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MIKE PAPANTONIO: Welcome back to Ring of Fire. I'm Mike Papantonio. The Monsanto Corporation
has been working to create genetically modified foods for decades. Most of the time, consumers
don't even know what they're eating. It is Monsanto's Frankenstein creation. I have Attorney
Howard Nations with me now to talk about what's happening to your food supply. Howard, party
around Monsanto today in this entire year. What a gift they've been given. Can you imagine
being the gift no other industry I know that can't be sued for negligence. They can't be
sued for causing harms to farmers. They can't be sued for causing harm to consumers. But
this is a Congress that snuck into the budge this release deal for Monsanto. Tell us the
GMO story in general. HOWARD NATIONS: The story of GMOs is that
allegedly they're to increase the food supply for the hungry people of the world. The fact
of the matter is that the real reason for the modification is that 75 percent of them
are to increase crop tolerance of herbicides; 50 percent of them alone are to withstand
Monsanto's Roundup Herbicide. So that's what GMOs are all about.
PAPANTONIO: Why is that? Why is that so important? In other words, you're making a crop. It's
a Franking crop, it's a Frankenstein variation of corn and soybeans and rice. And it's this
thing we haven't tested. We don't know whether it kills us in the long term or not. We know
it kills rats because we've tested that. NATIONS: Right.
PAPANTONIO: But we don't know if it kills humans. But what is the part of the Roundup
story that people miss here? NATIONS: Well, the problem with GMOs, essentially,
is that these are not the standard hybrid that increases the number of plants you can
produce. This specifically to tolerate Roundup, the Monsanto product, and other herbicides.
So we're producing a whole new group of modified foods that will tolerate Roundup. Now, the
Roundup story is, essentially, they found that Roundup has been associated with miscarriage,
birth defects, neurological development problems, DNA damage
PAPANTONIO: Okay, so we know this okay, so Congress knows this going into it. They know
that this is purely a money issue. You see now, if a farmer a farmer has to almost use
these products because Monsanto's able to say, "Listen. We're the only ones that make
this product that can withstand Roundup Herbicide. We've made this for you." Now, the farmer
is out there realizing that once he plants that seed, it's over for his conventional
or his or her conventional crop, right. Once it's in the ground, it's over for the future
for the future of that farm, isn't it? NATIONS: That's true because this is shocking,
but 70 percent of the products in the United States contain ingredients of GMOs. And you
would think that since there are obvious problems with it, there should be mandatory labeling.
But when we tried to get the mandatory labeling, which is supported by 90 percent of Americans,
and which 64 other countries require, there's been this great outcry from agribusiness.
They sent $50 million, led by Monsanto, to defeat Proposition 37 in California that
would simply warn Americans, consumers, about the fact that GMOs are in their products.
Now, if there's nothing wrong with the food, if there's nothing wrong with the GMO, why
are they so worried about us knowing about it? And then, of course, you come to what
you opened with, which is the Monsanto Protection Act. This is one of the most outrageous things
I've seen come out of an outrageous Congress. As we were approaching the fiscal cliff this
year, you'll remember back in March, a provision was anonymously placed into the legislation
that said, amazingly, that if a judge has proven in his courtroom that GMOs are hazardous,
risky to the health of consumers, that a court cannot stop the growth and sale of those products.
Now, that was placed in by Senator Roy it was originally placed in anonymously, but
traced back to Senator Roy Blunt from Missouri, who, incidentally, has received $716,000.00
from agribusiness this year. Last month, the Democrats tried to take it out. In the current
farm bill that's before the Senate right now, they include the provision to take the Monsanto
Protection Act out. The amendment was killed by Senator Blunt.
PAPANTONIO: Okay, let me just in this last 30 seconds -- here's what's important. It's
a product that hasn't been tested, that hasn't been tested on humans. We don't know -- no
epidemiology to tell us what is up with this thing. The only tests that we have show that
the product has the propensity to kill rats, cause cancer, cause tumors, cause neurological
problems. We have an administration who knows all of that. But we also by the way, Howard,
also have an administration that's put one of the key advisors to this administration,
happens to have Monsanto contacts and roots that are a mile long. This is a story that,
really, our children and grandchildren are gonna be affected by. Howard, I appreciate
you following this. This is it's just this is the tip of the iceberg right here. And
we're gonna really hear the end of the story about ten years from now when we start seeing
what all of this yields. Thank you for joining me. Howard Nation.
NATIONS: Thank you, Mike.