All we have to do to stop this is to stop paying & funding them to do it!

Go to YouTube and start searching and watching the videos. For those of us that feel we ‘must’ eat meat, eggs & dairy and cannot go to the time or expense to source our food from people that don’t torture and abuse animals…we NEED TO SEE THE TRUTH so we can make decisions that count.

Here is a link to the Environment section on the Thrive website, specifically the GMO topic:

http://www.thrivemovement.com/the_12_sectors-environment#critical_issues/303

Thus there is no evidence that defendants have commenced
litigation against anyone standing in similar stead to
plaintiffs. The suits against dissimilar defendants are
insufficient on their own to satisfy the affirmative acts
element, and, at best, are only minimal evidence of any
objective threat of injury to plaintiffs. Plaintiffs’
Case 1:11-cv-02163-NRB Document 53 Filed 02/24/12 Page 15 of 24
16
alternative allegations that defendants have threatened, though
not sued, inadvertent users of patented seed, are equally lame.
These unsubstantiated claims do not carry significant weight,
given that not one single plaintiff claims to have been so
threatened.6……………..Indeed, plaintiffs’ letter to defendants seems to have been
nothing more than an attempt to create a controversy where none
exists. This effort to convert a statement that defendants have
no intention of bringing suit into grounds for maintaining a
case, if accepted, would disincentivize patentees from ever
attempting to provide comfort to those whom they do not intend
to sue, behavior which should be countenanced and encouraged. In
contrast, plaintiffs’ argument is baseless and their tactics not
to be tolerated.7………………..“[U]nder all the circumstances” outlined above, the
plaintiffs have not “show[n] that there is a substantial
controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of
sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a
declaratory judgment.” AMP, 653 F.3d at 1342-43 (quoting
MedImmune, 549 U.S. at 127). Defendants have not accused
plaintiffs of infringement or asserted the right to any
royalties from plaintiffs, “nor have they taken any actions
which imply such claims. Instead, all we have before us is
[plaintiffs’] allegation that [their activities do] not infringe
the defendants’ patents.” Prasco, 537 F.3d at 1340.10………………….Taken together, it is clear that these circumstances do not
amount to a substantial controversy and that there has been no
injury traceable to defendants. We therefore do not have subject
matter jurisdiction over this action, and it is, accordingly,
dismissed.”

There was to damages and not likely to be any damages ! AIn other words the organic reps are full of bullxxxxx and the lawyers are wasting evryone’s time

http://www.krunchd.com/911

Rightfully its Monsanto’s responsibility to keep their seed our of my field not the other way around.

GMO biotechnology constitutes little more than science fair projects–science fair projects gone wrong.

No more corporate science fair projects!

I thought, what could be toxic coming from the sky?! Wow was I shocked. This is an assault upon life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and damage to private property.

Rosalind is an amazing person. The term “climate remediation” makes me ill.

They have been spraying since 2000!!!!! Their experiments cause drought/warming/floods/aluminum fire accelerant. Aluminum alzheimers connection.

WHO GIVES THE GREEN LIGHT ON THESE EXPERIMENTS? OBVIOUSLY THE PUBLIC IS PAYING. WHO IS SIGNING OFF ON THIS?

—– Original Message —–
From: Stephany Aulenback
To: denise.morrison@campbellsoupcompany.com
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 3:14 PM
Subject: an open letter re: Campbell’s soup, bisphenol-A, and the imminent collapse of the global economy

Dear Denise Morrison, President and CEO of Campbell’s Foods:

I am writing to warn you of a change in your consumer base that is bound to have grave repurcussions for your company.

A recent Harvard study has revealed that concentrations of the chemical bisphenol-A rise around 1000 percent in people who eat one bowl of canned soup per day. Bisphenol-A is often used in the manufacture of plastics but your company and others who put food in cans apparently use it to make the material that lines those cans. I do not know exactly what this amount of bisphenol-A does in the human body and it appears that scientists do not exactly know, either, but they are making a lot of guesses that don’t sound at all good. Apparently the chemical is an endocrine disrupter, which means it messes with one’s hormones and has therefore been linked to cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders like learning disabilities, ADHD, and cognitive issues, as well as problems with heart disease, obesity and diabetes, and sexual development.

