Tag Archives: GMO

Altered Genes – Did Druker miss out on Glyphosate ?

Posted on by

 

 

I have read Steven Druker’s book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. While being a passionate activist on food security issues, and used to be singularly focussed on the ills of GMO, I have shifted my stance now to be more aware, and more alarmed, about Glyphosate and its effect not just in food, but also in prairies, forests and just about everywhere, even in our lawns, and what it all is doing to this planet. I have been fortunate to have come to know a rising number of scientists from around the world, at the same time many other passionate people that flock to anti-GMO gurus to listen to them. I also consider North America is about the very worst of all continents when it comes to either general awareness of the problems with either Glyphosate or GMO, and also far less successful in resisting them, compared to any other continent where humans live.

So, I decided to sent a note to Steven Druker about his book, but primarily because I got bugged by some of his ardent supporters who seem to be fixated more on GMO than on Glyphosate, pretty much in line with Druker’s book. I hope to be able to catch up with Steven Druker some day, or perhaps have  a talk with him over the phone, and share views. My mail was sent to him through Linked-in since I do not have his direct email. In case that does not reach him, or he does not check that often, I decided to make it available to him as well as to the blog readers, here. I believe this is a constructive criticism that Druker would benefit from, and quite different from the vitriolic attack he sometimes faces on the web.

To: Steven Druker,

Author – Altered Genes, Twisted Truth

Dear Mr. Druker,

I am a Canadian citizen, and an activist on food security issues. I am also a blogger with an average daily readership of between a thousand and two thousand hits, mostly from North America, but also clustered in western Europe, South Asia and far east.

I have purchased and read your book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, and have discussed parts of it with many different people including some scientists from Canada, USA, Europe and India.

I wish to pass you some mild criticism about your book. I hope you will take them in good spirit and perhaps attend to some of them in the next reprint. 

In my view, the most glaring issue in this book, a feeling also shared by some scientists, is not what it says as much as what it does not say. Your book does not give due credit to the seriousness of the threat of Glyphosate, the most used biocide in the planet, and other stacked biocides that are on the horizon. Mention of Glyphosate in your book is almost like an distraction to the main theme, which is GMO, and how it was unethically approved in the US.

I understand that GMO is a highly visible issue – even presidential contenders are talking about if they support or do not support GMO labelling. In short – GMO sells. Therefore a book on GMO, especially if it can expose Government corruption, will sell. That Governments are failing to protect the people and are promoting corporations and share holder interests, is a common belief across the western democracies.

India, for example, has only one GM crop approved so far – Bt. Cotton. But India is awash with Glyphosate and the provinces such as Punjab, with high agricultural activity, those that were once considered the granary for India, are now known as its cancer capital. Two year old kids are now having cancer, in regions where they grow absolutely no GM crop at all, all thanks to herbicides and in particular, RoundUp.

You are likely aware that Sri Lanka is having a running battle with WTO, IMF and the World Bank, because the country wants to ban Glyphosate altogether since their sugarcane workers started dying of kidney failure ever since they started spraying non-GM sugarcane just before harvest. Unfortunately, these international institutions are threatening the country of financial ruin through cutting of credit and devaluing their credit rating etc, unless it backs away from banning the chemical across the board. In other words, there is more than just FDA and EPA, that are following unethical practice, to push Glyphosate down the throat of other nations. Even the actions of the US State Department deserves your investigation.

Within the BRICS nations, China is an interesting case to which I shall draw your attention. Russia wants the BRICS group to altogether ban Glyphosate. South Africa is on the fence but would like to join. Indian Govt is on the fence but the people in general would like to join this ban. China is very against banning Glyphosate. Why ? Because China is the biggest producer of Glyphosate (for American brand names) and exporter. Therefore, they do not want the Glyphosate market to shrink.

Therefore, it is my opinion that, to do justice to the topic, you might need to give much a higher exposure to the saga of Glyphosate.

Another thing, it is my understanding that US regulators such as EPA require toxicological tests not just for 90 days but for a lot longer, up to two years. This may not have been evident at the time of writing your book but Monsanto’s tests, their reports as well as raw data have been selectively released to key people with non-disclosure agreements, after 35 years. Anthony Samsel has over 4,000 pages of it, and has started investigating how Monsanto misrepresented the test data to claim that Glyphosate was safe. However, some of the tests extended to two years. I draw your attention to your book on Glyphosate (RoundUp) references on, for example, pages 302, 303, 304 etc. Perhaps you would consider amending that in the next printing. In my thinking, that 90 days test requirement may be factually incorrect. The reason the test results were accepted as satisfactory was not because the period of the test was short, but because Monsanto may have cheated in presenting the data. Incidentally, I interviewed Anthony Samsel on the now selectively unsealed Monsanto documents. Two short videos on them can be found on my blog: http://www.tonu.org/2015/06/06/glyphosate_tradesecretfiles/

There is a growing movement across the planet to rise up against Glyphosate. You of course are aware that Glyphosate is now routinely used as desiccant on non-GM crops, such as cereals, in North America, and it is difficult today for people here to find a meal without glyphosate, even if they go for certified non-GMO crops.

You may or may not be aware, that scientists in the US that make their own bread from certified organic wheat, which they buy in sacks, have found the wheat to be contaminated with Glyphosate in some of the bags, enough to make them sick. This goes to show how endemic the problem is.

