Category Archives: Glyphosate

Why don’t I like GMO in Canada?

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Here is another piece of information for all these new followers that I seem to gather like flotsam that get stuck at the mangrove roots in shifting tides.

The whole world, when discussing GMO, wants to see if it if safe or not. I believe it is unsafe, especially the chemicals and pesticides associated with it. However, that is not the main point from where I stand.

I am on a completely different platform. To me, this is an attack on Canadian democracy and independence, whereby all living creatures that are important, may one day cease to be Canadian product, or Gods creation, and instead belong to a patent holding foreign corporation.

This is also an assault on nature.

This – damn the science – is unacceptable to me. I want Canadian flora and fauna to remain Canadian and Gods creation and not stolen by any biotech thief from abroad.

And the mechanism being used to infiltrate into Canada, is not through scientists, but through our corrupt politicians.

Therefore, to me, this is a political issue. This cannot be solved by scientists, but by politicians. And corrupt politicians are not going to solve it for us. Hence, in a democratic system, it comes down to people. The buck stops at your and my feet to change the politician system, from the bottom up, in banning GMO at the Municipal level.

Why bottom up and why Municipal level ? because that, far as I can see, is the only level of Govt that is still within reach of ordinary people and where corporate funding has not yet become pervasive.

So, this is a politician problem, and needs a political solution. This will not happen by writing petitions to bogus politicians in Ottawa, but this can happen, and is happening in BC, at the ground level.

Think of it another way. In your own home, do you need to prove that Roundup is had for health in order to decide not to use it? No, you do not need to prove any such thing. Why not? Because you are living in a free country and it is your right to decide if you will or will not use GM food or pesticide, without any need to prove anything to anybody.

Likewise, a Municipality is an extension of your home, and includes your community. If the community does not like GMO and does not trust RoundUP, it can ban it without any need to prove anything to anybody. That is the meaning, and essence, of democracy & freedom.

Municipalities cannot be sued for banning it, per trade agreements, because Municipalities did not sign those agreements. Higher Govts did, and it is higher Govts to face the music for agreeing to trade deals that attempt to subvert citizen rights.

Now, why did I bother writing all this here ? To inform all of you pro-GMO nitwits that asking me to enter the “peer-reviewed” science of GMO safety is a complete waste of time. My freedom and that of my country is under attack. I don’t care too hoots about your peer-reviewed shit.

By the way, I do consider you pro-GMO guys nitwits, which is far better than considering you as collaborators to a foreign occupying force, or agents of fascism – I trust you’ll agree to that.

So, all you GM nitwits – find another place to go and jump up and down. I am totally uninterested in your opinion or behaviour.

Comprende ?

Above is the beginning of my new blog.
I invite you good people to write to me why you do not like GMO in Canada (or USA, or India, or Russia or elsewhere etc) and I may add those in the same blog. I shall also be asking friends, scientists and activists from around the globe to consider adding their perspective. 

Perhaps someone will agree to read all this into an audio podcast. Either way – this is an attack on our freedom and our eco-system. It is for us, and not those biotech scientists, to grab the issue by the scruff of neck and toss it off our land. Join me in the next freedom struggle, my friends, if you will.

Meanwhile here is a preview of the next blog headline : Deconstructing Controlled Opposition.

Moms Across America, USA
Zen Honeycutt, Founder

Moms Across America completely supports any country’s right not to be bullied by a few American chemical companies into feeding billions of their people GMO foreign proteins and toxic chemicals such as Glyphosate, 2,4-D, Atrazine and Dicamba.
American moms see their kids get better from ailments such as autism, allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases and more when we avoid GMOs and related pesticides. We urge parents, politicians and policy makers of all countries to protect your children, ban GMOs, Glyphosate and related toxic chemicals. Have faith in your farmer’s abilities to ingeniously farm as has been done for thousands of years, without toxic chemicals.
Protect your children and future generations now.

From Grace Joubarne
East coast, Canada

(a) the UN Agenda 21 and the Sustainability Development Agendas were signed off on by the Mayors of most municipalities in Canada and the USA since 1992 and that is why we are having the problems we are having now.  The Mayors signed treaties agreeing to meet UN demands and goals.  This is the root of the destabilization of Canada’s economy. It is part of the One World Order governance system and is designed to enforce changes at the local level and upwards. For more info look up Tom DeWeese Report for starters…excellent speaker and I follow his well researched newsletters.
(b) Harper is engaged in unprecedented high treason.  I will forward you the details of a very important lecture on this that is held tomorrow night (Nov 26th) in Ottawa.  I will definitely be there.  Former Deputy Prime Minister under Paul Martin, Paul Hellyer has called what Harper has done and will do when he secretly signs the CETA agreement ‘high treason’ that cannot be denied.  He will be the keynote speaker.

 Fran Murrell
MADGE – Australia

” I totally agree that we have the right to decide whether we want to use or eat a technology or not. Food is fundamental to our health and so to be told that we ought to eat experimental food because some obscure body has decided it is safe is oppressive. It is up to us to decide what we feed our families. When corporate profit overshadows science and transparency, as has happened with GM, then we have the right to be suspicious. When politics sides with corporations to deny us labelling or proper regulation we should resist. No one is coming to save us or our food, the only way we can do this is by organising from the ground up and claiming our democratic rights.”

Aruna Rodrigues
Challenging Govt of India at Supreme Court for introducing GMO

GMOs are a laboratory technology, can only made in a lab.  and  are  therefore, un-natural to the evolutionary process of billions of years. This is a technology that is also irreversible and irremediable  once introduced. This single aspect changes the dynamics of this technology and the way with which it must therefore, be considered and quite literally handled.  

The question of whether or not to accept GMO crops in food and feed should  and must ultimately be a societal decision shorn of politics (in an ideal world). At the very least, this should be the sterling effort and to this end, the role of democratic institutions is to foster this process. It will  encompass many aspects of life and living, ethics and science. Science is and should be an important input to this process, but is not the prime mover because it does not inform the other intellectual, religious/spiritual and cultural aspects of thousands of years of civilisation, and man’s interaction with the environment in which he lives. It must also be understood that science can only ‘stand’ if it is allowed to change its mind when new facts come to light. On the other hand, the biotech Industry, a stake-holder with a conflict of interest so severe, must be regarded as an undoubted IMPOSTER to this process. It may not have an input,  except to a country’s regulator for independent and rigorous appraisal and consideration of the technology. Unfortunately, this is precisely where  matters have gone seriously awry. Regulators are mired in very grave conflicts of interest in virtually all countries where these crops have been approved. The line between the regulator and  regulated has been effectively obliterated. It bears repeating that unfortunately, this is a  process encouraged by the USA where GMOs were first commercialised  about 20 years ago, by-passing sound science and rigour in regulation to foster the biotech Industry, as official policy.    

The democratic process in the matter of GMOs has simply broken down, hijacked  instead by money-power, politics and corruption, a sinister cocktail likely to be ‘deadly’ for the future of countries like India.  It is difficult to know how these matters may be remedied and resolved; but it is clear that this is a task that civil society must undertake, to enable and promote an environment where sense and sensibility may prevail in formal governance and the precautionary principle be allowed to take its rightful place in the regulation of GMOs.

Evaggelos Vallianatos
Ex EPA Scientist and author of “Poison Spring”

I support your position on GMOs. 
The genetic engineering of crops started in the mid-1990s. This project, like the giant industrialization of farming, has been political in nature. Science is used like a lipstick to instill confidence in something that deserves none. In my book, “Poison Spring” (Bloomsbury Press, 2014), I document the unreliability of presumed “safety” claims that accompany pesticides. In this case, industry influence nullifies both science and regulation. So pesticides are dangerous. But pesticides have been the most profitable part of the chemical industry — earning more than $ 40 billion per year. In fact, the GM crops were constructed primarily to extend the life of the best selling pesticides.
For these reasons, both pesticides and GMOs must be phased out because they harm both human health and the health of the natural world. In addition, the owners of these technologies are threatening out democracy. They flood the political system with corruption and money. They are pushing small farmers out of agriculture, promoting large farmers and industries. 
You are right in trying to ban GMOs at the municipal level of government. I congratulate you for your determination to work for the public good.
Evaggelos Vallianatos, Ph.D. 

Stephanie Seneff
Senior Research Scientist
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

I agree with you that it has to happen bottom up.  However, apparently, in parts of the US, there has already been sneaky legislature passed to prevent municipalities from banning Roundup.  I gave a talk in Wellesley to the League of Woman Voters, and the Wellesley leader of that group decided to investigate the idea of banning Roundup use in public spaces in Wellesley.  She looked into it, and found that there was already a state law on the books that prevented municipal levels from issuing such a ban. I was shocked to find that out.

In Hawaii, however, this is working superbly well.  All the counties except the big one (which is Oahu and Honolulu and most of the population) have successfully passed various laws restricting use of GMOs and/or pesticides.

Stephanie

Gretchen Zwickert, Northeast Pennsylvania.
Food activist, against the use of glyphosate.

