Millions Worldwide March Against Monsanto
Source: Common Dreams
Published on Saturday, May 24, 2014 by Common Dreams
Millions Worldwide March Against Monsanto
Dr. Vandana Shiva: "We did not choose to target Monsanto. Monsanto chose to target our seed and food freedom, our scientific and democratic institutions, our very lives."
- Lauren McCauley, staff writer
Marchers in Durban, South Africa. (Photo: @Revonews/ Twitter)
"It's time to take back our food!" was the cry as people in 52 countries worldwide took to the streets in a global day of action on Saturday against chemical behemoth Monsanto.
The third annual March Against Monsanto (MAM) is slated to be the biggest yet, according to movement founder Tami Canal, with millions of people in over 400 cities expected to take part.
From Agent Orange to Monsantos pending patents directly affiliated with weather modification to the gross government corruption, MAM has evolved to expose all the insidious tentacles that Monsanto possesses, said Canal in an interview with Anti-Media.
Across social media, protesters shared images from demonstrations around the world where people called for the permanent boycott of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and other harmful agro-chemicals.
Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/24-1
mnhtnbb
(31,391 posts)It was organized to occur right next to The Royal Palace. While I didn't take any photos of the group--I would say several hundred were gathered--I did take this photo of a sign they left when we walked past the protest spot later in the evening.
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)Cha
(297,275 posts)thank you mnhtnbb
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)FarrenH
(768 posts)Oh that's right. NOWHERE. There is no evidence.
But hey lets not base our opinions on facts or anything. Lets just make shit up because we don't understand a thing about genetic science and are suspicious of things we don't understand. I mean, its not as if a lay person could actually understand this stuff if they took the time to read any of the dozens of books that provide popular accounts of evolutionary biology for lay people. Its not like you can actually dig into the relevant molecular biology and find out that GE techniques simply represent a faster and more precise way of doing EXACTLY what we've been doing to plants for thousands of years, as I, a non-biologist, in fact did.
No lets just act like a bunch of nature-worshipping neo-luddites embracing a cause du jour based on vacuous bullshit and fundamental misunderstandings of the science. While all the while complaining about religious fundamentalists wanting to drag people back to the stone age on other issues.
FarrenH
(768 posts)In moments of clarity I realise my way of arguing about this is terrible and probably gets people's backs up rather than convincing them. I insult freely and often in a certain mood. Forgive me. Having been at the receiving end of similar online vitriol, I realize it angers rather than convincing. I should have a yellow sticky on the corner of my screen reminding me of this all the time. I believe there is a lot of wrongheaded thinking about GMOs qua GMOs, despite valid concern about IP law, commercial and biological ethics, ecology, et al/ But also know I have and probably do believe a lot of wrongheaded things so I really am not providing a courtesy I hope to receive from others.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)tecelote
(5,122 posts)Monsanto has been proven to be evil.
This company kills people and wildlife for profit.
ag_dude
(562 posts)What specifically do you find suspect about "GMO Food's health risks"?
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)because cross pollination affected the next farm over? You don't ask why Monsanto wins these cases? You don't give a shit about the world having seeds that are not from Monsanto? Who do you work for?
roody
(10,849 posts)HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Why can't you support your anti-GMO claims with a consensus of peer reviewed science?
Oh, yeah. That's right. Hmm.
roody
(10,849 posts)I like the fat content labels and I love Ben and Jerrys ice cream. Did you prefer the name Monsanto shills?
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)There is no logical, science based reason for labeling the technology that created the plant.
roody
(10,849 posts)I guess I am anti-vitamin!!
bvar22
(39,909 posts)HuckleB
(35,773 posts)No research that justifies an anti-GMO stance. Got it.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)Abstract
Our previous studies have demonstrated that stable microRNAs (miRNAs) in mammalian serum and plasma are actively secreted from tissues and cells and can serve as a novel class of biomarkers for diseases, and act as signaling molecules in intercellular communication. Here, we report the surprising finding that exogenous plant miRNAs are present in the sera and tissues of various animals and that these exogenous plant miRNAs are primarily acquired orally, through food intake. MIR168a is abundant in rice and is one of the most highly enriched exogenous plant miRNAs in the sera of Chinese subjects. Functional studies in vitro and in vivo demonstrated that MIR168a could bind to the human/mouse low-density lipoprotein receptor adapter protein 1 (LDLRAP1) mRNA, inhibit LDLRAP1 expression in liver, and consequently decrease LDL removal from mouse plasma. These findings demonstrate that exogenous plant miRNAs in food can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals.
