The Deadly Campaign to Shield All Pesticides from Legal Liability

Unmasking Bayer and Monsanto's Cruel and Destructive Legacy and How Toxic Sludge is Destroying Our Farmlands

Story at a Glance:

•For over a century, Monsanto has produced incredibly toxic (but “safe”) products that have injured millions and rendered many areas uninhabitable. However, due to cruel and aggressive legal strategies, they have long been shielded from culpability. Recently, this changed due to RFK Jr. successfully suing them for cancers caused by their flagship product, Roundup (glyphosate).

•In 2018, Bayer (one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies) acquired Monsanto. This backfired, as due to the billions in Roundup judgments (likely to far exceed 16 billion), Bayer rapidly lost two-thirds of its value.

•To save the company Bayer (which, like Monsanto, has a long history of unscrupulous conduct) is conducting a variety of measures to end those lawsuits within the Courts, States, Congress, and EPA. Many of these involve creating liability shields which make it impossible to ever sue a pesticide manufacturer for being seriously injured by their product, even if the manufacturer deliberately concealed this known toxicity.

•These actions eerily parallel the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a “well-intended” act which rather than lead to safer vaccines, unleashed the modern era of chronic disease upon America.

•Presently a bill is working its way through Congress containing a covert provision designed to shield Bayer (and many other manufacturers) from these lawsuits.

•Due to how repugnant this position is (along with a related one to ensure toxic sludge can be dumped on our farmland and render it permanently unusable), it can only pass if the public is unaware of it. As such, I believe it is vital to expose exactly what is going on and the dark history behind all of it.

For all of its flaws, the United States has one of the best governments that has ever been developed. This is because the system is rife with checks and balances, where one part of the country or government can constrain another part from acting out of line, and the public has a voice that can frequently be mobilized if things become too egregious and bring everything back to balance.

This framework naturally leads to bad actors taking a multi-pronged approach where they attempt to co-opt every single thing that constrains their misdeeds. While challenging, this can eventually be done with concerted effort. For example, during COVID-19, virtually every institution that should have prevented the unconstitutional lockdowns, the top-down suppression of unpatented COVID-19 treatments, and the COVID-19 vaccine mandates (let alone their approvals) failed as every institution worked in concert to advance the COVID cartel—resulting in arguably the worst “public health” crime in history.

Yet, even here, due to the independent media, liberty-minded politicians, and the egregiousness of the COVID policies, a check was eventually able to neutralize the COVID cartel. Furthermore, beyond the COVID vaccine program failing to accomplish its primary goal (an annual mandated vaccine and mainstreaming mRNA technology) the trust they’ve long used to market medical products has been shattered and longterm, COVID is now arguably costing the medical industry far more than was made from the pandemic—all of which illustrates our political system has a robust series of checks once things get too out of line.

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The Deadly Campaign to Shield All Pesticides from Legal Liability

The Forgotten Side of Medicine

A Midwestern Doctor

Aug 11, 2025

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Farmers get a third of what you pay for veggies, middlemen and retailers pocket the rest: RBI study

October 7, 2024

According to ab RBI working paper, fruits and vegetables’ farmers are getting around one third of the price that a consumer is paying; the rest is apportioned by the wholesalers and retailers read more

Indian farmers get one-third of vegetables, fruits' retail price, finds RBI study.

Farmers in India are getting only about a third of the final selling price of vegetables and fruits, in contrast to other sectors, a series of research papers published by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on food inflation highlighted.

The RBI working paper that studies the price dynamics of tomato, onion and potato (TOP) in India said that two-third of what consumers pay to purchase fruits and vegetables from the market are pocketed by wholesalers and retailers.

The share of farmers in the consumer rupee is estimated around 33 per cent for tomato, 36 per cent for onion and 37 per cent for potato, the study stated.

As for fruits, the RBI paper estimates farmers’ share in the consumer rupee to be 31 per cent for bananas, 35 per cent for grapes and 43 per cent for mangoes in the domestic value chain.  

In the export market, the share for mangoes increases, but the share for grapes drops, even though the overall price is higher.

The RBI studies, however, pointed out that unlike cereals and dairy products, where procurement and marketing are relatively developed, TOP vegetables lack an efficient value chain system.

In the dairy sector, farmers have been getting around 70 per cent of the final price.

As per the study, producers of egg appear to be best positioned, getting 75 per cent of the final price, while for poultry meat, farmers and aggregators together account for 56 per cent of the final price.

Assessing the value chains of pulses, the study estimated that approximately 75 per cent of the consumer rupee spent on gram (chana) goes to farmers, while the share is around 70 per cent for moong and 65 per cent for tur.

The RBI highlighted that while cereals and dairy products, where procurement and marketing are relatively developed, TOP vegetables lack an efficient value chain system.  

It is largely due to the perishable nature of the crop, regional and seasonal concentration, lack of adequate storage facilities, and presence of a large number of intermediaries.

Co-authored by agriculture economist Ashok Gulati, the study also said that forecasting price spikes is possible through a “balance sheet approach”.  

The papers also suggested several methods by which policymakers can smooth out these price spikes.

To restrict the spike in TOP price, the study recommended expanding private mandis, leveraging e-NAM, promoting farmer collectives, and relaunching futures trading. It also suggests building more cold storage facilities, promoting solar-powered storage, increasing processing capacity, and raising consumer awareness on processed TOP products.

Similar recommendations have been made for fruits and include improving the supply chain with better storage and transport, promoting different fruit varieties, offering crop insurance, expanding processing and exports, adjusting import duties to match demand, and using digital tools to track supply and reduce price swings.

