Tag: crops

Ex-Monsanto employee fired from scientific journal

Ex-Monsanto employee Richard Goodman has been removed from the Editorial Board of the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology. Goodman was appointed Associate Editor shortly before the Seralini study was retracted by the journal.

Former Editor-in-Chief, A. Wallace Hayes will be replaced by someone else as well.

It looks like one scientific journal has decided to get real, replacing a pro-GMO editor in a major scientific journal. An ‘unbiased’ Editor-in-Chief will be replacing the completely biotech-biased A. Wallace Hayes, who retracted the controversial paper by the Seralini team which showed the toxicity of GMOs beyond any shadow of doubt.

In response to a 2004 study declaring Monsanto’s NK603 GMO maize safe:

“…a predominantly French team led by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini undertook a two-year (over 700 days), feeding trial [2], which was otherwise similar. Their work was published in September 2012, also inFCT. The early warnings that had been dismissed in the Monsanto paper developed into serious illnesses, includingdamage to liver, kidneys, pituitary gland and, most notably, early deaths and development of large tumours in females. In addition, the study included trials of minute amounts of Monsanto’s Roundup, the herbicide to which tolerance has been genetically engineered into NK603, in the rats’ drinking water.”

Some time later, the Seralini study was removed from the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, and this fact has been used in a foolhardy way by biotech shills to promote the ‘fallacy’ of biotech dangers on more blogs and Facebook postings than I’d like to count. It looks like the journal is doing some house cleaning; however, because two Monsanto-supporting, biased editors have been removed from their positions.

After the Seralini study was retracted, hundreds of scientists contacted the journal to ask them why they were doing so, claiming that they were giving in to pressure from the biotech industry. The academic world was outraged, and they voiced that opinion, despite being labeled with childish names by Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, and others.

Now, the new Editor-in-Chief is Jose Domingo, who has published papers showing that the safety of GM crops is not an established fact.

“Critical changes have this year been made at the journal, Food and Chemical Toxicolgy, from which the Editor-in-Chief A. Wallace Hayes retracted the important paper by the Seralini team. The Editorial Board of the journal [19] now has a new Editor-in-Chief, José L. Domingo, who has published papers showing that safety of GM crops is not an established fact; and the Editorial Board no longer includes Richard Goodman, the ex-Monsanto employee who became Associate Editor for Biotechnology not long before the Seralini paper was retracted.”

The original Seralini study found an audience despite the journal’s retraction, but there are further studies from Prof Gilles-Eric Seralini and his team, including a more recent exploration of how glyphosate ruins the functioning of the heart.

Now that the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology has come to their senses, perhaps all the other ‘paid-for’ science will be ousted from reputable journals also.

Peak food: Shortages loom as global production slows

The world has entered an era of “peak food” production with an array of staples from corn and rice to wheat and chicken slowing in growth – with potentially disastrous consequences for feeding the planet.

New research finds that the supply of 21 staples, such as eggs, meat, vegetables and soybeans is already beginning to run out of momentum, while the global population continues to soar.

Peak chicken was in 2006, while milk and wheat both peaked in 2004 and rice peaked way back in 1988, according to new research from Yale University, Michigan State University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany.

What makes the report particularly alarming is that so many crucial sources of food have peaked in a relatively short period of history, the researchers said.

“People often talk of substitution. If we run out of one substance we just substitute another. But if multiple resources are running out, we’ve got a problem. Mankind needs to accept that renewable raw materials are reaching their yield limits worldwide,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, of Michigan State University.

“This is a strong reason for integration … rather than searching for a one-for-one substitution to offset shortages,” he added.

“Just nine or 10 plants species feed the world. But we found there’s a peak for all these resources. Even renewable resources won’t last forever,” said Ralf Seppelt, of the Helmholtz Centre.

The research, published in the journal Ecology and Society, finds that 16 of the 21 foods examined reached peak production between 1988 and 2008.

The simultaneous peaking of crops and livestock comes against a backdrop of a growing population, which is expected to reach nine billion by 2050, requiring the world to produce twice as much food by then as it does now, according to a separate study by the California Academy of Sciences.

The problems caused by the growing population have been compounded by the growth of wealthy middle-class populations in countries such as China and India which are demanding a meatier diet. This is problematic because meat and dairy use up a lot more resources than if a comparable level of nutrition were provided by crops, grown direct for human consumption.

Source: The Independent