Tag: food

GMO Tomato Project Funded by Gates Foundation and U.S. Taxpayers Hits Roadblock

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding research to genetically engineer tomatoes to be able to disrupt the reproductive cycle of the whitefly, a common insect that damages tomato plants, Jon Fleetwood reported on Substack.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — a division of the U.S. Department of Defense — also funded the research as part of its “Insect Allies” project, according to a study on the tomatoes published last month in BMC Plant Biology.

Whiteflies, or Bemisia tabaci, are a common pest that drinks sap from phloem, the food-conducting tissue in tomato plant stems and leaves, sometimes causing the plant to dry up. The insects also excrete a sticky substance called honeydew, which attracts ants.

Whiteflies can decimate crops. The BMC study estimates the pest causes $2 billion in annual losses in cassava production in Africa alone, which can cause food insecurity in regions that rely on the crop.

The researchers aim to develop a genetic modification (GM) technology that could modify plants to produce proteins that target and destroy whitefly eggs. The authors note that targeting egg viability is a “unique strategy” for transgenic plants, setting it apart from most GM insecticidal plants that target adult insects.

Fleetwood raised concerns about the technology’s potential to harm human health and the environment.

“If commercialized, these ‘[t]ransgenic plants’ — genetically engineered to include genes from other species — could introduce reproductive-disrupting insecticidal compounds into the human food chain,” Fleetwood wrote.

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The Glaring Hypocrisy and Embedded Deceptions of the Global Food Giants

Bryce Martinez (18) from Pennsylvania is mounting a legal challenge against major food companies, alleging that their ultra-processed foods (UPFs) led to his development of Type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease at the age of 16.

The 11 firms listed in the lawsuit are Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Coca-Cola, Post Holdings, PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestle’s (US), WK Kellogg, Mars, Kellanova and Conagra.

UPFs have undergone multiple processing steps and often contain additives, preservatives and artificial ingredients. These UPFs have become staples in many households. Examples of UPFs are prepackaged soups, many breakfast cereals, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals, hot dogs, sausages, sodas, ice cream and store-bought cookies, cakes, candies and doughnuts.

Martinez’s legal team contends that the big food corporations have deliberately engineered their products to trigger addictive responses. His lawyers at Morgan & Morgan, a major US law firm, says the case is unprecedented and includes claims for conspiracy, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation and unfair business practices.

Martinez had regularly consumed popular UPFs throughout his childhood. The lawsuit challenges the food industry’s argument that consumers have free choice in their dietary decisions. It argues that the notion of free choice is compromised by aggressive marketing tactics, especially aimed at children, and the addictive nature of these products.

UPFs are highly profitable for corporations. The same companies that dominate the UPF market are intertwined with investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard, which also hold stakes in the pharmaceutical industry. This dual investment creates a cycle where investment firms profit from both the sale of harmful foods and the treatment of diseases associated with these products.

Furthermore, the prevailing economic system creates a paradoxical situation where workers, whose pension funds are often managed by these same investment giants, find themselves financially tethered to a cycle that undermines their own health and well-being.

There is a famous quote often attributed to farmer, poet and campaigner Wendell Berry:

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.”

For a long time, that has served both industry’s interests very well.

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Bill Gates Funds Genetically Engineered Tomatoes with Insecticides Inside Them That Attack Reproduction—And Yes, You’d Eat Them

Bill Gates is funding research to genetically engineer tomatoes to produce insecticides inside their tissues, specifically targeting the reproduction of whiteflies, a destructive agricultural pest. According to a study published last month in BMC Plant Biology, these genetically engineered (GE) tomatoes express proteins designed to infiltrate and disrupt whitefly eggs.

“The molecular tools for achieving both apoplastic and phloem-specific expression of insecticidal proteins are well developed,” the study explains, highlighting the advanced genetic strategies employed.

If commercialized, these “[t]ransgenic plants”—genetically engineered to include genes from other species—could introduce reproductive-disrupting insecticidal compounds into the human food chain.

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Communism Fumbles Again: Cuba Importing Resource It Was Once Famed For Producing

It’s undeniably one of economist Milton Friedman’s most famous sayings about the failures of central planning: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

This was, of course, a stroke of hyperbole. Not even a billion Keynesian ditch-diggers could empty the Sahara.

