Scientific Consensus on GM is an Illusion

The assumption is that a global scientific consensus has formed around the value of patent-protected transgenic crops, analogous to the general agreement around human-induced climate change. Yet that is clearly false.

Let’s start by looking at the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a three-year project to assess the role of agricultural knowledge, science, and technology in reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods, and facilitating environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development.

Widely compared to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which definitively established a scientific consensus around climate change on its release in 2007, the IAASTD engaged 400 scientists from around the globe under the aegis of the World Bank and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. According to the Executive Summary of the Synthesis Report, the effort was originally “stimulated by discussions at the World Bank with the private sector and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on the state of scientific understanding of biotechnology and more specifically transgenics.”

If transgenic-crop technology had captured the broad approval of the global agricultural-science community, here was the place to show it. But what happened? According to the Executive Summary of the Synthesis Report:

   "Assessment of biotechnology is lagging behind development; information can be anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty on benefits and harms is unavoidable. There is a wide range of perspectives on the environmental, human health and economic risks and benefits of modern biotechnology; many of these risks are as yet unknown.

   The application of modern biotechnology outside containment, such as the use of genetically modified (GM) crops, is much more contentious [than biotechnology within containment, e.g., industrial enzymes]. For example, data based on some years and some GM crops indicate highly variable 10 to 33 percent yield gains in some places and yield declines in others."

The report goes on to call for a whole new framework for crop-biotechnology research—an implicit rebuke to the current one:

   "Biotechnologies should be used to maintain local expertise and germplasm so that the capacity for further research resides within the local community. Such R&D would put much needed emphasis onto participatory breeding projects and agroecology."

Thus, whereas the IPCC revealed broad agreement among the global scientific community around climate change, the IAASTD—arguably the "IPCC of agriculture"—showed deep ambivalence among scientists over transgenic crops.

The real question becomes: How can serious publications like Seed claim that skepticism toward GMOs reflects a “scientific flip-flop”? To be sure, the illusion of a broad consensus holds sway in the United States, and the IAASTD has clearly failed to correct it. The US media greeted its release with near-complete silence—in stark contrast to its reception in the European media.

So, how did this spectral scientific consensus for GMOs come into being? In a two-part article called ” The Genetic Engineering of Food and The Failure of Science,” recently published as a “work in progress” by the peer-reviewed International Journal of the Sociology of Food and Agriculture, the agroecologist Don Lotter ventures to answer this.

Lotter's paper traces the history of the rise of plant transgenics, convincingly arguing that political and economic power, not scientific rigor, have driven the technology’s ascent. He shows that the hyper-liberal US regulatory regime around GMOs stems not from an overwhelming weight of evidence, but rather from close, often revolving-door ties between the industry and US administrations dating back to Reagan. Take the assumption that transgenic foods have been proven to have no ill effects on human health. Far from being exhaustively studied, it turns out, that question has been largely ignored—left by US regulators to be sorted out by the industry itself.        When there have been long-term trials by independent researchers, the results have hardly been comforting.

For example, writes Lotter:

   "In a 2008 report (Velimirov et al., 2008) of research commissioned by the Austrian government, a long-term animal feeding experiment showed significant reproductive problems in transgenic corn-fed rats when all groups were subject to multiple birth cycles, a regimen that has not hitherto been examined in feeding studies comparing transgenic and non-transgenic foods."

Thus in the first-ever multi-generational study of the effects of GMO food, evidence of serious reproductive trouble comes to light: reduced birth weight and fertility. If the reproductive system can be viewed as a proxy for broad health, then the Austrian study raises serious questions about the effects of consuming foods derived from transgenic crops—i.e., upwards of 70 percent of the products found on U.S. supermarket shelves. Yet, as in the case of the IAASTD, the Austrian study dropped with a thud by the US media.

The Austrian results raise an obvious question: why did the first multigenerational study of the health effects of GMOs emerge more than a decade after their broad introduction in the United States? Lotter devotes the second half of his paper, "Academic Capitalism and the Loss of Scientific Integrity," to answering that question. 

