Free Republic

German pharmaceuticals giant Bayer and the US group Monsanto said Thursday they are in talks on a possible merger to create a global player in pesticides, seeds and genetically modified crops, following weeks of speculation about a possible tie-up. Both sides have emphasized that the talks are still only exploratory at this stage and neither has mentioned how much any proposed deal would be worth. But with Monsanto’s market value estimated at around $42 billion (€37.5 billion), observers say it would be bigger than the recent acquisition of Switzerland’s Syngenta by China National Chemical Corp. […] The US group has...

Colombia has announced it will stop using a controversial herbicide to destroy illegal plantations of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. The decision follows a warning by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic". The product has been used in US-sponsored crop-spraying anti-narcotics programmes in South America. President Juan Manuel Santos has said Colombia will need to find other mechanisms to combat coca production. Anti-narcotics officials in Colombia will have until October to prepare an alternative plan. "I am going to ask the government officials in the National Drug Council at their next meeting to suspend glyphosate...

In a first for a major restaurant chain, Chipotle Mexican Grill on Monday will begin serving only food that is free of genetically engineered ingredients. “This is another step toward the visions we have of changing the way people think about and eat fast food,” said Steve Ells, founder and co-chief executive of Chipotle. “Just because food is served fast doesn’t mean it has to be made with cheap raw ingredients, highly processed with preservatives and fillers and stabilizers and artificial colors and flavors.” In 2013, Chipotle was the first restaurant chain to indicate which items contained genetically modified organisms,...

The World Health Organisation’s cancer agency has declared that one of the UK’s most widely used weedkillers is “probably carcinogenic to humans”.Amateur gardeners and professional farmers have been urged to “think very carefully” about using the popular herbicide Roundup, which contains glyphosate. A summary of the International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) report, published in The Lancet Oncology, said that the herbicide had been detected “in air during spraying, in water, and in food”.It had also been detected “in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption”....The IARC's report said that its use has increased sharply with the...

One of the world’s most popular weed killers—and the most widely used kind in the U.S.—has been labeled a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The decision was made by IARC, the France-based cancer research arm of the World Health Organization, which considered the status of five insect and weed killers including glyphosate, which is used globally in industrial farming. […] The new classification is aimed mainly at industrial use of glyphosate. Its use by home gardeners is not considered a risk. Glyphosate is in the same category of risk as things like anabolic steroids and...

A new study from the School of Medical Sciences at Australia’s University of New South Wales points to profound brain changes that junk food causes, making a junk food habit “more deadly than war, famine, and genocide”. “We observed that rats fed a cafeteria diet for 2 weeks showed impaired sensory-specific satiety following consumption of a high calorie solution. The deficit in expression of sensory-specific satiety was also present 1 week following the withdrawal of cafeteria foods. Thus, exposure to obesogenic diets may impact upon neurocircuitry involved in motivated control of behavior.” "the consumption of junk food overrides this natural...

Last month, I ate a strawberry. The taste exploded in my mouth as my throat was bathed in rich juices. The meat of the berry was soft and succulent. I was in France. Last week, I ate another strawberry. There was a slight reddish flavour, which combatted the petroleum essence of the packaging. The meat of the berry was corky, dry and flavourless. I was in Canada.

(CNN) -- Vermont's governor on Thursday signed a bill into law that will require the labeling of genetically modified foods -- hailing it as the first such law in the nation. Under the new law, food offered for retail sale that is entirely or partially produced with genetic engineering must be labeled as such by July 2016. "Vermonters take our food and how it is produced seriously, and we believe we have a right to know what's in the food we buy," said Gov. Peter Shumlin. "More than 60 countries have already restricted or labeled these foods, and now one...

BUNKERVILLE (KSNV MyNews3.com) -- The gathering of rancher Cliven Bundy's cattle in northeast Clark County has been stopped by the director of the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM announcement came as Bundy was meeting with Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie about the week-long dispute. The BLM had been using contract cowboys to round up Bundy's 900 head of cattle that have been grazing over 600,000 square acres in northeast Clark County for more than 20 years without his payment of grazing fees. As of Friday they had secure 389 cattle from the Gold Butte area, nearly 90 percent of...

<p>WASHINGTON — Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo is pushing a bill in Congress that would shift responsibility for any labeling of genetically modified foods to the hands of the federal government, potentially stopping the efforts underway in many states to mandate labels on such foods.</p>

China rejected two shipments -- almost 546,000 tons -- of U.S. dried distillers' grain, a corn byproduct, because it contained genetically modified material, state media reported Friday.

