All Episodes
Previous Next
March 23, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
16:00
Jeffrey Smith GMO update January, 2012 - GMO labeling initiate in California, bad science and more
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
All right, welcome.
This is Mike Adams, the health ranger for naturalnews.com, joined today by Jeffrey Smith on the GMO front.
Today we are going to be interviewing Jeffrey, who's joining us by Skype video, to talk about the GMO labeling effort and how we're going to achieve victory that requires food manufacturers to admit on their labels that their foods contain GMOs.
So Jeffrey, thank you for joining me today, and where would you like to begin on this issue?
Well, I'd like to first give a little bit of the history of labeling and that it really was up to the FDA to make the decision on labeling back in 1992.
And they were mandated by the White House to promote the biotechnology industry.
So they did their own research and focus groups and became aware that most Americans wanted to avoid GMOs if labeled.
So the only way they could promote the biotechnology industry, and they're still mandated to do so, is to avoid labeling.
Now, the genetically modified crops should have been characterized as a food additive, but they decided with complete unprecedented logic that it was to be generally recognized as safe and therefore did not have to go through any testing whatsoever or labeling.
That was their so-called substantially equivalent logic?
Yes, exactly.
And that this excuse was in the policy that the agency wasn't aware of any information showing that GM foods were significantly different, therefore no testing or labeling was necessary.
But let me interrupt.
I'm sorry, Jeffrey, but right there, isn't that a logic trap because they say the foods are so equivalent that they're practically the same, therefore they don't need testing, but then they say these seeds are so different that they should enjoy patent protection under intellectual property laws?
There you go.
It's in your right hand, it's the same.
In your left hand, it's different.
Right, right.
So it's total logic insanity right there.
Sorry to interrupt you, but I had to point that out.
No, it's okay.
I mean, it's insanity and it's also a complete bold-faced lie.
In fact, 44,000 secret internal memos revealed from the FDA's own files We made public from a lawsuit, revealed that it was a complete lie.
There were scientists and divisions that were specifically telling the political appointees, please do not make an excuse that because we don't have enough information, we don't need to regulate.
In fact, the overwhelming consensus among the scientists at the FDA were that GMOs were dangerous.
That they could create hard-to-detect allergens, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems.
And of course they wanted it subject to long-term testing.
But the political appointee in charge was Michael Taylor, Monsanto's former attorney, later Monsanto's vice president, and now Obama's U.S. food safety czar.
Right.
Oh, talk about the revolving door of corruption.
There you go.
The guy should patent that revolving door.
Yeah, he could make quite a royalty on that.
Okay, so the history of labeling then, the FDA says, doesn't need to be labeled because it's really the same, even though Monsanto says it's different.
There's been efforts at the federal level to require labeling.
It's been introduced as a bill in Congress for many sessions.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich has a bill right now, two of them in fact.
There may be introductions in the Senate level as well, we don't know.
And there's a big petition with over a half a million signatures so far to support the citizens petition to the FDA to require labeling.
Now, in our strategic analysis of the situation, we believe that one of the strengths of the biotech industry is their ability to control and manipulate government by the revolving door, by political contributions, by lobbying, etc.
However, their weakness is in individual choice.
They haven't been able to convince most Americans that GMOs are safe and don't have to be labeled.
Nine out of ten Americans want GMOs labeled, and as we said, most Americans say they would avoid GMOs if labeled.
Now, in California, it's one of the few states that have an initiative process where citizens can vote directly on measures.
Not every state has this.
And so it will require about 800,000 signatures gathered between mid-February and mid-April in order to get mandatory labeling on the California ballot in November.
And this idea was brought forth by a grandmother from Chico, California.
She had this epiphany on January 1st.
20th, last year, she woke up in San Francisco and said, this is something I have to do.
Figured out what a California ballot initiative would look like.
Created a website, labeledgmos.org.
And on March 10th, came out as one person.
Within six months, she had over 100 county teams all over the state.
And now there's steering committees, organizations, petition gathering captains.
It looks like this can be the game changer we've been waiting for.
And it could all take place in California, but everyone in America can support this.
Certainly those in California have the better opportunity where they can have more on their resume, help them, the genetic engineering, the food supply 2012.
