a pound of pork, and ten pounds to produce a pound of beef.

The Green Revolution doubled the world’s irrigated acreage from 346 million acres to 690 million acres, and increased by a factor of nearly five its consumption of chemical fertilizer .8 Where does all the irrigation water come from? Wells, largely; as the World Bank has pointed out, groundwater comprises 97% of the world’s accessible freshwater reserves.9

Wells are a classic case of Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” 10 – if the aquifer is shared by multiple individuals or multiple villages and there are no rules on how much anyone can use, then the users are individually, although not collectively, better off if they use as much as they want until the wells all run dry. So unless everyone follows the Golden Rule or there is an elaborate legal “groundwater management plan,” controlling how much everyone gets, the wells DO run dry. The first thing you need to begin fair and sustainable allocation of groundwater supplies is records of pumping from wells. They don’t exist. And farmers everywhere, from the one-acre plots of North China to the 1000-acre ranches of California, rebel against interference with their freedom. Even if there were the will and the way to adopt rational groundwater management programs around the world, the task would take many decades to accomplish – unless another farm-boy-savior-scientist comes down from the sky, to whom the farmers and bureaucrats can relate.

So where does that leave us? The United States is in a relatively good position because only one fifth of its grain production comes from irrigated land, but the figure is three fifths in India and four fifths in China.11 The world-wide picture is bleak:

* The annual overdraft from the U.S. Ogallala Aquifer, producing cattle and grain in quantity, is said to be about equal to total yearly flow of the Colorado River.12 It was declared by the USDA over a decade ago to be “near depletion,” with Texas having already lost 1.4 million acres of irrigated land and the irrigated land supported by the aquifer expected to be reduced 50% by2030, an acreage accounting for roughly 10% of US grain production.

* In China, the world’s greatest grain producer,13 pumping from a fossil aquifer in the North China Plain is relied upon to produce half the nation’s wheat and a third of its corn, approximately 40 million tons per year or 10% of the nation’s grain production; 14.

* Northern India is also overdrawing its groundwater supplies to maintain grain production. Although the overdraft is apparently much less severe than in China or the United States, nonetheless, if the current level of unsustainable groundwater overdraft continues, government experts have concluded that “India could face severe water shortages.”15

* Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, reports that fifteen nations containing half the world’s population, rely on groundwater overdraft for irrigation.16

These practices cannot go on for long, and in this writer’s opinion, water development and conservation are unlikely to come to the rescue. large surface reservoirs and desalinization are unlikely to save the day, because these projects do not ordinarily pay for themselves and for the foreseeable future governments are unlikely to be in a position to subsidize multi-billion-dollar investments in concrete and steel to feed the poor. As for water use efficiency, it might theoretically permit savings of anywhere from 10-40%, but implementation and enforcement have all the hurdles of groundwater management plans, plus the additional hurdle that tens of millions of farmers were taught decades ago that plentiful water was essential to high yields. Changes may occur, but they will most likely be incremental and slow. So dropping grain production appears inevitable in the US and China, and likely in much of the rest of the world, in the absence of major increases in acreage and/or yield per acre.

As for increased acreage, there is general agreement that the acreages have been at best essentially “flat” for decades17 and in any event it is hard to envision major investments being made in land development to feed the undernourished and virtually destitute bottom seventh of our population when the same land could be used, if at all, to produce beef or biofuels for the top seventh.

Yields? They are still increasing at approximately 1% per year, not enough to keep up with population increase; in fact, world per capita grain production peaked in 1986.18 Steady 1% per year yield increases cannot, of course, solve the problem of exhaustion of fossil aquifers, likely to occur close to the same time as exhaustion of the oil supply. There are disputes as to whether or how long genetic tinkering can continue to improve yields. Eventually we have to hit the maximum efficiency at which photosynthesis can occur, but there are radically different educated views as to how close we are.19

In Lester Brown’s view, “Unless population growth can be slowed quickly, there may not be a humane solution to the emerging world water shortage.”20 The statistics appear to show that he should have said population growth must be “reversed quickly,” rather than merely “slowed quickly.”

So when the aquifers run dry, a return to the days when agriculture was limited to natural precipitation, is inevitable. This means, on top of the present inability of yield increases to keep up with population increases, a relatively abrupt loss of at least 10% of production.

What about the fertilizer? That comes from mining operations, too. That is literally true of phosphorus, although it wasn’t before we came along. There are more phosphorus-rich bones walking the face of the earth than ever before in geological history; humanity is hoofing it around with 5 billion kg or 11 billion pounds of phosphorus ,21 which comes from mines,22 – NONE of it recycled. This has happened only since half of us moved to the cities, taking our personal wastes with us; petrochemical fertilizers replaced natural ones; and community sewers were invented. Mama Nature can’t afford this kind of progress for long.