SOURCE

Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture

A common claim is that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are essential to agriculture if we are to feed an ever-growing global population. Supporters of genetically engineered (GE) crops argue that by increasing productivity and yields, this technology will also help boost farmers’ incomes and lift many out of poverty. Although in this article it will be argued that the performance of GE crops to date has been questionable, the main contention is that the pro-GMO lobby, both outside of India and within, has wasted no time in wrenching the issues of hunger and poverty from their political contexts to use notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy. There exists a ‘haughty imperialism’ within the pro-GMO scientific lobby that aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’ which is a distraction from the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and genuine solutions based on food justice and food sovereignty.

Last year, in the journal Current Science, Dr Deepak Pental, developer of genetically engineered (GE) mustard at Delhi University, responded to a previous paper in the same journal by eminent scientists PC Kesavan and MS Swaminathan which questioned the efficacy of and the need for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture. Pental argued that the two authors had aligned themselves with environmentalists and ideologues who have mindlessly attacked the use of genetic engineering (GE) technology to improve crops required for meeting the food and nutritional needs of a global population that is predicted to peak at 11.2 billion. Pental added that aspects of the two authors’ analysis are a reflection of their ideological proclivities.

The use of the word ‘mindlessly’ is telling and betrays Pental’s own ideological disposition. His words reflect tired industry-inspired rhetoric that says criticisms of GE technology are driven by ideology not fact.

If hunger and malnutrition are to be tackled effectively, the pro-GMO lobby must put aside this type of rhetoric, which is designed to close down debate. It should accept valid concerns about the GMO paradigm and be willing to consider why the world already produces enough to feed 10 billion people but over two billion are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies (of which 821 million were classed as chronically undernourished in 2018). 

Critics: valid concerns or ideologues?

The performance of GE crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in Kevasan and Swaminathan’s piece and by others, there is already sufficient evidence to question their efficacy, especially that of herbicide-tolerant crops (which by 2007 already accounted for approximately 80% of biotech-derived crops grown globally) and the devastating impacts on the environment, human health and food security, not least in places like Latin America.  

We should not accept the premise that only GE can solve problems in agriculture. In their paper, Kesavan and Swaminathan argue that GE technology is supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, they say that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. In this respect, conventional options and innovations that outperform GE must not be overlooked or sidelined in a rush by powerful interests like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to facilitate the introduction of GE crops into global agriculture; crops which are highly financially lucrative for the corporations behind them.  

In Europe, robust regulatory mechanisms are in place for GMOs because it is recognised that GE food/crops are not substantially equivalent to their non-GE counterparts. Numerous studies have highlighted the flawed premise of ‘substantial equivalence’. Furthermore, from the outset of the GMO project, the sidelining of serious concerns about the technology has occurred and despite industry claims to the contrary, there is no scientific consensus on the health impacts of GE crops as noted by Hilbeck et al (Environmental Sciences Europe, 2015). Adopting a precautionary principle where GE is concerned is therefore a valid approach.

As Hilbeck et al note, both the Cartagena Protocol and Codex share a precautionary approach to GE crops and foods, in that they agree that GE differs from conventional breeding and that safety assessments should be required before GMOs are used in food or released into the environment. There is sufficient reason to hold back on commercialising GE crops and to subject each GMO to independent, transparent environmental, social, economic and health impact evaluations.

Critics’ concerns cannot therefore be brushed aside by claims that ‘the science’ is decided and the ‘facts’ about GE are indisputable. Such claims are merely political posturing and part of a strategy to tip the policy agenda in favour of GE.

In India, various high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GE crops. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (2013) was scathing about India’s prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies and serious inherent conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on the commercial release of all GE crops.

Hunger Games: Food Abundance and Twisted Truths

As we have seen with the push to get GE mustard commercialised, the problems described by the TEC persist. Through her numerous submissions to the Supreme Court, Aruna Rodrigues has argued that GE mustard is being pushed through based on outright regulatory delinquency. It must also be noted that this crop is herbicide tolerant, which, as stated by the TEC, is wholly inappropriate for India with its small biodiverse, multi-cropping farms.

While the above discussion has only scratched the surface, it is fair to say that criticisms of GE technology and various restrictions and moratoriums have not been driven by ‘mindless’ proclivities.

Can GE crops ‘feed the world’? 

The ‘gene revolution’ is sometimes regarded as Green Revolution 2.0. The Green Revolution too was sold under the guise of ‘feeding the world’. However, emerging research indicates that in India it merely led to more wheat in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no increase or actually decreased.  

Globally, the Green Revolution dovetailed with the consolidation of an emerging global food regime based on agro-export mono-cropping (often with non-food commodities taking up prime agricultural land) and (unfair) liberalised trade, linked to sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF structural adjustment-privatisation directives. The outcomes have included a displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the consolidation of Western agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas. And yet, the corporations behind this system of dependency and their lobbyists waste no time in spreading the message that this is the route to achieving food security. Their interests lie in ‘business as usual’.

Today, we hear terms like ‘foreign direct investment’ and making India ‘business friendly’, but behind the rhetoric lies the hard-nosed approach of globalised capitalism. The intention is for India’s displaced cultivators to be retrained to work as cheap labour in the West’s offshored plants. India is to be a fully incorporated subsidiary of global capitalism, with its agri-food sector restructured for the needs of global supply chains and a reserve army of labour that effectively serves to beat workers and unions in the West into submission.     

Global food insecurity and malnutrition are not the result of a lack of productivity. As long as these dynamics persist and food injustice remains an inbuilt feature of the global food regime, the rhetoric of GE being necessary for feeding the world will be seen for what it is: bombast.

Although India fares poorly in world hunger assessments, the country has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food (in terms of calories) available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food security is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Food security for many Indians remains a distant dream. Large sections of India’s population do not have enough food available to remain healthy nor do they have sufficiently diverse diets that provide adequate levels of micronutrients. The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016-18 is the first-ever nationally representative nutrition survey of children and adolescents in India. It found that 35 per cent of children under five were stunted, 22 per cent of school-age children were stunted while 24 per cent of adolescents were thin for their age.