I totally support your stance on GMOs. It is a political problem. Awhile back I wrote for a local newspaper here in the Poconos. I would attend the local township meetings and report what was discussed. I was disappointed to see the lack of turnout by the community. It is sad that the inaction of the communities shows the politicians how much citizens are concerned about local government and the decisions that are made for the community. It all starts at the local level, whether it is in Canada or USA. People need to show up, speak out, and not accept poisons in our foods, soil, water, on our earth!

Anthony Samsel
Research Scientist / Consultant
Samsel Environmental and Public Health Services
Dr. Samsel is the principle investigator of the Glyphosate and Modern Disease papers, written with  co-author Dr. Stephanie Seneff.

Hi Tony,

This is a brief update on my current work…
Today, the vast majority of industrial agriculture is a two part system which consists of the use of genetically engineered (GE) or genetically modified (GM) plants and chemical herbicides.  Some of these GM plants contain the ability to manufacture insecticidal toxins and may also be resistant to the application of chemical herbicides.   My previous work focused on the biochemical effects of the herbicide glyphosate on our biology, as it is the most widely used herbicide on GM crops.  
I’m now working on the other side of the industrial agriculture equation, an extensive field experiment with laboratory analysis of 44 varieties of corn, 33 of which are GM patented varieties and four of these represent an isogenic line.  These GM varieties contain the major genetically engineered event traits now available from Monsanto, Dow, Dupont and Syngenta.  These are all grown by commercial farmers in the USA and many countries around the world.  
 
All of the varieties for these experiments were grown in the same field, under the same conditions and with no added fertilizers or micronutrients.  I’ve done a mineral analysis of the soil from the root zone of all of the corn varieties, to determine minerals available to the plants for assimilation and then quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed the plants themselves for all mineral, fatty acid and vitamin content.  
I’m examining how the stacked GM traits of the gene cassettes, which are installed in these corn varieties, influence the uptake of minerals and how the plants then express the fatty acids and vitamin content.  These results are being compared to the results of non-GM and ancient corn varieties which make up the balance of the 44 varieties.  I’m also looking at how glyphosate influences all of these parameters by spraying half of each variety with glyphosate.   I can now tell you that both the GM genes and the use of glyphosate negatively impacts the crop.  This is concerning as these varieties are grown as a source of food for humans and feed for animals.  
I can also tell you, that GM corn is substantially different from non-GM corn, contrary to FDA and industry claims.  In fact the changes are inflammatory to our biology and I will be explaining how, through the biochemistry of minerals and fatty acids.  The gene cassette determines the genes and the genes, influence the uptake of minerals and the expression of fatty acids and vitamins.  In the sprayed varieties, Glyphosate impacts and causes further disturbances to the minerals, fatty acids and vitamins.  
These changes caused by genetic modification and glyphosate herbicide, in concert together in the food, are then responsible for increases in a multitude of modern diseases of unparalleled proportion.  These GM crops now make up the majority of the Western Diet which consists of processed food and food oils.  The details of this work will be summarized and published in a paper which I’m currently writing. 
In the spring of 2015 I will begin the same kind of field and lab experiments with GM and non-GM soy.  I am also looking at wheat and have been accumulating samples of both herbicide treated and non-treated wheat obtained from farmers in Canada and the USA.  I’m looking for any possible biochemical changes to the wheat and will report findings at the conclusion of the work and again will focus on the biochemical impacts to human physiology.
Anthony
PS:  I’m still analyzing plant tissue in the lab as I can afford.  Please be patient, this work takes time and I’m working with no funding from my own pocket.

It’s a shame that good scientists like Anthony Samsel cannot find funding for their research, while rogue scientists get the funds from industry. This is why agricultural research needs to be public funded. I hope folks would do something, such as initiate a crowd funding scheme or something to help scientists like Anthony.

Henry Rowlands,
International Coordinator of the Global GMO Free Coalition
Director of Sustainable Pulse.
Hi Tony,

Thank you for your e-mail.
I of course support your work and I hope that your blog continues to grow.
The truth is that the system needs to be forced to change – I am not sure people power works on its own – but I am sure a mixture of people power and legal force does work.
We now have almost 1 million people a month visiting Sustainable Pulse – interest is growing.
“GMO and pesticide agriculture currently dominates the globe, creating human health and environmental problems on a scale that has never been seen before. However, change is on the way, a growing awareness of the problems associated with GMOs and their associated pesticides is leading to increasing pressure on the biotech industry and its supporters. This is a global fight and it needs everyone to get involved!” 
Best Wishes,
Henry

 

Asking Politicians to come clean on GMO and pesticides

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To :
Hon. Rona Ambrose, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health
Hon. Gerry Ritz, M.P., Minister of Agriculture
Libby Davies, NDP Health Critic
Hedy Fry, Liberal Party Health Critic
Elisabeth May, Green Party leader
cc:
Alex Atamanenko, M.P, NDP – concerned on GMO & Glyphosate
Bruce Hyer, M.P. Green Party – concerned on Glyphosate
 
Dated – Nov 6th, 2014
 
Honorable minister of health, Minister of Agriculture,
Health critics
Concerned Parliamentarians
 
Good day
I have written in the past to a few of you on this general topic and put up the feedback, if any, on my blog at www.ton.org on issues considered to be of grave concern for Canadians. Today, I have another set of questions for you.

Hon Rona Ambrose – Health Minister

 
I am a retired Marine Engineer, Shipmanagement executive, consultant, and a blogger, podcaster, science interviewer, photographer, videographer, citizen journalist, food security activist and a writer, not to mention a public speaker currently on a talking tour, along with retired Agriculture Canada Scientist Dr. Thierry Vrain, across Canada on GM organisms and what it means to Canada’s future as an independent nation. 

Questions I have are about GMO, pesticide, and patented life forms introduced into Canada, to replace natural life forms.

1) What Science ?
Science in the western hemisphere is no longer public funded, and is wholly supported by the Industry. The Industry has no interest in funding any science project that aims to find faults with its product. As a result, science itself has gotten one side and lost its neutrality.
Please comment on this. 
2) Where is the independent analysis?
GM crops are considered intellectual property of the patent holder, which denies the right for any independent analysis of its quality or safety without express permission of the patent holder, and this permission is only given with conditions that the findings be first be vetted by the patent holder and any analysis that is not flattering, does not get to see light of day.
Please comment on this.

3) Science under dictatorial censorship.
Few scientists that, in spite of such severe restrictions, found problems with the GM technology or its pesticides and published their findings, manage to get fired, or their papers retracted from the journals, and they are discredited, lambasted and literally hounded out of the academic world.
Please comment on this.
 
4) Who owns living organisms? 
How do corporations get to own living organisms and their DNA? They did not create them from scratch, but first stole the DNA of a few living organisms (I say stole because if life forms can be “owned” then those living organisms must have been property of some entity, even God, before the Corporations decided to use it). And then these stolen DNA were polluted it by inserting genes of unrelated organisms, such as a toxic bacteria and a food crop plant. So, should we allow such patents and let the whole organism be patented and owned by a corporation?
Please comment on this.
5) Attack on God’s creation and on Canadian Independence?
The plan, as it appears, is for all living organisms, be it food we eat, or grass and alfalfa in the prairies, or trees in the forest or fish and animals and micro organisms, all living creatures that have some value, to be owned property of a few patent holding foreign corporation.No living organism that has any value to humans in any way, will belong to Canada or be God’s creation any more.
Please comment on this.

This is an open letter and will be put up on the web (www.tonu.org) for the public. Any answer from you or another recipient in copy, will also be put up. Our belief is that the public needs to know where politicians stand on such issues

 
Thank you
Tony Mitra
tony.mitra@gmail.com
(Address and contact)

MP Bruce Hyer Responds:

Good letter

I agree

Bruce Hyer, Deputy Leader, Green Party


GE talk tour Ontario – CBC Radio talks with Tony Mitra

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We are on the GE talk tour already. While I have sporadic access to the internet, I believe one should still try to put up an update here for those interested. We are all in it together. So this is a fresh blog that I shall update time to time as more material comes in, and I find the time to collate it.

I am sitting in the wonderful home of Ann in Thunder Bay, Ontario. We arrived by a short flight from Toronto and Ann was there to greet us.

Attendees in Flesherton were very supportive and enthusiastic about our message. I did remember to tell them that without the women in Canada, our talk tour would not have gotten off the ground. Some of them said I should be staying back in Flesherton. I think some of these women should challenge the status quo in local municipalities, and try to emulate Richmond BC and other municipalities, and start pushing back at Glyphosate and GMO.

This was in essence our third stop. We had already spent an eventful day first at Flesherton, ON, and then at Owen Sound, ON, both within a few hours drive from Toronto. Both those events, in my view, went famously. The Flesherton event was a late morning+lunch+afternoon event. We got appreciated, and a lot of hand shakes and hugs.

Thierry Vrain addressing attendees at Harmony Centre, in Owen Sound, on Nov 1st, 2014

People in Owen sound were enthusiastic and knowledgable. The town has banned lawn pesticides, but they also knew about Neonicotinoids and were very keen to see what BC municipalities were doing with GMO and stretching the limit of how much authority municipalities have in banning substances that are federally approved.