There are a rising number of independents studies creeping up from all across the planet, about serious health effects, even deformed babies, from Glyphosate exposure. Separate wildlife scientists in North America are finding evidence that our wildlife, mostly ruminants and other mammals, and even many bird species, are standing at the verge of extinction, primarily suspected as victims of Glyphosate and its damaging effects on their microbiome. According to some of these scientists, large game mammals in North America are going to face extinction soon, since many will be unable to produce viable offspring, due to damaged reproductive system or infertility, while some bird species will face extinction due to highly skewed sex ratio, again thanks to Glyphosate.

I can introduce you, should you like, to some of these scientists. These stories have not yet been told properly and their findings have not seen proper light of day, due to disinterest from Government, media as well as the public.

Meanwhile, you are likely aware that a rising number of labs across north America are beginning to offer high end, low detection level, repeatable, accredited tests to detect Glyphosate in all kinds of raw and processed food, as well as live crops and grain. Also, a lot of people now are beginning to test their Urine for Glyphosate.  I am told Hollywood is getting ready to publicize it too – not sure if this Hollywood story is correct.

Here in Canada, folks are getting engaged in testing their own food and doing self-labelling, bypassing the entire do-nothing government. I am personally involved in this effort, as well as notifying the major food store chains that our intension is to test their food and put the results up on the web.

Anyhow, it is my honest opinion that your book has done a disservice to the very real dangers associated with glyphosate, with or without GMO. Many scientists, including genetic engineers and agrologist and soil biologists consider Glyphosate in the long run to be a greater threat and easier to prove scientifically, than GMO. That may be one reason the industry likes people to stay focussed on GMO, supporting the argument that the industry is comfortable responding to GMO concerns, but not Glyphosate.

I would like to touch base with you some day, should you come this way. I live in Delta, near Vancouver. I am friendly with many scientists – biochemists, microbiologists, genetic engineers, top biologists, agrologist and the like, in USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Asia, and Australasia and have learned a bit from them about this serious issue.

I understand you are a lawyer. So you probably know that the only serious court cases in relation to GMO that has been lost by the regulatory authorities or the biotech industry and won by the litigators have been in India, on more than one occassion. I personally know the people that took the Government to court about GMO and actually won, putting a serious dent in the biotech industry’s effort to open that market. Unfortunately, Glyphosate has not faced that kind of focussed resistance and it is virtually everywhere in India, even without GMO, and is ruining their health, not to mention the ravages of farmer suicide that has crossed 300,000. Not all of them are to do with GMO, something that Monsanto and its partners are quick to point out, but nearly all are linked, one way or another, with Glyphosate, something that the same Monsanto would rather not have to answer.

Incidentally, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai has recently published four papers, which conclude on a scientific basis that the concept of “substantial equivalence” is humbug, at least according to thousands of test results on GM against non-GM soy, when measuring glutathione and formaldehyde correlation. You might find it interesting to check on Ayyadurai’s work. I know him too.

Hoping to touch base with you some day, on phone of face to face.

Tony Mitra

Well, that was my letter to Druker. I hope I can have a good talk with him some day. I personally do not believe books on GMO will actually result in any measurable action in preventing its spread. I actually do not believe any prevention will happen through people singing petitions or by politicians either. Change has to happen with people directly engaging with their Government and rising op to stop this chemical attack. If it happens, it will be triggered by people other than armchair warriors.
That has been my observation even on the ground, such as in Eastern Europe or India. When Bt. Egg Plant was proposed for entry in India, there were hundreds of thousands of people on the march. It scared the daylights out of the minster of environment, who blocked it, effectively indefinitely, something that the new Indian Government is trying to undo, slowly.
In North America, people have forgotten how to rise up that way. Either for that reason, or for some other, we in North America are the worst off – which reflects in our health status in comparison to the other western nations, in every field. We are the sickest of them all, although we spend the most in healthcare, compared to all others.
I might add a discussion podcast, or perhaps a video, or other material, on what some of the other scientists and researchers, policy makers etc that have knowledge on it, might think about our Glyphosate problem, and how it has so far escaped the mainstream media, the political establishment and the public eye.
Readers are welcome to send me a note.

A few updates. I have received a very nice response from Dr. Don Huber in support of what Druker did in his investigative effort in the book, which is specifically focussed on the problems in the regulatory process of approval of GMO.
Dr. Huber agreed that I might copy his message here, which is

Tony,
Although your letter highlights the problem with glyphosate, it does a disservice to Steve Druker.  The PURPOSE of Druker’s book is to DOCUMENT the dangers of the PROCESS and the regulatory corruption that is present that is manifest in NOT JUST GMOs but also chemicals, etc. Without GMO, there would be much less glyphosate in our food even though I agree that desiccation with a systemic chemical like glyphosate is an abominable practice from a food safety consideration.
I commend Steve for his thorough documentation of the UNSAFE results of the PROCESS, and in doing it in such a readable and understandable manner! In visiting with him, he mentioned that he had several more chapters, but had to cut those because of length and didn’t want the purpose and focus of the book on the GMO PROCESS to be minimized.  There is plenty of room for someone else to write about glyphosate, as you know that those articles are published everyday.  Steve’s expertise is in the legal/regulatory arena which he shares very effectively in his book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. This is a much needed discussion since the opposition to food labeling is based on “don’t condemn the process” which both Steve Druker in his book and Shive Ayyadurai’s excellent research (devoted solely to Unsafety of the PROCESS) document.  Just because there are unaddressed issues in society that need to be addressed, please don’t negate the important contributions a few brave souls have been willing to dedicate so much effort to thoroughly document.
You highlight a glowing need for a comparable documentation on glyphosate, but it should not be construed as a reason t criticize or negate what has been accomplished with Steve’s book on GMOs and the PROCESS as well as the betrayal of the public trust involved in the regulatory system!
Don
Don M. Huber
Professor Emeritus, Purdue University

I received another message from another scientist involved in this issue, and who knows Steven Druker personally. I am quoting the comment here, though I shall keep the sender’s name out of it since I did not obtain specific permission to disclose it.