Late last year, in a small health-food eatery called Cafe Sprouts in Oberlin, Ohio, I had what may well have been the most wholesome beverage of my life. The friendly server guided me to an apple-blueberry-kale-carrot smoothie-juice combination, which she spent the next several minutes preparing, mostly by shepherding farm-fresh produce into machinery. The result was tasty. But at 300 calories (by my rough calculation) for a 16-ounce cup, it was more than my diet could regularly absorb without consequences. Nor was I about to make a habit of $9 shakes, healthy or not. Inspired by the experience nonetheless, I...

If one believes the backers of Washington State Initiative 522, Tuesday’s vote is simple commonsense: It’s about the “right to know” what’s in our food... “To be clear the Just Label campaign is not an anti-GMO effort,” says Gary Hirshberg, founder of organic food maker Stonyfield Organic, and head of Just Label It... But in less guarded moments, Hirshberg makes it clear that the labeling movement has nothing at all to do with science, information and discourse—it is exclusively an anti-GMO effort...

The detection of a small amount of genetically modified material in a Washington state farmer's non-GMO alfalfa crop constitutes a "commercial issue" only and does not warrant any government action, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday. The Washington state farmer had complained in late August to state agricultural officials that his alfalfa hay had been rejected for export sale because of the presence of a genetically modified trait that makes the crop resistant to herbicide. The event triggered a wave of concern from consumer and agricultural groups who have fought the government for nearly a decade to keep...

The left is in a frenzy over the American agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto and other agribusinesses that tinker with crop genetics. Is there any truth to their scare stories asserting that we’re being poisoned with “Frankenfood,” breeding new strains of superbugs and superpests? Genetically modified crops, known as GMOs (genetically modified organisms), have been used by American farmers since the mid-1990s in order to increase crop yields and reduce the use of pesticides. The FDA has approved their use. Today, 70-80 percent of grocery products in the U.S. include genetically engineered ingredients. In contrast, only 5 percent of the food...

Common compounds produced by gut microbes quench colitis in mice Common molecules made by bacteria in the gut may act as chill pills for the immune system. Molecules secreted by intestinal bacteria work to prevent misplaced immune attacks in inflammatory bowel diseases like colitis, a new study finds. “It is a huge advance,” says Sarkis Mazmanian of Caltech. “This opens up the notion that a very easy and potentially very safe therapy for inflammatory bowel disease could exist.” Decades of research have hinted that microbes play a role in immune-related diseases such as obesity, allergy, inflammatory bowel disease and colon...

Though biotech companies like Monsanto spent many millions creating and inserting genes that would make corn plants poisonous to the corn rootworm but harmless to other creatures, the pest has begun to develop an immunity. Though the use of chemical pesticides has always been a source of contention, the advent of corn hybrid plants by biotech companies like Monsanto allowed farmers to cut back on their use. These new hybrids had been specifically designed using genes from a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which provided a formidable defense against corn rootworm. Throughout parts of the midwest, however, farmers are now...

GM foods are banned from restaurants in the Houses of Parliament despite government claims it is ‘probably safer’ than other meals. Government ministers are demanding that ordinary families should abandon their reluctance to eat genetically modified food, however they are banned from MPs’ plates. This week the food and farming secretary, Owen Paterson, launched an extraordinary propaganda campaign to encourage the nation to accept GM crops and farming. He bolstered his campaign with claims that some seven million children in the Far East could have been saved from blindness or death in the last 15 years if only people had...

Monsanto Co's unapproved, experimental genetically engineered wheat, which is feared to have potentially contaminated U.S. wheat supplies after it was found growing in an Oregon field this spring, was kept in a U.S. government storage facility until at least late 2011, according to documents obtained by Reuters. The revelation that the seed for the controversial genetically engineered wheat was kept viable in a Colorado storage facility as recently as a year and a half ago comes as the U.S. government is investigating how the strain of experimental wheat wound up growing in an Oregon field this spring. The probe by...

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2 - CLICK HERE FOR PART 3 - CLICK HERE FOR PART 4APRIL 27, 2012, APPLE RIVER, IL – The little town of Apple River in northeast Jo Daviess County, Illinois is the hometown of a big man - Terrence Ingram. Though not big in a physical sense, when it comes to saving the American Bald Eagle, there is hardly anyone in the United States held in higher regard than Ingram. His years of documented research and expertise regarding eagles and the work of the Eagle Nature Foundation, founded by Ingram, is in great part responsible...