This issue is a brutal battering of the soul.

Days upon days of horrible imagery, godawful stories and ignorance so rich, it surely must be a parody. We can’t walk away from it, but part of your humanity can tuck itself away into your subconscious; hell, if it didn’t, you’d spend all your waking hours alternately cussing, babbling and sobbing. Great way to make new friends.

I’m lucky; personally, I have that ability to divorce myself from things, to an extent. Still, the nightmarish actualities of it all manage to force their way out in other ways: my temper is worse (than usual even,) I snap at BVC’s Exec. Director Stephen Capra, when he dares ask me questions. I’m smoking more. I’m eating Tums.

I’m a mess.

My dog Odie, (who looks much like the poor lab at the top,) and Stephen’s dogs, Sam and Josey Wales, and his cat, Stinker, are my heart. Sometimes having them around–while browsing pics of a dogs and cats with severed feet–forces grotesque, sympathetic imagery into my head, and I cringe and freak out…what if it happened to one of these precious kids? What if some random trap happened to be on our path of exploration through public land got them?

We feel that most (sane) people find trapping an ignominious, grotesque act of violence: we want everyone to know: it’s torture, plain and simple. You can’t just reduce trapping, any more than you can reduce rape, or reduce child abuse. You simply don’t allow it, not ever again.

Genesis 1:26: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Well, that verse of the bible pretty well says it all: a healthy majority (I’d guess more than 70 %,) of rural Americans buy into a strict and literal interpretation of it: “God sez they’re ours, so we can kill all them critters we’d be a-wantin’, I figger.”

Their attitude towards wildlife ranges from mere contempt, to an outright ‘shoot on sight’ policy. The nicest ones of all actually protect animals so that there’s more of them to kill.

Some, like this asshole here, actually revel in the pain they inflict; these are some pretty harsh ‘rulers,’ to be sure.
Being around them makes you feel like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, trying to be a modern person in 50′s-ville, USA. After awhile you realize: we’re not going to change this small population of ignorant, American Rednecks with facts, or with reason, or even with violence. Reasoning with these pinheads hasn’t worked for the last 100 years, so why does environment movement continue feel the need for talk compromise with them? It’s not like this is a gray issue here.

The empathy these rural ‘folk’ (key the great American ballad, and the sweeping vistas of grain,) may feel for pets, like dogs, cats and horses, just plain doesn’t extend into the realm of wildlife, and it never will, no matter how hard we try to reason with them. I can guarantee that some of these woodsmen, ranchers, and farmers will exterminate anything on their land that isn’t a cow, regardless of the law, so we won’t ever win that part of the war, without anything short of Predator Drones being deployed to gather intelligence. Personally, I’d like to deploy the weaponized drones, but I doubt we could manage to pass that particular enforcement plan through.

So, how do we win?

We engage the world, the ‘real’ world, the urban world, the educated world. These animals don’t know what a border is, they aren’t property of the United States; they’re part of the earth’s chain of life, and it’s ALL our jobs to protect them. That’s why you need to Share this cause right now. Not just once, but Share it once a day.

Every 8 seconds that we don’t stop trapping completely, another animal dies in torment: more than 10,000 animals die this frighteningly painful death, EVERY DAY, 4 MILLION animals per year.

This Cause will succeed, but your participation can’t stop with your signature:

-Like Bold Visions Conservation on Facebook

-Visit our website and learn more about trapping and other wildlife issues

-Become a member of Bold Visions, or donate.Your membership and/or donation will help win this Cause, and to support other important wildlife issues

-Share this issue with anyone who will listen: we need all the like-minded voices for this issue to bring their support to bear

-Share your experiences with us: we would love to hear what you think about our Causes, about our website…perhaps you even have a story to share with everyone about your experiences, or can speak out about how trapping makes you feel

THANK YOU, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU. YOU’RE AMAZING!

In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in GMO crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has belatedly discovered that the most common genetic regulatory sequence in commercial GMOs also encodes a significant fragment of a viral gene (Podevin and du Jardin 2012). This finding has serious ramifications for crop biotechnology and its regulation, but possibly even greater ones for consumers and farmers. This is because there are clear indications that this viral gene (called Gene VI) might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.