In fact, the world phosphorus reserves are expected to be depleted within 25 to 70 years, depending upon where you are. Humanity will apparently go extinct for lack of phosphorus within a century unless we resume recycling,.23 This writer is unaware of any government plans anywhere, to do so.

And phosphorus isn’t the perceived serious problem. Nitrogen is. We have a reasonable amount of nitrogen in the air for the present, but the nitrogen has to be processed into ammonium nitrate or something comparable with a high energy input, and the starting material is natural gas, 5 % of which globally is used for production of nitrogen fertilizers.24 There are presently no alternatives. Natural gas accounts for 90% of the cost of nitrogen fertilizer, so the cost of the latter is pretty much proportional to the cost of the former.25 When the petroleum supply starts to go, fertilizer prices will spiral upward.

Of course nitrogen fertilizer can also be produced by nitrogen-fixing legumes, but that necessitates alternating between nitrogen-fixers and market crops. In his Nobel lecture Borlaug spoke of a dream of nitrogen-fixing grains being introduced in 1990 that would free peasant farmers from the need to purchase chemical fertilizers, but then, he said, he would wake up, disillusioned. It was only a dream. 35 years and 3 billion more people later, he would have to tell the New York Times, “This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without chemical fertilizer, forget it. The game is over.”26

So at present, grain yield is not keeping up with the population, and things will get worse as fertilizer and water become expensive and scarce. Will a large part of the population die when they are curtailed? Not necessarily, because of how we allocate the use of the grain we produce.

To see the whole picture, we need to understand a little about the grain market, which is the dominant food market.. There are at this time three competing demands for the commodity: food (i.e. direct consumption by people), fodder, and fuel. Before fuel became part of the mix, the division between food and fodder was 60:40, with the “fodder” component capable if used as food, of providing the caloric needs of 3.5 billion people.27 But we are squandering the 40% “cushion.”

The mix in 2008 was said by Worldwatch Institute to be 47% food, 35% fodder, 18% fuel. The 18% figure may not be a 2010 reality, but no one claims less than 9%, and use of grain for bioalcohol is projected to double in the next decade.28 The 18% that we burn or apparently will burn is more than sufficient to fill the stomachs of the record 1 billion people who are undernourished today. Does it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling that we burn the grain that is sufficient to eliminate world hunger? Me neither. And If we engaged in a modest conservation program in our gasoline use and gave the saved grain to the hungry, no one would have to go hungry, at least for the moment The feed use is increasingly for beef, and the fuel use is primarily bioethanol – an attempt to use the “cushion” in world grain production to let the middle class, particularly in the

US and China, indulge in quarter-pounders and gas guzzlers for a few more years, while the poor’s burgeoning undernourished try to maintain themselves on an ever-slimmer portion of the grain production.

Feed and fuel compete with food not only for consumers, but for land. The EU has adopted a policy requiring 17% of its farmland to be devoted to biofuels in place of food.29 Land from Brazilian deforestation (which of course many of us would rather see not at all) could produce grain for food, could support range cattle, or could produce sugar cane (or grain) for ethanol. Not surprisingly, biofuel and beef are Brazil’s primary products from destruction of the rainforest.30 Food comes out as a poor third in competition with feed and fuel both for grain and for land. No wonder there were riots over bread in 2008.

“THE MIX IN 2008 WAS 47% FOOD, 35% FODDER, 18% FUEL. THE 18% THAT WE BURN IS MORE THAN SUFFICIENT TO FILL THE STOMACHS OF THE RECORD 1 BILLION PEOPLE WHO ARE UNDERNOURISHED TODAY. DOES IT GIVE YOU A WARM AND FUZZY FEELING THAT WE BURN THE GRAIN THAT IS SUFFICIENT TO ELIMINATE WORLD HUNGER?”