People are not hungry in India because its farmers do not produce enough food. Hunger and malnutrition result from various factors, including inadequate food distribution, (gender) inequality and poverty; in fact, the country continues to export food while millions remain hungry. It’s a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance.

Where farmers’ livelihoods are concerned, the pro-GMO lobby says GE will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income. Again, this is misleading: it ignores crucial political and economic contexts. Even with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress. 

India’s farmers are not experiencing financial hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies, years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace smallholder agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations . Little wonder then that the calorie and essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen.

However, aside from putting a positive spin on the questionable performance of GMO agriculture, the pro-GMO lobby, both outside of India and within, has wasted no time in wrenching these issues from their political contexts to use the notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy.

GE was never intended to feed the world

Many of the traditional practices of India’s small farmers are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate for high-productive, sustainable agriculture. It is no surprise therefore that a recent FAO high-level report has called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in to achieve global sustainable food security. It argues that scaling up agroecology offers potential solutions to many of the world’s most pressing problems, whether, for instance, climate change and carbon storage, soil degradation, water shortages, unemployment or food security.  

Agroecological principles represent a shift away from the reductionist yield-output industrial paradigm, which results in among other things enormous pressures on soil and water resources, to a more integrated low-input systems approach to food and agriculture that prioritises local food security, local calorific production, cropping patterns and diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability, climate resilience, good soil structure and the ability to cope with evolving pests and disease pressures. Such a system would be underpinned by a concept of food sovereignty,  based on optimal self-sufficiency, the right to culturally appropriate food and local ownership and stewardship of common resources, such as land, water, soil and seeds.  

Traditional production systems rely on the knowledge and expertise of farmers in contrast to imported ‘solutions’. Yet, if we take cotton cultivation in India as an example, farmers continue to be nudged away from traditional methods of farming and are being pushed towards (illegal) GE herbicide-tolerant cotton seeds. Researchers Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs note the results of this shift from traditional practices to date does not appear to have benefited farmers. This isn’t about giving farmers ‘choice’ where GE seeds and associated chemicals are concerned. It is more about GE seed companies and weedicide manufactures seeking to leverage a highly lucrative market.  

The potential for herbicide market growth in India is enormous and industry looked for sales to reach USD 800 million by 2019. The objective involves opening India to GE seeds with herbicide tolerance traits, the biotechnology industry’s biggest money maker by far (86 per cent of the world’s GE crop acres in 2015 contain plants resistant to glyphosate or glufosinate and there is a new generation of crops resistant to 2,4-D coming through).

The aim is to break farmers’ traditional pathways and move them onto corporate biotech/chemical treadmills for the benefit of industry. 

Calls for agroecology and highlighting the benefits of traditional, small-scale agriculture are not based on a romantic yearning for the past or ‘the peasantry’. Available evidence suggests that (non-GMO) smallholder farming using low-input methods is more productive in total output than large-scale industrial farms and can be more profitable and resilient to climate change. It is for good reason that the FAO high-level report referred to earlier as well as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Prof Hilal Elver, call for investment in this type of agriculture, which is centred on small farms. Despite the pressures, including the fact that globally industrial agriculture grabs 80 per cent of subsidies and 90 per cent of research funds, smallholder agriculture plays a major role in feeding the world.

That’s a massive quantity of subsidies and funds to support a system that is only made profitable as a result of these financial injections and because agri-food oligopolies externalize the massive health, social and environmental costs of their operations. 

But policy makers tend to accept that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). These corporations, their lobbyists and their political representatives have succeeded in cementing a ‘thick legitimacy’ among policy makers for their vision of agriculture.

From World Bank ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ directives to the World Trade Organization ‘agreement on agriculture’ and trade related intellectual property agreements, international bodies have enshrined the interests of corporations that seek to monopolise seeds, land, water, biodiversity and other natural assets that belong to us all. These corporations, the promoters of GMO agriculture, are not offering a ‘solution’ for farmers’ impoverishment or hunger; GE seeds are little more than a value capture mechanism.

To evaluate the pro-GMO lobby’s rhetoric that GE is needed to ‘feed the world’, we first need to understand the dynamics of a globalised food system that fuels hunger and malnutrition against a backdrop of (subsidised) food overproduction. We must acknowledge the destructive, predatory dynamics of capitalism and the need for agri-food giants to maintain profits by seeking out new (foreign) markets and displacing existing systems of production with ones that serve their bottom line.  And we need to reject a deceptive ‘haughty imperialism’ within the pro-GMO scientific lobby which aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

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From Monsanto to Bayer, the Worst of Both Worlds

https://www.sachbharat.org/search/label/MONSANTO

From Monsanto to Bayer, the Worst of Both Worlds

In July 2024, hundreds of scientists, farmer leaders, farmers and ordinary citizens signed a letter and sent it to Himanshu Pathak, director-general of the ICAR.

It said:

“Bayer is a company notorious for its anti-people, anti-nature business products and operations in itself and, furthermore, after its takeover of Monsanto. Its deadly poisons have violated basic human rights of peoples across the world, and it is a company that has always prioritised profits over people and planet.”

Bayer’s aim first and foremost seems to be to exploit the ICAR’s vast infrastructure and networks to pursue its own commercial plans, including boosting sales of toxic proprietary products and the introduction of genetically modified food crops into India. These crops would be reliant on Bayer’s agrochemicals.

Attempts to get GM food crops into India’s fields is being done by all means necessary, as explained in Aruna Rodrigues insightful online article Waltzing with Bayer Makes The Indian Council of Agricultural Research Blind: India Ditches Mandate to Farmers and Uses Mutagenesis to Drive Toxic HT Crops Into India. 