So far I have not noticed any tumors growing on my children but there is still plenty of time. And while I believe they are geniuses, I hate to think that they might have been just that much more intelligent, talented and well-behaved. It is not difficult to conjecture that, if my children had never ingested any canned foods, by now they might be working as highly paid child actors, like Dakota Fanning or Haley Joel Osment. We’re talking about the loss of millions of dollars of family income here.

I have become convinced that canned foods are at the root of the disharmony suffered by many families as a result of the poor performance of the children. I do not know what Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, fed her children but I now suspect she wouldn’t have have had to push them so hard to practise their musical instruments if she had completely avoided serving them canned food. Because they probably wouldn’t have had to practise so much. I’m guessing that, by now, her children would be supporting her — and she wouldn’t have had to write that embarrassing book in order to put them through college.

Furthermore, although my current goal is to slow my own children’s sexual development for as long as possible, there is a slim chance that, once I am dead, they may wish to begin dating.

The Harvard study I reference above and and others like it have have led me to finally make the decision to stop feeding canned goods to my children. This is the event that is bound to have dangerous financial consequences for your company. Currently, my children eat 13 trillion cans of Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle soup per week. This is an estimate, of course, but not a very rough one. Let’s just say my children eat a lot of that soup. In fact, they do not eat much else – perhaps a bowl of Kraft dinner now and then, or the odd chicken nugget. (And I ask you, what chicken nugget is not odd? What part of the bird do these uniformly pale lumps come from, exactly? But I realize that this is not your area of expertise as your lumps of chicken are pinkish, blotchy and veiny and are not encased in a tidy bread-crumb coating.)

It may surprise you to know that my two small children, aged two and six years respectively, ingest so much of your product and, in fact, you may be doubly shocked when I inform you that the younger child, my daughter, eats only the carrots. My son, however, will deign to eat the broth and the noodles and the other vegetable-like substances you include — but not of course the weird chicken, we give that to the cat — so so you could say that between the two (or three) of them, they lick the platter (bowl) clean. Of course, not literally clean. Nothing has been clean in this house since they were born.

As you can probably tell from the fact that your company has not already gone bankrupt, I have not yet completely stopped feeding the children your soup as I anticipate a few possibly unsurmountable problems as a result of this move. First, I am unsure whether my children will ever eat anything else. As an experiment yesterday, I tried to feed my daughter real carrots, boiled to a soft consistency. Although to me they looked and tasted almost exactly like the carrots in your soup, she refused to eat them, perhaps because they did not have that faint undertaste of plastic to which she has become accustomed. I fully understand, though, that this is not your problem. I am also fairly confident that, as their mother, I can somehow manage to meet their nutritional needs in some other way, perhaps through the use of Flintstones vitamins mixed in with a barley-based pablum in order to create the sensation of fullness.

However, I trust that you will share my concern about the imminent collapse of your company, once I stop my weekly purchases of approximately 13 trillion cans. And I am even more deeply concerned about the effect that the collapse of your rather large company will have on the already fragile global economy, which is why I am ccing the President of the United States, the Head of the European Union, and whoever is in charge of that weird hybrid of communism and capitalism in China. (I’ll google it.) Because I plan to implement the radical change of no longer feeding Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle soup to my children THIS EVENING AROUND 5pm EST, I fully expect the world markets to tumble dramatically tomorrow morning. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the globe is plunged into a bleak economic (and mental) Depression, one to rival that of 1929, by Friday evening.

I am sorry. I realize that the Christmas season is an unfortunate time of year for bad economic news. But I have to bite the bullet here – the health of my children must come first. During the Great Depression, many people raised their own chickens and grew their own vegetables. I plan to do both. I assure you that I am not looking forward to the extra work, especially since I’ll probably have to perform many other tasks I have never done before, like darn socks or even knit them from scratch. And I am determined to figure out how to grow noodles as well, so that I can make my children our own version of a Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup. Although it occurs to me as I am writing this, that while I’m making these changes for the sake of my children’s health, I might as well attempt to raise slender chickens instead of chunky ones. At any rate, my version of Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup will not contain any Bisphenol-A.

I just wanted to give you a heads-up.

Sincerely,

Stephany Aulenback

P.S. You could always start using cans that don’t contain any Bisphenol-A and save both of us a lot of trouble. Apparently this company does.

