Emergency! Pathogen New to Science Found in Roundup Ready GM Crops?

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/newPathogenInRoundupReadyGMCrops.php

Emergency! Pathogen New to Science Found in Roundup Ready GM Crops?

USDA senior scientist sends “emergency” warning to US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on a new plant pathogen in Roundup Ready GM soybean and corn that may be responsible for high rates of infertility and spontaneous abortions in livestock Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Please distribute widely and forward to your elected representatives

An open letter appeared on the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance founded and run by Judith McGeary to save family farms in the US [1, 2].  The letter, written by Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University, to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, warns of a pathogen “new to science” discovered by “a team of senior plant and animal scientists”. Huber says it should be treated as an “emergency’’, as it could result in “a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

The letter appeared to have been written before Vilsack announced his decision to authorize unrestricted commercial planting of GM alfalfa on 1 February, in the hope of convincing the Secretary of Agriculture to impose a moratorium instead on deregulation of Roundup Ready (RR) crops. 

The new pathogen appears associated with serious pervasive diseases in plants - sudden death syndrome in soybean and Goss' wilt in corn – but its suspected effects on livestock is alarming.  Huber refers to “recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.

Want an even scarier one? Monsatan contract stipulates that all liability be with the farmer, none monsanto, for ever the end.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/225030-Monsanto-Shifts-ALL-Liability-to-Farmers

if it isn't one thing it is another, so glad I'm not dealing with that mess on my property

I think we all need to be concerned because so much pollen is carried by the wind.  I am down wind from Lake Ontario and I know that pollen even drifts across that lake. 

A judge orders GMO crops destroyed
http://www.examiner.com/holistic-health-in-atlanta/first-genetically-engineered-crop-ordered-to-be-destroyed
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/01/us-monsanto-sugarbeets-ruling-idUSTRE6B00Y520101201

I might have seen this here somewhere this morning, if so my apologies for cross posting. Seems like a hopeful start but knowing the courts will likely be overturned on appeal. Still, even small falling stones can become an avalanche if there are enough of them. If we all join together to fight this giant... Well, I'm staying hopeful. Trying to anyhow. 

I read his letter, quite interesting stuff. However, I would also read his full report and the publication put out by some of the other plant pathologists at Purdue. I know a couple of professors in the department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Purdue, but it doesn't seem that they're involved in this research.

Huber's report, not the letter:

http://www.calciumproducts.com/dealer_resources/Huber.pdf

Purdue's publication:

http://www.btny.purdue.edu/weedscience/2011/GlyphosatesImpact11.html

Honestly, read the second one as well. There's some interesting information in it; and while I don't agree with the widespread use of herbicides, they make some good points.

stewartrIL wrote:
I read his letter, quite interesting stuff. However, I would also read his full report and the publication put out by some of the other plant pathologists at Purdue. I know a couple of professors in the department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Purdue, but it doesn't seem that they're involved in this research.

Huber's report, not the letter:

http://www.calciumproducts.com/dealer_resources/Huber.pdf

Purdue's publication:

http://www.btny.purdue.edu/weedscience/2011/GlyphosatesImpact11.html

Honestly, read the second one as well. There's some interesting information in it; and while I don't agree with the widespread use of herbicides, they make some good points.

I'm sorry, I utterly disagree on any use of herbicides.  Humans cannot keep up with the changes nature makes because by the time man finds a problem, and makes a chemo solution for it the problem has changed.  It was really only a matter of time before nature took one of the destructive things we make and made it worse.

Humans need to find their niche in the environment, and quick.

Well, like I said I don't agree with them either. I have an education in conventional agriculture, and was really turned off after realizing the quantity of inputs dumped into row cropped grains here in the midwest. Nitrogen from natural gas through the Haber process, fungicides in a wet year, glyphosate every year (usually more than once), Dicamba, 2-4d, atrazine, and others mixed in when you have resistance issues. Not to mention all of the energy required to produce these chemicals. We apply non-renewable mined products on a yearly basis, just to maintain yields......what do we do when we run out?