CELL RESEARCH: Full Study
And then there's always Seralinni's rats:
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Really? And you can cause problems with any cell, with just about anything in the lab.
You realize that 2000 plus peer reviewed show your nonsense to be, well, nonsense.
Why would you decide to ignore that massive amount of evidence, and go with, well, nothing?
Bizarre.
Oh, wait. I get it. You're just pretending to be anti-GMO.
FarrenH
(768 posts)And if you really understood what you were posting you'd realise that the findings on miRNAs apply to ALL PLANTS, not just GMOs. So it tells you nothing about any purported dangers of GMOs.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)Which would make all those who in spite of any evidence to back up their BS claims and who continue nonetheless to espouse such drivel, his minions.
Good day!
FarrenH
(768 posts)These are Sprague-Dawley rats, which Seralini used
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/33/11/2768.full.pdf
"A spontaneous tumor incidence of 45% was noted in 360 Sprague-Dawley rats..."
They're used in *cancer research* because they get tumours so easily, ffs. Seralini KNEW this. He was a polemical anti-GMO campaigner BEFORE conducting his "research", then he went and cooked up some completely fraudulent research using a tiny test group and control group that yielded a statistically insignificant result that is not replicated by any other research, held a big press conference before his results were even published (they were later retracted by an embarrassed Journal) and released a bunch of shocking photos of S-D rats exhibiting the kind of tumours they FREQUENTLY DEVELOP WITHOUT INTERVENTION.
When you rely on outright frauds and research that you don't understand to make your point, you don't get to call other people "minions" of teh evil corporation. You just look like an idiot who doesn't understand the science and is resorting to bluster.
FYI, I'm a middle aged South African programmer working on artificial neural networks for security. I have nothing to do with agribusiness. In fact I
1) Object to the patenting of life forms. I think IP law is broken, especially in the USA.
2) Think that our future food security lies in the reduction of monoculture and an increase in permaculture.
I'm not the cartoon villain or corporate shill you and other naive hippies think I am. I am, however, a science nut who finds the rank ignorance and stupidity of many science-illiterate GMO critics incredibly annoying.
Here's a brief list of things I think you should know
1) Any viable life form that can be arrived at by GE techniques can be arrived at by evolution, even moreso assisted evolution like conventional selective breeding. I mention this because some people are operating under the dumb delusion that GMO somehow means there is something inherently "unnatural" about the biological nature of GMOs. GE techniques just get to the desired life-form faster than any other technique (like the popular technique of mutation breeding, or conventional selection)
2) There is no distinctive trait that is common to either the tissue structure, cellular structure or DNA of GMOs and not "natural" organisms. Given two unknown organisms, one genetically engineered and one "natural", and using all of the science available to us, an expert could not identify which is the GMO. There is no physical property, no "GMOness" that makes GMOs GMOs. They are called GMOs wholly on the basis of how they were made, not their physical phenotype. This makes the assumption of some common risk to all GMOs on the mere basis that they share the label GMO, well, moronic. A rational person would proceed by looking at each individual organism and examining the proven risks of each organism. For Monsanto GM corn for example, this established, proven risk is diddly squat after billions of people have eaten it. But hey, lets not get science and a trial group of billions of humans over decades of consumption get in the way of our precious hippie intuitions, because TEH EVIL CORPORATIONS.
3) Every single common food in the world today is the result of thousands of years of slow genetic engineering and look nothing like their wild cousins/still existing plants they were derived from. The engineering technique used was simple selection for traits that favour human consumption, traits that would otherwise not be selected. Conventional breeders have selected and propagated thousands of viable mutations (mutations caused by viruses, radiation and replication errors) to arrive at the plants we have today. Every mutation was selected only for visible and tasteable phenotypic attributes, without any understanding of their deeper or less visible consequences. And yet, even for foods that only became global staples in recent history when they were spread to people who didn't co-evolve with them before, especially from South America, no-one who is or has ever marched for the ridiculous level of safety testing being demanded of GMOs.
