'Taking Back the Tap’ Is a Bad Idea as Long as a Toxic Pollutant Is Being Dumped in our Municipal Water Supply

A CFK exclusive
Commentary by CFK Editor BILL BONVIE

CFK News 10.2.10

Recently, some alternative health web sites have taken to warning visitors about the risks of a hidden ingredient that may be lurking in their favorite brands of ice cream.  The undeclared additive in question, recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH, is a genetically engineered substance developed by none other than Monsanto to enable dairy farmers to literally milk their cows for more than they would ordinarily produce.

Among the organizations that have been campaigning against the use of this hormone is Food and Water Watch, which has posted on its web site a comprehensive (and very useful) state-by-state listing of rBGH-free dairies. Other sites have criticized major ice-cream makers, such as Breyers, for continuing to refer to their ingredients as “all natural” even while allowing suppliers to administer rBGH to their herds.

What makes the use of rBGH such a cause for concern is that it has been found in both laboratory and epidemiological studies to increase the risk of several types of cancers in humans, as well as making the dairy herds injected with it more prone to various ailments, despite its having received a Food and Drug Administration stamp of approval (something discussed in detail in “Chemical-Free Kids: the Organic Sequel”).

But what I find most interesting is that the presence of rBGH is still very much a hot-button issue despite the fact that (as is also pointed out in our book) the number of cows injected with the hormone had dropped from 22 to 17 percent of the total in the U.S. by 2008 (its use having already been banned in Canada, the European Union, Japan, Australia and New Zealand).

By comparison, consider that nearly 70 percent of the municipal water consumed by Americans contains a toxic substance -- one classified as such by the Environmental Protection Agency-- that’s been deliberately added for an equally unnecessary purpose. I’m referring to a hazardous industrial pollutant that many reputable researchers over the past couple decades have become convinced should never have been permitted in drinking water in the first place. And by that, I don’t just mean individual scientists, but the entire membership of the EPA’s own union of toxicologists, chemists, biologists and other professionals, which several years ago went on record with its opposition to the practice, citing studies that pointed to a link between this exposure to the chemical at issue – fluoride --and cancer, genetic damage, neurological impairment, bone pathology and lowered IQs in children.

One would think such findings would be sufficient to have health, environmental and consumer advocates, such as those at Food and Water Watch, raising red flags all over the Internet about the dangers of ingesting water from faucets in most locales. Instead, this particular group is leading an effort to encourage us to quit purchasing bottled water  and “Take Back the Tap”Ò.

The main rationale for this crusade is a well-intentioned one – to help eliminate the use of plastic bottles, many of which end up clogging landfills and contributing to the pollution of the world’s oceans, and to build support for the upgrading of the nation’s aging water system infrastructure. But in its enthusiasm to promote these commendable causes, Food and Water Watch -- along with others on the anti-bottled water bandwagon-- has unfortunately played down the alarming risks to public health posed by the lacing of tap water with this potent poison for the sole purpose of helping to prevent tooth decay (if it actually does, which is a questionable premise at best).

Fluoride’s dangers take a back seat

It’s not that the folks at Food and Water Watch are unaware of the health hazards associated with water fluoridation.  That much is evident from a fact sheet they published  in July of 2009 on “Fluoride: the Chemical” which notes that “the health risks of excessive fluoride exposure” are “well established” and even briefly touches on some of the positions of the Fluoride Action Network, an international coalition of consumer groups opposed to fluoridation. 

But that particular report isn’t one that you’ll find prominently displayed on the group’s web site – in fact, you have to do a search for it (I was e-mailed a copy).  By contrast, the “Take Back the Tap” campaign is front and center on the site, which advises its readers to “DRINK TO YOUR HEALTH” and “Find out why tap water is better for you, the environment and your wallet.”

To back up these claims, the site talks about how testing of bottled water for bacterial contamination stacks up against that for public water supplies, pointing out, for example, that “cities must have their water tested by government-certified labs” whereas “no certification requirement exists for bottlers” and that “municipal tap water must be tested for coliform bacteria 100 times or more a month” whereas bottled water plants “only have to test once a week.

