Poisoned Food And Industrial Farming

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The health of all living things is in jeopardy thanks to modern genetic engineering and modern farming methods. Also, pet food that is supposedly many different brands, are really all made at the same factory which evidently used poisoned food from China. And scientists prove that soft drinks are really bad for the health. The FDA finally issues an artifical suntanning warning but won't close down sun tan salons.

Bees are dying all over the world thanks to modern bee-keeping and farming methods.

From Der Spiegel: By Gunther Latsch

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

Is the mysterous decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany a result of GM crops?

Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."

The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

World trade has meant the swift spread of all diseases. I grew up mostly in Arizona and one could not bring across any of the state's borders any fruits or vegetables. They had to be turned over to inspectors. This was to prevent the spread of diseases and insects that might destroy the crops in the home state.

Free trade has eliminated this and now vermin and diseases freely pass about the planet. A general rule of thumb is, invading organisms flourish when they enter new ecosystems. The plants and animals living in ecosystems with a certain germ, for example, evolve defences. Namely, the weak die and the ones that are not fatally affected, flourish. But if this same germ travels to a new site, 90% of the host plants or animals will die very rapidly because they have not evolved a resistance to the new organisms.

This is why all wise countries control the movement of plants and animals. Humans already make the world dangerous for us all by spreading exotic diseases. In 1969, I picked up a really virulent virus from Vietnam because I gave mouth to mouth recussitation to a sick vet who just arrived in San Francisco. It nearly killed me.

Back to the bees: I keep bees and for years, I have been unhappy with the use of Round-up and other defoliants because they make my bees ill. In NY, the government is trying foolishly to eradicate certain invasive wild flowers---it is too late, of course---so they had been spraying them with Round-up and then my bees get sick.

Once an invasive species enters, it is often too late to do anything. Many wildflowers we think are natural are actually invaders, for example.

But the genetic engineered plants that produce anti-round-up chemicals are particularily deadly. First, this is poison for bees and bees love pollen: this is how they produce their queens, just for example. Secondly, the genetic code for this resistance to the weed killing chemicals ends up in the weed, thanks partially to bees, and they grow more and more resistant as time passes.

From the article:

Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings or the woes of beekeepers. Although apiarists have been given a chance to make their case -- for example in the run-up to the German cabinet's approval of a genetic engineering policy document by Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February -- their complaints are still largely ignored.

Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of media attention environmental organizations like Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.

Industrial farming has many bad side effects at nearly every level. I consider these farms to be Concentration Camps for Nature. These systems create genetic weaknesses and brutalize both wild nature and domestic plants and animals. On every level, it is unnatural and destructive. But it also makes for a much bigger profit margin that can be exploited by capitalists.

Like many profit ventures, it relies on milking the system today, to hell with tomorrow. The quarterly bottom line, not the long line of history, is the focal point. But Mother Nature has distant horizons.

The pet food poisoning flap gets worse as investigators track down the cause.

From ABC news: By DAVID KERLEY

March 23, 2007 — ABC News has learned that investigators have determined that a rodent-killing chemical is the toxin in the tainted pet food that has killed several animals.

A source close to the investigation tells ABC News that the rodenticide, which the source says is illegal to use in the United States, was on wheat that was imported from China and used by Menu Foods in nearly 100 brands of dog and cat food.

Aside from the acknowledgement that we really don't have food service competition, it is all one big corporate entity run by one group of people, we also see the downside to free trade and health issues. Namely, food is floating about the planet grown and treated in all sorts of interesting ways we can't see until we eat it and die. The recent peanut flap whereby several supposedly different brands of peanut butter all came from the same contaminated vat, clearly shows the hazards to humans is just as great.

People die because of this. And if mishandling food in one place can poison many, having huge factories grind out tons of food for millions without the government supervising it all, can mean vast poisoning episodes like the recent spinach case that killed so many.

Under the GOP, government oversite has been defunded and corporate entities protected just as Montsanto genetic engineering now has the green light to do their worst. Thanks to political bribery.

Coca Cola should be banned.

From Live Science: Robin Lloyd

Root beer could be the safest soft drink for your teeth, new research suggests, but many other popular diet and sugared sodas are nearly as corrosive to dental enamel as battery acid.

Prolonged exposure to soft drinks can lead to significant enamel loss, even though many people consider soft drinks to be harmless or just worry about their sugar content and the potential for putting on pounds, the study says.

The erosive potential of colas is 10 times that of fruit juices in just the first three minutes of drinking, a study last year showed. The latest research, published in Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) journal General Dentistry, reports that drinking any type of soft drink hurts teeth due to the citric acid and/or phosphoric acid in the beverages.

When I was a little girl in Texas back in 1955, I was given a bottle of coke to drink. I spat it out and said, 'What is this? Battery acid?' Heh. Actually, I just spat it out. I thought the boy who gave it to me was pulling my leg. But he wasn't. I can't drink that stuff because I am allergic to caffine but even so, it still tastes like battery acid.

