Monsanto Responds to Glyphosate/Birth Defects Report

1. Earth Open Source response to Monsanto 2. June 2011 Earth Open Source Report on Roundup - Monsanto response

NOTE: Below (item 2) is Monsanto's initial response to the Earth Open Source report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?". The EOS report showed industry has known that glyphosate causes birth defects since the 1980s and EU regulators have known since the 1990s. But instead of informing the public, industry and regulators have repeatedly claimed that glyphosate and Roundup do not cause birth defects: http://www.scribd.com/doc/57277946/RoundupandBirthDefectsv5

Earth Open Source's response to Monsanto is also below (item 1). --- --- 1. Earth Open Source response to Monsanto June 14, 2011 http://on.fb.me/machCY

Monsanto responded to our report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?" in a statement on its website.

Monsanto said, "Regulatory authorities and independent experts around the world agree that glyphosate does not cause adverse reproductive effects in adult animals or birth defects in offspring of these adults exposed to glyphosate, even at doses far higher than relevant environmental or occupational exposures."

However, one of the main points of our report is that regulatory authorities have indeed agreed that glyphosate does not cause birth defects - but that conclusion is directly contradicted by the evidence in industry's own studies. These industry studies, submitted by companies including Monsanto in support of glyphosate's approval in the EU, showed that glyphosate causes birth defects in experimental animals. These effects were found not only at high doses, but also at mid and lower doses.

View the Original article

US-Led Global War on Drugs a Failure: Report

A 19-member international panel has condemned the US-led "War on Drugs" campaign as a failure and has recommended major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy report, released on Thursday, argues that the four-decades-long campaign has failed to make significant changes in the international drug scenario and has, in fact, devastating consequences on human societies across the world.

The term "War on Drugs" was first used by US President Richard Nixon on June 17, 1971 and was intended to define and reduce illicit drug trade globally. However, the new report points out that the result of this campaign has been nothing but a drastic increase in drug violence, especially in regions like Brazil and Mexico.

"Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government's global war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed," stated former president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso. "Let's start by treating drug addiction as a health issue, reducing drug demand through proven educational initiatives and legally regulating rather than criminalizing cannabis." 

View the Original article

World Agriculture Threatened by Water Gluttony: Report

NEW YORK (AFP) - World agriculture employs more than one billion people but is in trouble because it's the biggest consumer of ever scarcer water and a huge producer of greenhouse gas emissions, a new report said Wednesday.

Worldwatch Institute, a research group on climate, energy, agriculture and the green economy, said there had to be a revolution in investment in food and water to reverse a "frightening" long-term depletion of stocks.

"Agriculture as we know it today is in trouble," said the institute's "State of the World 2011" report.

The industry accounts for one trillion dollars of the global economy but also 70 percent of water withdrawals and 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, much of that from developing countries.

The institute said small farmers who dominate the industry would be the key to maintaining food supplies for the world's estimated one billion hungry people.

Studies have shown that increasing food production is not making a dent in reducing hunger in the world.

View the Original article

Worldwatch Report Highlights How Lopsided Discussion is About Africa, Food, and Biotechnology

By Samuel Fromartz

Last year, I had the opportunity to travel to Zambia for a project for Worldwatch. The massive report "State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet," released Wednesday, focuses on many projects that were highly effective in both feeding people and raising incomes in Africa. Much of this work was chronicled on Nourishing the Planet blog, as researcher Danielle Nierenberg logged thousands of miles criss-crossing the continent meeting with farmers, researchers, NGOs, and government officials. 

It was a refreshing perspective because so much of the discussion about agriculture in Africa focuses on production. Plant more. Increase yield. Improve seed technology. But there is really no silver bullet when it comes to food production and access, and the relentless focus on technology ends up being lopsided and incomplete -- as I saw in Zambia.

The nation produces more than enough food, much of it by small-scale farmers without tractors, irrigation, or any form of transportation. But this excess food ends up rotting in warehouses and causes price crashes when it hits the market -- good for buyers but dismal for small-scale farmers who depend on these sales for their meagre income.

Even so, some areas of the country still suffer from malnutrition and shortages. Why? There are many reasons, inadequate roads and supply networks among them, since it isn't always easy to get the food from areas where it is surplus to areas where it is in short supply. In this reality, high-tech seeds are the least of the nation's problems. And yet, on op-ed pages, that often seems to be the focus of discussion.

