Let Us Become Human(e) First. - A Quotation from Nanak Dev Ji

To learn more:

http://www.theworldofgurunanak.com/guru-nanak-dev-ji.html

Scientist Switches From Developing GMOs to Breeding Organic Cotton by Ken Roseboro

Source of Picture:  https://www.facebook.com/OccupyFood

Scientist switches from developing GMOs to breeding organic cotton



by Ken Roseboro

The Organic & Non-GMO Report,  29 May 2014


Jane Dever developed GMOs at Bayer CropScience but now breeds organic cotton varieties at Texas A&M University’s AgriLife Research

It’s rare that a plant breeder goes from developing genetically modified crops at a major biotechnology company to breeding varieties for organic and non-GMO farmers. Jane Dever, associate professor at Texas A&M’s AgriLife Research and Extension Center, is unique in having done just that. As global cotton breeding manager for Bayer CropScience, Dever put GM traits into cotton plants. Now she focuses on keeping GM traits out of organic cotton varieties.

Dever prefers the latter role. “I am just very comfortable here,” she says. “This is a great opportunity to work for Texas cotton producers and the more than 90% of US organic cotton producers located on the Texas High Plains.”

 

Heart with breeding, genetic diversity, genetic resource preservation

At Bayer, Dever became frustrated with the focus on developing plants as “projects” with a distinct beginning and end as opposed to breeding, which she sees as a process.

“What a lot of folks don’t understand is that ‘breeding’ and ‘GM trait development’ are two entirely different things,” she says. “It did not take long to understand that companies like these are not in the seed business unless they can realize growth from GM traits.”

Dever says she gained valuable experience at Bayer but says: “My heart is with breeding, genetic diversity, and genetic resource preservation.”
When the cotton breeding position at Texas A&M AgriLife opened in 2008, Dever “took a leap of faith” and accepted it, backed by support from Texas farmers, the National Institute for Food and Agriculture’s Organic Research and Extension Initiative, and the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative (TOCMC).

The focus of her work at AgriLife is breeding organic cotton varieties that have improved fiber quality, drought tolerance, resistance to thrip pests, and bolls that can handle Texas’s nasty sandstorms and extreme weather. Preserving genetic resources from unintended GMO contamination is another goal of Dever’s research.

An estimated 15,685 acres of organic cotton was planted in the US in 2013 with more than 95% of that grown on the High Plains of West Texas. North Carolina has also emerged recently as a producer of organic cotton.

Hard to find non-GMO seeds; screen to detect GMO contamination

Keeping GMOs out of non-GMO and organic cotton is a challenge because—as with corn and soybeans—GMO varieties account for more than 90% of production in the US.
The three major companies that sell cottonseed—Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, and Dow AgroScience— don’t offer non-GMO varieties.

Non-GMO cottonseed options are even more limited than they are for corn and soybeans.
“It’s very difficult for non-GMO farmers to get planting seeds,” Dever says.

Dever often receives inquiries on where to find non-GMO seeds, especially since the spread of herbicide resistant weeds, which are devastating cotton fields in the South.
The Roundup Ready GMO trait is so widespread in cottonseed that it is difficult for plant breeders like Dever to keep it out of her organic varieties.

“The problem for non-GM or organic breeders in a crop where biotechnology traits have been intensively adopted is that potential contamination is not visible,” Dever says. “Even the smallest amount of unintended contamination can multiply during the crossing, plant selection, and even testing phase if you do not know it is there.”

Tests to detect GMO traits can also be expensive.

Another aspect of Dever’s research is developing a fast, economical method to screen organic cotton for the Roundup Ready GMO trait. Seed Matters, an initiative that supports organic seed breeding projects, provided a $125,000 fellowship to Texas Tech graduate student Ryan Gregory to develop the method.

“If he can help devise a practical method to nip contamination in the bud, it will be of interest to every public cotton breeder,” Dever says. “Seed growers and farmers can maintain purity reasonably well if their beginning seed stocks are free from unintended presence of GM traits.”

 

Encouraging results on organic cotton varieties

Testing of the new organic cotton varieties began in 2011 on TOCMC members’ organic farms.
The results so far are encouraging. “We saw a 30%-40% reduction in insect damage from thrip, which is a major pest problem in organic cotton production,” Dever says.

Dever plans to release an organic cotton variety for farmers next year and aims to get an agreement with All-Tex Seed, a regional cottonseed company that offers non-GMO varieties and will process the organic cotton varieties.

The varieties could also be used in non-GMO cotton production.
“The (research) results are applicable in many cases to conventional, non-GMO production,” Dever says.

