March Against Monsanto

[Mike Henderson]

Not being allergic to any of those nuts, etc, and knowing people who are severely allergic, is it possible to have a reaction if something contained a hundredth of a percent of nut residue or oil?

People may or may not react to that low a level. The problem is liability. If you were a company, wouldn't you prefer to put the warning on your food just in case someone had a reaction? It would provide some protection to a suit.

And that's the problem with positive labeling. It's likely that every company would put the label on just to protect themselves, and by doing that, they remove the real information from the customers - as the earlier poster indicated about peanuts.

Much better would be labels that specified that a product was free of whatever you're worried about. For example, if a product would state that it did not contain nuts and had not been processed on equipment that also processed nuts. But it's highly unlikely that a company would put that on their product because of liability.

An example of a product which specified that it was free of something would be milk that specified it came from BST free cows.

Mike

[David Weaver]

Even then on the milk, they're relying on the farmer to make a pledge. Who knows what they actually do, but some of the dairies who supply most of their own milk are probably more honest about it than the average truck that collects from around the smaller places and says "yeah, sure, it's....uh....bst free".

When I was in elementary school, I recall someone having a reaction (or saying they did) from touching a ball that had peanut butter on it because another kid touched it. Other than that, I don't remember many kids having nut allergies back then, but I can name at least half a dozen now (and I'm not even a kid).

The pre-school my daughter goes to doesn't allow *any* kids to pack nuts or nut butters of any type in their lunches.

[Dave Sheldrake]

The pre-school my daughter goes to doesn't allow *any* kids to pack nuts or nut butters of any type in their lunches.

Same here David at my kids schools, I have an allergy to Water Melon, if I smell it I start throwing up and if I tried to eat it my mouth blisters and I go into shock pretty quickly

cheers

Dave

[Jake Helmboldt]

Citing Jon Entine is absurd. He is hardly unbiased. Affiliated with AEI and having had Monsanto as a client pretty much tells you that he is hardly impartial, and it belies the supposed mission of the GLP. His quote also belies that, for it shows that he is either disingenuous or stupid. Nobody (rational) has asserted that GMOs will suddenly make people ill; it is about the uncertainty of long-term impacts on human health. Just as BPA and other chemicals that are now known endocrine disruptors and similar health impacts from various products are being discovered after being assumed safe or beneficial, GMO foods are being questioned as the possible source of various health maladies. There has been a significant increase in a variety of auto-immune disorders and related maladies, and we should rightfully be suspicious of our food supply as the culprit.

Monsanto bought Searle which invented NutraSweet. In 1996 I drank a diet Coke (the only thing in the cooler after moving into our new home) and shortly after had adverse neurological effects. I was able to single out aspartame (and reproduce the effects) as the source and have since avoided it. I found many friends that had similar issues, but when I contacted Monsanto I got the corporate propaganda; a tiny percentage of people have adverse effects, it's been tested, yada yada. So I must be surrounded by a disproportionate number of this tiny affected class. I began having other issues with my thyroid a couple years later and discovered that a sports recovery product I was using had aspartame. I stopped using it, and never had any problems thereafter. Of course Monsanto and their shills deny the many claims online that aspartame is linked to thyroid issues.

I don't know if GMO is as bad as some people say, but as a consumer I want the right to know what I'm consuming and make an informed choice. The very fact that Monsanto won't even allow that speaks volumes.

[Stephen Musial]

Interestingly I just looked at my LinkedIn profile and I had a visit from an attorney at Dow Agribusiness. Things that make you go hmmmm...

[Greg Peterson]

BPA did have a regulated limited. The problem is that the accumulative affect of BPA was never regulated. A single dose of BPA is not harmful. Steady exposure/consumption over many years is another matter all together.

In 1939, Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller discovered that DDT was an effective insecticide. It was used during WWII to control malaria and typhus. In 1948, Müller received the Nobel Peace Prize for his discovery of DDT as a contact poison on several arthropods. By 1962, there were concerns that DDT may be harmful. It took another 10 years to ban its use in agriculture. DDT was in use for 33 years, all the while its effectiveness was diminishing.

