Monsanto’s Roundup Found in Animals with Birth Defects

Gee, thought you'd given up!

I won't let the last word be propaganda

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722151/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722151/

Again we are talking about RoundUp here. Let's stay on topic. I'll bet I can detect arsenic, formaldehyde, and pesticides in you too. The dose equals the poison.

But since you have changed subjects to bees..

"We found insecticides and fungicides in all 19, and herbicides in 23.6% of, pollen samples. Insecticides present in pollen collected by the bees came from seven categories. We found oxadiazines in 10.5%, neonicotinoids in 15.8%, carbamates in 31.6%, cyclodienes in 52.6%, formamidines in 52.6%, organophosphates in 63.2%, and pyrethroids in 100% of pollen samples. Both neonicotinoids and oxadiazines were present only in pollen collected by bees in apple orchards"

Hmmm. I thought neonicitinoids were the issue?

Myths about Pesticides
Pesticide spraying

Myths about pesticides are a testimony to the power of advertising, marketing and lobbying. The big pesticide corporations, like big tobacco and the oil industry, have systematically manufactured doubt about the science behind pesticides and fostered the myth that their products are essential to life as we know it — and harmless if "used as directed".

The book Merchants of Doubt calls it the "Tobacco Strategy" — orchestrated PR and legal campaigns to deny the evidence, often using rogue scientists to invent controversy around so-called "junk science" to deny everything; from cancer-causing second-hand smoke to global warming to the hazards of DDT. Here are eight of the seemingly plausible myths we hear every day:

Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world
Pesticides aren't that dangerous
The dose makes the poison
The government is protecting us
GMOs reduce reliance on pesticides
We're weaning ourselves off of pesticides
Pesticides are the answer to global climate change
We need DDT to end malaria, combat bedbugs, etc.
Myth #1: "Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world"
Reality: The most comprehensive analysis of world agriculture to date tells us that what can feed the world — and what feeds most of the world now, in fact — is smaller-scale agriculture that does not rely on pesticides.

More to the point, hunger in an age of plenty isn't a problem of production (or yields, as the pesticide industry claims), efficiency or even distribution. It is a matter of priorities. If we were serious about feeding people we wouldn't grow enough extra grains to feed 1/3 of the world's hungry and then pour them into gas tanks. Dow, Monsanto, Syngenta and other pesticide producers have marketed their products as necessary to feed the world. Yet as insecticide use increased in the U.S. by a factor of 10 in the 50 years following World War II, crop losses almost doubled. Corn is illustrative: in place of crop rotations, most acreage was planted year after year only with corn. Despite more than a 1000-fold increase in use of organophosphate insecticides, crop losses to insects rose from 3.5% to 12% (D. Pimental and M. Pimental, 2008).

Myth #2: "Pesticides aren't that dangerous"
Reality: Pesticides are dangerous by design. They are engineered to cause death. And harms to human health are very well documented, with children especially at risk. Here are a few recent examples from the news:

An entire class of pesticides (organophosphates) has been linked to higher rates of ADHD in children.
The herbicide atrazine, found in 94% of our water supply, has been linked to birth defects, infertility and cancer.
Women exposed to the pesticide endosulfan during pregnancy are more likely to have autistic children.
Girls exposed to DDT before puberty are five times more likely to develop breast cancer.
A large and growing body of peer-reviewed, scientific studies document that pesticides are harmful to human health. The environmental damage caused by pesticides is also clear; from male frogs becoming females after exposure, to collapsing populations of bats and honeybees.

AnchorMyth #3: "The dose makes the poison"
Reality: If one were exposed to an extremely small amount of one ingredient from a pesticide at a time, and it was a chemical of relatively low toxicity, it might pose little danger. That’s unfortunately an unlikely scenario. First, pesticide products typically contain several potentially dangerous ingredients (including so-called 'inerts' not listed on the label). Second, we’re all exposed to a cocktail of pesticides in our air, water, food and on the surfaces we touch. The combination of these chemicals can be more toxic than any one of them acting alone. Third, many pesticides are endocrine disruptors — which if the timing is "right" can, with extremely low doses, interfere with the delicate human hormone system and cause lifechanging damage. Finally, the research used when determining the safety of a pesticide is funded and conducted by the corporations marketing the product, often leading to distortion of findings.

