Anthony Gucciardi - Lawsuit Slams “All Natural” Snack Makers for Containing Harmful GMO Ingredients

Does the term ‘all natural’ really mean anything when it comes to food labeling? Increasingly, the evidence says absolutely not. A new lawsuit launched from New York highlights the real lack of meaning behind the ‘all natural’ marketing stunt, stating that Frito-Lay’s popular ‘all natural’ snack foods like Tostitos and SunChips are actually made with genetically modified ingredients.

Chris Sakes leads the suit against the mega snack corporation, filing a class-action lawsuit that sheds light on the ‘all natural’ labeling scam. Shake said that Frito-Lay products are not natural at all, as they contain corn oils and genetically modified plants. What is this phony ‘all natural’ claims worth? About 10 cents more than competing brands that do not claim to be all natural, which contain virtually the same ingredients. The lawsuit reported that independent testing actually confirmed the presence of corn and vegetables oils as well as GMOs within the popular snack brands.

In response, a Frito-Lay spokesman stated that the ‘all natural’ statement on its packaging “complies with all regulatory requirements.”

Of course genetically modified ingredients are quite far from natural. The suit states:

Read More:

http://naturalsociety.com/lawsuit-slams-all-natural-snack-makers-for-containing-harmful-gmo-ingredients/

Anthony Gucciardi - Monsanto Investor Bill Gates Says GMO Crops Needed to Fight Starvation

Bill Gates, the heavy Monsanto investor who purchased 500,000 shares of the biotech giant in 2010, has been touting Monsanto’s genetically modified creations as a tool that is necessary to prevent starvation in poor nations. The same poor nations where thousands of farmers routinely commit suicide after being completely bankrupt by Monsanto’s overpriced and ineffective GM seeds.

The same company that we recently exposed to be running ‘slave-like’ working conditions, forcing poor workers to operate the corn fields for 14 hours per day while withholding pay.

According to Gates, this is the company whose GMO crops are going to save the world from starvation. Of course, along with ‘saving the world from starvation’, GMO crops also bring along a large number of unwanted health and environmental effects.

A prominent review of 19 studies examining the safety of these crops found that consumption of GMO corn or soybeans can lead to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice – particularly in the liver and kidneys.

Read More:

http://www.infowars.com/monsanto-investor-bill-gates-says-gmo-crops-needed-to-fight-starvation/

Anthony Gucciardi - Busted: Monsanto Abusing Illegal Workers in ‘Slave-Like’ Conditions

Monsanto’s disregard for human health is evidenced by their hazardous GMO crops and herbicides, but a shocking new report has revealed the company’s illegal ‘slave-like’ working conditions. Forcing slave workers to work the cornfields for 14 hours per day and buy their food (most likely GMO) at highly-inflated prices from the company store, Monsanto has beenrunning these slave rings for an unknown number of years.

What’s more is the company not only ‘hired’ all of the workers illegally, but prevented them from leaving the farm premises and withheld their salaries. The information came to light following a raid by Argentina’s tax agency known as AFIP, where it was revealed that the farmhands were being forced to work almost twice as long as legally permissible and given no compensation. Amazingly, AFIP says that it will hold Monsanto responsible for the slave-like conditions.

Unsurprisingly, Monsanto failed to respond to the story.

Read More:

http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-abusing-illegal-workers-in-slave-like-conditions/

Ari LeVaux - How Genetically Modified Foods Could Affect Our Health in Unexpected Ways

Chinese researchers have found small pieces of rice ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to receptors in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood.

The type of RNA in question is called microRNA (abbreviated to miRNA) due to its small size. MiRNAs have been studied extensively since their discovery ten years ago, and have been implicated as players in several human diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. They usually function by turning down or shutting down certain genes. The Chinese research provides the first in vivo example of ingested plant miRNA surviving digestion and influencing human cell function in this way.

Should the research survive scientific scrutiny -- a serious hurdle -- it could prove a game changer in many fields. It would mean that we're eating not just vitamins, protein, and fuel, but gene regulators as well.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153737/how_genetically_modified_foods_could_affect_our_health_in_unexpected_ways

FoodFreedom.com - Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage

FoodFreedom.com   

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/three-approved-gmos-linked-to-organ-damage/

By Rady Ananda

In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.

Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn – Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 – were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. The data used for this approval, ironically, is the same data that independent researchers studied to make the organ damage link.

The Committee of Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen obtained Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats after a European court made it public in 2005.

The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.

Click to read more ...

GMW - Undisclosed infection calls into question GM salmon claims

Coalition calls for FDA to halt approval of genetically engineered salmon
December 20 2011
http://truefoodnow.org/2011/12/20/coalition-calls-for-fda-to-halt-approval-of-genetically-engineered-salmon/

*Discovery of undisclosed infection of salmon eggs calls into question company claims that GE salmon are safe for the environmen

Washington DC – Yesterday afternoon a coalition of 11 food safety, environmental, consumer and fisheries organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) calling for a halt to its approval of a genetically engineered (GE) salmon after learning that the company’s – AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. – research site was contaminated with a new strain of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA), the deadly fish flu that is devastating fish stocks around the world.  

