Marti Oakley (c) copyright 2013 All rights reserved
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The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) estimates that the waters in 27% of the southern half of Minnesota have reached critical levels in nitrogen contamination and that overall 41% of all lakes and streams have far higher than accepted and so-called “safe levels” of nitrogen contamination in addition to atrazine and glysophate contamination.
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Industrialized corporate farming Chemical Footprints
Our family farms have virtually disappeared. In their place are massive, squalid industrial farming and ranching operations. The result of this industrialization is low quality food contaminated with vaccines, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides and hundreds, if not thousands of chemicals we are not even allowed to know about.
The conversion, predominately over the last thirty years, from traditional farming to chemical 
farming is devastating the land and water, especially in agricultural states such as those in the mid-west. The result is chemical contamination and toxicity of land and water, now reaching critical levels and accumulating in our rivers and streams. Many of these same rivers and streams are emptying into the Mississippi, Cedar and Missouri Rivers and end up in the Gulf of Mexico contributing to the “dead zone”; an oxygen depleted area in the Gulf where nothing grows or lives. This area is enlarging each year. Much of our historically productive agricultural land and our water is on the verge of being reduced to a chemical laden soup unfit for use.
While the carping continues by vested interests regarding our so-called carbon footprints, and while the government continues its already debunked “global warming” scam, may be its time someone looked into the toxic chemical footprint being imprinted on our land and in our water by industrialized corporate farming. The promises of bigger more valuable crops, capable of feeding the world have been dismissed as the reality of agricultural monopolies protected by government, produce less than desirable crops, severely lacking in nutritional value.
With global demands for genetically modified grains dropping dramatically, participants in the global markets reject as unfit for human consumption genetically modified and heavily chemical laden gmo crops. The push here in the states to continue using toxic chemicals to produce grains and other crops with the promise of bigger profits, goes on unimpeded exposing the public to the silent poisoning of land and water.
The public has been diverted into worrying about carbon footprints, while ignoring the critical issue of land and water contamination due to industrialized corporate farming. Our agricultural land is being contaminated beyond reclamation along with our water sources and supplies.
Atrazine:
United States farmers apply an estimated 60 to 80 million pounds of atrazine’s active ingredient annually.
As a result, atrazine is the most commonly detected pesticide in U.S. waters, present in more than 75% of stream samples and 40% of shallow groundwater samples in agriculture areas across the United States. It is an endocrine disrupting chemical, meaning that it can disrupt normal hormone function in a wide variety of organisms, including people.
Glysophate:
Add the massive use and overuse of glysophate containing herbicides, such as Roundup, and the contamination of well, ground and municipal water supplies becomes dangerously toxic. The Environmental Protection Agency, exhibiting its usual pro-corporate stance, never required that neurotoxicity studies be done prior to Monsanto registering its glysophate based product, Roundup.
The glysophate can never be totally removed from food products. Washing, peeling and processing cannot remove all of the gysophate from the food because it is absorbed systemically by the plant.
Hiding behind the tried and trued loophole provided to corporate producers of toxic materials, the Monsanto’s of the world (at least here in the US) are allowed to claim listing of the toxins (inert ingredients) in their products would reveal trade secrets. It does make one wonder what kind of trade they are really engaged in.
From: Mercola
Now, results from a German study shows that people who have no direct contact with agriculture have significant concentrations of glyphosate in their urine. It’s becoming quite apparent that genetically engineered crops are a source of multiple toxins, in addition to having been found to contain far lower levels of nutrients. So much for saving the world from starvation.
Add nitrogen/nitrate into the mix
Cropland sources account for an estimated 89 to 95% of the nitrate load in the Minnesota, Missouri, and Cedar Rivers, and Lower Mississippi River basins.
Nitrate moves primarily through through groundwater and because it does, it pollutes available drinking water initially in the areas where it is first used. As it moves through the groundwater, eventually it ends up in rivers and streams and at some point may end up coming out of your tap.
More than 70% of the nitrate is coming from cropland, the rest from regulated sources such as wastewater treatment plants, septic and urban runoff, forest, and the atmosphere.
Municipal wastewater contributes 9% of the statewide nitrate load.
Nitrate leaching into groundwater below cropped fields and moving underground until it reaches streams, contributes an estimated 30% of nitrate to surface waters,
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) estimates that the waters in 27% of the southern half of Minnesota have reached critical levels in nitrogen contamination and that overall 41% of all lakes and streams have far higher than accepted and so-called “safe levels” of nitrogen contamination in addition to atrazine and glysophate contamination.