Then there was this giant of a red bearded man that came up to shake my hand, along with many others. He found my talk on political activism within municipalities very inspiring and wished to get engaged himself in his municipality and also consider standing for election and beginning to bring change from the bottom up, and learn to kick some butt in the process, focussing on how a handful of corporations are attempting to hijack Canada.

This young man takes to heart my talk and would like to engage in the municipal election and consider working for the betterment of the community and pushing back at the attempt of Corporate takeover of Canada.

Those were in Flesherton and Owen Sound.

And now, we are in Thunder Bay. We shall only be speaking in the evening, but we already have news.

Mr. Bruce Hyer, Green Party MP, who is against Glyphosate

First, there was a call from a Canadian MP, Mr. Bruce Hyer. He was at the Thunder Bay airport. He called in to say that he could not cancel his flight since he needs to vote on an important budget bill in Ottawa, so will miss our talk, much to his regret. He is aware of the dangers of Glyphosate and has tried passing bill to restrict it, but did not succeed. He was once with NDP but is now with the Green Party.

He said I should send him an email so he could stay in contact and also so he can send me his statement or speak to me on record, so I could quote him in my blogs if I found the need. I did tell him I consider it my duty to tell them which politicians were keen to protect Canada from GMO and Glyphosate and I would like to talk about him. So far the only MP that has come out straight away in our support has been MP Alex Atamanenko, NDP, from BC.

He also hoped we could get to meet him while we are in Ottawa face to face.

And then I got interviewed on phone by CBC radio in Thunder Bay area. We shall see if my talk is aired or not. I have never learned to mince my words or not call a spade a spade. Sometimes, that is too much reality in todays mainstream media. So we shall see.

Thierry is having another radio interview this afternoon. Then we talk together in the evening. Thierry usually takes say 90 to 120 minute for his talk and question and answer. I usually take around 20 minutes to ignite the issue of Canadian sovereignty and set fire in a few politicians underpants.

Had another eventful afternoon in Thunder Bay

This involved speaking with two ladies.
.
One of them is a councillor in the municipality of Thunder Bay. Her name is Linda Rydholm. Apart from being a councillor, she is also a board member of FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities). She is interested to know the exact wordings of the UBCM motion to be GMO free that was passed last year. I shall ask Harold Steves & Allan Patton of BC to please help. She is also keen to see if their own municipality could pass resolution to be GMO free and what the wording of Richmond resolution is.

I shall try and introduce Linda with Harold and Allan and hope she can kickstart it in Thunder Bay as well as in AMO (Association of Municipalities of Ontario), not to mention trying to bring it to the table at the next FCM.

Linda also got a copy of Thierry Vrain‘s letter to Rona Ambrose, explaining why Glyphosate needs to be the prime focus and not GMO per se, when discussing dangers to health and safety of Canadians.
.
The other person was Kendal Donahue, food strategy coordinator working for “Food Strategy”, which, the best I could understand, is a sort of semi Govt organization with gets public funding, but is not strictly a Govt organization. She too was interested in different aspects of the GMO debate and spent some time with Thierry Vrain on the science of the item. They both would check up on my blog.

Linda cannot attend this evening talk by us since they have a Municipal meeting today, the first one after the recent municipal election. Linda got re-elected.

Kendal will attend this evening.

CBC – Up North Airs a talk with Tony Mitra

Attached is a recording of my 8 minute talk with CBC Radio that was aired on 3rd November at Thunder Bay and surrounding areas on FM.

[youtube rAxkFuyxAAk]

That is the update from the afternoon. I had a talk with Councillor Allan Patton, about the GMO free motions and his efforts in this regard in January this year. Those interested can check it out and hear Allan Patton speak about his efforts to get the GMO free motion tabled at the Federal Council of Municipalities –  Blog on Allan.

Addressing the Thunder Bay people on Nov 3rd. Dr. Thierry Vrain nearest to the Camera looking at me.

That is the update from the afternoon. I had a talk with Councillor Allan Patton earlier this year, about the GMO free motions and his efforts in this regard in January this year. For those interested can check it out and hear Allan Patton speak about his efforts to get the GMO free motion tabled at the Federal Council of Municipalities as well as the wording of the GMO free motion that he push through, unsuccessfully, at FCM –  Blog on Allan.

Meanwhile I am including the audio recording of his talk with me on this issue, here as well.

Mayor of Delta – where are you?

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Link – blog on council members
Link – blog on school board

This is a preliminary post, of exchanges between myself and the mayor of Delta, BC, on account of GMO and pesticides. I chose the title because I am afraid the mayor is lost on the issue of GMO and is going about it in a completely wrong way, attempting to get herself and her council even more biased towards the science, the economics and the ethics of GMO cultivation in Canada. It reminds me of a ship floundering in turbulent waters, cast adrift without a helmsman or propulsion.

She also makes a false statement that the city council has no power to control GMO, and that all those that are supporting a GMO free resolution are, in essence, jumping a bandwagon that is going nowhere. What is most galling, is her assumption, or implication, that she considers it her duty to bring ‘credible reports’ on the science of GMO and then to study it, so that she, and her council can then pass their verdict and sermon on the people of Delta on what they should or should not eat. Far as I understand democracy, it should be the people that make the decision and the elected public servant that carry out people’s wishes.

I shall deal with most of these issues fully in due course. But lest I forget or miss anything, I am creating the first blog on it, calling it Mayor of Delta – where are you? I believe she is lost and along with her, the residents of Delta are drifting aimlessly, and facing collective peril with regard to our health, environment, biodiversity, food security, seed freedom and our very existence as a free and independent nation capable to charting our own course without interference and control from outside forces, and corporate greed.

But first, the letters. I had asked all candidates of Delta civil election on their position on GMO and if they would support Delta passing a resolution to be GMO free.

I have created two blogs, one for the council members and one for the school board, already. But the mayor deserves a dedicated blog. And here it is.

Tony Mitra

On Oct 26, 2014, at 6:48 PM, Lois Jackson <jacklo12@dccnet.com> wrote:

Mayor Jackson

GREETINGS: WELL, FIRSTLY MY NAME IS LOISŠ

SECONDLY, MAY I SAY THAT WE HAVE NOT BEEN USING PESTICIDES NOR INSECTICIDES IN OUR PARKS FOR SEVERAL YEARS.  WE BAN IT FROM BEING SOLD IN DELTA AND ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO USE łNATURAL˛ METHODS TO KEEP DOWN GARDEN PESTS. AS WITH MANY TOPICS THAT ARE BEING DISCUSSED TODAY IN THE MEDIA AND BY THE PUBLIC, GMO SEEMS TO BE ONE OF THEM. THIS ISSUE HAS NOT BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY PRESENTED TO OUR COUNCIL AND I HAVE ASKED OUR CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER, MR. GEORGE HARVIE TO BRING FORWARD GOOD SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS FOR COUNCILąS PERUSAL.

I MUST ALSO SAY THAT I AM NOT A SCIENTIST NOR A CANADIAN FOOD INSPECTOR NOR CANADIAN LEGISLATOR;THESE ARE VERY COMPLEX ISSUES AND I LOOK FORWARD TO RECEIVING CREDIBLE REPORTS TO OUR COUNCILąS ATTENTION.

AS FAR AS OTHER CITIES AND COMMUNITIES ARE CONCERNED, IT IS SO EASY FOR SOME COUNCILąS TO SIMPLY JUMP AT AN ISSUE, (LOOKING FOR ATTENTION PERHAPS?) AND THEY JUMP ONTO A BANDWAGON WHICH IS EMPTYŠ  EMPTY OF INFORMATION, SCIENCE AND UNDERSTANDING.  OUR DELTA COUNCIL TAKES PRIDE IN ANALYZING THE ISSUE, SEARCHING OUT THE BEST INFORMATION, REFERRING IT TO EXPERTS, BEFORE WE łJUMP ONTO THE BANDWAGON˛.

AS AN EXAMPLE, I REFER TO THE ISSUE OF SHARK FIN SOUPŠ  THIS WAS A FEDERAL IMPORTATION MATTER AND WE HAD NO JURISDICTION TO DISALLOW ITS IMPORTATION NOR SALE IN DELTA.  WE DID HOWEVER, MAKE STRONG PRESENTATIONS TO MANY FEDERAL JURISDICTIONS WHO DID HAVE AUTHORITY.  MANY COUNCILLORS AND COUNCILS CAME FORWARD CONDEMNING THE PRACTICE, HOWEVER, THE SUBJECT WAS AN EMOTIONAL ONE OVER WHICH LOCAL GOVERNMENT HAD NO JURISDICTION.

ANOTHER ISSUE WAS THE łBANNING OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN VANCOUVER˛ THERE WAS NO EFFECT OF THIS STATEMENT, AND IT WAS SIMPLY A STATEMENT BY A COUNCIL WHO HAD NO JURISDICTION OVER A MATTER.

THEREFORE, TO BE HONEST AND OPEN AND MAKING GOOD LEGISLATION ON AN ISSUE, I WILL AWAIT THE REPORTS FROM OUR STAFF AND CONTACT YOU UPON DELIBERATION OF SAME,

THANK YOU FOR YOUR QUESTION, AS I REMAIN,

LOIS E. JACKSON MAYOR OF DELTA

I have responded to her by a holding email. But I need to single out this email to show how many ways the politicians are being less than fully truthful, and honest in their statements.

