http://disinfo.com/2015/03/ecologist-claims-monsantos-glyphosate-is-safe-to-drink-refuses-to-drink-it/Ecologist Claims Monsanto’s Glyphosate is Safe to Drink, Refuses to Drink It By Marcie Gainer on March 29, 2015 in Corporate Skeptics, Environment,
https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKw6YjqSfM&feature=youtu.beLobbyist Claims Monsanto's Roundup Is Safe To Drink, Freaks Out When Offered A Glass In an interview with reporters from Canal+, ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore, claims that Monsanto’s Roundup ready ingredient, Glyphosate, is safe to drink. When offered a glass by the interviewer, he refuses, saying “I’m not an idiot.” The clip is from Canal+, a French TV network, that’s currently working on a Special Investigations Documentary.
Some news organizations have identified Dr. Moore as a lobbyist for Monsanto. However, Monsanto has come forward with the following claim:
Dr. Moore is not a Monsanto lobbyist or employee. Knowledgeable scientists, consumers and our farmer customers may be familiar with and confident in the safety of glyphosate, but their statements don’t make them lobbyists for our company. Dr. Patrick Moore is one of those individuals. He agrees with the science that supports the safety of glyphosate, and is an advocate for technology and innovation. But as I mentioned, he is not and never has been a paid lobbyist for or employee at Monsanto.
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So lets talk about what really happened: For many years, my opponents have claimed that I am a paid lobbyist for GMO seed companies, in particular Monsanto. This is a technique used to avoid debating the science that proves Golden Rice and GM foods are safe. Monsanto has now issued a statement that I have never been employed by them (link 2 below) so I will no longer have to put up with that lie. Personally, I admire Monsanto’s leadership in improving many crop varieties, through both conventional breeding and transgenic breeding. Unfortunately, I accidentally gave my opponents another distraction to use while being interviewed on French TV a few months back. I was extremely upset with this interviewer as he lured me to an interview under false pretences. It was meant to be an interview on Golden Rice and he pulled a stunt on me. The video has since been cleverly edited to distort my actual opinions on the subjects discussed.
I did not intend to say that glyphosate was “safe” to drink, it is
not intended for consumption. My point was that in almost all cases it is non-lethal to drink in large quantities and therefore ‘safe’ in the manner that it is used in farming worldwide. - See more at:
http://disinfo.com/2015/03/ecologist-claims-monsantos-glyphosate-is-safe-to-drink-refuses-to-drink-it/#sthash.BLt3ABlV.dpuf\\\
[UPDATE] Dr. Moore has released a statement regarding the above video:
- See more at:
http://disinfo.com/2015/03/ecologist-claims-monsantos-glyphosate-is-safe-to-drink-refuses-to-drink-it/#sthash.BLt3ABlV.dpuf| - - - -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore_(environmentalist)
Patrick Moore (born 1947) is a Canadian ecologist. He is the leader of Ecosense Environmental in Vancouver, a consulting firm that provides advice, lectures, opinions and committee participation to government and industry on a wide range of environmental and sustainability issues.[citation needed]
He used to be an early member of Greenpeace, in which he was an environmental activist from 1971 to 1986. He is a frequent public speaker at meetings of industry associations, universities, and policy groups.[citation needed]
...
In 2006, Moore became co-chair (with Christine Todd Whitman) of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which promotes increased use of nuclear energy.[28][29]
In 2010, Moore was recruited to represent the Indonesian logging firm Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), a multi-national accused by activist groups of widespread and illegal rainforest clearance practices, although this is strongly disputed by Moore
He has sharply and publicly differed with many policies of major environmental groups, such as Greenpeace itself, on other issues including forestry, biotechnology, aquaculture, and the use of chemicals for many applications.[3]
According to Greenpeace, he is "a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry, the logging industry, and genetic engineering industry."[4] He is an outspoken proponent of nuclear energy[5] and skeptical of sole human responsibility for climate change....
Genetically modified foods
In 2006, Moore addressed a Biotechnology Industry Organization conference in Waikiki saying, "There's no getting away from the fact that over 6 billion people wake up each day on this planet with real needs for food, energy and materials", and need genetically engineered crops to this end.[47]
Moore supports the adoption of golden rice to prevent vitamin A deficiency.[48]
Health effects of glyphosate
During a March, 2015 video interview with French television station Canal+, Moore was asked about the safety of the herbicide glyphosate. Moore told the interviewer that one "could drink a whole quart of it" without any harm. When Moore was challenged to drink a glass of the weedkiller, he refused, and ended the interview.[51][52] The interview came shortly after the release of a World Health Organization (WHO) report adding glyphosate to a list of probable carcinogens.[53][54][55]
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Proponent for Golden Rice ... Beta-Carotene in GMO Rice - ok but Bt rice also ? Glyphosate too? http://www.allowgoldenricenow.org/the-case-for-golden-rice...
