(NaturalNews) After months of pretending to review public feedback on the issue of GE alfalfa, the USDA has announced a surprise lifting of all restrictions on the genetically engineered crop, effectively allowing anyone to plant GE alfalfa anywhere, without any restriction. This is the USDA's surrender to Monsanto, and it signifies the beginning of a new era of widespread genetic pollution of North America's crops and ranch animals (which eat those crops).
Even though the USDA recently admitted in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) that GE alfalfa may pose a risk to both organic farmers and conventional farmers (http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/...), the agency suddenly and without scientific justification decided to remove all restrictions and allow Monsanto to regulate itself!
This is the work of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, Monsanto lobbyists and certain members of Congress who have been influenced to write extremely dishonest letters to the USDA which characters GE restrictions as "unscientific." NaturalNews previously exposed the twisted logic and manipulative linguistic games used by biotech supporters in an article called, "Unscientific" is secret code for anyone who opposes GMOs or pesticides (http://www.naturalnews.com/031093_u...).
The dishonest tactics used by the biotech industry have apparently been successful, and it is widely believed that this precedent will now be used to lift all regulation of other GE crops, unleashing what can only be called the era of genetic pollution across North America, courtesy of the USDA.
Under these programs, the USDA uses chemical poisons to murder literally millions of birds each year, including an occasional endangered species animal by accident. This is all part of the USDA's insane program of death to protect the financial interests of conventional agriculture giants.
Today's USDA decision to unleash genetically engineered alfalfa on the nation seems entirely consistent with the agency's reliance on mass animal murder to achieve its goals of reducing biodiversity and suppressing whatever forms of life it does not want to succeed. (I hope humans are not on the USDA's list of species to "manage," but after today's decision, I'm starting to think we might be...),
The USDA, as a rule, supports primarily corporate monoculture efforts such as genetically engineered crops, corn-fed cattle, and conventional crops being heavily sprayed with pesticides. With this decision on GE alfalfa, the USDA has squarely positioned itself as the enemy of organic food production, biodynamic farming methods and the use of heirloom seeds by farmers.
In fact, today's decision to unleash GE alfalfa on America now means the DNA pollution of non-GMO alfalfa is a certainty. Farmers trying to grow honest, non-GMO alfalfa, in other words, are about to suffer what can only be called an environmental catastrophe caused by GE alfalfa cross-contamination.
Additionally, there is evidence (but not yet conclusive proof) to suggest that GE alfalfa may release pesticide chemicals into the bodies of cows during digestion. Cows eat a tremendous amount of alfalfa each day, further concentrating potential toxins that may be present in their feed. When those cows are then slaughtered and turned into hamburgers in fast food restaurants, they may theoretically be delivering extremely high concentrations of pesticide toxins that were originally found in their feed grasses (or corn, for that matter).
In other words, GE alfalfa may turn out to be a mechanism by which consumers are ultimately poisoned with herbicides because those herbicides were concentrated in the bodies of cows first.
Again, NaturalNews does not yet have conclusive proof that this is the case. But neither does the USDA have conclusive proof that GE alfalfa is safe, and this is precisely the point: Rather than relying on the Precautionary Principle, the USDA is haphazardly unleashing GE alfalfa into the wild and crossing their fingers (behind their backs, probably) in the hope that nothing will go wrong.
GE alfalfa is a grand genetic experiment with an unknown outcome. Importantly, this is an experiment which can never be put back in the box! Once you've unleashed GE alfalfa into the wild, you have engaged in an irreversible chain of events impacting the one of the most sacred things on our planet: The DNA of crop seeds.
If the USDA has miscalculated, and if we've been lied to by Monsanto (and gee, why would a corporation ever lie to us just to make a profit?), then we may, in time, find ourselves the victims of an unthinkable genetic pollution catastrophe combined with a possible food wipeout scenario that can all be traced back to genetic pollution caused by GMOs.
Again, I cannot say for certain that this outcome will occur, but neither can the USDA (nor Monsanto) say with any honesty that they know such an outcome won't happen. And given what's at stake -- the very future of sustainable life on our planet -- only a fool would choose to roll the dice and risk everything just for the sake of quarterly profits for a few more bucks on the corporate bottom line.
The USDA, it seems, is now doing to humans what it has been doing to the birds: Poisoning us all and hoping no one will notice.