In short, my irritation is with the fundamentally ignorant position that GMOs, even transgenics, represent a physically different class of organisms from any other plant, with unique risks. THEY DON'T, they're just different DNA sequences, ones that nature itself could come up with, from an endless library of possible combinations.
And if anyone tells you nature can't come up with "transgenics", like plants with bacterial genes, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Here are two actual transgenic organisms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysia_chlorotica
Elysia chlorotica is a sea slug that has hijacked plant DNA to allow it to sustain chloroplasts and photosynthesise
http://achemicallife.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/aphids-carotenoids-and-photosynthesis/
Aphids, similarly, have hijacked plant DNA and incorporated it in their genes.
And at a bacterial level its becoming apparent that its all transgenic all the way, as we discover that completely different kinds of bacteria use plasmids to share DNA all the time, which is quite extraordinary. There are literally pathogens in your gut picking up antibiotic resistance genes from harmless soil bacteria you ingested with your food.
We're gradually coming to realise that lateral evolution happens more often than we think. So yes, nature DOES produce transgenics. IOW there is absolutely nothing about the physical nature of GMOs that distinguishes them from organisms produced by nature. So vague, handwaving anti-GMO hysteria is based on fundamental scientific ignorance.
Criticise a particular organism based on it's particular, scientifically-proven harm if you will. Criticize monoculture or IP law that allows people to "own" particular forms of life. But wave your hands around about the "dangers of GMOs" and you just look like an idiot that doesn't understand biology. A cartoon stereotype, the ignorant peasant marching with their pitchfork and torch in hand to burn teh mad genius at the stake because they don't understand his/her science. The fact that there are hundreds of millions of you does not make your arguments more compelling, any more than the opinions of hundreds of millions of people who don't know how to program computers would convince me of anything WRT programming computers. Its just ignorance, holding back potentially lifesaving science (like the not-for-profit GMO Golden Rice, which has also been a victim of this kind of hysteria).
FarrenH
(768 posts)In moments of clarity I realise my way of arguing about this is terrible and probably gets people's backs up rather than convincing them. I insult freely and often in a certain mood. Forgive me. Having been at the receiving end of similar online vitriol, I realize it angers rather than convincing. I should have a yellow sticky on the corner of my screen reminding me of this all the time. I believe there is a lot of wrongheaded thinking about GMOs qua GMOs, despite valid concern about IP law, commercial and biological ethics, ecology, et al/ But also know I have and probably do believe a lot of wrongheaded things so I really am not providing a courtesy I hope to receive from others.
AceAcme
(93 posts)HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Your meme is pointless.
AceAcme
(93 posts)Nation after nation are beginning to suspend and ban dangerous unwanted fascist GMO crap. Corporate crap "science" tries to obscure what independent scientists are learning.
Despite what any corporate hucksters may say.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)You seem to think goofball politics matter more than science when one is discussing the reality of a particular technology, such as GMOs. Oddly, you have not been able to justify any claim you have ever made about GMOs, cancer, or any other topic where I've seen you post. Why is that?
AceAcme
(93 posts)I have zero tolerance for lame, fact-deficient defenders of corporate fascism. Sayonara.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)All you have done is repeat fiction-based mantras. Shiva is a fraud.
AceAcme
(93 posts)How pathetic & preposterous that woo-wanking propagandists are still trying to trash the Seralini study, which convincingly and accurately demonstrated some of the many profound GMO dangers.
"In 2012, a study led by Professor Gilles Seralini called into question the safety of GMOs and Round Up herbicide. The paper that conveyed the results was last year retracted by a prestigious scientific journal (11). The publisher of Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), Elsevier, has now compelled the journal editor A. Wallace Hayes to publish a right of reply by the Séralini team.
"According to the Séralini team, the editor of FCT uses double standards when it comes to publishing in favour of the industry. Hayes retracted the study despite the fact that he found neither fraud nor conscious misinterpretation.
"In a new article published in FCT, the scientists explain why they do not accept his conclusion. They denounce the lack of scientific validity of the reasons given for the retraction, explain why the Sprague-Dawley rat strain used is appropriate and describe the statistical results in depth concerning the blood and urine parameters affected, proving that the liver and kidney pathologies and the mammary tumours are solidly based."
http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter200514.htm
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Cut the crap.
