GM Food Needs Mandatory Labels

Courtesy of Disinfo.com, from Business Week:

Genetically engineered corn, soy and plant oil should be disclosed on mandatory food labels, a coalition of more than 350 producers, trade groups and consumers said in a petition to U.S. regulators.

The U.S. should require added disclosure even when a product containing a gene-altered organism is similar to foods that aren’t bioengineered, the groups said today in the petition to the Food and Drug Administration. Stonyfield Farm, the organic-yogurt maker owned by Danone SA, and Dean Foods Co.’s Horizon Organic are among the coalition members.

Petitioners, led by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, want to reverse a 1992 Food and Drug Administration policy that doesn’t require different labeling. Gene-altered seeds are used for almost 90 percent of U.S.-grown corn, 94 percent of soy and 90 percent of cottonseed, an oil-producing plant, the coalition said.

“Consumers ought to have the right to choose whether to be buying these foods,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive officer of Londonderry, New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farm, in an interview...

Gene-Altered Foods Need Mandatory Labels, Coalition Tells FDA
Molly Peterson
October 04, 2011
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-04/gene-altered-foods-need-mandatory-labels-coalition-tells-fda.html

To those who Occupy: We stand with you

http://www.benjerry.com/activism/occupy-movement

We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent Occupy Wall Street Movement and to those around the country who have joined in solidarity. The issues raised are of fundamental importance to all of us. These include:

•The inequity that exists between classes in our country is simply immoral.
•We are in an unemployment crisis. Almost 14 million people are unemployed. Nearly 20% of African American men are unemployed. Over 25% of our nation’s youth are unemployed.
•Many workers who have jobs have to work 2 or 3 of them just to scrape by.
•Higher education is almost impossible to obtain without going deeply in debt.
•Corporations are permitted to spend unlimited resources to influence elections while stockpiling a trillion dollars rather than hiring people.

We know the media will either ignore you or frame the issue as to who may be getting pepper sprayed rather than addressing the despair and hardships borne by so many, or accurately conveying what this movement is about. All this goes on while corporate profits continue to soar and millionaires whine about paying a bit more in taxes. And we have not even mentioned the environment.

We know that words are relatively easy but we wanted to act quickly to demonstrate our support. As a board and as a company we have actively been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we pay a livable wage to our employees, we directly support family farms and we are working to source fairly traded ingredients for all our products. But we realize that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic change. We support this call to action and are honored to join you in this call to take back our nation and democracy.

— Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors

What’s our position on the issues that matter?

•Big Picture, Small World
•Fair Trade
•Climate Justice
•Peace Building
•Caring Dairy

Does Ben & Jerry’s spend money on lobbying in the United States?
Ben & Jerry’s has launched numerous activist campaigns over the years that are considered lobbying activities according to federal and state laws.

In the past four years, the positions we have taken in these activist campaigns are:

1.Support for a Constitutional amendment that would limit corporate spending in elections.
2.Support for stronger social and environmental protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
3.Support for the Youth PROMISE Act, which funds proven youth violence prevention programs.
4.Support for continued funding for the United States Institute of Peace.
5.Support for continued funding for the Complex Crises Fund which supports State Department emergency efforts to defuse volatile conflicts around the globe.
6.Support for aggressive federal legislation to limit and reduce carbon emissions to respond to the challenge of climate change.
7.Opposition to FDA approval of foods from cloned animals.
8.Support for a USDA program to require mandatory tracking of cloned animals in the food supply to support consumer choice.
9.Opposition to FDA approval of genetically engineered animals in the food supply.
10.Support for the right of dairy companies to label their products as being ‘rBGH-free.’
11.Support for the United Nations Millennium Development goals to eradicate extreme poverty and inequality.

Ben & Jerry’s has reported all expenditures on these grassroots campaign activities as required by federal and Vermont state law.

Fraud claim against Dr. Andrew Wakefield has no basis in fact

BMJ admits that fraud claim against Dr. Andrew Wakefield has no basis in fact
Thursday, August 25, 2011
PF Louis
http://www.naturalnews.com/033425_BMJ_Andrew_Wakefield.html

(Natural News) Big Pharma, the FDA, AMA and other medical associations falsely accuse conscientious healers of crimes that they themselves routinely commit or cover up. Unfortunately, they get away with it since they are the "authority", and the mainstream media (MSM) usually favors authority's version of events. Dr. Andrew Wakefield was a victim of the BMJ's (British Medical Journal) injustice, which also helped hide vaccine injury science from public awareness.

What Wakefield Actually Did

Dr. Wakefield was organizing clinical research on Crohn's disease, colitis and gastrointestinal disorders in young children. The research intended to determine if there was a link between those disorders and measles at the Royal Free Hospital in England. Dr. Wakefield published the results of this clinical study in the U.K. medical journal Lancet in 1998.

Children were brought to him because of his interest, but contrary to all accusations, he never treated them. He described himself as "the thinker" when Health Ranger Mike Adams recently interviewed him. In this particular study, he was the thinker for the team of doctors directly involved with the treatment.