Lotter traces the generally blasé approach to GMO research to "the restructuring of research university science programs in the past 25 years from a non-proprietary 'public goods' approach to one based on dependence on private industry." He teases out the following ramifications:

   • tolerance by the scientific community of bias against and mistreatment of non-compliant scientists whose work results in negative findings for transgenics, including editorial decisions by peer-reviewed journals, as well as tolerance of biotechnology industry manipulation of the information environment

   • monopolization of the make-up of expert scientific bodies on transgenics by pro-industry scientists with vested interests in transgenics

   • deficient scientific protocols, bias, and possible fraud in industry-sponsored and industry-conducted safety testing of transgenic foods

   • increasing politically and commercially driven manipulation of science within federal regulatory bodies such as the FDA

Lotter delivers well-documented examples to support each of those charges. He shows, for example, that the USDA dispersed $1.8 billion for crop biotechnology research to universities between 1992 and 2002, of which one percent ($18 million) went to "risk-related research.” He cites another peer-reviewed study showing that university biotech research has "'overwhelmingly been targeted at plants and traits that are of interest to the largest firms," and that "research on non-proprietary solutions which benefit the wider public has been lacking…This arena should be central to the mission of universities and other non-profit research institutions.”

It's worth noting that the IAASTD points out similar concerns in the industry-dominated research agendas at public universities:

   "An emphasis on modern biotechnology without ensuring adequate support for other agricultural research can alter education and training programs and reduce the number of professionals in other core agricultural sciences. This situation can be self-reinforcing since today’s students define tomorrow’s educational and training opportunities." 

A recent event reported by the New York Times illustrates the lack of independence—and thus, arguably, rigor—that surrounds too much GMO research. A group of 23 US scientists signed a letter to the EPA declaring that, “No truly independent research [on GMOs] can be legally conducted on many critical questions.” The Times reported that because of draconian intellectual property laws, scientists can’t grow GMO crops for research purposes without gaining permission from the corporations that own the germplasm—permission which is sometimes denied or granted only on condition that the companies can review findings before publication.

Stunningly, "The researchers … withheld their names [from the EPA letter] because they feared being cut off from research by the companies," The Times reports. 

So this is the sort of scientific consensus around GMOs that environmentalists should bow to—one literally based on fear among tenured faculty?

Ultimately, scientific responses to the advent of climate change and the rise of GMOs make a poor comparison. The consensus around climate change developed in spite of a multi-decade campaign by some of the globe's most powerful and lucrative industries—the petroleum and coal giants—to protect markets worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The consensus around GMOs—or at least the specter of one—arose through the lobbying and support of an industry desperate to protect its own multibillion-dollar investments. I predict this bought-and-paid-for consensus will prove short-lived. 

50 Years After 'Silent Spring' We Have Ignored Rachel Carson’s Findings to Our Peril

Fifty years ago, a Johns Hopkins–educated zoologist did something that few at the time thought was possible. With the publication of one book, she started a national debate about the universally accepted use of synthetic pesticides, the irresponsibility of science, and the limits of technological promise. She also challenged the metastatic growth of the synthetic chemicals industry that grew out of World War II.

Silent Spring [6] was Rachel Carson’s third book, following The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. The Sea Around Us had won the 1952 National Book Award for nonfiction and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 21 months. Yet it is unlikely that Carson, who had spent most of her career as an editor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had any idea of what the publication of Silent Spring would engender.

Carson became interested in the harmful effects of pesticides, especially DDT, in the late 1950s. DDT was first commercially produced just prior to World War II, and was used to reduce the threats posed by insects to U.S. troops overseas. After the war, DDT was promoted as a great scientific advance and was widely and successfully used as an insect killer in the United States. The chemical was considered to be so benign that parents casually watched their children running in billowing white DDT clouds sprayed from trucks in residential neighborhoods.

Carson’s research focused on organic pesticides like chlordane, heptachlor, and aldrin, as well as DDT. She documented the widespread death of birds that had been exposed to the chemicals, as well as reproductive, birth, and developmental abnormalities in mammals. All life, she wrote, is a “chemical factory” dependent upon oxygen to power the cell machinery. Citing the work of Nobel scientist Otto Warburg, she explained in clear terms why repeated small exposures to pesticides and nuclear radiation change the ability of the cell to carry out normal activities, resulting in malignancy or defective offspring—the reason there is no “safe” dose of a carcinogen. Many scientific experts shared her concerns.

The New Yorker ran three excerpts [7] of Silent Spring in June 1962, before the official September 27 publication date. The response was swift and resounding. CBS began preparing a nationally broadcast special on the book. Page one of the July 22 New York Times featured a story entitled “Silent Spring Is Now a Noisy Summer [8].” On August 29, a reporter attending President Kennedy’s press conference asked if the federal government was examining the growing concern about DDT and other pesticides. Kennedy responded: “Yes...I think particularly, of course, since Miss Carson’s book.” A month before the publication date, Houghton Mifflin had advance orders for 40,000 copies and had a 150,000-copy contract with the Book-of-the-Month Club.

