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(visit the link for the full news article)
A US pharmaceutical company is set to introduce a controversial new genetically modified corn to help farmers fight resistant weeds.
Dow Agrosciences says its new GM product will use a chemical that was once a component of the Vietnam war defoliant, Agent Orange.
It is needed they say because so called "superweeds" are now affecting up to 15 million acres of American crops.
During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 US gallons (80,000,000 l) of material containing chemical herbicides and defoliants mixed with jet fuel in Vietnam, eastern Laos and parts of Cambodia, as part of Operation Ranch Hand.[4][5] The program's goal was to defoliate forested and rural land, depriving guerrillas of cover; another goal was to induce forced draft urbanization, destroying the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, and forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, thus depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base and food supply.[5][6]
The US began to target food crops in October 1962, primarily using Agent Blue. In 1965, 42 percent of all herbicide spraying was dedicated to food crops.[6] Rural-to-urban migration rates dramatically increased in South Vietnam, as peasants escaped the war and famine in the countryside by fleeing to the U.S.-dominated cities. The urban population in South Vietnam nearly tripled: from 2.8 million people in 1958, to 8 million by 1971. The rapid flow of people led to a fast-paced and uncontrolled urbanization; an estimated 1.5 million people were living in Saigon slums.[7]
United States Air Force records show that at least 6,542 spraying missions took place over the course of Operation Ranch Hand.[8] By 1971, 12 percent of the total area of South Vietnam had been sprayed with defoliating chemicals, at an average concentration of 13 times the recommended USDA application rate for domestic use.[9] In South Vietnam alone, an estimated 10 million hectares of agricultural land were ultimately destroyed.[10] In some areas TCDD concentrations in soil and water were hundreds of times greater than the levels considered "safe" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.[11][12] Overall, more than 20% of South Vietnam's forests were sprayed at least once over a nine-year period.[
Controversy flares over "Agent Orange corn"
...."We no idea what the cumulative effects are," says Gary Hirshberg, co-founder of a group called "Just Label It." " ... What happens when you're exposed to more than one, two or three, let alone thousands of chemicals?"...
Hirshberg has built a $400 million organic dairy business without using herbicides at all.
He says he's not against genetically modified food, but wants it to be labeled as such.
"I think if the average consumer understood the kind of chemical escalation going on out there, they would absolutely demand something quite different," Hirshberg says.
Agent Orange was a defoliant used to decimate the Southeast Asian jungles so the enemy couldn't hide.
What do the standards say about GMOs?
Genetically modified organisms are not permitted under the standards, as stated in CAN/CGSB-32.310-2006, 1.4.1.a. Any product that is certified organic under the Organic Products Regulations (OPR) (SOR/2006-338) cannot use GMOs. In order to protect against GMO contamination, farmers must demonstrate to their certifying body (CB) that they have done everything possible to prevent contamination from neighbouring fields.
Effective protection against GMO contamination is virtually impossible for some crops. For example, canola pollen can drift up to two kilometres, leaving few locations in Canada where organic canola can be produced (For more information, visit the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate’s Organic Agriculture Protection Fund). For other crops such as corn, organic growers can reduce GMO contamination by late planting (to ensure that their corn comes into tassel at a different time than corn in neighbouring fields).
Farmers are required to develop buffer zones of eight metres to mitigate GMO engineered (or pesticide) drift from neighbouring fields. The Canadian Organic Standards (COS) also require that organic farmers use certified organic seed.
Originally posted by iforget
reply to post by Unity_99
I wonder if they could modify the corn to be able to grow under the pressure of weed competition and thus alleviate some of the need for such toxic chemicals too bad there is so much profit in pesticides or maybe we would see why genetic modification doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing
Originally posted by Unity_99
This is equivalent to BP, and Coexist, which is toxic against the building blocks of life.
This has to be stopped!
www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)
Many of these toxins are mutagenic or known to be a '#teratogen' which means that your unborn children will be affected and this does include subsequent generations. Your unborn children, and subsequent generations, very well could be born with and/or suffer from one or more of the following: birth defects, autoimmune or rare diseases, mental health illnesses, learning disabilities and/or cancers. ....
The chemical companies that produced Agent Orange continue to sell harmful products without repercussions. Products uch as Roundup, a weed killer and herbicide. Roundup is also available to the public and is used by many Americans, on their lawns as a weed killer, where their children play.
Roundup contains a new chemical ingredient which is an herbicide, glyphosate. Studies of glyphosate have found it to cause birth defects. Since farmers have introduced Round up ready crops they have over-sprayed their fields which have produced super weeds. These super weeds are immune to the Roundup and its main ingredient glyphosate. To resolve this problem 2,4 -D is being re-introduced to fight these super weeds. 2,4 – D is an herbicide and part of the Agent Orange formula.
Roundup contains an ingredient known as 'Agent Blue'. 'Agent Blue' was used in Vietnam and was known to be one of the 'Rainbow Herbicides'. Federal regulations that used to monitor acceptable thresholds of human exposure to 'Agent Blue' no longer exist.[./ex]
There is another thread on how Roundup GMO corn has been found linked to cancer in studies.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
news.yahoo.com...
Originally posted by TrueBrit
reply to post by Unity_99
I think you ought to be a little more circumspect here. If you are seriously considering growing your own food, then I think it would be a bad idea to publish that intent too loudly.
Last year, maybe the year before there were articles appearing stating that people who were growing thier own crops, drinking home milked milk and so on were being raided by the FDA and others. If you are serious, keep your head shut on the subject if you want to be allowed to get away with it!
Boycott Monsanto
Who is Monsanto?
The world's largest supplier of herbicides, bioengineered seeds, and hormones to increase milk production. Its primary product is Roundup and its goal is global dominance of the food supply.
Roundup and its cousins are marketed under about 90 different names. In 1997, Monsanto lost a lawsuit and agreed to stop using the terms "bio-degradable" and "environmentally friendly" in its advertising. Why? Because these products would appear to be direct descendents of Agent Orange, the company's most infamous product. The company has stated that Roundup is safer than table salt but independent analyses show that the product contains 41% glyphosate and the rest is water and any of 2300 other chemicals that are "trade secrets."
2,4-D Herbicide and Super GMO Crops
And perhaps even more startling than the drastic increase in herbicide usage is the fact that Dow AgroSciences’ new genetically modified soy is actually specifically designed to resist an especially toxic herbicide known as 2,4-D, a toxic compound used in the well-known Vitetnam War defoliant Agent Orange. Known to kill or maim at least 400,000 and cause an additional 500,000 birth defects according to conservative Viatnamese estimates, Agent Orange is one of the deadliest concoctions on record.
As of now, biotech giant Monsanto still has a tight grasp on the corn and soybean market, with approximately 90 percent of soy and 70 percent of corn engineered to drown in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup. However, it seems that their control over this market may soon dwindle at rapid speeds, as Roundup is creating a whole new category of superweeds that are resistant to Roundup and the active ingredient in Roundup - glyphosate. These resistant weeds were expected by experts to cover at least 120 million hectares worldwide by 2010.
Originally posted by Unity_99
en.wikipedia.org...
Well, well, well, what do we have here?
FORCED STERILIZATION OF HUMANS?
It sterilizes rabbits apparently!