AnchorMyth #4: "The government is protecting us"
Reality: Our regulatory system is not doing its job. More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied every year on U.S. farms, forests, golf courses and lawns. Farmworkers and rural communities suffer illness throughout the spray season and beyond, and infants around the world are born with a mixture of pesticides and other chemicals in their bodies. “The prevailing regulatory approach in the United States is reactionary rather than precautionary,” concluded the President’s Cancer Panel in May 2010, “instead of requiring industry…to prove their safety, the public bears the burden of proving that a given environmental exposure is harmful.”

The cornerstone of pesticide regulation is a fundamentally flawed process of "risk assessment" that cannot begin to capture the realities of pesticide exposure and the health hazards they pose. EPA officials remain reliant on research data submitted by pesticide manufacturers, who do everything they can to drag out reviews of their products, often for decades. Lawsuits are pending to force the EPA to abide by the law and speed up review. A better, common sense precautionary approach to protecting us would assess alternatives to highly hazardous pesticides rather than accepting public exposure to pesticides as a necessary evil. Such a shift will require fundamental federal policy reform.

AnchorMyth #5: "GMOs reduce reliance on pesticides"
Reality: Genetically modified organisms are driving pesticide use, and no surprise: the biggest GMO seed sellers are the pesticide companies themselves. The goal of introducing GMO seed is simple: increase corporate control of global agriculture. More than 80% of GMO crops grown worldwide are designed to tolerate increased herbicide use, not reduce pesticide use.

Monsanto, the world leader in patented engineered seed, would have us believe that its GMOs will increase yields, reduce environmental impact and mitigate climate change, and that farmers use fewer pesticides when they plant the company’s seeds. None of this is true. On average, Monsanto’s biotech seeds reduce yield. In 2009, Monsanto admitted that its “Bollguard” GMO cotton attracted pink bollworm — the very pest it was designed to control — in areas of Gujarat, India’s primary cotton-growing state. Introduced in 1996, Monsanto’s Bollguard seeds — which include toxic traits from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) — now account for half the cotton grown worldwide. In India, the productivity of Bt cotton has fallen while pesticide costs have risen almost 25%, contributing to the tragic suicide epidemic by India’s debt-ridden farmers.

In 2009, 93% of U.S. GMO soybeans and 80% of GMO corn was grown from Monsanto’s patented seeds. “RoundUp Ready” corn and soybeans were designed for use with Monsanto’s weed killer, which mostl feed animals and cars, not people. Now that weeds are rapidly becoming resistant to RoundUp, Dow and Monsanto are introducing GMO corn that includes tolerance of 2,4-D, a more dangerous herbicide related to Agent Orange used in Viet Nam.

AnchorMyth #6: "We're weaning ourselves off of pesticides"
Reality: After 20 years of market stagnation, the pesticide industry entered a period of vigorous growth in 2004. The global pesticide market is worth approximately $40 billion, and expected to grow at almost 3% per year, reaching $52 billion by 2014. About 80% of the market is for agricultural use, but non-agricultural sales and profit margins are growing faster, driven by the rise of a global middleclass adopting chemically reliant lawns and landscapes. In addition, the industry strategy of promoting GMO seeds, most of which are engineered to tolerate higher applications of herbicides, has driven increased sales of weed killers.

AnchorMyth #7: "Pesticides are the answer to global climate change"
Reality: Multinational corporations are working hard to increase their market share by exploiting climate change as a sales opportunity. As of 2008, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, BASF and others had filed 532 patents for “climate-related genes,” touting the imminent arrival of a new generation of seeds engineered to withstand heat and drought. Their approach will further restrict the age-old practice of farmers saving seeds with desirable traits — a practice that may prove even more important as the climate changes in unpredictable ways and demands more, not less, farm-scale diversity. In fact, evidence is showing that sustainable farming provides important solutions to climate change, with systems that create far fewer greenhouse gases, promote on-farm biodiversity and create carbon sinks to offset warming. Despite this latest gene-grab, none of these companies have yet been able to engineer any kind of yield-increasing or “climate-ready” seeds. Their promises to end world hunger through drought-, heat- and salt-tolerant seeds and crops with enhanced nutrition have proven empty.