What Podevin and du Jardin discovered is that of the 86 different transgenic events (unique insertions of foreign DNA) commercialized to-date in the United States 54 contain portions of Gene VI within them. They include any with a widely used gene regulatory sequence called the CaMV 35S promoter (from the cauliflower mosaic virus; CaMV). Among the affected transgenic events are some of the most widely grown GMOs, including Roundup Ready soybeans (40-3-2) and MON810 maize. They include the controversial NK603 maize recently reported as causing tumors in rats (Seralini et al. 2012).

The researchers themselves concluded that the presence of segments of Gene VI “might result in unintended phenotypic changes”. They reached this conclusion because similar fragments of Gene VI have already been shown to be active on their own (e.g. De Tapia et al. 1993). In other words, the EFSA researchers were unable to rule out a hazard to public health or the environment.

In general, viral genes expressed in plants raise both agronomic and human health concerns (reviewed in Latham and Wilson 2008). This is because many viral genes function to disable their host in order to facilitate pathogen invasion. Often, this is achieved by incapacitating specific anti-pathogen defenses. Incorporating such genes could clearly lead to undesirable and unexpected outcomes in agriculture. Furthermore, viruses that infect plants are often not that different from viruses that infect humans. For example, sometimes the genes of human and plant viruses are interchangeable, while on other occasions inserting plant viral fragments as transgenes has caused the genetically altered plant to become susceptible to an animal virus (Dasgupta et al. 2001). Thus, in various ways, inserting viral genes accidentally into crop plants and the food supply confers a significant potential for harm.

The Choices for Regulators
The original discovery by Podevin and du Jardin (at EFSA) of Gene VI in commercial GMO crops must have presented regulators with sharply divergent procedural alternatives. They could 1) recall all CaMV Gene VI-containing crops (in Europe that would mean revoking importation and planting approvals) or, 2) undertake a retrospective risk assessment of the CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences and hope to give it a clean bill of health.

It is easy to see the attraction for EFSA of option two. Recall would be a massive political and financial decision and would also be a huge embarrassment to the regulators themselves. It would leave very few GMO crops on the market and might even mean the end of crop biotechnology.

Regulators, in principle at least, also have a third option to gauge the seriousness of any potential GMO hazard. GMO monitoring, which is required by EU regulations, ought to allow them to find out if deaths, illnesses, or crop failures have been reported by farmers or health officials and can be correlated with the Gene VI sequence. Unfortunately, this particular avenue of enquiry is a scientific dead end. Not one country has carried through on promises to officially and scientifically monitor any hazardous consequences of GMOs (1).

Unsurprisingly, EFSA chose option two. However, their investigation resulted only in the vague and unreassuring conclusion that Gene VI “might result in unintended phenotypic changes” (Podevin and du Jardin 2012). This means literally, that changes of an unknown number, nature, or magnitude may (or may not) occur. It falls well short of the solid scientific reassurance of public safety needed to explain why EFSA has not ordered a recall.

At one egg producer, they saw overcrowding with up to 11 birds per cage, dead birds apparently left untended, and a severe fly infestation capable of spreading salmonella across the chicken population.

Another video showed “egregious violations” of federal animal care regulations by a meat packing company. The company allowed cattle that were too weak or sick to stand on their own to be slaughtered anyway … this led to the largest meat recall in US history.

In 2011, McDonald’s and Target said they would no longer purchase eggs from Sparboe Farms due to potentially unhealthy conditions discovered at Sparboe’s egg laying facilities by an ABC News “20/20” investigation.

This is just a short list of the abuses revealed – and the swift enforcement actions that often follow – by undercover footage.

The videos have given both lawmakers and the public a glimpse into an otherwise secretive world, and now the agricultural industry, rather than pledging to clean up their acts, is trying to make it illegal for undercover videos to be filmed at their industrial farms.