There is evidence that super weeds have invaded regions, that roundup loses its effectiveness on existing weeds, that it prevents fungus in the soil from breaking down nutrients for the plants and that crop yields are diminishing.

Granted, these studies and observations are not from Monsanto. They are from scientists either teaching in academia (one) or scientists that are involved in advising large scale growers or work for the USDA.

I'm not sure why one would be resistant to investigating whether or not GMO's and roundup are sustainable practices.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Citing Jon Entine is absurd. He is hardly unbiased.

Everyone is biased, even the people you agree with.

How in the world would you have expected Monsanto to take a call from you accusing them of causing your headache or whatever other neurological distress, what did you want them to do?

[Steve Rozmiarek]

BPA did have a regulated limited. The problem is that the accumulative affect of BPA was never regulated. A single dose of BPA is not harmful. Steady exposure/consumption over many years is another matter all together.

In 1939, Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller discovered that DDT was an effective insecticide. It was used during WWII to control malaria and typhus. In 1948, Müller received the Nobel Peace Prize for his discovery of DDT as a contact poison on several arthropods. By 1962, there were concerns that DDT may be harmful. It took another 10 years to ban its use in agriculture. DDT was in use for 33 years, all the while its effectiveness was diminishing.

There is evidence that super weeds have invaded regions, that roundup loses its effectiveness on existing weeds, that it prevents fungus in the soil from breaking down nutrients for the plants and that crop yields are diminishing.

Granted, these studies and observations are not from Monsanto. They are from scientists either teaching in academia (one) or scientists that are involved in advising large scale growers or work for the USDA.

I'm not sure why one would be resistant to investigating whether or not GMO's and roundup are sustainable practices.

Greg, that theory of yours about super weeds thriving on Roundup is still bogus. There are no giant mutant predatory ragweeds lurking in the darkest corners of your neighbors corn field, just waiting for an unsuspecting environmentalist to unleash untold allergic devastation on. Shockingly enough, farmers are pretty efficient at killing weeds, and this is a ridiculous theory. Some weeds, like marestail and kochia can be notoriously tough to kill, generally because of climatic or anatomical reasons. We don't want survivors in the fields, so we use two or three modes of actions to stop them, not just RR.

Your last sentence sums the insanity up. This has been researched to the limits of absurdity, but because the conclusions don't match people with your bias' goals, you ask for more research but on some ephemeral "sustainable" scale. At some point, hopefully for you, someone will find some tiny little "problem" to use as ammunition to attempt to destroy this technology. It may take the endangered species declaration of Asian carp, who develop a slight headache when they swim in pure roundup to start the lawsuit, but inevitably the assault on Monsanto will continue. Why? Money and power. Just like al gore became rich off scaring people to following him, others seek to follow his template. They need willful participants to follow them and fill the busses to the march against the "great evils" of our time, while they run the puppet strings of their masses minds to their own objectives. Like Ken said many posts ago, follow the money. You are being used.

I'm not going to convince you or anyone else hell bent of finding a conspiracy theory to worry about today, but when perhaps when a very bored rational person reads all the way through this thread, he will see that there is another side to consider to the debate.

[Greg Peterson]

Greg, that theory of yours about super weeds thriving on Roundup is still bogus. There are no giant mutant predatory ragweeds lurking in the darkest corners of your neighbors corn field, just waiting for an unsuspecting environmentalist to unleash untold allergic devastation on. Shockingly enough, farmers are pretty efficient at killing weeds, and this is a ridiculous theory. Some weeds, like marestail and kochia can be notoriously tough to kill, generally because of climatic or anatomical reasons. We don't want survivors in the fields, so we use two or three modes of actions to stop them, not just RR.