That article explains that mutagenetic techniques are being used to bypass existing GMO regulatory procedures, despite a recent Supreme Court directive for the government to formulate a national policy framework on GM crops based on a democratic consultative process.

Telangana State Seed Development Corporation chairman S Anvesh Reddy recently stated that farmers want a bio-safety policy and not a promotional policy for GM crops.

However, they are in danger of getting the latter. Prominent campaigner Kavitha Kuruganti has warned that the Ministry of Agriculture may bypass the democratic consultative processes recommended by the Supreme Court. It has already appointed a panel of ‘experts’ to draft the policy and information about it is being kept secret.

On X (formerly Twitter), agricultural policy specialist Devinder Sharma says:

“How can a policy be framed for GM crops when there is still no consensus on the need for these crops? Despite heavy lobbying by industry, most countries oppose it.”

How can this be?

Let us turn to Aruna Rodrigues:

“Our regulatory bodies have been captured by the biotech and agrichemical industries… It is breathtaking; all pretence is gone. We have a cancer that is metastasising vertically and horizontally throughout the entire regulatory body.”

The need for GM food crops is based on unsound logic, and, in general, neither farmers nor the public want them (see the online article Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture). Moreover, the failure of Bt cotton in the country, India’s only officially approved GM crop (see The Failure of GMO Cotton In India on resilience.org), should serve as a warning.

In the meantime, farmers’ leaders from 18 states in India have resolved to oppose GM crops. They say GMOs in agriculture are harmful to human and animal health, the environment, farmers’ livelihoods and trade and are based on failed promises. 

Environmentalist and campaigner Rosemary Mason has been relentlessly exposing the insidious effects of agrochemicals on human health and the environment through a decade-long series of incisive reports. Many of these reports have taken the form of scathing open letters directed at corporations, regulators and officials in the UK and the EU.

Mason has never held back in her condemnations of the agrochemical giants. After Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto in 2018, her focus sharpened on Bayer, scrutinising its troubling history and its actions, not least during one of humanity’s darkest chapters: Nazi Germany.

Bayer’s complicity as part of IG Farben, a chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate notorious for its involvement in war crimes, has been well documented. The company was formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical firms: Agfa, BASF, Bayer, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, Hoechst and Weiler-ter-Meer.

Bayer was not merely an observer but an active participant in heinous medical experiments conducted on concentration camp inmates. These experiments involved testing drugs on unwilling subjects, including those at Auschwitz, where prisoners were deliberately infected with diseases to evaluate Bayer’s pharmaceuticals.

During World War I, Bayer was involved in the development of chemical weapons, including chlorine and mustard gas. As part of IG Farben, Bayer later contributed to the creation of nerve agents like Tabun, Sarin and Soman. Post-war, Bayer transitioned these chemical developments into pesticides such as parathion, which are neurotoxic.

In addition, IG Farben was implicated in the production of Zyklon B, the gas used in concentration camps. Executives from IG Farben were convicted for their roles in war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials.

Bayer’s leadership was fully aware of these atrocities yet chose profit over ethics, benefiting from the forced labour of concentration camp inmates to produce essential chemicals for the Nazi war machine.

The aftermath of World War II saw Bayer and other IG Farben companies face minimal repercussions for their actions. While some executives were tried, they received light sentences or were released early, allowing them to reclaim positions of power within their companies.

As for Bayer, things did not stop with the end of the war. The Powerbase website provides a very long list of Bayer’s corporate wrongdoings since 1945, including allegations of corporate bullying, monopolistic practices, the suppression of scientific information, bribery, poisonings, false advertising and abusing workers.

More recently, Bayer has inherited a legacy of deception through its acquisition of Monsanto. Both companies have been accused of concealing the health risks associated with glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and the world’s most used agricultural herbicide. Internal documents reveal a concerted effort to downplay glyphosate’s carcinogenicity while ignoring substantial evidence indicating its dangers to human health.

In her numerous reports, Mason has shown how Bayer shaped regulatory processes to secure product approvals, influencing scientific studies and regulatory decisions while suppressing contrary evidence. The environmental devastation wrought by Bayer’s pesticides is alarming: Mason cites significant declines in biodiversity and poisoned ecosystems as direct consequences of their widespread use.

Moreover, rising cancer rates in communities exposed to Bayer’s products cannot be ignored, especially increasing cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma linked to glyphosate use in areas heavily treated with these chemicals.

Rosemary Mason is not alone in her condemnation of Bayer. For instance, journalist Carey Gillam has written extensively about Bayer-Monsanto’s practices, particularly in relation to glyphosate and its health impacts in the book ‘Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science’.

Gillam says:

“US Roundup litigation began in 2015 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Internal Monsanto documents dating back decades show that the company was aware of scientific research linking its weed killer to cancer but instead of warning consumers, the company worked to suppress the information and manipulate scientific literature.” 

Hit Lists and Lobbying

Gillam has shown that, over the years, Monsanto mounted a deceitful defence of its health- and environment-damaging Roundup and its genetically modified (GM) crops, and it orchestrated toxic smear campaigns against anyone — scientist or campaigner — who threatened its interests.

With that in mind, it comes as no surprise that a US-Based PR firm has created a watchlist, profiling activists, scientists and journalists who are critical of pesticide use and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), as recently revealed in documents obtained by the investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports.

As a result of a year-long investigation, Lighthouse Reports argues that this operation seeks to cast pesticide critics, environmental scientists or campaigners as an anti-science “protest industry” and used US government money to do so.

The watchlist is the brainchild of Jay Byrne, a former communications executive at Monsanto, and his reputation management firm v-Fluence. It comprises profiles (including personal information) on hundreds of scientists, campaigners and writers. These profiles have been published on a private social network, which grants privileged access to 1,000 people comprising a who’s-who of the agrochemical industry alongside government officials from multiple countries.

