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Food Corruption Media Articles

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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The labels said organic. But these massive imports of corn and soybeans werent.
2017-05-12, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-labels-said-organic-but-t...

A shipment of 36 million pounds of soybeans sailed late last year from Ukraine to Turkey to California. Along the way, it underwent a remarkable transformation. The cargo began as ordinary soybeans. They were fumigated with a pesticide [and] priced like ordinary soybeans. But by the time the 600-foot cargo ship carrying them to Stockton, Calif., arrived in December, the soybeans had been labeled organic, according to receipts, invoices and other shipping records. That switch - the addition of the USDA Organic designation - boosted their value by approximately $4 million, creating a windfall for at least one company in the supply chain. About 21 million pounds of the soybeans have already been distributed to customers. The multimillion-dollar metamorphosis of the soybeans, as well as two other similar grain shipments in the past year examined by The Post, demonstrate weaknesses in the way that the United States ensures that what is sold as USDA Organic is really organic. The three shipments, each involving millions of pounds of organic corn or soybeans, were large enough to constitute a meaningful proportion of the U.S. supply of those commodities. All three were presented as organic, despite evidence to the contrary. USDA officials say that their system for guarding against fraud is robust. The system suffers from multiple weaknesses: Farmers hire their own inspection companies; most inspections ... lack the element of surprise; and testing for pesticides is the exception rather than the rule.

Note: Sign an online petition to stop an Oregon county from forcing a well-established organic farm to spray their gardens with Monsanto's poisonous Roundup. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the food system and in the corporate world.


Hog Farms Spray Pig Urine, Feces Into Air Around North Carolina's Black Communities
2017-05-03, International Business Times
http://www.ibtimes.com/hog-farms-spray-pig-urine-feces-air-around-north-carol...

Residents in North Carolina are fighting back against one of the state's most prominent industries: hog farming. But the legislation may not be on their side - a group of lawmakers in the state passed House Bill 467 last week, legislation that limits how much residents can collect in damages from hog farms. Hog farms in North Carolina dispose of pig feces and urine by spraying it, untreated, into the air where residents live. In response, nearly 500 of those residents ... from eastern North Carolina, brought a class action suit against Murphy-Brown, the state's largest producer of hogs. The lawsuit has now made its way to federal court. Residents have said the process of waste disposal has caused health problems. Much of the waste disposal affects low-income residents and black communities. "It can, I think, very correctly be called environmental racism or environmental injustice that people of color, low-income people bear the brunt of these practices," [University of North Carolina professor] Steve Wing ... said. "I shut my hog operation down, and I got out of it. And I ... just couldn't do another person that way, to make them smell that," Don Webb, a former pig factory farm owner, told Democracy Now. "You get stories like, 'I can't hang my clothes out.' Feces and urine odor comes by and attaches itself to your clothes." HB 467 ... was passed by both houses of the North Carolina Legislature. The bill would prevent people from recovering damages like those for healthcare bills and pain and suffering.

Note: In 2014, video footage of toxic cesspools around North Carolina farms exposed shockingly lax agricultural waste disposal standards. In response, the North Carolina Legislature passed a law to prevent whistle-blowers from exposing corporate wrongdoing. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.


Why your organic milk may not be organic
2017-05-01, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-your-organic-milk-may-not...

The High Plains dairy complex reflects the new scale of the U.S. organic industry: It is big. The complex is home to more than 15,000 cows, making it more than 100 times the size of a typical organic herd. It is the main facility of Aurora Organic Dairy, a company that produces enough milk to supply the house brands of Walmart, Costco and other major retailers. But a closer look at Aurora and other large operations highlights critical weaknesses in the unorthodox inspection system that the Agriculture Department uses to ensure that organic food is really organic. The critical issue is grazing. Organic dairies are required to allow the cows to graze daily throughout the growing season. The cows are supposed to be grass-fed, not confined to barns and feedlots. But during visits by The Washington Post to Auroras High Plains complex across eight days last year, signs of grazing were sparse, at best. During most Post visits the number of cows seen on pasture numbered only in the hundreds. The milk from Aurora also indicates that its cows may not graze as required by organic rules. Testing ... by Virginia Tech scientists shows that on a key indicator of grass-feeding, the Aurora milk matched conventional milk, not organic. The inspectors who visited Auroras High Plains dairy and certified it as USDA Organic ... conducted the annual audit well after grazing season, [and] would not have seen whether the cows were grazing as required, a breach of USDA inspection policy.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the food system and in the corporate world.