Go call up some farmers in the Midwest. Many are buying back their tillers to till under the weeds the glyphosate won’t kill. Call it a result of glyphosate over-application, but even if that may be, those farmers are merely showing others what they will be facing 5 years down the line.

Nature is in a constant state of evolution. Chemical agriculture is accelerating the evolution of weeds. It is unsustainable. The only thing the future promises for chemical agriculture is successive new generations of stronger and more toxic herbicides.

Before Dr. McNeill got into agriculture, he worked for the Department of Defense creating biological weapons. I would say he knows a thing or too about biology, genetics and disease. You want to know more? Watch him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVyRQXlQipU

To say that “the vast majority of professionals in relevant fields support these crops,” is just plain irrelevant. Why? Because the people you reference in “relevant fields” are the ones whose livelihoods are based on this work. That’s like saying “the vast majority of oil engineers support oil production.”

Most of the world has not adopted GE crops. In fact, the EU still bans them. The US is the greatest grower and pusher of them on the rest of the world. The fact that the US is using diplomatic power and taxpayer money to push a privatized technology on the rest of the world is a perfect example of the why the revolving door between government and industry is dangerous. The only way GE crops have gotten to where they are today is not because of market forces, but because of corporate lobbying and backroom deals.

What alternatives would they prefer? Tillage, which degrades and erodes the soil and promotes fertilizer runoff? Perhaps older herbicides that were used before the adoption of GE crops, herbicides that are quite a bit nastier and have higher impacts on the environment? Do they understand this? It isn’t a question of what causes no harm, but what causes the least harm. I know which one I’d rather live next to. And I fail to see how the midwest where they grow many of these crops is an infertile weed patch.

2. Look at studies number 6, 32, 35, 38, and 56. You say that it is ‘preposterous to claim a biological alteration as being safe after studying it for such an absurdly short period of time.’ Let me ask, do you apply the same logic to all biological alterations? What about conventional breeding techniques? That changes the genes, and furthermore, it does so in unknown ways. Remember the Lenape potato…even breeding is not without risk. What about hybridization, somaclonal variation, chemical/radiation induced mutagenesis, induced polyploidy? What if marker assisted selection, wide crosses, or embryo rescue is involved? Do you apply the same logic to these? It’s genetic change, right. What if you can’t find anything different in the proteome between the GE plant and its non-GE isogenic counterpart? What if not a single person out there can describe in detail a single protein or metabolite out of place in a GE crop? Something cannot be dangerous if there is nothing dangerous present. And at what point do you consider something safe? You have to have a set criteria for declaring that something is safe, otherwise, you’re taking a position that cannot be disproven. You can take these as rhetorical questions if you want, my point is that there is a lot more nuance than you seem to indicate.

I don’t recall ever hearing much about any Dr. McNeill. A quick google search and I finds some things he’s said, some true, some not so much, and some kinda weird (spraying glyphosate is like giving a plant AIDS? Huh? How is Immunodeficiency anything like halting amino acid synthesis?) I’d have to know the exact situation any one person was in if they’re making money with non-GMO food. It does make me thing of this study (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6001/222.abstract) which claims that those who do not grow GE crops surprisingly get more benefit out of GE crops than the people actually growing them! Huber is another one who hasn’t published his data. He makes some really, really extraordinary claims, but nothing to back them up. Not much else to say about that. There’s that ‘open science’ again. Kind of a double standard that you’ll take Huber at his word but if he reached the opposite conclusion I doubt anyone would.

As for the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, who are they? Just another non-recognized pseudoprofessional organization, like so many others. Check out what sciencebasedmedicine.org, a site that doesn’t even deal in issues of genetic engineering, has to say about them. They’ve even got themselves a spot on Quackwatch. Anyway, I can list more than a few more reputable organizations, among them the World Health Organization, who have much different statements.

3. I did have some fun with that. The site you linked to here is just a directory. It does not list his data, although it does have his email. What I found funny was that Google decided to translate Суров Алексей Васильевич as Severe Shubnikov. I get how they can translate ‘суров’ to ‘severe’ from but how do the get Shubnikov out of Алексей Васильевич (Alexei Vasilevich)? Sure my Russian is pretty poor but I don’t get that. But I digress….

