Threat to Pakistan's Agriculture GMO Food

[simple Brain]

Putin Says Russia Will Be World’s #1 Exporter of Non-GMO Foods
A move the U.S. should be taking seriously

BY ANTHONY GUCCIARDI
POSTED ON DECEMBER 4, 2015

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is taking a bold step against biotech giant Monsanto and genetically modified seeds at large. In a new address to the Russian Parliament Thursday, Putin proudly outlined his plan to make Russia the world’s ‘leading exporter’ of non-GMO foods that are based on ‘ecologically clean’ production.

Perhaps even more importantly, Putin also went on to harshly criticize food production in the United States, declaring that Western food producers are no longer offering high quality, healthy, and ecologically clean food.

“We are not only able to feed ourselves taking into account our lands, water resources – Russia is able to become the largest world supplier of healthy, ecologically clean and high-quality food which the Western producers have long lost, especially given the fact that demand for such products in the world market is steadily growing,” Putin said in his address to the Russian Parliament.

And this announcement comes just months after the Kremlin decided to put a stop to the production of GMO-containing foods, which was seen as a huge step forward in the international fight to fight back against companies like Monsanto. Using the decision as a launch platform, it’s clear that Russia is now positioning itself as a dominant force in the realm of organic farming.

Read: Russia Says it Must Protect its Citizens from GMOs

It even seems that Putin may use the country’s affinity for organic and sustainable farming as a centerpiece in his economic strategy.

“Ten years ago, we imported almost half of the food from abroad, and were dependent on imports. Now Russia is among the exporters. Last year, Russian exports of agricultural products amounted to almost $20 billion – a quarter more than the revenue from the sale of arms, or one-third the revenue coming from gas exports,” he added.

Regardless of what you think about Putin’s politics, the fact that non-GMO farming and organic food production is now such a key part of the international discussion is beyond exciting (and long overdue).

Additional Sources:

Featured image credit ALEXEI NIKOLSKY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/putin-says-russia-will-be-worlds-1-exporter-of-non-gmo-foods/#ixzz3taxsx4mV
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This is what Russia going to do against the GMO which is considered in majority of the Western Countries a threat to their children's health. And what we Pakistanis did couple of months ago, here is a glimpse of that;

Senate body approves controversial bill on importing GM crops seed
THE NEWSPAPER'S STAFF REPORTER — UPDATED JUN 11, 2015 08:48AM
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Law allows the import of genetically modified crops, which many agricultural experts consider harmful for the country. -APP/File
ISLAMABAD: A Senate committee approved on Wednesday the controversial Seed Amendment Bill 2015 which the National Assembly has already passed.

But the controversy is likely to persist because the law allows the import and commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops in Pakistan, which many agricultural and environmental experts consider harmful for the country.

It was the controversy that made Senate chairman refer the bill to the Senate Standing Committee on National Food Security to address the concerns farmers, lawyers, civil society and seed company associations had about the legislation.

Critics allege that the government took advantage of a turbulent period when public attention was fixed on terror attacks to get the National Assembly pass the bill “unanimously”.

Chairman of the Senate committee Senator Syed Muzafar Hussain Shah also announced unanimous approval of the bill at the conclusion of three-hour long discussion on it in the committee on Wednesday.

However, one member, Senator Mohammad Mohsin Khan Leghari, did oppose passing the bill “in haste” and allowing GM crops into Pakistan without laying down the rules and procedures to regulate imported seeds.

He said the Ministry of Food Security and Research should guarantee that the imported GM seeds are free of disease and suitable for the local environment, and wondered “why are we pushing for passing the bill when nations from Asia to South America have had terrible experiences with GM crops?”

“Farmers in India are committing suicide because of poor results of growing Bt Cotton. There farmers are entangled in a web knit by multinational companies and their indigenous cotton seeds have been wiped out,” he reminded.

Senator Leghari believes that the Seed Amendment Bill 2015 is being passed in haste without analysing the consequences of opening our doors to GM crops.

An agriculture expert in Pakistan Agriculture Research Council described the legislative exercise as illegal.

“The National Assembly cannot discuss the bill since its subject is a provincial matter. After the 18th Constitution Amendment, the provinces have the authority to frame laws on the subject,” he said.

