Those Bright Oranges and Neon Pink Salmon Are Not What They Seem

More and Less Than Meets The Eye: Those Bright Oranges And Pink Salmon Are Not What They Seem

By Kurtis Bright

Tricks of the Food Trade: From Oranges to Chicken to Salmon, How Food Manufacturers Are Fooling You

If you needed any more proof that food manufacturers don’t want us to know what they’re putting in their products--that is, into our food--the ugliness over Vermont’s failed GMO labeling bill should tell you all you need to know.

Just when it seemed like the White Hats in Bernie Sanders country were going to succeed in taking control of GMO labeling so their citizens could know what they were eating, the bill was scuttled. Big grocery manufacturers and Big Agriculture went crying to their lackeys in Congress and got a new version of the DARK Act passed--so dubbed by opponents as the Denying Americans the Right to Know Act--a bill that actually prevents states from passing labeling laws. (Here's a good explanation of what the SAFE Act--its official name--entails, despite the article having been written before passage.)

So they’ve got secrets. Indeed, never before has an industry fought so hard to obscure its actual product and keep it hidden; selling GMOs requires a weird jujutsu that is essentially the opposite of advertising.

But as with anyone who has secrets and is trying to fool you, its good to know what they are, even if you don’t know exactly what they are hiding. But with these GMO guys there are some things we do know, some tricks of their trade that you can look out for when you’re shopping. Here are a few examples.

• Neon pink salmon - That neon bright pink-orange color you often find in the salmon at the fish counter in your grocery store is usually not natural. Wild-caught salmon has a healthy pinkish red hue, due to the krill they eat. However, since farmed salmon eat chemical-laden food pellets and never encounter krill in at any point in their short, miserable lives crammed into off-shore pens by the thousands, their color would normally be a dull gray. But as any parent of a toddler knows, bright colors catch the eye. Shoppers unfortunately have been conditioned to expect that unnaturally bright pink-orange color in salmon. Thus, fish farms give the animals pigment pellets to give their meat that color. The practice is so ingrained that food pellet manufacturers have swatches of pinks and oranges and reds for industrial salmon farmers to choose from when ordering their fish feed.
  
  Pick your poison: It's called a Salmo-Fan and it is appalling. 
   
• Oranges that are too orange - Have you ever wondered how those oranges you see in northern stores in winter can possibly all come with such a uniformly bright, vivid color? Well, if you know anything about the trickery of food manufacturers, it is of course no mystery: many Florida oranges are treated with a dye called Citrus Red No. 2 early on in the season to give them a brighter color. Of course, being firmly in the pocket of Big Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration has approved its use. However, despite this, you should know that the Center for Science in the Public Interest has issued multiple warnings over the dye. The non-profit group cites studies demonstrating that the dye can cause cancer in lab animals, among other problems. It is, however, banned in California. So oranges from that state should be free of the chemical. If you do end up buying bags of the Florida oranges, the label should say whether they have been dyed or not. However, buying loose oranges from a bin in a non-organic section of the store, you will never know what you’re getting--or rather, you probably will: dyed, chemically-treated oranges.
• Other dyed foods - So now it has come down to this: even bread is getting the dye treatment. Often a loaf of supposedly wheat bread has been treated with caramel coloring to make it look...well, wheatier. It is a way in which manufacturers are able to fool us yet again, palming off refined grain breads as the healthier, and more sought-after whole wheat type. Other victims of industry dye jobs are pickles, which are given a shot of yellow coloring to make them look more vibrant and eye-catching, as well as deli meats. As we have witnessed repeatedly, the FDA has rolled over for Big Food (and of course their Big Money) and approved the use of these dyes. Indeed, is there anything they won’t approve, when it comes to pleasing food manufacturers and stuffing consumers full of chemicals and additives? At any rate, be on the lookout for dyes on food labels, as they often indicate a food that is highly processed and loaded with unnecessary and sometimes dangerous additives.
• That ain’t no chicken soup I’ve ever heard of - Prepare yourself for a really nasty one: the U.S. Department of Agriculture has regulations in place that allow manufacturers to sell chicken that is up to 11 percent water. That doesn’t sound so horrible on the face of it. However what that means in practice this: after the chickens are slaughtered and had their feathers boiled off, they are cooled in a bath that contains bleach or another disinfectant. The reason they have to use bleach is because there is so much chicken feces spraying out of the birds following their gruesome deaths. Thus, up to 11 percent of your “healthy,” boneless, skinless chicken breast is bleach-poop water. Bon appetit!