As for the meat & potatoes here, first, the Argentinian study. I remember that one from a while back. From what I can tell about the only conclusion you can draw from that is don’t inject Round-Up into embryos, which sounded like a good idea before the study. Considering how much Round-Up is applied, then how much degrades, then how much is lost in processing, then how much is actually absorbed into the body, that study doesn’t exceptionally scare me. I’ve seen similar studies about pure caffeine. Doesn’t bother me.

The Zentek study, I hope you know, was withdrawn. Read about it (with links to the European Commission summery) here: http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/news/499.docu.html and here: http://www.gmo-safety.eu/news/599.does-maize-cause-impotence-efsa-experts-voice-doubts.html and here: http://www.biofortified.org/2010/04/update-on-austrian-feeding-study/ Not a good idea to cite withdrawn papers, though I must chuckle a little when I notice that anti-GE sites like Greenpeace’s and Jeffery Smith’s have no problem bringing up that study but curiously neglect to mention this. Almost as if they’re putting an agenda above facts, no?

As for the Vecchio study, I can’t actually read beyond the abstract from where I am now (there’s a paywall) so can’t comment on it. The two listed in the NIH don’t even mention GE. You going to bring up Pusztai next

4. If that is what you mean you should specify it, otherwise it gives the false impression that all GE crops require a specific herbicide. You certainty wouldn’t consider Bt crops the same as Ht ones, would you? And market share or not, there’s always the option of buying LL over RR.

5. It does matter. I’m not trying to be high horse at all, but it is a weasel word. It gives a false impression. They’re not super, no more so than the GE crops themselves are ‘super’ for being able to do the same thing. I’ve never heard of them being able to damage farm equipment as a result of glyphosate resistance. IIRC the resistance typically comes from a mutation that either changes how glyphosate is transported in the plant, alters the shape of the EPSPS protein so that glyphosate no longer affects it, or produces so much EPSPS that it survives the glyphosate through brute force. I can’t figure out how any of those would make the weeds any more likely to damage farm equipment, but if you could post a link I’d find that interesting.

6. Do you apply the same logic to the other side? I notice you link to Jeffery Smith. By your logic, you should disregard everything he says because he makes a living off anti-GE professional activism. Séralini was funded by Greenpeace, another case where the professional activism issue arises. I’m certainty not saying you shouldn’t be skeptical of people selling you something. Of course you should, you’d have to be pretty credulous not to. But the vast majority of professionals in relevant fields support these crops. If you look abroad, you see much the same, be it research in China, Bt rice in Iran, emerging biotech abilities in the EUA and Malaysia, virus resistant bananas in Ughanda, low GI wheat in Australia, virus resistant grape rootstocks in France, fungus resistant potatoes in the Netherlands, the beans that ANBIO just approved in Brazil. Granted, I’m talking about the technology as a whole there, but you should realize that this is more than a few companies, and if you’re drawing all that back to just them, then quite frankly you’ve firmly entered tinfoil land. Which is to say, lets get the notion that the process is the issue here out of the way and talk honestly about the traits. This however does not site well with a clearly defined black and white pro-GMO vs anti-GMO worldview.

Dang, I guess I did kinda sound like I was cheering on the Liberty Link ones there didn’t I? Well, getting called a Bayer shill instead of a Monsanto shill would be a nice change of pace. However, I can tell you I for one haven’t heard them mentioned much by anyone here. Come to think of it, in the biotech class I took I don’t even remember discussing the bar gene and glufosinate (if we did and I just don’t remember, it wasn’t in great detail). I bring them up because the best way to prevent weed resistance is to use multiple different herbicides with differing modes of action. If there’s a 1/X chance of a resistance to one type of herbicide emerging, and a 1/Y chance of resistance to another emerging, the odds of both emerging is 1/(XY), which any way you cut it is going to be a lot smaller. Mathematically speaking, the best approach is a good rotation and multiple varieties of weed control.

The debate here is over GMOs on public lands. Private farmers can still buy whatever seed they want. The citizens of Boulder do not want their lands to turn into the infertile, chemically-laden, weed patches that cover the cotton belt and the Midwest.

2. None of the independent studies in that list on safety were conducted for more than 90 days. It is preposterous to claim a biological alteration as being safe after studying it for such an absurdly short period of time.

