Rosemary Mason MB ChB FRCA

Farm Wars

Open Letter to the Director General of the BBC and the former Defra (Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs) Minister Lord de Mauley 

 

Lord Hall & Lord de Mauley: Monsanto’s own long term studies in rats in 1990 showed an increased risk of cataracts following exposure to Roundup®: why are you protecting Monsanto?

 

cataracts2

Annual rates of admission for cataract surgery in England rose 10‐fold from 1968 to 2003. A 2016 study by the WHO: ‘A global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks’ says that cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide.   Anthony Samsel is the US scientist who obtained Monsanto’s early studies under FOI from the US EPA which showed that Monsanto (and the US EPA) knew that glyphosate caused cancer but concealed it. He said: “Forty years of glyphosate exposure have provided a living laboratory where humans are the guinea pigs.”

Lord Hall: BBC Farming Today 18 March 2016: President of Monsanto Brett Begemann was interviewed.  Why was Prof Christopher Portier not asked to speak on behalf of IARC?

Asked by the interviewer about whether glyphosate was carcinogenic, the President dismissed as nonsense the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) statement that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic in humans. He said: “I trust the science.” Why did the BBC not reveal the massive dispute between IARC and some MEPs who rebelled and asked for FOIs, and the German Rapporteur Member State BfR and EFSA’s risk assessment of glyphosate?

Lord Hall: The BBC and the British Press know that the Science Media Centre is industry-financed but are quite untroubled by the knowledge: what does the BBC say about deceiving the public?

Nature World View 2012: Colin Macilwain, a science policy writer from Edinburgh who has worked as a reporter and an editor from both sides of the Atlantic wrote about plans to replicate Britain’s Science Media Centre (SMC) in the United States, which he said was “fraught with danger.” Furthermore, he said: “…the British press — led by the BBC which treats the Confederation of British Industry with the deference the Vatican gets in Rome — is overwhelmingly conservative and pro-business in its outlook. It is quite unperturbed by the fact that SMC sponsors include AstraZeneca, BP, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Monsanto, Syngenta (as well as Nature Publishing Group) but not a single environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) or trade union.”

Rat-feeding study condemned as a fraud by industry-financed UK SMC and EFSA

In September 2012 Séralini and his colleagues from CRIIGEN in France published a 2-year rat feeding study on GMO Maize and Roundup®. They reported liver and kidney damage, tumours and evidence of endocrine disruption. However, the ‘expert opinion for journalists’ (Monsanto and GM scientists) reporting for the UK Science Media Centre accused Séralini’s team of fraud and said the paper should be withdrawn. The paper was widely reported around the world apart from in Britain.

  • However, in November 2015 Prof Séralini was awarded Whistle blower of the year by German Scientists for his work on GMOs and Glyphosate; “After the research was published, Prof Séralini was attacked by a vehement campaign by ‘interested circles’ from the chemical industry as well as the industry-financed British Science Media Centre.
  • In the High Court in Paris, Séralini’s team won defamation and forgery cases on the team’s GMO and pesticide research. The Parisian High Court has ruled that French Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, a scientist known for his controversial research linking GM feed with cancerous tumor growth in rats, was right when he concluded that GMOs are unsafe for human consumption.

Lord de Mauley:  Why did you conceal from the public ‘The Open letter from America’ hand delivered to the Prime Minister on 11/11/2014 warning the UK against GM crops and glyphosate?

“Living with GMOs: Citizen to Citizen: From 57 million citizens in the US to citizens, politicians, and regulators in the UK and the rest of the EU about the hazards of genetically modified crops.

Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system.”  

Lord de Mauley: Why didn’t you forward the paper by Samsel & Seneff to the German Rapporteur Member State as you promised in your letter of 31/08/2013 to Lord Hylton?

Samsel and Seneff (2013) Glyphosate’s suppression of Cytochrome P450 enzymes and amino acid biosynthesis by the gut microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases in which they explained, in metabolic terms, how glyphosate could cause diseases and conditions associated with those on a Western diet, including Gastrointestinal Disorders, Type 2 Diabetes, Obesity, Depression, Autism, Infertility, Cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and autism, ALL OF WHICH THE UK POPULATION HAS BEEN SUFFERING FROM.

Your letter to Lord Hylton said:  

“The review paper by Samsel and Seneff referred to by Dr Mason suggests possible links between exposure to glyphosate and a wide range of human diseases.

CRD notes that many of the proposed associations between glyphosate and human disease seem hypothetical rather than being based on convincing evidence to support cause and effect.”

Nevertheless the CRD agreed to submit this paper to Germany, the Rapporteur Member State for glyphosate for its review of the chemical. However, IT WASN’T AMONG THE LIST OF PAPERS CONSIDERED BY THE RMS (OR GLYPHOSATE TASK FORCE).

Lord de Mauley: Did you hear the Question in the House of Lords asked by the Countess of Mar about the carcinogenicity of glyphosate on 21 March 2016?

The Countess of Mar: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the European Union Ombudsman’s finding of maladministration by the European Commission over pesticides, published on 22 February, and given that several EU countries including France, the Netherlands and Sweden have indicated that they will not support an assessment by the European Food Standards Agency (EFSA) that glyphosate is harmless, whether they support the EFSA view that that chemical should receive a licence for a further 15 years.

