Monsanto bringing Agent Orange back from the dead

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Claiborne D., SumOfUs.org" <us@sumofus.org>
Date: Apr 11, 2012 3:14 PM
Subject: Monsanto bringing Agent Orange back from the dead
To: "Daniel A. Stafford" <aquarianm@gmail.com>

Daniel,

Stop Monsanto and Dow from teaming up to create new GMO plants resistant to 2,4-D -- half the chemical cocktail of Agent Orange -- to begin industrial spraying of our crops with the toxin.

Welcome to SumOfUs.org! We're a new movement that acts as a positive force standing up to and shaping corporate power. In our brief few months, we have ensured that the grocery store Trader Joe's pays a fair wage to the men and women who pick its tomatoes, gotten Apple to commit to better wages and working conditions for the factory workers who make its iGadgets, and let big businesses like Starbucks know that customers reward corporate support for marriage equality. We look forward to working with you as we grow to make the world a healthier, happier, and better place.

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Over forty years after Monsanto stopped making Agent Orange, it is teaming up with Dow Chemical to mass-market one half of the carcinogenic cocktail for widespread use on our food supply. Since commercial use of Roundup has led to a new generation of "superweeds" resistant to the widely-used herbicide, the next step in the arms race is 2,4-D -- a chemical linked to cancer, Parkinson's and reproductive problems.

Farmers that sign up to use genetically-engineered 2,4-D-resistant corn will be required to spray down their fields with both 2,4-D and Roundup, double-dosing our food, our soil and our waterways with the toxins. Some experts estimate this will increase the use of 2,4-D 50 fold, even though the EPA says the chemical is already our seventh-largest source of dioxins -- nasty, highly toxic chemicals that bioaccumulate as they move up the food chain and cause cancer, developmental damage, and birth defects.

We can stop this. The use of 2,4-D is banned entirely in parts of Canada and Europe, and right now the US Department of Agriculture is accepting public comments on 2,4-D to decide whether or not to approve the widespread industrial use of the toxin.

Add your name to our letter to the USDA urging them to deny approval for Dow's 2,4-D-resistant GMO corn.

This is part of a growing problem, an escalating herbicide war going on across America's heartland. From 1996 to 2008, herbicide usage increased by 383 million pounds. Nealy half of this took place between 2007 and 2008 after the introduction of another strain of herbicide-resistant plant pushed by Dow. Like Roundup before it, 2,4-D is only a temporary solution that will require more and more tons of toxins and more and more potent chemicals leaching into our food supply.

2,4-D is nasty stuff and has been linked to a number of health problems, such as tripling the rates of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in Nebraska farmworkers exposed to it and causing reproductive problems -- birth defects and high rates of miscarriage -- in both mice and men exposed to it in the lab and field. Dow is pushing it as safe, but it has only tested the pure, industrial creation, not the active chemical mixture that will be sprayed onto our corn supply.

Tell the USDA - we don't want Monsanto's toxic pesticide.

-Claiborne, Kaytee, Taren and the RestOfUs

 

 

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Citations and further reading:

2,4-D linked to non-Hodgkins lymphoma

2,4-D linked to other problems as reported by the LA Times and National Institute of Health

The Atlantic: 2,4-D banned in parts of Canada and Europe, use could grow 50-fold

The EPA's report on 2,4-D

Dramatic increase in herbicide use

More reading on 2,4-D

More reading on "Agent Orange" corn

 

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