DaughterNature.com

This is a huge issue and a great concern of mine. Many foods that find their way to our tables have been genetically engineered and many studies on the harmful affects of these foods are incomplete or non existent.

We feel this is something we all should be aware of and here are important links:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 800005689#

The Gmo Trilogy And Seeds of Deception Set by Jeffrey M. Smith

Non-GMO Shopping Guide

Responsible Technology


Center for Food Safety - Petition



A MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY!





Get plugged in with companies offering 100% Natural Health Supplements such as http://www.HealthRoads.net which distributes an amazing product called Zeal For Life. See below and BUY IT TODAY!!

* Statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the subject.

This is awesome! Knowledge is out there, but one must make an effort to find it.
I am glad I found this forum! Great information. Thank you for sharing.

Hi gr8-2no,
We appreciate your comments and thank you for sharing this forum with everyone you know!

Have a GR8 day!

:O)

(NaturalNews)
http://www.naturalnews.com/028492_BRCA1 ... genes.html

As NaturalNews readers already know, corporations and universities right now claim intellectual property ownership over roughly twenty percent of your genetic code. This absurdity has occurred due to bizarre operations of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office which has handed corporations intellectual property monopolies over everything ranging from human genes to animals and seeds. Monsanto's "ownership" of genetically modified seed crops, for example, was only made possible by the patent office's willingness to grant the corporation intellectual property ownership over seeds.

I have long argued that granting patents on seeds, genes and medicines is a violation of natural law. In 2007, for example, I wrote an article entitled " Corporate Greed, Intellectual Property Laws and the Destruction of Human Civilization" (http://www.naturalnews.com/022096.html) in which I argued that the granting of such patents is a threat to not just human freedom but also the future of life on earth.

What happens when corporations, for example, wish to start collecting royalties on the human genes that you are copying when you reproduce by having children? The mere act of conceiving a child makes you a patent law violator... a criminal engaged in genetic piracy under U.S. law. This may sound patently absurd, if you'll excuse the expression, but it is precisely what has been held as true under current U.S. patent law.


You can't patent things created by Mother Nature
Fortunately, things are beginning to shift. Earlier this week, a federal judge struck down patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. These are the genes used by many doctors to attempt to predict breast cancer risk. Of course, the very idea that genes alone can determine your cancer risk is provably false, but that's another story altogether. For the point of this story, just keep in mind that lots of women have their DNA tested for the presence of these BRCA genes in order to (they think) determine their breast cancer risk.

But one corporation called Myriad Genetics holds seven patents on these genes. Although the patents are shrouded in lawyer's language, this company essentially claims to own these genes as if it had invented them! Furthermore, this company held that the mere act of testing for these genes was a violation of their patents.

Now, a more sensible person might instantly recognize that your genes existed long before Myriad Genetics came around. Depending on your frame of belief, your genes were either created by God or by Mother Nature, and to grant monopoly IP ownership over those genes to a corporations seems absurd beyond all reason.

But no: This corporation and its lawyers argued with a straight face that they alone effectively owned your BRCA genes and that no one could even test for the presence of those genes without paying them a royalty!

United States District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet disagreed with the patents in his 152-page decision http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/p ... pinion.pdf which strikes down seven patents formerly belonging to Myriad Genetics. This victory was achieved, in part, by the American Civil Liberties Union which helped challenge the BRCA patents last year. The ACLU argued (quite correctly, in my view) that human genes are products of nature and should never be owned by Man.

As state in a NY Times article (source below), an ACLU lawyer explained it like this: "The human genome, like the structure of blood, air or water, was discovered, not created. There is an endless amount of information on genes that begs for further discovery, and gene patents put up unacceptable barriers to the free exchange of ideas."


Striking back at biotech

If this decision stands, the resulting consequences could be hugely damaging to the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, both of which depend on government-granted monopolies (patents) to lock in their corporate profits. Biotech companies have been ramping up research on gene-based diseases for a decade or more, hoping to cash in on the genetic monopolies that would guarantee them profits for all sorts of human diseases that they could tie to "genetic disorders."

The idea that "your genes made you sick" is a very seductive (and profitable) concept for the biotech and pharmaceutical industries because it implies that patients have no role in their own health. Genes determine your future, you're told, so eating right and taking nutritional supplements is useless, they insist. Because your genes have already determined what diseases you'll get, the only thing you can do is take their patented chemicals that target those genes or their symptoms. Merely being screened for these "diseases" earns these corporations a royalty, by the way, since they owns the patents on the genes themselves.