AnchorMyth #8: "We need DDT to end malaria, combat bedbugs, etc."
Reality: The recent resurgence of bedbugs has nothing to do with the 1972 ban of DDT. Bedbugs, like many mosquitos, are resistant to DDT — and they were decades ago when DDT was still in use. In some cases DDT even makes bedbug infestations worse, since instead of killing them it just irritates them, making them more active. DDT had been abandoned as a solution to malaria in the U.S. long before it was banned for agriculture use. Around the world, practitioners battling the deadly disease on the ground report that DDT is less effective in controlling malaria than many other tools. A small cadre of advocates continue to aggressively promote widespread use of DDT to combat malaria, bedbugs — even West Nile Virus — despite its lack of effectiveness and growing evidence of damage to human health, even at low levels of exposure.

Myths about Pesticides
Pesticide spraying

Myths about pesticides are a testimony to the power of advertising, marketing and lobbying. The big pesticide corporations, like big tobacco and the oil industry, have systematically manufactured doubt about the science behind pesticides and fostered the myth that their products are essential to life as we know it — and harmless if "used as directed".

The book Merchants of Doubt calls it the "Tobacco Strategy" — orchestrated PR and legal campaigns to deny the evidence, often using rogue scientists to invent controversy around so-called "junk science" to deny everything; from cancer-causing second-hand smoke to global warming to the hazards of DDT. Here are eight of the seemingly plausible myths we hear every day:

Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world
Pesticides aren't that dangerous
The dose makes the poison
The government is protecting us
GMOs reduce reliance on pesticides
We're weaning ourselves off of pesticides
Pesticides are the answer to global climate change
We need DDT to end malaria, combat bedbugs, etc.
Myth #1: "Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world"
Reality: The most comprehensive analysis of world agriculture to date tells us that what can feed the world — and what feeds most of the world now, in fact — is smaller-scale agriculture that does not rely on pesticides.

More to the point, hunger in an age of plenty isn't a problem of production (or yields, as the pesticide industry claims), efficiency or even distribution. It is a matter of priorities. If we were serious about feeding people we wouldn't grow enough extra grains to feed 1/3 of the world's hungry and then pour them into gas tanks. Dow, Monsanto, Syngenta and other pesticide producers have marketed their products as necessary to feed the world. Yet as insecticide use increased in the U.S. by a factor of 10 in the 50 years following World War II, crop losses almost doubled. Corn is illustrative: in place of crop rotations, most acreage was planted year after year only with corn. Despite more than a 1000-fold increase in use of organophosphate insecticides, crop losses to insects rose from 3.5% to 12% (D. Pimental and M. Pimental, 2008).

Myth #2: "Pesticides aren't that dangerous"
Reality: Pesticides are dangerous by design. They are engineered to cause death. And harms to human health are very well documented, with children especially at risk. Here are a few recent examples from the news:

An entire class of pesticides (organophosphates) has been linked to higher rates of ADHD in children.
The herbicide atrazine, found in 94% of our water supply, has been linked to birth defects, infertility and cancer.
Women exposed to the pesticide endosulfan during pregnancy are more likely to have autistic children.
Girls exposed to DDT before puberty are five times more likely to develop breast cancer.
A large and growing body of peer-reviewed, scientific studies document that pesticides are harmful to human health. The environmental damage caused by pesticides is also clear; from male frogs becoming females after exposure, to collapsing populations of bats and honeybees.

AnchorMyth #3: "The dose makes the poison"
Reality: If one were exposed to an extremely small amount of one ingredient from a pesticide at a time, and it was a chemical of relatively low toxicity, it might pose little danger. That’s unfortunately an unlikely scenario. First, pesticide products typically contain several potentially dangerous ingredients (including so-called 'inerts' not listed on the label). Second, we’re all exposed to a cocktail of pesticides in our air, water, food and on the surfaces we touch. The combination of these chemicals can be more toxic than any one of them acting alone. Third, many pesticides are endocrine disruptors — which if the timing is "right" can, with extremely low doses, interfere with the delicate human hormone system and cause lifechanging damage. Finally, the research used when determining the safety of a pesticide is funded and conducted by the corporations marketing the product, often leading to distortion of findings.