However, we have seen the closest thing to Friedman’s vision coming true: In Cuba, an island practically made of sugarcane, the communist government now needs to import sugar.

It’s bad enough that, according to CiberCuba — an expatriate-run outlet which is critical of the government — a pound of sugar now costs 600 pesos on the island, or about $25 USD.

“Despite efforts to revive the sugar industry, the sector continues to face serious challenges, including failures in the last harvest,” CiberCuba reported earlier this month.

“During the session of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz recalled when Raúl Castro remarked that ‘it would be an embarrassment to have to import sugar.’ He then stated, ‘and well, we are experiencing that embarrassment because we are importing sugar.’”

Cruz “emphasized that the crisis in the sector is such that the country has also stopped exporting sugar, which was a key component of the economy,” according to CiberCuba.

And it’s not just dissident outlets like CiberCuba that are reporting on the failures of Cuba’s sugar industry, either. Earlier this year, the BBC’s Cuba correspondent, Will Grant, filed a piece about the failures of the system.

Shocker of shockers, you know what’s to blame? Communism!

“Cutting cane is all Miguel Guzmán has ever known. He comes from a family of farm hands and started the tough, thankless work as a teenager,” the May piece began. “For hundreds of years, sugar was the mainstay of the Cuban economy. It was not just the island’s main export but also the cornerstone of another national industry, rum.”

“Today, though, he readily admits he has never seen the sugar industry as broken and depressed as it is now – not even when the Soviet Union’s lucrative sugar quotas dried up after the Cold War,” Grant noted. “Spiraling inflation, shortages of basic goods and the decades-long US economic embargo have made for a dire economic outlook across the board in Cuba. But things are particularly bleak in the sugar trade.”

“There’s not enough trucks and the fuel shortages mean sometimes several days pass before we can work,” Guzmán said under a “tiny patch of shade” while he waited for Soviet-era trucks to arrive.

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High-fructose Corn Syrup is Everywhere — Scientists Say It May Make Cancerous Tumors Grow Faster

Eating fructose boosts the growth of cancerous tumors — by two-fold or greater in some cases — without changing body weight, fasting glucose or fasting insulin levels, according to a peer-reviewed study published Dec. 4 in Nature.

The authors of the study showed that dietary fructose promotes cancer tumor growth in mice that have melanoma, breast cancer and cervical cancer.

Fructose is a naturally occurring sugar found in some fruits, vegetables, honey and table sugar, according to the Mayo Clinic. The consumption of fructose has greatly increased in recent decades since food and beverage companies started routinely using high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener, the authors said in their report.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), high-fructose corn syrup is derived from corn starch. Corn starch is naturally made of glucose, but added enzymes convert some of the glucose to fructose — which tastes sweeter.

Gary Patti, Ph.D. — a professor of genetics and medicine at Washington University, the senior director for the university’s Center for Metabolomics and Isotope Tracing, and the study’s corresponding author — told The Defender:

“We put animals with cancer on a high-fructose diet and then compared the progression of the disease with animals who were on standard diets. We also fed fructose to cancer cells in a dish.

“We were surprised that dietary fructose drove tumor growth in the animals but that the same cells could not use it as a nutrient when isolated in a dish.”

This led Patti and his co-authors to discover that fructose does not feed tumor growth directly. “Instead, the liver transforms fructose into other nutrients that then drive tumor growth indirectly,” Patti said.

The researchers were also surprised to see how dramatic an impact fructose had on tumors. “In some cases,” Patti said in a press release, “the growth rate of the tumors accelerated by two-fold or even higher … Eating a lot of fructose was clearly very bad for the progression of these tumors.”

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BIG WIN: Dairy Producer STOPS Using Bovaer After Boycott

I have some very big and very good news for you today.

One of the largest dairy producers in Norway has now STOPPED giving their cows the methane suppressant Bovaer.

This is a major development.

The two largest dairy producers in Norway, Tine and Q-Meieriene began using Bovaer already in 2023 to make their cows fart less and reduce climate emissions.

They began to sell this as ”climate milk” in the stores. However, this was not popular at all with consumers. So guess what happened?

The dairy producer Tine stopped selling their climate milk, and instead just put it together with the normal milk without telling anyone. So people are now getting milk from cows being fed a TOXIC chemical without even knowing.

