|
by Natasha Longo
September 29, 2013
from
PreventDisease Website
|
Natasha Longo
has a master's degree in nutrition and is a
certified fitness and nutritional counselor. She has
consulted on public health policy and procurement in
Canada, Australia, Spain, Ireland, England and
Germany. |
As one of the few nations in the world with a
GMO-free platform, Russia does not
allow any cultivation of GMOs for commercial purposes.
Their regulatory agencies recently
suspended the import and use of an American GM corn following a
study suggesting a link to breast cancer and organ damage. The
Russian Prime Minister has now ordered the same agencies to consider
a possible ban on all GMO imports into Russia.
The Russian Federal Environmental Assessment Commission has
not adopted any commercialized GM varieties for agricultural use.
The
recent decision by the Russians to
suspend authorisation for American GM corn threatens to trigger a
transatlantic commercial and diplomatic row.
A
growing body of scientific research
- done mostly in Europe, Russia, and other countries - showing that
diets containing engineered corn or soya cause serious health
problems in laboratory mice and rats.
Experts at the University of Caen
conducted an experiment running for the full
lives of rats - two years.
The findings, which were peer reviewed
by independent experts before being published in a respected
scientific journal, found raised levels of breast cancer, liver and
kidney damage.
Russian Prime Minister Announces Possible Ban On All Imports
Russia’s consumer rights watchdog and Health Ministry,
Rospotrebnadzor, announced one year
ago that it had suspended the import and use
of the Monsanto GM corn.
Now, the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has ordered
the relevant agencies to consider a possible ban of all imports into
Russia of products containing genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) by October 15.
The order is addressed to,
They have been ordered to,
“submit proposals on amendments to
the Russian legislation aimed at tightening control over the
turnover of products containing components obtained from GMOs
together with the relevant federal executive bodies.”
The aforementioned agencies are also
ordered to submit proposals,
“on the possibility of banning the
import of such products into the Russian Federation.”
A list of the prime minister’s orders
was drawn up to fulfill the presidential orders issued after the
meeting on the socio-economic development of the Rostov region held
on September 18.
Medvedev’s orders have been posted on
the government website, Interfax news agency reported last September
25.
Russia is currently taking a hard line
on GMOs - in August the first independent project for identifying
whether Russian farmers are growing illegal GM crops started in the
Belgorod region.
NAGS (The National Association for
Genetic Safety) conducted the first checks of agricultural crops for
the presence of GMOs. No GMO plants were found in any Belgorod
fields.
According to the current law, 19 GM
lines are allowed in foodstuffs, but the cultivation of GMOs is not
allowed.
After joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), Russia is
being pressured simplify the procedure for registration of
genetically modified products, seed and feed, to stop their safety
checks, and to stop controls over their distribution.
Nations
Banning Monsanto's Glyphosate Herbicide
Glyphosate is the world's top selling herbicide, and
Monsanto's formulations Roundup is
used with more than 80 percent of all genetically modified (GM)
crops grown globally.
But evidence of its extreme toxicity has
been emerging within the past decade.
Glyphosate was found to kill human
placental cells at concentrations below that recommended for
agricultural use and approved by our regulators, while Roundup was
lethal at even lower concentrations.
The toxic effects of Roundup (R400) begin at 5 ppm, and the first
endocrine disrupting action is already evident at 0.5 ppm, 800 times
lower than the level of 400 ppm authorized by the US Environment
Protection Agency in food or feed.
According to one analysis, GMO corn tested by Profit Pro contains a
number of elements absent from traditional cord, including
chlorides, formaldehyde and glyphosate.
While those elements don’t appear
naturally in corn, they were present in GMO samples to the tune of
60 ppm, 200pm and 13 ppm, respectively.
“Glyphosate is a strong organic phosphate chelator that
immobilizes positively charged minerals such as manganese,
cobalt, iron, zinc [and] copper,” Dr. Don Huber attested
during a separate GMO study recently released, adding that those
elements “are essential for
normal physiological functions in soils, plants and animals.”
El Salvador has recently voted to ban
glyphosate, the pesticide that most GM crops are designed to be
grown with, along with 52 other chemicals.
Predictably, protests have been raised by the GM lobby group
CropLife, which is
scaremongering about losses of up to 60% in
crop production if the chemicals are banned.
CropLife is funded by the big GM
companies, including Monsanto.
The news of the historic El
Salvadorean vote comes on the anniversary of the publication of the
groundbreaking study led by Prof G.E. Seralini, which found
that the glyphosate-based pesticide Roundup - and a GM maize
engineered to tolerate it - caused severe organ damage and increased
rates of tumors and premature death in rats.
Roundup was found to be toxic at half
the level permitted in EU drinking water (Long
Term Toxicity of a Roundup Herbicide and a Roundup-Tolerant
Genetically Modified Maize).
Denmark has also imposed widespread bans on the spraying of
glyphosate in response to research showing that the sprays have been
contaminating the country's groundwater.
The chemical has, against all expectations sieving down through the
soil and polluting the ground water at a rate of five times more
than the allowed level for drinking water, according to tests done
by the Denmark and Greenland Geological Research Institution
(DGGRI).
A decade ago, the Danish environment minister Hans Christian Schmidt
announced unprecedented restrictions on glyphosate, the country's
and Europe's most widely used herbicide.
Sources
|