AnchorMyth #4: "The government is protecting us"
Reality: Our regulatory system is not doing its job. More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied every year on U.S. farms, forests, golf courses and lawns. Farmworkers and rural communities suffer illness throughout the spray season and beyond, and infants around the world are born with a mixture of pesticides and other chemicals in their bodies. “The prevailing regulatory approach in the United States is reactionary rather than precautionary,” concluded the President’s Cancer Panel in May 2010, “instead of requiring industry…to prove their safety, the public bears the burden of proving that a given environmental exposure is harmful.”

The cornerstone of pesticide regulation is a fundamentally flawed process of "risk assessment" that cannot begin to capture the realities of pesticide exposure and the health hazards they pose. EPA officials remain reliant on research data submitted by pesticide manufacturers, who do everything they can to drag out reviews of their products, often for decades. Lawsuits are pending to force the EPA to abide by the law and speed up review. A better, common sense precautionary approach to protecting us would assess alternatives to highly hazardous pesticides rather than accepting public exposure to pesticides as a necessary evil. Such a shift will require fundamental federal policy reform.

AnchorMyth #5: "GMOs reduce reliance on pesticides"
Reality: Genetically modified organisms are driving pesticide use, and no surprise: the biggest GMO seed sellers are the pesticide companies themselves. The goal of introducing GMO seed is simple: increase corporate control of global agriculture. More than 80% of GMO crops grown worldwide are designed to tolerate increased herbicide use, not reduce pesticide use.

Monsanto, the world leader in patented engineered seed, would have us believe that its GMOs will increase yields, reduce environmental impact and mitigate climate change, and that farmers use fewer pesticides when they plant the company’s seeds. None of this is true. On average, Monsanto’s biotech seeds reduce yield. In 2009, Monsanto admitted that its “Bollguard” GMO cotton attracted pink bollworm — the very pest it was designed to control — in areas of Gujarat, India’s primary cotton-growing state. Introduced in 1996, Monsanto’s Bollguard seeds — which include toxic traits from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) — now account for half the cotton grown worldwide. In India, the productivity of Bt cotton has fallen while pesticide costs have risen almost 25%, contributing to the tragic suicide epidemic by India’s debt-ridden farmers.

In 2009, 93% of U.S. GMO soybeans and 80% of GMO corn was grown from Monsanto’s patented seeds. “RoundUp Ready” corn and soybeans were designed for use with Monsanto’s weed killer, which mostl feed animals and cars, not people. Now that weeds are rapidly becoming resistant to RoundUp, Dow and Monsanto are introducing GMO corn that includes tolerance of 2,4-D, a more dangerous herbicide related to Agent Orange used in Viet Nam.

AnchorMyth #6: "We're weaning ourselves off of pesticides"
Reality: After 20 years of market stagnation, the pesticide industry entered a period of vigorous growth in 2004. The global pesticide market is worth approximately $40 billion, and expected to grow at almost 3% per year, reaching $52 billion by 2014. About 80% of the market is for agricultural use, but non-agricultural sales and profit margins are growing faster, driven by the rise of a global middleclass adopting chemically reliant lawns and landscapes. In addition, the industry strategy of promoting GMO seeds, most of which are engineered to tolerate higher applications of herbicides, has driven increased sales of weed killers.

AnchorMyth #7: "Pesticides are the answer to global climate change"
Reality: Multinational corporations are working hard to increase their market share by exploiting climate change as a sales opportunity. As of 2008, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, BASF and others had filed 532 patents for “climate-related genes,” touting the imminent arrival of a new generation of seeds engineered to withstand heat and drought. Their approach will further restrict the age-old practice of farmers saving seeds with desirable traits — a practice that may prove even more important as the climate changes in unpredictable ways and demands more, not less, farm-scale diversity. In fact, evidence is showing that sustainable farming provides important solutions to climate change, with systems that create far fewer greenhouse gases, promote on-farm biodiversity and create carbon sinks to offset warming. Despite this latest gene-grab, none of these companies have yet been able to engineer any kind of yield-increasing or “climate-ready” seeds. Their promises to end world hunger through drought-, heat- and salt-tolerant seeds and crops with enhanced nutrition have proven empty.