Ag-Gag Bills Seek to Keep You in the Dark About Where Your Food Comes From
Five states have so-called ag-gag laws in place, and another 10 have introduced their own anti-whistleblower laws this year. The laws, which are being heavily promoted by lobbyists for the meat, egg and dairy industries, would essentially prevent anyone from exposing animal cruelty and food-safety issues at CAFOs by:

Making it illegal to take undercover photos or videos
Requiring anyone applying for a job at a CAFO to disclose affiliations with animal rights groups
Requiring activists to hand over undercover videos immediately
Requiring mandatory reporting with extremely short timelines so patterns of abuse cannot be documented
These undercover videos and revelations by whistleblowers are often the only glimpse that Americans get into the world of industrialized agriculture. But the industry knows that the more they see, the more uncomfortable people will become with supporting this broken system.

They could simply change their “farming” methods to those that do not abuse and neglect animals, and create extreme food-safety risks. Instead, they’re fighting to protect their cloak of secrecy. The Huffington Post reported:1

“In short, they’re working to prevent Americans from finding out about animal abuse, rather than working to prevent the abuse. They may not be literally shooting the messenger, but they do want to imprison her.”

Big Agriculture Wants to Trick You by Sugar-Coating Their Image
It’s very common for industrialized agriculture to pawn off their modern-day torture chambers as idyllic family farms. Last year, for instance, the Pork Producers Council released a cartoon that made CAFOs look like wonderful places for animals and workers.

They say they put up “modern” barns to protect animals from harsh weather, illness and predators … which when translated to reality means the pigs never get to see the light of day, are packed in so tightly, living in their own feces, that illness runs rampant, and as for predators, well, the farm workers themselves are often caught in acts of abuse.

The Huffington Post2 recently highlighted a column by a pork industry veteran,3 which similarly advises pork producers to simply change the words they use to describe their horrific practices. For instance, he encourages calling gestation crates – two-foot-wide cages where breeding pigs spend nearly their entire lives, unable to even turn around – “individual maternity pens.” Other examples include “harvesting” animals rather than “slaughtering” and “environmentally controlled housing” in lieu of the confinement barns they really are.

It’s because of measures like these that even though most food comes from facilities that resemble factories rather than farms, many Americans still believe their food is grown on small family farms where animals are treated like living creatures instead of commodities. This is exactly what the pork producers and other industrial agribusiness giants want you to believe.

Because if you really knew where your pork, chicken, eggs or beef had come from, there’s a very strong chance you would not only refuse to eat it, but would be incredibly appalled at the very thought. The Huffington Post continued:4

“Big Ag is trying to do everything it can to keep Americans in the dark about how it abuses animals. Whether through ag-gag laws to prevent videos of animal abuse from surfacing or through playing the name game, this is an industry that knows it has a lot to hide.

After all, “one of the best things modern animal agriculture has going for it is that most people…haven’t a clue how animals are raised and processed,” wrote an editor of the Journal of Animal Science in an animal agriculture textbook. He aptly concluded, “For modern animal agriculture, the less the consumer knows about what’s happening before the meat hits the plate, the better.”

Agribusiness Uses Intensive Lobbying, Strong-Arm Tactics to Control Government
You might be wondering how ag-gag laws could ever be signed into law, given their implications for public health and animal welfare, not to mention truthful journalism and the First Amendment. The fact of the matter is, like many other industries, agribusiness uses intensive lobbying, strong-arm tactics and other abuses of power to keep regulations well in their favor. As reported by Occupy for Animals:5

“Federal legislature currently forbids animal waste from being categorized as hazardous. In addition, on the economic level, many corporations are multi-state and can simply move to another state if local laws become too restrictive for their tastes.

Other strong-arm tactics include abuse of power at the highest levels, industry lobby money poured into political campaigns in exchange for less restrictive laws, control of academic resources, and delaying tactics. Perhaps the most damning example of political abuse is the ability of certain corporations to claim immunity to the federal Clean Air Act.”

The end result of these strong-arm tactics is an industry that releases more greenhouse gases into the environment than the entire global transportation industry, as well as produces significant drinking water contamination from the massive amounts of animal waste generated.