I was disappointed as well by his “light” treatment of glyphosate. I think he was duped by all the propaganda that glyphosate is nontoxic to humans. I’ve tried to set him straight, but so far without success (I think).

Please give it a try!

I have also received a note from Dr. Samsel regarding his investigation of the Monsanto toxicological test. He corrected me in one area. The total number of pages of document thus released to him stands at over 15,000, and counting. It was 4,000 when I interviewed him last. So, Dr. Samsel has gotten a whole lot more now to sift through, regarding Monsanto, Glyphosate, EPA and the approval process.

Scientist friend Chenny from China supports Don Huber’s view, that Druker should not be responsible for highlighting glyphosate, since Drukers angle was GMO and FDA, not glyphosate and EPA, although glyphosate story is as important and damaging, as GMO.

Dear Tony,
I tend to agree with Don Huber’s comments.
If you carefully consider the whole book, you should understand that he approaches the issue from disclosing FDA regulatory procedures and result.
And, if you review FDA’s role over all glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops, you could see that they completely ignore the issue of glyphosate residues in glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops.
Part of the reason: “division of responsibility”, EPA (not FDA) is responsible of safety evaluation of pesticides, herbicides. Thus, once EPA classifies glyphosate/Roundup as safe to animals, humans, FDA then treats glyphosate/Roundup as safe and no concern to all glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops.
Monsanto takes advantage of this, in their “volunteer consultation” with FDA over all glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops, glyphosate residue is not even mentioned!
The same situation exists in China: When Monsanto applied for safety evaluation of RR soybeans/maize in 2003, glyphosate was not mentioned in any of their documents submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture, and RR soybean samples submitted to the Ministry for toxicology animal testing, were also grown without spraying Roundup. Ministry of Agriculture accepted all of this, especially because the same Ministry evaluated glyphosate/Roundup in 1988 and approved its “pesticide registration” classifying it safe to animals and human health!
This is why our efforts in China must start with the registration of  glyphosate/Roundup in 1988 based on falsified toxicology animal reports submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture, if we can not succeed on this issue, we have no ground to further attack the approval of RR soybean in 2003.
Accordingly, especially as a lawyer reviewing whatever legal effective evidence he can obtain, Druker will not (and cannot) discuss issues which are not available in the evidence he obtains.
Another even more important issue: Only by establishing widest possible united front against Monsanto and evil forces, the people can win. Accordingly, we must first evaluation if the person, like Druker, is a colleague on the same side, or an enemy on the other side, and treat them accordingly, and be careful not to miss fire and hurt each other on the same general side.
I suggest you give some further thoughts to the overall situation, and adjust you attitude and position with Druker.
Saying all the above, your critisim over glyphosate (not against Druker), is completely correct, and I believe that Druker also accepts. But, as a lawyer, and also for tacticle reasons, it is far more effective for his book not to discuss glyphosate, because this is completely not a FDA issue, it is a EPA issue.
Best regards
Chenny

Wildlife scientist Judy Hoy of Montana had an interesting feedback. She has not read the book, but believes Don Huber is right, in the sense that Druker’s book is on GMO and not glyphosate. Yet, she also mentions that, in effect, Druker’s book is nothing compared to the ravages that glyphosate brings on the planet. She also attached a graph in her response, of glyphosate against children’s autism.

Hi Tony,

I agree with Don Huber that Druker’s book was about GMOs in particular. (I haven’t had time to read it yet.) It would likely take at least two books equal in size to Druker’s book to report even a little of the extensive, sadistic damage Roundup/glyphosate is doing to the planet. Humans and most other animals will likely be gone because of that damage long before the total effects of releasing GMO plants on the planet reach their full potential.

Did I or anyone else send you The Earth is not Roundup Ready? It is a short document listing just a few of the things that Roundup/glyphosate are doing to cause global climate change and cause the demise of most species of vertebrate. It is based on what several scientists told me. I just put the effects in a list of sorts and sent it to other scientists.

I really don’t think that GMOs can work nearly as fast as Roundup, working synergistically with the other deadly pesticides (umbrella term), to destroy life on the earth. I may be wrong, but based on my observations for the last 20 years, I doubt it.

I thought your blog was great. Feel free to share our 2015 study with Steven Druker if you have the opportunity. It pretty much shows graphically and photographically what Roundup is doing to newborns of birds and mammal, including children. I have to say that I have a serious problem with governments allowing chemical companies to get by with maiming and killing millions of human babies. That is government condoned genocide, which I thought was not supposed to be allowed “ever again.” And as you say, one of the worst offenders is the United States (Canada may not be far behind if the birth defects on the animals are any indication.) Also, the serious effects of Roundup and the other highly used pesticides is extensively and actively covered up by all government agencies, almost all media, almost all conventional medical organizations and professionals, etc., which makes all of them accomplices in the mass genocide.

Best Wishes,
Judy

Microbiologist, soil biologist, and ex-agriculture Canada scientist Dr. Thierry Vrain had this to say about the book

I will play the devil’s advocate.  I read that thick book quickly and saw the space devoted to the danger of glyphosate – practically nil.   The whole book is about the history of evils that Monsanto has done, including the faked results of corporate research.   But there is nothing about the commercial successes of the RoundUp Ready technology (and desiccation of grains) taking over 500 million acres, and less than nothing about the herbicide sprayed on that half billion acres.  Don’t you find that a little strange ?