The chemical industry didn’t wait to read the book. Carson’s short but devastating treatise was a threat to their bottom line, and the industry that manufactured DDT and other pesticides Carson had described reacted angrily to her scientifically sound arguments that their products were harmful. They attacked Carson’s expertise. They attacked her methods. They attacked her motivations. They attacked her conclusions. They threatened to sue Houghton Mifflin and The New Yorker.

In a relentless campaign to destroy her character, the industry distributed pamphlets, published articles, and vilified Carson in media interviews. They described her as “fanatic” and “hysterical,” yet almost all international scientists agreed with Carson. A Scientific Advisory Committee assembled by Kennedy issued a supportive report in May 1963. In response to the shrill attacks of her industry critics, Carson calmly stuck to the facts. She died at age 56 from breast cancer, 18 months after Silent Spring was published.

Many regard Carson as the founder of the American environmental movement. Yet the movement had already begun. Albert Schweitzer, well-known scientists such as Linus Pauling, pediatrician Benjamin Spock, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas had already been speaking out against the dangers of above-ground atom-bomb testing. Citizen groups like Women Strike for Peace organized increasingly large demonstrations against such tests.

But to a large extent, Silent Spring sparked the movement that endures today. In 1967, scientists and activists founded the Environmental Defense Fund. On April 29, 1970, one week after widespread demonstrations on the first Earth Day, President Nixon’s Advisory Council on Executive Action proposed the Environmental Protection Agency, which became a reality later that year. And in June 1972, after three years of federal hearings and scientific inquiries into the question Carson raised in Silent Spring, EPA Director William Ruckelshaus issued an order that banned the use of DDT in the United States. The environmental movement was in full swing.

Despite the efforts of Carson and others who followed, a long list of chemicals is still in daily use—arguably more than ever. It includes pesticides, herbicides, industrial agents, fuels, preservatives, food additives, dyes, household products, medicines, and more.

The benefits of chemicals must always be weighed against their risks—but those risks must be objectively calculated. As Carson wrote in Silent Spring:

The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable: the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but also in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life.

Fifty years after the publication of the book, the corporations that produce and market the chemicals are far larger. Their lobbyists and PR machines are more well-funded and sophisticated and exert unprecedented influence over regulators, the media, and, most critically, elected officials.

A Congressional resolution introduced by Maryland Democratic Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski, honoring Carson on what would have been her 100th birthday in 2007, was blocked by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who complemented his vote with disparaging remarks about the author. “Millions of people in the developing world, particularly children under 5, died because governments bought into Carson’s junk-science claims about DDT,” he said in response to the resolution.

Today, the industry and its trade associations echo Coburn’s remarks and depict Carson as the leader of a mass-murder campaign that today allows diseases such malaria to proliferate because there is no chemical check on mosquitoes. In 2009, Todd Seavey of the industry-backed American Council on Science and Health wrote on World Malaria Day: “We need DDT Day.... Anti-chemical greens (inspired by Rachel Carson’s fear-mongering book Silent Spring) may already be humanity’s most prolific killers.”

The EPA never banned DDT for use against malaria, and Carson herself never supported a universal ban on pesticides. Instead, she wrote, “Practical advice should be ‘Spray as little as you possibly can’ rather than ‘Spray to the limit of your capacity.’”

Man-made chemicals will always be a part of life on earth. The volume of chemicals is massive, and the slow decay of many means they will be part of the biosphere for decades and centuries. The legacy of Silent Spring is that much can and should be done to reduce the health risks they pose, without sacrificing progress. About 41 percent of Americans will develop cancer. The current generation of children, compared to their parents or grandparents, has higher rates of disorders including low weight births, cancer, asthma, diabetes, autism, and ADHD. While multiple factors influence disease risk, exposure to toxic chemicals is one factor.

We have ignored Carson’s findings to our peril.

Record Arctic Snow Loss May Be Prolonging North American Drought

Melting Arctic snow isn’t as dramatic as melting sea ice, but the snow may be vanishing just as rapidly, with potentially profound consequences for weather in the United States.

Across the Arctic, snow melted earlier and more completely this year than any in recorded history. In the same way ice loss exposes dark water to the sun’s radiant heat, melting snow causes exposed ground to heat up, adding to the Arctic’s already super-sized warming.

