USDA Approves New GMO Potato, Alfalfa
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The Organic Consumers Association reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved a new GMO potato.
The “Innate” potato is made by the J. R. Simplot Company—the largest supplier of potatoes to McDonald’s restaurants. The USDA has also recently approved a new genetically engineered alfalfa.
Simplot wants consumers to believe that its new GMO potato is not only harmless, but the potato is bruise-resistant (which is really a benefit to commercial buyers and growers, not consumers), and that when heated to a temperature required for frying, the potato produces less asparagine, a naturally occurring amino acid that at high temperatures reacts with some sugars to oxidize into acrylamide. Acrylamide is recognized as a potential carcinogen.
In other words, the maker of the Innate GMO potato says it’s not only safe (the same claim Monsanto and Dow make about their GMO corn and soy products), it’s actually better for you than a non-GMO potato.
What Simplot doesn’t tell you is that the technology used to create the Innate potato—RNA interference, or RNAi—is considered by some scientists to be even more dangerous than the DNA manipulation technology used to create Roundup Ready and Bt crops.
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INTERNATIONAL STUDY WILL INVESTIGATE GMOS, ROUNDUP
On Tuesday, November 11, a $25-million international study was launched that will put an end, once and for all, to the question of whether or not Monsanto’s Roundup is “safe,” the Organic onsumer’s association reports.
The study, the first of its kind, will be based on a variety of herbicide-resistant corn. Three independent scientists–from the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation in Moscow, from the University of California in Irvine, and from the Maltoni Cancer Research Center in Bentivoglio, Italy–will investigate the answers to these questions:
1. Is the GM food (or its associated pesticide; i.e. Roundup herbicide) toxic to organ systems over the long-term?
2. Does the GM food (or its associated pesticide) cause cancer?
3. Does the GM food (or its associated pesticide) reduce fertility or cause birth defects?
4. Is the mixture of chemicals present in Roundup herbicide more or less toxic than its active ingredient glyphosate?
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PESTICIDES LINKED TO DEPRESSION IN FARMERS, FARM WIVES
Earlier this fall, researchers from the National Institute of Health finished up a landmark 20-year study of about 84,000 farmers and spouses of farmers since the mid-1990s to investigate the connection between pesticides and depression, a connection that had been suggested through anecdotal evidence for far longer, Modern Farmer magazine reports.
Dr. Freya Kamel, the lead researcher on the study, told Modern Farmer that “There had been scattered reports in the literature that pesticides were associated with depression. We wanted to do a new study because we had more detailed data than most people have access to.” That excessive amount of data includes tens of thousands of farmers, with specific information about which pesticides they were using and whether they had sought treatment for a variety of health problems, from pesticide poisoning to depression. Farmers were surveyed multiple times throughout the 20-year period, which gives the researchers an insight into their health over time that no other study has.
There’s a significant correlation between pesticide use and depression. The two types that Kamel says reliably moved the needle on depression are organochlorine insecticides and fumigants, which increase the farmer’s risk of depression by a whopping 90 percent and 80 percent, respectively. The study lays out the seven specific pesticides, falling generally into one of those two categories, that demonstrated a categorically reliable correlation to increased risk of depression.
These types aren’t necessarily uncommon, either. Malathion was used by 67 percent of the tens of thousands of farmers surveyed. Malathion is banned in Europe, but is a common pesticide not only on farms but around homes and gardens.
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DR. MERCOLA’S FIVE FACTORS CAUSING OBESITY EPIDEMIC
Two out of three Americans are now either overweight or obese, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola (www.mercola.com).
Obesity has become the number one form of malnutrition in the country, and no group has been hit harder than children. Childhood obesity in the U.S. has nearly tripled since 1980, and one in five kids is now overweight by age six; 17 percent of children and adolescents are obese.
As noted in a recent article by investigative health reporter Martha Rosenberg, the weight of the average American increased by 24 pounds in the four decades between 1960 and 2000.
Contrary to popular belief, obesity is not simply the result of eating too many calories and not exercising enough. While those are part of the equation, there are a number of other environmental and lifestyle factors that are likely to play a much more significant role because most people don’t realize they’re affected by them, and therefore fail to address them. They are:
#1: Antibiotics in Food and Medicine. Eighty percent of all antibiotics used in America are fed to farm animals, which we eat. These antibiotics harm our gut bacteria, an essential part of a strong immune system and obesity control.
#2: Growth Enhancing Drugs and Hormones used on Farm Animals. They are used to fatten livestock and have the same effect on us.
#3: Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals. These are pervasive in food and the environment. The endocrine system is the master hormonal system, directing all kinds of processes in our bodies that keep us healthy and at a normal weight. When these chemicals disrupt the body’s messaging system, obesity is just one of the bad results.
#4: Artificial Sweeteners. The lure of artificial sweeteners is the idea that no- or low-calorie sugar substitutes will help you lose weight. But research has repeatedly shown that artificially sweetened foods and beverages tend to stimulate your appetite, increase cravings for carbs, and stimulate fat storage and weight gain.
#5: Junk Food Marketing. Not only are processed foods a direct cause of obesity, but they are aggressively marketed, especially to children. According to a 2013 report by the Institute of Medicine, children aged 2-11 now see an average of more than 10 television food ads per day. And 98 percent of these are for products that are high in fat, sugar, and/or sodium.
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WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOUR HALIBUT IS REALLY HALIBUT?
Oceana and Food and Water Watch reports that fraud is rampant at the fish market.
When grouper, halibut, and red snapper were DNA tested, they sometimes turned out to be king mackerel and tile fish, two types of fish the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advises pregnant women and other sensitive groups to avoid due to high mercury content.
According to Oceana, more than 90 percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, yet only one percent of these imports are inspected for fraud. Evidently, no one is minding the store. You can protect yourself by visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s website (seafoodwatch.org) to see what seafood choices are wise and to download a free app for your iPhone or Android device.
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PEOPLE’S PARK REVISITED: NOW IT’S PEOPLE’S FARM
On an April morning in 2012, hundreds of people broke the lock on a fence surrounding the Gill Tract, a 14-acre plot of land owned by the University of California. They set about planting thousands of vegetable seedlings.
This was to protest the university’s plans to convert part of the Gill Tract into a commercial development. But the protestors also had bigger things on their minds, such as malnutrition among the poor. The Gill Tract protest, which has evolved and persisted for more than two years, has become a symbol of the subversive possibilities of urban agriculture.
There’s now a documentary about events at the Gill Tract called Occupy the Farm. The director of the film, Todd Darling, told National Public Radio that “What surprised me when I first got there was how much fun everybody was having. All these kids were running around. People from the neighborhood were there. I realized that doing this as a group, in a piece of open land, was fulfilling people in a way that everyone was surprised at. When people talk about growing food as community, as a way of building communities, I realized that it’s not just rhetoric, it actually is true. There’s something magical about that activity.”
Darling’s film highlights many of the big issues that motivated the protest’s organizers. “It certainly was a protest against the university’s plans to essentially privatize it by paving it over and leasing it out to commercial operations, but at the heart of it is the story of food and malnutrition in urban areas,” he says.
At the end of the first summer, the impromptu farmers harvested two tons worth of food. Darling says he was startled by the amount. “I came to realize how much food you could really grow in a small area,” he says.
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