And we have hardly looked at the inevitable consequences of an agriculture dependent for more than half its productivity on fossil fuels, outside the control of one-acre farmers in the Third World or even of thousand-acre farmers in the US. Two of the simpler ties between fossil fuels and food are the costs of fertilizer and water for a typical Third World one-acre farm. With most of the cost of fertilizer(although varying widely year-to-year and place-to-place, $100/acre is a reasonable figure) coming from the cost of natural gas, its cost is going to go up rapidly as oil runs out and (if it happens at all) as the world starts to do something about global warming. And the cost of gasoline at $3/gallon for pumping the water from an -all-too-typical 500-foot-deep well sufficient to irrigate an acre for a year is about $200.31 So rising fossil fuel costs are likely on the near term to drive up fertilizer and water coss by hundreds of dollars per acre The Ogallala-Aquifer farmer may be able to “pass the cost along to the consumer”(Brace yourselves, Americans!), but the farmer in India or China or Bangladesh has mostly to pass the cost on to herself. Where will it come from? Less fertilizer, less water, less food, with one billion people hungry already. These are of course just illustrative costs, but he writer suspects they are more accurate than the assumptions made by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization in its food supply projections for the next decade, that the international community will invest $200 billion per year for technological improvements in agriculture, that oil production will meet demand and that its costs will hardly budge.32 So even if the world can produce enough food, most folks may soon be unable to pay for enough.

The story of how we got here is complex – a confluence of population boom, oil boom and bust, the tragedy of the commons, misallocation of resources between rich and poor, the almost-deliberate blindness of America to the consequences of biofuel production -. the list goes on. There is an ongoing academic argument about whether the plight of the poor is one of inequitable distribution “or” population, but it is quite clear at this point that the answer is “Both.” There is also a sociological factor – the separation of people from the land, which has allowed us to “commoditize” land, to block the recycling of phosphorus and nitrogen, to separate sustenance from daily life, to warehouse in China’s cities the millions who had recently been attached for millenia to the cycles of sun and rain and soil. Out of sight, out of mind. We will not treat the earth sustainably when we do not see it and feel it in our daily lives and know directly that what surrounds us is what keeps us and our descendants alive and healthy.

There are too many of us to go “back to the land,” but we must preserve the connection. In coming decades necessity will dictate that everyone produce their own food wherever and however they can, but more important, we must reconnect ourselves to the earth we have abused. You who put aside a little corner of your urban homestead where things green can flourish are preserving the connection as best you can, and must teach others to do likewise. You are preserving an essential thread to our past, which will, if we are lucky, allow us to have a future.

But it’s a slim thread.

It didn’t need to be this way. Norman Borlaug, far from viewing himself as the man who proved the doomsayers wrong, knew what was coming if we didn’t take care. In his Nobel lecture he described the Green Revolution as giving the world a “breathing space” until the year 2000, but then referred to an “impending doom” imposed upon us by the “Population Monster ,” and told his audience that”the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”

Dr. Borlaug said in his lecture that whether and how we deal with the population problem is a”test of the validity of “sapiens” as a species epithet.” We have so far failed the test and squandered the thirty years he gave us. But the substantial fraction of the grain crop not used directly as food can, if we act quickly, allow us without famine to put ourselves on a sustainable population track, one recognizing that we don’t presently feed ourselves and that on the present track, things will get much worse. And of course no technical fixes can give the bottom seventh of the world population the wherewithal to pay for what they eat, so the looming food crisis will not just be fixed with a theoretical food supply for which they cannot pay. These things must happen. Is that likely? Probably not, given past history. But it is necessary.

Once again we 6.9 billion people are on our own, without leaders or guidance. But we know what we must do, as individuals and nations: we must avoid gasohol and beef, because we cannot take food from the mouths of the hungry; we must manage and conserve our diminishing water supplies, we must work to eliminate abject poverty so that people can pay for what they eat and we must begin to decrease our numbers by limiting ourselves to one child per family.33 There is no evidence that we can avoid famine otherwise. The Green Revolution was a one shot deal, because we cannot again double irrigated acreage or multipy use of chemical fertilizers by five; and because the Green Revolution was a program of the oil age, which is fast departing. Modest crop-yield increases may keep up with population growth for a while (although they haven’t for 25 years), but all indications are that the prices of what food there is will rapidly climb above the budgets of billions of us.

“Norm Boy,” the Iowa farm kid, died last year. He was 95.

………………………………….

The writer is a California-licensed attorney currently residing in Massachusetts. He has had professional experience trying without success to implement groundwater management in California’s vast agricultural San Joaquin Valley. Research and writing were supported by Urban Garden Magazine, which reserves copyright and all other republishing rights except the right to online submissions by the author. He wishes to thank Patricia Lemon and David Steele for invaluable editorial assistance.