But people are noticing... and this action has ignited a grassroots firestorm of protest across the internet (see below).
This is natural selection at work: When GE crops are sprayed with Roundup and other chemical pesticides -- and that's how GE crops are "managed" in the field -- they inevitably give rise to weeds that, through natural genetic variation, develop a genetic resistance to those herbicide chemicals. Those weeds survive and go to seed, reproducing and spreading their own "superweed DNA" across not just the GMO fields, but through conventional farming fields, too. This forces even conventional farmers (and organic farmers) to now deal with mutant superweeds that were created by GMO farming methods! (http://www.naturalnews.com/031095_s...)
This is a mirror image of the situation with MRSA and antibiotics in humans: When physicians overprescribe antibiotics (which is happening in virtually every hospital in the western world today), this practice gives rise to antibiotic-resistant bacteria -- so-called "superbugs." These superbugs are immune to antibiotics and become the real killers that are claiming the lives of innocent victims in hospitals across America right now.
In some hospitals, entire floors of patients become infected with these superbugs, and many simply die. According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, these superbugs kill 48,000 patients a year in America alone (http://www.naturalnews.com/028441_s...). In case you're keeping track, that's roughly 16 times the number of Americans killed on 9/11, and it's happening every year!
This is one of the greatest epidemics of infectious disease in America today, and it's being caused entirely by the abusive practice of using chemicals to eliminate undesirable forms of life in the bodies of human patients. Now the USDA wants to adopt this same disastrously failed method on a much larger scale, allowing chemicals to be used in combination with GE alfalfa in a way that is absolutely guaranteed to create superweeds which are resistant to standard herbicides.
Do you see where this is heading? Fast forward 25 years and we may see our fertile croplands overrun by aggressive, invasive superweeds that are resistant to everything -- weeds which are "Monsanto's Mutants" because they are the causal offshoots of insanely poor foresight and atrociously huge risk-taking by USDA officials who blatantly betray the American people at every opportunity. In making this decision, the USDA has squarely positioned itself as an enemy of sustainable life on our planet. It has made a deal with the Devil, and the price may ultimately be borne by the innocent victims who perish under a future crop failure or superweed explosion that extremely diminishes crop production potential across America.
America's great Bread Basket, in other words, may soon become a Dead Basket.
"We’re disappointed with USDA’s decision and we will be back in court representing the interest of farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice" said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety. "USDA has become a rogue agency in its regulation of biotech crops and its decision to appease the few companies who seek to benefit from this technology comes despite increasing evidence that GE alfalfa will threaten the rights of farmers and consumers, as well as damage the environment."
Read the full announcement from the Center for Food Safety at:
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/...
I strongly urge you to get involved in the OCA, join their email list, read their website and stay informed about this issue. Watch for some very important announcements from the OCA in the coming weeks.
About today's decision by the USDA, Jeffrey Smith told NaturalNews:
"The USDA's approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa is a travesty. It will simultaneously harm the health of humans, animals, plants, and soil life, and threaten the livelihood and purity of organic agriculture. I understand our friends at the Center for Food Safety are going ahead with immediate legal action. And others of us are considering how else we might prevent this catastrophe from going ahead."
They have launched a petition that I urge you to sign:
https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=653
The ANH is a tremendously effective non-profit group fighting to protect the rights of natural health consumers. They deserve your support, and they're part of an ever-expanding coalition of health freedom groups who are all working to protect consumers interests. The Natural Solutions Foundation (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org), similarly, was hugely effective in the fight to halt the S.510 Food Safety Bill. That fight was not successful, of course, but the massive public protests organized by groups like the NSF, ANH, NaturalNews and others was effective in forcing amendments to the Food Safety Bill, such as the Tester Amendment.
I'm not saying it was a victory or anything, but it could have been a whole lot worse. Grassroots action prevented it from being worse.
Join our Facebook group to get hourly updates (www.Facebook.com/HealthRanger).
SHARE our anti-GMO music video: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=B459F...
SUPPORT the OCA, the IRT, the CFS and other non-profit groups that are working their tails off (I know, because I know these people, and they work long hours like I do) to protect your interests.
Get involved now and we have a chance to beat back food tyranny, GMO pollution and the corporate takeover of the entire food supply. If we all stand back and do nothing, we will be enslaved by the corporations who will very, very quickly seize control over the world's seeds and crops, putting us all in the position of being mere sharecroppers who have to buy our food from the company store.
