This film documents the dangers of genetically modified organisms in the food supply.
(Editor’s note: Please attend our one-day health conference Saturday in Hixson. The main speaker for Debunking Nutritional Myths is Dr. Kaayla Daniel, the nutritionist who has the inside scoop on soy, the phony health food. The conference by the local chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation also has a workshop on fish oils as a supplement, making bone broth, myths and truths about plant-based diets, how to make yogurt, how to render lard/tallow, and wheat and its myths. Please see our link, at right. — David Tulis)
By Franklin Sanders
Jeffrey M. Smith has directed and produced the new documentary film, “Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives,” on the health dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and wrote the bestselling book of the same title. He meticulously documents how biotech companies continue to mislead legislators and safety officials, endanger public health, and imperil the environment.
In “Genetic Roulette,” Smith’s third documentary film, prominent physicians, scientists, researchers, and investigators point to GMOs as a major culprit in the rise of chronic diseases in the US. You can rent or view it at geneticroulettemovie.com. The trailer for the film is just above.
Smith’s first book, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating, combines storytelling with investigative reporting. His second book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, is the authoritative work on 65 GMO health dangers, including toxic and allergic reactions, infertility, and damage to virtually every internal organ in lab animals. Mr. Smith has lectured in 30 countries and has been quoted by world leaders and hundreds of media outlets.
Please read Part I of this interview here at Nooganomics.com.
What happens when you switch from GM to non-GM?
Moneychanger On our farm we had a big problem with swine fertility, littering three or four pigs instead of 11 to 15. The farmer we were buying corn from for years assured us that it was non-GMO, but after six years we found out it was GMO. Investigating swapping to organic, which isn’t readily available around here, we called Highland Naturals in Ohio. They said, “Call these other two pig farmers. They’ve had the same problem.” We did and both reported that as soon as they took their sows off of GMO feed, litter sizes return to normal
Smith I’ve heard this many times. I would love to get a write-up of that. We’re the only organization that’s actually officially collecting these stories and the stories of humans that switched from GM to non-GM and we’re seeing the same patterns.
Moneychanger But feeds have other additives. Pigs have to be supplemented with lysine, but instead of adding natural fishmeal, they may use lysine produced by GMO bacteria. My experience with pigs makes me think, “Goodness gracious, anybody eating GMO can’t ever expect to get pregnant.” Pigs are very robust animals and we don’t raise enfeebled, overbred varieties. We raise heritage breeds that are still tough animals but GMO feed, it seems, wrecks their fertility.
Smith There was a dossier created on a Danish pig farmer who switched to non-GM soy rather than corn. When he changed the conception rate went up and the litter size went up and the death rates went down and the medicine use dropped by two-thirds. The diarrhea that often proved fatal disappeared in two days. Birth defects disappeared.
I talked to an Iowa farmer who switched to non-GM corn on the recommendation of one of his consultants. He was still feeding the GM soy but within days he noticed a change in the behavior and health of the nursery where they were feeding non-GM corn. Medicine use dropped dramatically, more than half. The pigs’ whole behavior changed. In 14 years of feeding GM corn they were always lethargic and lying down, but with non-GM corn they started acting like piglets. It reminded them of how it was before they fed GM corn. He had no idea why his job switched from the easiest on the farm to the most difficult during those 14 years, constantly injecting sick piglets with medicines. Now the situation is reversed.
So your experience is being repeated all over America and yet this information is not reaching livestock producers.
Health problems in people?
Moneychanger If GMOs do that to cattle or pigs, what about humans eating their flesh? Does that cause health problems in humans?
Smith Some people who may be reading probably have fertility issues because it’s near epidemic proportions.
Moneychanger And that started in the last 14-17 years?
Smith Exactly. Given the timing and experience with livestock it would make a lot of sense if GMOs were causing it. But let’s talk about that in terms of animal feeding studies and the characteristics of Roundup Ready crops particularly. By the way, I know human stories where people switched to non-GMO and their infertility disappeared. One person unable to get pregnant for five years became pregnant three weeks into a non-GMO diet.
Animal feeding studies show reproductive problems especially with Roundup Ready crops where there’s a high concentration of Roundup. Roundup is an endocrine disruptor and in low concentrations can kill human placental cells. It can disrupt the whole hormonal structure. Rats, hamsters, and mice fed Roundup Ready crops saw a lot of reproductive disorders. From the microscopic level changes showed in the testicles, uterus, and ovaries and even the hormonal balance and the cycles. They saw the changes in the color of the testicles in male mice fed GM soy.