This extra heat retention appears to alter the polar jet stream, slowing it down and causing mid-latitude weather patterns to linger. It’s even possible that the ongoing North American drought, the worst since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, was fueled in part by climate change in the Arctic, making it a preview of this new weather pattern’s ripple effects.

“In the past, whatever happened in the Arctic stayed in the Arctic. But now it seems to be reaching down from time to time in the mid-latitudes,” said climatologist James Overland of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. “When you combine the new influence of the Arctic with other effects, such as El Niño, we’re seeing the more extreme weather events.”

Over the last several weeks, public attention has been seized by the disappearance of ice in the Arctic Ocean, which in September covered a smaller area than at any other time in the climate record, a fitting exclamation point to its 50 percent decline since the late 1970s.

Variation from the post-1967 historical norm in June snow cover, June 2012. Dark orange corresponds to between 75 and 100 percent below average. Image: Rutgers University Climate Lab

In June, Arctic snow cover also reached historic minimums. At the time, the news received little attention. Though the snow has retreated for several decades, and has even declined as precipitously as the sea ice, freshly exposed ground simply lacks the visual impact of open water.

It’s also harder to put the decline into context: Scientifically useful Arctic snow records only date back to the beginning of satellite photography in the 1960s, a relatively short period of time. The role of snowmelt has received less research attention than sea ice, and scientists are just starting to understand the interactions between climate patterns in the Arctic and lower North America.

“This is cutting-edge science,” said climatologist David Robinson, who runs the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. The research is maturing, however, and the implications are troubling.

To understand what snow loss could do, it’s instructive to study what happens when sea ice melts, a process described in a Geophysical Research Letters paper published in March by climatologists Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University and Stephen Vavrus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As the sea, now deprived of its reflective cover, absorbs heat, surface temperatures rise. That heat returns to the atmosphere during fall and winter, reducing the difference in temperature between the Arctic and latitudes below. This difference is what propels the northern hemisphere’s polar jet stream, the globe-spanning atmospheric current that pushes vast amounts of cold air south and warm air north.

“Think of it like a hill. Normally the Arctic is much colder than areas to the south. Because warm air takes up more space than cold air, the atmosphere to the south is thicker. If you’re sitting on top of one of these layers, you’ll slide down the hill to the Arctic. Earth’s spin turns you towards the right, and that’s what generates the jet stream,” explained Francis. “If you’re warming the Arctic more, the hill is less steep, and you won’t roll as fast.”

The jet stream loses speed. As this happens, say Francis and Vavrus, its path also changes, dipping far to the south and reaching to the north. This is what happens in fall and winter after Arctic sea ice melts in the summer. In the summer, after snow melts in spring, “we think a similar mechanism is going on with the snow,” Francis said. “If you lose all the snow earlier on high latitude land in the spring, when the sun is strongest, you’ve got dark soil exposed earlier, warming up earlier. It’s another way to make the Arctic warm faster than the rest of the hemisphere.”

'People talk about the new normal. There's nothing normal about this. It's going to continue to change.'

For now, Francis says, this is still a hypothesis, albeit supported by North American climate patterns in recent years and similar observations from Siberia. “There’s just basic physics behind it. We’re dealing with a very different energy budget up in polar regions than previously, because we’re exposing the land earlier in the season to the warming rays of the sun,” Robinson said. “The physics are indisputable.”

Indeed, it’s reasonable to speculate about the effects of the jet stream’s new patterns — and that’s where things get really interesting. In another Geophysical Research Letters paper now in press, Francis and Overland describe how atmospheric pressure patterns generated by extreme spring snowmelts in the last several years seem to have channeled warm air across the central Arctic Ocean.

The winds accelerate the sea ice’s melt and push it into the Atlantic Ocean. They also seem to have hastened Greenland’s ice sheet melt, which reached unprecedented rates this July. “The winds used to be light,” said Overland. “Now we have more steady winds that blow from the Bering Strait across the north pole and out into Atlantic.”

The connection between snowmelt and the new winds hasn’t been directly proven, Overland said, but the pieces fit. “In the last three years, we’ve had a real major loss in snow cover. That’s why we think there may be a tie between the loss of snow, higher atmospheric pressure and the changes in the winds,” he said.

As the polar jet stream slows and meanders, the regional weather patterns it influences could end up persisting longer than usual, rather than being carried away by the stream. Whether this would extend to temperate latitudes during the summer isn’t certain, said Francis, since the polar jet stream tends to be weaker in summer than in winter, but it’s plausible.