The US government funded v-Fluence as part of its programme to promote GMOs in Africa and Asia, including “enhanced monitoring” of critics of “modern agriculture approaches” — and to build the network.

Watchlists and hitlists aside, to further its interests, the agrochemical giants pour huge resources into lobbying that seeks to shape narratives, deceive and coerce rather than engage with genuine public health and environmental concerns.

The research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) recently took a deep dive into Bayer’s disturbing “toxic trail” of lobbying as the company strives to maintain its huge slice of the seed and pesticides markets, fight off regulatory challenges to its toxic products, limit legal liability and exercise political influence.

CEO’s report ‘Bayer’s Toxic Trails: Market Power, Monopolies and the Global Lobbying of an Agrochemicals Giant’ notes that Bayer spent between €7 million and €8 million in 2023 on EU lobbying, the biggest sum declared by any individual chemical company and the highest amount ever spent by Bayer on EU lobbying.

According to CEO, Bayer’s current top lobbying priority in Europe is to derail the original ambitions of the European Green Deal and to prevent any of the company’s firmly established interests (chemicals and pesticides) from being touched. One of the central goals of this deal is to reduce the use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50% by 2030 through the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy. This target aims to address both environmental and public health concerns associated with pesticide use in agriculture.

Bayer’s lobby spend in the US has also risen considerably over the past few years, spending US$7.5 million in 2023 alone, some of which is aimed at securing changes in the law to prevent further litigation cases and more hefty payouts to people suffering from conditions due to glyphosate exposure. To date, the company has reportedly paid out approximately $11 billion to settle nearly 100,000 lawsuits stemming from claims that Roundup causes cancer, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

CEO states:

“Bayer’s lobby tactics continue to capture public policymaking and in doing so hollow out democracy. A perverse symbiosis between corporate lobby groups and decision-makers has been actively created through its economic weight and large investments in many corners of the world, and this consistently leads to crucial decisions being made in favour of industry profits, rather than public interest.”

It concludes that:

“Around the world, Bayer’s modus operandi is not to work in the public interest but rather to capture public policy to serve its private interests and dividends of its shareholders, all while ignoring the public health and environmental impact of its activities.” 

Be Careful What You Wish For

So, why would a government want to do a deal with the devil?

That is precisely what the government of India seems to have done when it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bayer in September 2023. Bayer signed the MoU with the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), which is responsible for co-ordinating agricultural education and research in India. 

READ MORE

The Failure of GMO Cotton In India

Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture

Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled:

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

https://www.globalresearch.ca/corporate-power-monsanto-bayer/5869111 

Bayer's Modified Soil Microbes could Trigger a Genetically Engineered Doomsday

These genetic scientists have egregiously abused science by already contaminating the gene pool of every living thing on this planet.

Collectively, they have been plotting the takeover of all genetic material since 1992.

The only way to stop them is to take away their keycards and their containment suits, immediately escort them out of their laboratories, permanently ban them from any other scientific research for life, and then raze the buildings to the ground.

Source

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

-Bayer's modified soil microbes could trigger a genetically engineered doomsday for agriculture

-If you don't like the toxic pollution from industrial agriculture's synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides, Bayer and its partner Ginkgo Bioworks have a solution

-They say they're going to swap out some of the old fossil-fuel-based agrochemicals for genetically engineered microbes

-The uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered microbes could contaminate soil on such a vast scale that it could be the end of farming!

Genetic Scientists on track to create a Genetically Engineered Doomsday...

Bayer's modified soil microbes could trigger a genetically engineered doomsday for agriculture.

Is that what Bayer wants?

If you don't like the toxic pollution from industrial agriculture's synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides, Bayer and its partner Ginkgo Bioworks have a solution for you.

They say they're going to swap out some of the old fossil-fuel-based agrochemicals for genetically engineered microbes...

We're no fan of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, but let's not jump from the frying pan into the fire...!

The uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered microbes could contaminate soil on such a vast scale that it could be the end of farming!

You don't have to take our word for it, just read Ginkgo's own report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It's like a sci-fi writer's brainstorm of plots for a disaster movie:

"The release of genetically modified organisms or materials, whether inadvertent or purposeful, into uncontrolled environments could have unintended consequences...

The genetically engineered organisms and materials that we develop may have significantly altered characteristics compared to those found in the wild, and the full effects of deployment or release of our genetically engineered organisms and materials into uncontrolled environments may be unknown.

In particular, such deployment or release, including an unauthorized release, could impact the environment or community generally or the health and safety of our employees, our customers' employees, and the consumers of our customers' products.

In addition, if a high profile biosecurity breach or unauthorized release of a biological agent occurs within our industry, our customers and potential customers may lose trust in the security of the laboratory environments in which we produce genetically modified organisms and materials, even if we are not directly affected.

Any adverse effect resulting from such a release, by us or others, could have a material adverse effect on the public acceptance of products from engineered cells and our business and financial condition...

We could synthesize DNA sequences or engage in other activity that contravenes biosecurity requirements, or regulatory authorities could promulgate more far-reaching biosecurity requirements that our standard business practices cannot accommodate, which could give rise to substantial legal liability, impede our business, and damage our reputation.

The Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP), involves rules administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that regulate possession, use, and transfer of 'biological select agents and toxins' [a euphemism for bioweapons...] that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal, or plant health or to animal or plant products...

[W]e could err in our observance of compliance program requirements in a manner that leaves us in noncompliance with FSAP or other biosecurity rules...

Third parties may use our engineered cells materials, and organisms and accompanying production processes in ways that could damage our reputation.

