The Gaia Reports

By Theodora Filis In 2008, a food and safety scandal involving milk and infant formula, and other food materials and components adulterated with melamine, crippled China's dairy industry. An estimated 300,000 victims -- six infants dying from kidney stones and other kidney damage, and 860 babies hospitalized. The chemical appeared to have been added to milk to cause it to appear to have a higher protein content. In a separate incident four years before, watered-down milk had resulted in 13 infant deaths from malnutrition. This incident raised concerns over food safety, and political corruption in mainland China, damaging the reputation of China's food exports, with at least 11 countries stopping all imports of mainland Chinese dairy products. Today, China has allocated a trillion dollars to expand agricultural production, and aims to be 80% self sufficient in food and agriculture over the next decade. For this purpose, China is subsidizing modern US intensive facto...

By Theodora Filis California introduced a bill requiring any AquaBounty's genetically engineered salmon sold in the state to be clearly labeled for the public, together with Alaska senators who reintroduced their bills, one to ban the GE animal from being cultivated in Alaskan waters and one to require that it be labeled. AquaAdvantage salmon developed by AquaBounty Technologies is an Atlantic salmon modified with genes from a Chinook salmon and an ocean pout, which makes for a faster-growing fish that requires 10 percent less feed. Regardless of a wary public, a protest letter by 11 Pacific Northwestern senators, and strong warnings by an overwhelming amount of government scientists and public interest groups, the FDA looks to be moving closer to approving the salmon. Just like any other GMO, this salmon is a patented product. Once fishermen own the product -- or their waters are unintentionally contaminated with the product -- they'll have to continue purchasing it to conti...

 By Theodora Filis Consumers will see food labels that now say "bioengineered" or "derived from bioengineering," replacing the acronym "GMO" (genetically modified organism).  The federal standard replaces the former requirements as of January 2022. The new standard applies to genetically modified foods as well as foods with genetically modified ingredients that are "detectable" by certain standards. Critics say the rules devised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will actually confuse consumers further and make it harder to know what's in any given product. The new rules give food producers a few options. Commonly bioengineered foods include corn, canola, soybeans, and sugar beets. Most GMO crops are used for animal feed, according to the Food and Drug Administration. But they are also used to make ingredients that routinely find their way into human diets, such as cornstarch, corn syrup, canola oil, and granulated sugar. The Center for Fo...

By Theodora Filis                                     Bill Gates and Carlos Slim Helu Bill Gates with a fortune of $58 billion -- exceeding the annual budget of Russia -- just to put things in perspective.  Carlos Slim Helu, has a personal wealth of $60 billion, according to Forbes magazine.  Both men teamed up and donated $25 million to build a cluster of biotechnology labs at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CUNNYT) in Mexico -- promoting the increased production of GMO seeds to sell to farmers who don't want them, so they can feed the world's "starving" population that would rather starve than eat their GMOs. Why would the world's richest men want to invest so heavily in GMO research and production? One reason – they see lots of money in it? Actually... it has everything to do with control.                 Contr...

By Theodora Filis Coca-Cola has partnered with a dairy farm called Fairlife to launch a new brand of milk. “Who knew milk could be so spectacular?” grins Fairlife CEO in a marketing video. Lactose-free, with 50% more protein and calcium and half the sugar of regular milk, it seems Coca-Cola hopes to re-brand itself as a caring, family-friendly firm with ties to small dairy farmers. Coca-Cola's North American chief, Sandy Douglas, said to a crowd at Morgan Stanley's Global Consumer Conference last October that "It's basically the 'premiumization' of milk... We'll charge twice as much for it as the milk we're used to buying in a jug." The company's marketing campaigns use words like `natural´, `health and `wellness´ to have us believe this drink is good for us. But don´t believe the hype – a quick internet search exposes them to be pro-GMO campaigners masquerading as pro-natural family farmers, but this is clearly nothing more than a propaga...

By Theodora Filis Today, developed nations do not consider GMOs to be safe. In nearly 50 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs. In the US the government has approved GMOs based on studies conducted by the same corporations that created them and profit from their sale. Increasingly, Americans are taking matters into their own hands and choosing to opt out of the GMO experiment. Polls consistently show that a significant majority of North Americans would like to be able to tell if the food they’re purchasing contains GMOs (a 2008 CBS News Poll found that 87% of consumers wanted GMOs labeled). And, according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll, 53% of consumers said they would not buy food that has been genetically modified. In the US, GMOs are in as much as 80% of the conventional processed food. Many people don’...