Perhaps you should get out and consult some scientists who do not co-exist in your academic bubble. Talk to Dr. Michael McNeill, an agricultural consultant who manages 165,000 non-GMO and GMO acres. Ask him why his long-time GMO customers are making more money by going non-GMO. Talk to Don Huber about the new pathogen he has found in the soil of GMO crops. Talk to the The American Academy of Environmental Medicine. http://www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html

3. You want to read Surov’s study? Here you go, it’s in Russian, use Google Translate, have fun. http://map.biorf.ru/pages.php?id=RAS_problemSever

Also, here is an Argentinian study linking Roundup to birth defects:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx1001749

Add these to your reading list too:
http://www.somloquesembrem.org/img_editor/file/Vecchioetal2004.pdf
http://www.biosicherheit.de/pdf/aktuell/zentek_studie_2008.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240732/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1314908/

4. Glyphosate-tolerant crops currently hold the vast market share, so that is what we are talking about here. Glyphosate is technically not required, but to not use it would completely negate the reason for buying the GM seed. No one buying this seed is doing so without the intent of using glyphosate.

5. Superweeds – Yes I know they are actually called “glyphosate-resistant weeds”, this a blog, it’s a term, get off your high horse. The rise of glyphosate-resistant weeds are due to the blanket application of glyphosate farmers are able to apply because their crops can withstand it. And yes, they are super, because the selection pressure the widespread application of glyphosate has provided has resulted in some strains of weed that even damage farm machinery. Look at where the majority of the money is the industry and you see that genetic engineering and herbicide use go hand in hand.

6. I am going to counter your point and say that we should strongly question the amount of money people promoting a technology receive (directly or indirectly) from the people selling that technology.

Funny that you brought up Bayer’s Liberty Link crops, they give millions to your school…

You talk about the corporations and the people, corporations and the people, but what about the ones this really affects: the farmers. Do you think farmers LIKE paying for the cost of GE seed? You think they enjoy an additional cost that takes money right out of THEIR bottom line. No, that’s ridiculous. Why would they do it? Perhaps they find some benefit? Perhaps they, unlike many others, know what the alternative to GE crops is. Here’s a radical idea: let them choose. If they don’t want GE crops, fine, everybody’s happy. If the farmers do choose to spend that extra money, maybe you should accept that they know what they’re doing and not take away their rights to run their farms as they see fit.

Anyway, I find you made some errors in your piece here. First, it is absolutely false that there has never been any independent study on GE crops (you can find a list of about 100 such studies here: http://www.biofortified.org/genera/studies-for-genera/independent-funding/). Beyond that, I have yet to speak to any scientist who questions the safety of genetically engineered crops, and I’ve spoken to quite a number in my university’s biology, horticulture, genetics, and biochemistry departments. Sorry to be so blunt here, but the only ones who still think there is any legitimate debate about the safety of GE crops have clearly not gone through the literature on the subject. This is just like all those other so-called controversies (you know the ones I’m talking about). Heck, no one can find a single confirmed example of a single person having ever been harmed in any way from a GE crop, nor has anyone even put forward a plausible biochemical mechanism for how that could even happen.

You point out the claims of Surov and Séralini. As far as I know, Surov has yet to release his data. At first I thought your link was to his data, but when I clicked on it it, lo and behold, an article explaining that the data will be released in July…..2010. Now that’s open science right there! As for Séralini, the shoddy statistics used in his meta-study were widely discredited by pretty much everyone who gave it the time of day, including FSANZ, EFSA and France’s HBC (Haut Conseil des biotechnologies). As for the Round-Up toxicity claims, I notice a distinct lack of widespread birth defects among the millions of farming families who use Round-Up. If it really did cause birth defects, you would expect farmers to be the first to feel it. That has not happened. That observation aside, that study was pretty much cherry picking and is worth very little. Notice how these reports don’t exactly send shock waves throughout the scientific community. Ask yourself, why is that? Either the vast majority of biologists, zoologists, botanists, geneticists, microbiologists, toxicologists, biochemists, agronomists, and horticulturists (and naturally I’m one of them too) are in league with Monsanto for some nefarious purposes (although for some strange reason still eat the same GE food everyone else does), of the anti-GE position holds no water. When I hear hooves, I think horses, not zebras. So, uh, what was that about good science again? Shoddy statistics, cherry picking, and not even publishing your data are good science, but accepting scientific consensus isn’t?