Such assertions are countered by the bottled water industry, which contends on one of its own sites that, effective last December, no e coli bacteria have been allowed in bottled water sources, but are still permitted in tap water sources. The same site also maintains that tap water is allowed to have three times more lead content than bottled water -- a not insignificant point in light of a prominent researcher’s conclusion that increased lead uptake is one result of the most commonly used form of fluoridation.

A key feature of the Food and Water Watch site’s “Take Back the Tap” section is a cute and entertaining cartoon video entitled “The Story of Bottled Water (2010),” in which narrator Annie Leonard talks about bottled water being both an unnecessary commodity (try telling that to people caught up in a natural disaster) and a waste of resources, promoted to compensate for a decline in soft-drink sales.  At one point, in comparing bottled to tap water, she asks “Is it cleaner?” and answers, “Sometimes, sometimes not,” but “in many ways, bottled water is less regulated than tap.”  She also refers to the “basic human right to clean, safe drinking water” and urges viewers to quit using bottled water “unless the water in your community is truly unhealthy” – which, in essence, is the crux of our argument with “Take Back the Tap” proponents.

Our question to them is what, exactly, constitutes “unhealthy”? Can water be considered unhealthy when a substance as admittedly toxic as fluoride (once used as rat poison) is being added at an average rate of one part per million (ppm) -- a quarter of the maximum contaminant level permitted by the EPA (a figure that an advisory panel to the surgeon general once recommended be set far lower, between 1.4 and 2.4 ppm for exposure by children up to the age of 9)?

Fluoride-free bottled water: a 50-50 proposition

Interestingly enough, this mini-video, which focuses on the quality, taste and price of bottled versus tap water, makes no reference to the issue of fluoridation, which is a little bit like ignoring the presence of an 800-pound gorilla in one’s living room. The Food and Water Watch fluoride fact sheet, however, does make the claim that “bottled water is not the answer” because ‘fluoride can be present in bottled water too.” To back that up, it cites a 2008 study by the Environmental Working Group that “50 percent of the brands of bottled water tested contained fluoride” then goes on to say “this is not surprising, given that up to 40 percent of bottled water is municipal tap water, most of which is fluoridated.”

That, however, would also mean that approximately half the bottled water on the market is fluoride free – and it is easy enough for a consumer to tell the difference between municipal water that’s merely been recycled and filtered and spring water, which is unlikely to contain any measurable fluoride (whether it does, in fact, can be determined by simply calling the bottling company and inquiring.)

The fact sheet also acknowledges that “most common and inexpensive water filters…do not remove fluoride,” and that the only technologies certified by the National Sanitation Foundation to reduce fluoride are reverse osmosis and distillation” – both of which, as it turns out, can cost considerably more to buy and install than ordinary water filters (and distillation can take up to four hours to produce a gallon of water.)

So where does that leave those families who would like, as much as possible, to keep the water they consume fluoride free (and this, it should be noted, is a problem that affects people of all ages, since fluoridation has been linked to an increased rate of hip fractures in the elderly), and who can ill afford the cost of an effective filtration system? It’s a question I put directly to Emily Wurth, the water program director for Food and Water Watch.

By way of reply, Wurth referred me to (and pretty much reiterated) the organization’s position as stated in its fluoride fact sheet, where, under the heading, “What You Can Do,” you’ll find the following advice:

“Decisions about whether to add fluoride to a community’s drinking water are made at the state and local level. Contact your town council, state legislature or state water regulatory agency if you are concerned about your local fluoride policy and how it can be changed.”

Now, there’s no denying the importance of actively petitioning the powers that be to have bad policies reversed. But getting reforms implemented in that manner is a process that can take years -- especially when you’re talking about a well-entrenched practice such as fluoridation, which has been in effect for over half a century (its original adversaries having been far-right “lunatic fringe” groups, who gave opposing it a bad name), and has long been advocated by such mainstream bureaucracies as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the American Dental Association. 

Wurth concurred that “change is slow” and “is not going to happen overnight” and that “just like many of our battles, I think it’s a difficult thing to do.” And fluoridation, she admitted, is “not one of the primary focuses of our work.”

But providing families with information on how to avoid toxic chemicals is one of the primary focuses of ours – which is why we feel obligated to part company with people whose efforts we otherwise greatly admire when it comes to drinking the tap water now provided in most American communities. So when Wurth asked me what advice I would offer in this regard, my response was: if your water is fluoridated, either invest in a reverse osmosis filter or buy spring water that contains no fluoride –making sure you recycle the bottles rather than dumping them in the trash.