...[W]hile we have established a biosecurity program... to ensure that third parties do not obtain our engineered cells or other biomaterials for malevolent purposes, we cannot guarantee that these preventative measures will eliminate or reduce the risk of the domestic and global opportunities for the misuse or negligent use of our engineered cells materials, and organisms and production processes..."

Ginkgo's SEC filing makes clear how unleashing Frankenmicrobes into the environment might wreak havoc, but if that doesn't do it for you, this chilling true story from Dr. Elaine Ingham will.

Watch a short film about it from Protect Nature Now and read the original 1999 scientific publication here.

https://youtu.be/yMVcEEhQXxk?feature=shared

Source

When Dr. Ingham was an associate professor at Oregon State University, she led a study on a genetically engineered soil bacterium that changed the course of her career - and threatened all plant life on Earth.

In the 1990s, a European biotech company (I haven't been able to figure out which one, but reports identify it as German, like Bayer and BASF), was preparing to commercialize a genetically engineered soil bacterium called Klebsiella planticola.

In its natural form, K. planticola helps decompose plant matter.

The genetically modified version was intended to convert plant waste to alcohol, which could be used for fertilizer or fuel.

But when Dr. Ingham and her team decided to run their own test on the alcohol-producing bacterium, they discovered that it not only killed all of the plants tested, but had the potential to kill all terrestrial plants.

Her findings ultimately prevented the genetically altered bacterium from being commercialized, but also brought about the end of her affiliation with Oregon State University, an institution funded by the biotech industry...

That Dr. Ingham lost her university job when she saved the world from a GMO microbe that could have killed every plant on the planet tells us everything about the intentions of biotech behemoths like Bayer.

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.

The soil microbe scam is just another in the long line of empty promises about the potential benefits of genetic engineering for food and farming:

We've been fed so many lies about GMOs.

GMOs were going to "feed the world," but Monsanto (which merged with Bayer and retired its infamous name in 2018) never came up with any genetically engineered traits that increased yields.

They just bought up control of all the high-yielding varieties - that had all been conventionally bred.

GMOs were going to "reduce pesticide use," but there's no other reason to genetically engineer crops to be impervious to pesticides other than to sell more pesticides - and that's exactly what Monsanto did.

GMOs were "safe," but they were never safety-tested.

Monsanto avoided Food & Drug Administration regulation by getting GMOs declared Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS).

GMOs were going to "coexist" with organic, but Monsanto made sure the burden was on non-GMO farmers to protect themselves from genetic pollution and pesticide drift.

When farmers' seeds got contaminated, Monsanto successfully claimed the farmers were stealing its GMO traits.

GMOs were going to make farming more resilient to climate change, but Monsanto's "drought tolerant" corn was a failure.

Bayer claims to care about pollinators, but it invented the pollinator-poisoning neonicotinoid insecticides that are killing the birds and the bees - and it refuses to stop selling them!

Bayer claims to care about farmers, but 11,000 rice farmers had to sue it when Bayer contaminated rice seeds with unapproved GMO traits, causing $1.2 billion in losses.

Bayer eventually paid $750 million. Farmers still can't grow that rice.

According to a Greenpeace investigation, the contamination - which involved three different GMO varieties - impacted rice seeds and 30 percent of rice supplies, including rice exported to 30 countries.

The contamination was discovered in 2006, but the rice hadn't been grown since 2001. The unapproved GMO rice was still being found in Mexican supermarkets in 2010...!

It's hard to believe that any of this is an accident, especially considering Bayer's history.

Bayer used prisoners in experiments at Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Auschwitz was the industrial production headquarters of Bayer and its parent company I.G. Farben during World War II, built with slave labor purchased from the Nazis.

Bayer was the I.G. Farben division that marketed Zyklon B.

During the war, almost all sales were to the Nazis for their "gas chamber" genocide.

Monsanto conducted human radiation experiments on unwitting, uninformed U.S. citizens - from its own employees to the residents of whole housing projects - while working as a Pentagon contractor.

It ran the chemistry side of the Manhattan Project and then maintained the U.S. nuclear weapons production facility known as Mound Laboratories.

When the war was over, the two companies jumped straight from the Holocaust, and building atomic bombs to kill Japanese civilians, right into a merger they called MoBay.

That collaboration resulted in the Agent Orange toxin the U.S. used in the Vietnam War.

Bayer is evil...!

From Zyklon B to Agent Orange to glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup to pollinator-poisoning neonics, the company has done nothing but try to kill us and destroy our capacity to feed ourselves...!

Why...?

They plan to make money off the transition from agriculture as we know it to a world where lab-grown and synthetic "proteins" are the new processed foods.

We must stop its latest plot to destroy our food system...

by Alexis Baden-Mayer
January 16, 2024 (from Mercola Website)

Bayer + Monsanto = A Match Made in Hell

It is hardly surprising that the first thing Bayer did after completing their takeover of Monsanto earlier this month was to announce that they were dropping the Monsanto name, merging the two companies' agrichemical divisions under the Bayer CropScience name.

After all, as everyone knows, Monsanto is one of the most hated corporations in the world. But Bayer itself has an equally atrocious history of death and destruction...

Together they are a match made in hell...

June 23, 2018

from CorbettReport Website

Bayer + Monsanto = A Match Made in Hell

https://youtu.be/khfdjPbecwM

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Industry "Weapons" for Earth's Depopulation

Monsanto - A Multinational Factory of Death

MONSATAN

MONSATAN

India is steeped in synthesised controversy, created by Monsanto on the first GM crop supposedly-approved for commercialisation in India. Engaged in litigation on many fronts, Monsanto is trying to subvert our Patent Law, our Plant Variety and Farmers Rights Act, our Essential Commodities Act , our Anti Monopoly Act (Competition Act). It is behaving as if there is no Parliament, no Democracy, no Sovereign Laws in India to which it is subject. Or, it simply does not have any regard for them.