  • Banning of Lawn pesticides in Delta parks and removing them from stores. This is good work done. The work is not finished since anyone in delta can drive across scrott road and buy all the pesticide they need from stores in Surrey. More importantly, this banning was initiated by the municipality of Hudon, Quebec in 1991 – 23 years ago, starting a precedence for the rest of Canada. It took Delta 20 years to catch up on one issue. We do not have another 20 years for Delta to catch up with rest of BC on GMO and Glyphosate(RoundUp) issue.
  • Mayor says she has asked someone to bring good scientific analysis for the council’s perusal. By that statement, the mayor has exposed her lack of grasp of an issue that relates to not just “scientific analysis”, but a) with the denigration of neutral science in North America in the last two decades through industry influence, b) with impossibility of independent science labs to find problems with either GMO or Glyphosate due to “proprietary knowledge” that disallows independent scientists to honestly study their safety, just to name a few. Her statement is so outrageously absurd that I wonder if she is just ignorant, or calculating.
  • The mayor claims she is not a scientist nor a food inspector. That is correct. She is a public servant, and her duty is to check what the public wants. If the issue is complex, she should consider arranging experts on both sides of the argument to come to Delta and present their case, not just to the council, but to the residents of Delta, and let the people then decide what they would like their municipality to do. That, my dear mayor, would be your duty. You do not need to be a scientist nor a food inspector. You are hired to work as a public servant. Nothing more.
  • She belittles other towns and other politicians as if they are jumping a bandwagon and seeking popularity on fake issues. These other towns and politicians, are fighting for the interest and well being of Canada. The mayor, on the other hand, might be knowing or unknowingly sitting in the band wagon of foreign corporations hell bent on subverting Canadian food security and sovereignty. I consider it my duty to expose arrogant, dismissing replies that politicians use in this way.
  • Shark fin soup – I dispute her statement that it was merely federal matter. Hudson, QC defied federal approval and went ahead to ban a product in their town. They faced a barrage of court challenges for ten years and persevered, proving and setting a precedence, that municipalities have the right to ban a product or a practice, if the people there believe this is bad for their health or environment. I would have liked the mayor of Delta to strive to protect Delta people’s wish  as well as the sharks future, and not hide behind an excuse.
  • Banning Nuclear weapons in Vancouver – I would have liked the mayor to consider pushing back at the federal Govt by having the gall to propose a ban on installations or transportation of any nuclear warhead in the municipality or through the municipal land of air or waterways. I would have loved the mayor to take this issue to the public and ask if they agree and support this, and if “yes”, to threaten to pass this law and be ready to be challenged by higher authorities. That is the right way to stand up to principles and make a difference, instead of finding excuses to shirk responsibility. She took a very bad example as an excuse to explain why she would not fight to declare Delta GMO free and strive to work with other BC municipalities to push back at this dangerous onslaught on our food, health and nature.
  • If I appear annoyed and outraged at the mayors response, I feel I am more than justified. At stake is Canada’s future and here is a mayor tap dancing around important and difficult issues.

IT time Canadian politicians, starting from the bottom up, stop using ignorance as an excuse for doing nothing. It is time for them to stop passing the buck by blaming federal politics and claiming Municipalities have no authority. It is time for politicians to stop misguiding the public and obfuscate this issue. It is time for them to get off their high horse and face issues squarely and without hiding behind corporations and lobby groups.

SCIENCE ? WHAT SCIENCE ? The mayor used the term ‘Credible report‘ and the fact that she has asked a city administrator, to bring forward ‘good scientific analysis‘ for the council’s perusal. The mayor also goes on to add that the council takes pride in analyzing issues, searching out the best information and referring it to experts, instead of jumping to bandwagons.

These statements are so hollow that I am going to spend some time on them.

May the mayor and her team first address the issue of how they are going to ascertain that they are getting “credible” unbiased and neutral reports on science ? Are they aware of where scientific neutrality currently lies in Canada or North America ?

Let me refresh the mayor’s memory, that Governments do not fund science research through tax payers money any more, and science is funded by the industry. And the industry has absolutely no interest in funding scientist that may find problems with their product. Not only that, they actually fire any scientist that finds problems with their products, shuts down their labs, gets their papers retracted, forces the universities to discredit them, withdraws their licence if possible, and makes their source of income disappear.
Let me remind the mayor that, due to intellectual property rights clause of patented GMO, no independent science lab is even allowed to study possible ill-effects of GMO and not allowed to publish any finding without permission of the creator of the GMO and no article that is less than flattering ever gets published because of it. Which planet is the mayor living in, when she she thinks she can get “good scientific analysis” on the subject?

So, to start with, i invite the mayor, & her team to first identify a science institute that is doing meaningful work on testing GMO, that is not funded by the industry and where the scientists are not under either industry or political control.

How about reading the book “Poison Spring” by a retired EPA scientist Mr. Vallianatos? He is an ex EPA scientist that describes how corrupt EPA is due to constant interference of the industry on one side and the White House on the other. And it is this EPA that approves “ALL” pesticide that go into agriculture including Canadian Agriculture. In fact the Canadian health ministry gloats over the fact that it works “closely” with EPA and therefore only approves those chemicals that are deemed safe by EPA.

The EPA scientist Mr. Vallianatos meanwhile states that EPA has gotten so corrupt, that any scientist that ever finds even a little bit of problem with any pesticide, is fired, or gagged or transferred and made irrelevant. Could I invite the mayor to listen to Dr. Vallianatos speaking with me on record on this issue ?

So, how about Delta Council inviting Mr. Vallianatos to Delta (he lives in California) for a first hand presentation of how pesticides are approved by EPA ?

Then we can find the next scientist that can explain how things work inside Health Canada, in approval of questionable substances. How about reading the book “Corrupt to the Core – Memoirs of a Health Canada whistleblower” by Dr. Shiv Chopra, who was fired by Health Canada because he refused to accept a questionable growth hormone for cows imported from the US for approval unless sufficient safety tests were done, despite the fact that EPA had approved it. Because he was not accepting the hormone without safety tests, he got fired by Health Canada. Dr. Chopra and his union is taking Health Canada to the supreme court for wrongful dismissal of a conscientious scientist.

How about inviting Dr. Chopra (he lives in Ottawa) to present his case to the Delta Council?

And if you like to speak with a Canadian genetic engineer and soil biologist that has worked for many years with Agriculture Canada on one side, and is also an organic farmer on the other – there is Dr. Thierry Vrain, from our own British Columbia, currently flying to Ottawa to speak with the health minister Ms Rona Ambrose on the topic of, you guessed it, GMO and pesticide and how dangerous these things are and how none of them have ever been independently tested.

So, how about inviting Dr. Vrain to advise you his take on the dangers of the pesticides that are associated with the GMO ?

And ohh, I forgot to mention – EPA does not test the pesticides, just like FDA or other bodies do not test the GMO. All these tests are “supposed to be” done by the same corporation that produces them, i.e. companies such as Monsanto. Is that a conflict of interest or not ?

How about Dr. Don Huber ? He is a professor emeritus from Purdue University, Idaho, a microbiologist and a plant pathologist among many things. He has beens studying toxic chemicals such as Glyphosate for years and is and outright critic of the GMO science that pushes this dangerous chemical on our agricultural fields. As a result, he is now being hounded by the industry, and the University is trying to discredit him, although he is respected enough outside of the industry to be funded by external sources, including being invited by a few countries to teach them and guide them to move away from GMO and chemical farming to healthy localized sustainable farming.

Dr. Huber was a biological warfare expert, employed earlier by the US military. His job was to protect Americans from biological warfare. He has told me in his own words, that, if he was a terrorist and wanted to invent a harmful bio-molecule that would slowly, steadily and greatly harm America, he could not have invented a chemical better than Glyphosate. And how the terrorists don’t have to do that, because Monsanto is selling it to everybody, supported strongly by the US Govt.

How about asking Dr. Huber to come and give you his presentation on the issue ?

How about calling scientist Dr. Nancy Swanson from Seattle, that drew those charts based on US Govt data, showing correlation between release of Glyphosate and rise of diseases such as Crohn’s, Celiac, or autism ? How about calling Dr. Anthony Samself or Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT artificial intelligence laboratory, who are compiling paper after paper about the mechanism by which Glyphosate in our food destroys our gut bacteria that is so important for keeping us healthy ? How about calling Anthony Samsel or Stephanie Seneff or Nancy Swanson ? I know all of them personally and can help introduce you.

Canada signed it but did not ratify it. USA & Australia never even signed it. Rest of the world (except Russia which bans GMO altogether) signed and ratified it, protecting their biological diversity from theft by Biotech corporations or accidental destruction or extinction.

How about Studying Cartagena Protocol of the United Nations, which is about protecting your biological diversity against inadvertent damage through introduced GMO. A hundred and sixty countries have signed it, but Canada has not. As a result Canada’s biological heritage is up for grabs and grabbed it has been, by the likes of Monsanto. My question to you is – who in Delta Council is going to spend time studying this protocol and raising awareness so Ottawa is forced to address it? The Protocol Head office is in Montreal, not that far away. How many Canadian politicians even know about this issue ? Canola was a Canadian invention. If we had signed the Cartagena protocol and put up laws to protect our biological inventions and heritage, then Canola would still have remained a Canadian product. Instead, it is now owned by Monsanto. So, would the Mayor and Council still feel qualified to find “credible report” on GMO ?