Another accusation, that Dr. Wakefield asserted a definite link of MMR vaccines to autism was never published. He never made that claim. Some of his team colleagues put forth their interpretation that MMRs were linked to autism, but that was not part of Wakefield's Lancet paper. Dr. Wakefield was looking into the possible link of those commonly experienced gut disorders in children under five years old as a precursor to their autism related behavior.

That link to MMRs was actually made by the parents of those 12 participating children. They were doing fine until they received MMR vaccinations, and the parents reported this to Dr. Wakefield's team. Dr. Wakefield included the parents' reports in the case study findings. Including parents' observations in case study reports is highly appropriate.

Dr. Wakefield's only conclusion was the measles/gut disorder connection to autistic behavior possibilities merited further study.

Other Discoveries that Corroborate Wakefield's Findings

According to a Mike Adams article, fourteen months before Dr. Wakefield's paper was published, two other researchers discovered the same problems of gut disorders and autistic behavior in seven children. Their 1996 presentation was called "Entero-colitis and Disintegrative Disorder Following MMR - A Review of the First Seven Cases." Those seven cases became part of the final twelve cases in Dr. Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper. This and other facts disprove accusations that Wakefield fabricated the twelve reports.

A more recent Wake Forest University study determined that 70 of 82 autistic children they studied had measles virus in their guts. Interestingly, the measles virus strain they discovered was not a wild virus -- it was the same strain used in MMR vaccines.

A Russian born U.K. pediatrician, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, has not only established the connection of gastrointestinal tract disorders among the very young to autistic and other behavioral problems, she cures them with proper diet and supplementation. She learned how the hard way, by curing her own autistic son.

Dr. McBride coined the acronym GAPS for her book Gut and Psychology Syndrome. She describes the dietary solutions to her explanations of how the gut and the brain are connected. This relationship has been known by traditional Chinese medicine for centuries.

In a recent U.S. lecture, she mentioned that her colleagues were afraid to mention Dr. Wakefield due of the witch-hunt conspired against him earlier. But she acknowledges his research efforts as accurate contributions to her practice.

The U.K. government refuses to compensate cases of encephalitis (brain disease) due to vaccine injury. Here we may have one motive for a conspiracy against Dr. Wakefield.

There Really Was a Conspiracy

There are other motives from the usual suspects. The allegedly corrupt Murdoch empire's Sunday Times is run by Rupert Murdoch's son James. The Murdoch family is heavily invested in GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a vaccine manufacturer. James Murdoch is even on GSKs board of directors.

James hired a freelance hack journalist, Brian Deer, to fabricate the Wakefield fabrication. It created a firestorm in London that ignited another vaccine promoter, Dr. Fiona Godlee, who happens to be the editor in chief for the British Journal of Medicine (BMJ). She propagated Deer's lies officially.

This pincer move encircled the U.K. Government's medical establishment and forced a five member GMC (General Medical Council) hearing on Dr. Wakefield. Perhaps the hearing intended to defend the U.K.'s stance on not awarding vaccine injury victim?

The Sly Admission: Too Late; Damage Done

Private admission of wrong doing by the BMJ to newsletter Age of Autism, spoken evasively out of both sides of Dr. Fiona Godlee's mouth, is insufficient for the public damage done to Dr. Wakefield's integrity. But it has served to inspire a stronger alliance among medical professionals and aware parents of vaccine injured children on both sides of the Atlantic.

Peach contains an almond-like nut containing anti-cancer medicine

Amazing food facts: The seed of a peach contains an almond-like nut containing the anti-cancer medicine laetrile Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
Monday, July 25, 2011
http://www.naturalnews.com/033123_laetrile_vitamin_B17.html

(NaturalNews) Peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and almonds are all closely related fruit trees with very similar pits. In all these fruits, the pit must be broken open to reveal the almond-shaped kernel within. In fact, this is what almonds actually are: the kernel within the pit of the fruit of the almond tree!

The kernels of all these species contain high concentrations of a chemical known as laetrile. It's also known as amygdalin or vitamin B-17. Research has shown that laetrile induces programmed cell death in cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone. It's sort of like Mother Nature's chemotherapy except that it doesn't make you suffer the way man-made synthetic chemotherapy does.

Laetrile appears to work because the nutrient is actually composed of four separate molecules: two of glucose, one of benzaldyhide and one of cyanide. The latter two chemicals are toxic, but are bound up in a non-bioavailable form. Cancer cells contain an enzyme that healthy cells do not, known as beta-glucosidase. This enzyme actually breaks apart the component pieces of laetrile, and the cell is poisoned by a combination of benzaldyhide and cyanide. Healthy cells do not undergo this effect, which is why they remain unaffected by laetrile.

The medical establishment, learning about this natural "chemotherapy" that killed cancer cells and didn't even require a prescription, quickly began to attack it by spreading lies about the dangers of laetrile. The FDA, long an enemy of healing through nutrition, banned laetrile in 1971. Highly toxic chemotherapy substances, however, remain perfectly legal and continue to kill hundreds of thousands of people every single year. (Most people who "die from cancer" are actually killed by chemotherapy and radiation, not from the cancer itself. "Cancer survivors" are people who miraculously survive chemotherapy.)