Yet, despite their destructive impacts on the environment, animal welfare and human health, the US government is continuing their history of supporting these industrial CAFO operations, both by looking the other way when abuse or contamination occurs, and by directly subsidizing cheaply produced beef, and corn and soy used for feed. As it stands, 2 percent of US livestock facilities produce 40 percent of farm animals,6 and these large, corporate-owned CAFOs have been highly promoted as the best way to produce food for the masses.

The only reason CAFOs are able to remain so “efficient,” bringing in massive profits while selling their food for bottom-barrel prices, is because they substitute subsidized crops for pasture grazing. Corporations primarily use the CAFO system because efficiency and profits are valued above all else, even though this frequently violates natural laws and increase the risk to people eating the food they produce. The environmental assaults that follow are considered a cost of doing business, but as the documentary film River of Waste poignantly shared, we should perhaps be heeding this Native American Cree prophecy before it is too late …

“Only after the last tree is cut down, the last of the water poisoned, the last animal destroyed … only then will you realize you cannot eat money.”

Support the Food Producers Who Truly Have Nothing to Hide
You vote three times a day when you choose the foods you eat for your meals. Will you vote for the system that is systematically destroying your health, animal welfare and the planet … or will you support those who are changing the world for the better, one meal at a time? There are basically two different models of food production today, and there’s growing conflict between them. The first, and most prevalent, is the CAFO model that takes a very mechanistic view toward life, whereas the other — the local, sustainable farm model — has a biological and holistic view.

I encourage you to support the small family farms in your area, particularly organic farms that respect the laws of nature and use the relationships between animals, plants, insects, soil, water and habitat to create synergistic, self-supporting, non-polluting, GMO-free ecosystems. Whereas industrial agriculturists want to hide their practices from you, traditional farmers will welcome you onto their land, as they have nothing to hide.

Whether you do so for ethical, environmental or health reasons — or all of the above – the closer you can get to the “backyard barnyard,” the better. You’ll want to get your meat, chickens and eggs from smaller community farms with free-ranging animals, organically fed and locally marketed. This is the way food has been raised and distributed for centuries … before it was corrupted by politics, corporate greed and the blaring arrogance of the food industry.

You can do this not only by visiting the farm directly, if you have one nearby, but also by taking part in farmer’s markets and community-supported agriculture programs. The following organizations can also help you locate farm-fresh foods in your local area, raised in a humane, sustainable manner.

Read more: Studies Show Tomatoes Blasted with LED Light Have 50% More Vitamin C | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

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green design, eco design, sustainable design, dinosaur extinction, meteorite, tomato ancestors
The Meteorite That Killed Off the Dinosaurs Also Made Tomatoes Red!
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Lori Zimmer
Tomatoes Blasted with LED Lights Have 50 Percent More Vitamin C
by Lori Zimmer, 05/09/13
filed under: Botanical

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green design, eco design, sustainable design, LEDs in green houses, Philips Lighting, LEd Tomatoes, Wageningen URPhoto via Shutterstock

We all know LED lights help us save energy, but did you know that they could also help us to fight colds? Researchers at Wageningen UR, in a partnership with Philips Lighting, have put LED modules to the test, blasting bursts of light on tomato plants. Amazingly, the tomatoes that received a boost of light from LEDs contained twice as much vitamin C, with only a quarter of the light intensity from a naturally sunny day.

Image ©burgundavia

green design, eco design, sustainable design, LEDs in green houses, Philips Lighting, LEd Tomatoes, Wageningen UR

Image ©burgundavia

For the study, the researchers were looking for natural ways to grow healthier fruit and vegetables indoors, rather than in the field. In collaboration with Health from the Greenhouse (Gezond uit de Kas) and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, researchers suspended LED modules in between growing tomatoes that would otherwise be in the shade and beneath the leaves of tomato plants.

The LED-blasted tomatoes were then tested for their nutritional value. The resulting data showed that the light-boosted fruit were packed with more vitamin C — in most cases about 50 percent more. The light from LED modules, rather than traditional greenhouse lighting, helped tomatoes foster and grow more nutrients while creating a more red and delicious tomato.