Application of nitrogen exceeding the needs of the crop allows excess nitrogen to enter into ground and surface waters in addition to the known leaching that occurs upon application. There are also variances in soil and to some extent weather, which can affect the differences in nitrate absorption and dispersal.
Blood cancers and industrialized agriculture
The Mid-west has an inordinate number of blood research centers, and centers that treat those diagnosed with various blood cancers. This is no accident or coincidence. The clusters of lymphoma’s in highly agricultural areas is well known and is not confined to the farms. There are 30 various cancers under the label of lymphoma, but most are categorized as Hodgkin or Non-Hodgkin lymphoma’s.
More than ten years ago SUSAN OSBURN RESEARCH DIRECTOR, LYMPHOMA FOUNDATION OF AMERICA reported to the Senate:
America’s farmers, who produce our nation’s food, are at highest risk for lymphoma. They are exposed to pesticides in their work in the fields and also in their drinking water, as the chemicals leach into the groundwater that feeds their wells. Some studies have also suggested that exposure to nitrates, which enter groundwater and drinking water after heavy fertilizer use, may also be a factor in the high rates of lymphoma and deaths from lymphoma which we see in Midwestern farmers.
What was the governments response?
The EPA appears to be studying the relationship between the high levels of atrazine contamination and possible ill effects on human health. Of course, they have been studying this for more than a decade and despite numerous independent studies showing the dangers of these massive annual applications, just have not concluded that atrazine is all that bad.
The EPA has no actual response to nitrate contamination other than a statement that it will do a review no less often than every six years.
From GreenMedInfo:
The EPA, whose mission is to “to protect human health and the environment,” has approved Monsanto’s request to allow levels of glyphosate (Roundup) contamination in your food up to a million times higher than have been found carcinogenic.
“EPA has concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans. Therefore, a dietary exposure assessment for the purpose of assessing cancer risk is unnecessary.” (Read full article here)
The USDA was equally as reticent in actually assessing the biological harm from glysophate.
Summary:
We are being systematically and systemically poisoned and exposed to deadly diseases as a result of the over application of herbicides and pesticides applied to agricultural fields and used in other agricultural processes. The corporations forcing this chemical farming and ranching on the country, along with facilitating state and federal agencies are fully aware of the impending disaster that is culminating around land and water contamination.
I cannot help but note that the same areas suffering from this growing contamination are almost identical to the areas mapped out by the United Nations in their Wildlands projects, marking them for eventual non-human habitation and use. Is it possible that these projects are simply the cover for land and water devastation? Are these projects simply the advance creation of cover for corporations who are responsible for the damage, but who also donate massive amounts of money to the United Nations?
There are many questions that arise and need to be answered here.
Before the chemical castration of agriculture by bio-pirates and global corporations began, our farmers and ranchers were able to produce nutritious and abundant food without creating a poisonous environment.
The biggest question that should be asked is:
Why is our government supporting the continued expansion of chemical laden, toxic food production when we know historically that it can be produced without endangering the land, the water and the public?
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Some of the Resources:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/ofr03-069/
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/awetzler/minnesota_reviews_atrazineand.html
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/epa-american-people-let-them-eat-monsantos-roundup-ready-cake
http://www.oregon.gov/odf/board/docs/ffac_120707_comment_jpr_glyphosate.pdf
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/dc3770.html
http://www.lymphomahelp.org/chapter_three.pdf
http://www.lymphomahelp.org/feinsteintestimony.php
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/despite-irrefutable-evidence-of.html
http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/shri/pubs/pdf/Cancer_2012.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/reregistration/atrazine/
Aug 09, 2013 @ 18:38:09
Aug 08, 2013 @ 14:46:23
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_28062.cfm
Torturing Animals with Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered Feed
By Katherine Paul
Organic Consumers Association, August 8, 2013
“A Culture that views pigs as inanimate piles of protoplasmic structure to be manipulated however cleverly the human mind can conceive will view its citizens the same way – and other cultures.” –
Joe Salatin, Restoring Health, Wealth and Respect to Food and Farming
Leah Dunham stops short of using the word “torture,” but in her book, she argues that we can do better:
” As other food advocates have pointed out, we have learned how to dissociate what we spend from the farmers and citizens our food dollars affect. In doing so, we can avoid thinking about how our actions affect actual creatures.
