Montville says no to genetically modified crops

Montville says no to genetically modified crops
By Sarah Delage
MONTVILLE (NEWS CENTER) - Residents in Montville have passed an ordinance banning the growth of Genetically Modified Crops.
Kai George is one of many Montville residents who want local crops to be grown without being genetically modified. Saturday she joined a majority of the town's voters to approve a ban on genetically modified crops.

"There was an overwhelmingly positive response to that," George said. "The town voted not quite unanimously, almost unanimously for starting the ordinance process in town. The ordinance is a ten year moratorium on the production of G.E. crops in our town."

Genetically engineered crops have their DNA altered to make them more disease and pest resistent. The ordinance does not include any fines or punishment for violations. Montville farmers will have two years to phase out the crops.

"Our intent is to support the farmers every way we can to help them with this process," George told NEWS CENTER. "We're not at all interested in disrupting farmers' livelihoods. "We really want to help them do this."

"It's really important that they're supporting our farmers and in exchange we're trying to support them by growing local healthy food," Montville farmer, Miya Capoamor said.

Campoamor said the ordinance is a step in the right direction. But she wants surrounding towns to follow in Montville's footsteps, so their GM crops can't contaminate hers.

"The contamination of seeds doesn't know political boundaries," Campaomor said. "So I live in Montville but I'm two miles away from Liberty and Liberty doesn't have this ordinance. And contamination can happen through bees, it can happen through winds and really we're not safe unless the entire area is declared non-GMO."

According to Food For Maine's Future Montville is the only town outside of California to pass such an ordinance. The group says the Maine towns of Brooklyn and Liberty have passed non-binding resolutions declaring themselves "GE free."

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GM crops talks prompt farmer legal threats

Posted April 4, 2008 09:22:00

* Map: Inverell 2360

A New South Wales MP says threats of legal action between farmers over the introduction of genetically-modified crops is an indication of how worried some of them are becoming.

Anti-GM farmers say they are worried their crops will become contaminated and export markets will dry up.

The Network of Concerned Farmers, which opposes GM crops, is distributing letters to pro-GM farmers, warning them they will face personal legal action to recover any losses caused by the new crop.

Inverell MP Rick Colless, who is also the Opposition's parliamentary secretary for primary industries, says the farmers are making a good point.

"With any pollution-control exercise it is the polluter that pays," he said.

"In the case of genetically-modified crops - and I'm not suggesting that they are in the same category as polluters - but it is an unwanted contaminate coming from a neighbouring farm.

"In that situation it's the contaminated farmer that has to pay for the clean-up."

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Monsanto profit doubles on weed killer, corn seed
By Jack Kaskey
BLOOMBERG NEWS
04/03/2008

Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed producer, said fiscal second-quarter profit more than doubled as U.S. farmers bought more Roundup weed killer and genetically modified corn seed.

The Creve Coeur-based company is taking market share from rivals such as DuPont Co. by spending more to develop new varieties of corn, soybean and cotton seeds. Higher prices will help double gross profit from Roundup this year, Chief Executive Hugh Grant said on a conference call.

Net income in the three months through February rose to $1.13 billion, or $2.02 a share, from $543 million, or 98 cents, a year earlier. That surpassed Thomson Financial's prediction of $1.72 a share.

The second-quarter earnings include a 23-cent gain from the settlement of Monsanto's claims related to Solutia Inc.'s emergence from bankruptcy.


Sales were boosted by global demand for Roundup and genetically modified corn seeds in the U.S. and Brazil, Monsanto said.

"Between now and 2012, I think we're the only company in agriculture that can point to consistent growth irrespective of swings in commodity prices, fluctuations in planted acres or the usual ups and downs in the popularity of things like ethanol," Grant said.

Monsanto said it won an additional 3 to 5 percentage points of the U.S. corn-seed market this year, confirming earlier forecasts.