She emphasizes that breeding is a process that takes time. “It’s a long-term thing. Once you get a variety, farmers can follow best management practices with isolation guidelines, but they have to start with clean seed. Their challenge is my challenge.”

Dever is happy she left the biotech industry for her position at Texas A&M where she can help organic and non-GMO farmers and preserve genetic diversity.

“The non-GM market is small and certainly under-served, which is exactly why it is where I focus as a public breeder,” she says. “It is not ‘picking up crumbs’ left from private sector crop development, which is short-sighted, but rather continuing the work needed to ensure genetics will do its part to address global resource issues.”

Source:

The Organic & Non-GMO Report

Join The Worldwide Boycott Of Coke

 

To join in the worldwide boycott of Coke, please click on the link below:

Boycott Coca-Cola

A Beautiful & Wise Native American Discourse Revisited

A Beautiful and Wise Native American Narration

This is from a narration from the book entitled, Seven Arrows by Hymeyohsts Storm that was written in 1972 and that I have read back in the late 70's.  There was one narration that stuck in my mind that I have reflected on from time to time over the years.  This book is full of Native American Wisdom and one that I highly recommend.  This is a converstation between men of different tribes who lived on the Great Prarie at the time that American settlers were beginning to arrive.  Now, I will share this timeless wisdom with you the readers.  I will write it straight from the text without any alterations.  Here goes:

I have been told that you possess great Medicine for healing, Night Bear signed.  The old man clapped his hands together and laughed.  Do you and your brothers here wish to learn of one of my Medicines?  It is probably my greatest.

Yes, yes, yes, each man said aloud in his own tongue and also signed.

Then here it is, Shining Arrows began.  We will talk about a People, for example who number one hundred.  My greatest Medicine is one of the mind, and body, and heart.  If you have one hundred people who live together and if each one cares for the rest, there is one mind.  The power of this one single mind is a great one and is a means of keeping sickness from among them.  If there are but one or two among them who hate, there is little threat to any of the hundred.  But if ten of that hundred do not care for the rest of their brothers and sisters, then there is a threat.

The threat is one of sickness.  I know what you are all thinking; that you have heard of those who are able to make others sick, but this is not what I mean.  Nor do you believe this is possible.  I do not say that there has never been one who had the power to direct his hate causing illness to another.  This may sometimes have happened, but I think the possibility of it is remote.

The truth of the matter is this.  The hate these ten people have among the hundred will strike out and cause sickness.  We are each a living Spinning Medicine Wheel and each of us possesses this power to destroy and to create.  When ten of the hundred do not care it makes our shield that much less capable of stopping sickness.  This sickness strikes out at random and can hurt anyone.

I am sure you have seen a little child or person who is gentle striken with sickness and sometimes crippled by it.  This happens more because of the people not caring than because of the haters.  If twenty of the hundred do not care for the rest of their brothers and sisters there is twice the chance of sickness affrecting someone.

Maheo!  Two Bulls Touching signed.  You mean that not caring about our brothers is one of the causes of sickness?

Exactly!  answered the old man.  Not caring for one another has always caused sickness among a people.  It is one of the means of the Medicine to teach people to care for his brothers.  Caring is the only way to end sickness completely.  Of course, it does not really make all sickness disappear.  No!  There are things in all men that may cause sickness.  And they are endless in their naming.  Even if all the hundred care, there is still the accidents of the Great Prairie.  But these are not the same as sickness.

You used an example of the hundred, Pretty Weasel signed.  Is the Power greater if there are more people?

If there are ten, a hundred, a thousand, or just one, it is the same, White Clay signed.  It is not numbers, it is completeness.  I am an old man and I have seen clearly what happens when a people are not one.  Before the white man began to destroy the unity of the camps, there was very little sickness.   I had never seen a child born bad or dead.  I never knew a man who was crippled by disease.  Crippled men, yes!  But they were crippled by carelessnesss upon the great prairie.  This other is carelessness much more deadly.  It is the torn lodge, open to endless diseases.  There are as many diseases as there are grasses upon the Prarie, because there are many things in men.

Do you mean to tell me that if all the People of the world cared, there would not be one single person ill?  Night Bear signed.

No, signed the old man.  I do not.  There will always be minor sicknesses, because illness exists.  But it would be so very weak a sickness by comparison that one would hardly notice.

What if two camps of the People were to live close to each other, signed Pretty Weasel and in one of the camps there were those who were uncaring and in the other camp all of them cared?  Would one still affect the other or does distance keep this from happening?

