Video of Dr. Thierry Vrain in Surrey; India’s own Monsanto Protection Act; GMO alfalfa comes to Canadian fields

Edited and compiled  by Raoul Bedi, BASc (www.biofield.ca ). This is a sampling of some important articles and campaigns in the world of anti-GMO activism during the month of June 2013. 

1. Dr. Thierry Vrain in Surrey, BC  – A Critique of GE Agriculture

By Tony Mitra

Dr. Thierry Vrain

Dr. Thierry Vrain visited Surrey, BC on June 5 to address the general public at the Northwood United Church. He made an hour long speech accompanied by  a powerpoint presentation projected on a large screen behind him. Thierry, in his soft and patient manner, untangles the long story of how  GMOs came to interest farmers on the promise of lowering labour for weed and pest control efforts, by replacing it with easily available and applicable pesticides, and also by using specialized genetically engineered crops that are either tolerant to specific pesticide/herbicides or produce toxins themselves, that would kill the pests without the need for additional pesticide. That, initially, worked like magic, and saved a lot of labour for the farmers. But, the gain proved to be short lived, while the damage and danger, turned out to be rather ominous for the health of  people as well as the sustainability of a biologically diverse ecology.

Food Revolution Summit — Vandana Shiva interviewed by John Robbins

By Raoul Bedi, BASc 

The past few months has seen a massive shift in the “tectonic plates” of the food rights and food security movement not only in Canada but in the larger North American context. Some might say that it all began with the narrow defeat (voting irregularities aside) of the Proposition 37 “Right to GMO Labeling” referendum in California on November 6, 2012.

Vandana Shiva lecturing at the University of Victoria in BC. Click image to view source video.

From the Non-GMO Project website we can see that, despite the California setback, the ‘Right to Know’ effort has, instead, gained significant momentum. Through marches, rallies, petitions, social media, and targeted outreach campaigns, consumers are demanding that the government respect their right to know what’s in their food by labeling GMOs.

Seed Saving vs Seed Slavery

Via Ultraculture blog:

“Physicist and Activist Dr. Vandana Shiva Calls for Seed Freedom

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist and environmental activist who has been incredibly outspoken against Monsanto and its efforts to patent seeds and create “killer seeds” which destroy competing strains that it has no control over, thereby creating a monopoly on what can be grown on Earth. In the above video, she makes the chilling point that these policies are not merely enslaving humans, as was previously fashionable, but all life on Earth.

“Right 2 Know” march — citizens are demanding GMO foods be labeled now

From Raoul Bedi:

Together Let’s Demand GMO Labeling Now! 

Most Americans agree we have a right to know what’s in our food, and a right to choose safe, healthy food for our families and ourselves.  And yet 80% of the packaged foods in America contain Genetically Engineered ingredients that have not been proven safe, and are not labeled!

Time to end the war against the earth

From Vandana Shiva, an edited version of her talk last night at the Sydney Opera House, as published on TheAge.com.au. Thanks to Raoul Bedi for bringing this story to our attention:

Vandana Shiva, Indian food activist, from " Sydney Peace Prize". Click for source.

When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits – limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.

Resisting the corporate theft of seeds

From Vandana Shiva in The Nation:

President Barack Obama's administration has been investigating monopoly concentration in the seed business for over two years. But when the President spoke on the steps of the Seed Savers Exchange, an independent seed company, he didn't mention that inquiry once. Nor did he talk about business concentration in other areas of agriculture, despite hearings held by his Department of Justice all over rural America. Photo: The White House. The photo relates to the second story in this post.

“We are in a food emergency. Speculation and diversion of food to biofuel has contributed to an uncontrolled price rise, adding more to the billion already denied their right to food. Industrial agriculture is pushing species to extinction through the use of toxic chemicals that kill our bees and butterflies, our earthworms and soil organisms that create soil fertility. Plant and animal varieties are disappearing as monocultures displace biodiversity. Industrial, globalized agriculture is responsible for 40 percent of greenhouse gases, which then destabilize agriculture by causing climate chaos, creating new threats to food security.

Lies, damned lies, and “Food Safety”

M. Gray, from Op Ed News.com:

“Risk Assessment in the hands of centralized corruptible agencies is no protection for consumers as the disease and health epidemic in the U.S. linked to over processed, industrial foods shows. Even while the U.S. is at the epicenter of the food related public health crises, the U.S. government is trying to export its Food laws which deregulate the industry and over regulate ordinary citizens and small enterprise. This deregulation of the big and toxic and over regulation of the small and ecological is at the core of Food Fascism …” — Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva doesn’t mince words. Food safety is food fascism. Goebbels is equally straightforward.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

What’s the truth?