Lets see here, what else….All GE crops require this herbicide? Wrong. Only the Round-Up Ready ones can tolerate it. Note that they don’t REQUIRE it any more than any other crop. The insect resistant Bt crops don’t require it, and the Liberty Link crops are resistant to another herbicide, glufosinate. Or course, there is also virus resistant GE crops, but there’s only two of them on the market right now, papaya and summer squash (obviously only one of which really matters for most growers).

Super weeds? A misleading misnomer. The correct term is glyphosate resistant weed. These weeds are resistant to glyphosate, not anything else. If you’re against using glyphosate, it doesn’t really matter anyway. The danger here is threatening to take away the advantages GE crops have already provided, not to be ‘super’ or whatever is meant to be implied with that term. Anyone who knows anything about population genetics.will tell you that when you apply strong selection pressure to a fast reproducing population you will produce a genetic shift. This has absolutely nothing to do with genetic engineering itself, indeed, this is hardly the first time a weed has become resistant to a widely used herbicide. It opens up the discussion of better weed management but that’s a different (and rather complex) subject. That EU countries, and many other countries, ban GE crops shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who understands global agriculture. Ask yourself a question: how do you continue to prop up protectionist policies for your own agriculture in the face of the comparative advantage of countries such as the US and Canada after you’ve joined the WTO which clearly prohibits such policies? Simple, blame GMOs. It’s actually kind of clever. A number of other countries, particularly in Africa, not wanting to lose export markets to Europe, follow them and also ban the cultivation of GE crops. Is anyone really surprised by this?

Ok, so a bunch of people are against GE crops. I would strongly question the level of knowledge those people have regarding this subject. And I would also like to live were policy decisions are made by people who have strong understanding of the subject. Should we take a public vote on which surgical techniques are used in operating rooms, or should we let that decision up to, I don’t know, surgeons? What if these people were saying that farmers HAD to grow GE crops? How would that be any different? I confess, I don’t live there, I’m just someone who has been seeing this story pop up in GoogleNews time and again but really, why aren’t the farmers factoring into this? If they don’t want it, there’s no need for a ban, if they do, whose side are you really on?

Thank you, Garry Sanfaçon, for standing up! Boulder County has always taken the lead regarding health, sustainability, environmentcal concerns, etc., etc., etc. Please do not sell out now!

We do not need to sell out to Monsanto or any other corporation.

Below is my statement public position against GMOs. At this time, I am the only candidate that has taken a public stand.

Thanks,
Garry Sanfacon
Candidate for Boulder County Commissioner
http://www.garrysanfacon.org
303-803-7773
garryforbouldercounty@gmail.com

Garry Sanfaçon, candidate for County Commissioner (District 1), releases statement taking a stand against GMOs on County open space

Boulder County. CO, November 16, 2011 – Boulder County began the process of developing its Cropland Policy for agriculture on county open space18-months ago. Whether or not to continue to allow genetically modified crops (GMOs) to be grown on open space has become a contentious issue. Staff will present their final recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners in a public hearing on December 8, 2012, and it is anticipated they will recommend the County continue to support GMOs on County open space. The December 8 meeting will be the last chance for Boulder County citizens to voice their disapproval of GMOs on County open space. The Commissioners will make a decision the following week.

Garry Sanfaçon, candidate for County Commissioner (District 1), has taken a stand against GMOs on County open space. His statement follows:

After participating in the County’s 18-month Cropland Policy process, I am impressed and excited by the large number of community members actively engaged in discussing the future of our food and agriculture system. I believe we are at a similar decision point as we were in the 1970’s when our community was debating how to address growth management. The residents and leaders of Boulder County didn’t settle for business as usual then and we shouldn’t today. We should take this opportunity to transform our local food and agriculture system.

Clearly, the main sticking point in this discussion is whether GMOs should be allowed on County open space. When I ran for County Commissioner in 2004, I recommended banning GMOs on public and private lands in Boulder County because there was a lack of understanding of the short-term and long-term impacts to the natural environment and human health. Seven years later the safety concerns about genetically engineered crops persist. Therefore, I believe we should err on the side of caution and ban GMOs on County open space.