A one liner for yet another scientist, commenting not so much on the book, but about my role.

Tony, I am thrilled that you are so involved with this very important mission, and that you have a unique role to play!

This came from Victor Hafichuk, who had hosted us in his huge farm in Alberta during our GE talk tour event at Lethbridge. I had a time finding it in a snow covered agricultural landscape with no identifiable landmark anywhere, in the darkness. I still smile at that experience. This is the first feedback from a non-scientist.

From what I’ve learned, not only from you, is that glyphosate should receive no small billing. It seems to me that small mention of it is as bad as no mention at all, perhaps worse, like labeling GMO’s as though they’re legitimate food and that people ought to have a choice between food and poison. What’s poison doing on grocery shelves, anyway? We’re talking a fire-breathing dragon here, aren’t we? Should we be casual about the dragon or the fire? 

And keep up the good work, Tony. In the end, when all is said and done, Truth ALWAYS prevails, no matter the time or medium or apparent failures in the meantime….

GMO is a trojan horse, to quietly bring in glyphosate – says André Comeau, geneticist, Quebec City, working to develop plants that need zero pesticides

GMOs are a Trojan horse for pesticides. Alas the people are so poorly aware of the Greek literature that at least two thirds of them do not even know the meaning of Trojan Horse. But Trojan horse is the best descriptor of GMOs. It means nowadays, it is the doomsday gadget (GMO) that introduces a dangerous enemy (glyphosate), without giving any alert to the victims (that there is glyphosate in it).

 

Further feedback from Scientist Stephanie Seneff

I think he wrote a great book – one of the few that I have taken the time to read all the way through this year – but I can not help but say that I was disappointed that glyphosate didn’t get more coverage.

The only conclusion I can make is simply that he was not aware that it is so toxic.  I can forgive him for that, as it is hard for people to believe – even people who are experts on GMOs – that glyphosate COULD be that toxic, given that all the regulating agencies have given it the ‘okay.’

Stephanie

I received more feedback from non-scientists as well, but shall leave that aside for now. It is quite clear to me at least, that, the issue of importance of glyphosate as a very dangerous chemical that is on us in unbelievably huge quantities and is threatening life at a planetary scale, is agreed more or less by everybody.

Then there is a split, right down the middle, with some stating Druker did not need to tackle glyphosate (or he may be unsuited for that task), and the other half thinks Druker should very much have mentioned, even for two or three pages, the extreme danger glyphosate poses to the planet.

I believe, whether the book is by a scientist, a lawyer, a writer, an activist, or Mickie Mouse, if it is about corruption in the US institutions in accepting GMOs for agricultural use, it aught to have also covered the parallel ravages of glyphosate (in my mind glyphosate is a lot worse), just so the readers are not mislead into thinking GMO is the beginning and end of all evil, and you can drink glyphosate on the rocks before going to bed.

Steve Druker himself sent a long email to me – half scolding me and half demanding an apology. I would have posted his letter here too, as he had suggested, but he ended his email stating that I should not publish this letter till he has a chance to refine them a bit. Sine he did not send any such refinement, I have not posted his letter here.

The remarkable story of Richard Miller

Posted on by

Richard Miller was a healthy, barely thirty young man back in the 1990s, when he started getting sick with an incurable and permanently present migraine headache. The illness made him unfit to work every so often. Some days he would be unable to get off his bed, or keep his food down. He was visiting the Hospital sometimes 18 to 20 times a year. He lost his regular job. He spent countless thousands of dollars trying to cure himself, without success. He got progressively sicker, became obese, developed blood cholesterol and other problems, got into an indenting list of medicines he had to take. But nothing helped.

Then, in the fall of 2013, he saw Dr. Mercola on TV, in Hawaii. The doctor was taking in calls from the public. So Richard called him, and luckily got through. The doctor, after listening to his story, suggested that Richard tries to go 100% organic for a month, and see if that helps.

Richard did. On the tenth day, he woke us without a headache and feeling better than he had for the last 20 years. The experience changed him. Today he looks trim and healthy, years younger than his fifty plus years. And along with himself, he is changing his very neighbourhood in Chilliwack, BC, Canada.

Now, he is a messiah that is converting his neighbourhood, one house at a time, to get them to start growing their own organic food in their own front and/or backyard, and promoting chemical free food, including organic sprouts. In order to help convince his neighbours, Richard passes out free seeds, saplings, compost, and even his own about, to help a neighbour get started.

Watch the remarkable story of Richard Miller, in his own voice.

[youtube _chKm0a65Yw]

Kate Storey of the Green Party nails it on GMO and Glyphosate

Posted on by

Kate is an organic farmer based in Manitoba. She is also the Agriculture critic of the Green Party and an aspiring politician that is standing for the coming federal and provincial elections, hoping to be either an MP or an MLA.

For me this was a back to back interview with two candidates of the Green Party. They are on a fast growth track, far as I can see, but are starting from a near zero level. Their system and policies stand apart from any other conventional party.

Besides, being concerned about Canada’s food security and this chemical and biological attack we are subjected to through foreign biotech corporations efforts to own everything in Canada and our politicians penchant to sell Canada piece by piece to the lowest bidder is, at least to me, a national crisis whose root is in political corruption and can only be resolved politically, by electing good people into our parliament. Just like Politicians have a duty to protect the land and the people, a task in which they are failing, citizens have a duty, to ensure good people get elected, and to keep our politicians in check. A functioning democracy needs both elements – good politicians and involved citizens.