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From Cradle To Grave, Monsanto Is Always With You: Glyphosate Found In Baby Food, Oatmeal

From Cradle To Grave, Monsanto Is Always With You: Glyphosate Found In Baby Food, Oatmeal

By Kurtis Bright

We Are All Monsanto’s Children Now

Regulators and investors are still attempting to sort through the various legal and financial implications of Bayer’s proposed blockbuster merger with Monsanto, even as bad news continues to dog the agrichem giant.

For starters, the usually docile Indian government under the leadership of neoliberal Prime Minister Narendra Modi--a government that never met a genetically modified seed it didn’t like--has suddenly sprouted a backbone and started offering up some pretty stiff opposition to Monsanto’s proposed introduction of GMO mustard seed there.

In addition, the latest studies have found that glyphosate, the star weed-killing chemical in Monsanto’s Roundup brand herbicide is indeed likely responsible for the deaths of millions if not billions of honeybees in recent years, jeopardizing food production both commercial and personal.

However, don’t cry for our agrichemical overlords just yet, although it is truly amazing how they manage to so consistently bring this stuff on themselves.

For instance, yet another paper has backed up a blockbuster study from a few months ago showing that glyphosate is present in numerous samples of oatmeal--as well as baby food.

In the original study, a Food and Drug Administration chemist discovered a residue of glyphosate in a broad variety of oat-based cereal marketed for infants, some of which had concentrations of up to 1.67 parts per million.

That may not sound like much, but the fact is that for developing children who have weak immune systems and a body weight that is a mere fraction of that of an adult, any amount of what the World Health Organization has called a probable carcinogen is too much.

I mean, put it this way: is that too much for your child?

This of course also comes out on the heels of the news that samples of U.S. honey have also been demonstrated to be tainted with glyphosate--little surprise there, given the mounting evidence that honeybees have been contaminated via the copious spraying that has blanketed the crops of the nation with literally billions of pounds of glyphosate over the past 20 years.

What many observers found to be particularly alarming on that front was the revelation that these tainted honey samples often came in with glyphosate levels double what is legally allowed in the E.U.

For its part, the EPA has stated that the glyphosate residue tests they are currently officially conducting do not include oats or honey, and thus they would not comment on the aforementioned studies that were not conducted under their purview.

The EPA is currently testing for glyphosate residues in corn, soy, eggs and milk, they say, and so far none of them has shown levels that exceed what is legally allowed, although the analysis is ongoing.

Of course, the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs recently released the conclusion that glyphosate is “...not likely to be carcinogenic to humans at doses relevant to human health risk assessment,” and that the WHO study was wrong, regardless of the fact that their own research is ongoing.

Which is conveniently--and suspiciously--good news for Monsanto. But it is not at all surprising, coming as it does from a captive government agency that is staffed with dozens of former and future Monsanto employees, especially when you consider that people are just starting to awaken to the fact of how much glyphosate we are ingesting every day.

The takeaway here is probably that, despite the reassurances of the FDA and its allegedly ongoing research, perhaps staying away from oat products for your infant is in order.

Hell, for yourself too, really.

We can thank Monsanto for poisoning even baby food for us, but let’s not forget to offer a slow-clap, sarcastic round of applause for the FDA to for its ponderous foot-dragging, and relentless efforts at providing cover for these sociopaths as they poison the entire land.

Your tax dollars at work, working hard to benefit big corporations--as usual.

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Prominent Scientists Say U.S. Position on GMOs Is “Horribly Exposed”

Prominent Scientists Say U.S. Position on GMOs Is “Horribly Exposed”

By Kurtis Bright

U.S. Stance On GMOs Called Out As Shoddy Science

The proposed merger of Monsanto and Bayer edges ever closer to a done deal every day. At the same time, consumer awareness grows, of just how ubiquitous and dangerous genetically modified crops and the massive doses of chemicals needed to grow them really are. Indeed, genetically modified foods, Monsanto, glyphosate, and other subjects like these are drawing unwanted scrutiny that is making some people in high places very uncomfortable.

As this process has developed, the corporations predictably have rolled out their typical denial, reassurances, and platitudes. But another entity has been complicit in the massive cover-up of the vast array of problems with GMOs: the Federal Government.