We are dangerously close to full-on food enslavement right now. Help us fight back and you help save our collective future. And don't mistakenly think that we can do all this for you while you sit back and just watch what happens. The OCA, the IRT, NaturalNews and other groups are powerless without your direct participation in this battle. Your financial support, your petition signings, your campaigning and everything else you can do makes all the difference. We are here to serve you, but we are nothing without your participation and grassroots action. We are a team, and we need your teamwork to be effective.
Help us put an end to GMOs and protect the future of life on our planet.
http://food.change.org/blog/view/wh...
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/...
The Organic Elite Surrender to Monsanto:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/art...
Even though the USDA recently admitted in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) that GE alfalfa may pose a risk to both organic farmers and conventional farmers (http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/...), the agency suddenly and without scientific justification decided to remove all restrictions and allow Monsanto to regulate itself!
This is the work of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, Monsanto lobbyists and certain members of Congress who have been influenced to write extremely dishonest letters to the USDA which characters GE restrictions as "unscientific." NaturalNews previously exposed the twisted logic and manipulative linguistic games used by biotech supporters in an article called, "Unscientific" is secret code for anyone who opposes GMOs or pesticides (http://www.naturalnews.com/031093_u...).
The dishonest tactics used by the biotech industry have apparently been successful, and it is widely believed that this precedent will now be used to lift all regulation of other GE crops, unleashing what can only be called the era of genetic pollution across North America, courtesy of the USDA.
Confirmed: USDA is in the business of death
It was only a few days ago that NaturalNews shockingly revealed how the USDA is engaged in the deliberate murder of tens of millions of birds, cougars, beavers, foxes, ducks and other animals as part of its taxpayer-funded "Bye Bye Blackbird" program (http://www.naturalnews.com/031076_U...) and (http://www.naturalnews.com/031076_U...).Under these programs, the USDA uses chemical poisons to murder literally millions of birds each year, including an occasional endangered species animal by accident. This is all part of the USDA's insane program of death to protect the financial interests of conventional agriculture giants.
Today's USDA decision to unleash genetically engineered alfalfa on the nation seems entirely consistent with the agency's reliance on mass animal murder to achieve its goals of reducing biodiversity and suppressing whatever forms of life it does not want to succeed. (I hope humans are not on the USDA's list of species to "manage," but after today's decision, I'm starting to think we might be...),
The USDA, as a rule, supports primarily corporate monoculture efforts such as genetically engineered crops, corn-fed cattle, and conventional crops being heavily sprayed with pesticides. With this decision on GE alfalfa, the USDA has squarely positioned itself as the enemy of organic food production, biodynamic farming methods and the use of heirloom seeds by farmers.
In fact, today's decision to unleash GE alfalfa on America now means the DNA pollution of non-GMO alfalfa is a certainty. Farmers trying to grow honest, non-GMO alfalfa, in other words, are about to suffer what can only be called an environmental catastrophe caused by GE alfalfa cross-contamination.
Alfalfa is fed to the cows used to produce meat
The chain of toxicity goes way beyond mere GE alfalfa, of course. Alfalfa is largely used to feed cows who tend to collect and concentrate toxins in their fat tissues, raising them to much higher concentrations than what was originally found in the plants.Additionally, there is evidence (but not yet conclusive proof) to suggest that GE alfalfa may release pesticide chemicals into the bodies of cows during digestion. Cows eat a tremendous amount of alfalfa each day, further concentrating potential toxins that may be present in their feed. When those cows are then slaughtered and turned into hamburgers in fast food restaurants, they may theoretically be delivering extremely high concentrations of pesticide toxins that were originally found in their feed grasses (or corn, for that matter).
In other words, GE alfalfa may turn out to be a mechanism by which consumers are ultimately poisoned with herbicides because those herbicides were concentrated in the bodies of cows first.
Again, NaturalNews does not yet have conclusive proof that this is the case. But neither does the USDA have conclusive proof that GE alfalfa is safe, and this is precisely the point: Rather than relying on the Precautionary Principle, the USDA is haphazardly unleashing GE alfalfa into the wild and crossing their fingers (behind their backs, probably) in the hope that nothing will go wrong.
