Did my subtly ironic humor slip by you, Donna? (review comment about wetlands)
As for allergies, e.g. rhinitis, I acquired them decades before GMO crops came into the landscape.
For the record: we buy local and organic whenever possible, e.g. Paul's Grains for corn meal, flours, pancake mix, etc., free range organic lamb and bison and chicken (Daley's lamb of New Hartford, Bob Jackson's bison of Lucas County, Groothuis's chicken of Bremer County); we don't do much pork or beef. Fish: wild-caught Alaskan salmon & halibut. Organic vegetables--those that we don't grow ourselves--come from local producers, East View Orchard of rural Lawler, and New Melleray Abbey. Milk & dairy products--Hansen's family dairy of Hudson, IA. Fruits--organic. Beer & wine... hard to say what those French and California folk are up to, but no apologies, regardless. We dry, vacuum-pack and freeze lots of fruits & veggies in season. I bake our bread. I mow our lawn with a reel-type push mower and have for about 20 years. We don't do lawn chemicals. We pull weeds and trim shrubbery by hand. In winter, we clear our driveway and walks with shovels. We do much of our in-town commuting on bicycles (in good weather my wife rides a 14-mile roundrtip to work). We wash our laundry in a high-efficiency machine and line-dry it outside in good weather, indoors in bad weather. Our home heating & cooling is via heat pump; we have a programmable thermostat, set at 62 in winter and 75 in summer. I have a personal predilection for writing with fountain pens, vintage Parkers mostly, with an average age of 58 years. And, per your missives of awhile back, the unleaded gas in our two cars (2000 Chevy avg mpg 31 and 1997 Subaru avg mpg 21) does not contain ethanol. What else... there's a ceiling fan in every room of our house except the 2 bathrooms. All but 4 lightbulbs are CFLs.
There. I'm feeling pretty righteous again. I'll watch the oblique humor from now on. :--)
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Donna Buell
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
2 headed frogs or food allergies? Have your allergies increased since you've been eating so much GMO corn and soy?
Donna
On Jul 20, 2011, at 4:16 PM, William Witt wrote:
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 9:51 PM, Thomas Mathews
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Iowa is very likely the most Roundup/glyphosate drenched place on earth.--Tom
So why don't we find more 2-headed, 5-legged frogs? Oh, yeah, we drained all the wetlands.
In a message dated 7/19/2011 6:30:08 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
NOTE: The following is a merger of two almost identical articles that appeared in the German press, and which have been translated into English.
The Earth Open Source report mentioned in the articles is "Roundup and birth defects – is the public being kept in the dark?"
http://scr.bi/RRbirthdef
This report showed that industry (including Monsanto) knew from its own studies conducted in the 1980s that glyphosate caused birth defects in lab animals at high doses; from the 1990s, industry knew that these effects also occurred at lower and mid doses.
The German government, the "rapporteur" member state for glyphosate, knew from 1998 from its own reading of these same industry studies. Germany explained away the birth defects by redefining them as a "developmental variation[s]" - along with other 'creative' reasoning.
The EU Commission knew from 2002, when it approved glyphosate, incorrectly claiming that the birth defects only occurred at high doses that poisoned the mothers. This is the 9-year-old document referred to so blithely by the German government official in the article below--who suggests that it fully informs the public of the risks of glyphosate!
Only last year, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) told the Commission that there was "no evidence of teratogenicity" (ability to cause birth defects) for glyphosate. In making this claim, BVL was ignoring not only independent studies showing that glyphosate and Roundup cause birth defects, including at low realistic levels, but industry's own studies from as long ago as the 1980s.
In the light of all this, it's interesting to read BVL's defence, below.
---
---
Glyphosate: The Problematic Victory
By Stephan Bornecke
Frankfurter Rundschau
11 July 2011
The All-Round Killer
Berliner Zeitung
11 July 2011
For urls see footnotes below
BIOTECHNOLOGY – THE CULTIVATION OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED SOY POSES ALSO A THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTH, SAY SCIENTISTS. BY LICENSING ALLEGEDLY NON‐HAZARDOUS GRAINS FROM SOUTH AMERICA THE ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP WWF HAS COME UNDER CRITICISM.
Frankfurt a. M. – It is the most widely applied herbicide in the world and closely linked with genetic engineering in agriculture. But now glyphosate is suspected of posing a health risk to humans.
Known by the brand name Roundup, glyphosate began its conquest of the market back in 1974, when the US agribusiness giant first promoted it as a complete herbicide.
