Organic Bytes
Newsletter #833: Rogue GMO Microbes
 

TAKE ACTION

Modified Soil Microbes Could Trigger a GMO Doomsday

Alexis Baden-Mayer reports for the Organic Consumers Association: 

Contaminating soil with rogue GMO microbes could trigger a doomsday for agriculture that would jeopardize not only our ability to grow food, but would imperil life as we know it on this planet.

Before your legislative representatives let Bayer spread genetically engineered soil microbes (supposedly for use as fertilizers and pesticides) all over your state, make sure they read the risks report its partner Ginkgo Bioworks filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Starting with, “The release of genetically modified organisms or materials, whether inadvertent or purposeful, into uncontrolled environments could have unintended consequences,” it’s like a sci-fi writer’s brainstorm of plots for a disaster movie!

It covers accidents, terrorism, and biological weapons, and lets investors know that, even in the normal course of business, they could be on the hook for the deaths of Ginkgo’s employees, its customers and the general public.

Ginkgo Bioworks’ main partner is Bayer (Monsanto).

According to Friends of the Earth:

“Bayer has amassed a collection of at least 125,000 wild microbial strains and in 2019 created an umbrella branch for related products called Biologicals by Bayer. The company has rapidly expanded their activities in this area via acquisitions.

“Between 2012 and 2014, Bayer acquired three biologicals companies and in 2022 established a strategic partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, a startup company which has received $15 billion in investment to develop a platform to automate the genetic engineering of thousands of microbes at once. Bayer also acquires and markets individual microbial products from other companies. The most prominent microbial products released by the company to date are bacteria-based fungicides as well as some plant growth promoting products.”

Bayer has made a pledge to “reduce the environmental impact of crop protection by 30 percent without sacrificing yield and the health of the harvest” by 2030.

The truth is, Bayer has no plans to reduce its pesticide sales. What it’s looking to do is create additional products to stack on top of the ones it already sells.

Bayer is working with the Bill Gates-backed Pivot Bio on genetically engineered nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The promise is that it could cut synthetic fertilizer use, but there’s no evidence of that. Pivot isn’t letting independent scientists evaluate their claims.

It’s the same story with Poncho/VOTiVO, a hybrid chemical/biological insecticide product originally created by Bayer and now sold by BASF. Instead of marketing the genetically engineered Bt bacteria VOTiVO as an alternative to the neonicotinoid insecticide Poncho—which kills bees—they’re sold together, and only together, as a single product. This way, the companies can up-sell farmers, and if the product doesn’t work as advertised no one knows what’s to blame.

Bayer and Ginkgo Bioworks can’t be trusted. 

They don’t care if they destroy agriculture. They’re trying to replace real food and farming with lab-grown and synbio (“precision fermentation”) Frankenfoods anyway!

Those Frankenfoods are our future unless you act now.

Read more: Bayer’s Modified Soil Microbes Could Trigger a GE Doomsday

TAKE ACTION: Educate your legislators on the risks of genetically engineered microbes!

Learn more here and here

Recommended Resources from Chelsea Green: Mycorrhizal Planet, The Living Soil Handbook, The Soul of Soil, The Independent Farmstead

REGENERATION INTERNATIONAL

What is Regenerative Agriculture?

By Prof. Dr. André Leu, International Director of Regeneration International:

There are claims that there is no clear definition of Regenerative Agriculture.

Regeneration International started the worldwide regenerative movement in 2015. We have published our definition many times. We are the oldest and most significant of all the inclusive regenerative agriculture movements working on all 6 arable continents on our planet. Consequently, we state with authority that our definition is the primary one.

By definition:

Regenerative systems improve the environment, soil, plants, animal welfare, health, and communities.

The opposite of Regenerative is Degenerative

This is an essential distinction in determining practices that are not regenerative.

Agricultural systems that use Degenerative Practices and inputs that damage the environment, soil, health, genes, and communities and involve animal cruelty are not regenerative.

The use of synthetic toxic pesticides, synthetic water-soluble fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, confined animal feeding operations, exploitive marketing and wage systems, destructive tillage systems, and the clearing of high-value ecosystems are examples of degenerative practices.

Such systems must be called degenerative agriculture to stop greenwashing and hijacking.

Regeneration International asserts that to heal our planet, all agricultural systems should be regenerative, organic, and based on the science of agroecology.

Different Definitions

Other organizations have put out different definitions of regenerative agriculture. These tend to be narrower than ours; however, most do not contradict our definition. They are equivalent.

Read more: The Definition of Regenerative Agriculture

Check out Regeneration International’s latest newsletter for more on their definition of regenerative agriculture, Africa’s deep disappointment at COP28 results, an agricultural paradigm to overtake the climate crisis and much more.

ROUNDUP & CANCER

DNA Damage Seen in Men Applying Roundup and Other Glyphosate-Based Herbicides

Claire Robinson reports for GM Watch:

“A new paper from the US National Institutes of Health reports indications of DNA damage among men applying Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides. DNA damage is concerning because it can lead to cancer. A commentary on the new paper published in the same issue of the journal, titled Important new evidence for glyphosate hazard assessment, calls it “a critical step forward in filling knowledge gaps of glyphosate carcinogenicity in humans”.