Remember what I said to you?  White Clay signed.  Sickness exists in random places.  Sickness has no mind and it cannot seek out victums.  One camp, ten camps, or a hundred camps can never stand alone.  Each camp affects every other camp no matter what the distance between them.  It is like the teaching I have heard concerning the Singing Stone.   Both the Stone of Harmony and the Stone of Uncaring can be the drums that set the rings of water in motion within the Dance of the Medicine Lake.  One ring touches the next until all is within the Dance of Medicine Lake.  And it is the last leaf, the tiniest leaf, that is set into motion at the edge of the Lake.  This Leaf could be the leaf that will effect everyone.  If the People care for one another, the Rings of the Dance are Harmonious.

Then the answer is the same, signed Night Bear.  A people must care for their brothers and sisters to keep this from happening.

Exactly!  the old man answered.  This teaching is the greatest of all my Medicines.

Note:  I will say no more and leave this to your own ponderings.  Perhaps these words will lead you to a better understanding of your place inside the Medicine Wheel and you will come to remember if even for a moment that part of you that has Great Medicine?

Moms To EPA: Recall Monsanto's Roundup by Alexis Baden-Mayer

Source of poster:     https://www.facebook.com/OccupyTogether

 

Moms to EPA: Recall Monsanto’s Roundup

• By Alexis Baden-Mayer
  Organic Consumers Association, May 29, 2014
  

 

For related articles and information, please visit OCA's All About Organics page, our Genetic Engineering page, and our Millions Against Monsanto page.

Hell hath no fury . . . like a mother whose child has been sickened by a toxin that’s almost impossible to avoid.

Two activist groups, Moms Across America and Thinking Moms Revolution, want the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to recall Monsanto’s Roundup, the most widely used herbicide/pesticide in the world.

Now is the time to do it, they say, because the EPA is conducting a registration review of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup.

Representatives of the two groups contacted the EPA to request a meeting. When the EPA ignored them, they rallied supporters. Over a period of three days, about 10,000 moms from all over the country rang the phones off the hook at the EPA.

A week later, five Moms Across America leaders were sitting around a boardroom table with nine EPA employees who have the power to recall Roundup. The moms brought lawyers, scientists and advocates from Organic Consumers Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Consumers Union, Beyond Pesticides and the Truth-In-Labeling Coalition as back-up.

What was supposed to be a one-hour meeting turned into two. The EPA’s Dana Vogel, director of the Health Effects Division in the Office of Pesticide Programs, and other EPA staff stayed glued to their seats as one mother after another shared heart-wrenching stories of their experiences parenting children with life-threatening allergies, severe gastrointestinal problems, mysterious autism-spectrum disorders, and major nutritional deficiencies.

The common thread in those stories? Exposure to glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.

Wrenching tales of preventable illnesses

The activist moms had long suspected pesticides might be behind their children’s health problems. So they had their families tested for glyphosate. The tests showed unsafe levels of glyphosate in their drinking water, in their breast milk and in their children’s urine.

That’s when they resolved to get in front of the EPA. And when they did, they told their stories.

Moms Across America co-founder Zen Honeycutt recounted how when she learned of the link between glyphosate and autism, she had her middle child, who had been exhibiting autism symptoms, tested for glyphosate. His urine had 8.7 parts per billion glyphosate—eight times more than is allowed in drinking water in the E.U. She immediately eliminated all potential sources of glyphosate from his diet. After six weeks, the glyphosate was out of his system. And so were the autism symptoms. He stopped hitting people, and his grades went back up from D’s to A’s.

After a year of eating organic, her eldest son's walnut allergy went from a 19 to a 0.2. It’s no longer life-threatening. 

In fact, all of the mothers’ children suffered from deteriorating conditions until they put them on all-organic diets. When they figured out that going organic was the only thing that helped ease their children's symptoms, they started investigating the food they had been eating for possible causes of their children's poor health.

Each mother began to suspect glyphosate.

Zoe Swartz, leader of East Coast Moms Across America and founder of GMO Free Lancaster County told the EPA, “I’m really angry that I didn’t know that there was glyphosate in the food I was feeding my daughter.” She described her toddler’s problems with “leaky gut syndrome” which has been linked to glyphosate exposure. After three weeks of an organic diet, the child’s symptoms began to disappear.

Megan Davenhall of Thinking Moms Revolution, mother of an 11-year-old boy with autism, told the EPA, “It’s going to be a long road for us.”

She began her research when her son was diagnosed at age three. As she turned to organic foods, and eliminated chemicals, he started to grow—something he hadn’t done for two and a half years. He weighed only 38 pounds at age six. Now, Davenhall told the EPA, “He’s doing better. He’s not off the spectrum. … It’s a long road for us, because my son was so very damaged. … He was skin and bones and it’s taken us years to recover his gut health.”