This "Great Lie" of the biotech industry, of course, depends entirely on being able to procure intellectual property monopolies over human genes. And that's why this week's decision by judge Sweet is sending shockwaves through the biotech industry. They are now concerned that they won't be able to attract investors to develop more gene-targeted "therapies" (yeah, right) because they will no longer be granted patent monopolies through which they can make obscene profits by scaring patients into expensive gene therapies.


The greed of the corporation knows no bounds

Biotech, pharmaceutical and agricultural corporations, you see, are some of the most arrogant and dangerous organizations on the planet. They believe that they alone have the right to monopolize your genes, your seeds, your food and your medicine. Anything that they don't control and profit from is attacked or destroyed. The FDA's pharma-inspired attacks on nutritional products is a great example of this monopoly profiteering in action. It's the same story with Monsanto's legal assaults on farmers who refuse to plant genetically modified seeds.

That's why these corporations will be lobbying hard to reverse this decision by judge Sweet, forcing a reversal that would lock in their monopoly ownership over genes, seeds and medicines. These corporations want to own the world and control everyone and everything in it. And while they can't necessarily own all the physical objects in the world, if they can achieve ownership over most of the intellectual property, they can come pretty close to ruling the world.

Think about it: If they own your genes, your food crops and your medicines, they effectively control virtually everything you depend on to stay alive. It's not out of the realm of possibility to suppose that in the near future, you will not be allowed to have a baby without paying royalties to the biotech corporations that "own" your human genes. Making a baby, after all, does involve copying your genes, you pirate!

That's why granting corporations over genes, seeds or medicines is so dangerous to the future of humanity: It concentrates power over the world into the hands of the few. If that sounds like Monsanto's corporate motto, that's because Monsanto is the perfect example of a company that literally seeks to control the entire world and everything in it, and if they can exploit U.S. patent law to assert that control over the people, they will almost certainly take every opportunity to do so.


Why corporations are inherently evil

Allow me to share something about large corporations. Corporations have people, money, lobbyists and lots of power. But corporations do not have morals or ethics or human compassion. Corporations are granted all of the rights of the People (free speech rights, for example) and yet they have none of the compassions or sensibilities of people. Corporations consistently endanger and even sacrifice human lives in order to maximize their profits.

Want examples? Union Carbide in Bhopal, India. See the horrifying pictures of "the children of Dow's Chemicals" here: http://www.bhopal.org

Or review the story of Enron and how that company turned off power plants in California, killing senior citizens in the high heat in order to make more money selling emergency electricity back to the State of California.

Or look at the drug companies that manufacture and push deadly cholesterol and heart drugs that are killing people, even while burying the clinical trial evidence that proves those drugs to be extremely dangerous.

The list of corporate crimes against humanity is far too long to cover right here, but if you want a good overview of the situation, pick up some books by author John Perkins who wrote Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. I recently interviewed John Perkins by phone and will be posting that here on NaturalNews in the near future.

Watch this interview with John Perkins:




The important point here is simply this: If you grant corporations intellectual property ownership over your genes, foods, seeds and medicines, they will use that power to enslave you.

That's what corporations do: They inherently seek to create high-profit monopolies that limit consumer choice and force consumers to pay monopoly prices for all their goods and services, all to the benefit of the corporate shareholders. This simple truth is, in fact, the entire point of having a corporation in the first place: To make as much money as possibly by any means possible within the law. So if patent law grants monopolies over human genes, then it's only a matter of time before corporations will exploit that to own and dominate human reproduction involving those genes!



Patent reform is crucial to freedom

This is why I believe that judge Sweet's decision to deny patent ownership over the BRCA genes was hugely important to the future of freedom for humankind. If these intellectual property monopolies are allowed to stand, they will only grow ever more powerful and dangerous to the freedoms of populations around the world. If they are not struck down, these corporate monopolies will inevitably result in the outright enslavement of humankind to the corporatocracy -- a situation that many would agree we are dangerously close to right now.

So watch this situation carefully. You can bet that behind closed doors, judge Sweet is right now being pressured and perhaps even threatened if he does not reverse his decision. Or members of a higher court are being lobbied to overturn it for him.

One thing I've learned in my years of being the editor for NaturalNews is that corporations will do anything -- absolutely ANYTHING -- to protect their profits. This includes doing things that are far outside U.S. law and that endanger the lives of individuals or groups of people who stand in the way of a particular corporate agenda. Individual freedom has no value whatsoever in the eyes of these corporations, especially if it interferes with their profits. So send some good vibes over to judge Sweet and ask that he be protected right now for having the courage to boldly state the obvious: Corporations should not own human genes!

