GMO Harm to Animals, Birds, and Bees
Genetically Engineered Crops Taking a Toll on
Livestock Health
By Dr. Mercola
With the support of local prosecutors, Mr.
Gloeckner
, a German farmer who had 65 cows die after he fed
them genetically modified
Bt
corn has filed
criminal charges against the manufacturer, alleging that the company not only
knew the corn could be lethal to livestock, but was covering up deaths that
occurred during clinical trials.
According to a recent press release by GM Watch
1
, the lawsuit asserts that Swiss biotech
Syngenta committed a grave criminal offense by deliberately withholding the
results of a feeding trial in which four cows died in two days. The deaths
prompted the company to halt the test. No health problems or deaths were
reported in the control group, which was not fed the genetically
engineered
Bt
176 corn.
Syngenta is by law required to register the results of feeding
studies with the appropriate authorities, which they never did. They testified
before the court in an earlier lawsuit brought by Mr.
Gloeckner
,
stating they knew of no risks related to their
Bt
176
corn, which resulted in the case against them being dismissed. According to the
featured press release
2
:
"As a consequence of the deliberate withholding of that
critical information
Gloeckner
suffered
financial damage well above 500000 (US$650,000) which he was prevented from
regaining through the initial court process."
As reported by Institute of Science in Society
3
, this is far from an isolated incident of
mysterious deaths associated with genetically engineered feed, and it's not
just Syngenta's
Bt
176 corn either.
Thousands of livestock deaths have been reported across India, as a result of
grazing on genetically engineered crops and feed. The Philippines have also
reported cases.
According to
Dr. Don Huber
, an expert on the toxicity of genetically engineered plants, a new
organism linked to GE crops appears to be the cause of high reproductive
failure in livestock. The organism was initially identified by veterinarians
around 1998_about two years after the introduction of Roundup Ready soybeans,
which is one of the staple feeds. The vets were puzzled by sudden rates of
miscarriages. While sporadic at first, the phenomenon has continued to increase
in severity.
In an interview last year, Dr. Huber stated:
"We [recently] received a call from a county extension
educator, indicating that he has a dairy that has a 70 percent abortion rate.
You put that on top of 10 to 15 percent of infertility to start with, and
you're not going to have a dairy very long. In fact, a lot of our veterinarians
are now becoming very concerned about the prospects for being able to have
replacement animals."
USDA 93% OF corn planted in US is GMO corn
(
Glyphosate
-the
most widely used herbicide & widespread in U.S. food system- dramatic
increases in pathologies in the F2 generation grand-offspring, and F3
transgenerational great-grand-offspring were observed. The transgenerational
pathologies observed include prostate disease, obesity, kidney disease, ovarian
disease, and birth abnormalities. Epigenetic analysis of the F1, F2 and F3
generation sperm identified differential DNA methylation regions (DMRs). A
number of DMR associated genes were identified and previously shown to be
involved in pathologies. Therefore, we propose glyphosate can induce the
transgenerational inheritance of disease and germline (
e.g.
sperm) epimutations (61));
There
are other herbicides applied to GMOs which are easily of equal concern. The
herbicide
Glufosinate
(
phosphinothricin
, made by Bayer) kills plants
because it inhibits the plant enzyme glutamine synthetase. This ubiquitous
enzyme is found also in fungi, bacteria and animals. Consequently,
Glufosinate
is toxic to most organisms.
Glufosinate
,
is also a neurotoxin of mammals that doesn’t easily break down in the
environment and is accumulating in environment & people. (Lantz et al.
2014)
A
yet further reason to be concerned about GMOs is that most of them contain a
viral sequence called the cauliflower mosaic virus (
CaMV
)
promoter (or they contain the similar figwort mosaic virus (FMV) promoter). Two
years ago, the GMO safety agency of the European Union (EFSA) discovered that
both the
CaMV
promoter and the FMV promoter
had wrongly been assumed by them (for almost 20 years) not to encode any
proteins. In fact, the two promoters encode a large part of a small multifunctional
viral protein that misdirects all normal gene expression and that also turns
off a key plant defense against pathogens. (75).
Another problem caused by the widespread use of glyphosate in
our crops is that it has led to a sharp increase in glyphosate-resistant weeds.
These Superweeds require even greater herbicide use and are often combated
using older, more dangerous herbicides, such as 2, 4-D, a chemical that has
been linked
8
with non-Hodgkin’s
lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, endocrine disruption, and reproductive
problems.(16). Glyphosate neurotoxicity produces damage affecting dopamine
in a way similar to that seen in Parkinson’s (20).