A pair of prominent researchers finally got fed up. A conference at Cornell University was the site of their defection from the mandated talking points, as they instead talked about their growing unease as study after study further breaks down the scientific basis for the U.S. approval of widely-used GMO techniques and products.

Executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project Jonathan Latham said the official U.S. position on GMOs is “horribly exposed” as a result of the latest research, stating further that contradictions even within the framework of the original research “were never resolved.”

“There was obviously a lot of political pressure and economic pressure to just sweep things under the carpet,” Latham added.

Joining Latham in his disgust with the way GMO research was conducted when biochem companies were seeking U.S. regulatory approval was Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at the Consumer’s Union. Immersed in the issue of GMOs for over 30 years at both the state and federal level, as well as in an international context, Hansen has a depth and breadth of knowledge on the subject that rivals that of anyone.

And he has sounded the alarm, saying that it’s high time for stricter regulations on GMOs.

He adds that it may already be too late.

“Most of the environmental movements of the 20th century have basically been people cleaning up disasters after the fact,” Hansen said at the Cornell event. “With pesticides and all these things that were initially considered perfectly safe, we only find out years later that they’re contaminating the environment and causing all these problems. We wanted to make sure that biotechnology was regulated properly.”

The troubling fact is, according to Hansen, most U.S. citizens don’t realize that the U.S. doesn’t hew to internationally agreed-upon safety regulations when it comes to GMO crops. The U.S. Federal Government has chosen its own strange path for its citizens, and it tracks alarmingly close to exactly what Big Agrichem wants.

“There is global agreement on required safety assessments [for food that is derived from genetically modified organisms] and yet the United States does not do them,” Hansen said. “So we are actually on the outside of the global scientific standard.”

So when you encounter concern trolls on chat boards who want to try to “educate” you about how you just don’t understand how safe GMO products really are, or how Monsanto and companies like it simply want to feed the hungry of the world, keep in mind that they are not only likely to be on the payroll of Big Agrichem or hoodwinked by those who are, they are doing so using badly flawed research and data that was gathered and processed with one goal in mind: find a way--any way--to justify the approval of widespread use and sale of GMO crops.

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Toxic Education: Monsanto and the 26,000 Poisonous Public Schools it Poisoned

Toxic Education: Monsanto and the 26,000 Poisonous Public Schools it Poisoned

By Kurtis Bright

How Monsanto Is on the Hook for 26,000 Toxic Schools

You just can’t outrun your past. Wherever you go, there you are, complete with the litany of all the bad things you have ever done locked inside you.

It is a simple truism of life that we come to grips with more and more the older we get--or maybe it’s just that we have more accumulated past to contend with.

Either way, the big bosses at agrichem giant Monsanto are finding this to be more true than ever as scrutiny of the company is heating up with the news proposed merger with Bayer.

And any way you cut it, the company has had a rather...colorful past, shall we say. Ranging from their early days in the late 1800s and early 1900s when they worked tirelessly at popularizing saccharin despite its false promise of weight loss as a sugar substitute--and in the process fighting a decades-long court battle against allowing the proof of saccharin’s cancer-causing properties to force it from the market.

Then there’s the assist they provided on the Manhattan Project, from which experience working with the military they then pivoted to developing other tools of war, such as Agent Orange and white phosphorus. And of course there’s today, with the company gleefully blanketing the earth and everything growing on it with cancer-causing glyphosate and replacing natural systems with genetically modified crops.

There are not many companies that have wreaked so much havoc on the lives of so many people for so long.

But one oft-overlooked slice of the toxic cake that is Monsanto’s checkered history is now coming into the limelight once again: the company’s association with the manufacture of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls.

Once widely used in electronics and as an industrial sealant, PCBs have long been the cause of numerous municipal lawsuits as cities try to force the company to pay for the cleanup of the now-toxic wetlands it has befouled with the stuff.

But the latest is that Monsanto may be on the hook for the clean up of at least 26,000 U.S. schools that still have PCBs in their caulking, sealants, and other building materials--PCBs that could still be leaching out in affecting students nationwide.

 By some estimates, nearly 14 million students may be affected by the leaks, which represents some 30 percent of the total student population.

That could spell big lawsuits for Monsanto.

PCB is an endocrine disruptor and cancer-causing agent, exposure to which is known to cause skin conditions, liver damage, ocular lesions, lowered immune response, fatigue, headaches, and coughs, and in the children of women who are exposed it can cause cognitive development issues and motor control problems in their offspring.

