ontrol
oil and you control nations," said US Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger in the 1970s. "Control food and you control the people."
Global food control has nearly been achieved, by
reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are
distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda
has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food
but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the
hands of transnational corporations.
Profits Before Populations
According to an Acres USA interview
of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue
University, two modified traits account for practically all of the
genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect
resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves
insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals).
Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that
name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants
genetically modified to resist it.
Glyphosate-based herbicides are now the most commonly
used herbicides in the world. Glyphosate is an essential partner to the
GMOs that are the principal business of the burgeoning biotech industry.
Glyphosate is a "broad-spectrum" herbicide that destroys
indiscriminately, not by killing unwanted plants directly but by tying
up access to critical nutrients.
Because of the insidious way in which it works, it has
been sold as a relatively benign replacement for the devastating
earlier dioxin-based herbicides. But a barrage of experimental data has
now shown glyphosate and the GMO foods incorporating it to pose serious
dangers to health. Compounding the risk is the toxicity of "inert"
ingredients used to make glyphosate more potent. Researchers have found,
for example, that the surfactant POEA can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. But these risks have been conveniently ignored.
The widespread use of GMO foods and glyphosate herbicides helps explain the anomaly that the US spends over twice as much per capita on healthcare as the average developed country, yet it is rated far down the scale of the world's healthiest populations. The World Health Organization has ranked the US LAST out of 17 developed nations for overall health.
Sixty to seventy percent of the foods in US supermarkets
are now genetically modified. By contrast, in at least 26 other
countries-including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India,
France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy,
Mexico and Russia-GMOs are totally or partially banned; and significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.
A ban on GMO and glyphosate use might go far toward
improving the health of Americans. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a
global trade agreement for which the Obama Administration has sought
Fast Track status, would block that sort of cause-focused approach to
the healthcare crisis.
READ MORE: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/20644-monsanto-the-tpp-and-global-food-dominance