Your last sentence sums the insanity up. This has been researched to the limits of absurdity, but because the conclusions don't match people with your bias' goals, you ask for more research but on some ephemeral "sustainable" scale. At some point, hopefully for you, someone will find some tiny little "problem" to use as ammunition to attempt to destroy this technology. It may take the endangered species declaration of Asian carp, who develop a slight headache when they swim in pure roundup to start the lawsuit, but inevitably the assault on Monsanto will continue. Why? Money and power. Just like al gore became rich off scaring people to following him, others seek to follow his template. They need willful participants to follow them and fill the busses to the march against the "great evils" of our time, while they run the puppet strings of their masses minds to their own objectives. Like Ken said many posts ago, follow the money. You are being used.

I'm not going to convince you or anyone else hell bent of finding a conspiracy theory to worry about today, but when perhaps when a very bored rational person reads all the way through this thread, he will see that there is another side to consider to the debate.

Super weeds is not a theory, dispite your attempt to mischaracterize them as some 1950's era mutant. The entirety of your post is disrespectful and purposely distorted. I have provided links to in previous posts on this thread. If you want to summarily dismiss them and the studies and statements by experts on the subject as biased, conspiracy theories, then so be it, I can not help you.

Once again, for your convenience, here is link for the super weeds, of course it's from 2010, and the farmer has only been practicing no till soybean farming for the previous 15 years.

And another.

Here's one from an investors point of view. Quote: Benbrook described a vicious cycle, saying "resistant weeds have become a major problem for many farmers reliant on genetically engineered crops, and are now driving up the volume of herbicide needed each year by about 25 percent. Many experts in the US are projecting that the approval of new multiple herbicide tolerant crops will lead to at least a 50 percent increase to the average application of herbicide," he added.

You call this sustainable? Sounds like a problem to me.

[Raymond Fries]

There have been reports of roundup showing up in urine and breast milk. More studies are planned for this year but at the end of this article it says that last year the EPA raised the levels or roundup allowed in our food because it was tested it and it is safe. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0E72IH20140527

The article says that roundup is sprayed on most of the corn, soybeans, sugar beets, canola, and other crops in this country, That is contrary to an earlier post stating that roundup is only used on crops to feed animals.

[David Weaver]

Super weeds is not a theory, dispite your attempt to mischaracterize them as some 1950's era mutant. The entirety of your post is disrespectful and purposely distorted. I have provided links to in previous posts on this thread. If you want to summarily dismiss them and the studies and statements by experts on the subject as biased, conspiracy theories, then so be it, I can not help you.

Once again, for your convenience, here is link for the super weeds, of course it's from 2010, and the farmer has only been practicing no till soybean farming for the previous 15 years.

And another.

Here's one from an investors point of view. Quote: Benbrook described a vicious cycle, saying "resistant weeds have become a major problem for many farmers reliant on genetically engineered crops, and are now driving up the volume of herbicide needed each year by about 25 percent. Many experts in the US are projecting that the approval of new multiple herbicide tolerant crops will lead to at least a 50 percent increase to the average application of herbicide," he added.

You call this sustainable? Sounds like a problem to me.

Those weeds are ideal from a patent prospect. You've noticed that monsanto is pushing combination herbicides now instead of glyphosate, right? It's to their benefit that generics and nonpatent stuff will be behind glyphosate by itself because other folks will be able to freely put the modification in, but probably not the combinations that monsanto will be marketing. They have a distribution system and a market/customers set up, too, so if a generic group came up with a combination, it would have to be an awful lot better than monsanto's offering.

[David Weaver]

Everyone is biased, even the people you agree with.

How in the world would you have expected Monsanto to take a call from you accusing them of causing your headache or whatever other neurological distress, what did you want them to do?

I'm sure they're aware of a percentage of people having headaches after drinking aspartame. They increase my complex migraine incidence to the point that I had to stop drinking any diet sodas, and I know at least two other people, one of which gets a migraine with with 100% frequency after drinking diet soda or consuming aspartame-containing food, and none when not.