Monsanto last year surpassed DuPont's Pioneer unit as the largest producer, with 32 percent of U.S. corn-seed sales. DuPont had 30 percent and has pledged to hold its share steady this year. Monsanto said its share this year will be 35 percent to 37 percent.

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GM Files: Horrifying New Disease Contains Identical Material to GM "Food"
Bill Haymin
April 03, 2008
Rima E. Laibow, MD Medical Director

Natural Solutions Foundation

www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org

GM Files: Summary of GM Risks

GM Files: Morgellon´s Discussion

Nightmare on Elm Street´s Dinner Table. Thank you, Monsanto!

The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about - and to use - natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.

For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!

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Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.

Yours in health and freedom,

Dr. Rima

Rima E. Laibow, MD

Medical Director

Natural Solutions Foundation

www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org

Nightmare on Elm Street´s Dinner Table. Thank you, Monsanto!

Just in case you thought it was fine to eat Genetically Modified foods (better identified as "FrankenFoods"), along comes a study which makes it clear that you are eating this make believe non-food at your own peril and, worse yet, you are feeding it to your kids at their peril as well. It is important to note that Codex Alimentarius, which sets standards for the international trade of food, permits genetically modified foods and makes no effort to limit, control or eliminate them. In fact, the US has been trying for years to prevent the labeling of GM foods and seed in international trade to emulate its domestic policy which prohibits any label indication that foods contain GM ingredients, as 75-80% of all foods sold in the US do.

Now it appears that the increasingly prevalent nightmare of a disease called "Morgellon´s Disease" may be a result of GM crops and food.

Morgellon´s Disease was first described when a woman´s 3 year old son developed rashes and intensely itchy sores which produced weird multicolor fibers emerging from his skin. She put up a website about the condition in 2001 and named it "Morgellons Disease" after a 17th century report of a similar affliction.

As it always does, the allopathic community of Western, drug-oriented physicians labeled sufferers as delusional. As a physician, I have a great deal of difficulty explaining how a delusion can produce colored fibers which protrude from the skin and continue to grow in a petri dish. Be that as it may, the multicolored fibers produced by the "delusion" have been analyzed and we now know that Morgellon´s Disease is no longer rare, nor is it mysterious any longer. A study of the fibers shows that they contain DNA from both a fungus and a bacterium which are used in the commercial preparation of genetically modified foods and non-food crops (such as cotton). The fibers themselves are primarily cellulose, which the human body cannot breakdown or manufacture. So GM technology apparently has, like Professor Frankenstein, found a way to animate the non living. These fibers twist and twine, grow and divide. In short, living beneath the skin of people, they form parasitic lesions out of what should be non-living material but which, through the horror of genetic modification, has taken on the characteristics of a living thing.

The symptoms are so unbearable that a number of people suffering from the disorder have committed suicide rather than deal with the unbearable pain, constant feeling of something very much like an insect crawling without stop beneath the skin and unbearable itching any longer. Of course, it is possible to speculate that the attitude of most physicians that the condition is a mental aberration rather than a physical one may not have helped these poor souls to cope with their affliction.

How wide spread is Morgellon´s Disease? Some registries have 1200 or more people but these registrants only represent those who have access to the internet and have stumbled across the registry sites. The disease produces material unlike anything most people have ever seen. (http://www.morgellons.org/) and

These pictures show fibers removed from lesions on the skin of Morgellon´s Disease sufferers.

No picture, however, can show you the insects crawling under my skin day and night torment of the victims. Frighteningly, some researchers say that every person they have tested has some level of Morgellon´s type pathology in their skin.

If the hypothesis is accurate and the disease is caused by sowing, growing and eating FrankenFood, that would, however, make sense. 75-80 % of all US food contains unlabeled GM ingredients. We have no enzymes or other mechanisms to digest these unnatural components of the materials which the FDA says are the same as food and prohibits labeling of. We have no way of getting rid of the indigestible, toxic or even lethal materials injected into the nucleus of our food by high energy guns and biochemical tricks that nature never thought of.