New
Soil Study Shows Pesticides 'Destroying the Very Foundations of Web of
Life
'
-Great harm to worms, insects, pollinators, birds, animals, humans.
GENETICALLY
ENGINEERED CROPS DAMAGE
WILDLIFE ,
Linked
to declining populations of birds, butterflies, etc.
Seeds
of Deception, Jeffrey Smith,
http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey6.htm
British
Studies Show GE Crops Harm Wildlife, NZ Herald
www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10116661
Are GM
Crops Killing Bees? By Gunther
Latsch
Der
Spiegel
Thursday 22 March 2007
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/032307EA.shtml
Russian
research threatens to have an explosive effect on already hostile public
opinion. Carried out by Dr Irina
Ermakova
at
the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and
Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is
believed to be the first to look at the effects of GM food on the unborn.
The scientist added flour from a GM soya bean - produced by Monsanto
to be resistant to its pesticide, Roundup - to the food of female rats,
starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth
and nursing. Others were given non-GM
soyaand
a
third group was given no soya at all.
She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the
modified soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of
the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per cent
of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three weeks of birth,
compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed normal soya, and 6.8
per cent of the young of those given no soya at all.
"The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to
those of humans, and this makes the results very
disturbing"
said Dr
Ermakova
. "They point to a risk for
mothers and their babies."
Environmentalists say that - while the results are preliminary - they are
potentially so serious that they must be followed up. The
AmericanAcademy
of Environmental Medicine has asked
the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent
follow-up.
The Monsanto soya is widely eaten by Americans. There is little of
it, or any GM crop, in British foods though it is imported to feed animals
farmed for meat.
Tony Coombes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, said:
"The overwhelming weight of evidence from published, peer-reviewed,
independently conducted scientific studies demonstrates that Roundup Ready soy
can be safely consumed by rats, as well as all other animal species
studied."
What the experiment found
Russian scientists added flour made from a GM soya to the diet of
female rats two weeks before mating them, and continued feeding it to them
during pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were
give
non-GM soya or none at all. Six times as many of the offspring of
those fed the modified soya were severely underweight compared to
those born to the rats given normal diets. Within three weeks, 55.6 per cent of
the young of the mothers given the modified soya died, against 9 per
cent of the offspring of those fed the conventional soya.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article337253.ece
GM
crops created superweed, say scientists
Paul Brown,
environment correspondent
Monday July 25, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1535428,00.html
New
Soil Study Shows Pesticides 'Destroying the Very Foundations of Web of
Life
'
-Great harm to worms, insects, pollinators, birds, animals, humans.
Pesticides and The Rapid Pollinator Decline/Food Security
Researchers found that one of the
herbicide formulations killed 96% of the bees within 24 hours.
Factors Behind Pollinator
Declines
The decline in pollinators
and bees has been attributed to various causes – the three major culprits are
pests and pathogens, exposure to agrochemicals and habitat loss and
degradation.
Professor
Johanne Brunet of USDA-ARS at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
https://www.scientia.global/pollinator-decline-implications-for-food-security-environment/
Agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects in last 25
years as
neonics
are used on over 140 different types
of crops.
There
is growing evidence that neonicotinoid pesticides could be a major contributor
to declining bee populations.
Bee-toxic
pesticides in dozens of widely used products
, on top of many other stresses
our industry faces,
are killing our bees and threatening our
livelihoods. -PAN
National Geographic
Biologists have found more than 150 different chemical residues
in bee pollen, a deadly “pesticide cocktail” according to University of
California apiculturist Eric
Mussen
. The chemical
companies Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, DuPont and Monsanto shrug their shoulders
at the systemic complexity, as if the mystery were too complicated. They
advocate no change in pesticide policy. After all, selling poisons to the
world’s farmers is profitable.
Furthermore, wild bee habitat shrinks every year as industrial
agribusiness converts grasslands and forest into mono-culture farms, which are
then contaminated with pesticides. To reverse the world bee decline, we need to
fix our dysfunctional and destructive agricultural system.
Solutions That Save the Bees
Common
sense actions can restore and protect the world’s bees:
Greenpeace
1.
Ban the seven most dangerous pesticides.
2.
Protect pollinator health by preserving wild habitat.
3.
Restore ecological agriculture.
Pesticides & Bird
Population Decline
The major reason for
bird
species
decline
is
loss of habitat, especially grasslands and forests. ... All have
experienced
declines
in some areas since the 1960s and '70s,
and further
declines
are anticipated, due to habitat loss,
deforestation, and climate change. Pesticides and toxics also affect bird
populations. Some with major declines
include;
A key stop on the great bird flyway, Eilat sees steep dive in migrating flocks