A Purdue University researcher has linked Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops to an organism leading to miscarriages and spontaneous abortions in farm animals.
Professor Emeritus Don M. Huber has sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, warning that an “electron microscopic pathogen” found in high concentrations of GM crops could significantly impact the health of both animals and humans.
The organism was previously unknown and is only visible under a 36,000X electron microscope.
“For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks,” Huber noted in the letter.
“Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman's terms, it should be treated as an emergency.”
Huber goes on to detail the disturbing issues with animal fertility:
Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of this organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.
The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.
For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlege experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlege, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.
Huber is requesting that the USDA undertake an investigation of the pathogen, and immediately halt the deregulation of Roundup Ready crops until the causal relationship can be ruled out as a threat to plant, animal and human health.
While the correlation surely needs more research, the claim is alarming when you consider the recent decisions to deregulate GM sugar beets and unconditionally approve GM alfalfa.
Be Well,
Jimmy
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1) Round up Ready GE Wheat is still not available, so what were they studying?
ttp://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/04/us-monsanto-wheat-gmo-idUSTRE6A34K220101104
2)Round up binds to soil particles so previous round up use cannot transfer to non GE Wheat, which would be killed by the round up anyway.
3)Wheatlege is misspelled, its wheatlage or wheat silage.
4) Micro fungi are larger than virus's and bacteria and do not need an electron microscope to be viewed.
If this letter turns out to be a fraud, as I think it will be, many people will have seen it, and considered it an actionable item, sending it to their members of Congress. This is very unfortunate. The use of round up needs to be stopped, if only because of weed resistance to round up. Misattributed letters like this only hurt the cause.
The only GM production wheat that is generally used for production is a variety called Clear-Field wheat I believe it is put out by Syngenta. There currently is not in much production because of the SU chemistry used for the herbicide treatment has more Resistance in the weed spectrum then that of round up. That and the SU chemistry tend to cause a yield drag in the crop.
Its pretty rare that wheat is put into silage unless it has a been diseased to the point of economical loss and the grower has interest in cattle as well to recover some of his lost money. Simply put even in a dry land climate there is still better crops to raise for silage then wheat. Wheat into silage is a last ditch effort.
Wish this website would push there guys to do more homework.