1. This article will be published by Urban Garden Magazine in mid-August.
2. Bruce Alberts, President, NationalAcademy of Sciences
3. For the full lyrics, see http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/song/ia_corn_song.htmor http://iowareunionclub.com/iowacornsong.aspx
4. Mark Yudof, President, University of Minnesota.
5. Biographical information from Vietmeyer, Borlaug, Volume 1 (2004), unless otherwise indicated..
6. Dr. Borlaug’s Nobel lecture: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/borlaug-lecture.html
7. See Dr. Thomas Stein, sakia.org, 2007, http://www.sakia.org/cms/fileadmin/content/irrig/general/stein_2007_water_use_charts-units_converted.pdf for a general compilation of different foods and their water needs for production, together with a link for explanations as to how these were determined.
8. See chart, Global Education Project, Food and Soil, http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org:80/earth/food-and-soil.php. A hectare, a 100-meter square, is 2.2 acres. Spend an hour studying these charts, and you will know more than the average Ph.D. about modern agriculture.
9. World Bank, Groundwater, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTWAT/0,,contentMDK:21633297~menuPK:4620525~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:4602123,00.html.
10. (Garrett Hardin, 1968 paper published in the journal SCIENCE (162:12431248). If you aren’t familiar with it, read it, and then go for a vacation and meditate on it for a week.
11. Lester Brown, Aquifer Depletion, 2006, http://www.eoearth.org/article/Aquifer_depletion
12. Patricia Muir, http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/waterlim.htm
13. UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Agricultural Outlook 20102019 (2010)
14. Lin Shujuan, China’s water deficit ‘will create food shortage’, Science and Development Network, 2007, http://www.scidev.net/en/news/china-s-water-deficit-will-create-food-shortage-.html; and Lester Brown, WATER DEFICITS GROWING IN MANY COUNTRIES: Water Shortages May Cause Food Shortages, http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org:80/zarticles/080902_water_shortages.htm.
15. T. V. Padma, Thirsty Indian farming depleting water resources, Science and Development Network, http://www.scidev.net/en/news/thirsty-indian-farming-depleting-water-resources.html, quoting scientists from NASA and also citing the Indian Ministry of Water Resources..
16. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Aquifer_depletion,
17. See e.g. the graphs shown in Staniford’s article cited below.
18. Patricia Muir, http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/waterlim.htm
19. Stuart Staniford, Food to 2050, The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3702, discussing both sides of the dispute. See also Grain Production, http://www.whole-systems.org/grain.html, and Science’s February, 2010 issue devoted to food security. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/327/5967/812
20. Lester Brown, WATER DEFICITS GROWING IN MANY COUNTRIES: Water Shortages May Cause Food Shortages, above.
21. http://www.random-science-tools.com/chemistry/chemical_comp_of_body.htm
22. UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Current world fertilizer trends and outlook to 2011/12, Table 4, ftp://ftp.fao.org/agl/agll/docs/cwfto11.pdf
23. For a recent and very readable discussion of the phosphorus situation, see D.A. Vaccari, Phosphorus: A Looming Crisis, Scientific American June 2009, www.ScientifiAmerican.com.
24. Wikipedia, Fertilizers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer.
25. GAO, Domestic Nitrogen Fertilizer Production Depends on Natural Gas Availability and Prices, 2003, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031148.pdf.
26. K. Bradsher and A. Martin, The Food Chain: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer, New York Times, http://bigteaparty.com/fertilizer-soaring-foodprices-key-to-health-bad-for-environment/
27. United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Food from Animal Feed, World Food Supply, http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/food-crisis/page/3565.aspx). R. Segelkin, US could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists, Cornell University Science News, 1997, http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html.
28. Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs, Grain Harvest Sets Record, But Supplies Still Tight, 2009, http://www.worldwatch.org/vs2009.. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization says the figure is only 9% for biofuels at this time, but also says that the amount of grain being turned to alcohol will double in the next decade. OECD-FAO, Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019. So if 18% isn’t correct today, then it is likely to be correct in a decade…
29. X. Navarro, The European Commission says no to reviewing biofuel percentage goal, http://green.autoblog.com/2008/04/15/the-european-commissionsays-no-to-reviewing-biofuel-percentage/
30. OECD-FAO, Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019.
31. 1 gallon [U.S.] of automotive gasoline = 97,181,192.2530305 foot pounds. 1 acre pumping from 500 ft.: 3 acre-feet of water = 975,000 gal water x8 lbs/gal x 500 ft = 3,900,000,000 ft lbs/ 97,181,192.2530305 ft lbs/gal gasoline = 40.131 gal x $3/gal = $120, assuming a 100% efficient pump, or $200 assuming a 60% efficient pump.
32. OECD-FAO, Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019
33. There is a time lag of 30-40 years built into any population policy based upon birth control, because a rapidly-growing population over-represents the age group under reproductive age. Consequently, a “ZPG” birth rate does not result in ZPG for decades. Moreover, the water and energy problems imply that an overall population reduction is necessary.

