EPA to Test for Glyphosate Residues

From the Volatility blog:

“The FDA is required by law to test and regulate food additives. As part of the product design and intended use of herbicide tolerant GMOs such as the Roundup Ready system, pesticide residues such as those of glyphosate suffuse the cells of the crops including any eventual food products. These are food additives according to any reasonable definition.

The same is true of the insecticidal endotoxins in Bt crops. The FDA has directly flouted the law in refusing to regulate these highly toxic additives or even to require their listing among the ingredients of food. One reason why the FDA has refused to test glyphosate residues is to help give it the pretext of ignorance. A surprisingly common excuse among regulators is to say in effect, “We can’t do anything, because we don’t have any information, because we refuse to test for that information (and reject it when others test for it and offer it to us).” Listen to what the likes of the FDA and EPA say and you’ll come across it frequently. So it is with glyphosate levels in food.

Harvard study confirms bees being killed by neonicotinoid bug sprays

From Arjun Walia, on Collective Evolution:

“The human race is really starting to feel the consequences of their actions. One area we are waking up to is the massive amount of pesticides we spray (especially in North America) on our food that has not only been linked to human disease, but a massive die off in the global bee population within the past few years.

A new study out of Harvard University, published in the June edition of the Bulletin of Insectology puts the nail in the coffin, neonicotinoids are killing bees at an exponential rate, they are the direct cause of the phenomenon labeled as colony collapse disorder (CCD). Neonicotinoid’s are the world’s most widely used insecticides. (1)

From the early history of pesticides…

From the post “Sunrise in the Garden of Dreams”, on the “Puff the Mutant Dragon” chemistry blog: 

“Gerhard Schrader had been feeling sick for a while, but he didn’t realize how ill he was until he tried to drive home. There was something wrong with his eyes. He felt like he was going blind; he could hardly see the road, and it was becoming difficult and painful to breathe. It was a struggle for him to get home. When he finally reached the house, he peered into the mirror through his glasses, straining to see his own reflection. He discovered with surprise that the pupils of his eyes had shrunk to tiny pinpoints.

Chemist that he was, Schrader quickly guessed what had happened. Schrader worked at IG Farben, at that time in 1936 the world’s largest chemical company. He’d recently completed the initial synthesis of a new compound — a clear apple-scented liquid. Its sweet scent belied its real nature, however, for while he now knew the chemical’s vapor must be quite toxic, he didn’t yet realize how dangerous it was, or how close he’d come to an agonizing death.

Cardboard tomatoes from Florida

by Jim Romahn, on Agri007:

“I have just finished reading Tomatoland, by Barry Estabrook, and learned a great deal – most of it not very nice – about how Floridians grow most of the tomatoes we eat when local ones are not available.

Most of the book is about the workers who are exploited. Many are illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Central American countries and because they are afraid of being caught, they are open to exploitation. Some are literally slaves – bought and sold by “owners”, living in squalid conditions and never earning enough to get out of debt.

The tomatoes grow on sand, so all of the nutrients are supplied, mainly as chemical fertilizer. There is a hardpan layer below the sand which holds rainwater and irrigation water; if there’s too much, the fields are drained; if there’s not enough, they are irrigated.

Occupy activist raises questions at 2012 meeting of the Monsanto shareholders

From Anthony Gucciardi, on Natural Society.com:

“In an exciting act of grassroots resistance to Monsanto and their GMOs that are ravaging the planet, activist Adam Eidinger has infiltrated a Monsanto shareholder meeting and posted the video up on Youtube. Eidinger discusses the negative impact of GMO crops, Roundup, and other Monsanto creations on human health and the environment. As a result, a shocked Monsanto spokesman (identified as CEO Hugh Grant by Eidinger) does his best to brush off the concerns and assure the activist that the company — the same company that has been found to be running slave rings on their GMO crop fields — cares very much about the concerns of their shareholders.