Diet Sodas May Raise Risk of Dementia and Stroke, Study Finds
2017-04-24, NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/diet-sodas-raise-risk-dementia-stro...

People who drink diet sodas daily have three times the risk of stroke and dementia compared to people who rarely drink them, researchers reported Thursday. It's yet another piece of evidence that diet drinks are not a healthy alternative to sugary drinks, and suggests that people need to limit both, doctors said. The researchers, led by Matthew Pase ... and colleagues, studied more than 4,000 people for their report, published in the journal Stroke. "We found that those people who were consuming diet soda on a daily basis were three times as likely to develop both stroke and dementia within the next 10 years as compared to those who did not consume diet soda," Pase told NBC News. "Our study provides further evidence to link consumption of artificially sweetened beverages with the risk of stroke," the team wrote. "To our knowledge, our study is the first to report an association between daily intake of artificially sweetened soft drink and an increased risk of both all-cause dementia and dementia because of Alzheimer's disease." The team did not find the same risk for sugar-sweetened beverages. But they found other troubling signs. "Those who more frequently consume sugary beverages such as fruit juices and sodas had greater evidence of accelerated brain aging such as overall smaller brain volumes, they had poorer memory function and they also had smaller hippocampus, which is an area of the brain important for memory consolidation," Pase said.

Note: Previous research has linked diet soda with abdominal fat gain, as well as found a variety of serious health risks to be associated with the popular artificial sweetener aspartame. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.


Diet sodas may be tied to stroke, dementia risk
2017-04-20, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/health/diet-sodas-stroke-dementia-study/index.html

Gulping down an artificially sweetened beverage not only may be associated with health risks for your body, but also possibly your brain, a new study suggests. Artificially sweetened drinks, such as diet sodas, were tied to a higher risk of stroke and dementia in the study, which was published in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke. The researchers analyzed how many sugary beverages and artificially sweetened soft drinks each person in the two different age groups drank, at different time points, between 1991 and 2001. Then, they compared that with how many people suffered stroke or dementia over the next 10 years. Compared to never drinking artificially sweetened soft drinks, those who drank one a day were almost three times as likely to have an ischemic stroke, caused by blocked blood vessels, the researchers found. They also found that those who drank one a day were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with dementia. Separate previous studies have shown an association between the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and adverse health effects, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stroke, and possibly even heart failure.

Note: Explore lots more about the risks and dangers of aspartame in this excellent article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


Why Is Diet Soda So Bad For Your Brain?
2017-04-17, Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2017/04/27/why-is-diet-soda-so-bad-...

A study in the journal Stroke showed a correlation between drinking diet soda and both stroke and dementia: people who drank at least one diet soda a day were three times as likely to have a stroke or develop dementia as those who avoided the beverages. Previous research had already uncovered a possible link with higher stroke risk. The findings in this study add some support to those results. The link with dementia, however, is new, and at minimum is enough cause for concern that it's worth studying further. Why might diet sodas contribute to these risks? Diet sodas are designed to trick the brain into thinking its getting an extra dose of glucose (the brains fuel), but eventually the trick is on us because the brain adapts to not receiving the added glucose by overcompensating in other ways (leading to a variety of effects still under investigation). Diet sodas could imbalance the bacterial jungle in our guts - the microbiome - causing unpredictable results. Since theres a bacterial superhighway from gut to brain, which we know interacts with key neurotransmitters, this theory may eventually tell us more of a much bigger brain story. This study didnt narrow down the exact types of artificial sweeteners that were consumed, so its an open question how one may have affected the brain differently than another. In the meantime, curtailing how much of any artificial sweetener you ingest, along with added sugar, is a reasonable position to take.

Note: Artificial sweeteners have also been connected with blood sugar level spikes, obesity, and diabetes. There is undeniable evidence that aspartame is toxic to the human body. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food industry corruption and health.


First evidence found of popular farm pesticides in drinking water
2017-04-05, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/04/05/iowa-sc...