“It’s harder to show in summer, because the waves are more amorphous, but the same mechanisms should happen,” Francis said. If so, that could at least partly explain why the North American drought, which started in the spring, is so severe. In a year without such an extreme Arctic snowmelt, it might have been a dry spell dispelled by the jet stream. Instead it stuck around.

Northern hemisphere snow coverage, in millions of square kilometers, as compared to the post-1967 average. Image: Rutgers University Climate Lab

More research is needed to be certain this hypothesized cascade of snowmelt, jet stream changes and drought lockdown in fact happened — Overland cautioned that “it’s very, very difficult to say” — but it raises the possibility that the Arctic climate is even more intertwined with lower-latitude weather than most researchers thought.

If so, extreme lower-latitude weather events will become more likely. “As the waves work more slowly, the weather wherever you happen to be will tend to change more slowly,” Francis said. “If that goes on long enough, you have extreme weather. If you have a cold snap for a day or two, it’s not a big deal. If it goes on for weeks, it’s an event. Same with drought.”

The next question is whether the extreme Arctic snowmelt is a result of human-caused warming. According to Francis, that’s likely the case. “There’s nothing else that can explain it. It’s so dramatic. It’s almost certainly mostly anthropogenic,” she said.

Robinson said climate scientists generally agree that some Arctic warming is human-forced, but would disagree as to precisely how much. As for himself, “I believe we see the fingerprint of man in it,” he said, saying there is a “preponderance of evidence” that greenhouse gases are to blame. “We see multiple changes going on there. These things are happening just as the models suggest they should happen.”

Even a small amount of unnatural Arctic warming is a problem. “That little bit of warming starts all these physical processes, like loss of snow and ice, so you start absorbing more solar energy rather than reflecting it to space. That amplifies the signal,” said Overland, who says people are responsible for an Arctic uptick of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s not just the initial warming. It’s the cascade of events.”

Some researchers have also linked the drought to an intersection of human-caused warming in the Indian Ocean, where warmer temperatures are historically associated with mid-latitude droughts, and natural La Niña cooling in the central Pacific, which generates dry spells in southern North America. Add this “perfect ocean for drought” to the Arctic snowmelt, and the combination may have been catastrophic.

That, of course, remains a hypothesis. “I wish we had years more data. I wish we had models that could give us order-of-magnitude improvements in temporal and spatial resolution. But that’s science. You put the pieces together, and you conduct your investigation,” Robinson said.

In a few years, scientists may have a better idea. In the meantime, the Arctic will continue to melt. “We are seeing changes that most of us never imagined we would see in our careers,” Robinson continued. “People talk about the new normal. There’s nothing normal about this. It’s going to continue to change.

S. D. Wells -- The $3 billion Human Genome Project was supposed to find the root causes of all diseases, but turned out to be a scientific boondoggle

To ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's and then generate treatments" was the true goal of the 10-year, $3 billion human genome project, or was it? Geneticists who were paid a very pretty penny to study the genetics of disease are claiming they are "back to square one" in knowing where to look for the roots of these diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. But are any of them really diseases at all?

Most diseases are actually contagious, infectious and/or genetic defects, but the four leading causes of death in America, for the most part, are not. So what's the real deal? In June 2000, President Clinton announced that the genome project would "Revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, IF NOT ALL, human diseases." He then added, "You will see a complete transformation in therapeutic medicine." Remember that Clinton is the man who balanced the national budget.

"Genomics is a way to do science, not medicine," said Harold Varmus, former president of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who became director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Both organizations pay their presidents and CEO's massive salaries and bonuses, using up most of the public donated monies for administrative costs, all while burying cures for disease (http://just-say-no-to-chemo.blogspot.com). Varmus claims the findings have explained only a small part of the risk of getting a disease, and that scientists now fear even those could be "statistical illusions." (http://www.cancer.gov/aboutnci/director)

Read more.. http://www.naturalnews.com/037167_Human_Genome_Project_scientific_failure_disease.html

Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez -- We Eat by the Grace of Nature, Not by the Grace of Monsanto

“Organic, schmorganic,” fumes New York Times columnist Roger Cohen sarcastically in an article entitled “The Organic Fable.”

He bases his sweeping dismissal of the organic foods movement on a new Stanford University study claiming that “fruits and vegetables labeled organic are, on average, no more nutritious than their cheaper conventional counterparts.”