But everyone can participate by donating to this effort because think about what the biotic industry is going to do.
They're going to rain down huge amounts of money in a disinformation campaign.
Oh, of course.
We know what they're going to say, too, because back in 2002, the Oregon ballot initiative for mandatory labeling was defeated.
Originally, when it was first set up, about 70% of citizens were in favor.
But 70% of the citizens voted against it, because everyone in the state received a letter warning them that they would have to spend $555 per family If the measure was passed.
It's a total lie.
Scare campaign, yeah.
It's a total lie.
Well, let's talk about this petition and this labeling effort in California.
What steps are going to be necessary to have it become law?
First of all, the 850,000 signatures that are needed, I'm confident that those will be gathered, if not a million or more, because there's so much support for it at the grassroots level, and also many organizations are Are supporting it, such as yours, Institute for Responsible Technology.
I know Organic Consumers Association is also behind it, as are we, Natural News, Mercola is also supporting it, many other organizations.
It's got a ton of support out there.
But once the signatures are gathered and it gets on the ballot, obviously a big advertising campaign to try to scare people.
But let's say it passes anyway.
Even then, can't the biotech industry challenge it in the court system?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, they can challenge anything in the court system at any time.
Now, there's been a team of lawyers drafting the measure so that the ability for it to be derailed in the courts is highly minimized.
No guarantees there, but I've seen the draft.
I understand a little bit of the law, and it looks pretty solid.
So if it passes, it means that foods that have direct derivatives of GMOs...
We'll need to be labeled by mid-2014.
Now, it does not affect milk and meat from animals that have been fed GMOs.
So we're still going to need to educate consumers to create a tipping point of consumer rejection against all GM-related crops and also animal products.
And it doesn't, of course, affect products that are sold regionally outside of the state.
So what we think the best combination would be is that the messaging that we use to reach out to Californians to inspire them to vote for the ballot initiative is the same kind of messaging that we know works To change people's behavior so they no longer eat GM foods, so they then vote at the supermarket every time they go shopping.
That's right.
That's right.
Well said.
And that's what your books get into, helping spread that education.
Genetic roulette, Seeds of Deception DVD set.
I highly recommend, folks, if you're watching this, check that out.
Jeffrey, where can they get that DVD set, by the way?
Well, if you go to ResponsibleTechnology.org, then that will link you over to the other site, which is SeedsOfDeception.com, which is the commercial site with all of the books, DVDs, and CDs.
You can also order shopping guides in bundles of 25 or more to give away, brochures to give away.
There's free videos online, etc.
Awesome.
So we, in fact...
The reason I wrote Seeds of Deception in the first place, I was not like a book author looking for another subject.
I was trying to stop GMOs and I realized the way to do it is to convince people that they're dangerous.
And we had the evidence.
And I realized if I just put a technical book together, it wouldn't be very interesting and it probably wouldn't get read by many people.
So I gathered a bunch of stories of how scientists were fired, stripped of responsibilities, forced out, how the regulatory agencies were hijacked, Fox TV reporters were fired, all this, you know, the U.S. scientist claimed to senior Mexican officials threatened him claiming or implying we know where your children go to school.
Trying to get them not to publish incriminating evidence.
So I put all these stories together into seeds of deception, and the basic theme was the deception and the health dangers.
I specifically did not talk about the environmental problems, which may be worse.
Because as we've said in a previous interview, the self-propagating pollution of the gene pool can outlast the effects of climate change and nuclear waste.
It's a permanent feature unless some science fiction future can eliminate it.
We're permanently changing the genetic background of our environment based on an infant science and feeding the products to the entire population.
It's absolute madness.
You've hit upon something that's absolutely huge, the environmental impacts of this.
I agree with you, Jeffrey, and I feel so strongly about it.
We're putting out a video called False Environmentalism that calls upon the green movement to really embrace all of this information about stopping GMOs because that is more destructive to our environment, I believe, than carbon emissions or even toxic metals from mercury mines and copper mines and things like that.
One more point I want to address, and then we've got to wrap this up.
We're almost out of time.
Oh, and first of all, folks, if you really want to help support this effort, share this video.
Get the word out to others.
Visit Responsible Technology, Jeffrey's website, that's responsibletechnology.org, and share this video.