Despite the fact that the company’s decades-long battle to keep PCBs legal (boy, does that ever sound familiar) ended in 1979 when the Environmental Protection Agency finally banned their manufacture, numberous older buildings across the nation still contain construction materials and wiring containing PCBs.

The angle on schools in particular comes out of the offices of U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass), the Environmental Working Group, and America Unites Kids.

And the news ain’t good: at minimum some 12,960 schools contain PCB-laden caulk, and that number could be as high as 25,920.

“That number comes by looking back at those periods of time where public schools were most extensively built. About 60 percent of the schools were built from 1950 to the early '80s, the time when PCBs were most commonly used in building materials,” wrote primary author and researcher at Harvard School of Public Health Robert Herrick.

Studies have shown that people can be exposed to PCBs by simply touching contaminated surfaces, and possibly even by inhaling PCB-laden dust. In schools that were constructed so long ago, it is a near-certainty that some such dust exists.

One can only hope that this latest round of Monsanto PCB disclosures and pending lawsuits will finally put a stake in the heart of this vile company that has visited so much evil on humankind.

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And You Thought Glyphosate Was Bad: Big Agrichem Companies Using Quasi-Slave Labor

And You Thought Glyphosate Was Bad: Big Agrichem Companies Using Quasi-Slave Labor

By Kurtis Bright

Near-Slave Conditions Exist in the U.S. For Migrant Workers At Big Agrichem Facilities

It’s difficult to overstate the length and breadth of the list of complaints against Monsanto and others in big agrichem.

Naturally (unnaturally, actually) there are the engineered seeds, perversely designed to not self-reproduce, thus locking farmers into a vicious cycle of indebtedness.

Then of course there are the chemicals, the cancer-causing glyphosate with which they have dusted nearly the entire earth in their stultifying, poisonous embrace, with over 8.6 billion kilograms (18 billion pounds) of the stuff having been sprayed in the U.S. alone.

And then there are the as-yet unknown dangers of feeding humans and animals genetically modified foods, research for which is constantly harried and hampered by government and industry.

But it gets even worse than that. How, you may well ask? How bad could it get?

How about slave labor bad?

New reports are emerging that name Monsanto and other big agriculture giants as being behind the horrific conditions in which they and their subsidiaries force migrant laborers to work and live--on U.S. soil.

Thousands of workers labor under conditions that, according to reports are akin to modern-day slavery at camps all across the Land of the Free. Makes you wonder just what that phrase really means: free for whom?

According to an expose in the journal In These Times, state inspectors are routinely summoned to deal with complaints about such camps. And they end up writing citations a shocking 60 percent of the time they are called out.

Which is all well and good. But there’s another problem when it comes to Big Agrichem: it’s too big to jail.

Companies like Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta and others have woven such a powerful network of enablers among lazy and compliant lawmakers and regulators that even these limp warnings and demands that they comply with the law are tossed aside contemptuously.

These companies have also perfected the art of plausible deniability and distancing themselves from operations from which they profit. They hire intermediaries, third-party recruiters and “independent” landlords who are paid to run the facilities, allowing Monsanto and DuPont to pretend ignorance when it comes to mistreatment of workers.

But now the details of the travails of these migrant laborers under the dubious care of the Big Ag companies has come to light, painting a disturbing picture--and it was told in the words of the very workers who have been so mistreated.

According to In These Times, one migrant worker, 50-year-old Baltazar Arvizu said, “I’ve stayed in housing that is very similar to barns for animals. We used to live 80 in a barn. We just had two bathrooms for 80 people.”

And Arzivu’s story took place not in some sketchy border town. This is happening, right now, in modern-day Indiana. This isn’t some long ago Dust Bowl land of Tom Joad.

But the ringing echoes of The Grapes of Wrath rings throughout the stories these workers tell, even some 80 years after the Great Depression ended and labor laws were supposedly reformed.

Worker complain they are being paid less than minimum wage, and they are often forced to plunk down $300 monthly rent or more on company-provided housing in shoddy motels and disused nursing homes.

The kitchen facilities the workers were promised in one of these housing units turned out to be a converted school bus with a couple of stoves and refrigerators and no ventilation, a shabby makeshift kitchen meant to serve over 30 people.

The entire article is linked here, if you can stomach it.

And the next time some troll wants to tell you how Monsanto and others like them are actually working to feed the world’s poor, send them a copy.

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