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Peru Bans GMOs

Back in 2009, Wikileaks released some diplomatic cables from the U.S. which revealed a list of priority countries for ‘GMO outreach’. Peru was amongst those on the hit list.

Well, now it seems Peru has opted out….

After public outcry when the nation’s former President — pro-GMO Alan Garcia — opened the door to GMOs and failed to action requests from the public to ban them, the new President, Ollanta Humala, has signed a GMO ban into law.

Peru’s Congress approves 10-year GMO ban
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, November 5 2011

LIMA – Peru’s Congress announced Friday it overwhelmingly approved a 10-year moratorium on imports of genetically modified organisms in order to safeguard the country’s biodiversity.

The measure bars GMOs – including seeds, livestock, and fish – from being imported for cultivation or to be raised locally.

Exceptions include the use of GMO products for research purposes in a closed environment, but those will be closely monitored, the legislature’s official news service said.

The bill, approved late Thursday, now goes to President Ollanta Humala to be signed into law. Humala, who has been in power since late July, has repeatedly said he opposes GM programs.

According to the Agriculture Ministry, Peru is one of the world’s leading exporters of organic food, including coffee and cocoa, with $3 billion a year in revenues and 40,000 certified producers.
Congress approved a similar 10-year moratorium in June, but outgoing president Alan Garcia, who was seen as being favorable to GM, did not ratify the ban.

There was friction over GM in the previous government’s ministries of agriculture and environment.

The head of Peru’s Consumer Agency, Jaime Delgado, said the moratorium is long enough to learn from scientific studies that will emerge on the effects of GMO products.

The country’s leading group representing farmers and ranchers, the National Agrarian Convention, said that by this measure Peru “defends its biodiversity, its agriculture, its gastronomy and its health.” — capitalfm.co.ke

I’d like to remind readers of a simple fact — that we don’t need GMOs! It’s well recognised that natural plant breeding techniques (which have been utilised by growers for millennia) produce improved, climate-specific varieties of plants much faster, and at almost no expense. This is in stark contrast to GMO laboratory work, which takes millions of dollars of research and many years of development — only to create a single strain, which is then expected to perform equally well (but they don’t) regardless of locale and regional conditions (so long as you use their recommended, costly chemicals, that is). GMOs are purely a ‘solution’ looking for a problem — and all for the pure financial self-interest of bio-copyright claimants (nature privatisers), who are taking the aggregated work of farmers over the course of agricultural history, and making it their own.

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

[…]

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a "decrease" in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening. — The Independent (emphasis added)

More and more countries are looking to protect their natural biodiversity and increase their economic resilience by avoiding GMO crops. I look forward to the day when Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and the like, all close up shop….

One Comment

  1. Monsanto’s Roundup threatens stability of global food supply
    Monday, March 12, 2012 by: Anthony Gucciardi

    (NaturalNews) Monsanto’s reckless disregard for public health and the agricultural stability of the planet may be even more significant than previously thought. A shocking new report reveals how Monsanto’s Roundup is actually threatening the crop-yielding potential of the entire biosphere. The report reveals that glyphosate, which was developed by Monsanto in the early 1970s and is the active ingredient in its patented herbicide Roundup, may be irreversibly devastating the microbiodiversity of the soil – compromising the health of the entire planet, as a result.

    New research published in the journal Current Microbiology highlights the extent to which glyphosate is altering, and in some cases destroying, the very microorganisms upon which the health of the soil, and – amazingly – the benefits of raw and fermented foods as a whole, depend. Concerningly, certain beneficial strains of bacteria used as food-starters in cultures for raw yogurt, such as Lactobacillus cremoris, have entirely disappeared from certain geographic regions where traditionally they were found in plenty. The study reports that the death and growth inhibition of selected food microorganisms was observed in concentrations of Roundup that are lower than are recommended in agricultural practice.

    This means that farmers who are increasingly using larger and larger concentrations of Roundup and similar glyphosate-based herbicide formulations to countermand the increasingly resistant super weeds GM agriculture has spawned, are not only damaging the immediate health of the soil, but subsequent yields of indispensable food-starter microorganisms, as well as the microbes that ensure the overall fertility of the soil for producing crops well into the future.

