GMO Myths and Truths

11 GMO Myths Totally Debunked

• 21Jul2013

By Dr. Michael Antoniou, Claire Robinson and Dr. John Fagan Earth Open Source  Food Freedom

Based on the evidence presented in the report, GMO Myths and Truths: An evidence-based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops, there is no need to take risks with GM crops when effective, readily available, and sustainable solutions to the problems that GM technology is claimed to address already exist.

Conventional plant breeding, in some cases helped by safe modern technologies like gene mapping and marker assisted selection, continues to outperform GM in producing high-yield, drought-tolerant, and pest- and disease-resistant crops that can meet our present and future food needs.

Genetically modified (GM) crops are promoted on the basis of a range of far-reaching claims from the GM crop industry and its supporters. They say that GM crops:

The Food Industry’s War on US Health- and more

more good articles from Food Freedom News:

The Global Food Economy: Peak Food, Social Unrest, and Bailed-Out Credit-Junkies

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Beginning with Malthus’ warning to the world and the Great Irish famine, David McWilliams (of Punk Economics) provides his typically succinct, profoundly fascinating, and graphically pleasing insights on the state of the global food economy. “What happens…

 

The Food Industry’s War on US Health

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In this 5-part video, Peter Jennings of ABC World News Tonight explores the murky connections between the FDA, USDA (and other regulatory agencies) and powerful food corporations, allowing for mass deployment of junk food leading to declining…

 

US Staple Crop System Failing from GM and Monoculture

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GM Cancer Warning Can No Longer Be Ignored

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USDA Was Storing Monsanto’s Unapproved GM Wheat in Seed Vault

• 30Jun2013   Food Freedom News

By Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton 
Activist Post

How did genetically modified wheat escape and taint the fields of American farmers? The unsettling case remains unexplained, but traces back to a USDA seed vault.

According a recent article in the Denver Post, the unapproved strain of genetically modified (GM) wheat that tainted fields in Oregon and prompted a lawsuit from farmers was, in fact, being stored in a government seed bank in Fort Collins, Colorado.

This location is the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation (NGCRP), operated by the USDA on the Colorado State University campus and formerly known as the National Seed Storage Laboratory (NSSL). It sits nearby the USDA’s Crop Research Laboratory. The NGCRP serves a seed bank and “a repository for animal genetic resources in the form of semen and plant genetic resources in the form of graftable buds or in vitro plantlets.”

This facility began storing Monsanto’s GM wheat strains starting in 2004, but it claims to have destroyed them as of January of 2012. Did this USDA facility play a role in the escape of unapproved GM wheat?

Ed Curlett, a spokesperson for the USDA, said, “Whatever seed Monsanto sent to the repository was incinerated.” That agency’s claim is currently being investigated for validation. But, where there’s smoke, there’s typically fire.

Reuters obtained documents indicating that the USDA’s National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation took possession of “at least 43 physical containers of Monsanto’s so-called ‘Roundup Ready’ wheat in late 2004 and early 2005.”

This included ‘more than 1,000 different unique varieties or lines’ of the GM wheat, which would help to explain how the Oregon fields had been tainted with a different variety than Monsanto was reportedly testing during its field trials from 1997-2005 in at least 16 states. Testing in Oregon, where the tainted wheat was found, reportedly ceased in 2001 and involved Spring wheat while unapproved strains of GM Winter wheat were discovered.