Earth Minute 1/20/15
On Thursday, the US Department of Agriculture approved Monsanto’s controversial new GMO soybean and cotton that resist the toxic herbicide dicamba.
Approved in 1967, dicamba seeps through the environment, causing damage to crops and flowering plants and polluting waterways. Studies also link it to “increased rates of cancer in farmers, and birth defects in their male offspring.”
These new GMOs are Monsanto’s response to the fact that many weeds now tolerate their herbicide glyphosate, due to the widespread use of GMO crops that resist it. 70% of drinking water in US households is now contaminated by glyphosate, which has also been found in high levels in mother’s breast milk and in human urine.
About Monsanto’s new dicamba-resistant crops, Andy Kimbrell, of the Center for Food Safety commented that these new GMO crops “are yet another example of how pesticide firms are taking agriculture back to the dark days of heavy, indiscriminate use of hazardous pesticides, seriously endangering human health and the environment.”
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.