GE alfalfa is a grand genetic experiment with an unknown outcome. Importantly, this is an experiment which can never be put back in the box! Once you've unleashed GE alfalfa into the wild, you have engaged in an irreversible chain of events impacting the one of the most sacred things on our planet: The DNA of crop seeds.
If the USDA has miscalculated, and if we've been lied to by Monsanto (and gee, why would a corporation ever lie to us just to make a profit?), then we may, in time, find ourselves the victims of an unthinkable genetic pollution catastrophe combined with a possible food wipeout scenario that can all be traced back to genetic pollution caused by GMOs.
Again, I cannot say for certain that this outcome will occur, but neither can the USDA (nor Monsanto) say with any honesty that they know such an outcome won't happen. And given what's at stake -- the very future of sustainable life on our planet -- only a fool would choose to roll the dice and risk everything just for the sake of quarterly profits for a few more bucks on the corporate bottom line.
The USDA, it seems, is now doing to humans what it has been doing to the birds: Poisoning us all and hoping no one will notice.
But people are noticing... and this action has ignited a grassroots firestorm of protest across the internet (see below).
Here come the superweeds
We don't yet know whether GMOs will lead our world into a DNA catastrophe ending in global starvation and widespread death, but we do know something else that's similarly frightening: GE crops result in the creation of "superweeds" that are highly resistant to even today's strongest herbicides.This is natural selection at work: When GE crops are sprayed with Roundup and other chemical pesticides -- and that's how GE crops are "managed" in the field -- they inevitably give rise to weeds that, through natural genetic variation, develop a genetic resistance to those herbicide chemicals. Those weeds survive and go to seed, reproducing and spreading their own "superweed DNA" across not just the GMO fields, but through conventional farming fields, too. This forces even conventional farmers (and organic farmers) to now deal with mutant superweeds that were created by GMO farming methods! (http://www.naturalnews.com/031095_s...)
This is a mirror image of the situation with MRSA and antibiotics in humans: When physicians overprescribe antibiotics (which is happening in virtually every hospital in the western world today), this practice gives rise to antibiotic-resistant bacteria -- so-called "superbugs." These superbugs are immune to antibiotics and become the real killers that are claiming the lives of innocent victims in hospitals across America right now.
In some hospitals, entire floors of patients become infected with these superbugs, and many simply die. According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, these superbugs kill 48,000 patients a year in America alone (http://www.naturalnews.com/028441_s...). In case you're keeping track, that's roughly 16 times the number of Americans killed on 9/11, and it's happening every year!
This is one of the greatest epidemics of infectious disease in America today, and it's being caused entirely by the abusive practice of using chemicals to eliminate undesirable forms of life in the bodies of human patients. Now the USDA wants to adopt this same disastrously failed method on a much larger scale, allowing chemicals to be used in combination with GE alfalfa in a way that is absolutely guaranteed to create superweeds which are resistant to standard herbicides.
Do you see where this is heading? Fast forward 25 years and we may see our fertile croplands overrun by aggressive, invasive superweeds that are resistant to everything -- weeds which are "Monsanto's Mutants" because they are the causal offshoots of insanely poor foresight and atrociously huge risk-taking by USDA officials who blatantly betray the American people at every opportunity. In making this decision, the USDA has squarely positioned itself as an enemy of sustainable life on our planet. It has made a deal with the Devil, and the price may ultimately be borne by the innocent victims who perish under a future crop failure or superweed explosion that extremely diminishes crop production potential across America.
America's great Bread Basket, in other words, may soon become a Dead Basket.
Center for Food Safety to file lawsuit
The Center for Food Safety (http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org) has announced its intention to immediately file a lawsuit challenging the USDA's lack of scientific integrity in lifting GE alfalfa regulations:"We’re disappointed with USDA’s decision and we will be back in court representing the interest of farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice" said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety. "USDA has become a rogue agency in its regulation of biotech crops and its decision to appease the few companies who seek to benefit from this technology comes despite increasing evidence that GE alfalfa will threaten the rights of farmers and consumers, as well as damage the environment."
Read the full announcement from the Center for Food Safety at:
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/...
Organic Consumers Association continues its fight against GMOs
The Organic Consumers Association (www.OrganicConsumers.org), led by grassroots organizer Ronnie Cummins, is also at the forefront of this fight with its Millions Against Monsanto campaign (http://organicconsumers.org/monsant...).I strongly urge you to get involved in the OCA, join their email list, read their website and stay informed about this issue. Watch for some very important announcements from the OCA in the coming weeks.