And even that is not enough. My question to the Delta Council is – who are they to study GMO and make a decision on if the people should eat toxic gene or toxic chemical laden food ? Who gave them the authority ?

Last I checked how democracy is to work, it should be the people that decide if they like pesticide laden food in their meals or not. Last time I checked, the duty of elected officials is to carry out the wishes of the electorate. All that the Municipality and the mayor needs to do, is to check the pulse of the people, and assist them to get both sides of the story without bias and without industry propaganda and without political or corporate interference. Is the Mayor and the Council capable to arranging that ?

Last time I checked, the only leaders that makes decision on what kind of food or anything else is good for the people, are Dictators, and not Elected politicians.

This is one problem that creeps into politics, the moment the public stops watching over politicians – the politicians forget that they are public servants, and starts thinking they might be dictators, or perhaps prophets sent down to this planet by God himself, to make all decisions for us the poor and ignorant people.

The Mayor and the corporation of Delta assumes authority, which they do not have, of deciding what GMO is and if it is good for the people. The elected officials should be joining the people’s wish across the land, to declare themselves to be GMO free and then work with other municipalities and UBCM and FCM to find ways to push back at the current agro-industry contract workers (I find it difficult to call them GMO farmers, since they do not own their seeds and are in effect contract labourers for Monsanto), to take over farming and kill all local farmers.

The farm lands are getting depopulated as the small organic farmers go bankrupt, and move to the cities to become unemployed, while huge swaths of land is coming under control of US biotech industry.

I find myself both annoyed, outraged and exasperated by the Mayors high handed and dismissive note on GMO issues, where she and the other politicians are obviously out of their depth and yet presume to study “credible reports’ without having a clue about how biased the very science has become thanks to the politicians allowing the industry to skewer our science in the first place. How blind can a politician be ?

How about calling Vandana Shiva to Delta? She did her PdD in quantum mechanics in Canada. She is coming to Ontario next month.

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If I feel annoyed and outraged by the mayor’s dismissive and arrogant email, perhaps she and other readers will understand that I have sufficient reason to be so. Ms Mayor – please consider calling both sides of the argument and let the people decide. You do not have the authority to decide for the people.

I have no doubt your team with find a lot of pro-GMO pro-industry propagandists. They are crawling all over the place. But I doubt you or your team is able to gather a credible team of scientists that can tell the people the opposing view, those that are beyond the reach of the industry and the Governments, who are willing and able to tell the  people how they are being robbed off their land, their environment and their future, by what amounts to new age cobbler barons. So, please call them and let them speak to the people of Delta.

  • EG Vallianatos (ex EPA scientist) – California
  • Shiv Chopra – (Ex Health Canada scientist) – Ottawa
  • Thierry Vrain (Ex Agriculture Canada scientist) – Comox Valley, BC
  • Don Huber (Ex US Army biological warfare expert, scientist) – Idaho
  • Anthony Samsel (Ex Arther d’Little, scientist) – Massachusetts
  • Stephanie Seneff (MIT artificial Intelligence lab, scientist) – Massachusetts
  • Nancy Swanson (Correlation – Glyphosate & disease, scientist) – Seattle
  • Vandana Shiva, of Navdanya, India, who will be touring Ontario in winter.
  • Read Book – Poison Spring, by Vallianatos
  • Read Book – Corrupt to the core – memoirs of a health Canada whistleblower, by Chopra

I shall come back here later, to add more points for the mayor, the council and the people of Delta. And we shall talk about seed freedom, about farm labour, about economic viability, about local produce against food coming from California while local small farmers die off. We have a lot of ground to cover on the GMO / pesticide issue. The biggest and deepest issue is – political corruption in Canada that has brought Canada to this state of affairs, literally handing over our freedom and ability to control our destiny away from the people’s hands into those of foreign corporations.

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Feedback from a North American scientist that is fighting against Industry and Govt repression because he tried to research and speak the truth. He wishes to remain anonymous for the moment, but I expect he will come out in the open soon. Here is what he said. The formatting is mine.

Dear Tony

The big business is very good at destroying the scientists who stand against them. 

This afternoon if you can wait I will feed you some more of my ideas. We need to learn how to play the game of pseudo-democracy, which is reality.

  • EG Vallianatos, cannot comment much – sounds interesting. I need his curriculum.
  • Shiv Chopra, one guy who was properly destroyed by big business.  A good value.
  • Thierry Vrain, give him a try. Good value if he can speak well.
  • Don Huber, my hero; big business is trying hard to destroy his name.
  • Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff – very imaginative and with ideas to work on for next 50 years, however, they have been the target of the most vicious attacks.
  • and Nancy Swanson. A remarkable person who put together a summary in which I verified a lot of the data.

A scientist is always afraid of misleading correlations. But the search for cause-effect is so often a misleading act in itself.

For example cholesterol plugs arteries but it is a symptom of damage to arteries and not a cause of damage. Mainstream medicine has not caught up yet because the pharmaceuticals have so much control over medical schools.

But various studies showed that lower cholesterol is not a predictor of reduced cardiovascular problems.

I heard a conference at Laval University that went through the whole history of cholesterol research; the very first scientists knew that cholesterol was, overall, a good molecule.

True culprits for cardiovascular problems exist; sugars, excess iron in red meat, trans fats, and probably pollutants of various kinds, which are irritant to blood vessels. But the focus on all fats and on cholesterol was led by a fraudulent scientist named Ancel Keys who published papers ignoring any data that was contrary to his hypothesis. He became so powerful that he crushed all others in his path. And big pharmacy saw a golden opportunity. The result is a 15 billion $ fraud.

Maybe I am out of context, but this is to show how far away from the truth science can go. You see, cholesterol plugs arteries THEREFORE we must lower cholesterol is a cause-effect statement in which the search for the cause was not serious and honest, and thus the true causes were obliterated in USA and in all countries that suffered their influence.

That is the problem we have. Big companies are making money, they want more, and they do not want to know anything that could bother their money-making scams.

Governments have made themselves very dubious entities in our attempts to know the truth. Canadian governments appear to be enemies of true science.


Mayor, consider investigating this, about science in Canada. And I am not joking

In the last months the federal government has emptied all scientific libraries of 99% of books, & 100% of journals. You could not find one scientists who was really consulted. Or perhaps the younger generation does not care about science…

Try to grasp the implication. Many scientific disciplines are getting lost. Of all pathologists that were used to breed disease resistant plants, perhaps only 10% remain, compared to 40 years ago. Once you get rid of those people the only solution becomes CHEMICALS.

This massacre went on everywhere, I understand. Such events of mass desctruction of scientific knowledge have perhaps no equivalent in 2000 years in the history of the world. All the history of the Canadian scientific research in agriculture is gone to the dumpster. All the documents that allow us to see what is changing over time is destroyed.

I was sleepless for days after seeing that. Sometimes, it still gets me awake at night. And if the same is going in in Health Canada, Environment Canada, everywhere… just think about this: moving Canada 40 years behind in a single sweeping move.

One of the main tools of research scientists has been burned to ashes. Books worth a fortune were destroyed; they were not offered for sale, not offered to interested scientists, just destroyed.

What a stupid, dirty, revealing way to deal with public science. And you want to bring “Credible Reports” on  GMO?

Then they claim that the science behind the pesticide industry is sound science, and all I have to say, is – you bullshitters, you do not even know what science is about.

If the govt gets itself in a weaker position which I hope will be sooner rather than later – it may then be safer for a scientist or two to emerge from the shadows to talk about these horrors of Canadian science.

Ms Mayor of Delta – you are way out of your depth on the assumption that you and your office, can check best available information and make educated decision on behalf of the people, about the “science” of GMO. Study, if you like, first, on the issue of destruction of past records of Canadian agricultural documents, studies, reports and data, if you dare.

Pardon my French, Ms Mayor – you are either unbelievably naive or extraordinarily out of your depth here, both on your ability to grasp the science and the business model behind GMO and on what authority you may have in making a decision on it.

Its not that the mayor has not received mails and appeals from concerned citizens on this and related issues before. I have personally written to her several months ago, and put that up on my blog goo. The mayor did not see it fit to respond to it. Her actions do not show any evidence that her office had attempted to study up on it.

.. This is a link to my letter to the Mayor in May 2014 which she did not bother to respond to, and displays no evidence that she cares about.

Podcast : Lisa Fraser of Burnaby, BC, tries to get candidates to explain their stand on GMO. She talks to Tony Mitra about it.

Catherine Colvin – a unique journey in the path of detoxification

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Here is a remarkable story of Catherine Colvin of Minnesota, USA.
Sick from possible excessive exposure to harmful chemicals, she had a series of debilitating illnesses from childhood.

Catherine Colvin

By the time she was in her 40s, the doctors had given up on her, suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, Thyroid, and blood cancer to name such a few. She was looking towards another 2 or 3 years to live under lingering pain and disability.

