Super Weeds - Super Scary

Note this is a picture of a local invasive weed NOT the pigweed mentioned in the NY Times article.

Cracks are beginning to show in Monsanto's GMO (genetically modified organism) armor.  This week's article in the New York Times paints a grim picture for cotton, soy bean and corn farmers who have embraced Monsanto's RoundUp Ready seeds.  Just like germs that have become resistant to antibiotics, the use of GMO seeds is creating super weeds.  To quote the article:

“The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent agriculture when they’ve always promised, and we need to be going in, the opposite direction,” said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety in Washington.

When will we figure out that the quick fix is often followed by a serious of even more difficult problems?

Another sign that the balance is beginning to shift happened today when The President’s Cancer Panel Report was submitted.  As reported by The Organic Trade Association, “Exposure to pesticides can be decreased by choosing, to the extent possible, food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers…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,” according to the report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” submitted to President Obama by Dr. LaSalle Leffall, Jr., an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, and Dr. Margaret L. Kripke, an immunologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

In a letter to President Obama, the panel stated “The American people—even before they are born—are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures. The Panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your 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.”

If you want to read the entire report, you can download it here.