Response to HuckleB (Reply #41)
Name removed Message auto-removed
FarrenH
(768 posts)ag_dude
(562 posts)Where's the science that supports such an strongly anti-GMO position?
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Just wondering who's science you are talking about.
roody
(10,849 posts)see them repeated numerous times.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)mia
(8,361 posts)I heard this scientist speak when she was in Miami in 1991.
http://gift-economy.com/portfolio-item/wedo-vandana-shiva/
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)In fact, it has been found that she has overstated her credentials. Also, almost everything she has said about GMOs has turned out to be false.
In general, while she feigns goodness, she appears to be a classic charlatan.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/01/05/vandana-shiva-compares-gmos-to-rape/
http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/the-truth-about-the-terminator/
I could go on and on with links, but I think you get the point.
Can anti-GMO people please offer the evidence that supports their claims, once and for all? If not, can they please stop working against a technology that does not appear to be evil, based on the evidence, and might just help people?
albino65
(484 posts)We can't even get GMO labeling so we can make an educated decision as to whether to consume the products or not.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)No adequate consumer protection in this country. The least they can do is label it so the buyer can make an informed choice.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)americannightmare
(322 posts)The march must have been at least 4-5 blocks long. Always get the opportunity to have some great conversations with like minds as well.
polly7
(20,582 posts)Vandana Shivas Message for the March against Monsanto
My response is, we did not choose to target Monsanto, Monsanto chose to target our seed and food freedom, our scientific and democratic institutions, our very lives.
Monsanto has admitted it wrote the intellectual property treaty of WTO that allows seeds to be redefined as Monsantos intellectual property. And it is through patents that Monsanto, a poison maker, has become a seed giant, with the largest share in control over the seed market. In India it controls 95% of the cotton seed market, and the extraction of superprofits through royalties has trapped our small farmers in unpayable debt. 284,000 farmers have committed suicide in India because of debt linked to seed and chemicals.
Corporations like Monsanto were behind the EC Seed law that would have made diversity and seed saving illegal in Europe. The last parliament sent back the law to the European commission. We must ensure that the new parliament does not pass the law.
In the US, Monsanto used its money to undermine the Right of US citizens to Know what they eat. It is threatening the State of Vermont because it got a labelling law in place. And it now has introduced a bill in Congress called called The Safe and Accurate Food Labelling Act which has earned itself the name the Dark (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act.
This is an assault on Democracy and peoples freedom.
While Monsanto announces that it is retreating from Europe, it is pushing GMOs on the Eastern European countries. And is pushing new trade treaties like TIPP, to undermine Europes largely GMO free status, and to get stronger IPR rights on seed.
http://seedfreedom.in/vandana-shivas-message-for-the-march-against-monsanto/
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)Cha
(297,275 posts)HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Why does the ant-GMO movement fail to support any of its claims?
Cha
(297,275 posts)HuckleB
(35,773 posts)How does that translate to millions?
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)...this is it!
- K&R
[center]America's premier POISON MAKERS.
[/center]
Towns poisoned by Monsanto
burrowowl
(17,641 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)May 26, 2014
The Stuff of Coups
Monsanto: the Toxic Face of Globalization
by ALEXANDER REID ROSS
To the rhythms of drums and chants, concerned people took to the streets across 436 cities in 52 countries yesterday. The message was clear: smash Monsanto. With thousands marching from coast to coast, Canada to Argentina, and around the world, the day of protest has emerged as one of the largest global eventsand it has only been around for two years. However, more than small hopes for a mandatory labeling of genetically modified products, smashing Monsanto entails a larger transformation of the modern relationship between people and food.
It is not only GM products, but the continuing economy of globalization, that Monsanto represents. Thanks to major seed companies and agricultural conglomerates like Monsanto and Cargill, the very definition of farmer has changed throughout the worldfrom a person or group of people in a given community who specialized in producing food to a corporate, land-owning entity comprised more of machines, technological assemblages, and inputs than of people who work the land. Thus, the target of protest is not only GMs, although GMs are a central aspect, but also the supply chain of multinational corporations that transforms food into a commodity that many throughout the world cannot afford.
