Renewable Farming

Carey Gillam brings you GMO and ag policy news most farm editors won’t touch

Carey Gillam’s Dec. 16 on-scene report of this week’s EPA glyphosate hearings exposes how the federal “regulatory” chiefs consider their job as primarily biotech allies, not protectors of environmental and human health. Gillam’s analysis, published on The Huffington Post site, is one more lively confirmation of her self-description as an “investigative reporter.”

Dec. 16, 2016  — For example, Gillam reveals that Dr. Peter Infante, an acknowledged expert on glyphosate’s possible influence on setting up human health conditions leading to cancer, had been removed by EPA from the agency’s scientific advisory panel member at the urging of CropLife America, a chemical industry lobby group. That signals industry’s power to sway our Washington regulators. 

Carey Gillam

Huffpost carries an “author” section on their site which lists articles Gillam has written recently. Since non-farm websites don’t depend on ad revenue from the Big Five biotech/chemical firms, they can offer more controversial reports than, say, the Iowa Farm Bureau Spokesman. 

Should you want to scan other investigative reports on ag policy, sustainable farming and the food revolution, you can visit her personal website, http://www.careygillam.com.

EPA’s hearings on glyphosate this week are simply another chapter in the ongoing saga documented by another independent analyst, Steven Druker. On Tuesday at Ames, Dr. Don Huber held up Druker’s book, “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth” before the seminar of about 100 farmers and urged them to read it. As we’ve detailed in our earlier report linked above, Druker dredged up the darker side of the biotech industry’s manipulations which converted regulatory “science” into part of the biotech and chemical promotion industry’s marketing machine.

Further evidence of the “confluence” of scientific and marketing conclusions shows up in a research study documenting that papers published in scientific journals by writers with a personal commercial connection had a “50% higher frequency of outcomes favorable to the GM crop company.”  You can review that analysis at this link. This is an overseas journal, not one originating in the United States.

It’s highly unlikely that EPA’s safety advisory panel will review this week’s testimony, plus all the written comments on the glyphosate renewal question, and conclude that glyphosate has any influence as a human carcinogen. The “scientific” evidence would have to present virtually 99% statistical confidence, and arise from double-blind tests.  Circumstantial evidence such as high sickness rates in glyphosate-sprayed regions is just so much epidemiological hearsay.

But here in the country, we’re hearing more and more farmers tell us, “I’d sure like to get away from glyphosate.” Their concerns are far broader, and more health-related, than the problems of weed resistance to that chemical.