I wanted to ask her questions that relates to the particularly unenviable position that Canada is in, with regard to exposure to transgenic organisms and nasty biocides such as Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide and others being used on our food system, our prairies, forests, parks and everywhere else.

I wanted to ask her if the Green Party might bolster its policy on UN convention on biodiversity and the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety, by proposing to ratify the Cartagena Protocol and actually pass a law that will protect indigenous flora and fauna. She agreed this is a good idea and asked me to send her the details. Members of the party can propose amendment on their party policy and she was a member, so she would consider helping the party adopt it.

Then she spoke for around ten minutes straight, describing the Green Party agriculture policy, possibly reading it out, and covered a lot of ground so we did not have to ask each item one by one. I was concerned about the rural heartland being depopulated as small farmers were driven to extinction, and becoming unemployed job seekers while mega corporate farms replaced them and turned to extremely energy and input dependent toxic chemical dependent mono-culture regime that only bring illness to the people and lifelessness to the land while impoverishing the people. She did a good job explaining all of that in one shot.

Then we went to another difficult issue – political alliance in ridings where the left vote is split and the conservatives gain by stealing the seat there. I got a response from Tom Mulcair about his effort to form an alliance with the Liberals, but that the Liberals refused. He did not mention the Greens.

Kate spoke on record that the NDP had refused to form any alliance with the Greens. The Greens had tried very hard to form alliance with both Liberals and the NDP but apparently none of the larger parties were interested. This is a tragedy, in my mind, because ego of the parties get in the way and open the path for the Conservatives, who are ruining the country.

I should be asking Tom Mulcair again to clarify the issue of alliance with the Greens.

Kate opposes absentee owners of the farm land and supports agriculture cooperatives for helping small farmers and dependence in local food instead of our cauliflowers coming from California.

Pesticide use has increased instead of decreasing, with widespread adoption of GM crops. The party is aware of Glyphosate poisoning of people and proposes all children being tested for Glyphosate.

I did not interrupt her to state that Canada does not even have a lab that will test children or our food for Glyphosate content. Canadian labs at this moment only offer testing Glyphosate in water and soil. I am personally involved in trying to coax labs to offer this service on one side, and asking the people to demand this test, so as to create a “demand” for this service, so that labs take note and get on board.

I should be asking Kate to consider writing in a policy to help in this effort so Canada gets a few labs that will test Glyphosate in people and food.

I asked her about mandatory voting law. Its not mandatory in Canada, and Canadian voter participation is rather poor. She things this is a great idea, as is the issue of proportional representation. The problem is, I thought, that current senators may never vote these systems in, because they are the beneficiary of the absence of these laws.

However, these are necessary goals and can only happen with public pressure and public demand.

She said NDP is in power in Manitoba and that they have a policy to support proportional representation, and yet, they have not passed this law. So,  somebody needs to ask NDP Manitoba about it. Perhaps I shall ask them by email, and see what they say.

Kate predicts that the Greens will get somewhere between ten and twenty seats in the next federal election, with British Columbia leading the way and perhaps PEI following suit.

All in all, this is one politician and hopefully a future MP that I really enjoyed speaking with.

I do hope she wins, and gets to kick some butt in Ottawa.

The podcast is just over 31 minutes long. You can listen to it by clicking the play button at the bottom of this page.

Dr. Josette Wier continues her battle against pesticides

Posted on by

Dr. Josette Wier, a doctor and an activist against pesticides, was born in France. She is 68 years old. She has a 120 Acre plot at Smithers, northern BC. She wishes to plant organic grain there, but has not managed the economics of it yet, so presently leases the land for hay. She does not earn anything from it – but gives the hay away freely. She intends to try out experimental crops in small lots to see what works and what does not. She is not aiming to get her products certified organic right now, because it is an expensive proposition, but would like to grow her crops as if they were organic.

There is a shortage of information and knowledge on what can be grown there sustainably. The region’s history of settlements is barely a century old, where settlers came, cleared the forest and created the farm land. Nobody has tried growing human cereals, though some have grown animal feed there. There was a government funded study in an experimental farm decades ago, to see what can be grown there. But, the Government has shut that down quite a while ago. The information thus collected is apparently lost or lying in someone’s barn without any effort to preserve. Reportedly a research student in the University of Northern British Columbia, UNBC, is trying to find that information and is lamenting at the difficulty of finding, preserving and building on that knowledge base.

Josette has a few more things that sets her apart. She has been battling pesticide use in Canada, as an activist and a litigator, for 15 years or so. She took the provincial Government followed up by taking the Federal Govt to court for practice of injecting arsenic based pesticide into hundreds of thousands of BC forest trees to fight the pine beetle attack, and for spraying RoundUp by the logging corporations. After several years of court battle , she eventually won both her cases, and the practice was halted. But this happened only after EPA had withdrawn approval of the practice in USA due to proven harm to environment.

Josette however does not consider it a victory, since the BC Government does not seem to know what to do with the hundred thousand trees that still stand with arsenic and Glyphosate in them, and are poisoning woodpeckers, mice, insects and a whole lot of the food chain. During this long battle, she came to learn a lot about the harmful effects of Glyphosate.

As if that was not enough, Dr. Josette Wier has come across a new challenge in the last few years in Smithers. Her district voted itself to want to be GMO free through a resolution in 2013. However, an Alberta farmer has landed on her town, bought a large plot, and has started planting and growing GM RoundUp Ready Canola, and spraying RoundUp, more than the recommended limit, on his property bordering Josette, causing pesticide trespass onto her property over the fence, as well as using RoundUp on crown property ditches which is illegal even in Canada.

