GMO war in Hawaii: EPA liars on parade

EPA testimony on Monsanto pesticides

- By Jon Rappoport - April 27, 2015

“There is a great big elephant in the room for regulatory agencies. It’s the combined effect of many different chemicals acting together on the human body. For example, five different pesticides arriving in your food at once. The agencies don’t want to think about that. They don’t want to run those tests. They want to pretend there is no elephant at all.” (Notes for AIDS Inc., Jon Rappoport)

The date was July 1, 2014. The County government of Maui held a hearing.

It was labeled “POLICY AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, Council of the County of Maui, MINUTES, July 1, 2014” (via County of Maui: Council – Policy and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee (2013-2014))

The purpose? Gain knowledge about the upcoming ballot measure that, if passed, would put a temporary block on all Monsanto/Dow secret GMO experiments in Maui County, pending a complete investigation.

Four months later, the ballot measure did pass—and then Monsanto sued, the vote was suspended, and the case has dragged on in federal court.

But on July 1, 2014, key testimony by the EPA [US Environmental Protection Agency] revealed a massive hole in their regulatory oversight and their “science.”

Put simply, it’s this: the EPA evaluates the toxic impact of pesticides by examining each chemical compound separately—but completely ignores the potential harm that results from these compounds acting together.

No outsider knows exactly how many pesticides Monsanto and Dow have been testing in Maui County. No outsider knows their precise composition. No outsider knows how many of these pesticides are labeled “restricted use,” meaning they are highly toxic.

So naturally, any sane scientist would demand to know all these details; and then he would develop and run tests to discover what harm to health the various chemical combinations would create.

But this is not the EPA’s position.

The EPA has a “divide and conquer” strategy: ignore the obvious fact that dozens of chemicals, entering the body, will have effects beyond what each chemical, separately, will cause.

This is purposeful EPA “see no evil.”

Here are key statements EPA representatives put on the record at the 2014 Maui hearing:

COUNCILMEMBER COCHRAN: …So do you folks test combinations of pesticides in determining, you know, your reasonable, unreasonable impacts?

MR. [BILL] JORDAN [EPA]: We do in some areas and in other areas, we don’t. Where pesticides have what’s called a common mechanism of toxicity, we will take into account the fact that exposure to chemical A and chemical B is likely to add up. When chemicals do not have a common mechanism of toxicity, then our regulatory approach is to treat them as not being additive. This is consistent with advice that the National Academy of Sciences gave in a report they released in April of 2013 on assessing risks to, of pesticides to wildlife. So generally speaking, we try to look at situations where there are common mechanisms but we don’t anticipate any synergistic interactions in the absence of that.”

Later on in the hearing, Dr. Lorrin Pang testifies that the EPA is completely misinterpreting the “advice of the National Academy of Sciences.”

Jordan’s chilling remark about the EPA not anticipating any synergistic interactions is, surely, willful ignorance. It’s on the level of saying, “If you ingest 20 or 30 toxic chemicals, there’s no reason to suspect they’ll produce problems together, beyond their individual ability to cause harm. We don’t need to consider that possibility.”

Patently absurd. And insane.

The EPA’s Jordan, later in his testimony, also defends glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, which the World Health Organization has just labeled “a probably carcinogen.” Jordan states that, “as far as herbicides go, this is one of the safer products and as authorized for use by EPA, it does not cause any unreasonable risks to people or to the environment.”

Finally, Jordan doubles down on his pronouncement that there is no need to test pesticides for their combined harm to health. Claiming that the National Academy of Sciences is the champion of good sense, Jordan states:

“They advised us that it’s really not practical to obtain test data on mixtures [of different pesticides acting together to cause harm]…[and] if the exposure to the [individual pesticide] components are gonna be kept at a level that does not have any adverse effect on its own, then you should not expect any kind of combined effect to occur.”

This is on the level of asserting that, since a few familiar chemical compounds don’t, individually, cause explosions, then combining them in a barrel and connecting them to a fuse and lighting the fuse should be no problem.

It would take a sixth-grader, with a reasonably good science course under his belt, about 30 seconds to refute Mr. Jordan and the EPA.

But that Agency isn’t worried about criticism. It has other issues on its collective mind. For example, providing cover for Monsanto and Dow and their pesticides.

Last November, the citizens of Maui made their voices heard. They voted to place a temporary stop on all local Monsanto/Dow GMO experimentation, pending a complete investigation into its details. Monsanto and their allies immediately sued, the case went to federal court, and the vote has remained unenforced ever since.

That’s called justice.

And now you see the EPA has absolutely no interest in ever doing inspections in Maui, to see what the combined effects of Monsanto/Dow pesticides are on the population.

More of the same kind of justice.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

Vermont Becomes First State to Have Mandatory GMO Labeling

Will other states dive in by 2016?

- By Christina Sarich - April 24, 2015

After months of consumer and activist comments, picketing at the Attorney General’s Office, and winning a lawsuit against Monsanto who tried to overturn the original law, Vermont has just become the first state to have mandatory GMO labeling.

Vermont became the first state to become GMO-labeled (a step toward becoming GMO-Free) in 2014, but Monsanto, Dow, Bayer and other biotech interests decided that consumers had no rights at the state level to determine what they wanted to eat. Vermont was brave enough to uphold the voted-upon law anyhow, and even put money aside for the legal fight they knew would ensue when the new legislation passed.

Attorney General Bill Sorrell said that the formal adoption of the GMO labeling law gives ample time to food manufacturers to change their products or lose an entire state’s business.

I’m proud of Vermont for standing strong against biotech, and we need to do the same now as members of Congress will vote this week on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). If this ‘Nafta-on-steroids” bill wins the vote, then it would take away state’s rights to ban or label GMOs, and all the effort Vermont has put into cleaning up its food supply will have been for naught.

Make sure you call or email Congress today and tell them not to allow the TPP.

This article originally appeared at Natural Society.

SPOKANE, Washington School District Kicked 143 Kids out for Not Being Vaccinated

Associated Press - April 14, 2015

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Spokane school district officials on Monday removed from class 143 students who could not prove they had legally required vaccinations.

More than 700 students in the state’s second-largest district lack complete vaccination documents, so that number was expected to rise, district spokesman Kevin Morrison said. The crackdown began Monday morning.

The Spokane district was believed to be the first in the state to take this action, Morrison said.

“We’re the front-runners,” he said. “Given the increased awareness that the world has of the possibility of pandemic, I think heightened awareness is certainly not a bad thing.”

Students who are removed from school can return once their parents either get the required vaccinations, or sign waivers saying they were opposed to one or more vaccinations, Morrison said.

The Spokane district has about 30,000 students, and only about 729 students lack the required documentation, he said.

The recent measles outbreak across the nation pushed the district to review its vaccine compliance rate, Morrison said. What they discovered led them to change their process and insist on documentation for every child. He could not speculate on whether other school districts in the region or the state would follow.

After the measles outbreak, Spokane district officials discovered about 6 percent of their students lacked propervaccination documentation. In February they launched a program to inform parents that their children neededvaccinations or waivers. The school district and the Spokane Regional Health District also held a series ofvaccination clinics.

That helped drop the out-of-compliance rate to about 3 percent, Morrison said.

Ensuring students are vaccinated is complicated because 60 different languages are spoken by students in the Spokane district, and about 30 percent of the students leave their school each year, he said.

Tracking vaccinations is especially difficult for students who come from out-of-state or other countries, he said.

Complete documentation is important to protecting students, Morrison said. For instance, if there were a measles outbreak in a school, officials would like to know which students have not been vaccinated against the disease so they can be sent home, he said.