Of the many pesticides that American farmers have embraced in their war on bugs, neonicotinoids are among the most popular. One of them, called imidacloprid, [boasts] sales of over $1 billion a year. A 2016 study suggested a link between neonicotinoid use and local pollinator extinctions. As the bee debate raged, scientists studying the countrys waterways started to detect neonicotinoid pollutants. In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey collected water samples from streams throughout the United States and discovered neonicotinoids in more than half of the samples. And on Wednesday, a team of [researchers] at the USGS and University of Iowa reported that they found neonicotinoids in treated drinking water. It marks the first time that anyone has identified this class of pesticide in tap water. The Environmental Protection Agency has not defined safe levels of neonicotinoids in drinking water. The pesticides ... work their way into plant tissue rather than just coating the leaves and stems. Neonicotinoids can slip past sand [water filtration systems] because they ... dissolve very readily in water. The research team looked at how effectively the universitys sand filtration system ... blocked the three neonicotinoids studied. The universitys sand filter removed 1 percent of the clothianidin, 8 percent of imidacloprid and 44 percent of thiamethoxam.

Note: For more, see this mercola.com article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.


Moms Exposed To Monsanto Weed Killer Means Bad Outcomes For Babies
2017-04-04, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/moms-exposed-to-monsanto-weed-killer-mean...

Concerns about the worlds most widely used herbicide are taking a new twist. Researchers looking at exposure to the herbicide known as glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsantos Roundup-branded herbicides, said they tested and tracked 69 expectant mothers and found that the presence of glyphosate levels in their bodily fluids correlated with unfavorable birth outcomes. Glyphosate ... has become the subject of hot debate over the last few years because of research that links the herbicide to types of cancer and other health ailments. Monsanto is being sued by hundreds of people who claim they or their loved ones developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma because of exposure to glyphosate-based Roundup. Documents discovered in the course of the litigation indicate the company may have manipulated scientific research to hide evidence of harm. The team that presented their report Wednesday ... collected the data over two years, from 2015-2016, and found that higher glyphosate levels in women correlated with significantly shorter pregnancies and with lower adjusted birth weights. [Paul Winchester, who led the study], said he was surprised to see such a high percentage of women tested showing glyphosate in their urine. He was sharply critical of the U.S. government, which routinely skips testing for glyphosate residues in food.

Note: Major lawsuits are building over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public on the dangers of glyphosate. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health.


Urban farmers grow veggies in freight containers
2017-03-21, USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2017/03/21/urban-farming-growin...

The future of urban agriculture might require farmers to think inside the box. Farmers ... are growing vegetables here in converted freight shipping containers equipped with the latest hydroponics and automated systems equipment. They are provided by a Boston-based firm, Freight Farm. Freight Farms started in 2010 with the goal of bringing viable, space-efficient farming techniques to all climates and skill levels year-round. It recently expanded to Arizona. [Mark] Norton of Picked Fresh Farms isnt what most people would picture as a farmer. The closest anyone has come to farming in his family was his grandfather, who farmed as a child, but that didnt deter Norton. If I can get a better environment, better food, help people with their food, and still help people with their health, thats where it all fits, Norton said. It aligns with my core values. He recently had one of his first successful harvests of lettuce, but hes already looking to the future, with a 10-year goal to expand to 10 containers. In a year, [each] 320-square-foot container can produce the equivalent of a three-acre farm. It also saves water, using ... 95% less than traditional farms. The water is delivered in a nutrient-rich system based on hydroponics, a method to grow plants without soil. Norton prides himself in using no GMOs, no pesticides and no herbicides. The environment is controlled, so theres no reason for it. The container can put out 50 to 100 pounds of lettuce a week.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


5 Biotech Products U.S. Regulators Arent Ready For
2017-03-17, MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603870/5-biotech-products-us-regulators-ar...

A new report issued by the National Academy of Sciences says U.S. regulatory agencies need to prepare for new plants, animals, and microbes that will be hitting the market in the next five to 10 years. The new products ... could overwhelm regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration. Changes in the vast communities of microorganisms that live in and outside the human body may contribute to diseases, but scientists dont yet understand all these complex relationships. That isnt stopping companies trying to develop genetically engineered bacteria to treat a whole range of medical conditions. Ingested in pills, these living microorganisms could end up in wastewater and possibly drinking water. Early this year, the FDA proposed new regulations requiring researchers to get approval for gene editing in cattle, pigs, dogs, and other animals. This week, startup Memphis Meats announced plans to start selling chicken grown from cultured animal cells. The company is among a handful of startups aiming to develop animal-like proteins that dont require traditional agricultural methods. Lab-made meat falls into a regulatory gray area. Gene drives [promote] an engineered genes spread through an entire population. [The technique] is being considered to eliminate invasive rodents on islands and to wipe out mosquitoes that transmit malaria. The idea is that organisms would inherit self-limiting genes that drive them toward extinction. But a gene drive has never been tried in the wild.