How come we hardly see op-eds on what paved roads, improved sanitation, more efficient distribution networks, soil conservation, and a reduction in food waste might do for world hunger? Fifteen percent of the grain harvest is wasted in poorer countries, according to a researcher quoted in this report. Even cutting that in half would amount to an enormous yield gain. The Worldwatch report attempts to jump-start this discussion by addressing these issues.

View the Original article

USA Is Fattest of 33 Countries, Report Says

The United States is the fattest nation among 33 countries with advanced economies, according to a report out today from an international think tank.

Two-thirds of people in this country are overweight or obese; about a third of adults - more than 72 million - are obese, which is roughly 30 pounds over a healthy weight.

Obesity rates have skyrocketed since the 1980s in almost all the countries where long-term data is available, says the report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which works on policies to promote better economies and quality of life. Countries with the fastest obesity growth rates: the United States, Australia and England.

"Obesity is a growing threat to public health in all the advanced countries throughout the world," OECD spokesman Matthias Rumpf says. Obesity causes illnesses, reduces life expectancy and increases health care costs, he says.

Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, several types of cancer and other diseases. Obesity cost the U.S. an estimated $147 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2008, according to a study by government scientists.

"We have to find the most effective and cost-efficient way to deal with the problem," Rumpf says. "Countries can learn from each other, and the best and most effective policies can be used in all countries."


View the Original article

Scrambled Eggs: Report Spotlights "Systemic" Abuses in Organic Egg Production

CORNUCOPIA, WI - An independent report has been released that focuses on widespread abuses in organic egg production, primarily by large industrial agribusinesses. The study profiles the exemplary management practices employed by many family-scale organic farmers engaged in egg production, while spotlighting abuses at so-called factory farms, some confining hundreds of thousands of chickens in industrial facilities, and representing these eggs to consumers as "organic."

The report will be formally presented to the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the October meeting of the National Organic Standards Board in Madison, Wisconsin.

The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, developed the report, Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture, following nearly two years of research into organic egg production. The report also contains a scorecard rating various egg brands on how their eggs are produced in accordance with federal organic standards and consumer expectations.

"After visiting over 15% of the certified egg farms in the United States, and surveying all name-brand and private-label industry marketers, it's obvious that a high percentage of the eggs on the market should be labeled 'produced with organic feed' rather than bearing the USDA-certified organic logo," said Mark A. Kastel, The Cornucopia Institute's codirector and senior farm policy analyst.

According to the United Egg Producers (UEP), the industry lobby group, 80 percent of all organic eggs are produced by just a handful of its largest members. Most of these operations own hundreds of thousands, or even millions of birds, and have diversified into "specialty eggs," which include organic. At least one UEP member, Hillandale Farms, has been implicated in the recent nationwide salmonella outbreak affecting conventional eggs.

Cornucopia's report focuses not on the size of some of these mammoth agribusinesses but rather on their organic livestock management practices. It says that most of these giant henhouses, some holding 85,000 birds or more, provide no legitimate access to the outdoors, as required in the federal organic regulations.

The new report comes at a critical juncture for the organic poultry industry. The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), the expert citizen advisory panel set up by Congress to advise the USDA on organic policy, has been debating a set of proposed new regulations for poultry and other livestock that would establish housing-density standards and a clearer understanding of what the requirement for outdoor access truly means. The industry's largest operators, along with their lobbyists, have been loudly voicing their opposition to requirements for outdoor space.

"Many of these operators are gaming the system by providing minute enclosed porches, with roofs and concrete or wood flooring, and calling these structures 'the outdoors,'" stated Charlotte Vallaeys, a farm policy analyst with Cornucopia and lead author of the report. "Many of the porches represent just 3 to 5 percent of the square footage of the main building housing the birds. That means 95 percent or more of the birds have absolutely no access whatsoever."

"If one animal has the legal right to be outdoors, then all animals have the same right, whether they choose to take turns or if they all choose to be outside at the same time," said Jim Riddle, organic outreach coordinator with the University of Minnesota and former chairman of the NOSB.

At previous meetings of the NOSB, United Egg Producers represented industrial-scale producers and publicly opposed proposals to strengthen regulations requiring outdoor access.

"We are strongly opposed to any requirement for hens to have access to the soil," said Kurt Kreher of Kreher's Sunrise Farms in Clarence, N.Y. And Bart Slaugh, director of quality assurance at Eggland's Best, a marketer of both conventional and organic eggs based in Jeffersonville, Pa., noted that, "The push for continually expanding outdoor access   needs to stop."

Family-scale organic egg farmers, and their allies, intend to challenge corporate agribusiness lobbyists and make their voices heard at the October 25 meeting of the NOSB.

View the Original article