It's a systemic problem we have with conventional agriculture. We have a tradition and a culture of raising crops in a certain way, and that is very difficult to change. The entire system needs to be reworked from the ground up, but we have a history of producing cereal grains, and I really doubt that we will see much happen with Don Huber's message. Just speaking from experience, as Monsanto has deep pockets.

I agree with many of the points that Huber makes, but I posted the other report to play devil's advocate. I wanted to show that his conclusions are not widely accepted in the scientific community (at this time), and I fear his actions will probably have few results. plus, it's good to understand both sides of an issue.

I'm not arguing that the deregulation of GM alfalfa is a bad thing, it's a terrible thing. Huber just seemed to really push the envelope with some of his statements. Honestly, I see GMO as a much more significant threat than glyphosate.

You don't have to be proherbicide to think that Huber is making an undue fuss. Huber hasn't been publishing his work, and what he has suggested is an organism that is capable not just of damaging but of fully infecting diverse types of plants and animals (which is extremely rare, and comes with some specific characteristics) and is extremely small (which violates the characteristics specific to the multipathogens, i.e. a lot of extra biomechanical machinery) and a fungus (which can't be extremely small). He is rewriting vast swaths of science and doing it with technology that has been out of date for 15 years and ignoring the new awesome technology that we have developed recently that is far more powerful, and the only only only reason anyone isn't laughing him out of the room is because he is also attacking monsanto while he does it.

These crops have been grown for 20 years, I don't think it's an emergency, and if he is right he is definitely going to win a nobel prize for his discovery.

If livestock is affected this badly by GM crops wonder what it does to us? One more reason to grow your own food or have a close relationship with local organic producers.

What has me most concerned though is things like GM alfalfa. For the last few years I have been raising my own grass-fed beef for myself and family.

You can stop consuming corn and soy and feeding it to livestock, and these plants generally don't grow well in the wild on their own. How do you protect your livestock from GM alfalfa though? Alfalfa basically grows like a weed and spreads on it's own. I have pasture that was never seeded with alfalfa that is full of it and my steers love the stuff.

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2011/01/31/usda-wont-regulate-gm-alfalfa/

They don't call Monsanto, Monsatan for no reason.

And if livestock is not affected this badly by GM crops what does that mean?

That's not something I really want to test outside of a lab. There's no going back from that sort of mistake I'm afraid.

Well the mistake was made 20 years ago if it was made. My point it. how bad an emergency can it be if it went by undetected for 20 years?

How do you know that it hasn't had an effect? I read about farm animal illness and issues in the news all the time, it isn't clear to me what the absolute singular cause of those issues is. Rather, like declining human health, I suspect it's accumulative. We don't quite understand but that doesn't make it any less devastating.

Anyhow, GMO is constantly evolving and changing. We can't assume any of it is safe for widespread use without adequate testing. Who is going to pay for independant testing? I don't see any volunteers for that. So it's tested in the field and ultimately on us. Well, not on me, I don't eat that stuff but you know what I mean.

Imagine that you are in a car accident, you're beaten up but can move. You look at your back and see a 10" gash, you rush straight to the hospital. Now imagine in a different universe you never look at your back. You go home and shower with your sponge on a stick, and go through life, and six weeks later get a glance in the mirror and notice that you have a huge scar on your back from the traffic accident you were in 6 week ago, do you now rush straight to the hospital? No! Because you know that any kind of emergency you might have had was not life threatening then and will not be now.

I follow quite a bit of farm stuff, and I haven't been hearing a huge emergency in fertility. If there was a large effect (say a 2% reduction in fertility) then Hog farmers would know it within 2 years, and be doing something to figure out why. A 5%  drop would be noticed in a year. Since they haven't been looking frantically for this thing that is killing their businesses I'm guessing that it hasn't been that bad. I suspect that we couldn't call it an emergency for anyone bug hog farmers until it was about a 25% reduction in fertility.

GMO is constantly evolving, but he is not just talking about the new crops, he is talking about the crops that have been grown for 20 years too. He is also talking about an impossible organism.

Here is another blog post on the subject: Extraordinary claims… require extraordinary evidence.