“This new information calls into question the reliability of AquaBounty’s data and the validity of its claims that their fish are safe for the environment” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “The FDA must respond appropriately and conduct their own environmental impact statement that looks at a broad range of environmental risks from these genetically engineered salmon, including the risk of spreading diseases such as ISA and antibiotic use for other diseases.”

AquaBounty has claimed that the company’s process for raising GE fish is safer than traditional aquaculture.        However, documents that were revealed last week indicate that their production site was found by Canadian Authorities to have been contaminated in Nov. 2009.  This information was hidden from the public and potentially FDA and other Federal agencies consulting on the GE salmon application.  ISA is a deadly disease and is classified as a ‘Listed’ disease by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) – alongside diseases such as Anthrax, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Foot and mouth disease, rabies, sheep pox, swine fever, avian influenza, West Nile fever, scrapie, fowl cholera, bovine tuberculosis and myxomatosis. 

“Infectious Salmon Anaemia threatens wild fisheries around the world and the communities whose livelihood depend on those fish” said Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth US. “ISA infections in Chile cost the industry around two billion dollars. A similar infection in Canada and the U.S. could be the last blow to wild Atlantic salmon populations and bring a collapse in wild salmon fisheries.”

Click to read more ...

Marcela Valente - Poison from the Sky

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106159

Marcela Valente 

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 9 (IPS) - Argentina's soy boom has been a major source of foreign exchange. But the other side of the coin is the toxic effects among the rural population, from spraying agrochemicals.

Research by the National University of Río Cuarto in the northwestern province of Córdoba demonstrated that glyphosate, the herbicide used on transgenic soy crops, causes genetic damage in mice and amphibians, like frogs. 

Two years ago, another research study by Andrés Carrasco, a professor at the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine and principal researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), also demonstrated damage in amphibians. 

Genetically modified (GM) soy seeds, approved amid controversy in the 1990s for use in Argentina, were developed by the U.S.-based multinational biotechnology corporation Monsanto to be resistant to glyphosate, the active principle in the "Roundup" herbicide sold by the company. 

Introduction of the GM seeds launched an expansion of soy cultivation and increased use of glyphosate. Today, 18 million hectares are planted to soy, out of a total of nearly 30 million hectares of all kinds of grain crops. 

Click to read more ...

Food Freedom - Sebelius-backed biotech firm reorganizing under criminal probe

Food Freedom on May 3, 2011 

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/sebelius-backed-biotech-firm-reorganizing-under-criminal-probe/

By Rady Ananda

The head of Health and Human Services not only denies that Americans have a right to bodily health and food of their choice, but Kathleen Sebelius is hell bent on spending taxpayer money to promote genetically modified food and drugs. One of her projects, Kansas Bioscience Authority, a publicly funded venture enterprise developed to promote biotechnology, is currently under criminal investigation. CEO Tom Thornton has resigned.

KBA also lobbied the Dept. of Homeland Security for the highly controversial bioweapons and cattle disease lab in the state, along with former Governor Sebelius, now President Obama’s Cabinet Secretary. Under her governorship and full support, the Kansas Economic Growth Act of 2004 passed, funding KBA’s mission with $581 million in tax revenue to develop a bioscience industry in Kansas.

Click to read more ...

PF Louis - Genetically modified alfalfa and Roundup herbicides may create an agricultural disaster

by PF Louis

http://www.naturalnews.com/034264_GM_alfalfa_Roundup.html

(NaturalNews) Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been extended to alfalfa. This could be the beginning of a disastrous domino effect on our food crop and livestock systems. The GMO hazards have gone beyond the need for labeling our consumption needs. Genetically engineered alfalfa is a far more serious threat than imagined by most.

Alfalfa's importance

Alfalfa is considered the number one forage crop. Milk from cows that graze on alfalfa is considered premium. The best horses graze on alfalfa. And of course, alfalfa itself is used for human consumption with the increased popularity of alfalfa sprouts.

Its usefulness as animal feed goes beyond grazing. Alfalfa can also be used for animals as hay or silage, which is made by storing moist crops in a silo or under plastic. That process is known as ensiling or ensilage. The silage can also be dried and made into pellets for pet food.

Silage for livestock, usually produced from corn or soy, is what is used for non-grass fed or grazing cattle and other livestock. So it's not corn on the cob or soybeans that are used in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Factory farms use silage because it's the most compact and convenient form of feed for industrial livestock.

Click to read more ...

Martha Rosenberg - What Drugs Was Your Thanksgiving Turkey On?

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet

Posted on November 20, 2011, Printed on November 21, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153149/what_drugs_was_your_thanksgiving_turkey_on

 So far, 2011 has not been a great year for turkey producers. In May, an article in Clinical Infectious Diseases reported that half of U.S. meat from major grocery chains--turkey, beef, chicken and pork--harbors antibiotic resistant staph germs commonly called MRSA. Turkey had twice and even three times the MRSA of all other meats, in another study.

In June, Pfizer announced it was ending arsenic-containing chicken feed which no one realized they were eating anyway, but its arsenic-containing Histostat, fed to turkeys, continues. Poultry growers use inorganic arsenic, a recognized carcinogen, for "growth promotion, feed efficiency and improved pigmentation," says the FDA. Yum.

Click to read more ...

The GMO Right2Know Rally

Gary Null at the March for GMO Right 2 Know Rally on October 1st, 2011 in Prospect Park, New York City. Demand the Right to Know What's in Our Food!