With the help of LED lights, tomato growers can also reduce costs. Not only will the presence of LEDs yield more desirable tomatoes by evening out fruit that would usually not fully develop because of shade, the tomatoes will achieve nutritional maturity faster and easier with the modules.

Read more: Studies Show Tomatoes Blasted with LED Light Have 50% More Vitamin C | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

Consider this case in point: A couple of years ago, narcotics officers knocked on the door at the home of a man who had just purchased a seed starter kit from a local gardening shop. The police officers were demanding to know just what it was he was planning to grow.

“Tomatoes,” he told them, and the officers finally left – but only after they were convinced he was not growing marijuana.

Since that day the gardener, who asked the Kansas City Star not to identify him over fears he would once again be hassled by police, began parking a block away from that same garden center, in order to avoid police stakeouts.

The harassment of hydroponic gardeners has only gotten worse since them.

In fact, owners of garden centers are increasingly complaining that police surveillance and stakeouts are hurting their businesses – sometimes even driving smaller garden centers out of business. Few people, it seems, are comfortable shopping under the watchful eyes of the Police State.

A number of customers, the paper said, have reported being followed home by police after making their purchases, regardless of what they were growing.

‘You don’t hear about when there is no case’

As is always the case, cops are defending this horrendous abuse of the public trust by saying, you know, such surveillance is necessary and prudent because it is keeping marijuana off the streets. To even believe such nonsense makes you wonder if the narcotics officers making that claim are smoking dope themselves.

Police say that local narcotics officers have been watching hydroponics shops – which sell equipment for growing produce indoors – for years. They write down license plate numbers of customers and then follow up with search warrants after first looking through their garbage for any evidence of drug use. They say all of this is justified because marijuana growers shop at hydroponic shops too – in addition to the vast majority of customers who grow flowers and crops inside their homes.

Sometimes such arrests become high-profile events. Many times, however, there are no cases to make.

“[What y]ou don’t hear about are the cases where there is no case,” attorney Cheryl Pilate told the Star. She added that she wonders how often innocent people are questioned by police just for shopping at a hydroponics gardening store.

She knows of what she speaks. She is currently representing a Leawood, Kan., family that was the target of an April 20, 2012 drug raid in which officers turned up no evidence – zero – of illegal substances. That family, Robert and Adlynn Harte, were raising tomatoes and other veggies that grow under lights.

They were never even told why they were targeted, so they have filed a suit against the Johnson County, Kan., Sheriff’s Department “to gain access to records that would reveal why they were initially under suspicion,” the Star reported.

The couple, and their attorney, believe that they were suspected of growing illicit drugs in part because they shopped at Green Circle Hydroponics, one of three local stores that specialize in indoor gardening supplies.

The Police State is bad for business
That explanation would not surprise Jeffrey Hawkins, owner of a similar gardening center called Hooked On Ponics. His place, too, is under constant police surveillance; he knows this because his customers have told him of being questioned after they have shopped there, including one woman who grows orchids.

“What they do is target all the grow shops,” Hawkins, who said he closed his original store in Liberty, Kan., after business dropped off due to police scrutiny, told the paper. He said he now operates on weekends at a northeast Kansas City flea market.

“It’s a serious problem,” he said. “They profile people.”

The surveillance and harassment of customers “is getting more serious,” said Sam Williams, the owner of Grow Your Own Hydroponics in Independence, Mo.

“It’s not right. They’re driving business away from me,” he said.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.kansascity.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/hydroponics.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040121_hydroponics_police_state_surveillance.html#ixzz2S3Wmv1WT

Genetic engineering (GE) of our food supply amounts to a massive science experiment being performed on mankind, without consent or full disclosure. Although the biotech industry continues to claim GE products are safe, the truth is that no one knows what the long-term effects will be, because no one has done the necessary studies.

The loudest proponents of GE are the ones who stand to profit the most, and they don’t seem terribly concerned about the human or environmental costs.

What do we know for certain? We know genetic engineering is riddled with unpredictable effects… so we should expect the unexpected.