Female rats fed GM soy starting two weeks before they got pregnant saw more than half of their babies die within three weeks, compared to only a 10 percent [in the control group.—FS] The group was also smaller and could not reproduce. By the third generation hamsters most were sterile and some had hair growing in their mouths. The infant mortality rate was four or five times that of the control group. Mice fed GM corn had smaller and fewer babies.
So there’s real astounding evidence in the laboratory, but we don’t know if it’s caused by Roundup in high concentrations in the seed or the genetic engineering of the crop. One study published in September 2012 fed rats for two years either (1) Roundup or (2) Roundup Ready corn with Roundup or (3) Roundup Ready corn without the Roundup — three different test groups. In all three cases they were problems in the liver, kidneys and pituitary and there was early death. So we know that all three have a highly toxic impact but they didn’t have reproductive impact in that particular case.
In addition to disrupting the endocrine system, what else about Roundup might also contribute to infertility? There are two other candidates. One we mentioned already, that it is a chelator that it makes certain nutrients unavailable to the plant. So when the animals are fed mostly GM crops, the main feed that U.S. livestock eats is nutrient deficient.
Manganese missing, affecting reproductive health
Sometimes they supplement it with something like lysine, as you described. Sometimes they are deficient in other things that aren’t supplemented like manganese or cobalt which helps produce vitamin E and you have a universal deficiency in certain trace minerals.
Manganese is related to reproductive health. In stillborn or aborted calves, manganese levels are non-detectable or very, very low. This nutrient deficiency in the animals might explain that. The third candidate is how Roundup promotes plant diseases and soil-borne pathogens. A pathogen new on the radar screen is extremely tiny, the size of a virus, but it can kill embryos and render animals infertile, and it’s in high concentration in crops sprayed with Roundup. It’s also in high concentration in aborted fetal tissue in livestock from farms with high miscarriage rates and it may be related to human miscarriages as well.
The changes that genetic engineering can produce are sometimes known and sometimes not even evaluated. That’s why I think that GMOs are implicated in animal infertility issues. Since we eat the animals and the crops, we eat the Roundup, too. We eat the nutrient-deficient animals so we can end up with nutrient deficiencies, although that may be a lesser issue. However, this pathogen may be transferring from animals to humans as well. So I think that GMOs are a prime candidate for causing human as well as animal infertility.
Is it OK to eat animals fed with GMOs?
Moneychanger Am I reading something into your statements by concluding that one ought to try to avoid eating animals fed GMOs as well as GMO crops themselves?
Smith Certainly we should try to do that. It’s much harder in the U.S. because you have to buy organic products or wild caught or 100% grass fed animals where no GM alfalfa is used. A few years ago I was talking to a farm family and they had butchered both the GM-fed and the non-GM fed animals. What they reported seeing and smelling I have now heard over and over again.
The discoloration and stench may be from the altered gut bacteria. When they pull the intestines from the animals they just shred, paper thin as opposed to normal integrity. The U.S. meat industry has to buy sausage casings from New Zealand now because they can’t deal with the horrible intestines from U.S. livestock for sausage casings.
According to this farmwife, the lard from non-GM fed pigs was white while the GM-fed lard was discolored a horrible yellow with a smell. Based on her visceral firsthand experience she doesn’t give her kids any GMO-fed animal products.
Moneychanger It’s no bargain to buy the cheaper meat? Or cheaper feed?
Smith The farmer in Denmark – after paying more for the non-GM soy — was still making $100 per animal more because health, litter size, etc. The family farm that I talked to in western Iowa was using dramatically less medicine. A recent epidemic went through the area and the recovery was unprecedented while during the 14 years they were feeding GM it lingered. It was a quick recovery and a very small level of infection. They think that that was related to the healthier feed.
They’re just starting non-GMO soy this year in addition, expecting an even healthier animal prole there. One goat farmer switched from GM to non-GM because on the GM his goats had a terrible time getting and keeping pregnant. Switching changed all that, so he was losing a lot of money as a probable result of the GM feed. I can’t say for sure but that’s what it appeared to be.
Right now in the U.S. livestock industry there’s an epidemic of fertility problems. They haven’t put their finger on it but we think it’s the GM feed.
Public health — autism, allergies, stomach disorders, mental fog disorder
Moneychanger I have to conclude that you believe GMOs are not safe for humans to eat?
