Despite the public health risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the lobbyist-swayed FDA keeps easing regulations

Salon
By Martha Rosenberg, Alternet

So far, 2012 is bringing bad news for people who don’t want “free antibiotics” in their food.

ntibiotics are routinely given to livestock on factory farms to make them gain weight with less feed and keep them from getting sick in confinement conditions. But the daily dosing, at the same time it lowers feed needs, lowers drug effectiveness and produces antibiotic resistant bacteria or super bugs that can be deadly to people. Read Full Article »

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New formulas make colonies more prone to disease, research finds.

The Independent – London, UK
by Jonathan Owen

Bees are vital to human to survival, pollinating crops that provide most of the world’s food.

Compelling new evidence from the US government’s top bee expert that modern pesticides may be a major cause of collapsing bee populations led to calls yesterday for the chemicals to be banned. Read Full Article »

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Food Safety News
by Cookson Beecher

Like a persistent mosquito that keeps coming back no matter how many times you bat it away, the controversial issue of mandated labeling for genetically engineered foods in the United States just won’t go away.

The latest example of that persistence is legislation proposed in Washington state that would require genetically engineered foods, or food items that contain genetically engineered foods, to be labeled so consumers can make an informed choice about what they buy.

If approved, for the most part, the labeling requirement as proposed by legislation in Washington state would kick in on July 1, 2014. Fines for not labeling such foods are included in the legislation. Read Full Article »

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KEYE-TV Austin
By Barbara Kessler -Green Right Now

In the brave new world of bio-tech agriculture, the big pesticide/herbicide makers have argued for years that their genetically modified crop manipulations would reduce the use of chemicals.

It made sense, that tactic. Almost everyone agrees that our health and the environment would benefit from reduced pesticide use. And Americans react strongly when they find their food has been compromised by chemicals. Think of the Alar apple scare, or the more recent outcry over strawberries doused with methyl iodide, a fumigant suspected of causing cancer.

Chemical companies tapped into citizen concern about pesticides by promising they could engineer corn and soybeans to resist certain “safer” chemicals, such as Monsanto’s Roundup. That would reduce environmental harm and give farmers a break, because they could use Roundup whenever they wanted without fear of harming their crops. They’d get higher yields with little downside, because the Roundup would biodegrade, and America would feed the world….

That was the promise of genetically engineered (GE) crops, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The actual results were nearly the opposite: Read Full Article »

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Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.

SPIEGEL ONLINE International

The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.

Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed “a danger to the environment,” a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans. Read Full Article »

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