“The damage didn’t need to happen to him,” Davenhall said. “And I don’t want to see it happen to one other kid out there, not one. What we feed our kids, what we put into our bodies, is the most important thing. Healthy food should be available for everybody. It needs to happen. It needs to happen today.”

Sarah Cusack of Thriving Family Health talked about her daughter Claire who at 12 months, changed from a happy, easy-going baby to a miserable, constipated baby who was literally starving. She was emaciated. She had a huge bloated belly. At 20 months, she was diagnosed with celiac disease. But the turning point came when she switched to an organic diet. Claire is now a healthy six-year-old. Her mom is a health coach. Cusack says that an all-organic diet is the centerpiece of her practice. She’s seen improvement in clients with myriad health problems, including migraines, eczema, rashes, gastro-intestinal conditions, mood disorders like anxiety and depression, constipation and auto-immune conditions.

Swaying decision-makers with Science

After the testimonials, It was time to hit the EPA with hard science.

Honeycutt delivered a 20-minute presentation on how glyphosate figures as an environmental cause of so many of the diseases impacting our kids today. She left behind a binder, prepared by Moms Across America volunteers, packed with scientific articles supporting her assertions. Zen’s presentation and the materials she presented to the EPA covered the following points.

•    Exposure to glyphosate correlates with chronic illness. Chronically ill people have significantly higher levels of glyphosate in their systems than healthy people.

•    Glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor which is toxic to placental cells. This means it may impact our ability to conceive and carry healthy babies to term. It may also cause breast cancer.

•    Glyphosate destroys the gut bacteria we need for good health. Scientists have observed that in chickens and cattle, glyphosate kills the good gut bacteria while leaving behind bacteria that causes food poisoning. Glyphosate’s negative impact on our microbiome may be the reason for increasing rates of allergies, celiac sprue and gluten intolerance, and colitis and Crohn’s disease.

•    Glyphosate makes vaccines far more toxic than they would otherwise be. When children are overexposed to glyphosate, they are more likely to react badly to vaccination. There’s an intricate connection between the gut and the brain, such that an unhealthy digestive system translates into pathologies in the brain. Aluminum, mercury and glyphosate work synergistically to create severe deficiency in sulfate supplies to the brain. This may be what’s causing the epidemic levels of autism and other diseases such as Alzheimer's.

•    Glyphosate is a chelator that deprives living things of vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals. This is how glyphosate kills plants. It may also be how it’s killing people. Glyphosate-induced vitamin deficiency may be a factor in the growing cancer rates. Glyphosate has been directly linked to Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. A recent meta-analysis found that exposure to glyphosate doubled the likelihood of contracting B cell lymphoma.

Will the EPA consider this evidence and move to protect our children from glyphosate?

We’re about to find out.

For five years, the EPA has been collecting and analyzing data. This year (2014), the agency will publish a risk assessment and open a 60-day public comment period. Then it will publish a proposed registration and provide another opportunity for public comments.

Finally, the EPA will make a registration decision to either continue business-as-usual, place new restrictions on the use of glyphosate, or to take it off the market.

Moms want it off the market.

Moms Across America and Thinking Moms Revolution are currently working with the EPA to develop protocols for an independent scientific study of glyphosate in breast milk for inclusion in the agency’s review.

These moms won’t stop until Roundup is recalled and they need your help.

 

Please join the Recall Roundup campaign at Moms Across America or Thinking Moms Revolution.

Alexis Baden-Mayer is political director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Malibu Moms Say No To Vaccines

Malibu Moms To Vaccine Industry:  Take Your Shots And Shove Em

by Sarah

The Healthy Home Economist,    27 May 2014


The vaccine industry is beside itself.

College educated Moms in Malibu and all around the Los Angeles area are refusing shots for their children at an accelerating rate.

And, as any trendspotter knows, lifestyle trends that take hold in California typically spread to the rest of the country over time.

How strong is this trend?

Estimates are that only 20% of children that attend some private schools in the Los Angeles area are vaccinated.

You read that right.  Privately educated children in LA are unvaccinated up to 80% of the time!

How about public school?

Still shockingly non-compliant with the egregious CDC childhood vaccination schedule.

One public elementary school in affluent Malibu, just north of Los Angeles , reports that only 58 percent of its students are immunized. Health department authorities “recommend” 90+ percent immunization rates for school going children.