By Nicholas C. Arguimbau
31 July, 2010
Countercurrents.org

Aspartame is consumed by over 200 million people around the world. Also known as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Canderel, Benevia, and E951, the chemical sweetener is found in more than 6,000 products, including carbonated soft drinks, dessert mixes, puddings, frozen desserts, yogurt, low calorie beer, vitamins and sugar-free cough drops. James S. Turner, Esq., a consumer rights lawyer and aspartame educator for over 30 years, tells us the story behind this popular ingredient, and why so many consumers are choosing to avoid it.

The Man Who Changed Our Food

Arthur Hayes Jr., who led the Food and Drug Administration when it approved aspartame in 1981 (NutraSweet) and 1983 (Equal), died February 11, 2010 in Danbury, Connecticut.

According to the February 15 issue of the New York Times, Dr. Hayes granted approval for the use of the sugar substitute aspartame in dry foods and as a tabletop sweetener in 1981. “Research had found,” the Times said, “that aspartame was associated with high rates of cancers in rats that had been given large doses, starting at what would be the equivalent of four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person.”

The Times also said that “research done after Dr. Hayes’s time as commissioner indicated that aspartame can sometimes cause incapacitating headaches and even seizures.” Today, aspartame, which is marketed as NutraSweet (when used as a food additive) and Equal (the tabletop version), is now also used in over 5,000 products like soft drinks, breakfast cereals, pudding mixes and chewing gum.

Here we see a thumbnail sketch of aspartame’s story: a sweet-tasting chemical, in spite of having caused high rates of cancers in rats before approval, and subsequently causing incapacitating headaches and even seizures, receives an FDA go-ahead to be consumed by hundreds of millions of human beings. Clever marketing, creating the soothing names “NutraSweet” and “Equal,” spur sales of the chemical into the billions of dollars.

An even darker story lies behind these few troubling facts.

The First Approval: 1974

In 1965, G.D. Searle & Company chemist James M. Schlatter, working on an anti-ulcer drug, accidentally discovered that aspartame tasted sweet. As did the discoverers of saccharin and cyclamate before him, he licked his finger and for the first time a human tasted what would revolutionize the sweetener market. Searle launched an effort to market their wonder additive, finally succeeding in 1981.

The story leading up to that 1981 approval and the story following it make clear why prudent consumers avoid products containing aspartame. This sweetener consists of the natural amino acids L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine, as well as methyl alcohol. It creates byproducts such as free amino acids, methanol and formaldehyde. In certain markets, aspartame is manufactured using a genetically modified variation of E. coli.

Two hundred times sweeter than sugar with almost no calories, aspartame is popular in certain diets. However, in addition to many safety problems, it tastes different than sugar, breaks down in heat, fails in baking, degrades shortening shelf life and loses flavor in some products, leaving an odd aftertaste for some and non-flavor or watery aftertaste for others. Still, smooth marketing turned it into a giant money maker.

In October 1980 an FDA Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) found that aspartame caused an unacceptable level of brain tumors in animal testing and ruled that it should not be added to food. This ruling capped 15 years of regulatory deception by the FDA and Searle (acquired by Monsanto in 1985). Two decades of maneuvering, manipulating and dissembling by FDA, Searle and Monsanto followed the PBOI ruling.

Early tests of aspartame showed it produced microscopic holes and tumors in the brains of experimental mice, epileptic seizures in monkeys, and was converted by animals into dangerous substances, including formaldehyde. In 1974, however, in spite of the information in its files, the FDA approved aspartame as a dry-foods additive. The approval to market was short lived.

Blocking Aspartame/NutraSweet Approval for Seven Years

I, along with Dr. John Olney MD, a prominent brain researcher from Washington University in St. Louis, filed petitions with the FDA seeking a public hearing on the evidence. For the first and only time in its history, the FDA made public the data supporting its food-additive decision. Here was the evidence of monkey seizures, mouse brain cancers, eye damage, and very sloppy laboratory procedures at Searle.

Dr. Olney had already shown that one aspartic acid feeding caused microscopic holes in rat brains. Phenylalanine, aspartame’s second amino acid component, was known to lead to mental retardation, brain damage, and seizures in some susceptible children suffering from Phenylketonuria (PKU). Methanol, aspartame’s third ingredient, is highly toxic to humans and, in large amounts, is know to cause blindness.