Given that the US is allowing the greatest biological experiment in the history of human kind, we should not be skeptical about the possibility that this tragic and terrifying disease may be caused by terrifying make-believe food with all-too-real dangers inserted inside them where they cannot be seen, tasted, or otherwise detected by normal means, only by specialized laboratories.

Part of the objective of the Natural Solutions Foundation is to make sure that 3rd world countries have the labs, and the training necessary to determine what food is clean and safe, and what food is damaged by techniques by Genetic Manipulation.

In the meantime, we will be attending a very important Codex meeting in Ottawa. Either the African Pro-health Coalition will hold its ground in the meeting and continue to defy the US and hold fast to their fervent determination to not allow GM seeds into their coutnries and to require substantial labeling on all foods which contain GM components.

Link Between Morgellon´s Disease and GMOs

by Barbara H. Peterson

Global Research, March 27, 2008

Since the Clinton administration made biotechnology "a strategic priority for U.S. government backing" (1), giant transnational agri-business concerns have aggressively taken over the global food chain by flooding it with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) without regard for the consequences to the earth or its inhabitants. This takeover not only has the potential for global economic devastation, but threatens the earth´s population with far-reaching health concerns as well. One health concern that seems to coincide with the GMO revolution is Morgellons disease. What if the advent of Morgellons disease has something to do with the ingestion of GMO foods?

Morgellons Disease – What is it?

Very little can be found regarding this disease. Originally, sufferers were told that their problem was imaginary. This was of little comfort to the people who were suffering.

Morgellons Disease sufferers report strange, fiber-like material sticking out of sores or wounds that erupt on the skin. This is accompanied by painful, intense itching, that has been described as "an ever present sensation as if something is crawling under the skin." (2)



On May 18, 2006, KGW, a local news channel reporting out of the Oregon area published this story:

Strange sickness: Mystery disease horror story (excerpt)

Dr. Drottar] The disabled family practice doctor felt like bugs were crawling under her skin.

"If I fully tell people what has gone on with me medically, they think they´re in the twilight zone," said Drottar.

She woke up with the feeling that fluid was flowing just below her skin. Often black or blue hair like fibers protruded from her skin, she said.

"I thought I had been exposed to asbestos. I thought I was having asbestos fibers come out of my skin. I was pulling long, thin, small hair-like fibers that were extremely sharp that could literally pierce through my finger nails," Drottar said.

In addition to the feeling of bugs and the fibers, Drottar also suffered from severe depression, chronic fatigue and a weakened immune system. As a result, she had to give up her family practice, Drottar said. (3)

Morgellons and GMO – the Link

Little information has been revealed concerning the long-term health effects of GMO crops on humans or animals, and even less information can be had regarding research correlating Morgellons with GMO foods. This is suspicious right off the bat, because it would seem that there would be a natural curiosity regarding a link between Genetically Modified Organisms that people ingest regularly and inorganic fibers that protrude from a person´s skin. This would be right up a geneticist´s alley, and quite worthy of intensive research. So, why aren´t there a ton of published studies? Why is it so difficult finding anything related to this? Could it be that companies such as Monsanto have enough clout to effectively squash these stories? If they have enough clout to ruin countries by deceiving impoverished farmers into purchasing patented GMO seeds, and then take it a step further and force these poor people to purchase seeds year after year instead of harvesting their own, then they have enough clout to ask our more than willing corporate government to manipulate the press…again.

According to Mike Stagman, PhD, "Genetic Engineering is a nightmare technology that has already caused MANY disease epidemics — documented but unpublicized." (4)

Well Monsanto, you let at least one study slip through. With the help of a couple of search engines, the following article by Whitley Strieber published on October 12, 2007, titled "Skin Disease May Be Linked to GM Food" was found, which concludes that the fibers taken from a Morgellons sufferer contain the same substance that is "used commercially to produce genetically-modified plants." Here is the article:

Skin Disease May Be Linked to GM Food

12-Oct-2007

Many people—and most physicians—have written off Morgellons disease as either a hoax or hypochondria. But now there is evidence that this mysterious disease may be REAL and related to GENETICALLY MODIFIED food!