But it was the development of genetically engineered soybeans in 1996 that really ensured its victory. Since then, corn, canola, cotton, and sugar beets have been developed that are Roundup resistant. At this point, fully 83 per cent of genetically modified plants are resistant to this herbicide.
However, it seems that the product does not live up to its initial promise – that glyphosate would simplify farming, and even enhance environmental protection. More and more studies have shown that the herbicide, which will be up for re‐evaluation by the EU, negatively impacts wild plants, soil
biota, aquatic life forms, and even the plants it is designed to protect, for instance, by increasing the incidence of fungal attacks. And that’s not all. Other plants have also developed resistance to it, which means more spraying, not less.
Now new investigations have revealed another dimension to the problem. Apparently, glyphosate is more damaging to mammals and other vertebrates, including perhaps humans, than was previously assumed. And there’s more: such undesirable side effects have apparently been known to EU authorities and German regulatory authorities with EU responsibility since the end of the 1990s.
To cite one example, Argentine Professor Andrés Carrasco published a study in 2009 that substantiated the dangers of Roundup spray. He concluded that the herbicide caused dysplasia in frog and chicken embryos even at doses lower than levels commonly used in agriculture The consequences observed in animals are comparable to those found "in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy."
There must have been serious findings pointing in this direction early on, and they must have been known not only to the industry but to regulatory authorities as well. At least that is the claim of an international group of Earth Open Source researchers led by Michael Antoniou, a molecular geneticist teaching in London. The study, Roundup and birth defects – is the public being kept in the dark?[3], points to miscarriages and birth defects in new‐borns in Argentina and Paraguay whose parents live near fields of genetically modified soybeans. A study of regulatory approval documents also shows that German authorities knew about foot deformities in rats and rabbits. These consequences were also observed in some cases at dosage levels in soybeans that are approved for humans.
The report by the EU health commissioner in charge at the time downplayed possible embryo abnormalities, opining that such deformities would only ensue if the mothers had ingested a deadly dose of the herbicide.
In response to a question from the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), which is also the EU rapporteur, called the criticism "baseless", stating that no important information was withheld from the public. Andreas Tief, spokesperson for the BVL, added that Antoniou had relied on "a document that is available to the public, and has been for nine years now".
In light of the emerging awareness of the risk to the human reproductive system, Christoph Then, a Munich‐based scientist, is demanding completely new standards at the upcoming EU re‐approval proceedings for glyphosate that have been postponed for three years, to 2015. Many consumers are not aware that they are in fact the end consumers of genetically modified soybeans when they consume the meat of animals that have consumed them.
Copyright © 2011 Frankfurter Rundschau
Copyright © 2011 Berliner zeitung
1. The German original of this article was published on 11 July 2011 in two almost identical versions simultaneously in Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) and Berliner Zeitung (BZ), two daily broadsheet newspapers that are well known beyond the regional limits where they are published. The online source for FR is
http://bit.ly/glyph_FR
for BZ it is
http://bit.ly/glyph_BZ
2. Translation from the original article in German by Larass Translations, Ottawa; the two versions have been integrated.
3 Study downloadable from http://scr.bi/RRbirthdef
................................................................
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "GMWatch" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:25:25 -0700
Subject: GMW: Glyphosate: The all-round killer - German press articles
NOTE: The following is a merger of two almost identical articles that appeared in the German press, and which have been translated into English.
The Earth Open Source report mentioned in the articles is "Roundup and birth defects – is the public being kept in the dark?"
http://scr.bi/RRbirthdef
This report showed that industry (including Monsanto) knew from its own studies conducted in the 1980s that glyphosate caused birth defects in lab animals at high doses; from the 1990s, industry knew that these effects also occurred at lower and mid doses.
The German government, the "rapporteur" member state for glyphosate, knew from 1998 from its own reading of these same industry studies. Germany explained away the birth defects by redefining them as a "developmental variation[s]" - along with other 'creative' reasoning.
The EU Commission knew from 2002, when it approved glyphosate, incorrectly claiming that the birth defects only occurred at high doses that poisoned the mothers. This is the 9-year-old document referred to so blithely by the German government official in the article below--who suggests that it fully informs the public of the risks of glyphosate!
Only last year, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) told the Commission that there was "no evidence of teratogenicity" (ability to cause birth defects) for glyphosate. In making this claim, BVL was ignoring not only independent studies showing that glyphosate and Roundup cause birth defects, including at low realistic levels, but industry's own studies from as long ago as the 1980s.