Faced with this array of possible health dangers, the FDA granted the hearing requests in lieu of withdrawing its aspartame approval. The agency convinced Searle to refrain from marketing the sweetener until after completion of the hearing process. It then proposed that a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) review the matter. Backing and filling by the agency kept the PBOI from convening until January of 1980.

In July of 1975, while the FDA set up the PBOI, an FDA inspector conducting a routine review of Searle’s testing facilities found many deviations from proper procedures. Animals died and came back to life, aspartame feed got mixed with unsweetened feed, and results seemed fudged. This report spurred Congress to pass laboratory regulations and the FDA commissioner to empanel a Special Task Force to review Searle’s labs.

In December of 1975 the Task force reported serious problems with Searle’s research on a wide range of products, including aspartame. It found 11 pivotal aspartame studies conducted in a manner so flawed as to raise doubts about aspartame safety and create the possibility of serious criminal liability for Searle. Based on this report, the FDA stayed (suspended) aspartame’s approval, keeping the sweetener off the market.

Reviewing the Data

To review the questionable data, the FDA contracted, over serious internal objection, with a group of university pathologists (paid by Searle) to review reporting of the results of most of the studies, set up a task force to review the validity of three studies, and asked the U.S. Attorney for Chicago to seek a grand jury review of the monkey seizure study. Searle managed to thwart each of these efforts.

The pathologists paid by Searle only reviewed the failure to properly report data, while not reviewing the design or conduct of the pivotal studies. They found no serious reporting problems. The FDA task force found Searle’s key tumor safety study unreliable, but this was ignored. The U.S. attorney let the statute of limitations run out, then (along with two aides) proceeded to join Searle’s law firm.

While these committees met, the FDA organized the PBOI. Searle, petitioners Olney and myself, and the FDA Bureau of Foods each nominated three members for the board and the FDA commissioner selected one member from each list. Three world-class scientists made up the board, took evidence, and drafted and signed an unanimous report blocking the further marketing of aspartame.

The board, which convened in January of 1980, rejected the Olney/Turner request that the commissioner’s task force information contained in the Bureau of Drugs be included in its deliberations. Still, in October 1980, looking at only the evidence in Bureau of Foods files, the board blocked aspartame marketing until the tumor studies could be explained. The board said: “approval of aspartame for use in foods should be withheld at least until the question concerning its possible oncogenic (cancer) potential has been resolved by further experiments. The Board has not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive under its intended conditions of use.” Unless the commissioner overruled the board, the matter was closed.

The New Commissioner Intervenes: Politics Overrules the Board

In November 1980, one month after the aspartame PBOI report, the country elected Ronald Reagan President. Donald Rumsfeld (a former congressman from Skokie, Searle’s home town, White House chief of staff, secretary of defense and, since January 1977, Searle’s president) joined Reagan’s transition team. Rumsfeld began a full court press against the board decision, orchestrating aspartame’s approval from inside the administration.

In January 1981 Rumsfeld told a sales meeting (as one attendee reported) that he would call in his chips and get aspartame approved by the end of the year. On January 25th, the day the new president took office, the previous FDA commissioner’s authority was suspended. Three months later the commissioner’s job went to Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, who had done drug research on army recruits while Rumsfeld was defense secretary.

Transition records give no reason for the choice of Hayes, a professor with a defense department connection and no particular background in food and drug regulation. His Pentagon proximity to Rumsfeld seemed the primary explanation. In July, Hayes, defying FDA advisors, approved aspartame for dry foods: his first major decision. In November 1983 the FDA approved aspartame for soft drinks: the last decision on Hayes’s watch.

Also in November 1983, under fire for accepting corporate gifts, with the threat of an abuse of recruits charge from the Army inspector general looming, Hayes left the agency and went to Searle’s public relations firm as senior medical advisor. Later, Searle lawyer Robert Shapiro named aspartame “NutraSweet.” Monsanto purchased Searle. Rumsfeld received a $12 million bonus. Shapiro became Monsanto president.

Shortly after the FDA’s July 1983 soft-drink approval, Searle began test-marketing aspartame drinks, and complaints of dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, and seizures began arriving at the FDA. The complaints were more serious than the agency had ever received on any food additive. At the same time, scientists began looking more closely at this manufactured chemical sweetener.

The Record of Damage Piles Up

In 1985, the FDA asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to review the first 650 complaints (there are now over 10,000). The CDC found that the symptoms in approximately 25% of the complainants had stopped and then restarted, corresponding with their having stopped and then restarted aspartame consumption, either purposely or by accident. This finding suggests serious problems for some members of the population.

