Most people associate the words “genetic engineering” with GMO foods and crops, Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller and the anti-GMO movement’s hard-fought campaign for GMO labeling laws.

As dangerous and unnecessary as genetic engineering is when used to modify food, the technology has an even more potentially deadly use: engineering viruses and microbes to be more transmissible and virulent.

It’s time to stop allowing—and funding—the dangerous and illegal activity of genetically engineering viruses, under the guise of “biodefense” or “biomedical” research in the U.S. and worldwide.

SIGN THE PETITION: Stop the Genetic Engineering of Viruses! Shut Down All Biowarfare Labs Immediately!

Researchers have identified almost 300 chemicals in everything from hair dye to pesticides that can increase levels of breast cancer-contributing hormones.

Ruthann Rudel, director of research for the Silent Spring Institute and co-author of the new study, told EHN that of those chemicals, 219 had not been previously identified as potential carcinogens. The findings come in a study out this week in Environmental Health Perspectives. 

Learn More: Breast Cancer: Hundreds of Chemicals Identified as Potential Risk Factors

Google has been marginalizing and “shadow banning” OCA and our closest allies now for a number of years, especially since the onset of COVID-19. Whereas we used to rank high in the Google search engines, recently our Google traffic has fallen precipitously, while warnings from Facebook and YouTube to stay away from forbidden topics or lose our access to our several million followers have increased. As a result of these threats and shadow banning, OCA now has to produce two newsletters every week, one for our subscribers (uncensored) and one which we are allowed to post on social media (censored).

To carry on our work in the face of corporate lies, government intimidation, and now social media censorship, we need your help. 

Please get your friends and everyone you know to become subscribers of Organic Bytes, since we may be “de-platformed” any day now on Facebook and social media.  

Please ask everyone on your email list and your social media contacts to subscribe to Organic Bytes here. 

And we need your financial support as well, more than ever.

Please make a generous donation at this time, if you are able. Thank you for your support.

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

Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby, OCA’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm (not tax-deductible)

Donate $100 or more and we’ll send you a copy of Ronnie’s book, Grassroots Rising

Click here for more ways to support our work

The Counter writes: 

“Mexico is now the United States’ single largest agricultural trading partner, largely the result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a treaty enacted in 1994 that eliminated tariffs on the majority of goods produced and traded between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Although NAFTA was heralded by the U.S. government for reducing barriers to trade, the pact devastated rural economies in Mexico, flooding the market with cheap, government-subsidized U.S. corn and gutting domestic corn prices by nearly 70 percent. This shift led an estimated 2 million farmworkers to abandon the countryside to seek work in big cities or across the border in the United States.” 

Read more: Mexico is Phasing Out Imports of Glyphosate and GMO Corn. Supporters Say That Could Reverse Years of Damage from U.S. Trade Policy.

Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Meat by Nicolette Hahn Niman, is definitely not on the recommended summer reading list for Bill Gates and the other Silicon Valley tycoons who are bankrolling genetically engineered lab meat and animal products. 

These GMO enthusiasts tell us that organic agriculture and livestock management are a threat to the environment, drivers of climate change, and an impediment to solving world hunger. From their mansions and boardrooms, they tell us that the billion indigenous and small farm ranchers should just give up on animal husbandry, switch to GMO Impossible Burgers and vegan fare, and perhaps “find another job.” 

Before I learned about the environmental, climate, and nutritional benefits of regenerative grazing, I was a committed vegetarian for over three decades. Like most Organic Bytes subscribers, I abhor factory farms and the network of millions of acres of GMO soybeans and corn and government subsidies that prop up this abomination. I boycott factory-farmed “Big Meat and Dairy.” I’m the co-founder and manager of an organic research farm in Mexico, Via Organica, that raises and nurtures a diversity of farm animals in a humane and regenerative manner.

And as renowned animal welfare advocate Temple Grandin reminds us: 

“I have traveled to every state in the U.S. during both summer and winter and have seen the land in extensive rural areas. There are huge land areas in this country that cannot be used for crops. The only way to grow food on these lands is by grazing animals. Grazing done properly will improve the land. Defending Beef shows clearly that beef cattle are an important part of sustainable agriculture.”

Read more and order a copy of Hahn Nieman’s book: Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production

In a bombastic, 7,000-word article in the New York Times by Jennifer Kahn published on July 20, “Learning to Love GMOs,” we are admonished once again that genetically engineered foods and crops are perfectly safe, and oh-so-misunderstood by the average consumer. In the Great Reset of the future, Kahn tells us gene-edited foods will not only satiate our hunger and alleviate malnutrition and rural poverty, but cure our illnesses as well.

Over twenty years ago, I co-authored (with Ben Lilliston) one of the first consumer-oriented books on GMOs, entitled Genetically Engineered Foods: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers. Kahn and her handlers at the Times obviously haven’t looked at my book or the many others that detail the obvious hazards of GMOs and the superiority of organic foods and farming. 

If I were allowed to debate Kahn and the other gene food cheerleaders such as Mark Lynas, I would point to the two thousand plus GMO articles on the OCA website that we have published over the last 25 years.

OCA’s archives provide overwhelming evidence that 

(1) GMOs are basically designed and patented to serve as delivery systems for the proprietary (and toxic) herbicides, pesticides, and insecticides sold by Bayer/Monsanto, Syngenta/ChemChina, and Corteva (formerly Dow/DuPont), such as Roundup, glufosinate, dicamba, and (the bee-killing) Bt. These toxic pesticides, which now permeate our food, our bodies, and our environment are the commercial drivers and necessary companion chemicals for all of these GMO foods and crops. 

(2) GMOs do not increase the safety or nutritional value of food, especially in comparison to organic products. 

(3) GMOs do not reduce poverty among small farmers or ranchers. 

(4) Healthy food, natural health remedies, and a healthy lifestyle are the essential ingredients for health and wellness, not genetically engineered or biopharmaceutical foods, crops, and vaccines. 

Read more: Jennifer Kahn’s ‘Love GMOs’ NYT Article is Propaganda, Not Journalism