Florida governor vetoes bill to help farm workers who are sick from pesticides

From Barry Estabrook on his “Politics of the Plate” blog:

“No wonder Tea Party activists love Florida Governor Rick Scott. To save a pittance on the state’s budget, the new governor, who has a personal net worth of more than $200 million, thanks in part to being president of a healthcare company that perpetrated the biggest medical fraud in United States’ history, vetoed a bill earlier this month that finally would have brought relief to 2,500 poverty-plagued African American farm laborers who, over the course of five decades, were poisoned on a daily basis by a witch’s brew of pesticides.

I met Linda Lee, one of the afflicted workers, last summer when she took me on a “pesticide tour” of the land near Lake Apopka, a few miles northeast of Orlando. Leaning on her cane in the scorching midday June sun, Lee, who is 57, matter-of-factly listed her medical conditions: diabetes, lupus, high blood pressure, emphysema, and arthritis. Her hip had to be replaced and her gall bladder removed. Her kidneys failed, so she had a transplant. She also had two corneal implants. Asked what caused her woes, she didn’t hesitate: As a farm laborer on the shores of Lake Apopka in the 1970s and 1980s, she was routinely exposed to agricultural chemicals as she worked in the fields. “Plenty of my old friends and neighbors got what I got, and a lot of them got stuff I don’t want to get,” she told me.

Colony Collapse Disorder and pesticides — British government investigates link between bee deaths and farm chemicals

From Beyond Pesticides.org

(Beyond Pesticides, April 1, 2011) A British government scientist on Wednesday announced that he has ordered a review of a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, to determine what effects they may have on bee and pollinator health. Neonicotinoids, such as clothianidin and imidacloprid, have come under intense scrutiny recently due to concerns regarding their toxicity to honeybees, which are essential for a secure food supply in their role as crop pollinators. This has led some to suggest that chemicals such as these could be contributors to honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Organic farming in poor countries could double food production within a decade

From a UK newspaper, The Guardian:

A move by farmers in developing countries to ecological agriculture, away from chemical fertilisers and pesticides, could double food production within a decade, a UN report says.

Insect-trapping plants in Kenya and ducks eating weeds in Bangladesh’s rice paddies are among examples of recommendations for feeding the world’s 7 million people, which the UN says will become about 9 billion by 2050.

“Agriculture is at a crossroads,” says the study by Olivier de Schutter, the UN special reporter on the right to food, in a drive to depress record food prices and avoid the costly oil-dependent model of industrial farming.

Senate bill S-510, Codex, and the choice between corporate food and earth food

From a guest post on Kimberly Hartke’s blog by Kimberly Usher:

Food monopolies are poisoning our Good Earth food by over-spraying pesticides, which contaminates our food, and our bodies. Pesticides can be absorbed through the skin. Encounters with pesticides, and their effects have oversight from people in government positions who have worked for the corporate food entities. The bottom line for corporate food is profit, and the bottom line for Good Earth food is health.

The facts are all there; the Good Earth food for health has more nutrition, while the Corporate food has none, or very little…this is why the Codex Alimentarius Treaty, with the WTO, is important to the corporate food groups…in the Codex Alimentarius Treaty, which will be ratified by Congress with the passing of the Food Safety Modernization Laws (S510, HR2749), the legal standard for the amount of nutrition in foods will go down, and the legal standard for poisons in our food go up…It is that simple.

Restauranteur in China finds vertical integration (growing their own food) is the only way to ensure quality

From David E. Gumpert’s The Complete Patient blog:

“Ever since Lejen Chen, a Chinese-American, opened her New-York-style diner, Mrs. Shanen’s, in Beijing seven years ago, the biggest challenge has been ensuring a clean safe supply of food.

By clean and safe, Chen isn’t talking necessarily about pathogen-free. She means free of the chemicals, pesticides, toxic sludge, and GMO products that have contaminated so much of the Chinese food supply, as epitomized by the scandal over melamine-tainted baby formula, along with other dairy products. She also means having access to “clean manure.” Too often, she says, “We’d find needles and asbestos from roofing” in chicken, pig, and cow manure purchased from neighboring livestock farms.