Cohen does grant that “organic farming is probably better for the environment because less soil, flora and fauna are contaminated by chemicals…. So this is food that is better ecologically even if it is not better nutritionally.”

But he goes on to smear the organic movement as an elitist, pseudoscientific indulgence shot through with hype.

“To feed a planet of 9 billion people,” he says, “we are going to need high yields not low yields; we are going to need genetically modified crops; we are going to need pesticides and fertilizers and other elements of the industrialized food processes that have led mankind to be better fed and live longer than at any time in history.

“I’d rather be against nature and have more people better fed. I’d rather be serious about the world’s needs. And I trust the monitoring agencies that ensure pesticides are used at safe levels — a trust the Stanford study found to be justified.”

Cohen ends by calling the organic movement “a fable of the pampered parts of the planet — romantic and comforting.”

But the truth is that his own, science-driven Industrial Agriculture mythology is far more delusional.

Let me count the ways that his take on the organic foods movement is off the mark:

Organic food may not be more “nutritious,” but it is healthier because it is not saturated with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and preservatives, not to mention antibiotics, growth hormones and who knows what other chemicals.

There are obvious “health advantages” in this, since we know—though Cohen doesn’t mention—that synthetic chemicals and poor health, from asthma to cancer, go hand in hand.

Read more.. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/08-3

Jason Mark -- Whoa, Is Organic Food No Healthier Than Non-Organic? Controversy Erupts Over Study

I had barely drank my first cup of coffee when I heard the news yesterday morning on NPR [3] – organic food, it turns out, may not be that much healthier for you than industrial food.

The NPR story was based on a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine [4] which concluded, based on a review of existing studies, that there is no “strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods.” The study, written by researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine, also found that eating organic foods “may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

The interwebs were soon full of headlines talking down the benefits of organic foods. “Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce,” the NY Times [5] announced, as reporter Kenneth Chang pointed out that pesticide residues on industrially grown fruits and vegetables are “almost always under the allowed safety limits.”CBS news [6], running the AP story on the Stanford study, informed readers: “Organic food hardly healthier, study suggests.”

Organic agriculture advocates were quick with their rebuttals. The Environmental Working Group [7] put out a press release playing up the researchers’ findings that organic produce has less pesticide residue. Charles Benbrook, a professor of agriculture at Washington State University and former chief scientist at The Organic Center [8], wrote a detailed critique you can find here [9]. Benbrook noted that the Stanford study didn’t include data from the USDA and US EPA about pesticide residue levels. He also pointed out that the researchers’ definition of “significantly more nutritious” was a little squishy.

Is this the last word on the nutritional benefits of organic foods? Hardly. As Benbrook said, in the coming years improved measurement methods will hopefully allow for better comparisons of food nutritional quality. (You can find an Earth Island Journal cover story on this very issue here [10].)

I’ll leave it to the PhDs and MDs to fight this out among themselves. As they do, I’ll keep buying (and growing [11]) organic foods. Why? Because even if organic foods are not demonstrably better for my health than industrial foods, I know that organics are better for the health of other people – the people who grow our nation’s food.

To his credit, NPR’s new ag reporter, Dan Charles, was careful to note that organic agriculture “can bring environmental benefit[s].” One of the most important environmental benefits organic agriculture delivers is a boost to public health and safety.

Let’s say you’re not worried about the relatively small amounts of pesticides that end up on the industrial foods at the supermarket. (Though you should read this [12] Tom Philpott dissection of the Stanford report when considering your risk of eating pesticide residue.) Well, you should still be concerned about the huge amounts of pesticides that end up in the air and water of farming communities – chemicals that can lead to birth defects, endocrine disruption, and neurological and respiratory problems.

When pesticides are sprayed onto farm fields, they don’t just stay in that one place. They seep into the water and waft through the air and accumulate on the shoes and clothes of farm workers. In recent years in California (the country’s top ag producer) an average of 37 pesticide drift incidents [13] a year have made people sick. Pesticides also find their way into the homes of farm workers. A study by researchers at the University of Washington found that the children of farm workers have higher exposure to pesticides [14] than other children in the same community. When researchers in Mexico looked into pesticide exposure of farm workers there, they found that 20 percent of field hands “showed acute poisoning. [15]”

The health impacts on those workers were serious and included “diverse alterations of the digestive, neurological, respiratory, circulatory, dermatological, renal, and reproductive system.” The researchers concluded: “there exist health hazards for those farm workers exposed to pesticides, at organic and cellular levels.”

