Synthetic Biology is Creating Unsafe Foods

Organic Bytes Newsletter - April 14, 2022

Apr 14, 2022

Vandana Shiva on the Hazards of Lab Meats and Synthetic Biology

Vandana Shiva writes:

“Fully artificial food is an increasingly popular trend focused on developing a new line of synthetically produced, ultra-processed food products by using recent advances in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. These new products seek to imitate and replace animal products, food additives, and expensive, rare, or socially conflictive ingredients (such as palm oil).
Biotech companies and agribusiness giants are seeing the opportunity to move into this promising market of ‘green’ consumption and hence these products are marketed to a new generation of environmentally conscious consumers who are growing critical of the grim realities of industrial food production.
As a result, meatless burgers and sausages, as well as imitations of cheese, dairy products, seafood, and others, have begun to flood the market, being found anywhere from fast food chains to local grocery stores.”

Learn more: The Corporate Push for Synthetic Foods: False Solutions That Endanger Our Health and Damage the Planet

BIOWEAPONS

Bioweapons Expert on U.S.-Funded Ukraine Biolabs

Mercola reports:

“According to U.S. bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, Russia’s accusation that Ukraine is conducting U.S.-funded bioweapons research appears to be accurate. If true, everyone involved is subject to life in prison under the U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
According to Boyle, the U.S. government and Pentagon have had a ‘comprehensive policy’ to ‘surround Russia with biological warfare laboratories’ and ‘preposition biological weapons’ there for use against them.
The problem with trying to make a distinction between ‘biodefense’ and ‘biowarfare’ is that, basically, there is none. No biodefense research is purely defensive, because to do biodefense work, you’re automatically engaged in the creation of biological weapons, and all dual-use research can be used for military purposes. SARS-CoV-2 may be the result of such dual-use research.
Boyle believes we can hold the culprits behind the SARS-CoV-2 bioweapon accountable by asking local prosecutors to convene a grand jury to seek the indictment of those responsible for the pandemic for murder and conspiracy to commit murder.”

Learn more: Bioweapons Expert Speaks Out About US Biolabs in Ukraine

BIOLABS

Stop the Biolabs in Ukraine & in Your Backyard

Did you know that genetic engineering isn’t just used to make GMO Frankenfoods, synthetic biology (syn-biotech) fake meats and food ingredients, and experimental gene-transfer “vaccines,” but also to weaponize viruses and pathogens and create “dual-use” biological weapons?

Monsanto and Bayer (Monsanto’s parent corporation) are two of the primary culprits in this chemical, genetic engineering, and military madness.

Monsanto has worked for decades as a U.S. military contractor. It manufactured the deadly defoliate Agent Orange during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, which killed or injured millions of Vietnamese people as well as U.S. soldiers, and earlier refined plutonium for the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan in World War II. As People’s World magazine points out “Bayer, perhaps best known for its aspirins or other useful medicines, also has a trail marked with death… It was Bayer, together with two other chemical giants, BASF and Hoechst, which developed the terrible chlorine gas used in World War I. In 1925, the three formed a giant cartel, IG Farben, which became the world’s leader in pharmaceuticals, dyes, and chemicals. During the early 1930s, IG Farben became the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolf Hitler… This was amply rewarded. IG Farben, with Bayer, became the single largest profiteer of German conquests in World War II.”

Monsanto also participated in tests to study the dispersal of biological weapons—tests that were conducted without notice or consent on the people of St. Louis, Missouri, in the 1950s and 60s. This story is documented in the book Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans.

If you’re just as concerned about GMOs engineered for biological weapons (hiding behind the excuse of dual-use medical research) as you are about GMOs in food and agriculture, please…

Sign the petition to stop the genetic engineering of dangerous pathogens.

Answer the Biolabs in Your Backyard survey to tell us which biolabs you’re most concerned about.

Join the Stop Weaponizing Pathogens Facebook group or sign up for the campaign via email.

