-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Webb [mailto:worldwidewebb01@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 1999 3:47 PM
To: webbk@missouri.edu
Subject: Fwd: Fw: Monsanto's Genetically Modified Milk Ruled Unsafe
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> "Tim Spence" <c611332@showme.missouri.edu>,
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> "Eleanor" <indigoelle@yahoo.com>, "Deni
> Durham" <denire@yahoo.com>,
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> "Chris and Liz Hauer"
> <HauerC@worldnet.att.net>,
> "Brian Halweil"
> <halweil_at_wwinstitute@mailhost.worldwatch.org>,
> "Ann Pearce" <annp@garden.org>, "Alfred R.
> Goff" <Algoff28@aol.com>,
> "Jennifer Bass" <jennifer@kpla.com>
> Subject: Fw: Monsanto's Genetically Modified Milk
> Ruled Unsafe
> Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 14:29:56 -0500
>
> Howdy-
> Another chink in the armor.
>
> ----------
From: fred@inch.com
Monsanto's Genetically Modified Milk Ruled
Unsafe by UN commission
CHICAGO, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The
following was released today
by
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Professor of
Environmental Medicine,
University
of Illinois School of Public Health, Chicago:
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, the U.N. Food Safety Agency
representing 101 nations worldwide, has ruled
unanimously in favor of the 1993 European moratorium on Monsanto's
genetically engineered hormonal milk (rBGH). This unexpected ruling,
revealingly greeted by the U.S. press
with deafening silence, is a powerful blow against U.S. global trade
policies which are strongly influenced by powerful multi-national
corporations, such as Monsanto. The Codex Commission ruling has also forced
the U.S. to
abandon its threats to challenge the European moratorium before the World
Trade Organization later this year. As
importantly, the ruling represents the first large scale defeat of
genetically modified foods on unarguable
scientific grounds, apart from ethical and ideological concerns.
Since the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of
unlabeled rBGH milk in February 1994, the U.S. has exerted
considerable pressure on Mexico and other trading partners to approve rBGH
in efforts to increase pressure on Europe through the World Trade
Organization. In this, they
have been strongly supported by reports from the Food and
Agriculture/World Health Organization's (FAO/WHO) Joint Expert Committees on
Food Additives (JECFA), including its latest September 1998 report, which
unequivocally absolved rBGH from any adverse veterinary and public health
effects.
However, these JECFA committees, besides others such as those
claiming the safety of meat from cattle treated with sex
hormones, operate under conditions of non-transparency and conflicts of
interest, and are predominantly staffed by unelected and unaccountable U.S.
and Canadian regulatory officials and industry consultants with no expertise
in
public health, preventive medicine and carcinogenesis.
The 1998 JECFA report on rBGH was then submitted to the Codex Committee on
Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Foods, chaired by FDA's Director for
Veterinary Medicine Dr. Stephen Sundloff who also played a prominent role in
the 1998 JECFA
Committee. The Codex Committee promptly rubber stamped JECFA's seal of
approval for rBGH with the confident expectation that this would be
subsequently endorsed by the parent Codex Commission. However, the best
laid plans of Monsanto and the FDA were aborted by an unexpected turn
of events.
> >> >
Bowing to growing pressure in 1998 by Canadian advocacy groups, "dissident"
government scientists and the Senate
Agriculture Committee. Health Canada convened expert committees on
veterinary and human safety under the auspices of the Canadian Veterinary
Medical Association and the
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, respectively. Based on
conclusions on the adverse veterinary effects of
rBGH, particularly an increased incidence of mastitis, lameness and
reproductive problems, Health Canada reluctantly broke ranks with the U.S.
in January 1999, and issued
a formal "notice of non- compliance", disapproving future sales of rBGH.
> >> >
Meanwhile, the European Commission had commissioned two independent
committees of internationally recognized experts
to undertake a comprehensive review of the scientific
literature on both the veterinary and public health effects of rBGH. The
veterinary committee fully confirmed and extended the Canadian warnings and
conclusions. The
public health committee confirmed earlier reports of
excess levels of the naturally occurring Insulin-like-Growth Factor One
(IGF-1), including its highly potent variants, in rBGH milk and concluded
that these posed major risks of cancer, particularly of the breast and
prostate, besides
promoting the growth and invasiveness of cancer cells by
inhibiting their programmed self-destruction (apoptosis). Faced with this
latest well documented scientific evidence from both Canada and Europe, the
U.S. bowed to the inevitable and failed to challenge the Codex ruling in
support of the
European moratorium.
> >> >
It is now 15 years since Monsanto embarked on a series of large scale
veterinary trials on rBGH all over the U.S., and
sold milk from these trials to an uninformed and unsuspecting public with
the full approval of the FDA. Since then, Monsanto and the FDA, strongly
supported by a network of indentured university academics, aggressive
lobbying by the National Dairy Council and its well organized "hit squads"
targeting rBGH opponents, and an overwhelmingly uncritical media, have
ignored or trivialized substantial scientific evidence on the hazards of
rBGH milk, including a series of publications over the last decade in the
International
Journal of Health Services, the most prestigious international public health
publication. Also ignored by the media have been charges in 1981 by
Congressman John Conyers (then Chairman of the House Committee on Government
Operations), on the basis of a leaked confidential Monsanto
study revealing serious pathology in cows injected with rBGH, that "Monsanto
and the FDA have chosen to suppress and manipulate animal health test data
in efforts to approve commercial use of rBGH".
> >> >
These considerations reinforce growing concerns on the extreme unreliability
of Monsanto and other biotech
industry claims of the safety of genetically modified soy and other foods,
especially in the absence of comprehensive testing by independent scientific
experts, who should be
funded by industry and not consumers. >> >
> >> >SOURCE Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
> >> > /Contact: Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.,
> Professor of Environmental
> >> Medicine
> >> >at the University of Illinois School of Public
> Health, Chicago, and
> >> >Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition,
> 312-996-2297/
> >> > /Web site: http://www.preventcancer.com /
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >Copyright 1999 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >=================================
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
> Section 107, this
> material
> >> >is distributed without profit to those who have
> expressed a prior
> >> interest
> >> >in receiving the included information for
> research and educational
> >> >purposes. ***
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
>
><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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> >> >The searchable WWW list archive is available at
> >> >
> >> > http://www.gene.ch/archives.html
> >> >
> >> >
> >> Greg Todd for
> >> Park Slope Food Coop Environmental Committee
> >> 782 Union Street
> >> Brooklyn, NY 11215
> >> tel. 718-858-8803
> >> fax 718-852-5997
> >> email becnc@igc.org
> >>
> >> "Good food at good prices through cooperation"
> >>
> >
>
>
>
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