06.05.10
Sterility a possiblity?
A researcher from the Russian Academy of Sciences is set, this month, to publish the results of a two-year, multi-generational food safety study on the effects of genetically modified foods (HERE).
The scientist, Alexey Surov, found that all of his hamsters that were fed high GMO soy diets, save one female, were sterile after three generations. His control groups did not suffer similar levels of sterility, including hamsters fed the same amounts of soy, but a non-GMO variety.
If published in a peer reviewed journal, Surov’s study will be the first GMO food-safety article of its kind. Typically food safety studies are conducted by the corporations that patent the GMO seed and they are done only for three months, and in secret. There has never been a long-term, multi-generational food safety study completed until Surov’s.
Surov is quick to caution that he cannot determine the exact cause of the sterility without further study. He points to many possibilities, including the GMO soy itself, the increased presence of herbicide in the food and other potential effects of the genetic manipulation like the insertion of bacterial agents or disfigured DNA.
What is clear from Surov’s preliminary finding is that hamsters fed genetically modified soy matured more slowly and lost the ability to breed as compared to hamsters fed the same diet, but with non-GMO soy.
Surov also commented about the difficulty of finding non-GMO soy; he had to go to the far reaches of Siberia to find pure crops.
Assuming that Surov’s findings of GMO-implicated sterility do nothing to stop the United State’s Government/corporate GMO juggernaut, it is important to remember the following talking points.
1. GMOs do not increase yield. There is not one single marketed GMO for increased yield, enhanced nutrition, salt resistance or drought tolerance.
2. Until Surov’s study there had never been a long term food safety study on even one GMO seed.
3. Independent food safety studies are forbidden by the corporate owners of the patents.
4. Eighty percent of GMO crops are tolerant of, not resistant to, proprietary herbicide. The plants are filled with the herbicide. They are not excluding it. Nearly all of the rest create their own pesticide; they are filled with it.
5. There just seems to be something questionable about a crop that is defended so viciously (typically scientists who detract are attacked, muffled and or defunded) by a consortium of corporate scientists and government agencies.
Okay, that last point is more mine than anything. But the scale of the attack on detractors, like Britain’s Arpad Pusztai, France’s Gil Seralini and Russia’s Irina Ermakova–all scientists who questioned the safety of GMO foods and were subsequently disproportionately ridiculed or worse–makes me wonder what sweet sugar boat they were tipping, exactly. If these industry scientists were so certain their products were safe, it would seem to me that they would be demanding more long-term, multi-generational food safety studies to defend their thesis.
As to The People’s representatives in Washington, President Obama’s latest Supreme Court pick, Elena Kagan, famously filed a friendly, and notably noncompulsory, brief supporting Monsanto when the company appealed a lower court ruling banning their Roundup Ready alfalfa. What’s notable is her hope, as a Federal official, that the judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would overturn an earlier court’s decision. That’s the Federal Government stepping in, where it is not a defendant–nearly unprecedented in itself–and asking an appeals court to overturn a lower, state court’s ruling. Yep. That’s our next Supreme Court judge.
It looks like Kagan will be sitting on the Supreme Court when that very same Roundup Ready Alfalfa appeal makes it to SCOTUS this summer. Wonder how she’ll vote? Wonder how Clarence Thomas will vote? He’s a former staff attorney for Monsanto’s herbicide division and he’s foregoing recusal.
What should come as no surprise is that the Obama administration is backing a GMO cheerleader for a seat on the Supreme Court. Obama appointed Tom Vilsack secretary of Agriculture and Michael Taylor as US Food Safety Czar. Vilsack was named the biotech industry’s Governor of the Year, successfully banned GMO free zones in Iowa and famously bandies about in one of Monsanto’s corporate jets.
Micheal Taylor has spent two decades bouncing back and forth between collecting hefty paychecks from Monsanto and securing those paychecks by directing the offices of the government regulatory agencies that oversee Monsanto (presumably, to not oversee Monsanto).
New Mexicans now confront bold-faced GMO/government collusion as its State University in Las Cruces brews up a genetically modified chile pepper plant, funded by the State of New Mexico. You can learn all about that research and a whole lot about Genetically Modified Organisms by seeing my film, Genetic Chile (http://genetic-chile.com) wherein I systematically dismember the glossy-brochure talking points of NMSU’s chief genetic engineer. La Montanita Coop is one of the sponsors of the film.
