Monsanto makers of the banned DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange

[gyroscope]

good to know Monsanto is now in control of our commercial agriculture, of which 80 to 90% is produced with their GMO products.


DDT - widely used as a pesticide in US commercial agriculture in the fifties and sixties until it was banned by the EPA in 1972.

PCBs - used in a variety of consumer and industrial products until it was banned by the US Congress in 1979.

Agent Orange - used in Vietnam war to defoliate forests, widely linked to cancer and birth defects in the local population as well as returning US veterans.

Dioxins- Monsanto begins compensating victims of dioxin exposure

GMO foods - In the EU food products containing more than 0.9% GMO content must be labelled. The US has no labeling requirements. Cultivation of GMOs have been banned in several EU countries including Germany, France and Austria.

In every case, Monsanto claimed each of the above substances were perfectly harmless and safe for human use and consumption, and pose no threat to the environment and wildlife. A position Monsanto have not changed to this day. Can they be trusted with anything they say about GMO when so many of their previous products have been banned?

[KT2000]

1. And Roundup

which research is showing it is not the harmless substance it was promoted to be.

No - Monsanto is not to be trusted. They have left their damage for the taxpayer to pay. They are responsible for health care costs they are not paying for. Big Whoop! They finally start paying for one product after half a century.

[gyroscope]

9. They were also fined $700M in 2003

$700 Million Settlement in Alabama PCB Lawsuit

Solutia Inc. and the Monsanto Company have agreed to pay $700 million to settle claims by more than 20,000 Anniston residents over PCB contamination, plaintiff's lawyers said today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/21/business/700-million-settlement-in-alabama-pcb-lawsuit.html
-----------------------------


I'm not sure why this company is still allowed to stay in business.

[enough]

2. Interesting how the public memory has been completely scrubbed on this issue.

Thank you for the post.

[gyroscope]

14. Media coverup

its easy to forget when the MSM fails to do its job.

[Wella]

3. But I thought there were studies saying GMOs are not harmful to humans

Am I missing something?

[gyroscope]

4. Let me guess

were these particular studies conducted by Monsanto?

[Wella]

5. I don't know

Quite frankly, I don't know enough about the issue to make any real statement on it. I was just under the impression from newspaper articles I have read through the years that GMOs have not been proven dangerous in any way.

[gyroscope]

6. What about DDT and Agent Orange?

ddt, agent orange, dioxins, pcbs, etc

do you think all these other Monsanto products are harmless as well?

[Wella]

7. Of course not. But they were not intended to be food.

It's not like Nutrasweet, which was intended to be a pesticide and ended up being an artificial sweetener. The GMO crops were not intended to be pesticides, only vulnerable to a certain pesticide.

[gyroscope]

8. DDT was used widely on agriculture

in the 50s and 60s, so it was pretty hard not to ingest it if you were growing up back then.

And Monsanto's current signature product Roundup is an actual chemical insecticide that is genetically engineered into corn DNA, so it is certainly meant to be consumed by humans. Not just sprayed onto the crops but artificially engineered into its DNA.

[Wella]

10. DDT was a pesticide, and all pesticides end up being ingested in some way. But GMOs

are not the pesticide; they are engineered to react to the pesticide. What you're saying is that the genetic modification itself is the addition of a pesticide, which is not the case. Let's take corn, which is mostly GMO these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food

Corn used for food has been genetically modified to be resistant to various herbicides and to express a protein from Bacillus thuringiensis that kills certain insects.[30] About 90% of the corn grown in the US has been genetically modified.[31]

The key here would be "genetically modified ....to express a protein from Bacillus thuringiensis that kills certain insects." Bacillus thuringiensis is an actual bacteria used as a pesticide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis

Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a Gram-positive, soil-dwelling bacterium, commonly used as a biological pesticide. B. thuringiensis also occurs naturally in the gut of caterpillars of various types of moths and butterflies, as well on leaf surfaces, aquatic environments, animal feces, insect-rich environments, and flour mills and grain-storage facilities.[1][2]

During sporulation, many Bt strains produce crystal proteins (proteinaceous inclusions), called ?-endotoxins, that have insecticidal action. This has led to their use as insecticides, and more recently to genetically modified crops using Bt genes. Many crystal-producing Bt strains, though, do not have insecticidal properties.[3]

So what the GMO corn does, if this is all correct, is express this crystal protein that comes from the original Bacillus to kill insects. If humans are ingesting anything from the GMO, it's the gene that produces this protein that is killing insects.