In the context of todays historical epochthe Global Land Grab, in which farmland is being grabbed by multinational corporations from vulnerable populations like small farmers, campesin@s, and Indigenous peoples throughout the worldthe March Against Monsanto has taken on a particularly sharp edge. In Ethiopia, where Monsanto has taken up shop through the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, reports have emerged of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people flooding the streets of the capital city, Addis Ababa, to demonstrate against land grabbing.
Monsanto has also ingrained itself in Mali since the US-backed coup of 2012, in spite of renewed fighting in the North that only yesterday claimed the lives of 50 soldiers. Malian cotton farmers, who have resisted Monsantos genetically modified Bt Cotton seeds since 2004, are being brushed to the side. The process of side-stepping traditional agriculture moved forward in 2010 through the IMF-mandated privatization of La Compagnie malienne pour le développement du textile against the organized opposition of farmers who petitioned through the Peoples Forum. A year after the coup, the USDA announced that Malian farmers are ready to adopt Bt Cotton, although Malis biosafety law needs to be revised and made functional. The biosafety law is to be removed, because it restricts the ability of researchers to run field tests.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/26/monsanto-the-toxic-face-of-globalization/
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)Latin America: protests target Monsanto, Chevron
Submitted by Weekly News Update... on Mon, 05/26/2014 - 23:44 Southern Cone
Latin American activists joined thousands of environmentalists and farmers around the world in an international protest May 24 against genetically modified (GM) crops and Monsanto, the Missouri-based multinational that dominates the transgenic seed industry. This was the third March Against Monsanto since May 25 last year, and organizers expected the day of action to include protests in some 351 cities in 52 countries.
In Chile, where a farmer won more than $65,000 in December 2013 by challenging the contracting methods of Monsanto's local affiliate, organizations including Chile Without Transgenics and I Don't Want Transgenics (YNQT) sponsored protests in eight cities.
Mexicans held a total of 13 different protests. In the southeastern state of Chiapas, Without Corn There Is No Country and other groups organized an informational event in front of the cathedral in San Cristóbal de las Casas to raise awareness about the consequences of GM crops, while about 60 protesters marched in Santiago de Querétaro, the capital of the central state of Querétaro. Rubén Albarrán, of the band Café Tacvba, joined the painter and environmentalist Francisco Toledo to protest in the southern state of Oaxaca, and hundreds marched in Mexico City chanting: "We want beans; we want corn; we want Monsanto out of the country!" GM planting is limited in Mexico, but researchers say that even the current level of sowing has contaminated some of the many varieties of native corn; the plant was first cultivated in Mexico.
In Puerto Rico activists marched from San Juan's Luis Muñoz Rivera Park to the Capitol. Monsanto doesn't sell GM seeds on the island, but along with other multinationals like Pioneer and Syngenta it uses large tracts of farmland for experiments, according to Jesús Vázquez Negrón, the spokesperson for the Nothing Saintly About Monsanto collective. Activists claim Monsanto uses more land than it is entitled to under Puerto Rican law. (Aporrea, Venezuela, May 24, from TeleSUR and unidentified wire services; Primera Hora, Puerto Rico, May 24; La Jornada, Mexico, May 25, May 25)
More:
http://ww4report.com/node/13259
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)Published on Wednesday, May 28, 2014 by Common Dreams
Moms to EPA: End Monsanto's Poisoning of America
"We will get Roundup recalled, and we will have an impact on the chemical treadmill," said Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
It's time for Monsanto's Roundup to stop poisoning our food.
That was the message brought to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday by a group of concerned mothers who say that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widespread herbicide made by the chemical and biotechnology giant, is putting public health in jeopardy.
The group of 11, which included scientists, a lawyer and health worker, urged the agency to look at the results of a recent pilot study commissioned by their group, Moms Across America, and Sustainable Pulse. Their study found glyphosate present in human breast milk, indicating contrary to industry claims that the herbicide may build up or "bioaccumulate" in women's bodies.
The results of that study were "considerable and shocking," Zen Honeycutt, Founder and Director of Moms Across America, told Common Dreams.
Honeycutt pointed to a previous study which looked at on Roundup's negative effects on gut bacteria and pointed to possible links between those effects and a number of diseases. She said that in her group's breast milk study, the sample with the highest levels of Roundup detected had levels that were higher than was shown to destroy gut bacteria in the earlier study.
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/28-9