They'll be uninterested in entertaining the reality of that while most of the market appears to be unaffected by it, though.

[Pat Barry]

Super weeds is not a theory, dispite your attempt to mischaracterize them as some 1950's era mutant. The entirety of your post is disrespectful and purposely distorted. I have provided links to in previous posts on this thread. If you want to summarily dismiss them and the studies and statements by experts on the subject as biased, conspiracy theories, then so be it, I can not help you.

Once again, for your convenience, here is link for the super weeds, of course it's from 2010, and the farmer has only been practicing no till soybean farming for the previous 15 years.

And another.

Here's one from an investors point of view. Quote: Benbrook described a vicious cycle, saying "resistant weeds have become a major problem for many farmers reliant on genetically engineered crops, and are now driving up the volume of herbicide needed each year by about 25 percent. Many experts in the US are projecting that the approval of new multiple herbicide tolerant crops will lead to at least a 50 percent increase to the average application of herbicide," he added.

You call this sustainable? Sounds like a problem to me.

To me the concerns are these: Genetically modifed produce such as RR will be ingested by humans as either the primary or secondary consumer. There will be NO WAY of determining the long term result of that science experiment until many generations have come and gone.

Knowing our track record, I would suppose that we are doing more long term harm than good.

This comes at a reduced product cost now which we are all grateful for, and a huge monetary reward for companies such as Monsanto and even for the farmers themselves, but secretly we all are only hoping this pans out in our favor in the long run. Given our less than stellar history - not knowing now what we really need to know - I think its a bad gamble. The fact that we are already seeing things such as plant mutation (survival of the fittest weeds for example) can only make you think that plants are just much more sensitive to the RR product than are humans, and since they have already reacted, how long before the cows, pigs, and ultimately humans do and what will those changes be. Its very scary. I don't like the game we are playing. Its really irresponsible.

[Dave Sheldrake]

I'm sure they're aware of a percentage of people having headaches after drinking aspartame. They increase my complex migraine incidence to the point that I had to stop drinking any diet sodas, and I know at least two other people, one of which gets a migraine with with 100% frequency after drinking diet soda or consuming aspartame-containing food, and none when not.

They'll be uninterested in entertaining the reality of that while most of the market appears to be unaffected by it, though.

Post Hoc Ergo Procter Hoc David unfortunately, The only way to get definitive results is by double blind testing in a lab environment, outside of that there are just too many variables and possible other causes.

cheers

Dave

[David Weaver]

Yes, and the sample not only has to be relatively large, but the results statistically significant. If you get enough light headed individuals in a sample where the return of positive consistent individuals is relatively small, they can blow them right out of the study. I would assume that a lot of people who think they get headaches from aspartame (but seem to get them a lot) would blow the study, but there are likely some who actually do get headaches (just as there are people who get headaches from perfectly natural food triggers - like certain cheeses).

MSG and aspartame do appear to have enough likelihood such that they are mentioned by mayo clinic in a list of food triggers, with the word "may", which is also provided for alcohol. You're just as aware as I am, I'm sure of what the connotation of the word "does" is vs "may".

Personally, aspartame in a significant dose causes me to have a sensation like both eyes won't work together at the same time on the same thing, which leads to a migraine. MSG, however, does not cause me to have any issues. I like the taste of both of them!

I'd bet the ratio of the number of people who get headaches and think they're from aspartame vs. the number of people who get headaches that are from aspartame is pretty high, though, making study difficult, and you'd also have to choose a level of use in such a study that would be enough to trigger results. Certainly like anything else, there's a lethal dose, and there's probably a dose that would cause nothing.

I've got enough from personal trials and documentation of food to avoid aspartame and eat MSG (which makes mediocre food taste so much better). I always hesitate when someone has one or two events and picks out one thing out of 500 variables and says "I just know that it was ___".

At any rate, from a business standpoint, if I'm a monsanto phone rep, I'd expect to be trained that it's only a small percentage of the population, they're lost as customers already and you can just ignore them.