Note: A recent Nature article makes it clear that engineered 'gene drives' are extremely risky and can not be safely contained. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing GMO news articles from reliable major media sources.


Emails show Monsanto tried to 'ghostwrite' research
2017-03-16, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/16/emails-show-monsanto...

Emails released as part of a federal lawsuit against Monsanto suggest the agriculture supplier cozied up to an EPA regulator and sought to whitewash studies to ignore potential cancer-causing effects of an herbicide found in weed-killer. NPR reports the emails show the company asked scientists to co-sign safety studies on glyphosate, an active ingredient in Roundup, after the International Agency for Research on Cancer found glyphosate may cause cancer. The emails show company representative William Heydens suggesting the company "ghost-write" a finding. He wrote, according to NPR, "we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak." The emails ... also show EPA regulator Jess Rowland boasting in a 2015 email to Monsanto that, "If I can kill this I should get a medal," referring to a Monsanto effort to stop a government investigation into glyphosate. CBS reported another email from a Monsanto employee to an EPA director said, "I doubt EPA and Jess can kill this, but it's good to know they are going to actually make the effort." The company defended the relationship in an interview with Bloomberg. Rowland ... has left the EPA's pesticide division and is involved in about two dozen lawsuits related to the company not disclosing potential cancer-causing hazards of glyphosate.

Note: The negative health impacts of Monsanto's Roundup are well known. Major lawsuits are beginning to unfold over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public on the dangers of glyphosate. Yet the EPA continues to use industry studies to declare Roundup safe while ignoring independent scientists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


Unsealed Documents Raise Questions on Monsanto Weed Killer
2017-03-14, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/monsanto-roundup-safety-lawsuit.h...

The reputation of Roundup, whose active ingredient is the worlds most widely used weed killer, took a hit on Tuesday when a federal court unsealed documents raising questions about its safety and the research practices of its manufacturer, the chemical giant Monsanto. Monsantos internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators ... suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundups main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The files were unsealed by Judge Vince Chhabria, who is presiding over litigation brought by people who claim to have developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma as a result of exposure to glyphosate. The litigation was touched off by a determination made nearly two years ago by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen. Court records show that Monsanto was tipped off to the determination by a deputy division director at the E.P.A., Jess Rowland, months beforehand. That led the company to prepare a public relations assault on the finding well in advance of its publication. Last year, a review by The New York Times showed how the [chemical] industry can manipulate academic research or misstate findings.

Note: The negative health impacts of Monsanto's Roundup are well known. Major lawsuits are beginning to unfold over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public on the dangers of glyphosate. Yet the EPA continues to use industry studies to declare Roundup safe while ignoring independent scientists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


'Aggressive' firms peddling myth pesticides are needed to feed world condemned by UN
2017-03-07, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/pesticides-feed-world-lobby-un-huma...

The idea that pesticides are necessary to feed the worlds fast-growing population is inaccurate and misleading, a UN report has warned. The document, which is expected to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council this week, strongly denounced the aggressive promotion of pesticides by the industry as experts found the chemicals had catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole. [These impacts] have been exacerbated by corporations systematic denial, aggressive, unethical marketing tactics and by having obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions globally. Lobbyists have often defended pesticides as being necessary to increase yields as the world is facing threats of climate change impact. But the report debunks this idea. The assertion promoted by the agrochemical industry that pesticides are necessary to achieve food security is not only inaccurate, but dangerously misleading. In principle, there is adequate food to feed the world; inequitable production and distribution systems present major blockages that prevent those in need from accessing it. The report notes that while pesticides have not succeeded in eliminating worldwide hunger, studies indicate that food can contain a cocktail of pesticides. Washing has no effect on modern pesticides.