By Theodora Filis Entrenched in action and always on the front lines of saving the world and feeding the hungry, Bill Gates gets right to the “root” of solving the world's food shortage by putting his money where his friends at the Rockefeller Foundation tell him to. This week, The Associated Press said Bill Gates believes “Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve.” This comment was directed at the naysayer's of genetically modified (GM) seeds and the belief that “high-tech” solutions to world hunger are bad for the environment. Why are Bill Gates and The Rockefeller Foundation supporting the proliferation of patented seeds, GMOs, and at the same time, investing tens of millions of dollars to preserve every natural seed variety on this planet in a bomb-proof doomsday vault? Wouldn't it be best to cultivate the world's natural seeds, while preserving them, and nourishing and nurturing our world's...

By Theodora Fili A recent report claims that, Walmart, a US multinational retail corporation that runs large discount department stores and warehouse stores, is set to sell a new form of genetically-engineered (GE) sweet corn as early as this summer. Monsanto’s Bt sweet corn contains three GE traits that have never before been consumed directly by humans and have not been subjected to thorough safety testing. There will be no labeling telling consumers that the corn is a GMO (genetically modified organism), or that Monsanto’s GMO corn has been tied to numerous health issues, including organ disruption. Petitions urging Walmart to drop or label the Bt corn as GE are being circulated in the hope that Walmart will refuse to sell the Bt sweet corn, and that other food retailers will follow. Half of all US farms growing corn for Monsanto are using genetically modified corn, and most of it is intended for human consumption and will be sold to consumers as whole ears on the cob...

By Theodora Filis Despite claims that their very expensive, patented, genetically modified (GM) seeds are the best thing since sliced bread, chemical seed giant Monsanto is fighting awfully hard to defeat California's Proposition 37 on November 6 – and paying millions of US dollars to do so. The biotech industry and Big Ag have already dumped $25 million into the pot - $4.2 million from Monsanto alone. Other major contributions against Proposition 37 were given by: E. I. Dupont de Nemours – $1,273,600 Dow Agrosciences – $1,184,800 PepsiCo – $1,126,079 "The giant pesticide and food companies are afraid of the mothers and grandmothers who want the right to know what's in our food," said Stacy Malkan, media director of California Right to Know. "These companies will try to buy the election, but it won't work. California moms and dads will prevail over Monsanto and Dupont." As of today, the "Big 6" pesticide c...

By Theodora Filis On the heels of a worldwide protest against biotech giant, Monsanto Company, the US Senate has just voted overwhelmingly, 71 to 27, against an amendment in the US Farm Bill that would have required labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). A ballot initiative that would have required GMO labeling in the state of California was defeated after Monsanto and other companies benefiting from GMOs spent nearly $50 million on ads opposing it. GMOs are widely used in processed foods, but shoppers hoping to avoid them now stand no chance of doing so. The biotech industry and its supporters resist labeling, likening informational labels to warning stickers on cigarettes and liquor, saying such labels could “alarm” shoppers. Link to US Senate Roll Call: To permit States to require that any food, beverage, or other edible product offered for sale have a label on indicating that the food, beverage, or other edible product contains a genetically engineered ingredient. http...

By Theodora Filis The House Agriculture Committee has passed its version of the 2012 Farm Bill that includes dangerous provisions for genetically engineered crops (GE).  According to Food & Water Watch, several "riders" were included in the House Farm Bill at the last minute that would allow for the rubber-stamp approval of genetically engineered crops if the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) doesn't finish its approval of the crops within a year. “These weaken the requirements of the USDA's environmental analysis, allowing the agency to do even less of an assessment of the potential harm posed by the crop, and they endanger the entire organic market, by sanctioning the contamination of non-genetically engineered crops”. One of the biggest concerns is a provision in the 2013 Agriculture Appropriation bill—Section 733 (also known as the Monsanto Rider) which would allow the planting of GM crops even if they were illegally approved. In spite of l...

By Theodora Fili s Earlier this week, I received an email from a reader who seemed filled with a sense of duty to set me and my “environmental agenda” straight.  Mr. “X”, wrote: “ Dear Ms. Fills, I am not surprised, that there are people like you, who for their own personal benefits, love to spread doomsday predictions. The Fukushima "disaster" was on the news every day for months, because doomsay brings much more money, than good news.  All those scare-mongers, like Al Gore, Michael Mann, Richard Branson and the likes, have their agendas, and while they themselves pollute the air prodigiously, they tell us, the commoners, not to pollute as they very obviously believe, that only the "elite" have the right to do so.  ...why is it that groups like Greenpeace and the one that uses the Seashepherd not follow their "Green" preachings and build ships made of dead trees, instead of using the latest technology in ships, which all have been made from mined ...