The FDA discounted the CDC’s report. The day that the FDA released the CDC report, Pepsi (with an advanced copy of the confidential CDC report) announced its switch to aspartame with a worldwide media blitz, drowning out the CDC reports of aspartame harm. The Pepsi announcement and aggressive marketing (millions of gumballs, a red and white swirl, tough contracts) made NutraSweet known in every home. Still the damage reports rolled in.

Data released in 1995 showed that human brain tumors in the general population, like those in the animal studies, had risen 10% and previously benign tumors turned virulent. Searle and the FDA’s deputy commissioner said the data posed no problem. Two years later this same FDA official became vice president of clinical research for Searle.

Current Cancer Science

In the early 21st century the European Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences “B. Ramazzini” in Bologna, Italy presented new animal data suggesting that aspartame was a generalized carcinogen, at the very least involving haemopoietic and lymphoid organs and tissues. At the highest dose level tested in the Ramazzini study, 25% of female rats bore lymphomas-leukemias compared with 8.7% in the controls.

The foundation said: “Because of the globalization of the industrialized diet and the ever-increasing use of artificial sweeteners among billions of people in both industrialized and developing countries, the European Ramazzini Foundation considers its work on sweeteners to be of the highest priority for the protection of public health, in particular the health of children and pregnant women who are among the most vulnerable populations.”

“In light of this goal,” it continued, “and given the inadequacy of most of the previous carcinogenicity studies on artificial sweeteners, we have planned and are conducting additional research, not only on aspartame, but also on other widely diffused artificial sweeteners and blends used in thousands of foods, beverages and pharmaceutical products.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the FDA in the U.S., the European Food Safety Authority’s Panel on Food Additives, Flavorings, Processing Aids and Materials (EFSA), and of course the NutraSweet Company all dismiss the new findings. Their most important claim is that human epidemiological studies do not show any difference in cancer rates between consumers and non-consumers of aspartame.

Increasing Demand

The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based research firm, reports that U.S. demand for alternative sweeteners in the past decade increased about 4 percent per year to $1.1 billion in 2009. Demand is projected to grow 3.4 percent annually through 2013.

Avoiding Aspartame/NutraSweet Makes Sense

Given the NIH conclusion, the danger warning of the experimental data was underlined by examination of studies done from 1985 to 1995. During that time researchers did about 400 aspartame studies, divided almost evenly between those that gave assurances and those that raised safety questions. Most instructively, Searle paid for 100% of those studies that found no problem. All studies paid for by non-industry sources raised questions.

NIH epidemiological studies are not laboratory studies. Populations are not individual people. The jury is still out on aspartame safety for various susceptible individuals. There is a pattern of potential harm in animal studies and human complaints that raise a red flag. Symptoms come and go as individuals use and stop using aspartame. If NutraSweet is harming people, it is doing so whether scientists know it or not.

Given this record, it is little wonder that many health-conscious people believe that avoiding NutraSweet improves their quality of life. If and when a scientific consensus concludes that aspartame puts some, if not all, of its consumers at risk, it will be much too late. The damage will have been done. The point is to eat safely now. There is no reason to risk the aspartame dangers complained about by so many individuals.

Read the Label

In the U.S. and Canada, foods and beverages that contain aspartame must include “contains phenylalanine” on the label. Be aware that products that contain MSG (monosodium glutamate) also bear a relationship to aspartic acid in aspartame. In the case of medications, look at both the active and inactive ingredients.

The Many Faces of Aspartame

Aspartame is also known as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Canderel, Benevia, and E951.

Leading aspartame manufacturer Ajinomoto announced in November 2009 that it would be rebranding its artificial sweetener as “AminoSweet” in Europe, the CIS, the Middle East and Africa. Ajinomoto has also developed a vanilla-flavored version of aspartame, called “advantame.” Ajinomoto USA states that: “It is our expectation to obtain the U.S. approval [for the use of advantame in food from the FDA] within two years.” Ajinomoto USA also “intend[s] to apply for [approval in] Australia/New Zealand and Europe.”

Aspartame Alternatives

Alternatives to chemical or artificial sweeteners such as aspartame include: honey, maple syrup, turbinado sugar, fruit, fruit juice concentrates, and various forms of stevia (an herb).

Aspartame and Monsanto

NutraSweet made up an important part of the Monsanto Empire between 1985 and 2000. Here is a road map of how its ownership evolved:

The NutraSweet Company makes and sells NutraSweet, their trademarked brand name for the artificial sweetener aspartame, and Neotame.