And don't be surprised to see the corporations in the biotech industry pulling out all the stops to try to get this decision reversed. Their very future depends on dominating humankind through legal monopolies known as patents, and anyone who threatens that profit model will be targeted by the biotech industry in more ways than one.

Sources for this story include:
NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/busin ... tml?src=me

FierceBiotech
http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/expe ... 2010-03-31

(NaturalNews) Author's Note The number 8 at the beginning of a PLU is not being used to identify GMOs. This from a recent article by Jeffrey Smith posted late Feb 2010 in Huffington Post. The 8 was proposed but never followed up on. Until Smith's recent post, all other sources used by the author were claiming the 8 tag for GMOs was in effect.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) states, "Genetically Modified foods have not been properly tested and pose a serious health risk. There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation." The AAEM also called for a moratorium on GMO's in food and for physicians to advise their patients to avoid GM foods. Since the massive invasion of GMO's into the food supply from 1996, chronic diseases and food allergies have doubled.

Now that President Obama has appointed Michael Taylor as Food Czar to his cabinet, the struggle is destined to become more difficult unless more consumers knowingly boycott GMO products. Michael Taylor was a vice president and chief lobbyist for Monsanto prior to his cabinet selection. Did you know that the stated aim of Monsanto is to own the patents for all the food crop seeds in the world? And now they're in the White House!

Why Avoid GMO Foods?

From anti-GMO activist and best selling author Jeffrey Smith's recent News With Views Internet article, "Doctors Warn: Avoid Genetically Modified Foods," "World renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava goes one step further. After reviewing more than 600 scientific journals, he concludes that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans".

"Among the population, biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute warns that 'children are the most likely to be adversely effected by toxins and other dietary problems' related to GM foods. He says without adequate studies, the children become 'the experimental animals.'"

In addition to you and your family's personal health risks, the whole human race is endangered as Monsanto pursues it's stated goal of owning the world's food supply. Genetic engineering alters genetic codes of the DNA in organism by splicing in other genes from other forms of life, including other plant forms, insects, bacteria and even viruses. This creates mutant organisms and dangerously mutating genes, solely for sociopathic commercial demands on different forms of produce.

These commercial demands never consider the negative effects on human and animal health, nor the future of the food chain. Pollen pollution from GMO crop fields has already infected formerly pristine crops on small farms and indigenous farming groups. This pollution can cause permanent genetic mutations. And when Monsanto officials determine where these pollen drift pollutions occur, they sue the farmers of the polluted crops for patent violations! So farmers who avoid GMO planting are at risk.

As a matter of fact, there are several documents recovered from lawsuits and from the Freedom of Information Act that show FDA scientists had even urged long term studies before releasing GMO products. This was back in the early 1990's when the genome biotechnology industry was coming out of the closet. So how were they over ruled?

Along came Michael Taylor from Monsanto, you know, the current Food Czar guy, taking a key position in the FDA to create policy regarding GMO foods. The policy he instated essentially decrees that it's all food; there is no difference from any other food, and if the biotech company that created the GM foods say they're safe that's good enough! That FDA policy for GM food remains the same to this day.

Recovered documents from the biotech companies and independent testing prove that the GMO firms not only do very little testing, but they also often test improperly, cheat on the testing, and lie about the results! This junk science and PR lying is what gets to the mainstream media and press, via the FDA or even from biotechnology press releases. Meanwhile, research that prove GMO dangers is suppressed.

How To Avoid GMO Foods

Avoid the big four, which has become five now: The highly genetically engineered crops are soy, corn, canola and cottonseed. Add sugar beets, which are now becoming GMO.

Most blended oils in North America contain canola and cottonseed oils. Use extra virgin olive oil instead. Avoid all soy products and oils as well. The healthy alternative is usually not so healthy after all, since most soy is GMO unless it is specifically labeled non-GMO.

Most corn is GMO. Items like corn flakes and corn chips are from GM corn. Corn based products, corn starch, corn oil, corn syrup, and high fructose corn syrup appear on the ingredients labels of many processed foods. Corn in various forms is prevalent in the vast fast food supply that dominates our culture.

GMO corn is fed to cattle and other livestock. If you eat beef, pork or fowl, you are probably a second hand consumer of GM corn. So dig a little deeper and buy grass or alfalfa fed or free range livestock meats only.

