Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4) by Nick Pirog (best ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗

substance is unlikely to be genotoxic (i.e. damaging to DNA) or to pose a carcinogenic threat to humans."

Terminator Seeds

Genetic use restriction technology, colloquially known as Terminator technology or suicide seeds, is the name given to proposed methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by causing second-generation seeds to be sterile. The technology was developed under a cooperative research and development agreement between the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land Company in the 1990s, but it is not yet commercially available.

From Monsanto’s website: Monsanto has never commercialized a biotech trait that resulted in sterile – or “Terminator” – seeds. Sharing the concerns of small landholder farmers, Monsanto made a commitment in 1999 not to commercialize sterile seed technology in food crops. We stand firmly by this commitment, with no plans or research that would violate this commitment.

Golden Rice

Golden rice is produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. It is intended to produce a fortified food to be grown and consumed in areas with a shortage of dietary vitamin A, a deficiency which is estimated to kill 670,000 children under the age of five each year.

Golden rice has met significant opposition from environmental and anti-globalization activists who claim there are sustainable, long-lasting, and more efficient ways to solve vitamin A deficiency that do not compromise food, nutrition, and financial security.

Golden Rice was one of seven winners of the 2015 Patents for Humanity Awards by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

As of 2016, it was still in development.

Times Beach (Simon Beach)

Times Beach is a ghost town in St. Louis County, Missouri. Once home to more than two thousand people, the town was completely evacuated early in 1983 due to a dioxin contamination that made national headlines. It was the largest civilian exposure to dioxin in the country's history. In 1985, the State of Missouri officially disincorporated the city of Times Beach.

I stole bits and pieces from what actually happened. You can read the entire saga here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri.

Farmer Assurance Provision (Lunhill Protection Act)

The Farmer Assurance Provision refers to a bill that was passed by the Senate on March 20, 2013 and then signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 26, 2013. The bill is commonly referred to as the “Monsanto Protection Act” by its critics.

Legal effect - if a biotech crop had already been approved by the USDA and a court reversed that approval, the provision directed the Secretary of Agriculture to grant temporary deregulation status at the request of a grower or seed producer, to allow growers to continue the cultivation of the crop while legal challenges to the safety of those crops would still be underway.

Support – the provision was a response to frivolous procedural lawsuits against the USDA which were attempting to "disrupt the regulatory process and undermine the science-based regulation of [agricultural biotechnology].

Criticism - those who opposed the provision referred to it as the “Monsanto Protection Act,” on the premise that it "effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of controversial genetically modified (GMO) or genetically engineered (GE) seeds, no matter what health issues may arise concerning GMOs in the future."

Monsanto and Blackwater

From Newstarget.com:

Millions of Americans remember the private mercenary force known as Blackwater for its involvement in an unprovoked attack that left scores of Iraqi civilians dead in 2007, but most have no idea that the firm had a business relationship as well with Monsanto.

As we reported in May 2013, the relationship between the world’s largest bio-ag company and producer of genetically modified foods and seeds and Blackwater was described by blogger Randy Ananda as “a death-tech firm weds a hit squad.”

As further reported by The Nation magazine, it appears that Monsanto hired Blackwater shortly after the Iraq incident to “protect the Monsanto brand,” which meant essential [sic] conducting intelligence operations against anti-Monsanto activists and their allies.

Read the full article here: http://www.newstarget.com/2016-04-28-monsanto-hired-the-infamous-mercenary-firm-blackwater-to-track-food-activists-around-the-world.html.

Monsanto/FDA/EPA

This is from a post on Rense.com:

The "revolving door" - the interplay of personnel that assists the industrial alignment of public service and regulatory authorities - has led to key figures at both the US's FDA and EPA having held important positions at Monsanto, or else doing so shortly after their biotech-related regulatory work for the government agency.

An article in The Ecologist's famous 'Monsanto Files' by Jennifer Ferrara, 'Revolving Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators,’ looked in detail at this issue. As an instance, Ferrara noted the FDA's approval of Monsanto's genetically engineered cattle drug rBGH which failed to gain approval in either Europe or Canada despite intense lobbying and accusations of malpractice.

You can read the rest of the post here: http://rense.com/general33/fd.htm.

FDA and testing of new drugs

From the FDA website:

Drug companies seeking to sell a drug in the United States must first test it. The company then sends CDER (FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research) the evidence from these tests to prove the drug is safe and effective for its intended use. A team of CDER physicians, statisticians, chemists, pharmacologists, and other scientists reviews the company's data and proposed labeling. If this independent and unbiased review establishes that a drug's health benefits outweigh its known risks, the drug is approved for sale. The center doesn't actually test drugs itself, although it does conduct limited research in the areas of drug quality, safety, and effectiveness standards.

Suing farmers

Since 1997, Monsanto has filed 147 lawsuits against farmers who have “improperly reused their patented seeds.” This includes when farmers tried to sue Monsanto over cross-pollination of their organic crops with GMO seed. For example, a federal court dismissed one of those cases, saying that it couldn’t protect Monsanto against unfair lawsuits should they side in the farmers’ favor.

According to Monsanto’s website, they have only proceeded through trial with nine farmers.

They have won all nine cases.

You are probably curious about where I stand