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con): (Replying on behalf of Lord Gardiner of Kimble, the Defra spokesperson for the HOL) My Lords, the Government support pesticide use where scientific evidence shows that this is not expected to harm people or to have unacceptable effects on the environment. UK experts participated in the European Food Safety Authority’s assessment of glyphosate and support its conclusions, particularly that glyphosate does not cause cancer. The Government therefore support the continuing approval of glyphosate.

Lord Hall and Lord de Mauley: Bearing in mind my evidence that the health of the UK and the US has deteriorated dramatically in the last 30 years in terms of diseases, disabilities and cancers compared with citizens of European countries that are not exposed to as many pesticides as the UK, would you support the renewal of the licence for glyphosate as Baroness Chisholm has done? 

Lord Hall and Lord de Mauley: Bearing in mind that on December 3rd 2015 it was announced that Monsanto, the US-based transnational corporation, will be put on trial in the International Criminal Court in The Hague for ecocide.  Will the UK Government, EFSA, the EU Commission, the British Press and the BBC be prepared to join Monsanto in The Hague?  

One of the NGOs is Séralini and his team at CRIIGEN whose work UK scientists dismissed. They have won legal cases in the High Court in Paris against others who have defamed them.

PARIS – “The Organic Consumers Association (OCA), IFOAM International Organics, Navdanya, Regeneration International (RI), and Millions Against Monsanto, joined by dozens of global food, farming and environmental justice groups announced today that they will put Monsanto, a US-based transnational corporation, on trial for crimes against nature and humanity, and ecocide, in The Hague, Netherlands, next year on World Food Day, October 16, 2016. This International Criminal Court, established in 2002 in The Hague, has determined that prosecuting ecocide as a criminal offense is the only way to guarantee the rights of humans to a healthy environment and the right of nature to be protected.”

The tribunal’s website says,

According to its critics, Monsanto is able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products and maintain its devastating activities through a strategy of systemic concealment: by lobbying regulatory agencies and governments, by resorting to lying and corruption, by financing fraudulent scientific studies, by pressuring independent scientists, by manipulating the press and media, etc. The history of Monsanto would thereby constitute a text-book case of impunity, benefiting transnational corporations and their executives, whose activities contribute to climate and biosphere crises and threaten the safety of the planet.”

In addition to Monsanto, the tribunal intends to mount a “best case” to denounce all multinational companies which are driven by the profit motive and thereby threaten human health and the safety of the planet“. The initiative is “unique and unprecedented”, says Marie-Monique Robin.

The Bilderberg Meeting 2015: attended by the global élite, including George Osborne, Rona Fairhead BBC Trust, Hoffman La Roche, Executives from Google, CEO Shell, various Banks, Editor-in Chief of the Economist, The Financial Times and the former President of the European Union

Amongst the Bilderberg Objectives are (see full list in main document):

  • centralized control of world populations by “mind control;” in other words, controlling world public opinion;
  • a New World Order with no middle class, only rulers and servants (serfs), and, of course, no democracy;
  • a zero-growth society without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers;
  • manufactured crises and perpetual wars;
  • absolute control of education to program the public mind and train those chosen for various roles.

In view of the Bilderberg Objectives, I presume that is why George Osborne in his 2016 budget:

  • cut the PIPs to those with disabilities; Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says 370,000 disabled people will lose an average of £3,500 a year thanks to PIP cuts. IFS also points out that spending on disability benefits has “almost quadrupled” in the last 20 years. So has the number of disabled people [1] due to the Government’s support for the pesticides industry;
  • reduced the capital gains tax for the richest;
  • the Government has protected corporations; given support for the Oil and Gas industry
  • continues to privatise the NHS;
  • announced that all schools should become academies
  • In addition he has allowed Google get away with paying minimal tax to HMRC.

Please will you all read carefully the attached document Open letter to the Director-General of the BBC and the former Defra Minister Lord de Mauley about Monsanto that enumerates Monsanto’s crimes against humanity and ecocide and those of the other Agrochemical Corporations.

Under the circumstances, I believe that the Media and the Government are faced with one of two choices:

  1. Either sever all links with the agrochemical industry and tell the British public truthfully about what the chemical industry has done to human health and the environment
  2. Or continue to support Monsanto and risk being taken to The Hague to be charged with crimes against humanity and ecocide

I look forward to receiving your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Rosemary Mason

ENTIRE LETTER 

GLYPHOSATE, PATHWAYS TO MODERN DISEASES IV: CANCER AND RELATED PATHOLOGIES

 

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One Response to “Monsanto: Cancer, Cataracts, and Ecocide”

  1. Kathy says:

    Hello Barbara, Many Thanks for this article ! I have just recently viewed “GMO OMG” & “DAVID VS MONSANTO” and have been truly awakened and made aware. GMO OMG sums all those other documentaries up in way that really can I believe reach everybody if they are only introduced to it by people whose opinions they trust. Please if you can pass this DVD on to others whom you know will truly appreciate and also be made 100% aware of what is really going on with our food, gov’t and LIFE. I am doing the same on my end here in Alaska. Will be following up on more related articles. God Bless

    Kathy from Alaska