Dr Paul Winchester sees a potentially catastrophic outcome resulting from the epigenetic damage caused by pesticides

EXCERPT: [Dr Paul] Winchester lays the blame [for rising infertility] at the feet of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which doesn't consider epigenetic or generational effects of chemicals, and the pesticide and chemical manufacturers like Monsanto. "They can sell all the Roundup they want, but if it's in me they are going to have to pay for that. Every molecule that I find is on them … What I want to know is: has my fetus had altered DNA imprinting because of this chemical? I have a right to know that. If we are going to have to wait 75 years to find out if my grandchildren are going to be affected by it, I think somebody has to pay. They better put a fund together. I want somebody's head to roll. I don't think that the EPA and Monsanto get to walk away."

CHICAGO (Reuters) - America’s two biggest independent seed sellers, Beck’s Hybrids and Stine Seed, told Reuters they are pushing U.S. environmental regulators to bar farmers from spraying dicamba weed killer during upcoming summers in a potential blow to Bayer AG’s Monsanto Co.

Limiting spraying of the chemical to the spring season, before crops are planted, would prevent farmers from using the herbicide on dicamba-resistant soybeans that Monsanto engineered. The seeds are sold by companies including Beck’s and Stine.

Last summer, after farmers planted Monsanto’s dicamba-resistant soy seeds en masse, the herbicide drifted onto nearby farms and damaged an estimated 3.6 million acres of non-resistant soybeans, or 4 percent of all U.S. plantings.

Court finds in favor of Dewayne Johnson, first person to take Roundup maker to trial

DeWayne Johnson listens during the Monsanto trial in San Francisco last month. Photograph: Reuters

Monsanto suffered a major blow with a jury ruling that the company was liable for a terminally ill man’s cancer, awarding him $289m in damages.

Dewayne Johnson, a 46-year-old former groundskeeper, won a huge victory in the landmark case on Friday, with the jury determining that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller caused his cancer and that the corporation failed to warn him of the health hazards from exposure. The jury further found that Monsanto “acted with malice or oppression”.

Johnson’s lawyers argued over the course of a month-long trial in San Francisco that Monsanto had “fought science” for years and targeted academics who spoke up about possible health risks of the herbicide product. Johnson was the first person to take the agrochemical corporation to trial over allegations that the chemical sold under the brand Roundup causes cancer.

The lawsuit alleges exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and its active ingredient, glyphosate, caused Northern California resident Dewayne “Lee” Johnson to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

The lawyer for a California groundskeeper dying of cancer urged jurors Tuesday to make Monsanto pay hundreds of millions of dollars for failing to warn about the health risks of weed killer Roundup.

"Today is their day of reckoning," attorney Brent Wisner told jurors as he urged them to impose a penalty of more than $400 million on Monsanto for hiding the cancer-causing potential of Roundup and commercial strength version Ranger Pro.

"Every single cancer risk found had this moment, where the science finally caught up, where they couldn't bury it anymore."

Terminally-ill Dewayne Johnson watched as his attorney accused Monsanto of putting profit over people's health by fighting research signaling Roundup's potential cancer risks and failing to issue warnings.

Johnson, 46, testified that he would "never" have used Roundup or Ranger Pro had he known it could lead to his illness.

The right to know what’s in your food continues to ring true with consumers. According to the Hartman Organic and Natural Report 2018 consumer awareness of GMOs is almost universal at 97%. The growth in consumer awareness also aligns with an increasing amount of consumers seeking to avoid GMOs. Hartman reports that 46% of shoppers deliberately avoid GMOs when shopping.

This finding aligns with the continued growth of sales of Non-GMO Project Verified products which is now estimated to be at $26 billion. Hartman noted that 36% of shoppers say that they are buying more non-GMO products in comparison to a year ago and that of the consumers seeking to avoid GMOs 42% seek out Non-GMO Project Verified products.

Nestle is facing a federal class-action lawsuit in Los Angeles alleging it sold products labeled as having "No GMO Ingredients" with genetically modified organisms.

The corporate parent behind such food brands as Stouffer's frozen dinners, Buitoni pasta, and Haagen Dazs ice cream also is accused on designing a seal on its product packaging with the intention to trick consumers into thinking that its products were certified by the non-profit Non-GMO Project, a leading authority on the subject

According to an 18-page court filing, Nestle's "No GMO Ingredients" label was developed by the Switzerland-based company to mimic the appearance of the Non-GMO Project seal, which is on more than 43,000 products. The suit also alleges that Nestle sold dairy from cows fed GMO grain, a violation of the non-profit's standards for its Product Verification Program.

Washington, D.C. – Today, Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration for failing to abide by the mandatory deadlines Congress set in the 2016 genetically engineered (GE) food disclosure law. That law required that its regulations be finished by two years after its enactment, or July 29, 2018. Earlier this week Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is assigned to draft and issue the new labeling rules, missed the final rules deadline. So today CFS went to Court, in order to get a mandated schedule for completion and judicial oversight of USDA, to ensure timely completion of the rules.

"Americans have waited for decades for GE foods to be labeled, which Congress knew when it ordered USDA to get this done in a reasonable timeframe," said George Kimbrell, CFS Legal Director. "Trump, Perdue, and their corporate lobbyists may want indefinite delay and keeping Americans in the dark, but the law doesn't permit it."

Crispr technology may allow scientists to change the environment forever, but working with the affected localities presents a challenge.

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Crispr, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, isn’t the first new technology to pose such complicated questions. But Crispr offers “the potential to control evolution and change future species,” says biochemist Kevin Esvelt, an assistant professor at the Cambridge, Mass.-based MIT Media Lab, where Mice Against Ticks was born.

Crispr is the immune system of bacteria. Scientists adapted Crispr and the Cas9 enzyme that it produces to serve as a tool to edit DNA in plants, animals and humans. Researchers soon realized that Crispr might be used not only to edit or repair genes of people living with diseases but also to edit embryos, changing the DNA of future generations. It could also be used to create a so-called “gene drive,” spreading engineered genetic changes through populations of wild animals but also altering the environment in unpredictable ways. With so much at stake, Dr. Esvelt says, scientists must not make such decisions by themselves.

Thanks to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for providing a recap of the fourth and fifth day in court in the Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto Co. trial. Proceedings began in San Francisco Superior Court on July 9. The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, a 46-year-old former school groundskeeper who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma four years ago, claims Monsanto hid evidence that the active ingredient in its Roundup herbicide, glyphosate, caused his cancer. This is the first case to go to trial among hundreds of lawsuits alleging Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The trial is expected to last about a month. (Read recap of day six).

Throughout Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, July 16 and July 17, Monsanto’s attorney, Kirby Griffiths, continued his ambuscade of Plaintiff’s epidemiologist/toxicologist, Dr. Christopher Portier, probing for weaknesses in Portier’s assessment that glyphosate and Roundup are human carcinogens. Dr. Portier yielded nothing; the studies evaluating glyphosate’s carcinogenicity were performed correctly, he said, properly examined and interpreted accurately by the International Agency for Cancer Research, which determined that “glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen.” Watching Griffiths try to get a grapple hold on Dr. Portier had the aspect of a man trying to climb a greased pole. Griffiths never got his feet off the ground.