I want to ask you, Jeffrey, about the hypocrisy of the Monsantos and the DuPonts and the other GMO companies out there.
You know, they say that GMOs are great.
They're wonderful.
They're like super crops.
Hey, if they're so proud of their crops, why wouldn't they want them on the food labels?
Why wouldn't they want it to say, you know, cornflakes now with extra GMOs, genetically engineered for your children's future.
I mean, why wouldn't they want them on the labels?
Well, they know that they would actually lose fortunes if they were.
They haven't been able to convince Americans that GMOs are safe.
They haven't been able to convince their own employees.
I'll tell you just a couple of stories.
Someone told me a story this month where a group of Monsanto employees were taking a lunch off-site in another facility in England, I think, and one jokingly said, well...
We have to make sure this is non-GMO, and he was joking, and another person, I think he was a visitor, and someone from Monsanto said, oh, don't worry, we make sure our food is brought in special.
This is organic.
Now, in Europe, in England, in the headquarters of Monsanto there, in 1999, the head of the restaurant wrote a letter in response to an inquiry to an activist organization and said, We are, based on concern by our customers, by our consumers, we're removing as much as possible genetically modified soy and corn.
Their consumers are Monsanto employees.
Now, another story I got from a former Monsanto scientist is that three of his colleagues were doing safety studies on the milk from cows injected with Monsanto's bovine growth hormone.
They found so much IGF-1, which is linked to cancer, so much of this cancer-related drug in the milk These three scientists, from that point on, refused to drink milk unless it was organic.
One bought his own cow.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, we see this kind of thing all the time.
You know, cancer doctors refusing to undergo chemotherapy because they see what happens.
But that's really interesting.
The Obama White House has a completely organic kitchen and so did the Bush White House.
Oh, yeah.
Look, the global elite are all into this.
We did a story on Natural News about Queen Elizabeth and she was smuggling in raw milk for her grandchildren.
Even though raw milk was banned, and like in Canada, you can't have raw milk, but it was good enough for the queen and her offspring.
Just not you little people out there.
You can't have raw milk.
You can't have real food.
You can't have non-GMO seeds and all that.
So, very interesting elitist attitude out there, but it's interesting that some of the scientists behind the scenes are protecting themselves by avoiding GMOs.
There's one other thing that the California Ballot Initiative will do, and that is it will disallow companies from claiming that their products are all natural if they contain GMOs.
And it was interesting, there's a couple of lawsuits now against companies that are claiming their products are all natural, and even though they're genetically modified.
And the people that are filing the lawsuit are quoting Monsanto's website.
describing their definition of GMOs as something that can't be obtained naturally.
And they're also using the World Health Organization's words to the same effect.
So it'll be very interesting to see the outcome of these lawsuits, but if we pass the labeling initiative in California, it means all of the national brands that have been falsely claiming their products are natural will have to fess up and either remove GMOs, which they'll probably do, or take off the natural claim.
Well, very good, Jeffrey.
And that lawsuit, I believe, was filed against Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo.
That'll be interesting to watch.
Jeffrey, you do an awesome job out there and also keeping your ear to the ground to keep us informed of what's happening.
Will you come back in February and give us an update then as well?
Absolutely.
There's plenty of evidence.
There's plenty of stuff.
It's a fiercely pitched, fought battle all over the world.
You need to hear what's going on.
All right, folks.
Well, again, if you want to check out more from Jeffrey Smith, go to his website, responsibletechnology.org.
Look for other video interviews with Jeffrey on tv.naturalnews.com as well as youtube.com.
And Jeffrey says he'll come back and join us in February and maybe even more months after that with more updates.
So we look forward to that, Jeffrey.
Best to you on your ongoing effort and thank you for joining us today.
It's always a pleasure to have you on.
Thank you, Mike.
All right, take care.
All right, folks, that was the interview with Jeffrey Smith.
Thanks for joining me today.
Always enjoy talking with Jeffrey.
He's the man.
He is the tip of the spear on this fight to protect us against invading GMOs and environmental impacts, not just the health impacts as well.
Remember that.
It's a two-pronged situation.
So thanks for watching.
This is Mike Adams with The Health Ranger reporting for NaturalNews.com.
▲
Export Selection