A government official, on the condition of anonymity, shared his belief with Dawn that the government misinformed the Senate Standing Committee that provincial assemblies of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh had passed resolutions under Article 144 of the Constitution allowing the federal government to make amendments to the bill.

The Punjab government sent only its comments on the bill, according to him.

Federal Secretary Food Security and Research Seerat Asghar conceded to the Senate committee that Pakistan lacked mechanisms and trained manpower to ensure checks and balances on genetically modified cotton, but said “this bill ensures checks and balances. It lays down a strict procedure to check and regulate GM crop seeds.”

“To satisfy the committee, the government will consult its members while making rules on imports of genetically monitored crop seeds to make regulations strict,” said the official, urging the committee not to delay the bill further for it had been hanging fire since 2007.

Pakistan is signatory to Cartagena Protocol on Bio-safety, which does not permit import and commercialisation of GM crops without bio-safety regulations and proper infrastructure in place.

Anti-GM lobby in the country says that 85 per cent of Pakistan’s cotton belt is already under genetically engineered Bt cotton and multinational seed and pesticides companies are pushing to introduce genetically modified corn and maize seeds.

Many agricultural and environmental experts have been arguing that GM crops threaten Pakistan’s food security.

Critics say the bill ignored the eight-year long trial period of imported GM crop varieties/hybrid in different locations to study its adaptability and assess diseases that could spread from sowing into the local environment and have hazardous impact on human health.

They also say that genetically modified cotton introduced in Pakistan has been a failure. Growers complain that use of pesticides has increased and yields gone down since the GM cotton seed arrived as pests have developed resistance to the variety sooner than expected.

These critics claim that the government is trying to introduce Bollgard II, the second generation of Bt cotton seed, after Bollgard I failed to deliver promised results over the past five years.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2015

 

[Azad-Kashmiri]

Critics allege that the government took advantage of a turbulent period when public attention was fixed on terror attacks to get the National Assembly pass the bill “unanimously”.

I just looked up dangers of GM food. Stay clear! Who are the corrupt sayasdan voted for this and was Monsanto paying them? I think we'll need more lamp posts in Islamabad.

 

[simple Brain]

HYBRID SEEDS VS. GMOS
by Kristen Michaelis 64 Comments | Affiliate Disclosure

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Hybrid Seeds. Genetically-modified (GMO) seeds. Heirloom seeds. The labels often confuse people. Not a single day passes without some well-meaning reader leaving a comment like this one: “GMOs are perfectly safe. Farmers and gardeners have been cross-breeding seeds like this for thousands of years. Take off your tinfoil hats, people!”

Um… no. Just no.

Farmers and gardeners have NOT been cross-breeding seeds like this for thousands of years. What those well-intentioned readers fail to understand is the fundamental difference between hybrid seeds and GMOs.


HYBRID SEEDS: WHAT ARE THEY?
Farmers and gardeners have been cultivating new plant varieties for thousands of years through selective breeding. They did this by cross-pollinating two different, but related plants over 6 to 10 plant generations, eventually creating a new plant variety.

The process required patience, but was rewarding. By selectively cross-pollinating related plants in this way, farmers could create varieties that were healthier and stood up to the farmer’s micro-climate — their soil, their weather patterns, their predatory insects.

Yet in the mid-nineteenth century, Darwin and Mendel discovered a method of controlled crossing that can create these desired traits within just one generation. This method produces what’s known as F1 hybrid seeds.

These hybrid seeds are just as natural as their historic counterparts; they’re still cross-pollinating two different, but related plants.

HYBRID SEEDS: THE CONSEQUENCES
The biggest disadvantage of hybrid seeds is that they don’t “reproduce true” in the second generation. That means that if you save the seeds produced by F1 hybrid plants and plant them, the plant variety that will grow from those seeds (known as the second generation) may or may not share the desired traits you selected for when creating the first generation hybrid seed.

I like how Rebsie of Daughter of the Soil describes it:

When two dissimilar varieties are crossed, the result is a hybrid which will often be bigger, brighter, faster-growing or higher-yielding than either of its parents, which makes for a great selling point. But it’s a one-hit wonder. Subsequent generations don’t have the same vigour or uniformity, and the idea is that you don’t save seed from it, you just throw it away and buy some more. This is bad for the plants, bad for the garden and bad for you, but the seed companies make a packet out of it and gain increasing control of what we buy and grow.
(source)

While there may not be anything inherently wrong with this process, it does keep you dependent on seed companies year after year since you can’t save your seeds and expect the next generation of plants you grow to be identical to the first.

