Outrageous Lies Monsanto and Friends Are Trying to Pass off to Kids as Science

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As Monsanto and others have expanded worldwide, into India, China, Pakistan, and other countries, the effect on small farmers has been devastating. In India, for instance, after World Trade Organization policies forced the country in 1998 to open its seed sector to companies like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta, farmers quickly found themselves in debt to the biotech companies that forced them to buy corporate seeds and fertilizers and pesticides, destroying local economies. Hundreds of thousands of India's cotton farmers have committed suicide.

And according to a Greenpeace report, poorer farmers in the Philippines were sold Monsanto's Bt corn as a "practical and ecologically sustainable solution for poor corn farmers everywhere to increase their yields" only to find the opposite was true: Bt corn did not control pests and was "not ecologically sustainable."

Which brings us to one more of the Council for Biotechnology Information's lies to kids: That agricultural biotechnology is good for the environment.

Study after study, over more than a decade, has warned us of just the opposite. Even the pro-biotech USDA has admitted that GE crops use more pesticides, not less than non-GE varieties. Genetic engineering results in evermore pesticides being dumped into the environment, destroying soil and water, human and animal health, and threatening the biodiversity of the planet.

How about telling kids instead that numerous reports, including one from the German Beekeepers Association, have linked genetically engineered Bt corn to the widespread disappearance of bees, or what is now referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder? And while we're at it, maybe we should remind kids of the Albert Einstein's quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

Maybe we should also tell them that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's herbicide, Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world, kills Monarch butterflies, fish, and frogs, destroys soil fertility, and pollutes our waterways and drinking water.

The fact is, widespread use of Monsanto's Roundup in all agricultural and urban areas of the United States is destroying the environment, pure and simple. US Geological Survey studies released this month show that Roundup is now commonly found in rain and rivers in agricultural areas in the Mississippi River watershed, where most applications are for weed control on GE corn, soybeans and cotton. Here's the real truth, from an article published this past week: Monsanto's Roundup is actually threatening the crop-yielding potential of the entire biosphere. According to the article, new research published in the journal Current Microbiology highlights the extent to which "glyphosate is altering, and in some cases destroying, the very microorganisms upon which the health of the soil, and -- amazingly -- the benefits of raw and fermented foods as a whole, depend."

Lie #3: "Scientists are using biotechnology to grow foods that could help make people healthier." (page 11)

This is the perhaps the most outrageous lie of all. Telling kids that GE foods are more nutritious is tantamount to telling them Hostess cupcakes and Coca-Cola are health foods.

Genetic engineering -- of human food and food for animals that humans eat -- has been linked to a host of diseases and health issues, including auto-immune disorders, liver and kidney damage, nutritional deficiencies, allergies, accelerated aging, infertility, and birth defects.

There's a growing and alarming body of research indicating that GMO foods are unsafe, and absolutely no research whatsoever proving that they are safe. And yet the USDA and FDA continue to approve, and just this past month even agreed to speed up approval of these crops that scientists and physicians increasingly link to poor health.