|
and should be held accountable in the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity and ecocide." Dr Rosemary Mason.
Moreover, Wales has
become a storage dump for
Monsanto's most toxic chemicals.
These are the messages conveyed by Dr Rosemary Mason in her
recent open letter to Councillor Rob Stewart, the leader of
Swansea City and County Council.
There has been a
long-term reckless use of a glyphosate-based weedkiller in Swansea,
regardless of EU recommendations.
He showed that collapse of bee colonies, the loss of other invertebrates and bird declines in Europe are associated with chronic low levels of these chemicals.
Dr Pierre Mineau
wrote a Report for the American Bird Conservancy "The
Impact of the Nation's Most Widely Used Insecticides on Birds -
Neonicotinoids and Birds" in which he accused the US
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of collusion with the
agrochemical industry and negligence.
Monsanto using Wales as a toxic dump
Monsanto established a factory in Newport in 1949, and Mason notes that the company paid a contractor to illegally dump chemical waste in Brofiscin Quarry, Grosfaen.
These included polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the defoliant Agent Orange and dioxins used in the Vietnam War.
When PCBs were banned in the US, the UK government agreed to ramp up production in a Monsanto-owned factory in Wales in 1971. They were manufactured until 1977.
Toxic dumps were established at seven quarries around Wales.
Brofiscin Quarry in Grosfaen, near Cardiff, is one of the most contaminated places in Britain. In 2003, the lining of the quarry burst and the orange contents drained into west Cardiff.
According to engineering company WS Atkins, the site contains at least 67 toxic chemicals.
The Environment Agency claimed:
Citing a study by WWF-UK in 2003, Mason shows that residues of PCBs and other organochlorines were found in 75 adipose tissue samples taken from human cadavers throughout 1990 and early 1991 from Welsh populations.
The researchers found:
Mason states that children in Wales have low scores in the PISA tests, a measure of reading, maths and science ability in 15 year olds, and low educational achievement in primary schools.
She also notes that organophosphate pesticides have supposedly been banned but are now used on salmon lice in fish farms:
Theresa May promoting the great agrochemicals-pharmaceuticals scam
Glyphosate (Roundup) contamination of food is associated with an epidemic of diseases:
Glyphosate (captures) and washes out the following minerals:
Mason says that the UK prides itself in being 'in the forefront of new technologies' that its companies can sell privately to the rich or to other countries:
These include,
Theresa May was very upbeat about Brexit:
Cover-ups, deceptions and the dodging regulation
The industry has worked overtime to cover-up its crimes, to try and discredit those who challenge its products and practices and to put a positive spin on what it does.
Mason discusses the Seralini affair and how a massive PR campaign sprang into operation to try to discredit the study and pressurize the editor of the journal that published it to retract it.
The UK-based Science Media Centre (SMC) was in the forefront of the attacks. The SMC defends and promotes GM technology and is 70% funded by corporations, including Monsanto and other big GMO developer firms.
The SMC's director was subsequently reported as saying that she took pride in the fact that the SMC's "emphatic thumbs down" on the study,
Bruce M. Chassy, professor emeritus of food science at the University of Illinois provided scathing quotes about the study.
Yes, that Bruse Chassey:
Mason says that in Wales there are cancer/disease hotspots in the surrounding villages where Roundup has been sprayed:
Many of the cancers are aggressive and unusual; they resemble the cancers that were seen in factory workers in the pesticides industry in the 1960s.
And yet a global biocide industry has emerged to advise on dodging regulations. It is controlled by the pesticides industry and is based in the UK making lots of money for Britain.
Mason cites the example of Exponent Inc., which describes itself as,
Exponent was employed by Bayer to criticize EFSA's work on neonicotinoids and bees in 2013.
It also contributed to a review by a Dow employee that concluded that,
This review was supported by the various UK government agencies.
Glyphosate and the destruction of biodiversity
In her letter, Mason describes how Japanese knotweed Reynoutrie japonica was introduced to Europe in the mid-16 Century.
For 500 years, it caused no problems. Glyphosate was introduced in 1974 and by 1981 both plants were classified in the Wildlife and Countryside Act as invasive species.
Mason argues that Swansea has been a test-bed for Roundup and is known as the Japanese knotweed capital of Europe because recurrent spraying makes the plants grow bigger and stronger. It grows in in old mine workings where the soil is loose.
So, the people most affected by Roundup are the poor.
She then highlights that in the US the first confirmed glyphosate-resistant weed, rigid ryegrass, was reported in 1998 within two years of Roundup Ready crops being grown. Super-weeds in the US in GM cropping systems are now a massive problem.
Between 1996 and 2011, as a result of GM technology, 22 glyphosate-resistant super-weeds had developed.
In 2016, Charles Benbrook said:
The 2016 UK State of Nature Report highlights the devastating loss of biodiversity in the UK.
What we are seeing a war on any plant (or creature) that is not part of the monocultured (increasingly genetically engineered) system of agriculture favored by the agrichemicals/agritech cartel.
What can be done?
At the end of her letter, Rosemary Mason states:
The UK government is engaged in criminality by colluding with agrochemicals manufacturers that are knowingly poisoning people and the environment in the name of profit and greed.
As Mason points out, communities, countries, ecosystems and species have become disposable inconveniences.
Corporate totalitarian tries to hide beneath an increasingly fragile facade of democracy.
The agrochemicals industry lobbies hard to have its products put on the market and ensures that they remain there. It uses PR firms and front groups to discredit individuals and studies which show the massive health and environmental devastation caused and gets its co-opted figures to sit on bodies to guarantee policies favorable to its interest are put in place.
Mason has documented all of this in her numerous fully-referenced documents and has identified and named the culprits.
We have enough information to know that agrochemicals are killing us and exactly who (corporations, public bodies and individuals) is culpable.
Readers can consult all of Mason's fully-referenced documents here.
The regulatory system surrounding agrochemicals is not broken and in need of a bit of tinkering to put things right. From bought-and-paid-for science and public relations that masquerades as journalism to policy implementation and the lack of regulation, the argohemicals industry wallows in a highly profitable cesspool of corruption.
Money wields power and political influence.
We must restore the link between farmer and consumer and challenge the corporate hijack of the food system.
As a global movement, Nyeleni has a radical agenda that is committed to challenging some of the issues that fuel the problems we are facing, including:
The Nyeleni Europe website contains some valuable information.
The agrochemicals industry continues to get away with crimes against humanity and the environment. Not everyone can grow their own or afford to eat healthily all the time and no one can escape the pollution and destruction of the environment and the impacts.
The aim must be to educate, organize, agitate and inform the wider public who are gradually waking up to the reality of a corrupt food system.
Further reading
Readers are urged to consult 'Roundup and Birth Defects - The Public has been Kept in the Dark' by Rosemary Mason (2011), a 44-page, fully-referenced document.
|