Robert B. Shapiro, who worked as an attorney for the Illinois-based G.D. Searle & Company from 1979, became CEO and Chairman of its NutraSweet subsidiary in 1982 where he remained until 1990. Monsanto bought Searle in 1985. When Searle was acquired by Monsanto, Shapiro moved up the management chain in the latter, becoming Vice President in 1990, President in 1993 and CEO in 1995. He remained CEO of Monsanto until 2000. Shapiro oversaw a period of industrial expansion and consumer regulatory approval for the genetically-engineered foodstuff corporation. In 2000 Monsanto merged with the Swedish pharmaceutical company Pharmacia, and Shapiro became chair of this entity until he stepped down in February 2001. In March 2000, Monsanto sold NutraSweet to the private equity firm J.W. Childs.

(Image credit: University of Guelph.)

If you’re one of those crazy soil-gardeners who believe that manure is heavenly and should be revered, well … clearly you don’t manage an intensive hog operation. These factory farms are dealing with an environmental (not to mention ethical) crisis: phosphorus pollution of surface and groundwater, as a result of the massive manure lagoons and run-off.

Developed in 1999, and now on its way to commercial production and a place on grocery store shelves, the Enviropig^TM is apparently the solution. Perhaps we should instead question the problem. Intensive hog “farms,” cattle feedlots, and intensive egg production and poultry facilities are creating toxic wastelands, treating the animal inmates as nothing more than animated foodstuffs.

Hog confinement operations typically consist of a sow barn containing an average of 5,000 sows, a nursery barn with about 19,000 piglets, and a finishing barn with 12,000 to 14,000 pigs. (Photo credit: Friends of Family Farmers.)

In contrast, small-scale agriculture sees manure as a necessary part of building healthy soil and producing nutritious, healthy food. “Everything in moderation” is the key to a sustainable model of agriculture, and clearly the intensive, industrial models we’ve adopted are not working.

So, What’s For Dinner?

The Enviropig is now on its way to landing on Canadian plates, with Environment Canada recently determining that the Enviropigs are in compliance with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and therefore can be produced outside of the research context in controlled facilities. Submissions have been made to Health Canada and other federal agencies – including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2007 – to have the pigs approved for human consumption and commercialization. At this time, no country has approved products derived from genetically engineered animals for human or animal consumption.

But given our North American governments’ laissez faire attitude toward genetically modified food, Enviropigs will no doubt soon appear as bacon, sausages and ham on grocery store shelves. The best part? We won’t even be able to tell, because both Canada and the U.S. refuse to require mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

Source: The Center for Food Safety

In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE / GMO) Roundup Ready alfalfa.  The federal courts sided with CFS and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of the plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in a rigorous analysis known as an environmental impact statement (or EIS). USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009.  A 60-day comment period is now open until February 16, 2010. This is the first time the USDA has done this type of analysis for any GE crop.  Therefore, the final decision will have broad implications for all GE crops.

CFS has begun analyzing the EIS and it is clear that the USDA has not taken the concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, organic dairies, or consumers seriously.  USDA’s preliminary determination is to once again deregulate GE alfalfa without any limitations or protections for farmers or the environment. Instead USDA has completely dismissed the fact that contamination will threaten export and domestic markets and organic meat and dairy products.  And, incredibly, USDA is claiming that there is no evidence that consumers care about such GE contamination of organic!

USDA also claims that consumers will not reject GE contamination of organic alfalfa if the contamination is unintentional or if the transgenic material is not transmitted to the end milk or meat product, despite the fact that more than 75% of consumers believe that they are purchasing products without GE ingredients when they buy organic.

USDA claims that Monsanto’s seed contracts require measures sufficient to prevent genetic contamination, and that there is no evidence to the contrary. But in the lawsuit requiring this document, the Court found that contamination had already occurred in the fields of several Western states with these same business-as-usual practices in place!

USDA predicts that the approval of GE alfalfa would damage family farms and organic markets, yet doesn’t even consider any limitations or protections against this scenario.  Small, family farmers are the backbone and future of American agriculture and must be protected. Organic agriculture provides many benefits to society: healthy foods for consumers, economic opportunities for family farmers and urban and rural communities, and a farming system that improves the quality of the environment. However, the continued vitality of this sector is imperiled by the complete absence of measures to protect organic production systems from GE contamination and subsequent environmental, consumer, and economic losses.

Tell USDA That You DO Care About GE Contamination of Organic Crops and Food: Click Here!