Further, he appears to be using it more often and in larger quantity than recommended by the producer (Monsanto) and seller (Croplife). Also the new farmer apparently does not follow best practice guidelines recommended in Croplife brochure, about informing bee keepers and neighbours before spraying, so the neighbours could take precaution.

Josette says she and her family is genetically inclined to fall prey to Cancer more easily than others. She has officially complained to the district board. But nothing much happens.

It appears that the use of Glyphosate is approved by Health Canada based on study by the maker of the product, provided the user follows the guidelines provided in the package. The strange thing is – there seem to be no oversight or regulator, to ensure that the guidelines, however questionable, are being followed.

[youtube eXxdL00nKC4]

Josette has filed a case with the Farm Industry Resource Board on this issue as well as given written letters to the farmer in question, advising him of the recommended practice per CropLife and Monsanto documentation and requesting him to maintain a buffer, use the herbicide no more than recommended level and keep neighbours and bee keepers advised ahead of time. None of these requests are being followed.

I am planning to create a two part video, 15 minutes each, of Josette’s talk, and plan to drive to her place in summer,  a 12 hour drive, for a look sea and taking pictures (right now there is a lot of snow on the roads and is not a good time to drive there).

This video was created based on my talks with her.

A few notes:
She is asking for a buffer around her property where no herbicide is sprayed. This is better than no buffer. But we know that is insufficient as the spray drifts in the air. Also, it may get into the underground water, and also go in agricultural runoffs and contaminate the neighbourhood anyway.

The issue here, is another example where we may be having a Government that appears determined to poison the countryside for the sake of a handful of Auber-powerful corporations. Is this an onset of fascism? Are we having a Government of the Corporations, for the Corporations and by the Corporations, while maintaining a thin and crumbling facade of democracy and rule of law?

If any of you know the student of UNBC that is searching for the missing documents about the experimental farm in Bulley-Nachako regional district, that was shut down by the Government, I would request you to pass me her contacts so I can catch up on that story.

This is not the only battle on Josette’s plate. She has the pipeline and the other toxic agendas to fight against too. My heart goes out to this spirited doctor, and member of CAPE (Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment).

For those that might want  to offer a suggestion for Dr. Wier – send me a note.

Canada’s unenviable record of resisting Glyphosate and GMO

Posted on by

Here is something that I wrote, on a long chain of email based discussions on what we Canadians or British Columbians might do, to resist the GMO onslaught.

Hi Dag, and everyone else.