It not only rots the teeth, it is made with corn syrup and this is very conductive towards creating obesity in bees, cows and humans. The misuse of this sugar is throughout our factory food system, if one reads labels on food boxes, it comes quite clear, just how much of this dangerous sweetner we injest.

The bottling industry is furious with this study and hotly denies they are responsible for the deterioration in human populations' health even though the amount of soft drinks consumed has skyrocketted compared to say, milk consumption. Not to mention my favorite drink, tea.

Then there is the health hazards of those cosmetic suicide suntanning machines that are proliferating across the country.

From the FDA:

Public health experts and medical professionals are continuing to warn people about the dangers of ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun, tanning beds, and sun lamps. Two types of ultraviolet radiation are Ultra violet A (UVA) and Ultraviolet B (UVB). UVB has long been associated with sunburn while UVA has been recognized as a deeper penetrating radiation.

Although it's been known for some time that too much UV radiation can be harmful, new information may now make these warnings even more important. Some scientists have suggested recently that there may be an association between UVA radiation and malignant melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer.

My previous husband was diagnosed with melanoma when he was still in his twenties. He is one of the first survivors of that dreadful disease, thanks to modern medical technologies. But it was in his eye, not his skin, thank goodness.

In the skin, it rapidly spreads and then kills the victim. Even with modern technology, it still shortens the life. Instead of just warning people, they are killing themselves when they use these machines, the FDA should be outlawing these parlors.

I regularily warn heavy smokers, they are shortening their lives. This doesn't work until the Grim Reaper stands right over them. Then they wish they didn't fall for the addiction. But it is too late. Going to the funerals of people who died too young because they consumed products the government certifies as safe is very depressing.

We have sent millions of people to prison because illegal drugs are supposed to be bad for the health. So why aren't we sending the executives of all these corporations to prison? If the point is to protect the people, they deserve to serve their time. Or be executed like in China. I wonder if the guy who shipped that contaminated feed to the USA is going to be punished?

It all depends on political connections. Which is why our own system allows using the excuse of fund raising for an election to be the open door for all bribes.

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Comments

[CK]

I am trying to determine when a company in KANSAS for god's sake began importing wheat from CHINA.

[DaliWood]

GM crops are another example of neocon hypocrisy. One of their favorite tactics is to predict catastrophic consequences if we stop the war, allow gay marriage, address global warming, protect civil liberties, cut corporate welfare, or whatever other sensible plan they happen to hate at the moment. It even becomes absurd at times--if we recognize gay marriages, it will lead to people marrying their pets, for instance.

But when mega-agribusiness says, "We're planning to alter the fundamental building blocks of life through GM and irreversibly alter much of the ecosphere--oh, and while we're at it, we're going to poison the whole freaking planet with toxic chemicals" what do the neocons say? "Yeah OK whatever, where's my check?"

[Mark Abbott]

Back when I administered international research projects for the U.S. Dept of Agriculture, the varroa mite in bees was one of the animal diseases with the most frightening long-term implications, as central as bees are to crop pollination. But could we get much $$ support for getting a major research effort (with Brazil, which then was one of the worst-hit places) to counter this infestation?

Of course not ... but there was all kinds of dosh for research on animal diseases important to groups like the Natl. Cattlemen's Association and the Pork Producers Council. USDA isn't nicknamed the Dept. of Agri-bidniss for nothin'.

Also, the fact that varroa was in wild bees, among them the so-called "killer bees" that were then moving through Central America from the vast forests of S. America (i.e. Brazil), made it oh so easy for the politicos planted throughout the bureacracy (to a degree unknown even under Nixon, and not to be exceeded until Bush43) to ridicule the necessary scientific work on varroa as part and parcel of a "killer bees conspiracy theory."

Ideology + money trumped good (or at least necessary) science under Reagan -- and does so even moreso today.

The only reason I hope there really is a Hell somewhere is to see that those criminals get a due comeuppance. Forever.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Thanks for the background, Mark.

Everyone here is correct--no surprise. Yes, the right wingers are hysterical about something spreading when it is free love or gay marriage or divorce (sort of) but when it comes to altering the planet in deadly ways, they think this is OK.

I suspect they are really aliens like in the scientologist theology.

[blues]

The Scientologists sue people constantly. I gave them a lot of hell over the Terri Schiavo fiasco. They owned the 'hospice' where her feeding tube was pulled out, and she was thus starved. They cannot cope with trans-humans, such as myself. And I am NOTDEADYET!

[blues]

I am now taking bets that this pollinator insect crisis (and it will be one whopper of a crisis if we loose most fruits and vegetables to it) is from genetically modified plants that are toxic to insects. The government must know the consequences involved, and if it were merely a natural disaster, the cause would be all over the news. I bet someone is now very busy covering their posterior!