Scotland has banned genetically modified organisms (GMOs) within its country. “Scotland is known around the world for our beautiful natural environment—and banning growing genetically modified crops will protect and further enhance our clean, green status,” said rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead. Here in the US the fight is just for the right to know that a food product should be labeled as GMO, and that’s not going so well.

This summer HR Bill 1599 was introduced to Congress. Dubbed the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right to Know) by its opponents, it was reactionary legislation to Vermont, Connecticut and Maine's 2014 laws that made GMO labeling mandatory on food packaging. The DARK Act makes absolutely no sense, and here's why.

At Monsanto, sales of genetically modified seeds were steadily rising. But executives at the company’s St. Louis headquarters were privately worried about attacks on the safety of their products.

As the vitriol intensifies in what passes for debate over the safety of genetically modified foods, scientific inquiry, thankfully, continues. A Tufts researcher, Sheldon Krimsky, recently published his assessment of the last seven years of peer-reviewed evidence, finding 26 studies that "reported adverse effects or uncertainties of GMOs fed to animals."

Oregon's Josephine County won't enforce a ban on genetically modified crops until a related lawsuit is resolved.

Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin signed onto a brief defending Vermont’s right to require labels on food containing genetically engineered ingredients.

Chipotle Mexican Grill isn't mincing words as it speaks out against a new lawsuit over serving items that contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

“Reading the emails make(s) me want to throw up” tweeted the Food Babe after reading a lengthy series of them posted online by the NY Times on Sept 5th. The emails in question result from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and are posted in the side bars of a front-page article by Times reporter Eric Lipton (“Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show”).

The Puppetmasters of Academia (or What the NY Times Left out)

by Jonathan Latham, PhD

Synopsis: Although hailed as great investigative reporting in many quarters, a new front page article (NY Times Sept 5th) by reporter Eric Lipton left out the most important elements of the story. Some were left out from the main article, others from the email trails linked to in the article. Some of these facts Lipton could not reasonably be expected to have known (though it seems he didnt investigate far). But others he should have, including that the "Nina Fedoroff", who played a prominent role in the emails he examined, was the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and that senior administrators at Cornell were in on the PR activities of their academics. Yet both these important facts were omitted entirely. Numerous others were buried as the article focussed instead on little academic fish. This article is the story Lipton should have written.

Essay by Ronnie Cummins

If governments won’t solve the climate, hunger, health, and democracy crisis, then the people will… Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the health crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy. -

Dr. Vandana Shiva, speaking at the founding meeting of Regeneration International,

La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica, June 8, 2015

Degenerate—(verb) to decline from a noble to a lower state of development; to become worse physically and morally; (noun) a person of low moral standards; having become less than one’s kind…”. - New Webster’s Dictionary, 1997 Edition

Welcome to Degeneration Nation.

After decades of self-destructive business-as-usual—empire-building, waging wars for fossil fuels, selling out government to the highest bidder, lacing the environment and the global food supply with GMOs, pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, toxic sweeteners, artery-clogging fats, and synthetic chemicals, attacking the organic and natural health movement, brainwashing the body politic, destroying soils, forests, wetlands, and biodiversity, and discharging greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere and the oceans like there’s no tomorrow—we’ve reached a new low, physically and morally.