While this is a small nuisance to a home gardener, it can be devastating to subsistence farmers around the world.

In fact, this is precisely what happened. Dawn from Small Footprint Family writes:

When the peasant farmers grew these new hybrids, they were indeed more productive, even though they required more fertilizer and water. But when they collected and saved the seed for replanting the next season—as they had done for generations and generations—none of it grew true to the parent crop, little food grew, and these poor farmers, having none of their open-pollenated traditional varieties left viable, had no choice but to go back to the big companies to purchase the hybrid seeds again for planting year after year.

U.S. companies like Cargill intentionally disrupted the traditional cycle of open-pollinated seed saving and self-sufficiency to essentially force entire nations to purchase their seeds, and the agricultural chemicals required to grow them.

Most of these poor subsistence farmers never had to pay for seed before, and could not afford the new hybrid seeds, or the new petrochemical fertilizers they required, and were forced to sell their farms and migrate to the cities for work. This is how the massive, infamous slums of India, Latin America, and other developing countries were created.

By the 1990s an estimated 95% of all farmers in the First World and 40% of all farmers in the Third World were using Green Revolution hybrid seeds, with the greatest use found in Asia, followed by Mexico and Latin America.

The world lost an estimated 75 percent of its food biodiversity, and control over seeds shifted from farming communities to a handful of multinational corporations.

(source)

GMO SEEDS: WHAT ARE THEY?
Unlike hybrid seeds, GMO seeds are not created using natural, low-tech methods. GMO seed varieties are created in a lab using high-tech and sophisticated techniques like gene-splicing.

Furthermore, GMO seeds seldom cross different, but related plants. Often the cross goes far beyond the bounds of nature so that instead of crossing two different, but related varieties of plant, they are crossing different biological kingdoms — like, say, a bacteria with a plant.

For example, Monsanto has crossed genetic material from a bacteria known as Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) with corn. The goal was to create a pest-resistant plant. This means that any pests attempting to eat the corn plant will die since the pesticide is part of every cell of the plant.

The resultant GMO plant, known as Bt Corn, is itself registered as a pesticide with the EPA, along with other GMO Bt crops. In other words, if you feed this corn to your cattle, your chickens, or yourself, you’ll be feeding them an actual pesticide — not just a smidgeon of pesticide residue.

GMO SEEDS: THE CONSEQUENCES


Sadly, GMOs are a great, big scientific unknown.


On the one hand, biotech firms like Monsanto argue that the GMO seeds they create are so unique that they need to be patented — something that has far-reaching and devastating effects on the global economy. (Just ask Percy Schmieser.)

Yet on the other hand, the same firms argue that the GMO seeds are “substantially equivalent” to other seeds, so they have no need to be labeled, tested, or otherwise regulated.

So far, the U.S. government has allowed biotech firms to get away with this crazy juxtaposition. However, some testing of GMO seeds has been done in other countries, and it takes investigative journalism found in books like Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eatingto expose just what’s at risk.

Vickie Mattern of Mother Earth News summarized it this way:

The trouble is that nobody knows how these unnatural new organisms will behave over time. The seed companies that develop these varieties claim intellectual property rights so that only they can create and sell the variety. In some cases, companies — such as Monsanto — even refuse to allow scientists to obtain and study their GM seeds. For some crops, such as corn, wind can carry the pollen from GM varieties and contaminate non-GM varieties. And there is no mandatory labeling of GM content in seed, says Kristina Hubbard, advocacy and communications director for the Organic Seed Alliance.
(source)

HYBRID SEEDS VS. GMOS
In short: Hybrid Seeds are nothing to fear, but you may not want to support them given that they fail to breed true and have caused so much global havoc. GMO seeds are far more unnatural and likely to cause harm — both to your environment and your health.

