I’ve written before about Monsanto, the international chemical company whose campaign to gain control over the world’s food supply has been abetted by corrupt politicians and mass media whores –– and a few wealthy creeps such as Bill Gates. See ‘The Face Of Evil’, February 17, 2012, http://lookingglass.blog.co.uk/2012/02/17/the-face-of-evil-12807395/ –– but it would not be fair to leave out of the discussion another worthy corporate murderer, the Dow Chemical Company.

Dow AgroSciences has filed a request with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for permission to market a variety of corn which can survive being showered with a pesticide known as 2,4-D. For more than three years, 2,4-D has been in limbo because the Environmental Protection Agency was stalling on approval.

There are very good reasons why the EPA might’ve been reluctant to okay 2,4-D, starting with the extensive evidence that its use causes non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Now the agency, under the leadership of Michael Taylor, a Monsanto lawyer and lobbyist appointed by Barack Obama to oversee food safety, has removed restrictions on its use, saying that there is an absence of animal studies which confirm this.

If that makes sense to you, perhaps you can qualify for a job with the Obama administration.

Evidently, the danger of cancer and birth defects, demonstrated by numerous studies, does not outweigh the huge profits to be made from the new line of GMO ‘food’ which the USDA has been asked to approve. With the friendly nod from the EPA and the Obama administration, Dow has a clear path to bringing its corn to a generally-unsuspecting public.

In America, unlike in Europe, manufacturers of poisonous food products are not required to label them, thus most people are not aware that what they’re buying and consuming has been genetically modified to withstand toxic chemicals. Since corn and corn products are a major staple in the America diet, the EPA ruling has alarmed health experts.

According to an article on the web site of the National Resources Defense Council, there is little doubt that exposure to 2,4-D has escalated the incidence of cancer in farmers and agricultural workers http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/gsolomon/epa_decision_could_open_the_do.html.

The history of Monsanto’s use of pesticide-tolerant GMO foods is a nightmare of poisoned air, water, soil, and seed, where even non-offending properties are infected by drift. Entire communities have been destroyed. Now, Dow is poised to exponentially increase its use, with numerous GMO foods in the pipeline.

The damage both to the environment and to human beings from this practice is hard to exaggerate. Briefly, it works this way: ‘new’ foods are developed which are resistant to the toxins in herbicides. This enables food producers to saturate their fields with poisons which do not kill the crops. But the practice causes damage to neighboring fields which are not resistant, leeches poison into the water supply, and actually enables the corporation to sue –– and put out of business –– farmers whose crops they themselves have contaminated. If that sounds insane to you, welcome to the American justice system. The courts have consistently sided with Monsanto in the hundreds of suits it has brought against small farmers who were victims of the corporation.

Since the USDA does not generally worry about health concerns and ecological damage, the EPA ruling is a disaster.

I really don’t know what we can do to reverse this tragic course. The food supply for most Americans is being compromised in ways which threaten the health and safety of the people. Thanks to corporate greed and the corruption of the Obama administration, we are looking at a very dangerous situation without apparent recourse. A recent lawsuit brought by a strong alliance of environmentalists and small farmers to try to at least restrict the ability of Monsanto to sue its victims was thrown out of court.

To give you a clearer idea of just how deep into the U.S. government companies such as Monsanto have burrowed, several WikiLeaks memoranda have described how the State Department is pressuring European governments to accept GMO crops.

On several message boards recently, people have expressed an interest in finding out which companies are owned by Monsanto and which use its products, but a google search provides very little current information. A massive, nationwide boycott might work if we could find out what to boycott. Perhaps one of my readers will have some success with this and share it. Education and information is probably our only chance. Obama’s a lost cause and Romney will certainly be no better.