Guess this is a kind of email-brainstorm discussion on the topic. I shall state my feelings on it, if I may, based on Dag’s very good analysis, which is still quite different from mine.
I look at it this way, but am not proposing that everyone else must agree:
  1. Glyphosate is a greater health risk, proven, than GMO. Glyphosate combined with vaccine additives make a drastically more dangerous cocktail of poison. Glyphosate is in more things than just our food, and is killing more than just humans. Glyphosate is now being used even on non-GMO crops as desiccant, so it is expected to have higher concentration on non-GMO food than even on GMO crops. Lastly, without Glyphosate, a majority of the GMO  (roundUp ready crops) will automatically die off. IN other words, eradicating GMO will not stop Glyphosate, but eradicating Glyphosate will more or less kill the largest swatch of GMO. So, at least in my view, Glyphosate is to be the primary target of my energy. The only thing worse is, 2,4-D is coming, together with Glyphosate and smart stacks.
  2. I disagree that Canada in the last ten or twenty years have gone a long way forward  in fighting off GMO. I do not know how to judge public awareness, but by mathematical numbers, the support for fighting off GMO is pitiful in my eyes. Where venues should pack thousands of people, even hundreds of thousands, we see tens and twenties and at times a few hundred. I do not consider this progressing forward. To me this is regressing backward. Further, if I check the details of how many GMO crops Canada managed to stop, and compare than with how many GM crops Canada has allowed in, in the last two decades, I come to the conclusion that Canada is singularly the worst nation in the planet (along with USA) when it comes to approving GM products in our food. Official figures through UNO affiliated bodies say USA and Canada have over 100 GMO products on their food shelves, while Europe has less than ten, and countries like India have just one. So, if I consider we are making progress, then I am in denial, and I am part of the problem, not part of the solution.
  3. When strategizing, I must take into account that GMO and pesticides are entering Canada through our political system, and that both mainstream political parties, i.e. the conservation’s and the liberals, are allowing wholesale introduction of it, much like the republicans and the democrats in the US. NDP has a slightly shrouded agriculture policy that appears to be against GMO and pesticide  but does not spell it out clearly and unambiguously. I have learned to be suspicious of policy statements that are vague and avoids calling a spade a spade. The agriculture policy of the Green Party appears to be the only one that is unmistakably, unambiguously and clearly, against introduction of patented GMO and pesticide laden agriculture, forestry and ecosystem management practices. Not just that but they seem to be the only party that highlights the dangers of the trade deals we are entering into that allow foreign nations and corporations to sue us if we do not import their toxic packages. But then, the Green Party is a long way off from forming a Government.  Some  MLA and MPs have said, including emails to me, that there is no hope for Canada (on the GMO/pesticide issue as well as many others) unless we get proportional representation. However, nobody seems to know how to bring about proportional representation when such policy changes will have to be voted by the very MPs that support the current unjust system. What we have is a mockery of democracy, and the onset of a full blown fascism, and unless we fix that, all the talk about resisting GMO is just that – talk. So, to me, resisting GMO or pesticide cannot be divorced from politics. This is a political problem – a crisis of civilization, and not one of just science or sociology. Our democracy has gone down the toilet.
  4. I am appalled at the apathy of Canadian citizenry, especially of the younger generation that seems to have no time for anything other than be preoccupied with themselves. In that sense, I believe the youth is disconnected in general, but Canadian youth appear to be particularly more self-absorbed and myopic compared to youth of other continents. So, again from my point of view, I am trying within my meagre means to get ordinary citizens to re-engage with the rotten political system of this country. I have been vigorously involved within my means in the local municipal election – supporting good candidates and exposing those that sit on the fence on the GE free issue on my blog (www.tonu.org) naming rogue politicians, mayors and the like and putting up their pictures, as well as highlighting honest politicians that pledge to fight for eradication of GMO and pesticides. I am happy to note the only politician I went door to door to canvas in support of (ms Heather King) won the election in Delta. I am trying to organize a weekly trip to the local town halls where municipalities conduct their business in front of the people, and trying to give a free ride to anyone wanting to attend them from my neighbourhood. I find it appalling that the halls are bare and there are more councillors and municipal staff than there are public attending them. These, to me, are some of the root illnesses of our society, our civilization and our culture – just my view.
  5. In the last provincial election, I went door to door supporting candidates in Surrey, and Langley area that were standing on the Green ticket – not because of the party, but because they had integrity and would not mince their words on GMO and pesticide. They all lost their elections, but that hardly changes my position on what I as a citizen consider my duty of supporting good candidates.
  6. I am contemplating who to support in the next general election and what strategy I might adopt as a citizen. I already have at least one candidate and a very strong personality on anti-GMO and anti-pesticide battle. She is Brandie Harrop of Sherwood Park, Alberta standing on the Green ticket. I have not yet found a similar candidate, of any party or independent, in BC, but the search in on.
  7. I aim to promote and highlight people that make a difference, such as Arzeena Hamir, April Reees, Harold Steves, Sheryl McCumsey, Huguette Allen, Wendy Bales, Josette etc. These are hero and heroines of far greater importance, in my book, than a hundred Vandana Shiva, or Jeffrey Smith, Rachel Parent, or any other name on the horizon. These are people that are trying to “do” something, and not just talk about it and look pretty on tv. And I am always looking out for more of the unsung hero and heroines of Canada. I cannot get enough of them.
  8. I think GE free resolutions are a great starting point, but it needs to go further, and Municipalities need to push the button and find ways to pass bylaws and not just resolutions, on banning on growing GMO, or find ways to make it difficult or uneconomic for GMO / pesticide using farmers. I know legally agriculture in Canada is supposed to be a federal jurisdiction. But I have studied enough of it to know that both Provincial Governments as well as Municipalities can push at this boundary continuously, and preferably with many Municipalities together – to alter the situation. I also come from the land of Gandhi, who said, if there is a law that is unjust, then it is our duty to break that low. Growing clean food should be a basic human right and any law that curtails it is an unjust law in my book. That is part of the civil disobedience that Henry David Thoreau talked about almost two centuries ago.
I do not propose or expect folks here to agree with me much. I am just stating my own analysis on it and what I aim to do about it. I shall join hands with others occasionally where our views overlap.
Yes, we are in it together, but we are not a monolithic pack and I am not here to work under a narrow agenda. Most agendas I have so far seen, appear irrelevant and do not go far enough for me. But, I accept that for a lot of folks, thats all they can do.
By the way, there is a lot of bogus information, ill-information, half-information, or veiled misinformation going around in the name of science, while promoting the notion that GMO and herbicides are good for us and good for the planet. Don’t be swayed by such propaganda of the corporatocracy. Here is an example, that claims to state the “truth about glyphosate“:

Thanks and best wishes
Tony Mitra
.
[More to come here. Watch this space]

Asking Politicians to come clean on GMO and pesticides

Posted on by
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


Mayor of Delta – where are you?

Posted on by
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.

[youtube YEdpE0Aspf0]

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.

[youtube hTEh8fb6RIE]

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

Posted on by

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.
.
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.

Vallianatos exposes EPA through his book – Poison Spring

Posted on by

As the title says, Evaggelos Vallianatos, along with Mr. M. Jenkins co-authored the book on EPA, and how the organization has been literally captured by the toxic chemical industry, to the disadvantage of the average American, and by extension, of the people the world over.

I found the book very useful to understand how toxic chemicals get approved and how much of a clout the industry has over the regulatory mechanism. So much so that I approached Evaggelos Vallianatos for a phone interview, even if I was not very successful in pronouncing  his first name accurately.

He agreed and we had a talk a few days ago.

Here are the basic points:

  • The prevailing culture in EPA was to pretty much let the chemical industry to run the show.
  • The Government has been captured by the industry, and EPA is simply an example.
  • EPA is too important to be allowed to be dominated by such outside forces.
  • Decision made in EPA are questionable due to the influence that comes from the Congress, from the White House and directly from the Chemical Industry.
  • Credibility of science has been damaged due to the history of fraud in the testing of these toxic chemicals for decades.
  • The climate of fear, and acceptance of outside influence, is still pervasive.
  • America aught to reject the current EPA and redesign it as an independent organization, with a wall of protection from the industry so the scientists would feel secure and confident that their work and decisions are to be made on reliable and untampered data.
  • Also, the EPA or the Government needs to create a set of independent laboratories to test all these chemicals before they get into the market, and not rely on labs under control of the industry.
  • Credibility of the industry right now is as good as zero. Nobody trusts it’s findings. He himself would not trust them because of what he has seen in EPA.
  • This is very important because this not only affects the people of America, but also of Canada and pretty much the rest of the industrial world and beyond.
  • The system needs to be reformed, and its workings set right, and the industry needs to be kept away from interfering with the work of this agency.
  • We need to raise awareness by speaking about it, in Canada, in USA and elsewhere, in order to raise public awareness to the level where it can make an impact.
  • It has been 53 years since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. There should be no need now to re-state the problem, and we are still tackling with the same old problem albeit with a new breed of toxins.
  • CSPAN book TV has interviewed Dr. Vallianatos to be broadcast soon – and people are encouraged to see it.
  • Eggevelos Vallianatos would love to speak to Canadians on this.
  • He believes, if we have to select just a handful of pesticides that should be removed immediately, we might choose to kick out 2,4-D and Glyphosate first.
  • When EPA banned 2,4,5-T, they likely made a secret agreement with Dow not to touch 2,4-D since it was so popular.
  • Glyphosate in Roundup is used for decades and there are some experts that believe it will destroy American agriculture. We don’t think such extremely toxic substances should be in our environment.
  • Moms Across America has some young mothers test their breast milk and found traces of Glyphosate in them. Imagine the feeling of the mothers when they know they might poison their babies through breast feeding !!
  • There is science papers out there already about how bad these toxins are for many animals and even humans. And now it is in mothers milk.
  • Governments should ban it. There is enough good food possible through organic clean agriculture. There is no need for this toxic model.
  • So why is this toxic industry surviving? Not to provide nutrition or kill insects or do any favour to nature or people, Vallianatos argues. They survive so a small number of corporations can have a mega empire.
  • Advise to  Canadians – start eating organic food. Doing so you avoid GMO, you avoid pesticide, you avoid sludge, radiation, and other synthetic chemicals. Then, start influencing others to do the same. Join environment protection groups. Then try to organize bigger groups to influence the politics of your region and your nation.

Its a 14 minute interview. You can listen to it directly at the bottom of this page, or you can download it to play later through your music player.

I shall be glad to hear your opinion. Write to tony.mitra@gmail.com

Cheers

Tony Mitra


Anthony Samsel blasts GMO-Technology and the one gene one enzyme hyphotheses

Posted on by

I have had the pleasure of speaking with three scientists in USA recently that have done work on GMO or Glyphosate and how they are likely the primary or an important ingredient in our runaway rise in chronic diseases. These are Dr. Don Huber, Dr. Anthony Samsel and Dr. Stephanie Seneff.

I have already created audio podcast of my talks with Dr. Huber (http://www.tonu.org/2014/04/15/don_hube/) and Dr. Seneff (http://www.tonu.org/2014/04/19/stephanie-seneff/). I am yet to create a full audio podcast of my talks with Dr. Samsel, primarily because of some recording glitch where the quality of sound was not the best and I was having a hard time trying to clean it up through editing. Perhaps I shall have to request him for a fresh talk again.

Meanwhile, I did manage to extract two short sections of the talk, and create short video clips of them. One is about Golden Rice and vitamin deficiency (http://www.tonu.org/2014/04/21/goldenrice-debunked/), where Dr. Samsel illustrates why Golden rice is unnecessary, and untested. More than that, if one wishes to improve vitamin intake of poor kids in third world countries, the first step should be to remove Glyphosate from their diet. Thats because Glyphosate inhibits people’s micro-biome from creating vitamins using the raw materials in their food. SO, removing Glyphosate would automatically improve a boy’s ability to have more vitamins from his regular food.

I was meanwhile on a trip to the maritime provinces of Canada, on the Atlantic coast, and four hours time difference away from British Columbia. I was there with Dr. Thierry Vrain, mostly networking. Dr. Vrain spoke about the bad science behind GMO and worse science behind Glyphosate and how important it was to keep them away from one’s dinner table. I spoke of how the people of Canada needed to get mad, get even, and wrench back control of the political process from the clutches of big money and a handful of corrupt and toxic corporations.

After returning home, I got to working with the audio file of me speaking with Dr. Samsel, and managed to extract another 8 minute of exchange about the issue of GMO technology itself – if taking a single gene from one organism and inserting into another organism can work in theory, given our current knowledge of how genome works. Isn’t there collateral damage and unexpected outcome that we are not even looking or testing for? Further, what happens when Glyphosate is allowed to mix into this brew?

Dr. Samsel had been more than clear, forthright and easy to understand on these issues. I was happy to learn that Dr. Mae-Wan Ho of UK was had recently written in an article, crediting Dr. Samsel and Dr. Seneff for proving that the one gene one enzyme hypothesis is false. Not only can disruption of one original gene and replacing it with something else cause unexpected damage, it can lead to a cascading series of problems and effects, and often does.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the video clip, 8 minutes long, where Dr. Samsel again blasts the idea that one could pick a gene from a dinosaur, stick it into a mesosaur and hope to create a functioning GMOsaur. GMOs in short, are a scientific humbug, and a devastating attack on the natural world, and our food security.

I also included a quote from Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America, that i stumbled upon recently, and liked very much. My thanks to go Zen for a different reason, and relates to her group having samples tested for Glyphosate, which is something a few of us in Canada are also planning to do.

I hope you shall like the two short videos. I apologize for not being able to create a full length half hour audio podcast with him yet. But I am not giving up. I intend to ask him again, shortly, for indulging me.

You are most welcome to send me your comments or suggestions by email. One could also write directly on the blog, but one would first need to log in  there or create an account, which may be a bit of a hassle.

[youtube RmfWAnnu-RI]

The talk with Dr. Samsel is also available as an audio podcast for those that wish to listen in or save, linked below.

I shall be glad to hear your comments, sent to tony.mitra@gmail.com

Thanking you

Tony Mitra