In the light of all this, it's interesting to read BVL's defence, below.
---
---
Glyphosate: The Problematic Victory
By Stephan Bornecke
Frankfurter Rundschau
11 July 2011
The All-Round Killer
Berliner Zeitung
11 July 2011
For urls see footnotes below
BIOTECHNOLOGY – THE CULTIVATION OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED SOY POSES ALSO A THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTH, SAY SCIENTISTS. BY LICENSING ALLEGEDLY NON‐HAZARDOUS GRAINS FROM SOUTH AMERICA THE ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP WWF HAS COME UNDER CRITICISM.
Frankfurt a. M. – It is the most widely applied herbicide in the world and closely linked with genetic engineering in agriculture. But now glyphosate is suspected of posing a health risk to humans.
Known by the brand name Roundup, glyphosate began its conquest of the market back in 1974, when the US agribusiness giant first promoted it as a complete herbicide.
But it was the development of genetically engineered soybeans in 1996 that really ensured its victory. Since then, corn, canola, cotton, and sugar beets have been developed that are Roundup resistant. At this point, fully 83 per cent of genetically modified plants are resistant to this herbicide.
However, it seems that the product does not live up to its initial promise – that glyphosate would simplify farming, and even enhance environmental protection. More and more studies have shown that the herbicide, which will be up for re‐evaluation by the EU, negatively impacts wild plants, soil
biota, aquatic life forms, and even the plants it is designed to protect, for instance, by increasing the incidence of fungal attacks. And that’s not all. Other plants have also developed resistance to it, which means more spraying, not less.
Now new investigations have revealed another dimension to the problem. Apparently, glyphosate is more damaging to mammals and other vertebrates, including perhaps humans, than was previously assumed. And there’s more: such undesirable side effects have apparently been known to EU authorities and German regulatory authorities with EU responsibility since the end of the 1990s.
To cite one example, Argentine Professor Andrés Carrasco published a study in 2009 that substantiated the dangers of Roundup spray. He concluded that the herbicide caused dysplasia in frog and chicken embryos even at doses lower than levels commonly used in agriculture The consequences observed in animals are comparable to those found "in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy."
There must have been serious findings pointing in this direction early on, and they must have been known not only to the industry but to regulatory authorities as well. At least that is the claim of an international group of Earth Open Source researchers led by Michael Antoniou, a molecular geneticist teaching in London. The study, Roundup and birth defects – is the public being kept in the dark?[3], points to miscarriages and birth defects in new‐borns in Argentina and Paraguay whose parents live near fields of genetically modified soybeans. A study of regulatory approval documents also shows that German authorities knew about foot deformities in rats and rabbits. These consequences were also observed in some cases at dosage levels in soybeans that are approved for humans.
The report by the EU health commissioner in charge at the time downplayed possible embryo abnormalities, opining that such deformities would only ensue if the mothers had ingested a deadly dose of the herbicide.
In response to a question from the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), which is also the EU rapporteur, called the criticism "baseless", stating that no important information was withheld from the public. Andreas Tief, spokesperson for the BVL, added that Antoniou had relied on "a document that is available to the public, and has been for nine years now".
In light of the emerging awareness of the risk to the human reproductive system, Christoph Then, a Munich‐based scientist, is demanding completely new standards at the upcoming EU re‐approval proceedings for glyphosate that have been postponed for three years, to 2015. Many consumers are not aware that they are in fact the end consumers of genetically modified soybeans when they consume the meat of animals that have consumed them.
Copyright © 2011 Frankfurter Rundschau
Copyright © 2011 Berliner zeitung
1. The German original of this article was published on 11 July 2011 in two almost identical versions simultaneously in Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) and Berliner Zeitung (BZ), two daily broadsheet newspapers that are well known beyond the regional limits where they are published. The online source for FR is
http://bit.ly/glyph_FR
for BZ it is
http://bit.ly/glyph_BZ
2. Translation from the original article in German by Larass Translations, Ottawa; the two versions have been integrated.
3 Study downloadable from http://scr.bi/RRbirthdef
................................................................
Website: http://www.gmwatch.org
Profiles: http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/GM_Watch:_Portal
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GMWatch
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/GMWatch/276951472985?ref=nf
This email should only be sent to those who have asked to receive it.
To unsubscribe, contact [log in to unmask], specifying which list you wish to unsubscribe from.
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latest news and activities. Subscribe and view recent
editions at http://www.sierraclub.org/insider/
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