From christosv@home.com Sun Mar 12 22:06:10 2000 Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 16:10:23 -0800 From: Christos Vasilikiotis To: sanet Subject: Monsanto's Fact sheet on pesticides and Avery's lies [ Part 1, Text/PLAIN 102 lines. ] [ Unable to print this part. ] [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] I just discovered this fact sheet on Monsanto's web site: http://www.biotechknowledge.com/showlib_biotech.php3?2 I was quite surprised that a chemical giant like Monsanto would have a fact sheet listing the evils of these highly toxic chemicals that they are producing and pushing to farmers. Some of these facts are quite astonishing especially when they are validated by Monsanto: * Number of pesticides presently on the market that were registered before being tested to determine if they caused cancer, birth defects or wildlife toxicity: 400. * Amount of time it takes to ban a pesticide in the U.S. using present procedures: 10 years. * Number of active ingredients in pesticides found to cause cancer in animals or humans: 107. * Of those active ingredients, the number still in use today: 83. * Number of people in the U.S. routinely drinking water contaminated with carcinogenic herbicides: 14 million. After reading this fact sheet I went back to transcript from ABC's 20/20 show on organics with Dennis Avery and realized how glaring their lies were. I guess ABC did not bother to check their facts (even Monsanto would have told them that they were wrong!). Below is part of the transcript, followed by the facts from Monsanto's fact sheet: [ABC's 20/20 transcript http://abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/transcripts/2020_000204_organic_trans.html ] .. .. .. JOHN STOSSEL (VO) By a small margin, more of the organic produce was contaminated than the conventional stuff. But the real bad news for you organics buyers is that the average concentration of E. coli in the contaminated spring mix was much higher. And what about pesticides. Our tests surprisingly found no pesticide residue on the conventional samples or the organic. DENNIS AVERY Theyıve got us worrying about exactly the wrong thing. If weıve got no deaths from pesticides, and 5,000 deaths from bacteria, itıs pretty clear to me that we should be worrying now primarily about the nasty new bacteria. .. .. [Monsanto's Fact Sheet on Pesticides] * Percentage of all food samples tested by the FDA in 1980 which contained pesticide residues: 38%. * Of the 496 pesticides identified as likely to leave residues in food, the percentage which FDA tests can routinely detect: 40%. CV--- so much for Stossel's claim that there was no pesticide residue found, 60% cannot even be detected! * Increase in cancer rates between 1950 and 1986: 37%. CV--- Thats even more surprising coming from Monsanto. Bruce Ames claims that there is no increase. * Number of Americans who will learn they have cancer this year: 1 million. * Number who will die from it: 500,000. * Highest rate of chemical-related illness of any occupational group in the U.S.A.: farm workers. * Pesticide-related illnesses among farm workers in U.S.A. each year: Approximately 300,000. * Number of people in the U.S. who die each year from cancer related to pesticides: 10,400. CV--- Avery blatantly claims that there are no deaths due to pesticides, when even Monsanto admits that more than 10,000 die each year! I guess Monsanto is trying to prove that we need GMO's, so they are coming clean on pesticides. Would you trust them that this new technology will be safer? Peace, Chris =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Chris Vasilikiotis christosv@home.com Berkeley, CA, USA * the Earth laughs in flowers * _______________________________________________