Admittedly, that’s not a perfect solution – in fact, you might even think of it as the lesser of two evils, if you’re so inclined. It would be far preferable if we could simply drink our water from the faucet, secure in the knowledge that it was free of both pathogens and harmful additives. But, to be brutally honest, the fluoride added to our water is not the innocuous, smile-enhancing substance that many have been led to believe, but in most cases a poisonous residue of industry (in particular, phosphate fertilizer production) that would have to be disposed of as toxic waste if it weren’t being dumped in the public water supply.  Even its supposed benefits are dubious, since it may not only be an ineffective way of preventing cavities (as comparative studies have indicated), but exposing teeth to excessive fluoride can actually cause them to become discolored and brittle – a condition known as dental fluorosis (which, in turn, may indicate the chemical is having other adverse health effects as well).

On the Food and Water Watch Web site, there’s a petition to Congress that visitors are urged to sign, calling on those in power to “upgrade and repair our country’s aging water and wastewater systems to ensure that the nation has safe, clean and affordable water for all and to safeguard the local environment.” It’s a high-minded objective that, unfortunately, lacks an added demand (or a place to make one) for an end to the practice of making our water supply the repository for an industrial poison.

Until we can genuinely “take back the tap” we have no more business applying terms like “safe” or “better for you” to the water that flows from it in most of America than we do describing ice cream containing Monsanto’s genetically engineered growth hormone as “all natural.”

(Editor’s note: We ourselves drink filtered water from the tap, not bottled water.  But we are fortunate enough to live in New Jersey, where most municipal water isn’t fluoridated – including ours – and to have our water come from the relatively pristine Pine Barrens.)

 

ACSH: Finding ‘Junk Science’ in Every Claim
of a Connection Between Chemicals and Illness

Goals of Chemical-Free Kids echoed in report by President’s Cancer Panel

Organic food now recommended by mainstream physicians


CFK News 5.14.10

Could it be? Organic food recommended by some of mainstream medicine’s most respected practitioners? What’s the world coming to?

Actually, it’s finally coming to recognize the health risks (especially to children) posed by commonly used chemicals, judging from what representatives of the U.S. public health establishment now have to say on the subject.

In the newly released 200-page report of the President’s Cancer Panel, two eminent physicians, Dr. LaSalle Leffall Jr., an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, and Dr. Margaret Kripke, an immunologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston -- both Bush administration appointees – have issued a strongly worded warning to Americans about the toxic substances to which we are routinely exposed.

Here. For example, is some of the advice they offer individuals (as opposed to “policy, research and program recommendations”):

“Exposure to pesticides can be decreased by choosing, to the extent possible, food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers and washing conventionally grown products to remove residues. Similarly, exposure to antibiotics, growth hormones, and toxic run-off from livestock feed lots can be minimized by eating free-range meat raised without these medications if it is available.”

That might sound like a far cry from the way organic agriculture was once dismissed as a radical, unnecessary or counter-productive concept, but it reflects a whole new public-health perspective on the relationship between environmental chemicals and cancer, as well as other health concerns. Or, as the report’s executive summary notes, “A growing body of research documents myriad established and suspected environmental factors linked to genetic, immune, and endocrine dysfunction that can lead to cancer and other diseases.”

The report’s authors make a special point of emphasizing the effect of such factors on society’s youngest members, pointing out that “children are exposed to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and radiation through the air they breathe, the food and water they consume, medications they are given, and the environment in which they live, including their homes, schools, day care centers, and even the motor vehicles in which they ride. Pound for pound, children take in more food, water, air, and other environmental substances than adults. Children also can be exposed to toxins in utero via placental transfer and/or after birth via breast milk. Tests of umbilical cord blood found traces of nearly 300 pollutants in newborns’ bodies, such as chemicals used in fast-food packaging, flame retardants present in household dust, and pesticides.”