The study’s authors, Vicky C. Chang et al, were inspired to conduct their study because although mechanistic studies in human cells and animals support the genotoxic effects of glyphosate, “evidence in human populations is scarce”. They analyzed the blood, urine and mouth cells of licensed pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina. They found links between lifetime occupational use and a marker of DNA damage known as mosaic loss of chromosome Y (mLOY). mLOY is a chromosomal alteration that is commonly detected in the blood cells of adult men, especially aging men. It has been associated with blood cancers such as lymphoma, myeloma, and leukemia, as well as with Alzheimer’s disease.”



Read more results from the study

Make Your State the First to Ban Monsanto’s Roundup Weedkiller!

FARM BILL 2024

Beginning Farmers Are at a Crossroads. Here’s How the Next Farm Bill Can Help.

Max Sano writes for Civil Eats:

“April Prusia’s 78-acre heritage hog operation in the Driftless region of Wisconsin has benefited from two forms of financial support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In 2013, around the time she was getting the operation off the ground, Prusia secured a cost-share loan through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) that helped her install a system to divert water from the roof of the barn away from the barnyard. In addition to the environmental benefit of “keeping clean water clean,” she said the new system helped the barnyard stay drier. “It’s had a positive side effect, a healthier environment for the animals,” she said.

Around 2018, Prusia received a second federal loan, this time from the Farm Service Agency (FSA), specifically geared toward women and minority producers. With this money, she bought an additional 28 acres on which to grow hay for bedding and feed for the pigs. “It allowed me to triple the size of my operation and have healthier animals—they’re up on pasture [on the new land],” she said.

Additionally, converting the additional parcel from an annual to a perennial cropping site has increased the amount of carbon sequestration happening, and she hears more songbirds. Together, these two pots of funding—both made available through the farm bill—helped Prusia establish and expand her farm.

Despite the existence of federal funds, however, Prusia is in a rare boat. According to the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), many new farmers don’t even know such funding exists.”



Read more about how beginning farmers are thinking more about pasture, carbon sequestering, and perennial farming

Want Better Food? Demand a Better Farm Bill!

STOP WEAPONIZING PATHOGENS

Killer Coverup — Scientists Misled Pentagon About Wuhan Research

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola:

  • Evidence suggests the lab leak theory has been intentionally ignored because individuals who had a hand in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 needed to cover up the fact that it was man-made to protect reputations and money flows
  • The lesson to be learned is that we cannot afford to allow this kind of research to continue
  • In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance submitted a proposal to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), requesting $14 million for gain-of-function (GOF) research on bat sarbecoviruses. The proposal spelled out the intent to insert “human-specific cleavage sites” into sarbecoviruses, a genus of coronavirus to which SARS-CoV belongs. This also happens to be one of the radically novel features that makes SARS-CoV-2 so infectious to humans
  • At the end of December 2023, U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) received an early draft of the proposal with comments from Daszak and Baric in the margins. The comments reveal Daszak misled DARPA about where the research was to be conducted
  • The Pentagon rejected the proposal, but questions remain whether the research was conducted under some other program

Read more about the intentional coverup

TAKE ACTION: Stop Weaponizing Pathogens! Ban Gain-of-Function Biolabs!

SUPPORT OCA

2024: Search Out New Friends and Allies

Now is the time to educate, search out new friends and allies, even in the most unlikely places, improve our health, strengthen our resolve, and prepare for any eventuality. A new 21st Century populist counter-culture and politics, potentially strong enough to overturn business as usual, is starting to emerge. Left and right, liberal and conservative, green, red, and blue, have suddenly lost their meanings. Corrupt and cowardly politicians from both major parties have destroyed their credibility, along with all the major institutions.

We literally have no choice but to build a new system of participatory democracy on the ruins of the old. This is what our new corps of Resistance and Regeneration will look like: farmers and consumers, young and old, rural and urban, whites and non-whites, middle class, working class, immigrants, low-income communities, dropouts from the affluent class, a rainbow of dissidents and rebels from all genders, religions, and spiritual belief.

Accepting diversity and building a society of participatory democracy in a diverse nation (and world) of different cultures and traditions doesn’t mean we all have to love one another. But we must come to grips with the life or death issues that are pressing down on all of us. We have no choice but to break down the walls and the single issue silos (my issue is more important than your issue, my constituency is more oppressed or more important than yours) that divide and enslave us. 


Now is the time to spread the message of peace, justice, tolerance, hope, and Regeneration to all who are willing to listen.

Please help us educate consumers and support our policy and legal works to regenerate our health, environment, and politics.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Click here for more ways to support our work

MENTAL HEALTH

First Cats Took Over This Prison. Then They Stole Its Prisoners’ Hearts

Jack Nicas writes for NYT:

“Some say they were first brought in to take out the rats. Others contend they wandered in on their own.

What everyone can agree on — including those who have lived or worked at Chile’s largest prison the longest — is that the cats were here first.

