The Truth About Monsanto

Glyphosate Hazardous to Crops, Soils, Animals, People

The truth about Monsanto is almost completely censored by the mainstream media. In Washington, a majority of both parties backed the heinous Monsanto Protection Act. The DARK Act signed by President Obama made things even worse. And when small farmers and other U.S. citizens manage to work around Monsanto’s own Congress – Sen. Roy Blount (R-MO) and others – and air their grievances before the nation’s Supreme Court, a former Monsanto lawyer – Judge Clarence Thomas – is there to slam the courthouse door on them. (Thomas has done so more than once.) In Europe, however, Monsanto has had a tougher time forcing its poison practices on people. Junk science and disinformation from Monsanto don’t sell as well in Europe and elsewhere as they do in America.

Monsanto’s cancerous bovine growth hormone (rBGH), for one example, is banned in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Most of those countries have also fought hard to keep Monsanto’s Roundup out of their food.

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In Europe, politicians will even listen to an American scientist who can’t get heard in his own country. Don Huber, a USDA senior scientist and professor emeritus at Purdue University, delivered to the UK Houses of Parliament the truth about Monsanto, Roundup, and glyphosate. Back in 2012, Huber gave UK’s Parliament a damning indictment of Monsanto products and methods. He explained just why Monsanto is such a serious threat to crops, soils, animals, and people.

Crop Disease Sparks Scientist’s Interest
Mr. Huber has been a plant physiologist and pathologist for more than 40 years. His academic career began with eight years as a cereal pathologist at the University of Idaho. He spent 35 years at Purdue University, specializing in soil-borne disease control, physiology of disease, and microbial ecology. For the last 20 years, he has conducted extensive research into the effects of glyphosate on crops. His interest followed the huge increase in crop diseases on fields sprayed with glyphosate.

Letter to US Secretary of State Ignored
Mr. Huber wrote a letter to the US Secretary of State Tom Vilsak in February 2011. It was ignored by mainstream media and the American government. In the letter, Mr. Huber described a pathogen “new to science” that is everywhere in glyphosate-tolerant GM crops. He concluded in his letter: “We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem.”

Glyphosate Reduces Nutrient Availability
Mr. Huber’s Parliament talk also linked glyphosate to reduced nutrient availability in plants, and to increasing plant diseases. He also referenced the emergence of a new pathogen causing animal illness that can possibly affect human health, since humans eat animals.

Pathogen New to Science
The conversion of U.S. agriculture to monochemical herbicide practice has resulted in the heavy use of glyphosate herbicides, Mr. Huber explained. Farmers have coincidentally seen deterioration in the health of corn, soybean, wheat, and other crops. They’ve also seen epidemics of diseases in small grain crops. All this deterioration and disease are linked with the heavy use of glyphosate, which has increased further since the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant, Roundup Ready (RR) crops.

The Truth About Monsanto

Glyphosate kills by immobilizing nutrients that plants need for health and disease resistance. (It also immobilizes human gut flora; so it is likely the cause, or a leading cause, of the huge increase in Irritable Bowel Syndrome.) This weakening of plants’ defenses could explain the infestation of GM crops with the new pathogen. It has now been found in horse, sheep, pigs, cows, chicken, multiple animal tissues including reproductive parts (semen, amniotic fluid), manure, soil, eggs, milk, as well as the common fungal pathogen now infesting RR crops, Fusarium solani fsp glycines mycelium. All come in contact with glyphosate through direct exposure or animal feed consumption. The pathogen is also highly abundant in crops suffering from plant Goss’ wilt and sudden death syndrome.

The pathogen can be cultured in the lab, Mr. Huber explained to Parliament. It has been isolated from livestock foetal tissue, replicated in the lab and re-introduced back into the animals. It appears to be very common and may well be interacting with the effects of glyphosate on both plants and animals. The result is that it exacerbates disease and causes reproductive failure in livestock.

Money Matters Limit Good Science
People who care about clean food and a cancer-free life want Mr. Huber to publish his findings. The problem is that he insists that before he can publish, he needs more resources (ie. money) to be able to characterize the ‘entity’ and identify what type of species it is, including sequencing of its genome. Such research is very expensive. The problem is who would pay for such research? This is largely how we got into the mess with Monsanto in the first place. Monsanto’s own studies (and political connections) were used to push Roundup past the US FDA and EPA. Those agencies simply took Monsanto’s word that Roundup was safe. They never required the necessary safety testing. Mr. Huber wants eventually to publish his work in a peer-reviewed journal, which is the only way such work could get into evidence to help stop Monsanto from continuing to devastate the world with its poison practices.

Government Must Sponsor Sound Research
It’s well past time that the National Institutes of Health, paid for by our tax dollars, performs long-term testing on Roundup as well as Monsanto’s monochemical practices. Besides the fact that evidence shows Roundup to be linked with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, and other cancers, Roundup is killing pollinator bees, depleting soils, and devastating biodiversity. It’s time for adults to take charge in Washington and do the work that only government can afford to do. Our tax dollars should be spent in protecting us from criminal organizations like Monsanto, not being used against us to rubber stamp all of Monsanto’s poison practices.

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