You may not realize that this reckless genetic experimentation is not limited to your food supply. Besides being used to create drugs and “Frankenfish,” they’ve also created vaccine-containing bananas, goats that produce spider silk in their milk, venomous cabbage, chemotherapy chicken eggs, and even glow-in-the-dark cats.1

As creepy as some of these things are, the application that may have the greatest potential for global disaster are GE trees created to serve the desires of the paper industry.

Deforestation is already an enormous problem, and the last thing we need is to further stress our precious native forests and the flora and fauna that depend on them.

The documentary featured above discusses how GE trees may adversely impact ecological systems on a grand scale, with potentially catastrophic effects. A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees is hosted by Dr. David Suzuki,2 an award-winning geneticist and author of 52 books.

‘The Greatest Threat to Native Forests Since the Chain Saw’

As Dr. Suzuki explains, the problem with genetic engineering has to do with the fact that GE plants and animals are created using horizontal gene transfer (also called horizontal inheritance), as contrasted with vertical gene transfer, which is the mechanism in natural reproduction.

Vertical gene transfer, or vertical inheritance, is the transmission of genes from the parent generation to offspring via sexual or asexual reproduction, i.e., breeding a male and female from one species.

By contrast, horizontal gene transfer involves injecting a gene from one species into a completely different species, which yields unexpected and often unpredictable results. Proponents of GE assume they can apply the principles of vertical inheritance to horizontal inheritance, and according to Dr. Suzuki, this assumption is flawed in just about every possible way and is “just lousy science.”

Genes don’t function in a vacuum — they act in the context of the entire genome. Whole sets of genes are turned on and off in order to arrive at a particular organism, and the entire orchestration is an activated genome.

It’s a dangerous mistake to assume a gene’s traits are expressed properly, regardless of where they’re inserted. The safety of GE is only a hypothesis, and in science, initial hypotheses typically end up being wrong. GE foods are promoted as if they’ve been found to be safe, which is the farthest thing from the truth.

Why this rush to apply this science before testing it? The simple answer is, those promoting it stand to profit enormously from it. The timber, pulp, bioenergy, and fruit industries are rushing ahead with GE trees, with only their paydays in mind. As the film states:

“Genetic engineering of trees is the greatest threat to the native forests since the invention of the chain saw.”

Why Genetically Engineer Trees?

Trees as being genetically engineered to give them unnatural characteristics, such as the ability to kill insects, tolerate toxic herbicides, grow abnormally fast, or have altered wood composition. The paper pulp industry has to remove lignin from wood pulp before it can be used to make paper, which is an expensive part of the process. So, the biotech industry is working to create trees with lower lignin content. The problem is, lignin is what gives trees their structural integrity.

It’s what allows trees to stand strong in wind and other weather, and to withstand diseases and damage from insect and animal browsing. Low lignin trees are weaker and less able to withstand these environmental stresses. Dead low-lignin trees also decompose faster, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere more quickly, which contributes to climate change.

The best thing for trees is to not use them for paper. Paper doesn’t need to be made from wood pulp, because there are more Earth-friendly materials such as agricultural wastes, recycled material, hemp, tobacco and even banana leaves.

Fruit trees are being genetically engineered for disease resistance. However, contamination of wild and organic fruit trees by genetically altered DNA has already had devastating consequences on nearby groves. For example, GE papaya plantations have contaminated much of the organic and wild papaya trees in Hawaii.3 Nearly 20,000 papaya seeds from the Big Island and Oahu revealed GMO contamination. Eighty percent of the seeds tested were from organic farms, and the remainder were from wild trees and backyard gardens.

Contamination with GE DNA has caused many organic Hawaiian papaya growers to lose their plantations and/or their organic certification. Hawaiian GE papayas have now begun developing black spot fungus, so they have to be heavily sprayed with toxic fungicides every 10 days.

This is so typical of what happens to GE plants — they are weaker and more susceptible to disease and end up needing massive amounts of chemicals, usually in the form of herbicides and pesticides — to remain viable. This is particularly tragic because there ARE so many far superior alternatives. Later this year, I will be reviewing many of the newer high performance agriculture techniques that far surpass virtually ANY benefit of GMO technology. I am currently identifying the leading experts in the US in this area.