In another theatre, Monsanto and Bayer are merging. They were one as MOBAY (MonsantoBayer), part of the Poison Cartel of IG Farben. Controlling stakes of both Corporations lies with the same private equity firms.


I.G. Farben board member Fritz ter Meer (fifth from right) explains to Adolf Hitler the significance of synthetic rubber, Berlin, 1936, © National Archives, Washington, DC (image right)

The expertise of these companies are those of war. IG Farben – Hitler’s economic power and pre-war Germany’s highest foreign exchange earner – was also a foreign intelligence operation. Herman Shmitz was President of IG Farben, Shmitz’s nephew Max Ilgner was a Director of IG Farben, while Max’s brother Rudolph Ilgner handled the New York arm of the ‘VOWI‘ network as vice president of CHEMNYCO.

Paul Warburg – brother of Max Warburg (Board of Directors, Farben Aufsichsrat) – was one of the founding members of the Federal Reserve System in the United States. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz played a central role in the Farben empire. Other “guiding hands” of Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler. Every one of them were adjudged ‘War Criminals’ after World War II, except Paul Warburg.

Monsanto and Bayer have a long history. They made explosives and lethally poisonous gases using shared technologies and sold them to both sides in both World Wars. The same war chemicals were bought by the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers, from the same manufacturers, with money borrowed from the same federated reserve bank.



MOBAY (MonsantoBayer) supplied ingredients for Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. 20 million gallons of MOBAY defoliants and herbicides were sprayed over South Vietnam. Children are still being born with birth defects, adults have chronic illnesses and cancers, due to their exposure to MOBAY’s chemicals. Monsanto and Bayer’s cross-licensed Agent Orange Resistance has also been cross-developed for decades.

Wars were fought, lives were lost, countries carved into holy lands – with artificial boundaries that suit colonisation and resource grab – while Bayer and Monsanto sold chemicals as bombs and poisons and their brothers provided the loans to buy those bombs.

More recently, according to Monsanto’s website Bayer CropScience AG and Monsanto Co. have “entered into a series of long-term business and licensing agreements related to key enabling agricultural technologies”. This gives Monsanto and Bayer free access to each other’s herbicide and the paired herbicide resistance technology. Through cross licensing agreements like these, mergers and acquisitions, the biotech industry has become the IG Farben of today, with Monsanto in the cockpit.

The Global Chemical and GMO industry – Bayer, Dow Agro, DuPont Pioneer, Mahyco, Monsanto and Syngenta – have come together to form Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII) to try and become bigger bullies in this assault on India’s farmers, the environment , and democratically framed laws that protect the public and national interest.This is in addition to the lolly-group ABLE, the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises, which tried to challenge India’s Seed Price Control order issued under the Essential commodities Act, in the High Court of Karnataka. The case was dismissed.

The new Group is not “seed Industry”, they produce no seeds. And they try to stretch patents on chemicals to claim ownership on seed, even in countries where patents on seeds and plants are not allowed by law. This is the case in India, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and many other countries.

All the Monsanto cases in India are related to Monsanto un-scientifically, illegally and illegitimately claiming patents on seed, in contempt of India’s laws, and trying to collect royalties from the Indian seed industry and Indian farmers. The FSII is an “IG Farben 100 Year Family Reunion”, a federation is a coming together of independent and autonomous entities.



The Farben family chemical cartel was responsible for exterminating people in concentration camps. They embody a century of ecocide and genocide, carried out in the name of scientific experimentation and innovation. Today the poison cartel is wearing G-Engineering clothes, and citing the mantra of “innovation” ad nauseum. Hitlers concentration camps were an “innovation” in killing. 100 years later, the Farben Family are carrying out the same extermination, silently, globally, much more efficiently.

Monsanto’s “innovation” of collecting illegal royalties and pushing Indian farmers to suicide is also an innovation in killing without liability, indirectly. Just because there is a new way to kill does not make killing right, or a right. “Innovation” like every human activity, has limits – limits set by ethics, justice, democracy, the rights of people, the rights of nature.



I G Farben was tried at Nuremburg. We have national laws to protect people, their right to life and public health, and the environment. India’s Biosafety laws and Patent, and Plant Variety Act are designed to regulate greedy owners of corporations – with a history of crimes against nature and humanity.

Industry is getting ready to push its next “gene” the GM-Mustard (DMH-11). The GM mustard being promoted as a public sector “innovation” is based on barnase/barstar/ gene system to create male-sterile plants and a bar gene for Glufosinate Resistance.In 2002 Pro-Agro’s (Bayer) application for approval for commercial planting of GM Mustard based on the same system was rejected.

Although banned in India, Bayer finds ways to sell Glufosinate, to the tea gardens of Assam and the apple orchards of Himachal Pradesh, illegally. Sales agents show the Glufosinate sales under the ‘other’ category to avoid regulation. These chemicals are finding their way into the bodies of our children without government approval. Essentially all key patents related to the bar gene are held by Bayer Crop Science which acquired Aventis Cropscience, which itself was created out of the Genetic Engineering divisions of Schering, Rhone Poulenc and Hoechst. Then Bayer acquired Plant Genetics Systems, and entered into cooperation agreement with Evogene – which has patents on genome mapping.

Before any approval is granted to the Genetically Engineered Mustard, the issue of limits to patentability needs to be resolved on the basis of Indian law, patents on plants and seeds and methods of agriculture must not be allowed, because they are not allowed.

Pental, a retired professor and GM-Operative, will not commercialise GM Mustard seed. His Commanding Officers at Bayer/Monsanto/MOBAY will.