Citing a rise in U.S. childhood cancer statistics during the period between 1975-2006, the report goes on to contend that such increases “have been too rapid to be of genetic origin. Nor can (they) be “explained by the advent of better diagnostic techniques” which “might be expected to cause a one-time spike in rates, but not the steady increases that have occurred in these cancers over a 30-year span.” But it does acknowledge that “research on environmental causes of cancer has been limited by low priority and inadequate funding. As a result, “the consequences of cumulative lifetime exposure to known carcinogens and the interaction of specific environmental contaminants remain largely unstudied.”

In an open letter to President Obama at the beginning of the report, the authors warn about the effects such a wide gap in our understanding could be having on everyday people, noting that the Panel “was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread.”

The letter goes on to recommend that “efforts to inform the public of such harmful exposures and how to prevent them … be increased. All levels of government, from federal to local, must work to protect every American from needless disease through rigorous regulation of environmental pollutants.” Observing that “the American people—even before they are born—are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures, it concludes by urging the president to use the power of his office “to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”

All of which echoes our sentiments exactly, as well as the mission in which we’ve been engaged ever since the publication of our original “Chemical-Free Kids” book seven years ago. The fact that we’re now hearing it from a government-sponsored panel comprised of major players from the realm of conventional medicine proves that once again, as Bob Dylan put it, “The times they are a–changin’…and hopefully, will continue to do so until the man-made risk factors have been substantially eliminated from our diet and environment.

To view a PDF of the complete report, click on: http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/pcp.htm

To read Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed column on this report in The New York Times, click on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/opinion/06kristof.html

 

Replacing high-calorie sodas with diet beverages
may pose an even greater health risk to students

A Chemical-Free Kids investigative report

By BILL BONVIE

CFK News 4.13.10

From the self-congratulatory tone of the saturation ads now being disseminated over the airwaves by the American Beverage Association, many parents might now be under the impression that they need no longer be concerned about the health effects of the drinks being made available to their kids at school.

According to the message, the ABA’s School Beverage Guidelines program (co-sponsored by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation and the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and with Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper playing leadership roles), has now succeeded in reducing the caloric content of those beverages by a whopping 88 percent.

“It’s a brand new day in America’s schools when it comes to beverages,” the organization boasts on its web site. “Our industry has delivered on its commitment to change the school beverage landscape. We’ve removed full-calorie sodas and replaced them with lower-calorie, nutritious, smaller-portion choices.”

To be sure, soft-drink consumption has been identified as one of the leading culprits in a virtual epidemic of obesity and diabetes – and it appears that the offending items in this regard may indeed have been removed from most vending machines used by students. According to the ABA’s director of communications, Christopher Gindlesperger, “shipments (to schools) of full-calorie soft drinks have declined by 95 percent since 2006, and we felt the need to share the news.”

But high-calorie drinks and the ingredients they contain – especially high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS – aren’t the only dietary hazards to the health of the nation’s kids. And by substituting low-calorie or “diet” items, the industry may well have increased their consumption of other harmful additives – in particular, the artificial sweetener aspartame.

Aspartame’s adverse effects sugarcoated …once again

Gindlesperger, in fact, acknowledged in a phone interview that “aspartame is our low-cal sweetener in many of the products” now being marketed via vending machines in high schools throughout the country (although soft drinks are now being removed entirely in participating elementary and middle schools, he noted). And our own survey of diet sodas on supermarket shelves showed that virtually all of them still contain aspartame.

So it perhaps should come as no surprise that this shift from sugar and HFCS-saturated soft drinks to those laden with aspartame is being accompanied by an attempt on the part of the ABA to reassure consumers that the latter additive is indeed safe for most people to consume.

In fact, prominently displayed on the group’s web site, right below its lead article on the change in the “beverage landscape,” is an article bearing the headline “Safety of Aspartame Re-Affirmed…Once Again”. The story relates how “a team of experts from a number of European Union member states” have found “no new evidence on aspartame that would require EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) to reassess its opinion that the sweetener is safe.” That conclusion, it points out, goes along with the position of such agencies as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It also maintains that aspartame and other artificial sweeteners used in beverages have “undergone extensive testing before being approved by the FDA.”

The fact that such safety claims have long been disputed by a number of leading health experts and medical authorities, however, isn’t mentioned --- nor is the fact that many thousands of adverse reactions to aspartame, ranging from seizures and migraines to vision problems, have been reported to the FDA (as well as being logged by non-governmental organizations, such as the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network).