I suspect that one day future generations will remember the last three decades as a ridiculous age in American agriculture. This has been an age during which too many human beings treated animals and children like guinea pigs, feeding them genetically modified, chemically coated, antibiotic resistant experiments, despite the overwhelming evidence that these foods are serious risk factors for illness and disease. In today’s world of widely accessible research and technological advances, the ability to produce abundant amounts of food without threatening biodiversity and our basic biological rights should be an expectation, not a goal.
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Aug 08, 2013 @ 14:35:14
Oppose the King Amendment to the 2013 Farm Bill
Dear Humanitarian,
On July 11, the U.S. House of Representatives approved its version of the 2013 Farm Bill (H.R. 1947). Included in the House bill is a provision introduced by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) that would prohibit states from establishing animal welfare standards for agricultural products sold in-state but produced elsewhere. If enacted, this provision would shield out-of-state producers from having to comply with farm animal welfare laws of the states where they do business. The amendment is broadly worded and could adversely impact not only the advancement of farm animal welfare measures, but also food safety, worker protection, and environmental quality standards.
The provision, marketed as the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act,” would nullify the progress that has been made in many states to better protect farmed animals from cruelty. In California for instance, it could invalidate laws prohibiting the sale of eggs from hens kept in extremely small, crowded battery cages, as well as foie gras, which is produced by brutally force-feeding geese. It could also interfere with state restrictions and bans on gestation crates for pigs, veal crates for calves, tail-docking for cattle, and slaughter of horses. Food safety regulations are at risk as well; labeling requirements for genetically modified products could be invalidated, as could restrictions on contaminants in feed.
The King amendment masquerades as an effort to “protect” interstate commerce, but in fact interferes with states’ rights to establish laws to protect the health and safety of their citizens. It would stymie the progress that many states have made in advancing animal welfare regulation and could put a stop to future state legislation aimed at promoting humane conditions for farm animals.
What You Can Do:
Like the House, the Senate has passed its version of the Farm Bill, and the two chambers will now form a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the legislation. It is critical that the King amendment to the House Farm Bill be omitted from the reconciled legislation. Please call or email your representative and senators today and urge them to oppose the King amendment to the 2013 Farm Bill. You can find your legislators’ contact information here, or send end an email through the Compassion Index by clicking here, where you will find suggested talking points to include in your email.
Suggested message for your call or email:
The King amendment would reverse the progress that has been made in a number of states to better protect farmed animals from cruelty, and would inhibit future progress.
The broadly-worded King amendment could have far-reaching, negative impacts not only on states’ efforts to improve farm animal welfare, but also on food safety, worker protection, and environmental quality regulation.
The King amendment is inconsistent with states’ rights to pass stronger laws that are supported by their citizens.
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Aug 06, 2013 @ 01:59:26
Here in Luzon (the Philippines) most Roman Catholic farmers won’t use Monsanto products because they are convinced that the “Mo” stands for “Mossad”, and that if they use Monsanto products, they’ll be forcibly converted to Judaism (they also believe that opening the head of a “Christ-killer” with an axe, is perfectly acceptable.
In the predominantly Muslim areas of the island of Mindanao, most farmers believe the same thing about Monsanto, but they believe in killing Zionist infidels with a bullet or a sword, rather than an axe.
My personal response to the article about contamination of American food products is to ask my wife not to purchase any food products imported from the U.S. Many American brands are actually manufactured here in Asia (such as Kellogg’s Cereals made in Indonesia and Thailand). So long, Smuckers! Too bad, Hershey’s!
If you’d like information on moving your family, your money, and yourself to Australia, New Zealand, or the Philippines, contact me, Dave Laibow, any time at “caballafamily[at]yahoo.com”. I’m a Jew, and if I had been a German family head, and had read Adolf Hitler’s “My Struggle” (“Mein Kampf”) in 1926, the year after it was published, I would have had my family, my money, and myself out of Germany by the end of 1927 — slightly more than 5 full years before Hitler became German Chancellor on January 30, 1933. You are living through the rollout of “star-spangled fascism” in America right now, and you will live in a country where “the State is greater than the individual”. In contrast, my wife, my grown sons and daughters, and my grandchildren stand tall and breathe free in Asia (into which North American and Western European investment capital is flooding, taking jobs and prosperity with it).
URGENT — visit “whitehouse.gov” and look up “Executive Order — National Defense Resources Preparedness”, which President Obama signed into law on Friday, March 16, 2012. It enables the Executive Branch, through the Cabinet departments and independent agencies, to confiscate your property — financial, real estate, personal — and your person, “through the civilian labor draft”. Here in the Philippines, by contrast, we stand tall and breathe free, because nobody’s watching us!
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