She lost her job, her medical insurance and her support system from the healthcare industry. That was in 2006. She should have been dead long before today.

and yet, she survived, and is well on her way to curing herself, without funds, without medical insurance and without western medicine, so to speak.

Her primary tactic was to remove synthetic chemicals from her life and her lifestyle. Her second line of defence was to study alternative medicine practiced by just about everybody except the western medical profession. And she lived to tell the tale.

  • She was a military child, and was exposed to a chemical environment from childhood.
  • She had allergies, small cysts on skin, asthma. She got sick after vaccines
  • Her mother had her on birth control to her at 13
  • She wen anemic at 14
  • She developed endometriosis symptoms at 14 though not diagnosed until 19
  • Doctors recommended that she should have a hysterectomy because it was the only cure and she would never have children anyway. She did not have the hysterectomy at the time, thankfully – and eventually got to be a mother of two healthy sons – now, 29 and 34.
  • She had multiple sclerosis from childhood.
  • In 1989 she finally had a hysterectomy
  • In 2005 She was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
  • Same year, 2006 she was confirmed to have multiple sclerosis
  • Also in 2006, she was diagnosed with acute paraproteinemia – a blood cancer.
  • She was to face life expectancy of next 2 to 3 years. She should not be alive today at all.
  • She lost her high paying job. She lost her medical insurance. Doctors stopped speaking with her. She only had to wait for death.
  • But she outlived all expectations, and cured most of her illness, without the medical establishment, without insurance and mostly without western medicine.
  • The most effective treatment she did – was remove synthetic chemicals from her life.
  • She learned what alternative treatments, usually outside the U.S. such as Chinese, Indian, African, Latin American and American Indian treatments.
  • Changed diet drastically – eating things that were easy to digest and beginning to heal her gut microbiome.
  • She avoided trans fats, sugars
  • She went on celiac diet for about 6 months
  • She detoxed herself with the lemonade diet or Master Cleanse for a few months and now twice yearly
  • She used mega-doses of zero toxicity supplements such as liposomal vitamin C which she can now make at home, vitamin D, E, K, A, the B’s and others.
  • She mixed her own RO (reverse osmosis) water with baking soda and sea salt and trace minerals
  • She used dehydrated greens 3 times daily as a drink
  • She used 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide to dilute and use for soaking in baths and washing vegetables
  • And she went organic – organic – organic.
  • Within months most of her symptoms where receding. Her blood cancer started curing itself. Today, it is undetectable.
  • Multiple sclerosis started healing. She could walk a block without collapsing.
  • She tried every unconventional treatment. She found out that, for her thyroid, in some nations, patients are given a diet of the thyroid gland of a cow or pig, chopped up and raw. She found the same treatment used in the west for pets, such as thyroid issues for a pet dog or cat – but not humans.She ordered thyroid gland from an organic grass fed cow, for her imaginary “sick dog”. Then she ground out the meat, and ate it raw herself, along with enzymes to help her digest it (she had gone vegetarian by then, so she needed help to digest raw meat). Her thyroid problem is fast improving.
  • She removed chemicals from her life by tossing out store sold soap and makes her own, for washing her clothes, her dishes and even herself.


Today, she has not only outlives expectations, her blood cancer cannot be detected, her sheer tiredness is gone. She has a spring in her step. At 53, she is healing and aging at the same time. Far as I can tell, she is going to outlive me and many others of our generations.
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This is the story of my friend Catherine Colvin of Minnesota, USA.

I am editing my interview with her – for a two part podcast.

The picture above is a recent one – well on her way to healing.

Introducing – Catherine Colvin – who defied death by stepping away from western medicine, diet, and to a large extent, rejecting the traditional western lifestyle – though she kept the motorcycle.

Is Croplife Canada trying to keep RoundUp under the carpet?

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Dr. Thierry Vrain and self had a few presentations, talks and question and answers in Manitoba last month, including one in the town of Steinbach. The talk from Dr. Vrain was about Glyphosate and how dangerous it can be for our soil, water, food and in our body.

I spoke about Canada not having a single lab in Canada were we can test our body fluids and food for presence of Glyphosate, as well as how citizen’s grassroots actions, and political engagement at the Municipal level, can push back at this relentless encroachment of corporations into our rights to good health, environment and food.

Meanwhile, the president of Croplife Canada, wrote a letter to the editor of the Southeastern Manitoba newspaper – The Carilloon, which was posted by the paper. The letter basically criticizes Dr. Vrain, but misses his presentation completely.

The content of his letter is as attached.

I found this to be a misrepresentation of facts, considering the fact that Dr. Thierry Vrain focusses on Glyphosate, the weed killing chemical in Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide, rather than Gene transfer technology in GMO. Mr. Menzies appears to be either unaware of Dr. Vrain’s presentation or may be willfully attempting to sidetrack the main issue of Dr. Vrain’s talks – which is damages to health and environment brought on by Glyphosate, the molecule in RoundUp herbicide suspected to be robbing the mineral nutrients from soil and food as well as killing our micro-biome, the colony of our gut bacteria that are so vital to our well being.

Since Mr. Menzies appears to be so generous in offering his views about it, albeit sidestepping the herbicide, I thought it might be proper to bring the focus back where it was supposed to be – on Glyphosate the weed killer in our food.

Dr. Thierry Vrain

Dr. Vrain has sent a letter to the publisher. I shall copy that here for the people around the world, as Dr. Vrain’s response does throw more light on the issue. Here is what he said :

Dear Sir,

Mr Ted Menzies, President of Crop Life Canada, has not been made aware of the Food Safety and Sustainable Agriculture Forum that took place last month in Beijing.    Over 300 scientists from China, the USA, the UK, Russia, France, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and Peru, met to review and discuss scientific studies of engineered crops and food.  These were not anti GMO activists and conspiracy theorists with an agenda, they were biologists and biotechnologists, and medical doctors and veterinarians,  and there were also farmers, and social and food safety activists,  and representatives of NGOs.   The broad consensus was that the RoundUp Ready technology that was invented to boost the sales of the herbicide RoundUp is not sustainable because of the chronic toxicity of the herbicide.  The technology has been very successful and revolutionized agriculture since 1996, particularly in North America and a few countries of South America, but it is deeply flawed.  This chemical is now spread (and sprayed) all over the food supply in North America and a few other countries, it has become as common as a food additive.  It is also in the air, the rain, the water and of course it bio-accumulates in our body organs.  There is a large body of science showing severe chronic toxicity in animals and pointing the finger at many of the degenerative and inflammatory diseases that we have seen become epidemic since RoundUp has been sprayed on RoundUp Ready crops.  Many countries including political allies of the USA (64 at the last count) have now legislated some form of regulation of engineered crops and foods, or banned them altogether.

The fact that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada personnel seem to have caved in to political pressure or lobbying to keep ignoring the latest science is not reassuring at all.   Studies from the US Department of Agriculture show that engineered grains are depleted of metal micronutrients.  Just like they would if they contained residues of a powerful and broad spectrum chelating agent that binds the missing minerals.   Studies from many countries show that glyphosate is also antibiotic (at one part per million, as cited on the 2010 US patent).  Does this mean that people are fed low level antibiotics like industrial chickens and cattle?  Business as usual is not acceptable anymore, this was the strong message from the Forum that took place in Beijing last month. 

Cui bono ?  Mr Ted Menzies finds it disconcerting that I am not getting paid and still consider it my civic duty to protect the health and safety of Canadians and raise the alarm.  Who is this technology good for if it depletes the food of essential mineral nutrients and threatens our health?  

 Dr. Thierry Vrain

And then here is what I wrote to the editor of the same paper, today, August 5th 2015:

Dated: August 5, 2014

Dear sir,

As a concerned citizen, I write to you drawing attention to apparent misinformation posted by Mr. Ted Menzies, President of Croplife, in his letter as published in your paper recently.

Dr. Thierry Vrain speaks primarily about Glyphosate, the active ingredient contained in Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide, and not GMO or gene transfer technology. Mr. Menzies sidesteps the main presentation about the effects of RoundUp herbicide in our food and environment, and attempts to falsely drag Dr. Vrain into a debate on if GMO is good or bad. Is that not falsification of facts?

I would encourage Mr. Menzies to provide peer reviewed science papers that actually prove that presence pesticides in general, or Glyphosate in particular in our food, is good for our health.

I would further like Mr. Menzies to either provide proof that Glyphosate is not an antibiotic although it is patented by Monsanto to be such, or that glyphosate does not damage the micro-biome in our gut in spite of being an anti-biotic.

I would be delighted if Mr. Menzies can further provide data where Canadian citizens can have their blood, urine, and food tested for presence of Glyphosate, to check if levels of this poison has crossed minimum safety limits imposed by USA, by Europe, and other countries. I would also encourage Mr. Menzies to furnish data on what safety limits the Canadian Government might have set on presence of Glyphosate in our food, and if Croplife, or Health Canada or anybody has conducted thorough testing of Canadian food for presence of Glyphosate and if so, where those results are available.

Lastly, I would recommend that Mr. Menzies to actually attend one of Dr. Vrains talks and tries to absorb the content of his presentation, and then write his views on it.