It is crucial to have an alternative to the increasingly pervasive GMO technology as the list of adverse health effects from these toxic chemicals is growing all the time. For example, the herbicide glyphosate (the active agent in Roundup) has been linked to miscarriages, premature births, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The only winner in this scenario is the biotech industry because it manufactures both the GE seeds and the toxic chemicals required to grow them. The biotech industry has created the problem, as well as the “solution” that makes them rich.

The Spread of Seed and Pollen Is Uncontrollable. Period.

Genetically engineered trees vastly differ from other annual GE crops like corn and soybeans because trees can live for decades and even centuries in the wild. Once GE trees escape the confines of their plantation, they are extremely difficult to eradicate. For this reason, the risks, regulation and assessment needs of GE trees are even greater than those of agricultural GE products like corn and soy.

Disrupting forest ecosystems endangers the health of the entire planet. Native forests have been called the “lungs of the earth,” providing food and wildlife habitats everywhere. Forests absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, filter water and release it back into the atmosphere. Many tree species, such as pines and poplars, can spread their pollen and seeds over great distances. Pollen can blow hundreds or even thousands of miles, opening the door for native forests to be dusted with GE pollen.

The contaminating of native forests is both inevitable and irreversible, according to the Global Justice Ecology organization.4 Some tree varieties are widespread throughout the world, and some are able to interbreed with similar species. Some tree types are highly invasive, such as Eucalyptus, a “bully” that has spread out of control across California. Once wild tree species are contaminated, GE trees could take over vast geographical areas, and there is no do-over! You can recall a bad drug, but you can’t recall a bad tree.

Industry’s Answer to Cross-Contamination: The Terminator Gene

The biotech industry realized tree contamination would be a problem, so they developed the “terminator gene.” This gene causes the plant to produce a toxin that’s supposed to prevent its seeds from being viable, thereby preventing cross-contamination. Like the Terminator’s promise “I’ll be back,” Mother Nature trumps human ingenuity when it comes to nature’s drive to reproduce. Even the originators of the terminator gene admit it’s impossible to ensure 100 percent sterility.

The problem is, even a small amount of slippage can spread sterility to our native forests.

Consider the scenario of a native forest sitting adjacent to a GE tree plantation. Once contaminated, 95 percent of the native forest trees may become sterile, meaning they would produce no nuts, no seeds, no fruit, and no flowers or pollen. This renders the forest uninhabitable to native wildlife and rapidly degrades the soil. This phenomenon is already being seen around the 100 to 150 GE tree test plots5 in the southern part of the US.

Monsanto’s Love Child, ArborGen

GE tree plantations may threaten to destroy global ecosystems and local farmers’ livelihoods, but they promise to make the biotech industry rich. Genetically engineered trees and other crops become the property of the company that patented the seeds from which they grew. Monsanto has stolen more than 15 million dollars from farmers whose crops were contaminated by no fault of their own.

Once a farmer’s crop is contaminated, they can be sued by Monsanto, which manufactures the majority of the world’s GE seed. Even if only one percent of the crop is contaminated, patent law dictates that Monsanto gains possession of 100 percent of the crop. If this patent law goes unchallenged, ALL of the world’s natural resources could end up owned exclusively by biotech industry magnates.

The majority of GE research and development on trees has come from a company called ArborGen, the industrial “love child” from a tryst between Monsanto, International Paper, Westvaco and Fletcher Forests.6 Although Monsanto dropped out of the partnership early on, ties between Monsanto and ArborGen remain.

Barbara Wells, who was ArborGen’s CEO and President from 2002 to 2012, spent 17 years with Monsanto and headed its RoundUp Ready Soy division in Brazil. Similar parallels exist with ArborGen’s new CEO, Andrew Baum, and its VP of Business and Product Development, David Nothmann — who also happens to serve on committees in the Department of Energy and USDA.