Now we can argue whether that is a bad thing or not, but it's not the same thing as ingesting a pesticide. The key question is "Is that gene damaging to humans?" I honestly don't know the answer to that, but that is the answer that is important.

[gyroscope]

11. That's right

the GMO supposedly makes the corn resistant to the Roundup herbicide. thank you for the correction.

but its still not safe, nor effective because the weeds have developed immunity to the Roundup. forcing farmers to spray even more Roundup, which further saturates the surrounding ground and water supplies with chemical wastes and degrading the environment. the wind blows the Roundup everywhere and wildlife such as honeybees come into contact with the Roundup and other chemicals used in the ag industry and they start to die off. (you may have heard of Colony Collapse Disorder).



Roundup resistant weeds pose environmental threat
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2010-06-21-roundup-weeds_N.htm

[U4ikLefty]

12. Pretty quick learning...hmmm.

at 6:52 PM "Quite frankly, I don't know enough about the issue to make any real statement on it. I was just under the impression from newspaper articles I have read through the years that GMOs have not been proven dangerous in any way."

at 7:39 PM (less than an hour later) you post a whole bunch of pro-Monsanto bullshit...with links & opinion.

How odd.

[Wella]

16. I googled it.

[Wella]

17. So basically, the genetic modification has a short shelf life

And that requires more pesticide which means more potential poisons in the food supply. That makes sense.

Also, yes, I have heard of dying bees, but didn't realize it was connected with Roundup. The last I had read--and this was a while ago--it was connected with some European chemical company, Swiss maybe? It's been awhile.

[gyroscope]

20. It's not just the bees

but all the trees and other plant life in the surrounding area are killed by the Roundup.

the Roundup is designed to kill not just the weeds but any natural plant life that hasn't been genetically modified to resist it. and the wind blows the roundup for miles around so rivers, lakes and forests, (and wildlife who consume these plants), that may not even be near the Roundup Ready farm may become contaminated by it. as well as other non-Roundup Ready farms in the area then become contaminated by it. because the herbicide is carried far and wide beyond where it was sprayed, by wind, river and rains.

its easy to see the potential environmental disaster it creates.

[Wella]

21. What you're describing is a major environmental disaster

Where does the EPA stand on this?

[gyroscope]

18. Is GMO harmful to humans?

The key question is "Is that gene damaging to humans?" I honestly don't know the answer to that, but that is the answer that is important.

Check this out. I think it may help answer your question.


Euronews: Shocking French GMO food study in lab rats

Euronews: Monsanto known to bribe (or attempt to bribe) politicians and scientists into suppressing their own GMO studies:

[Wella]

19. Thank you. That French study looks damning

I'd like to actually find the text of it and read it.

[MoonchildCA]

22. GMO means genetically modified organism.

It doesn't specify how the organism has been modified. It can be many different ways, some more harmful than others. Monsanto modifies their seeds to be Roundup Ready. Roundup is an extremely powerful herbicide. Roundup Ready seeds can be sprayed with an infinite amount of it without dying; therefore, even if the modification itself were not particularly dangerous (a fact I'm not convinced of), the fact that you are consuming a product that has been saturated in a dangerous herbicide, is in itself enough to be extremely concerned about.

One particular GMO corn, is also labeled as a pesticide. Should we really believe that corn, developed to kill pests which ingest it, will have no long-term effect on us? It's a pesticide!

I don't like GMOs for many reasons, politically, sustainibility, etc., but when it comes to safety, they are not all created equal.

[Cha]

13. Oh yeah, they're toxic corporate fuckers and I hate them.

[raven mad]

15. +1