Smith Yes. Based on the evidence that I’ve been collecting for 17 years I am convinced that GMOs are not only unsafe but are also one of the most dangerous aspects in our current society. They are probably behind the prevalence of gluten sensitivity, allergies, asthma, autism, certain cancers, inflammatory diseases, a whole host of gastrointestinal disorders, and based on the experience of both humans and livestock, I would say also some mental disorders. Some individuals report mental fog, anxiety, depression, etc., have gone away when they switched to non-GMO and I have numerous farmer and veterinarians all using the same word to describe an improvement in their animals when they switched over: happier. I don’t know if that’s a scientific evaluation, but it’s something that I’ve heard people say independently when they describe their animals on GM as antisocial, irritated, upset and even cannibalistic and aggressive.
Moneychanger When you try to avoid GMOs — GMO corn, soy, canola oil from GMO rapeseed, and sugar beets – you find that they or their derivatives are present in almost all processed foods and there’s never any warning. How in the world can we avoid eating them?
Smith We have a shopping guide to make it easier. Go to NonGMOShoppingGuide. com and download a free iPhone application called Shop No GMO. You can also get a little booklet at ResponsibleTechnology. org, our main website for the Institute for Responsible Technology. So we have made it easy. About 9,500 products at this point have been third party-verified by another organization called The Non-GMO Project. Good news is that over 20 states have been looking at labeling bills this year including Washington State, which has a ballot initiative in November.
Labeling needed, or outright GMO ban; pressure grows
We believe that some labeling bill will be passed at a state level and that it’ll eventually become a national requirement so that the U.S. will join the 62 other countries that require labeling or ban GMOs outright. We will see a tipping point of consumers rejecting GMOs as people learn about the dangers. When people realize their friends are feeling better and eliminating symptoms by eliminating GMOs, when they’re told by their doctors to avoid GMOs, when they watch the movie Genetic Roulette and Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of our Lives which is available at GeneticRouletteMovie. com, they will reject GMOs.
We are already seeing a kind of an avalanche of companies switching to non-GMs. It will become a marketing liability to use GM ingredients and that’s on the horizon. That’s how it was kicked out of Europe, not because of some law but because the media reported the information the dangers of genetically engineered food and alerted the public which alerted the food companies which kicked GMOs out. That has kept GMOs out for more than a decade.
Farmers are all economists, right? They’re aware of market prices and you can hear them on radio every day here in Iowa. The farmers are very aware of what’s going to sell in the marketplace. Back in 1999 or 2000 when the European Union wouldn’t accept two varieties of GM corn, Staley and Archer Daniels Midland simply announced in late August that their elevators weren’t going to take those two varieties.
Farmers who grew those varieties had to suffer but of course they’re not going to grow those varieties the following year. Likewise if their elevators say, “We’re not going to go to take any GMOs this year because the nearby wet mill plant will only take non-GM corn,” which is exactly what will happen, the farmers are going to have to switch. Companies that sell to certain companies like Frito-Lay actually have a list of approved seed. They’ll just eliminate the GMOs from their approved list.
They’ve already seen anti-GMO sentiment rapidly race through Europe. It caused them to eliminate GMO there. They saw genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone milk kicked out of Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Yoplait and Dannon, because of a consumer tipping point. They’re going to get rid of GMOs as soon as the writing is on the wall and it’s halfway there already.
Moneychanger What is the best place for my readers to buy the book?
Smith SeedsOfDeception.com offers two books. And there are other DVDs and materials on that SeedsOfDeception.com website.
Another website is ResponsibleTechnology.org where they can sign up for a free newsletter. There’s speaker training. There’s tipping point network which is joining with other advocates in areas around the country to help educate the community. We are specifically looking for stories from individuals and from farmers and veterinarians about health changes when people switched to non-GM or animals switched to non-GM. E-mail us at Healthy@ResponsibleTechnology.org.
Moneychanger I deeply appreciate your work and your giving me time for this interview.
Used by permission. Subscribe to the Moneychanger’s daily commentary by dropping your email address at Franklin’s website, the-moneychanger.com. Franklin Sanders is publisher of The Moneychanger, a privately circulated monthly newsletter that focuses on gold and silver and the application of Christianity to economics, culture and family life. We have subscribed to this newsletter for more than 20 years, and consider it a must read. F$149 a year. Franklin is an active trader in gold and silver (he’ll swap your green Federal Reserve rectangles and give you real money in return). He trades with savers and investors outside Tennessee. F. Sanders, The Moneychanger, P.O. Box 178, Westpoint, Tenn. 38486 Tel. 888-218-9226.