The government has doled out numerous grants — well over $1 billion — to bioenergy companies and scientists to further the development of new bioenergies, many of which center on GE. The USDA is doing everything it can to hasten the approval of GE technology and silence the opposition. According to Global Justice Ecology:

“In April 2011, the USDA announced a new plan that would allow biotech companies to conduct their own environmental assessments. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the USDA is responsible for studying the environmental risks of GMOs. Part of the strategy of the USDA’s new plan is to speed up the deregulation process and take it out of the public arena, reducing the ability of GMO watchdog groups to weigh in. This plan is a direct result of the numerous cases that the USDA has lost in court due to their poorly conducted environmental assessments of potentially dangerous GMOs.

On February 22, 2012, the USDA announced a plan to cut in half the review time for new GMO products from 3 years to 13-16 months. Part of this acceleration would be accomplished by accepting public comments after making the final decision in the Environmental Assessment, eliminating any real ability for the public to have input.”

Final Thoughts

GE tree plantations threaten to spoil native forests, displace local farmers, and destroy sustainable economies. Self-sufficient communities will be forced to leave their lands and find livelihoods elsewhere. Pollen and seeds from GE trees are impossible to control, even with “terminator gene” technology, and find a way to cross-pollinate wild trees with grim ecological consequences. Pollen from GE trees may also cause brand new allergies that we may or may not be able to successfully address. Despite the obvious dangers, the profit-driven biotech industry, with the full backing of the US government, is pushing GE trees forward with ever-increasing zeal. That said, there are some things YOU can do to help preserve our precious native forests:

Refrain from buying paper products made from trees/wood pulp; instead, buy recycled paper (toilet paper, tissue paper, writing paper, computer paper); Greenpeace and NRDC have handy downloadable guides for buying recycled, Earth-friendly paper products
Eliminate your need for toilet paper altogether by installing in a bidet
Say no to napkins, especially when you’re handed a stack of them; use cleaning cloths instead of paper towels
Cut back on printing; ask yourself if you really need to print a document; use both sides of a paper before tossing it; use old receipts for notes; reuse wrapping paper, or make your own from newsprint or magazines
Opt out of the yellow pages7

For more information about GE trees, visit Global Justice Ecology. To sign the Petition to Prohibit GE Trees, or Donate to the Global Justice Ecology Project, visit globaljusticeecology.org/petition.php. And be sure to support GMO labeling campaigns.

Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods

While California Prop. 37 failed to pass last November, by a very narrow margin, the fight for GMO labeling is far from over. The field-of-play has now moved to the state of Washington, where the people’s initiative 522, “The People’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act,” will require food sold in retail outlets to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients. As stated on LabelitWA.org:

“Calorie and nutritional information were not always required on food labels. But since 1990 it has been required and most consumers use this information every day. Country-of-origin labeling wasn’t required until 2002. The trans fat content of foods didn’t have to be labeled until 2006. Now, all of these labeling requirements are accepted as important for consumers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also says we must know with labeling if our orange juice is from fresh oranges or frozen concentrate.

Doesn’t it make sense that genetically engineered foods containing experimental viral, bacterial, insect, plant or animal genes should be labeled, too? Genetically engineered foods do not have to be tested for safety before entering the market. No long-term human feeding studies have been done. The research we have is raising serious questions about the impact to human health and the environment.

I-522 provides the transparency people deserve. I-522 will not raise costs to consumers or food producers. It simply would add more information to food labels, which manufacturers change routinely anyway, all the time. I-522 does not impose any significant cost on our state. It does not require the state to conduct label surveillance, or to initiate or pursue enforcement. The state may choose to do so, as a policy choice, but I-522 was written to avoid raising costs to the state or consumers.”

Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, they need support of people like YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply because we didn’t have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food companies. Let’s not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can, regardless of what state you live in.

No matter where you live in the United States, please donate money to these labeling efforts through the Organic Consumers Fund.
If you live in Washington State, please sign the I-522 petition. You can also volunteer to help gather signatures across the state.
For timely updates on issues relating to these and other labeling initiatives, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.
Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the Washington initiative.

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