Jeffrey Smith and the IRT
Of course, Jeffrey Smith and the Institute for Responsible Technology (www.ResponsibleTechnology.org) are working tirelessly to oppose GE crops and protect the interests of consumers. NaturalNews is a cooperative supporter of the IRT and their mission, and I personally urge you to help contribute financially to the IRT at your earliest opportunity, as they are working on what promises to be a breakthrough documentary exposing GMOs. This project requires additional funding (and you can bet the large corporations won't be funding this, huh?)About today's decision by the USDA, Jeffrey Smith told NaturalNews:
"The USDA's approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa is a travesty. It will simultaneously harm the health of humans, animals, plants, and soil life, and threaten the livelihood and purity of organic agriculture. I understand our friends at the Center for Food Safety are going ahead with immediate legal action. And others of us are considering how else we might prevent this catastrophe from going ahead."
Alliance for Natural Health
Please also stay in touch with the Alliance for Natural Health (www.ANH-USA.org), which has launched an effort to halt the use of GMOs in school lunches.They have launched a petition that I urge you to sign:
https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=653
The ANH is a tremendously effective non-profit group fighting to protect the rights of natural health consumers. They deserve your support, and they're part of an ever-expanding coalition of health freedom groups who are all working to protect consumers interests. The Natural Solutions Foundation (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org), similarly, was hugely effective in the fight to halt the S.510 Food Safety Bill. That fight was not successful, of course, but the massive public protests organized by groups like the NSF, ANH, NaturalNews and others was effective in forcing amendments to the Food Safety Bill, such as the Tester Amendment.
I'm not saying it was a victory or anything, but it could have been a whole lot worse. Grassroots action prevented it from being worse.
Urgent action needed to fight back against GMOs and genetic pollution
Please take action today in whatever way suits you best.Join our Facebook group to get hourly updates (www.Facebook.com/HealthRanger).
SHARE our anti-GMO music video: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=B459F...
SUPPORT the OCA, the IRT, the CFS and other non-profit groups that are working their tails off (I know, because I know these people, and they work long hours like I do) to protect your interests.
Get involved now and we have a chance to beat back food tyranny, GMO pollution and the corporate takeover of the entire food supply. If we all stand back and do nothing, we will be enslaved by the corporations who will very, very quickly seize control over the world's seeds and crops, putting us all in the position of being mere sharecroppers who have to buy our food from the company store.
We are dangerously close to full-on food enslavement right now. Help us fight back and you help save our collective future. And don't mistakenly think that we can do all this for you while you sit back and just watch what happens. The OCA, the IRT, NaturalNews and other groups are powerless without your direct participation in this battle. Your financial support, your petition signings, your campaigning and everything else you can do makes all the difference. We are here to serve you, but we are nothing without your participation and grassroots action. We are a team, and we need your teamwork to be effective.
Help us put an end to GMOs and protect the future of life on our planet.
Read more:
Does Whole Foods support GE alfalfa?http://food.change.org/blog/view/wh...
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/...
The Organic Elite Surrender to Monsanto:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/art...
Articles Related to This Article:• Almond Growers Sue USDA to Halt Mandatory Chemical Fumigation of Raw Almonds• The Honest Food Guide empowers consumers with independent information about foods and health • Mad cow madness: USDA lies and the coming collapse of the U.S. beef industry • USDA downplays seriousness of mad cow disease found in Alabama cow • Corruption: USDA Looks Out Only for Self Interests • The Food Irradiation Plot: Why the USDA Wants to Sterilize Fresh Produce and Turn Live Foods into Dead Foods |
Related video from NaturalNews.TVYour NaturalNews.TV video could be here. Upload your own videos at NaturalNews.TV (FREE) |
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In mid 2010, Adams produced NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He's also a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031139_GE_alfalfa_deregulation.html#ixzz1CN2Li8u7
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Greenpeace: 22,000 Germans rally against genetically engineered products in our food
Prabhupada, February 19, 1975, Caracas: [...] God has created perfect, but you have become imperfect by misusing your independence. God is fully independent. You are part and parcel of God. Therefore you have got that quality, independence. When you misuse that, you become bad; when you use it properly, you remain good. Full Conversation
Greenpeace: 22,000 Germans rally against polluting agriculture
GREENPEACE| Stephanie Toewe-Rimkeit | January 26, 2011 at 17:43 — “We are fed up with it, we are fed up with it” or “We are able to change it” were the chantings in the city of Berlin last weekend. 22,000 people came together and demonstrated from the main train station through the government district to the Brandburger Tor against polluting agriculture in Germany and its consequences for health and nature.
