Rady Ananda
Activist Post
An eastern Washington field has been contaminated with Roundup Ready alfalfa, the state Ag Department
confirmed on Friday. The farmer reports he did not plant it, nor wants it.
Of course we knew this was going to happen. Alfalfa seeds are only
2mm in size and can spread for miles on the wind alone. The Oregon crew who
sabotaged the GM beet fields in June didn’t go far enough.
Alfalfa is planted on 17 million acres in the US and earns over $8 billion a year, reports
Reuters, adding:
Exports
of hay, including alfalfa, have been rising, hitting a record $1.25
billion in 2012, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
Washington state is one of the largest producers of alfalfa for export.
Alfalfa is the most common forage used for grazing, and the organic meat and dairy industries are dependent on GMO-free hay.
Not
only the organic industry, but biotech’s inability to contain their
product is also economically sabotaging export farmers who use
chemicals, but not GM seeds.
If we don’t stop the federal
government from favoring the “death tech” industry (as Vandana Shiva
calls it), all our food will be genetically modified, whether they label
it or not, whether we like it or not.
When Bayer’s GM rice
contaminated a third of all US rice in 2006, no regulator stopped them:
not the USDA, the EPA nor even the judicial system.
“Regulators” are “still investigating” the GM wheat contamination in Oregon last May. The
$8 billion wheat export business
took a hit this year, and will likely suffer next year, thanks to
another act of economic sabotage, the blame for which falls squarely on
Monsanto, the company that brought us Agent Orange.
But, throwing
money at the problem won’t fix it: Federal “regulators” and the biotech
industry are contaminating all natural crops, whether we like it or not.
This problem will not go away without serious intervention, because
they do not want it to: this is the plan. The GM experiment started
here, and contamination is worse here than anywhere else.
“Regulators”
have allowed GM crops to be planted in our wildlife refuges. Our
refuges! The source of vast biodiversity, where pollinators caught a
break from all the chemical farms. No more. Biotech’s nasty chemicals
see to that. Oh, sure, we won a
partial victory
back in 2011, when the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed to
yank GM plants from 11 Northeast states. In 2012, the Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility, et al. got two dozen
Southeastern refuges to be GM-free. The same plaintiffs just
filed suit last month, again against the FWS, for allowing GM crops in refuges in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and Minnesota.
Read More Here
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Washington state alfalfa crop may be contaminated with genetic modification
Farmer in Washington state reports his alfalfa shipment was rejected after testing positive for genetic modification
-
- theguardian.com, Thursday 12 September 2013 17.34 EDT
A healthy crop of mature alfalfa ready for cutting in North Carolina. Photo: Alamy
Authorities
were investigating a new suspected case of crop contamination on
Thursday – the second in the Pacific north-west in five months – after
samples of hay tested positive for genetically modified traits.
The investigation was ordered after a farmer in
Washington state
reported that his alfalfa shipments had been rejected for export after
testing positive for genetic modification. Results were expected as
early as Friday.
If confirmed, it would be
the second known case of GM contamination in a major American crop since May, when university scientists
confirmed the presence of a banned GM wheat growing in a farmer's field in
Oregon.
The
suspected outbreak comes in the run-up to a ballot measure in
Washington state that would require mandatory labelling of all
GM foods.
Alfalfa
is America's fourth largest crop, behind corn, wheat and soybeans, and
the main feedstock for the dairy industry. A confirmed case of
contamination could hurt the organic dairy industry, which is now worth
$26bn a year, forcing farmers to find new sources of GM-free feed. It
could also hurt a growing export industry. Alfalfa is increasingly sold
for export but buyers, such as Japan, do not want GM products.
Read More Here
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Raw clover sprouts on Jimmy John’s and other fast food sandwiches are the likely source of an E. coli outbreak that
has sickened 10 people in Washington and Idaho, according to the
Washington State Department of Health. Seven people have confirmed cases
of E. coli O121 poisoning and three have probable cases. Five people
have been hospitalized.
The stores added to the list include Circle K stores in California,
Pavilions in California, Safeway in Arizona, California, and Nevada,
Vons in California and Nevada, and Winco in California, Idaho, and
Washington state. The number of stores that may have carried the
products has grown to include more than 2,100 stores. More than 1,200 of
those facilities are in California.