Note: Pesticide giant Monsanto was recently banned from the European parliament after shunning important hearings with regulators. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


The bad eating habits that are killing the most Americans
2017-03-07, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bad-eating-habits-killing-americans-bacon-fat-sugar/

Gorging on bacon and burgers? Turning up your nose at fish, nuts or vegetables? These are among food habits that new research links with deaths from heart disease, strokes and diabetes. Overeating or not eating enough of ... 10 foods and nutrients contributes to nearly half of U.S. deaths from these causes, the study suggests. Good foods that were under-eaten include: nuts and seeds, seafood rich in omega-3 fats including salmon and sardines; fruits and vegetables; and whole grains. Bad foods or nutrients that were over-eaten include salt and salty foods; processed meats including bacon, bologna and hot dogs; red meat including steaks and hamburgers; and sugary drinks. The research is based on ... data showing there were about 700,000 deaths in 2012 from heart disease, strokes and diabetes and on an analysis of national health surveys that asked participants about their eating habits. Most didnt eat the recommended amounts of the foods studied. The 10 ingredients combined contributed to about 45 percent of those deaths. For example ... excess salt can increase blood pressure, putting stress on arteries and the heart. Nuts contain healthy fats that can improve cholesterol levels, while bacon and other processed meats contain saturated fats that can raise levels of unhealthy LDL cholesterol. In the study, too much salt was ... linked with nearly 10 percent of the deaths. Overeating processed meats and undereating nuts and seeds and seafood each were linked with about 8 percent of the deaths.

Note: This study referenced above can be found here, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. For a most excellent book by an MD who learned of deep cover-ups related to food and health, don't miss "How Not to Die," by Dr. Michael Greger. This book could quite literally save your life. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


Health benefits of organic food, farming outlined in new report
2017-02-08, Harvard School of Public Health
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/health-benefits-organic-food-farmi...

The European Parliament is concerned about food safety and human health. They asked a group of experts ... to review the possible health advantages of organic food and organic farming. Our report reviews existing scientific evidence regarding the impact of organic food on human health. The most important information in this report is about pesticides in food. In conventional food, there are pesticide residues that remain in the food even after its washed. Organic foods are produced virtually without pesticides. Three long-term birth cohort studies in the U.S. suggest that pesticides are harming childrens brains. Womens exposure to pesticides during pregnancy ... was associated with negative impacts on their childrens IQ and neurobehavioral development. Also, one of the studies looked at structural brain growth ... and found that the gray matter was thinner in children the higher their mothers exposure to organophosphates, which are used widely in pesticides. Pregnant and breastfeeding women, and women planning to become pregnant, may wish to eat organic foods as a precautionary measure because of the significant and possibly irreversible consequences for childrens health. We know that the overly prevalent use of antibiotics in farm animals is a contributing factor in the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria - a major public health threat because this resistance can spread from animals to humans. On organic farms, the preventive use of antibiotics is restricted.

Note: For more, see this mercola.com article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


Monsantos Mind-Meld; Spin Machine in High Gear
2017-01-31, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/monsantos-mind-meld-spin_b_1452869...

Corporate spin is nothing new. Whether its cigarettes or sugar-laden sodas, the companies that make billions from such products employ a variety of strategies to promote the good and bury the bad. But the tactics being unveiled by Monsanto and surrogates over glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsantos Roundup herbicide and the lynchpin for the success of genetically engineered crops, are noteworthy for the depths of their deception. The latest move, the formation of a group called Campaign for Accuracy in Public Health Research, (CAPHR) clearly promotes an agenda opposite to that which its name implies. Formed this month by the American Chemistry Council, whose membership includes Monsanto and other chemical industry titans, the groups express purpose is to discredit the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a unit of the World Health Organization. An IARC scientific team declared in March 2015 that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen after reviewing an extensive body of published research on the subject. Monsanto and friends have been harassing IARC ever since through a series of demands, threats and legal maneuvers, including lobbying the U.S. House of Representatives to cut funding for IARC. The new campaign takes the assault further. Embedded in the industrys truth-twisting tactics is the characterization of anyone who gives credence to scientific research showing problems with glyphosate, or the GMOs that go with it, as anti-science.

Note: The negative health impacts of Monsanto's Roundup are well known. Big lawsuits are building over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public about the safety of glyphosate. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs and the corruption of science.


California gets closer to requiring cancer warning label on Roundup weed killer
2017-01-27, Los Angeles Times/Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-roundup-cancer-20170127-story.html

California can require Monsanto to label its popular weed killer Roundup as a possible cancer threat even though the chemical giant insists it poses no risk to people, a judge tentatively ruled Friday. California would be the first state to order such labeling if it carries out the proposal. Monsanto had sued the nation's leading agricultural state, saying California officials illegally based their decision for carrying the warnings on findings by an international health organization based in France. Critics take issue with Roundup's main ingredient, glyphosate. It is sold in more than 160 countries, and farmers in California use it on 250 types of crops. The chemical is not restricted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a Lyon, France-based branch of the U.N. World Health Organization, classified the chemical as a probable human carcinogen. Shortly afterward, the most populated U.S. state took its first step in 2015 to require the warning labels. Once a chemical is added to a list of probable carcinogens, the manufacturer has a year before it must attach the label. Dozens nationwide ... are suing Monsanto, claiming the chemical gave them or a loved one cancer.