Sugar beets are added to the big four to make it five. Now more and more sugar beets are GMO. Sugar from sugar beets is less expensive than cane sugar for refined sugar; therefore, it is popular with food processing groups. So if you haven't stopped using sugar or products with refined sugar, you might want to reconsider now.

A handy guide for consumers are PLU codes that are labeled or stamped onto fruits and vegetables. PLU stands for Price Look Up. The PLU codes are for input into electronic cash registers to determine prices for bulk items, such as apples and cabbage. The codes identify exactly what the item is with its current pricing, while giving the consumer a handy tag for identifying GMO produce.

Each PLU code has five digits. If the first digit is a 9, the item is organic. If it is an 8, it is GMO! Conventionally grown produce has a 0 for the first digit, but usually the 0 is dropped. So most conventionally grown produce will actually have only 4 digits on the PLU tag if you don't see a 0 at the beginning. The 8 gives you the worst of two worlds, GMO and heavy chemical spraying!

Those are your three main categories. PLU codes do not usually appear on packaged produce or items such as string beans that are too small to label or stamp.

Obviously, buying organic and from local farmers is ideal. Forget convenience. Buy bulk and eschew packaged foods. So what if you have to soak legumes the night before cooking them. If you buy locally, through a local health food store or at a farmers' market, you can determine by direct communication how the crops were raised.

Need more details? You can download a free, very detailed Non GMO Shopping Guide (pdf) created by The Center for Food Safety here: http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

The Genesis of GMO Madness

[The following passage is excerpted from "Commentary on Dangers of Genetically Modified Foods", By Edem Srem Sept. 2, 2009 GBC News]

The history of controlling the food industry in the world by the then American Government in 1973 under President Nixon started by introducing the "Food for Peace" programme which was led by Henry Kissinger, Nixon's Secretary of State and National Security Adviser.*

According to the New African Magazine, Kissinger controlled absolutely the US foreign policy and summarized his activities as "Control oil and you control nations, control food and you control the people". His idea of capturing the worldwide food industry started with the introduction of what was termed as the gene revolution. [End of article excerpt]

That gene revolution evolved to the biotechnology industry in food. Under Bush senior, biotechnology was given the deregulation green light possibly more than any other industry. Connect all these dots to Michael Taylor's revolving door passages from corporate (Monsanto) to government (FDA) and back again to Monsanto then tapped as Food Czar.

The picture becomes apparent: the thrust to completely control food world wide is being pursued by an alliance of USA government policy and multi-national agribusiness and food processing corporation ambition. Don't expect government to come to the rescue!

Grass Roots Activism Too Shut Down GMO Foods

The agenda for controlling the world food supply through patented GMO seeds has hit a few glitches, thanks to the word getting out and food consumer boycotts. Monsanto's target for accomplishing this was up years ago! But of course, they haven't given up.

Monsanto is a multi-national company that created PCB's, Agent Orange, Aspartame, rBGH, Terminator Seeds and Round Up weed killer, for which GMO crops were created to withstand its heavy spraying, creating more toxic chemical residue to the GM crops than even conventionally grown crops. Would they care about anything but their food fascism control agenda? With Food Czar Monsanto Mike in the White House, they have their point man in position.

What Jeffrey M. Smith, Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and author of Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette proposes is that enough people get educated and boycott GMO products to diminish market demand. This can create a tipping point, where the balance of supply and demand shifts enough for the market place venues to drop GMO products.

He claims this has been achieved in the USA with rBGH or bovine growth hormones. And thanks to an honest scientist, Arpad Pusztai, who lost his lab funding for exposing GMO dangers in Scotland, the EU is GMO free.

The same link provided above for the GMO Shopping Guide leads to the Institute for Responsible Technology where Jeffrey Smith's powerful, live 84 minute power point presentation on the whole GMO situation is available free.

Sources:

Institute for Responsible Technology (for Non GMO Food Guide and J. Smith free video presentation)
http://www.responsibletechnology.org

Doctors Warn: Avoid Genetically Modified Foods by Jeffrey M. Smith
http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey125.htm

Organic Vegetable PLU Codes
http://www.cffresh.com/trade_info/plu_c ... ggies.html

GMO Free Ebook by Greg Ciola (scroll down list to find Greg's book)
http://www.thenhf.com/page.php?id=26


About the author
Paul Fassa is dedicated to warning others about the current corruption of food and medicine and guiding others toward a direction for better health with no restrictions on health freedom. You can visit his blog at http://healthmaven.blogspot.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/027226_food_ ... z1hhXkD8uJ