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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

    107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

    By Joel Achenbach
    June 29 at 12:01 PM


    W worker tends to corn crops at the Monsanto test field in Woodland, Calif., on Aug. 10, 2012. Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate and the largest producer of genetically engineered seed. (Noah Berger/Bloomberg News)


    More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world.

    "We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular," the letter states.


    The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and, with Phillip Sharp, the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of genetic sequences known as introns. The campaign has a website,supportprecisionagriculture.org, that includes a running list of the signatories, and the group plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning at the National Press Club in Washington.


    “We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science," Roberts told

    The Washington Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause."


    Roberts said he endorses many other activities of Greenpeace, and said he hopes the group, after reading the letter, would "admit that this is an issue that they got wrong and focus on the stuff that they do well."


    Greenpeace has not yet responded to requests for comment on the letter. It is hardly the only group that opposes GMOs, but it has a robust global presence, and the laureates in their letter contend that Greenpeace has led the effort to block Golden Rice.


    The list of signatories had risen to 107 names by Wednesday morning. Roberts said that, by his count, there are 296 living laureates.


    Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post, “I find it surprising that groups that are very supportive of science when it comes to global climate change, or even, for the most part, in the appreciation of the value of vaccination in preventing human disease, yet can be so dismissive of the general views of scientists when it comes to something as important as the world’s agricultural future.”


    The letter states:
    Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world. Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk. VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 - 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.

    The scientific consensus is that that gene editing in a laboratory is not more hazardous than modifications through traditional breeding, and that engineered plants potentially have environmental or health benefits, such as cutting down on the need for pesticides. A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released in May, said there is no substantiated evidence that GMO crops have sickened people or harmed the environment, but also cautioned that such crops are relatively new and that it is premature to make broad generalizations, positive or negative, about their safety.


    [Are GMO crops safe? Scientists weigh in, saying the focus should be on the plant and not the process.]


    Opponents of GMOs have said these crops may not be safe for human or animal consumption, have not been shown to improve crop yields, have led to excessive use of herbicides and can potentially spread engineered genes beyond the boundaries of farms.


    Greenpeace International's web site
    states that the release of GMOs into the natural world is a form of "genetic pollution." The site states:
    Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally.These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non 'GE' environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way.

    Virtually all crops and livestock have been genetically engineered in the broadest sense; there are no wild cows, and the cornfields of the United States reflect many centuries of plant modification through traditional breeding.

    Genetically modified crops started to become common in the mid-1990s; today, most of the corn, soybeans and cotton in the country has been modified to be resistant to insects or tolerant of herbicide, according to government statistics.


    [The 'GMO-free' marketing ploy]


    Opponents of GMOs have focused a great deal on the economic and social repercussions of the introduction of lab-modified crops. Greenpeace has warned of the corporate domination of the food supply, saying that small farmers will suffer. A Greenpeace spokesman Wednesday referred a reporter to a Greenpeace publication titled "Twenty Years of Failure: Why GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises."


    This debate between mainstream scientists and environmental activists isn't new, and there is little reason to suspect that the letter signed by the Nobel laureates will persuade GMO opponents to stand down.


    But Columbia University's Martin Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel in chemistry for research on green fluorescent protein, said he thinks laureates can be influential on the GMO issue.


    "Is there something special about Nobel laureates? I’m not so sure we’re any more special than other scientists who have looked at the evidence involved, but we have considerably more visibility because of the prize. I think that this behooves us, that when we feel that science is not being listened to, that we speak out."


    Roberts said he has worked on previous campaigns that sought to leverage the influence of Nobel laureates. In 2012, for example, he organized a campaign to persuade Chinese authorities to release from house arrest the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Roberts said he decided to take on the GMO issue after hearing from scientific colleagues their research was being impeded by anti-GMO activism from Greenpeace and other organizations. He said he has no financial interest in GMO research.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory


    Further Reading:
    Why this genetically modified mushroom gets to skip USDA oversight

    Why science is so hard to believe


    Bill Nye is changing his mind about GMOs


    Pondering 'what it means to be human' on the frontier of gene editing

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  2. #2
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    NO AMNESTY

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    Washington Post story - what a bunch of GMO baloney. Wonder how much they & the 107 nobel laureates were p;aid by monsanto akin to scientists' paid off reports?

    To say it would result in less pesticide use is nothing further from the truth. It has created SUPERWEEDS THAT REQUIRE MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF MORE DEADLY PESTICIDES - THEN WHAT? Spray more! All the more $$$$$$ for monsanto whilst our cells die from exposure.

    monsanto's entire history has been exposing us to deadly toxins.
    That is how they make their monies.
    Last edited by artist; 06-29-2016 at 05:33 PM.

  4. #4
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Op-Ed Stop worrying about GMOs; it's that organic granola bar that could make you sick
    Recalls of organic foods amounted to 7% of all food units recalled in 2015, even though organic farms account for only about 1% of agricultural acreage. (Los Angeles Times)


    Henry I. Miller


    Karma can be so cruel. Just think how many times anti-GMO activists have protested against the imaginary risks of food that has been genetically modified. Now a favorite snack of those same protesters, the sacred granola bar, has been found to pose an actual health risk.

    Anti-genetic engineering campaigns are among the activities bankrolled by organizations such as the Clif Bar Family Foundation, which uses the considerable profits it receives from selling “healthy” and “natural” snack foods to denigrate the products of modern farming and extol supposedly superior organic alternatives. Like Clif Bars.


    The truth is that paying the “organic tax” — the price premium associated with organic products — makes you no healthier. Recalls of organic foods amounted to 7% of all food units recalled in 2015, even though organic farms account for only about 1% of agricultural acreage. In early June, several types of Clif Bars were recalled from stores because they contained organic sunflower kernels potentially contaminated with a bacterium called listeria. Food poisoning from this nasty bug kills hundreds of Americans every year.