Nor, for that matter, does the ABA bother to tell you about the exceptionally high number of rats that developed spontaneous brain tumors after being administered aspartame --25 times higher than normal, according to the original manufacturer, or 47 times, according to Dr. John Olney, the neuroscientists who reviewed the findings. Nor, when it comes to the FDA approval, that the FDA commissioner at the time of its introduction in the early 1980s overruled the opinions of a panel of scientific advisors in giving it an official green light.

Then, too, there’s no mention of aspartame’s being categorized as an “excitotoxin” -- described by Dr. Russell Blaylock, a prominent neurosurgeon and renowned authority on health issues, as a neurotransmitter capable of literally exciting brain cells to death, especially in children whose blood-brain barriers aren’t fully formed.

Such disturbing issues are merely dismissed by the article’s author as “sensational things about low-calorie sweeteners” that you might have read or heard.

A reality check on other artificial sweeteners

Sweeteners? Well, as it turns out, there are a couple of other synthetic ones used in some diet drinks that various experts have also been raising red flags about – particularly acesulfame potassium (or acesulfame K) and sucralose (Splenda), which is made by chlorinating sugar.

The web site Medicine net.com, for instance, notes that “Acesulfame K does contain the carcinogen methylene chloride,” long-term exposure to which “can cause headaches, depression, nausea, mental confusion, liver effects (and) kidney effects.” And sucralose has been the subject of few human studies, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola, one of the country’s most respected authorities on alternative health issues. But Mercola warns that it could make diabetes more difficult to control -- as well as resulting in such problems as shrinking of thymus glands, enlarged liver and kidneys, reduced growth rate, decreased red blood cell count, hyperplasia of the pelvis, aborted pregnancy and decreased fetal body weight.

And as it turns out, both of those additives are contained in sports drinks now being offered to high-school students as part of the ABA-sponsored campaign – “product innovations” such as Gatorade G-2 and Powerade that, according to Gindlesperger, have actually been developed in conjunction with the program. “These products didn’t exist before we started doing this initiative, he noted. (Both drinks, incidentally, also contain artificial colors, and HFCS is listed as an ingredient in Gatorade G-2.)

Gindlesperger, however, said he wasn’t sure if any soft drinks that contain the herbal sweetener stevia, which is non-caloric and not associated with any adverse health effects, were being offered by any participating schools, since “there’s such a limited number of stevia products on the market.” (Stevia, unlike aspartame, has only recently been given FDA approval as an additive, despite centuries of use and numerous studies attesting to its safety.)

So while parents might be justifiably pleased to see HFCS-laden, high-calorie drinks removed from schools – and all sodas made unavailable to students in lower grades – they should also be aware that their replacements are by no means a healthy or safe alternative, and might even have far more adverse effects on some kids. While “the safety of (these) products has been repeatedly reaffirmed by government agencies around the world,” as the ABA’s Gindlesperger puts it, there are also many credible, independent authorities who have had no role in allowing them to be marketed – and whose research has led them to the firm conclusion that the additives they contain are hazardous to our children’s health.

Bill Bonvie , content editor for the Chemical-Free Kids web site, is a veteran newspaper reporter, editor and commentary writer and co-author of "Chemical-Free Kids: The Organic Sequel."

Pesticides endangering bees as well as birds – and many of our basic crops

CFK News 4.4.10

Apparently, it’s not just the birds that are being killed off in large numbers by toxic pesticides, but the bees as well.

It seems the massive honeybee die-offs of the past couple years – a phenomenon known as "colony collapse disorder" – are getting worse, and pesticides are now regarded as one of the major culprits.

According to a study published Friday in the scientific journal PLOS (Public Library of Science) One, about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states contained at least one systemic pesticide, which is designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant – a development that the Environmental Protection Agency is "very seriously concerned" about.

Responding to the study, chemists at a scientific conference in San Francisco this week are examining the link between chemical sprays and the depletion of bee colonies.

And in December, a federal judge in New York banned the sale of a pesticide developed by Bayer Crop Science, which had been granted conditional EPA approval with the proviso that it carry a label warning it was "potentially toxic to honey bee larvae through residues in pollen and nectar." The ban, sought by the Natural Resources Defense Council on the grounds that the public had not been given timely notice of the company’s application, has been upheld by two more judges.

