Junk Science? Number 101: GMOs, terminator seeds, and a European cover-up? – Part 1

GMOs, terminator seeds, and a European cover-up?

‘Seeds of destruction’ by William Engdahl is a must-read book for anyone remotely interested in their health and especially that of their children, grandchildren and so on. It is available on Amazon.

Here is part 1 of our review on the book, in which we focus on GMOs and terminator seeds:

Engdahl starts with the famous 2012 ‘Caen Study’ by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini (1), where more than 200 rats were divided into two equal groups, one a control, the other fed with GMO NK603 Maize. Pictures of the tumours in the GMO-fed rats shocked the world.

The original Monsanto research ‘proving’ safety showed that the measured period was just 90 days – in Seralini’s research tumours only started to appear after 4-7 months!! Where Roundup was used, the female rats died 2-3 times more quickly. While mammary and pituitary tumours were more prevalent in female rats, liver and kidney tumours were 2.5-3 times more likely in males and overall GMO-fed males had 4 times the levels of tumours of the control groups. Monsanto seeds are genetically modified to resist the weed-killing effects of Roundup. The seeds can accumulate Roundup (glyphosphate) throughout their life.

Monsanto has repeatedly refused requests to publish the exact formula and contents of Roundup claiming ‘Trade Secret’ status. Research however has shown that it can affect human embryo cells in doses far lower than used in agriculture (2).

In both the USA and Europe, scientific testing on GMO seeds had uniquely been left to the seed company. Animal research was never conducted beyond 90 days.

The European Regulatory body (the EFSA in Brussels) had passed the seeds in 2009 whilst conducting little research of its own and never for more than 90 days.

The EFSA response was to question the credibility of the Seralini study and dismiss it. More than half of the EFSA panel members had conflict of interest with the very companies they should have been protecting the EU population from, according to a study by the Corporate Europe Observatory. A Spanish Study (which was little more than an endorsement of GMO from the Spanish Government) was often cited as corroboration for the EFSA view. Worse, the EFSA commissioned no study to check out the Seralini findings.

In 2001 Monsanto, along with Coca Cola, Kraft, Nestle and ADM, another GMO company, helped form the ‘independent’ Washington-based ‘International Life Sciences Institute’, or ILSI. A scandal erupted when Professor Diana Banati who was on the EFSA board went to take up a simultaneous position on the European arm of ILSI. Public interest groups have noted this ‘revolving door’ effect in Brussels on many occasions.

Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to the EU, has gone on record as saying that there is no substantiated scientific evidence against GMOs.

All this with different European public polls showing almost 80% public rejection of GMO foods.

Monsanto is currently being fused with the giant European Bayer Corporation, also advocates of GMO.

Terminator Technology

In 2007, Monsanto took over a company called Delta and Pine Land. This company had been a long-term recipient of US Government funding. It had been developing Genetic Use Restriction Technology, or GURT. This is also called ‘Terminator Technology’. Seeds grow their plants for one season, and that’s it. Never again. So if you are a farmer, you have to come back and buy more the next year. This is the very antithesis of what seeds are all about!
The Terminator Technology was protected by a patent (No: 5,723,765), owned jointly by the company AND the US Government.

Clearly, it could be used to control farmers and their crops from Mexico to Iran. So, it also could control whole countries and their food production. But, at the same time, it endangers all living crops in all countries as the spread of the seeds is difficult to control.

It would not be the first time that America has sought to use food this way. Henry Kissinger called it ‘Food as a Weapon’, when regime change was brought about in Chile by American pressure. As Kissinger said in 1970, “Control Oil and you control continents; control food and you control the people”.

The USA has openly said it wants to encourage use of its seeds around the World. And by developing the World Trade Organisation, individual countries signing up, cannot impose a restriction on ‘Free Trade’ because they are concerned about ‘health risks’. That would constitute an ‘unfair trade barrier’ and bring the threat of trade sanctions. Second and third world countries are potentially in big trouble.

Monsanto and Syngenta have publically declared that they will not use Terminator Technology. The US Government has refused to drop its involvement in Terminator development.

Ref:

1. Gilles-Eric Seralini et al, Genetically modified crops safety assessments: present limits and possible improvements, Environmental Sciences Europe 2011, 23:10, accessed in http://www.enveurope.com/content/23/1/10.

2. Aris, A., Leblanc, S., Maternal and fetal exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, Reproductive Toxicology, 2011 May;31(4):528-33. Epub 2011 Feb 18.