A sunny sky, the sound of many tractors, clashing lids, drum roll, great costumes and funny songs and slogans put everybody in good spirits. Environmentalists, concerned members of the public, animal rights acitivists and a lot of farmers vented their anger about agro factories, intensive mass animal farming, dumping prices and genetically engineered products in our food, feed and on the fields.
The protest was very creative and colourful – a diversity all participants also wish for our agriculture and food production. “Meat and milk – climate killer No.1″, “Biofuels kill”, “No GMOs, no pesticides, no toxin in our food” were some of the slogans.
Young people also demonstrated against the overproduction and the food waste: “Every tenth loaf of bread ends up as waste”. Greenpeace folks from all over Germany travelled to Berlin to support the Greenpeace volunteer group in Berlin which demonstrated.
Over 80 percent of the Germans don’t want genetically manipulated organisms (GMOs) on their plates. Most GM crops ends up as animal feed. And animal products like milk, eggs and meat do not have to be labelled if cows, chickens or pigs were fed with GM-maize or GM-soya.
Now the European commission wants to open the animal feed also for non-approved GMOs in the EU. The rally on Saturday shows that people are simply not willing to put up with this. Agriculture is an issue that affects everybody. It threatens our natural resources, farmers’ livelihoods, our fresh water and healthy soils, climate change and conservation of the rain forests and last but not least it threatens our food.
– Stephanie
DES MOINES, Iowa - The widespread Internet posting of a letter by a retired university researcher who says he has linked genetically modified corn and soybeans to crop diseases and abortions and infertility in livestock has raised concern among scientists that the public will believe his unsupported claim is true.
The letter to the U.S. agriculture secretary has been posted on dozens of websites, generating discussion on message boards about the controversial topic of genetically modified crops and their potential effect on animals and humans.
But other scientists say they have no way to verify Purdue University professor emeritus Don Huber's claims because he won't provide evidence to back them up.
"People in the scientific community have at times made outlandish claims but it's been based on research that was flawed in some way, but at least the data was provided to be analyzed and critiqued," said Bob Hartzler, an Iowa State University agronomy professor who called the letter "extremely unusual, especially coming from the scientific community."
Huber, 76, wrote the letter to Tom Vilsack in January, warning of a new organism he claims has been found in corn and soybeans modified to resist a weed killer called Roundup. Huber wrote that the organism could lead to a "general collapse of our critical agriculture infrastructure" and further approval of Roundup Ready crops "could be a calamity."
He told The Associated Press the organism that concerned him was found in much higher concentrations in corn and soybeans grown from so-called Roundup Ready seeds than in grains grown from conventional seed, although the samples of conventional crops tested were too small to get a reliable result.
Huber believes the pathogen has made genetically modified soybeans more susceptible to sudden death syndrome and corn to Goss' wilt. He also claims it's linked to spontaneous abortions and infertility in livestock that eat feed generated from those crops.
He said he wrote the letter because he thought the U.S. Department of Agriculture needed to take immediate action and provide resources to further research his claims. He said he doesn't know how it reached the Internet.
The department acknowledged it had received the letter, but it doesn't appear the agency is investigating the matter.
Monsanto, the St. Louis-based company that developed Roundup resistant seeds, said in a statement it was not aware of reliable studies that show Roundup Ready crops are more prone to disease.
Huber, who now lives in Melba, Idaho, said he started his research at Purdue in Indiana and continued it in collaboration with other scientists in the Midwest, Florida, Brazil and Canada after retiring in 2006. He declined to name the other scientists, saying they asked to remain anonymous because the attention would distract from the research.
"The information on the new organism was new enough that there wasn't time for peer-reviewed papers and that it was serious enough I felt it was very important the secretary know what the situation was and that they exercise some caution before moving forward," Huber said.
The U.S., meanwhile, has moved ahead with an expansion of biotech crops.
In January, the department of agriculture deregulated alfalfa and in February it partially deregulated sugar beets that have been genetically modified to withstand Roundup, which contains a chemical called glyphosate.