The skin of Morgellons victims oozes mysterious strands that have been identified as cellulose (which cannot be manufactured by the human body), and people have the sensation of things crawling beneath their skin. The first known case of Morgellons occurred in 2001, when Mary Leitao created a web site describing the disease, which had infected her young son. She named it Morgellons after a 17th century medical study in France that described the same symptoms.

In the Sept. 15-21 issue of New Scientist magazine, Daniel Elkan describes a patient he calls "Steve Jackson," who "for years" has "been finding tiny blue, red and black fibers growing in intensely itchy lesions on his skin." He quotes Jackson as saying, "The fibers are like pliable plastic and can be several millimeters long. Under the skin, some are folded in a zigzag pattern. These can be as fine as spider silk, yet strong enough to distend the skin when you pull them, as if you were pulling on a hair."

Doctors say that this type of disease could only be caused by a parasite, but anti-parasitic medications do not help. Psychologists insist that this is a new version of the well-known syndrome known as "delusional parasitosis." While this is a "real" disease, it is not a physically-caused one.

But now there is physical evidence that Morgellons is NOT just psychological. When pharmacologist Randy Wymore offered to study some of these fibers if people sent them to him, he discovered that "fibers from different people looked remarkably similar to each other and yet seem to match no common environmental fibers."

When they took them to a police forensic team, they said they were not from clothing, carpets or bedding. They have no idea what they are.

Researcher Ahmed Kilani says he was able to break down two fiber samples and extract their DNA. He found that they belonged to a fungus.

An even more provocative finding is that biochemist Vitaly Citovsky discovered that the fibers contain a substance called "Agrobacterium," which, according to New Scientist, is "used commercially to produce genetically-modified plants." Could GM plants be "causing a new human disease?" (5)

GMO – Not on My Watch!

The giant transnational corporations behind the GMO revolution are hitting us in our most vulnerable spot – our bellies. Most people have been brought up with an innate trust that what they purchase from the stores is safe to eat. This is no longer true, since most processed foods contain genetically engineered ingredients that can have disastrous effects on both animal and human health. What you purchase from the corner store might just change your DNA and create such frightening symptoms that the general public simply does not believe it. What is worse is that when you go to the doctor to get help, he/she tells you what you are experiencing is all in your head. This is rubbish! It is up to people who care to make the correlations between what we eat and what happens to our bodies. Remember the old saying – "you are what you eat?" Well, this author believes it is true.

Notes

1) Engdahl, F.W. (2007). Seeds of Destruction.

2) Stagman, M. Phd. (2006). GMO Disease Epidemics: Bt-cotton Fiber Disease. Retrieved from http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/08/344305.shtml

3) Porter, L. (2006). Strange sickness: Mystery disease horror story. Retrieved from http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_051806_news_sweeps_strange_sickness_morgellons.53b2569a.html

4) Stagman, M. Phd. (2006). GMO Disease Epidemics: Bt-cotton Fiber Disease. Retrieved from http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/08/344305.shtml

5) Strieber, W. (2007). Skin Disease Might be Linked to GM Food. Retrieved from

http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=6486

Barbara H. Peterson is a Writer and Activist,

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GM debate heats up in Hawaii
Date:5/04/2008
Written By:Laura
The state government in Hawaii has recently rejected a bill to ban genetically modified coffee.

The shelved bill, which had proposed a ban on growing genetically modified coffee crops, has nonetheless provoked debate between coffee interests in the state.

Supporters of the bill fear that genetically modified crops could conaminate the Kona blend, which is grown only on Hawaii's Big Island and exported worldwide. Some argue that discerning overseas drinkers would reject the brand if they felt it had become mixed with other strains.

Not wanting to limit scientific research in the state, Hawaii's lawmakers have ordered a study into the pros and cons of GM coffee. One company is already planning a GM crop on Oahu, of a type of bean that grows decaffinated naturally.