EXCERPT: Dr. Jeff Ritterman, writing for Huffington Post, puts it in even better perspective: To the Salvadorans, using indigenous seeds makes sense both economically and agriculturally. Over millennia, nature has adapted these seeds to the Salvadoran climate and soil. But there is another equally pressing reason to avoid Monsanto’s GMO seeds… For years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of a chronic kidney disease epidemic which has hit Central America, India and Sri Lanka. Unlike in most kidney diseases, the kidney tubules are the site of injury, not the kidney’s complex filtration apparatus. New research has shown that glyphosate has the unique ability to bind with heavy metals like cadmium and arsenic. The glyphosate-heavy metal complexes appear to be toxic to the kidney tubules, and may be the cause of this worldwide kidney disease epidemic. Are we in the United States going to insist that the Salvadorans use Monsanto’s seeds which require Monsanto’s pesticide, glyphosate, given the real fear that glyphosate may be a major cause of a worldwide epidemic of chronic kidney disease? Are we going to claim that we know better than El Salvador’s farmers which seeds are better suited to their local conditions? Are we going to demand that El Salvador, a poor agrarian nation, buy its seeds from a transnational corporation year after year rather than develop a program of local seed sovereignty? Are we going to pretend that we didn’t fund a brutally repressive regime responsible for crimes against humanity and do nothing to help heal the wounds we caused?
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 07:35:42 +0000
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