    Monsanto’s Roundup assaults the planetary biosphere
    Microorganisms are responsible for much more than just the health content of raw and fermented foods. The most numerous inhabitants in the web of life, microorganisms participate quite literally “at the root” of the nitrogen, phosphate, oxygen and carbon cycles, and are therefore indispensable for the health of the entire biosphere. Astoundingly, there are an estimated 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (6 x 10 to the 30th power) bacterial cells on the planet, and these soil microrganisms represent about 50 percent of the the total biodiversity in terms of numbers of species.

    As Roundup usage threatens these soil microrganisms, including fungi and the mycellium (technically the largest organism in the world), it could lead to devastating implications. Compromising the health of the mycellium, in particular, may cause serious harm to the planet. According to prominent mycologist Paul Stamets, mycellium may actually act as a ‘network’ within the biosphere, acting as the Earth’s ‘natural internet’ in which virtually all organisms may rely upon. It has been recognized throughout the ages that all life depends on the soil. Without healthy soil, the health of the entire planet is at risk.

    Charles E. Kelogg was one individual who stated such in the USDA yearbook back in 1939. Kelogg said:

    “Essentially, all life depends upon the soil … There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together.”

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt also voiced similar concerns, warning:

    “The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.”

    Based on an ever-increasing body of scientific evidence showing glyphosate biodegrades slowly, sinks down through the topsoil where it accumulates in the groundwater (source for natural drinking water, e.g. aquifers, springs), and is found in nearly all air and rain samples tested in the US, it is safe to say that Monsanto’s best-selling Roundup is one of the greatest threats to human and environmental health ever created.

    As the USDA continues to sit back and allow Monsanto to threaten the environmental stability of the planet, it becomes more apparent that the USDA and Monsanto are gladly willing to exchange the future of the planet and its inhabitants for short term gain. In fact, the USDA has even given Monsanto’s latest GMO crops speedier approval in order to secure the company’s profits, ignoring the numerous known harmful effects of Monsanto’s past creations, e.g. Agent Orange, Aspartame, DDT.

    The known effects of Roundup
    The negative effects of Monsanto’s Roundup on human health and the environment have been firmly established by numerous scientific studies and large-scale investigations, with scientists even linking the best-selling herbicide to conditions like infertility and cancer due to its genotoxic (DNA damaging) nature. Amazingly, even when diluted by 99.8 percent (450-fold lower dilutions than used in agricultural applications), Roundup still exhibits serious genotoxic characteristics and is harmful to the integrity of human DNA. Meanwhile, this carcinogenic herbicide product is used nationwide by unsuspecting homeowners and agricultural workers. According to the United States Geological Survey, 176 million lbs of glyphosate were used in the U.S. in 2007.

    Outside of the public health realm, Roundup’s startling environmental havoc is perhaps an even greater cause for concern. Despite being created to fend off weeds, Roundup is actually spawning resistant superweeds across millions of hectares (one hectare is 10,000 square metres), bankrupting farmers and destroying crop land. These resistant weeds currently cover over 4.5 million hectares in the United States alone, though experts estimate the world-wide land coverage to have reached at least 120 million hectares by 2010. The onset of superweeds is being increasingly documented in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Europe and South Africa.

    The research is clear: Roundup is not only harming human health and damaging farmland, it is threatening the very biosphere itself by destroying microbial biodiversity, with the future agricultural stability of the planet, i.e. the ability to produce food through monoculturing, at serious risk of collapsing.

    Sources for this article include:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22362186

    https://www.naturalnews.com/035050_Roundup_Monsanto_DNA.html

    https://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2909

    https://www.naturalnews.com/034620_Monsanto_diplomats_GMOs.html

    https://greenmedinfo.com/toxic-ingredient/glyphosate

    About the author:
    Anthony Gucciardi is a health activist and wellness researcher, whose goal is centered around educating the general public as to how they may obtain optimum health. He has authored countless articles highlighting the benefits of natural health, as well as exposing the pharmaceutical industry. Anthony is the creator of Natural Society (https://www.NaturalSociety.com), a natural health website. Anthony has been accurately interpreting national and international events for years within his numerous political articles. Anthony’s articles have been seen by millions around the world, and hosted on multiple top news websites.

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