    Fortunately, the problem was detected before anyone was sickened by the Clif Bars or other affected organic snacks that were made by Kashi and Bear Naked, both subsidiaries of Kellogg.

    These products all contained seeds from SunOpta, which describes itself as a “leading global company focused on organic, nongenetically modified (‘non-GMO’) and specialty foods.”


    A similar sort of karmic revenge struck Chipotle Mexican Grill last year. The fast-food restaurant chain had sought to gain market share with ads that vilified conventional agriculture and boldly proclaimed their move toward “no GMO” ingredients. But the company proved more adept at marketing than safe food preparation, and about 60 customers in 20 states were sickened by norovirus or bacteria (E.coli and salmonella).

    Twenty were hospitalized.


    The superior safety and environmental benefits of food made from genetically engineered plants have been proven over decades. Many genetically engineered crops resist insects and contamination with dangerous fungal toxins such as mycotoxins. And unlike new crop varieties modified with less precise, less predictable techniques that are permitted in organic agriculture, genetically engineered crops have all been exhaustively tested and are subject to government regulation.


    Organic farming practices reject many modern technological farming advances as if there were some sort of golden age of agriculture when primitive techniques produced better results.

    That notion is complete nonsense. A 2012 report by researchers at Stanford University’s Center for Health Policy analyzed data from 237 studies to determine whether organic foods are safer or healthier than nonorganic foods. They concluded that fruits and vegetables that met the criteria for “organic” were on average no more nutritious than their far cheaper conventional counterparts, nor were those foods less likely to be contaminated by bacteria such as E. coli or salmonella.


    Why on Earth would anyone think that using raw manure as a fertilizer -- in essence spreading feces on food plants -- produces healthier food?



    Some of the potential problems with organic produce seem like a matter of common sense.

    Why on Earth would anyone think that using raw manure as a fertilizer — in essence spreading feces on food plants — produces healthier food for the dining table? (It's allowed, but the FDA requires certain intervals between the application of raw manure and harvesting.)

    And the widely held belief — which the organic industry promotes — that organic growers don’t use pesticides is simply untrue. Although modern pesticides are prohibited, according to data from USDA, there is extensive cheating. Moreover, many of the primitive pesticides permitted to organic farmers pose significant dangers.

    As evolutionary biologist Christie Wilcox explained in a 2012 Scientific American article: “Organic pesticides pose the same health risks as nonorganic ones.” For example, neem oil, a bug killer, is considered “natural” because the substance is found in the seeds of a tree, but “natural” doesn’t mean safe. The stuff is known to cause seizures and comas in humans if consumed in large doses, and it kills bumblebees at very low concentrations.

    Modern science has designed far better pesticides than neem oil that are safer, more targeted and much more effective at significantly lower concentrations. Modern pesticide seed treatments, for example, mean that crops can sometimes be grown with little, if any, need for spraying plants.

    Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence in favor of the safety of modern agriculture, Clif Bar isn’t backing down. The company’s website contains anti-genetic engineering propaganda: “GMOs are simply the latest Band-Aid on a broken system — a faulty tool in the conventional, chemically dependent farming system.”

    The multibillion-dollar organic food industry devotes massive resources to perpetuating the myth that 19th century farming methods make food healthier and better for the environment because it has to persuade consumers to spend on average an extra 50%, or more, for its products. Better to be guided by the facts instead of fears promulgated by self-interested food activists.


    Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA.

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...nap-story.html

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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    The FDA raw cookie dough warning isn't for the reason you think


    The FDA has issued a warning to consumers to not eat raw cookie dough and other products with untreated flour due to an E. coli risk. (Larry Crowe / Associated Press)


    Jessica Roy

    The FDA means it this time: Stop eating raw cookie dough.

    We know we aren't technically supposed to eat raw cookie dough. The raw eggs are a salmonella risk. But if we're all being really, truly honest with ourselves, and with one another, we can acknowledge we've eaten raw cookie dough before, and we probably didn't get sick from it.


    But this time, the eggs aren't the problem. The flour is.


    On May 31, General Mills issued a recall of 10 million pounds of flour over concerns the product was linked to an outbreak of E. coli that has sickened at least 38 people across 20 states. E. colibacteria are killed by heat, so anything you've baked, fried, sautéed or otherwise cooked is safe.


    The recall includes big-name brands like Gold Medal, Wondra and Signature Kitchens. You can find the exact products that are recalled here.


    So it's not only cookie dough that could make you sick — it's anything you made with flour but haven't cooked. However, most of us probably aren't sampling bread dough or breaded chicken breasts while they're still raw. On June 28, the FDA issued a warning specific to cookie dough about the risk. (You might want to avoid licking the cake batter spoon, too.)


    Don't drive these Hondas and Acuras unless dangerous air bags are fixed, government warns

    People who cook or bake with flour should make sure to wash their hands and clean any affected surfaces thoroughly once they're done. In addition to staying away from raw cookie dough and cake batter, parents should be on the lookout for homemade Play-Doh, a popular Pinterest craft made with flour.

    Symptoms of E. coli include abdominal cramps and diarrhea. Most healthy adults will recover in three or four days, but it can be very dangerous and even deadly for children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems.


    Some good news for people who still need their raw cookie dough fix: Raw cookie dough ice cream sold in stores is safe. The dough in those products is made with treated flour and pasteurized eggs.


    If you're craving cookies (in their baked form, of course), try our recipe for what might be the greatest peanut butter cookies ever made.

    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...nap-story.html
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