Tony Mitra
(address, phone # & email)

Eric Rempel with Tony Mitra

I was happy to note that Dr. Vrain’s letter was published by the paper, along with another letter from Mr. Eric Rempel, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Manitoba, and who is perhaps planning to stand for election in the local Municipal Council, and do in his neighbourhood what Harold Steves did for Richmond. Below is the copy of his letter to the editor.

I wrote a follow up note to the editor, not necessarily wanting them to publish my comments, but rather, advising them of this blog and its readership, and inviting the editor or other staff to consider posting their own view on this blog, about mainstream media, social media, citizen journalism and alternative media in this new age of internet that has essentially placed the printed newspapers in an almost existential crisis. Add to it the fact that many of the large news-media conglomerates are, by definition, under control of a shrinking body of media corporations that exert a disproportionate amount of influence on what is published and what is not. In the process, free press as we understood it two generations ago are fast becoming a thing of the past.

So here is what I wrote to the editor.

To: The Editor, Mr. Grant Burr
The Carillon,
377 Main Street
Steinbach, Manitoba R5G 1A5
Phone: 204-326-3421 

Dear Mr. Burr,

cc: Dr. Thierry Vrain, Eric Rempel

Subject: Glyphosate, GMO, and the letter to editor by Mr. Ted Menzies, president of Crop Life, Canada.

This is a follow up of my previous email to you dated 5th of August, 2014 on the subject.

I am a citizen journalist, writer, blogger (www.tonu.org), podcaster, videographer and food security activist, and have covered this issue on my blog at http://www.tonu.org/2014/08/05/invisible-glyphosate/. I accompanied Dr. Thierry Vrain on the cross Canada GMO talk tour, speaking after Dr. Vrain, on citizen action issue on Glyphosate Testing, and on grassroots level political activism to counter an unholy alliance between foreign biotech corporations and our political system in Canada.

The blog itself is reasonably popular on a global scale, getting between 1,500 to 2,000 hits a day, mainly from North America, but also from clusters in Western Europe, Asia and elsewhere, and is being picked up even in remote and unlikely locations such as Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Pago Pago island, Turkey, Peru, Hawaii and Guyana . The most recent statistics (past 48 hours) from the server in a visual map is included below for your record.

I was happy to note that you have included at least two of the letters sent to you presenting an opposing view to Mr. Ten Menzies’ note, since Mr. Menzies clearly has a conflict of interest, since he is the president of Crop Life, and since Crop Life benefits from sale of both GM crop seed as well as RoundUp herbicide.

From Dr. Vrain’s point of view, largely supported by an increasing number of citizens, scientists, organic farmers, naturopaths and food security activists, it is the pesticide in general and Glyphosate in particular, that is the 900 pound gorilla at our dinner table and more clearly identifiable as the toxic element in our environment and food.

It is perhaps for this reason, that the industry would prefer to sidestep any debate on Glyphosate (the poison in RoundUp herbicide, the most used poison in the world today) in our food and in our body, and try to shackle the debate on the narrow topic of GMO and gene transfer.

I send this note to you for your information, not necessarily requesting you to post this comment in your paper, but rather, to encourage you or your staff to read up on the blog, and perhaps offer your own comments, which I shall be happy to append at the bottom of the blog, should I receive any.

I do not have Mr. Ted Menzies’ email, but in case you do, you are welcome to pass him this note, in case he should wish to offer any counter argument.

This letter, like most things we citizen journalists often write, will be for public consumption, and therefore may be included at the bottom of the same blog, and also freely circulated through internet, etc.

I am copying this note to Dr. Thierry Vrain and Mr. Eric Rempel, whose letter you were gracious enough to print.

This is for your information. Congratulating you for maintaining a balanced view on the topic, and airing both sides of the argument.

Wishing you and your paper a prosperous future.

Tony Mitra
(Contacts)
PS – I have a habit of not proof reading my letters, so please excuse any typo.

I would also invite the editor of the newspaper, The Carillon, to offer his comments if he so wishes, on this blog. I do not have the contact details of Mr. Ted Menzies, president of Crop Life Canada. In case any of the readers has his contacts, you are welcome to invite Mr. Menzies for his comments as well.

In case anyone is interested to write a letter to the newspaper, The Carillon, which presumably covers South-eastern Manitoba, their contacts as displayed on their web site is:
Editor : Mr. Grant Burr
The Carillon, 377 Main Street, Steinbach, Manitoba R5G 1A5Phone: 204-326-3421Fax: 204-326-4860

To better present what Dr. Thierry Vrain talks about, we should shortly have a copy of his presentation video on the internet for the general public to see.

Tony Mitra at University of Regina

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We had an event at the auditorium attached to the education centre of the University of Regina.

I spoke for about 21 minutes. Here is a recording of my talk there. Points covered:

  • Cartagena Protocol on preservation of biological diversity, how 160 odd countries have signed and ratified it but Canada did not. How India did ratify it and using it to protect its flora and fauna from theft and biopiracy by corporations that wish to steal the genome of indigenous varieties to create patented life forms as GMO.
  • Comment from Scientist Don Huber, on Glyphosate
  • Comment from Scientist Stephanie Seneff on Glyphosate and autism.
  • Glyphosate Testing – how Canada does not have a lab to test glyphosate poisoning of humans and food.
  • Our effort to get an US lab to offer low cost testing for Canadians on a social cause.
  • How grassroots groups cropped up in Canadian towns to organize batch processing of human body fluid samples as well as food.
  • How Americans and even scientists came forward to use this price breakthrough.
  • Pressure was exerted to stop this service before it could get off the ground. The US lab regrettably stopped offering this service without testing a single sample.
  • How we are looking to create a citizen’s lab in USA and Canada that does not depend on Govt or industry and therefore cannot to shut down.
  • Political corruption in Canada.
  • Municipal Governments, the lowest level of elected Government, is more approachable by the people, than higher levels at provincial or federal government.
  • How Harold Steve of Richmond, BC, got his town to pass resolution to be GMO free.
  • How two dozen other towns in BC follows suit. How the union of BC municipalities passed a province wide resolution to be GMO free.
  • How other towns and provinces are trying to follow suit outside of BC.
  • How people of Regina can also start making a change from the bottom up.
  • How some councillors get elected with only five votes. This is because Canadians do not vote and do not get engaged at the Municipal level, which is something we aught to, so our rights are not taken away by unscrupulous politicians that work for the interest of corporations rather than the people they represent.

I shall be happy to hear your views on it.
Tony Mitra

MP Alex Atamanenko lends a word of support – on Glyphosate testing

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Since we concluded the eastern tour of the Maritime provinces, a number of new issues have come up, some of it with some involvement from my end as well. Here I shall cover one aspect of it – testing mammalian body fluids, such as human urine, blood or mothers breast milk, as well as cow milk, and perhaps even grain or bread etc, for presence of Glyphosate – the active poison in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

What I learned in the process is that the dozen or so labs in Canada that have the accreditation for testing for Glyphosate, none seem prepared to test its presence in any sample except water and soil. Urine, blood or milk from nursing mothers or cows cannot be tested. I told him of me being puzzled and wondering if Health Canada at all has imposed any acceptable limit of concentration of Glyphosate in humans, and if they do – what is that limit. More importantly, how do they test it if no lab in Canada can do that? If on the other hand, Health Canada has not set any limit of concentration in humans, and in effect considers any level of accumulation is fine – then why set a limit for potable water in the first place ?

What exactly is Health Canada’s position on accumulation of Glyphosate in humans and other animals?

I told him about the general conception that, if Glyphosate can bio-accumulate in the body, then its acceptable limit in environment should be way less than it is now. Presence of it in mothers breast milk in USA is already raising questions these questions across the border. I told him how most experts will agree that fetuses in the womb are more vulnerable to harmful molecules since they have not yet developed enough resistance to disease from what they eat, which is why an affected mother, if she can pass Glyphosate to the fetus, may pose a higher risk of harming the baby.

Mr. Atamanenko lent his support to getting the tests done across the border in USA, if no Canadian lab can do it. Further, he wished me to send a short note on the question my suspicion that Health Canada might not have imposed any limit to accumulation of Glyphosate in human beings, and worry that this is dangerous to health of Canadian people as well as the animal kingdom. Mr. Atamanenko wishes to push this issue directly to the minister of health.

You can listen to the 5 minute podcast of which just over two minutes are from Mr. Atamanenko.

Meanwhile, I received this note of relevance from Dr. Anthony Samsel himself, from Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Hi Tony,

All who consume food containing glyphosate residues, be they man or beast will have glyphosate residues circulating in their blood and bioaccumulating in their tissues.  Glyphosate bioaccumulates in the milk of all mammals and can also be found attached to the fatty acids of cerebrospinal fluid.  Contrary to Monsanto’s claims that glyphosate is metabolized and passed out of the body harmlessly in the urine and feces, some does bioaccumulate.

Glyphosate also attaches to muscle tissue which includes the heart and it has been found in the pancreas, liver and kidneys.  Glyphosate is passed up and through the food chain.  What affects one species, will affect all species exposed; there is no free lunch.  Glyphosate is an equal opportunity offender.