Given our experience with GMO cotton, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is considering the option of putting in place guidelines for socio-economic assessment to judge proposed GM varieties on the basis of factors such as economy, health, environment, society and culture.

http://m.thehindubusinessline.com

At the core of socio economic assessment is the issue of monopolies and cartels and impact on small farmers. Even though patents on seeds are not allowed, for more that one and a half decade Monsanto has extracted illegal royalties from Indian farmers, trapping them in debt, and triggering an epidemic of farmers suicides. Monsanto’s war on India’s foot soldiers – farmers – is a war being waged by the Farben Family, on our Earth Family.

DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Monsanto Merges with Bayer, “Their Expertise is War”. Shady Historical Origins, IG Farben, Part of Hitler’s Chemical Genetic Engineering Cartel.

Crimes agains Nature and Humanity / Global Research, September 18, 2016 / Award Winning Author and Scientist Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Monsanto trying to Hide GMO Foods under the Term "Biofortified"

Do genetically engineered crops and their pesticides make you think of the term "biofortified"? Chances are, the term biofortified makes you think of vitamins in kids' cereals.

Mega corporations are no strangers to propaganda and public relations.

Did you know that much of our non-organic crops are grown with human sewage sludge? No? That's because the practice is called "biosolids" to keep you in the dark.

You are probably aware of the sneaky disguises that sweeteners like aspartame and high fructose corn syrup were attempted to be concealed in ("corn sugar," anyone?)

There are no power grabs out of reach for Monsanto - they are now attempting the most ridiculous propaganda scheme of all.

They are attempting to manipulate definitions under Codex Alimentarius that would allow GMOs to fall under the classification of "biofortified" foods.

Codex is a collection of guidelines, codes and other recommendations relating to foods, food production, and food safety - that were created under the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

If you are thinking this is arbitrary and wondering why our country should pay any attention to such guidelines, you are heading in the right direction…

In the late 1990s, consumers feared that their vitamins and supplements would move to prescription-only under Codex guidelines.

According to National Health Federation (The NHF is the only natural health advocate that gets a seat at Codex, by the way!):

It all started out innocently enough several Codex Nutrition committee meetings ago when an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) named the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI - and sponsored by Harvest Plus) had one of its country contacts introduce a proposed new work at Codex (only member countries may introduce new work at Codex, not INGOs.)

Harvest Plus' method of increasing certain vitamin and mineral content of basic food crops consists of the time-honored, conventional way of cross-breeding, not genetic engineering.

Harvest Plus, for example, will increase the vitamin or iron content of sweet potatoes so that malnourished populations in developing nations will receive better nutrition.

The new work at the Codex Alimentarius Commission's Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) was simple:

Craft a definition for Biofortification.

That definition could then be used uniformly around the World to apply to those foods conventionally fortified with higher levels of nutrients and everyone would be on the same page whenever the term "biofortified" was used.

Indeed, the National Health Federation (NHF) was an early supporter at Codex of this definition.

Poisoned in the Womb

This year's CCNFSDU meeting - hosted by the German Health Ministry in Berlin, Germany the first full week of December 2017 - witnessed a lively debate about not only how to define Biofortification but also whether or not the very word "Biofortification" should be used at all.

However, this was not the beginning of the debate. The NHF had two delegates there.

At the 2016 CCNFSDU meeting, the Chairwoman Pia Noble (married to a former Bayer executive) had started off the Biofortification-definition discussion by giving her incorrect personal opinion that the definition should be as broad as possible and that recombinant technology should be included.

Her statement, though, directly contradicted Australia's admission at the 2015 meeting that if the Committee were to refer to the original 2012 document on the scope of Biofortification, we would see that Biofortification only refers to conventional breeding and so we should clearly exclude GM techniques.

At last year's CCNFSDU meeting, however, Australia was silent on the issue.

In other words, the original mandate for creating the Biofortification definition was that it was to be defined as a process by which the nutritional quality of food crops is improved through conventional plant breeding with the aim of making the nutrients bioavailable after digestion.

Not surprisingly, though, soon enough, the Monsanto minions got their grubby little hands on the definition through influence peddling with Codex delegates and the Chairwoman, and the definition began changing into one that would include genetically modified "biofortified" foods.

So, the battle is on at Codex as to whether or not GM foods will be included within the definition of Biofortification.

I am sure that Monsanto would be thrilled to be able to market its synthetic products under a name that began with the word "Bio."

As of 2017, the definition of "biofortification" - including GMOs - under Codex has morphed into:

…the process whereby any nutrients or related substances of all potential source organisms (e.g. animal, plant, fungi, yeasts, bacteria) of/and foods are increased by a measurable level [and/or] become more bioavailable for the intended purposes.

The process applies to any method of production [and excludes conventional fortification]." [footnotes excluded]

Not only is the term "biofortified" for GMO foods confusing here in the U.S., but in European countries the prefix, bio, is used to denote "organic."

NHF took opposition with the term biofortified falling under these vague parts of the definition:

'all potential source organisms'

'the process applies to any method of production'

Footnote 4 ('Method of production should be determined by National/regional authority')

Dr. Noble retired, so hopefully her "heavy-handed" and crafty tactics of dictating the meeting to get the term biofortification to apply to GMOs will have left with her.

According to NHF,

Monsanto's attempt was recognized by many delegates for what it was and denounced in the meeting.

The fight, however, will carry over to next year's meeting to be held in Berlin in November 2018. And that meeting will be chaired by the Committee's new chairwoman, Ms. Marie-Luise Trebes.

As always, Big Biotech will be back to try again.

To be privy to the back-story and even drama that went on these meetings, hop on over to the National Health Federation!

by Heather Callaghan
January 11, 2018
from NaturalBlaze Website

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Monsanto - A Multinational Factory of Death

Genetically Modified Organisms - Foods and Others

Seeds of Death: Unveiling The Lies of GMOs

https://youtu.be/a6OxbpLwEjQ