Nina Shapiro, a professor at UCLA medical school and mother of two who wrote an Op-Ed in the
Los Angeles Times recently about her growing concern with the anti-vax movement, sneered:

“Yes, that’s right: Parents are willingly paying up to $25,000 a year to (LA) schools at which fewer than 1 in 5 kindergartners has been immunized against the pathogens causing such life-threatening illnesses as measles, polio, meningitis and pertussis (more commonly known as whooping cough).”
 

“It’s that whole natural, BPA-free, hybrid car community that says ‘we’re not going to put chemicals in our children. It’s that same idea: ‘I’m going to be pure and I want to keep my child pure.”

Nice, huh?

A UCLA doctor publicly chooses to bully mothers who use their common sense and critical thinking skills by refusing to allow a lethal cocktail of chemicals, heavy metals, animal DNA/viruses and other highly toxic ingredients into their child’s body.

Sorry honey.  Your white coat and fancy degree don’t mean anything to a Mom who smells a rat and is acting to protect her child from a lifetime of vaccine induced, auto-immune related health problems and a greedy and deceitful pharmaceutical industry.

This heartening trend of vaccine refusal by society’s most educated women is not new.  It’s been known for some time that the anti-vax movement is being led by college educated, affluent mothers.

The American Journal of Public Health reported in 2007 following a study of 11,860 families from the National Immunization Survey, that children of mothers who had not completed high school were 16 percent more likely to have up-to-date vaccinations than children of college graduates.

But why affluent mothers in particular?  There are plenty of middle and lower class Moms who care about this issue passionately.

Could it be because the typical Malibu Mom doesn’t have to worry about where the next meal is coming from or how to make the mortgage payment?  This freedom from financial worry would give them time that other mothers don’t have to think and thoroughly research issues that impact the health of their children.

Moms who are overwhelmed with work/family balance issues might possibly tend to go along with what the pediatrician says without as many questions.

 

Trend of Vaccine Refusal Continues Despite Legislation to Stop It

The real story from where I sit is that the trend of vaccine refusal continues despite legislation designed to stop it. In October 2011, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB499 which allows children as young as 12 years old to decide whether or not to accept the Hepatitis B jab or any other sexually transmitted disease vaccine without parental knowledge or consent.

Incidentally, AB499 was sponsored by political lackeys in the pocket of Merck who are either on the take (legislator Toni Atkins who lied about the money she received) or own a significant stake in the company (CA assemblywoman Sally Leiber who was forced to remove her name on the bill when her conflict of interest was revealed).

Then, the childless Governor Brown signed into law AB2109 introduced by Assembly Member Dr. Richard Pan MD which requires parents to obtain the signature of a MD, nurse practicioner, or physician’s assistant before exercising their philosophical exemption for opting out of vaccination for their children. Conveniently, chiropractors are not permitted to sign although the final version of the bill did include naturopaths.

Despite legislation giving adolescent children the “freedom” to go around their parent’s medical decisions and making it highly inconvenient to exercise the legal right under California law for a philosophical exemption, mothers are continuing to opt out of vaccination for their children in droves.

Not even scare tactics are working by the pharmaceutical industry funded mass media which is reporting ad nauseum about “outbreaks” of measles, mumps, and whooping cough around the country – outbreaks which have always happened periodically but have been widely reported only recently.

The vaccine industry is nothing short of desperate to contain this trend.  What will work? How to stop these college educated Moms from, gasp, thinking for themselves?

The short answer?

Nothing.

For a growing segment of society, particularly college educated mothers, the jig is up.  The reliable, residual income for the vaccine industry known as the CDC childhood immunization schedule is coming to an end.

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

Sources:

http://www.vaccineriskawareness.com/More-Educated-Mothers-Are-Less-Likely-To-Vaccinate

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/health/16immu.html?_r=1&

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/14/whats_with_rich_people_hating_vaccines/

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oe-shapiro-schools-and-vaccination-rates-20130811-story.html

 Source:

The Healthy Home Economist

Calling All Coloradans- Vote Yes To Label GMOs In Colorado In November

CALLING ALL COLORADANS! Support is growing for a ballot measure to label GMOs in Colorado. Signatures are being gathered through mid-July and the fundraising has begun! Right To Know Colorado needs your help to put this measure on the Novem...ber ballot.

 

COLORADANS NEED TO KNOW IF IT'S GMO!

READ:

 

http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Politics/Politics/label_gmo_foods_0514140928.html

Find Right TO Know Colorado online:

 

http://www.righttoknowcolorado.org/

On Facebook:

 

www.facebook.com/righttoknowcolorado

#Colorado #RightToKnowColorado #GMO #labelgmos #NeedToKnowGMO #BoycottGMOs #GMOFreeUSA

 

Source: 

 

GMO Free USA