naturalnews.com printable article

Originally published March 30 2015

Sorry, Monsanto

by Natural News Editors

(NaturalNews) A few weeks ago, I spoke by phone with Cathleen Enright, executive vice president of the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO).[1] (Long story). (Story by Katherine Paul, republished from CounterPunch.org.)

During the course of our conversation, when we touched on the subject of the science behind the debate over whether or not GMOs are "safe" (me arguing that there's no scientific consensus http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/s12302-014-0034-1.pdf on safety) Enright said, "Then you must not believe in climate change, either."

I glossed over that accusation, though it struck me as odd. And random. Until less than a week later, on March 9 (2015), an article appeared in the Guardian[2] under this headline: "The anti-GM lobby appears to be taking a page out of the Climategate playbook."

That's when I realized what I should have known. Enright's comment wasn't random at all. It's just a new twist on an old talking point--from an industry on the verge of crumbling under the weight of an avalanche of new credible, scientific evidence exposing not only the dangers of GMO crops and the toxic chemicals used to grow them, but the extent to which both Monsanto and U.S. government agencies like the EPA, FDA and USDA have covered up those dangers. (Side note: Turns out the authors of the Guardian piece all have ties to, surprise, the biotech industry[3]).

Here are just a few examples of the latest reports, articles and books exposing the dangers of GMOs, Big Ag's toxic chemicals and evidence of a decades-long cover-up to keep consumers in the dark.

That's just a smattering of the latest science--from scientists who have nothing to gain and everything to lose, based on Monsanto's history[14] of aggressively discrediting and scientist who dares to challenge GMOs--that should have every consumer in this country asking, "What's going on here?"

Of course the industry response to the latest accusations concerning both its products and its desperate attempt to keep consumers in the dark, has been the same old same old: deny, deny, deny. All the while pretending to be incredulous that anyone would question its motives. This from an industry that (among other crimes) for nearly 40 years, knowingly poisoned a community in Alabama by dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into open-pit landfills, according to 2002 article[15] that said:

And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents--many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy"--how that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

One final comment on the climate-denier talking point. How ironic that Enright and the biotech industry would pretend to side with the scientists sounding the alarm on global warming--when the largest contributor[16] to global warming is industrial agriculture, with its GMO monoculture crops. Anyone serious about global warming knows that our best hope is to ditch our chemical-intensive, soil-destroying industrial agriculture and replace it with organic, regenerative farming practices that restore[17] the soil's ability to capture carbon.

That's a talking point we can all get behind.

Katherine Paul is associate director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Read more at CounterPunch.org.

Sources:

[1] www.organicconsumers.org

[2] http://www.theguardian.com

[3] http://usrtk.org

[4] http://www.thelancet.com

[5] www.organicconsumers.org

[6] http://mbio.asm.org

[7] www.organicconsumers.org

[8] http://www.cdc.gov

[9] http://www.huffingtonpost.com

[10] http://www.ucsusa.org[PDF]

[11] http://www.amazon.com

[12] http://www.amazon.com

[13] http://usrtk.org[PDF]

[14] http://truth-out.org

[15] http://www.commondreams.org

[16] www.organicconsumers.org

[17] http://rodaleinstitute.org






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