AnchorMyth #8: "We need DDT to end malaria, combat bedbugs, etc."
Reality: The recent resurgence of bedbugs has nothing to do with the 1972 ban of DDT. Bedbugs, like many mosquitos, are resistant to DDT — and they were decades ago when DDT was still in use. In some cases DDT even makes bedbug infestations worse, since instead of killing them it just irritates them, making them more active. DDT had been abandoned as a solution to malaria in the U.S. long before it was banned for agriculture use. Around the world, practitioners battling the deadly disease on the ground report that DDT is less effective in controlling malaria than many other tools. A small cadre of advocates continue to aggressively promote widespread use of DDT to combat malaria, bedbugs — even West Nile Virus — despite its lack of effectiveness and growing evidence of damage to human health, even at low levels of exposure.

*citations please*
Once again glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp is post patent. There are probably 30 different companies that make it.
Organophosphates are stictly restricted and many that I used to be able to use are no longer available.
Funny they should call Bt "toxic" since most "organic" farmers use it
The rest is the typical woo and anecdotal evidence clearly lacking causation while making claims of correlation.
Here I got a correlation for you.. Autism rates have gone up since Whole Foods Market came into existence. Clearly Whole Foods causes autism

Sparty, we will never agree on this subject.
There are consequences now and will be in the future.

I liked this article:

http://khon2.com/2014/11/05/voters-approve-maui-county-gmo-ban-now-what/

The companies that develop the pesticides are basically the ones doing the vetting and make billions by doing so and have their money to spend lobbying for their approvals. EPA is hamstringed. Long term environmental effects are still unknown but there are enough studies to recommend caution and alternatives.

It's way past time to think about that.

We need to consider the ramifications of the repercussions of the amounts of the combined multitude of pesticides be used, daily, by the billions and interacting with each other in our earth, air, fresh water and oceans.

We, dominate species, are not doing a great job of protecting our planet and our environment, nor the futures of our children's children's children.

You have your opinions, I have mine.
I hope you are right as the alternative is not good.

I agree with you about one thing. Mankind as a whole are terrible stewards. With a population approaching 7 billion pesticides are a necessity. I also think the earth, with us or without us will endure

Just came across this article.

Shedding light on systematic pesticides and Bees

February 2, 2015
by Maryam Henein

Recently, a friend sent me the article "Bee Deaths Reversal: As Evidence Points Away From Neonics As Driver, Pressure Builds To Rethink Ban." The wordy title hinting that systemic pesticides are safe seemed suspect, but because the op-ed was published in Forbes, a reputable publication, I knew many would read it as bona fide truth. I would have too, if I hadn't studied bees and colony collapse disorder for the past eight years. I am the director of a documentary film called Vanishing of the Bees, narrated by Ellen Page. I owe my life to the bees in many respects.

Nowadays, an increasing amount of blatant misinformation is being planted in the media about honeybees and the systemic pesticides that are killing them. Unlike typical pesticides, which are applied topically, systemic pesticides are entrenched in the soil or embedded in the seed so that the poisons are taken up by the plant and transported to all its tissues, including roots, stems, leaves, pollen and nectar.

Just a few days before I saw the Forbes article, I'd spotted another pesticide-friendly article on The Huffington Post: "Bee Experts Dismantle Touted 'Harvard' Neonics-Colony Collapse Disorder Study As 'Activist Science.'" Sure enough, both pieces were written by the same person. Who is this person, and why the sudden interest in disputing the effects of neonicotinoids on declining bee populations?

Suspecting ties to agribusiness, I did some research and quickly discovered that Jon Entine has written pieces defending genetically modified (GMO) crops, the cancer-causing herbicide atrazine and the toxic compound BPA.

Critics describe Entine as an "agribusiness apologist," "pseudo-journalist" and "biotech shill."

Tom Philpott, Mother Jones' food and agriculture correspondent, uncovered three years ago that Entine, who describes himself as an "author, think tank scholar, leadership and sustainability consultant, media commentator, and public speaker on the DNA of human behavior," has indirectly worked for Monsanto and has ties to Syngenta, the agrichemical company that makes atrazine and neonicotinoids (neonics).

At some point, it seems that this chemical company looked to hire some reporters to spin poisons - literally, chemicals designed to kill - in their favor.

There are a few links in the article.
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/shedding-light-three-big-lies-about-systemic-pesticides-and-bees