For decades, they have walked along the prison’s high walls, sunbathed on the metal roof and skittered between cells crowded with 10 men each. To prison officials, they were a peculiarity of sorts, and mostly ignored. The cats kept multiplying into the hundreds.

Then prison officials realized something else: The feline residents were not only good for the rat problem. They were also good for the inmates.

“They’re our companions,” said Carlos Nuñez, a balding prisoner showing off a 2-year-old tabby he named Feita, or Ugly, from behind prison bars. While caring for multiple cats during his 14-year sentence for home burglary, he said he discovered their special essence, compared with, say, a cellmate or even a dog.


Known simply as “the Pen,” the 180-year-old main penitentiary in Santiago, Chile’s capital, has long been known as a place where men live in cages and cats roam free. What is now more clearly understood is the positive effect of the prison’s roughly 300 cats on the 5,600 human residents.”


Read more about how the felines’ presence changed lives

BAN PFAS

Yale Study: “Forever Chemicals” Promote Cancer Cell Migration

By Jenny Blair, Yale School of Public Health:

“In a new study by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, two “forever chemicals” spurred cancer cells in the lab to migrate to new positions, an indication that the chemicals could contribute to cancer metastasis in living organisms.

The study addressed the group of industrial chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The substances are known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment and can build up in the human body.

All have the ability to shed water and resist penetration by oils. They are notorious for their ubiquity, their exceptional environmental stability, and their suspected toxic effects.

“PFAS make up a prevalent class of persistent organic pollutants of increasing public concern worldwide. They have been frequently detected in the environment, such as in drinking water, indoor dust, cleaning products, and coatings,” said co-first author Jie Zheng, a postdoctoral associate who was working in the lab of principal investigator Caroline Johnson, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology (environmental health sciences), at the time the research was conducted.

The chemicals show up in the blood of newborns, of people living in sub-Arctic Indigenous communities, in fish and mussels, even birds’ eggs. No level of PFAS in the body is considered safe, and they have been linked to a litany of health problems, including cancers. In November, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a common PFAS, as carcinogenic to humans and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), another common PFAS, as possibly carcinogenic to humans.”


Read more about this new research

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators to Ban Toxic PFAS!

SAVE THE BEES

BBC Documentary: A Man Without Bees

The Gaia Foundation writes:

“Simon is from Tharaka, meaning ‘The Land of the Bees’, and these flighty, winged allies have been central to the cultural, spiritual and ecological fabric of the region for generations. People would look to pollinators to tell them about the weather, particularly when the rain was coming. Honey was used to brew beer for ceremonies at sacred sites – rituals that would connect clans with each other and with place. Honey beer was even offered as thanks, by households who needed help from others, human or more-than-human.

“The bees are everything in Tharakan communities. When I was very young my father would climb the tallest trees with just his hands and feet. I could see his outline against the night sky, and felt scared. He would put his hand in amongst all those bees, without upsetting them. One bad move and he would be showered with stings. But it never went wrong. He would fill a container with some of their honey, leaving plenty for them. The bee hives are still here today, and my uncle still climbs trees, aged 70! But now, when you tell someone that Tharaka means ‘The Land of the Bees’, their next question is ‘where have the bees gone?’”

In this documentary, Simon sets out to find an answer. Watch this beautifully illustrated video.

Learn why Simon is encouraging everyone to abandon pesticides and use organic farming methods

TAKE ACTION: Ban bee-killing neonic seed treatments!

PESTICIDES

New EPA Plan for Hormone Harming Pesticides Sparks Hope But Also Skepticism

Johnathan Hettinger writes for The New Lede:

“A new US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plan aimed at protecting the public from exposure to pesticides that harm reproductive health is sparking hope for advocates who have called for action for more than two decades, but skepticism remains high.

The long overdue strategy comes after litigation and multiple Inspector General probes exposed decades of EPA inaction to deal with evidence that many widely used pesticides are disrupting human hormones in ways that interfere with healthy pregnancies and cause an array of other harms. 

Under the law, the EPA is supposed to look at how pesticides impact the human endocrine system – the body’s hormonal system that controls or regulates many biological functions, including the functions of reproductive organs, growth, and energy levels. The agency is then supposed to incorporate that data and consider if restrictions are needed to protect the public from the risks

Yet, for more than 25 years, the EPA has not determined even a single chemical to be an endocrine disruptor through its testing process, and has not put in a single regulation to protect consumers and farmworkers from pesticides that independent research has shown to be endocrine disrupting. “

Read more about why it appears to politics, not science is driving EPA’s inaction

HEALTHY LIVING

Find Seed Oil Free Restaurants

My Health Forward reports:

“Find restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and creameries that provide seed oil free food options. Places on this map do not cook some or all of their food in seed oils and use extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, butter, ghee, tallow, duck fat, and lard instead. This list prioritizes restaurants sourcing from local farms.

Add to the Map

Submit a restaurant, cafe, bakery, creamery or any other establishment serving food that provides all or some of their food as seed oil free. Please include the place’s name, address, and a description of what oils they use. If you see a place on here and know more information about how they cook their food, please submit that as well. I will review all submissions before adding to the map.”

Check it out!