There are shelves’ worth of studies [16] documenting the health dangers of pesticide exposure. A study published last year found that prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides [17] – which are often sprayed on crops and in urban areas to control insects – can lower children’s IQ. A follow-up investigation into prenatal pesticide exposure concluded that boys’ developing brains appear to be more vulnerable [18] than girls’ brains. A study by Colorado State University epidemiologist Lori Cragin found that women who drink water containing low levels of the herbicide atrazine are more likely to have low estrogen levels [19] and irregular menstrual cycles; about three-quarters of all US corn fields are treated with atrazine annually. British scientists who examined the health effects of fungicides sprayed on fruits and vegetable crops discovered that 30 out of 37 chemicals studied altered males’ hormone production [20].

Read more.. http://www.alternet.org/food/whoa-organic-food-no-healthier-non-organic-controversy-erupts-over-study

Frances Moore Lappé -- Stanford Scientists Shockingly Reckless on Health Risk And Organics

I first heard about a new Stanford "study" downplaying the value of organics when this blog headline cried out from my inbox: "Expensive organic food isn't healthier and no safer than produce grown with pesticides, finds biggest study of its kind."

What?

Does the actual study say this?

No, but authors of the study -- "Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives? A Systematic Review" -- surely are responsible for its misinterpretation and more. Their study actually reports that ¨Consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria."

The authors' tentative wording -- "may reduce" -- belies their own data: The report's opening statement says the tested organic produce carried a 30 percent lower risk of exposure to pesticide residues. And, the report itself also says that "detectable pesticide residues were found in 7% of organic produce samples...and 38% of conventional produce samples." Isn't that's a greater than 80% exposure reduction?

In any case, the Stanford report's unorthodox measure "makes little practical or clinical sense," notes Charles Benbrook -- formerly Executive Director, Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences: What people "should be concerned about [is]... not just the number of [pesticide] residues they are exposed to" but the "health risk they face." Benbrook notes "a 94% reduction in health risk" from pesticides when eating organic foods.

Assessing pesticide-driven health risks weighs the toxicity of the particular pesticide. For example the widely-used pesticide atrazine, banned in Europe, is known to be "a risk factor in endocrine disruption in wildlife and reproductive cancers in laboratory rodents and humans."

"Very few studies" included by the Stanford researchers, notes Benbrook, "are designed or conducted in a way that could isolate the impact or contribution of a switch to organic food from the many other factors that influence a given individual's health." They "would be very expensive, and to date, none have been carried out in the U.S." [emphasis added].

In other words, simple prudence should have prevented these scientists from using "evidence" not designed to capture what they wanted to know.

Moreover, buried in the Stanford study is this all-critical fact: It includes no long-term studies of people consuming organic compared to chemically produced food: The studies included ranged from just two days to two years. Yet, it is well established that chemical exposure often takes decades to show up, for example, in cancer or neurological disorders.

Consider these studies not included: The New York Times notes three 2011 studies by scientists at Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan that studied pregnant women exposed to higher amounts of an organophosphate pesticide. Once their children reached elementary school they "had, on average, I.Q.'s several points lower than those of their peers."

Thus, it is reprehensible for the authors of this overview to even leave open to possible interpretation that their compilation of short-term studies can determine anything about the human-health impact of pesticides.

What also disturbs me is that neither in their journal article nor in media interviews do the Stanford authors suggest that concern about "safer and healthier" might extend beyond consumers to the people who grow our food. They have health concerns, too!

Many choose organic to decrease chemicals in food production because of the horrific consequences farm workers and farmers suffer from pesticide exposure. U.S. farming communities are shown to be afflicted with, for example, higher rates of: "leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and soft tissue sarcoma" -- in addition to skin, lip, stomach, brain and prostate cancers," reports the National Cancer Institute. And, at a global level, "an estimated 3 million acute pesticide poisonings occur worldwide each year," reports the World Health Organization. Another health hazard of pesticides, not hinted at in the report, comes from water contamination by pesticides. They have made the water supply for 4.3 million Americans unsafe for drinking.

Finally, are organic foods more nutritious?

In their report, Crystal Smith-Spangler, MD, and co-authors say only that "published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods." Yet, the most comprehensive meta-analysis comparing organic and non-organic, led by scientist Kirsten
Brandt, a Scientist at the Human Nutrition Research Center at the UK's Newcastle University found organic fruits and vegetables, to have on "average 12% higher nutrient levels."