GUIDE

After COVID: Dealing with Tyranny

Tessa Lena, aka “Tessa Fights Robots” writes:

“I believe that the absurd, authoritarian condition that we are facing is a way of dealing with unresolved spiritual issues that our species has accumulated. It’s an opportunity to expel our ghosts, heal our wounds, and go back to our roots.
Since we cannot just close our eyes and pretend that the attempt at the abusive Great Reset isn’t here full force, we might as well turn this situation of abuse into a way of remembering our strength, love, and clarity — and tap into them all the way. And then work at it until we win!
I believe that the key ingredients of eventually succeeding in the battle against transhumanism are doing everything from love in our own lives, being our absolute best, and leaving the rest to the universe. The neurotic principle that the technocrats are driven by is like a contagious ghost, it can jump person to person — so not allowing it in our own lives is extremely powerful against technocracy.”

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

UN Report Calls for Regenerative Food, Farming & Land Use

Lisa Held of Civil Eats reports:

...the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “notes that, while eliminating fossil fuels is the first priority, land- and diet-based solutions could provide a quarter of world’s urgently needed emissions cuts… Many of the food-system and forestry solutions laid out in the report are also ready to be deployed right now at a low cost, the authors note. Preserving and restoring forests, peatlands, wetlands, and other land ecosystems have the greatest potential to make an impact followed by agricultural strategies including soil carbon management through grasslands and cropland, agroforestry, improved rice cultivation, and livestock and nutrient management.”

Learn more: The Field Report: New UN Climate Report Urges Food Systems Solutions—Before It’s Too Late

ACCOUNTABILITY

COVID Dictators: What They Got and What We Lost

Todd Hayen writes in the Off-Guardian:

“I’ve written about this premature euphoria several times, warning that we really haven’t won a thing, not even one battle, until some heads roll. And there are no rolling heads to be seen. Not even a cursory fall guy having his career destroyed due to all the blame thrown his way.
I thought at first Fauci was going to get this honor with his mysterious disappearance as a precursor to his public fall from grace. But I was wrong. He is only off somewhere private to lick his wounds, assuming he even considers himself wounded, which I rather doubt.
No, we have won no battle, not even a skirmish. The enemy just backed off a bit. We woke up one morning and they were gone. The hill we were supposedly fighting for was ours…”

FOOD AS MEDICINE

How Food and Diet Drive Chronic Disease

New York’s Hunter College Food Policy Center has published a new 335-page report on Food as Medicine pointing out that:

“There is overwhelming evidence demonstrating the impact of food and diet on health, specifically among food-related diseases. Whether or not a poor diet can cause damage to the body should no longer be debated, as evidence supports the potential causal relationships between dietary factors and diet-related diseases such as ischemic heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. While diet has the potential to cause disease, it is also capable of building, maintaining, and restoring health. The report aims to bridge the gap between traditional medicine and the use of food as medicine in the prevention and treatment of disease…”

Learn more: Food As Medicine Review and Report: How Food and Diet Impact the Treatment of Disease

ORGANIC TRANSITIONS

Transitioning to Organic

Gary F. Zimmer and Leilani Zimmer-Durand of Eco-Farming Daily report:

“With conventional prices for corn, beans, wheat and dairy really low right now and both prices and demand for organic products high, a lot of growers are thinking about transitioning to organic.

“For most growers, one of the biggest deterrents to going organic is the 36-month-long process of transition, during which time you can use only organic-approved inputs and practices, but the crops, milk or other farm goods produced can’t be sold as ‘organic’ and receive the price premium.

“In my opinion, chasing profits is not the right reason to go organic, and there is more to it than not adding prohibited inputs and getting paid more for your crops. Being a successful organic farmer requires a different mind-set, and the best time to figure out your approach to organic farming and set yourself up for success is during the transition period…”

SUPPORT OCA & CRL

Hasta La Victoria: Struggling and Campaigning Until We Win

As Tessa Lena reminds us, we are involved in a long-term struggle. We must not only regenerate our food, farming, and land use practices, but our politics, and indeed our spirituality and daily life practices as well.

OCA can promise you that we will not give up our common struggle Hasta la Victoria, until victory. We intend to shut down the biolabs; drive GMOs, toxic pesticides, and chemicals off the market; expose unregulated and unlabeled gene-editing and synthetic biology as just another manifestation of reckless genetic engineering, and educate and mobilize the grassroots so we can build an organic and regenerative future where food as medicine, planting peace, and participatory democracy are the norm, not just the wished-for alternative.

But we need your help to carry on our crucial, indeed sacred, mission.

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