Note: The negative health impacts of Monsanto's Roundup are well known. More lawsuits are building over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public about the safety of glyphosate. Yet the EPA used industry studies while ignoring independent studies to declare Roundup safe. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


Monsanto, EPA Seek to Keep Talks About Glyphosate Cancer Review a Secret
2017-01-18, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/monsanto-epa-seek-to-keep_b_142505...

Monsanto Co. and officials within the Environmental Protection Agency are fighting legal efforts aimed at exploring Monsantos influence over regulatory assessments of the key chemical in the companys Roundup herbicide, new federal court filings show. The revelations are contained in a series of filings made ... as part of litigation brought by more than 50 people suing Monsanto. The plaintiffs claim they or their loved ones developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) after exposure to Roundup herbicide, and that Monsanto has spent decades covering up cancer risks linked to the chemical. Lawyers for the plaintiffs want the court to lift a seal on documents that detail Monsantos interactions with former top EPA brass Jess Rowland regarding the EPAs safety assessment of glyphosate, which is the key ingredient in Roundup. They also want to depose Rowland. But Monsanto and the EPA object to the requests. The World Health Organizations International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared in March 2015 that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, with a positive association found between glyphosate and NHL. Monsanto has been fighting to refute that classification. Rowland has been key in Monsantos efforts to rebut the IARC finding. He chaired the EPAs Cancer Assessment Review Committee (CARC) that issued an internal report in October 2015 contracting IARCs findings. That 87-page report, signed by Rowland, determined that glyphosate was not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.

Note: The negative health impacts of Monsanto's Roundup are well known. More lawsuits are building over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public about the safety of glyphosate. Yet the EPA used industry studies while ignoring independent studies to declare Roundup safe. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health.


Big Sugars Secret Ally? Nutritionists
2017-01-13, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/opinion/sunday/big-sugars-secret-ally-nutr...

It was 1956. Papers had run a photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower sweetening his coffee with saccharin, with the news that his doctor had advised him to avoid sugar if he wanted to remain thin. The [sugar] industry responded with a national advertising campaign. The ads explained that there was no such thing as a fattening food: All foods supply calories and there is no difference between the calories that come from sugar or steak or grapefruit or ice cream. More than 60 years later, the sugar industry is still making the same argument, or at least paying researchers to do it for them. The stakes have changed, however, with a near tripling of the prevalence of obesity in the intervening decades and ... an almost unimaginable 655 percent increase in the percentage of Americans with diabetes diagnoses. When it comes to weight gain, the sugar industry and purveyors of sugary beverages still insist, a calorie is a calorie, regardless of its source. The assumption ignores decades of medical science, including much of what has become textbook endocrinology (the science of hormones and hormone-related diseases) and biochemistry. Different carbohydrates, like glucose and fructose, are metabolized differently, leading to different hormonal and physiological responses. Fat accumulation and metabolism [are] influenced profoundly by these hormones. In light of this research, arguing today that your body fat responds to everything you eat the exact same way is almost inconceivably nave.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing food system corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Despite Pledges To Cut Back, Farms Are Still Using Antibiotics
2016-12-22, NPR
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/12/22/506599017/despite-pledges-to-c...

Every year, more restaurants and food companies announce that they will sell only meat produced with minimal or no use of antibiotics. And every year, despite those pledges, more antibiotics are administered to the nation's swine, cattle and poultry. According to the latest figures, released this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, antibiotic sales for use on farm animals increased by 1 percent in 2015, compared to the previous year. The increase was slightly greater 2 percent for antibiotics used as human medicine. The FDA and other public health agencies have been pushing farmers to rely less on these drugs. Heavy use of antibiotics both in human medicine and in agriculture has led to the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, complicating the task of treating many infections. But the FDA finds a glimmer of good news in the latest figures, pointing out that the rate of increase has slowed. In the previous year, antibiotic use had increased by 4 percent, and a total of 22 percent from 2009 to 2014.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about food system corruption and health


Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.