With this decision we must not walk away thinking our work is done and organic farming will automatically flourish. On the contrary, the work is just beginning. The good news is that there is a great deal of common ground. Here’s what I’m hearing people want for our food and agriculture system: ensuring healthy soil, air and water; minimizing the use of pesticides; enhancing food security; increasing local food production; creating jobs; improving the health of all residents; supporting farmers now and in the future; preserving our rural character; building economic viability; and ensuring all income levels have access to local food.

Let’s focus our energy on finding ways to start the transition to implement this desirable future. To start, I recommend bringing all stakeholders – especially farmers – together to get their ideas about the steps we should take to achieve a healthy, equitable and profitable food and agriculture system.

###

“GMOs are now present in 75 to 80 percent of conventional processed food in the U.S., according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association.”

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/studies-show-gmos-in-majority-of-us-processed-foods-58-percent-of-americans-unaware-of-issue-104510549.html

And in regard to the GMO Food Factory, I’m not sure the cogs CAN BE clogged. I believe the GMO food factory was genetically engineered as a single large alimentary canal. They shovel GMOs in one end and out the other are excreted unlabeled GMO-laden foods. Its a vile sideshow of digestive chemicals and tangled DNA. Perhaps there are some glitches along the way for farmers contending with weeds, but as for GMO food factory’s voracious appetite for more, GMOs is all it needs.

Thanks for a great website and an awesome forum. I have been spreading the word about the dangers with GMO’s for some time now, and I believe by standing together we can propel the Organic Revolution even further. I find that the biggest problem with getting people educated about this topic is not only getting the information out there, it is also to a large degree about 1) people actually not wanting to know the truth about what is being included in their daily food supply 2) people refusing to alter even in the slightest a lifestyle they have grown accustomed to. It is only by working together and continue spreading our insights into this matter that we can truly derail the GMO train.

Please check out my short film about this topic;
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Through-a-Glass-Darkly/187641547960696
and
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1847474818/through-a-glass-darkly

Let’s keep up the good fight!
Best,
Steven

keep up the good work,

Lee

Please accept the enclosed resume for appropriate positions you, or others you may know, have available.

link to resume http://foodsafetyadvocate.webs.com/

Skills and experience include:

Link to Video of Public Speaking for Food Safety : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAUZKMmAuyc

Other Video: http://everythinglubbock.com/fulltext?nxd_id=58035&watch=1

http://everythinglubbock.com/fulltext?nxd_id=28492

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAUZKMmAuyc

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6888169&page=1

MS Office, including Excel programming and writing calculation functions.

Eight years experience in Medicaid with the Dept of Human Services, including Asst Program Manager.

Case Management with AIDS Resource Center.

Medical Experience with Charter Medical, Zimmer Orthopedics, and United Blood Services.

Management Experience with Peanut Corp, Rent A Center, as well as many other skills.

Thanks for your consideration,

L. Kenneth Kendrick

-Matt

You are correct, 5-digit PLU codes beginning with an ’8′ are for GMO produce, but labeling GMOs is optional so no food producers do it. The reason being that most Americans state they wouldn’t purchase GMOs if they were labelled.

The only way to be sure you are not eating GMO is to buy organic produce, which has a 5-digit PLU code beginning with a ’9′.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/plu-codes-do-not-indicate_b_473088.html

-Matt

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a registered pesticide with the EPA. Bt corn contains the toxin producing genes from Bacillus thuringiensis. Thus, Bt corn produces pesticides.

Here is a link to the General Fact Sheet on Bacillus thuringiensis from the NPTN:
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/BTgen.pdf

-Matt

“Because behind your back, they’ve succeeded in replacing 86% of US corn with their patented insecticide-producing “frankencorn”

The gm-corn doesn’t produce insecticides! The gm corn is bred with resistance to certain pests (cutworms, corn bore), therefore REDUCING or ELIMINATING the use of actual pesticides. I’m a farmer, and worked with REAL PESTICIDES. These things are poison-designed to kill all sorts of living pests. They are unhealthy for people, and the environment.

So, please realize that GM-products REDUCE the use of pesticides and insecticides!