You may quote me

Anthony

So there you have it folks.
I shall be happy to have your feedback at tony.mitra@gmail.com

 

 

March Against Monsanto, Vancouver, May 2014 – Canada under GMO attack

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The March Against Monsanto itself has been evolving the world over. In Vancouver, the march started from its usual location – Vancouver Art Gallery and ended back there. This time there were six speakers before the march and then there were a singer and a closing speaker at the end of the March.

My wife and later myself filmed most of the speakers, including myself, before the march.

Although I have some video clips of the march itself, I have not had the time to stitch them into a meaningful collage.

Here, I am putting up the clips of the speakers prior to the commencement of the march, all linked to U-Tube, all filmed by me or Anuradha.

The task at hand now is to organize ourselves for some of the immediate work – such as handling the Glyphosate testing issue – or to ascertain what other chemical one should test against.

There may also be a need to put all the analyzed data into some sort of a database, to make sense of later on. I am willing to do it initially, but not using any database software (don’t have the time), but perhaps into a giant spreadsheet, or worksheet.

We may need to form a volunteer group that are willing to work on this. A lot of folks showed interest in doing so at the Vancouver Art Gallery where I broached the subject. We do not have a group specific email list, or a separate FB page or other platforms where this can be stored, viewed, discussed, explained or advertised. All that might need to happen.

Perhaps there is a need for airing out views on this on a few conference calls. People with Skype account comes first to mind. Google hangout is another possibility. I do not have a conference call facility with my telephone provider, nor a subscription to specific conference call service providers, which usually involve a monthly paid subscription. Anyhow, these are issues worth thinking through.

Then there is also the question of what to test, how to test, and who should monitor the process, as well as bulk pricing against individual pricing.

Dr. Anthony Samsel and Dr. Stephanie Seneff have reportedly offered a service for the people of PEI, Canada, for a pilot study on a small group of target people for long term study of adverse effect on people through exposure of Glyphosate. I am not certain at this point if the study will include exposure to other biocides. PEI is an interesting case. It is a relatively isolated island with a small population, and heavily burdened with biocides, both in the past and at present. However, Glyphosate may not be the most used poison there. 82% of the current biocide load appears to come from a fungicide used on the potato fields.

The product most used as a desiccant on the potato fields in PEI is reportedly Syngenta’s Reglone, with uses the active ingredient diquat, as a contact killer through cell membrane disruption and photosynthesis inhibition.

I know some dairy farmers in PEI cannot grow their own cattle feed and purchase it from special cattle feed producers, who may be growing or using GM corn and soy for this purpose. Therefore, Glyphosate is likely to be in the diet of these dairy cattle, and could therefore me present in the milk. This of course is not typical of just PEI, but across Canada, and opens an opportunity for independent citizen’s action groups having dairy milk tested for glyphosate from select areas. I know the Dairy farmers in the Comox Valley in Vancouver Island are using this method.

Interstingly, Syngenta’s Reglone, with its diquat, is used by the Canadian Govt on surface water reservoirs used for drinking throughout the Canadian prairie, and possibly elsewhere.

What is even more interesting, or disquieting, is a report I have read, by Hans Peterson, Senior Research Scientist, Saskatchewan Research Council, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan – that says “average treatment concentration of diquat is around 1,000 ug per litre of dugout water. The Canadian Drinking Water Guideline for diquat is 70 ug per litre. The federal government restricts consumption of diquat treated water for 24 hours. It is, however, likely that a treatment concentration of 1000 ug per litre has not decreased to 70 ug per litre 24 hours after treatment.”

I further learned from Hans Peterson’s report that the US EPA, no saint themselves, allow only 10 ug/litre and do not allow it to be consumed before 14 days have passed.

The European Union, apparently, allow only 0.1 ug/l.

I am as a result looking for a chance to speak with Hans Peterson, but do not know his contact details, or if he likes to be contacted on this issue. I would appreciate if anyone can trace him or help me contact him on this issue. I intend to learn a bit more about this desiccant that is also used on drinking water across Canada.

Then there is the issue of wood preservatives in British Columbia. I shall get to it later on. For now, this is a quick note from me, on issues that are before us, in Canada as well as Globally. Since our Government is not showing sufficient concern and not conducting wide ranging tests on how much of these man made poisons are entering into our ecology and our persons, the task it left for the people to handle.

I have no doubt in my mind that GMO and pesticides are not just a health hazard, but are part of a design to undermine Canada’s very independence and democratic underpinnings, and convert it into a colony to be made profit from, by a handful of corporations. I have no doubt in my mind that the solution will have to come through political action of the people, and not through polite academic debates on policy. There is also mounting evidence that science is now censored and there is little freedom of press left. The media is not as much corporate controlled as is education.

So, the citizens need to take back control of the political process. Sooner or later, something has to give, because the current trend is only heading towards a cliff.

Here are the MAM Vancouver speakers videos:

1. Kenneth Young

[youtube N7t7K5e3XP0]

 2. Tony Mitra

[youtube dOADhM-Ennw]

Another – Official version

[youtube ArURGIx_x3c]

3. Teresa Lynne

[youtube UJqIQ10JL70]

4. Daniel Bissonnette

[youtube mGhRuO0JMzY]

5. Harold Steves

[youtube XVHaBaZJVXw]

6. Lili Dion

[youtube cQ-ODb–AA8]

Letter to Scott Hamilton, MLA, Delta North, BC

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To MLA Scott Hamilton, North Delta
cc: Jennifer Newman, Constituency Assistant to Minister Steve Thomson, BC Govt.
cc: Ministry of forestry, BC Govt.
cc: MLA Vicky Huntington, South Delta
Scott Hamilton
Subject: Request for data on Pesticide use in BC wood processing industry,

Dear Honorable MLA Hamilton

Good day,

I am an engineer, a citizen journalist, a blogger (www.tonu.org), a podcaster, a videographer and a food security activist.

You are my representative in the legislative assembly of British Columbia, and I have been asked by the secretary of the Minister of Forestry, Mr. Steve Thomson, to approach you with my request. For reference I include an email sent to the honourable Minister Steve Thomson.

We, the citizens of Canada and residents of BC, are concerned about the rising pesticide load on the agricultural land, the forests and the aquatic ecosystem of the province, and wished to check how far the local Government has actually performed independent testing for presence of any potentially harmful substance in our environment that could be attributed to industrial activity.

While this effort is still ongoing, people are getting ready to conduct their own tests, thus bypassing the political process if need be, to find out if harmful contaminants have entered their neighbourhood.

From documents released by Environment Canada, I tried to use the information on latest records of pesticide use in different provinces, and by dividing that with area and population of each province, tried to get a per capita and per unit area pesticide load in a table. I include this table for your reference.

We note from the Environment Canada document, that a high percentage of pesticide use in BC is on wood preservatives, presumably due to concentration of lumber processing plants.

We would therefore like to know what kind of wood preservatives have been used in the past and being use now. Specifically, we are looking for figures, in Kg of toxic metals such as chromium, copper, tin or arsenic.

Further, we wished to know if Tributiltin (TBT) had been or is being used as wood preservative in the province and the Kg amount that may have been used so far.

All these are toxic and harmful to human health. Many of these items are now banned from industrial use in various parts of the world. TBT for example, has been banned from Marine use, where earlier it was used as anti-fouling paint on ships underwater hull, to prevent encrustation of barnacles. This was killing marine lifeforms and is now banned.

Based on information thus received, it is the wish of the people, to engage in conducting tests of the ground water, soil, and human and animal body fluids for the presence of these materials.

Ideally, such tests should have been conducted by the health and/or environment ministry, and not left to the industry which may have a vested and conflict of interest in such tests.

In absence of such tests performed by the BC Government, we plan to do it ourselves.

Meanwhile, we request information, from the Government and through you, on :

  1. A year upon year breakdown of the amount (by weight) of which kind of pesticide has been sold and used in the province.
  2. Specific types of wood preservatives that have been and are being used in the wood processing industry in BC and in which areas these are concentrated.
  3. Has the Govt of BC conducted independent study of presence of toxic chemicals or elements used by the industry, in the environment where they could harm the living planet including humans and livestock? If “yes” I would request for copies of these reports for public consumption.

Since I am part of a large body of grassroots organizers and since many of them are involved in this effort, and since this is a transparent above board effort of the people, this email may be put up on line or circulated for information.
In the coming March Against Monsanto event this May 24th in Vancouver, where thousands are expected to gather, I have been asked to address the people, and would have liked to mention a few elected officials that are working for us in finding the information thus requested.

I would have preferred to get encouraging feedback from the elected politicians, and thus would have mentioned them at the rally. Unfortunately, we have not received a single response from any elected official at the provincial level, although a number of elected Councillors have shown support for the effort, and a few MPs are also considering it.

I would therefore appreciate if you could assist us in finding the right answers to the pesticide distribution in BC, and help reduce cost of endless tests to find out what is more prevalent where. I would be glad to speak with you on phone on this, and pay you a visit should you so prefer. I would also like to take your name, in case you offer help and if you allow, in the march against Monsanto, as an example of an elected MLA that is helping us find further information on this very important issue.

Hoping for a positive response
With much regards
Tony Mitra
10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada
tony.mitra@gmail.com