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Police Arrest TikTok ‘Prankster’ For Spraying Poison All Over Food in Walmart, Causing $1 Million in Damage, and Posting Video of Crime to Social Media

A so-called TikTok ‘prankster’ known for wreaking havoc on the public for social media views, was arrested for spraying poison all over food in a Mesa, Arizona, Walmart.

The suspect, 27-year-old Charles Smith, was stupid enough to video his face while committing the crime. He then uploaded the video of himself committing the felony to social media.

According to court documents, Smith went back inside Walmart 10 minutes after he committed the crime and “attempted to collect the items he sprayed.”

Smith wheeled some of the poisoned items to the back of Walmart.

Walmart was forced to remove nearly $1 million in damaged food/suspected damaged food after Charles Smith ran through the store and sprayed poison all over the place.

Mesa police arrested Charles Smith on Saturday and charged him with Introducing Poison (felony), Criminal Damage (misdemeanor), Endangerment (misdemeanor), Theft (misdemeanor).

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Pentagon funds alternative meat protein from fungus for military food to meet sustainability goals

The Pentagon is funding alternatives to meat protein, which includes using fungi for food for U.S. service members as part of the White House’s sustainable bioeconomy agenda.

The Department of Defense is focusing on investments into fungi protein as an alternative to animal protein, after initially seeking to fund lab-grown meat earlier this year in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. Critics have pushed back on such initiatives, arguing that they are negatively affecting the military.

In November, the DOD announced that it had given 34 awards totaling over $60 million to bioindustrial firms under the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program (DBIMP). $1.38 million was given to The Fynder Group “to plan a bioproduction facility for fungi-based proteins that can be incorporated into military ready-to-eat meals.”

The program is part of President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy,” which is “aimed at bolstering America’s bioeconomic strengths while helping the Department achieve advanced defense capabilities,” according to the DOD.

The projects that were awarded funding from the DOD program “will be eligible to receive follow-on ‘build’ awards providing access to up to $100 million to construct U.S.-based bioindustrial manufacturing facilities,” the DOD announcement added.

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Global Food Prices Are Entering Very Dangerous Territory

What in the world is going to happen if global food supplies continue to get even tighter?  During the second half of this year global food prices have been surging.  A “perfect storm” of factors is suppressing production all over the planet, and meanwhile worldwide demand for food just keeps rising.  Needless to say, higher prices hurt those at the bottom of the economic food chain the worst.  Food prices have become a major issue in country after country, and if current trends continue it won’t be too long before widespread unrest breaks out.  Here in the United States, the cost of living is absolutely eviscerating the middle class.  If a way cannot be found to stabilize food prices, we will be seeing a tremendous amount of anger and frustration in 2025 and beyond.

Last week, it was being reported that global food prices had risen to “the highest level in 19 months”…

The world food price index, compiled by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to track the most globally traded food commodities, increased to 127.5 points last month from a revised 126.9 points in October, the highest level in 19 months and up 5.7% from a year ago.

The vegetable oil index jumped 7.5% above levels seen a month ago and 32% above those seen a year earlier, driven by concerns over lower-than-expected palm oil output due to excessive rainfall in Southeast Asia.

Clearly, things are not heading in the right direction.

But what could be coming next is potentially even more alarming.

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Study reveals shocking levels of cancer-linked pesticides in imported food – and the fruit that’s most affected

Analysts have raised the alarm about potentially harmful pesticides linked to cancer and infertility that are found in fruit like satsumas and oranges imported into Britain.

Campaign group Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) used Government testing data to show 46 pesticides with links to cancer had been detected on produce imports to Britain as of the end of last year.

This was more than double the 19 such pesticides found in British produce. 

Similar results were found for pesticides linked to fertility and damage to the nervous system, with twice and thrice as many such chemicals found on imports compared to British fare.

By food group, ‘soft citrus’ — which includes satsumas, tangerines and clementines — had the highest change of having a cocktail of multiple pesticides present, with 96 per cent of samples tested returning positive.

This was followed by oranges and lemons which had multiple pesticides detected in in 95 and 89 per cent of samples.

All three types of fruit contained as many as nine different pesticides — and all of these samples were imported from South Africa.  

For individual fruits, grapes from Lebanon that had the most pesticides of any item, with 13 substances detected on one sample analysed. 

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