HOW TO AVOID GMOS
Unfortunately, because GMOs aren’t currently labeled in the U.S., you have no way of knowing whether or not you’re eating them. Roughly 85% of all grocery store foods contain GMOs, and there only a handful of sure-fire ways to avoid them:

1. Opt to buy single-ingredient certified organic food.
2. Choose Non-GMO Verfied labeled foods.
3. Grow your own open-pollinated, heirloom variety plants.
4. Know your farmer and ask pointed questions about his or her growing practices, then opt to support GMO-free growing.

 

[Azad-Kashmiri]

Bhai jaan, thank you for telling us. I will tell my family and friends to avoid shaythan food.

 

[simple Brain]

I just looked up dangers of GM food. Stay clear! Who are the corrupt sayasdan voted for this and was Monsanto paying them? I think we'll need more lamp posts in Islamabad.

Yes you are right, they have destroyed half of the world's agriculture system, every Country who is a user of GMO food is now regretting, and for that we don't have to go really far, our dearest Neighbor India is a victim of Monsanto. Monsanto created GMO seeds has destroyed the India's cotton growth.

Vandana Shiva On the Dangers of GMOs | Food Renegade

We were sold by our Politicians long time ago, no wonder Aids, Cancer, Diabetes, Hepatitis B & C, is growing in Pakistan and thousands of People are dying of it every single day. We never had this Mosquito called Dangy, but for the last few years it suddenly appeared from nowhere.

Bhai jaan, thank you for telling us. I will tell my family and friends to avoid shaythan food.

Ya bro spread this word as much as you can, this is also called a sadqa e Jariya. We need to protect our Nation, we can't come out on the roads but least we can do is to spread this word of awareness through social media.

 

[war&peace]

Monsanto is the most detested company in west and especially many European countries (The Netherlands especially) have slapped bans on multiple of its products and EU is resistant to GMOs while the awareness against GMOs is on the rise here in USA too.
Pakistan must stick to its original organic food but unfortunately their corrupt traitors who are ruling us will destroy our agriculture too. While the uneducated and illiterate Pakistani will accept it as part of his destiny....so the destitution is the destiny ( ہے جرم ضعیفی کی سزا مرگ مفاجات)

 

[simple Brain]

This woman called Najma Sadique, She fought against the legalization of GMO seeds in Pakistan back in 2014 and majority of our Politicians were scared of her, but unfortunately she died in January this year due to kidney failure. Someone wrote an article about her back in 2014, here is the link.

Pakistan Says ‘No’ To GMOs

But soon after she died, our Politicians started lobbying in favor of the GMO seeds. And why they did that, well everyone knows about it in Pakistan.

 

[Azad-Kashmiri]

Pakistan must stick to its original organic food but unfortunately their corrupt traitors who are ruling us will destroy our agriculture too. While the uneducated and illiterate Pakistani will accept it as part of his destiny....so the destitution is the destiny ( ہے جرم ضعیفی کی سزا مرگ مفاجات)

No, don't put this is on us. People on here complain when Sharia is mentioned and when the same gormant is selling us out and now poisoning us and killing us in the long term, whose fault is this? The ordinary Pakistanis don't know and can't afford to go to the streets. This is the way gormant and the ginrals have kept us, ignorant and uneducated to control us easily.

 

[war&peace]

Listen to this 12 yrs old girl; if she can figure out what GMO is actually (beyond the false information or concealed info by GMO producers)....Why can't you Pakistanis. Below the YT video link (try proxies if still not allowed)

 

[simple Brain]

Youtube is banned in Pakistan.

I agree with @Azad-Kashmiri there is no doubt that our Politicians are exploiting our Nation's ignorance about the hidden secrets of world dominated Multi-National firms.

 

[Azad-Kashmiri]

Youtube is banned in Pakistan.

Yes, because the saysadan and ginrals love nabi as'salaathu was'salaam soooooo much that they banned it whilst they were drinking Jack Daniel.

 

[simple Brain]

Yes, because the saysadan and ginrals love nabi as'salaathu was'salaam soooooo much that they banned it whilst they were drinking Jack Daniel.

ya could be, after all JD is their favorite drink.

 

[XenoEnsi-14]

Death to Monsanto GMO's

 

[Azad-Kashmiri]

ya could be, after all JD is their favorite drink.

Bhai jaan i use a proxy to watch youtube. I used to say they drink Johnny Walker which i heard long time ago and now i heard they drink Jack Daniel. Lamp posts of Islamabad will be filled soon.