Bottom line for me? What we do know is that the rates of critical illnesses, many food-related --from allergies to Crohn's Disease -- are spiking and no one knows why. What we do know is that pesticide poisoning is real and lethal -- and not just for humans. In such a world is it not the height of irresponsibility to downplay the risks of exposure to known toxins?

Rachel Carson would be crying. Or, I hope, shouting until -- finally -- we all listen. "Simple precaution! Is that not commonsense?"

Read more.. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/06-12

Action Alert: The Rockaway Pipeline

The Rockaway Lateral is yet another high-pressure, large-diameter gas pipeline, proposed to run across newly restoredwetlands in Jamaica Bay, under Riis Park beach, Floyd Bennett Field, all the way to Avenue U, near the always-crowded Kings Plaza shopping center in Brooklyn. 

All the same problems with fracking and radon that apply to the Spectra pipeline also apply to the Rockaway Lateral––and more: grave risks to delicate wetlands as well as risks from frequent brush fires at Floyd Bennett field. And the safety record of this pipeline builder (Williams Transco) is just as bad as Spectra's. In fact, since 2008, there's been only one month out of the past 45 in which they have not operated under a federal Corrective Action Order. Just this past March, they were fined $50,000 for failures related to corrosion control on pipes running through Staten Island.

Comments Due by Monday, 5pm, June 25, 2012!

Public comments are needed by 5pm June 25th. It's easy to e-comment on the FERC website. Reference Docket No. PF09-8-000. In a rush? Cut and paste from this sample comment.

A New York Strangled by Pipelines?

This pipeline is another piece of the pie in Mayor Bloomberg's plan to convert all of NYC to methane. Lawmakers are buying into the false promise of cleaner skies via boiler conversions, and ignoring the health risks from air pollution, water contamination and radon that come with use of fracked gas. Even uber-liberal Congressional leaders and Senators have been unabashedly supportive of this shale gas takeover.  Did you even HEAR about the Congressional ok for this pipeline? It snuck through Congress in February, and is now up for grabs in the Senate. Watch this clip from "Inside City Hall" for some background. Schumer and Gillibrand have been tough nuts to crack on this issue, but we urge you to communicate your opposition to this plan. We want a New York run on clean energy--wind, water and solar--not on polluting shale gas!

Read More:

http://saneenergyproject.org/events/

Chris Hedges - Why We Fight

I park my car in the lot in front of the rectory of Sacred Heart in Camden, N.J., and walk through a gray drizzle to Emerald Street. My friend Lolly Davis, whose blood pressure recently shot up and whose kidneys shut down, had been taken to a hospital in an ambulance but was now home. I climb the concrete steps to her row house and ring the bell. There is an overpowering stench of garbage in the street. Her house is set amid other brick and wooden residences, some of which have been refurbished under Monsignor Michael Doyle’s Heart of Camden project at Sacred Heart, a Roman Catholic parish. Other structures on Davis’ street sit derelict or bear the scars of decay and long abandonment.

Lolly’s grandson, nicknamed Boom Boom or Boomer, answers the door. He tells me his grandmother is upstairs. I enter and sit on a beige chair in the living room near closed white blinds that cover the window looking out on Emerald Street. The living room has a large flat screen television and two beige couches with brown and burnt-red floral patterns that match the chair. There is a stone fireplace with a mantel crowded with family photos. Her grandson, one of numerous children from the neighborhood whom she adopted and raised, yells upstairs to let Lolly know I have arrived.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_we_fight_20120625/

GMOs and Glyphosate Linked to Infertility, Botulism and SIDS

Introduction and Background Information

I have heard much confusion and doubt about a man I admire much… Dr. Huber. When I first met Dr. Huber over four years ago, listened to his presentation, then reviewed his work in my hotel room, I began to realize what this meant for mankind. I wept, I cried some more, realizing how much evil was behind this; my tears are still on my notes of his work, I did not sleep, realizing how much work needed to be done. I have seen countless friends and family affected by the evil stemming from this crony capitalism network. Huber’s work is sound, his character strong, and he needs help spreading truth and clearing confusion. I am now asking for help from you, any of my friends, to equip yourselves with knowledge, as knowledge is power. This may bore many of you; too difficult for others, but it is the #2 thing to understand in your life other than God. If we can stop this, Dr. Huber is deserving of any earthly honor we can give him. I urge anyone who comprehends any of what I write to share this with as many as you can. It is a matter of utmost importance right now to ALL life on this planet. 

Ephesians 6:12 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Read More:

http://farmwars.info/?p=8543