What all this means is that even while pesticides continue to be promoted as being responsible for abundant harvests, they may quite literally be having the opposite effect – by killing off the pollinators that are essential to the very existence of our most important fruits and vegetables. Pesticides, in other words, could well end up starving future generations of essential nutrients if the extermination of bees continues at its present rate.

For the full story, click here.

 

Legal clash over pesticide carbofuran evokes ‘canary in the coal mine’ comparison

CFK News 3.29.10

In her landmark book "Silent Spring," the late Rachel Carson envisioned a time when the arrival of spring would no longer be accompanied by the singing of birds due to uncontrolled pesticide use having killed off all of these harbingers of the season.

The publication of that book back in 1962 has been largely credited with the subsequent banning of DDT and the growth of restrictions on other toxic pesticides, as well as for the launching of the environmental movement itself.

But the campaign against chemical threats to the environment hasn’t yet been won – and, as a protracted battle now in its climactic phase has shown, the fears expressed by Carson were not the hysterical exaggerations that her critics have claimed.

The chemical at issue is carbofuran, a pesticide used on used to corn, soy beans, cotton, potatoes, and other crops, which was estimated by the EPA to have killed up to three million birds per year in its granular form, which was banned 16 years ago (although other estimates put the avian toll as high as 90 million). Since then, only the liquid formulation has been in use - and in 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began the process of canceling the use of the chemical entirely.

But the manufacturer, FMC Corp., challenged that EPA mandate, leading to court proceedings that finally got under way this week in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, with the National Pesticide Reform Coalition, comprised of some 20 bird advocacy and environmental groups, facing off against the company and its supporters in the chemical industry.

While the estimated number of birds killed by pesticides is believed to have decreased significantly from about 67 million per year in 1992, to around 15 million currently, a more precise count has been made impossible by the relaxing of wildlife poisoning incident requirements a dozen years ago. And while an Aviation Incident Monitoring System (AIMS) has since been facilitated by the American Bird Conservancy, it hasn’t made up for the lack of official reporting that, according to ABC President George Fenwick, may be concealing the actual numbers of pesticide-related bird deaths.

Since publication of " Silent Spring," many critics have made the charge that environmentalists are simply "elitists" out of touch with the real world. But no one would ever say that of coal miners, who are known to have used canaries to find out if toxic gases had built up to life-threatening levels in their working environment.

In light of the statistics, as we await the final verdict on carbofuran, we may well ask ourselves whether everyday birds haven’t become our own equivalent of the "canary in the coal mine" when it comes to the use of agricultural pesticides.

For a profile on carbofuran from American Bird Conservancy, click here.

Also interesting is a press release from the company that makes the chemical, FMC, stating they plan a legal challenge to the EPA's decision. This is the case going on now.

Has genetically engineered food met its Waterloo? Perhaps not yet – but the withdrawal of applications to market a "second generation" of GM (genetically modified) corn by Monsanto, the world’s leading biotech company, appears to be a significant setback for this risky and untested experiment with our food supply.

After concerns about safety were raised by independent New Zealand scientists, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was notified by Monsanto subsidiary Renessen that the company wanted GM corn varieties pulled from the regulatory and assessment process at the eleventh hour," according to a communique from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia.

While neither the company nor the EFSA opted to make news of the retreat public, you can read all about it here.

 

CFK News 1.14.10

The dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods, which we explored in Chemical-Free Kids: The Organic Sequel, are now getting more publicity than ever. Monsanto and other biotech corporations, with the backing of the FDA, like to portray genetic engineering of crops as a thoroughly safe, innocuous and beneficial process that can only make life better for both farmers and consumers, But the information that’s been emerging on this relatively new, untested and alien technology paints a very different and disquieting picture.

The link below will provide you with some of the latest news in the campaign to inform consumers about the hidden hazards of GM foods, and a handy guide for avoiding them. You can read more on the subject, including the sneaky way this technology was approved without safety testing and the destructive effects it is having on agriculture, in Chemical-Free Kids: The Organic Sequel (available at Amazon.com at our CFK store).

http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com/SG/Home/index.cfm