Since the 1920s Bt has been used to control a number of crop pests and has been particularly favored by organic farmers as it is considered a "natural" insecticide. Bt is commonly used as a spray,
...
Dr. Potrykus and his colleagues found it very difficult to win approval for
Golden Rice in the countries where vitamin A deficiency was most severe. The
anti-GM movement had succeeded in erecting resistance to approval even for field trials. They decided to form an organization, the
Humanitarian Golden Rice Project, and to recruit support from key organizations. These include
HarvestPlus (which in turn is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank), the Swiss Development and Collaboration Agency, USAID, and the Syngenta Foundation, together with local research institutes and several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including the
Rockefeller Foundation and the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).1
...
In 2012, Joint American and Chinese scientists published new research on Golden Rice in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showing that the beta carotene produced by Golden Rice is as good as beta carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_riceGolden rice was originally created by Dr. Ingo Potrykus and his team in Zurich, Switzerland.[12] This genetically modified rice is capable of
producing beta-carotene in the endosperm (grain) which is a pre cursor for vitamin A production.[
Syngenta was involved in the early development of Golden Rice and held some intellectual property on Golden Rice,[12] but has since handed it over to non-profit institutes including the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to develop on a non-profit basis.[13] The scientific details of the rice were first published in Science in 2000.[14]
Golden Rice plants being grown in greenhouseThe World Health Organization has stated that iron deficiency affects 30% of the world's population. Research scientists from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) are helping to address this issue as part of broader program with HarvestPlus and IRRI to
increase the amount of iron in rice.[15] They have modified three populations of rice by over expressing the genes: OsNAS1, OsNAS2 or OsNAS3. The research team found that nicotianamine, iron, and zinc concentration levels increased in all three populations of rice relative to the controls.[11]
http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/01/13/gmo-golden-rice-scientific-realities/Golden Rice (GR) is genetically engineered to contain increased levels of beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A (also known as provitamin A). The rice is claimed to help cure blindness and other illnesses caused by vitamin A deficiency in the Third World. It is also claimed that opposition to GR by environmentalists and anti-GMO activists has caused millions to die or go blind in the developing world.
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GR is not needed
GR is an expensive and unproven ‘solution’ to a problem for which better solutions exist. It has swallowed millions in development money and yet is still not ready.
In contrast, World Health Organisation programs to combat vitamin A deficiency are cheap, already available – and proven to work. They focus on methods such as educating people to grow green leafy vegetables in kitchen gardens, encouraging breastfeeding of babies, and giving supplements and fortified foods when necessary. Research by Dr Vandana Shiva’s organization Navdanya in India has calculated that green leafy vegetables are up to 3500% richer in beta-carotene than GR.
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Other
problems with GR include:
1. Hidden Information on GR’s Genetic Makeup. There has been no adequate characterisation of GR in the peer-reviewed literature. Where there is secrecy, there is mistrust....
6. No proof that GR is safe to eat. Genetic modification can result in novel toxins or allergens being created in plants, or changes in nutritional value. New toxins or allergens can appear even if the gene of interest is taken from a non-toxic source, since changes can happen after the gene is inserted into the new host plant. Such unexpected changes are difficult to detect without dedicated animal feeding safety trials.
One potential hazard, as pointed out by Prof David Schubert of the Salk Institute in the USA, is associated with retinoic acid, a vitamin A derivative which can damage human fetuses and cause birth defects...
Until such studies have been published in the peer-reviewed literature,
GR has not been proven safe to eat.
7. Unethical Trials on Humans. Even though GR has not been tested for unexpected toxins or allergens in animal feeding trials, the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, in conjunction with Tufts University, has conducted three feeding experiments on humans. One included the use of children “without adequate vitamin A nutrition” . In 2009 a group of 32 scientists complained to Tufts about this breach of medical ethics and the Nuremburg Code. When the research resulted in the publication of two papers (in 2009 and 2012), there was a furore in China due to the use of children in one experiment without informed consent. The revelation led to the sacking of three Chinese officials and the forced retirement of the lead researcher at Tufts.
