U.S. Rice Supply Contaminated

[nosmokes]

buried on page A7 of the sat edition. motherfuckers. no wonder folks don't think this is an issue. and i find secretary johannsreaction an insult at best. a staple of the food supply is contaminated and the best he can do is ssay the company that contaminated says it's safe? do your goddam job.
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original

U.S. Rice Supply Contaminated
Genetically Altered Variety Is Found in Long-Grain Rice

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 19, 2006; Page A07

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced late yesterday that U.S. commercial supplies of long-grain rice had become inadvertently contaminated with a genetically engineered variety not approved for human consumption.

Johanns said the company that made the experimental rice, Bayer CropScience of Monheim, Germany, had provided information to the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration indicating that the rice poses no threats to human health or the environment.


Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said information provided by Bayer CropScience indicates the altered rice poses no threat to human health or the environment.

"Based upon the information we have seen, this product is safe," he said in a telephone news conference.

Johanns said he did not know where the contaminated rice was found or how widespread it may be in the U.S. food supply. The agency first learned about it from the company, he said, after it discovered "trace amounts" during testing of commercial supplies.

The variety, known as LLRICE 601, is endowed with bacterial DNA that makes rice plants resistant to a weedkiller made by the agricultural giant Aventis.

Johanns said Bayer had not finished the process of getting LLRICE 601 approved for marketing before dropping the project years ago. But the company did complete the process for two other varieties of rice with the same gene. And although neither of those were marketed, he said, their approval offers reassurance that 601 is probably safe, too.
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complete article with links to other blogs here

[warrens]

1. "probably"

Well, this is one genie that ain't going back in the bottle. This isn't a few plants on the wrong side of a fence. This is in the food supply...for good, evidently.

[MikeyJones]

20. Yeah, I loved the "probably" quote also.....

guess that means I'll just avoid rice for a couple of weeks.

[Oreo]

2. Was LLRICE made by the same people that made LLBEAN?

Isn't it great being a guineau pig?

[Skidmore]

3. So, buy foreign when it comes to rice.

We usually buy Indian basmati in the burlap bags.

[malaise]

4. Bingo

or rice from Guyana. I don't eat US rice.

[SmokingJacket]

5. We get that too -- though sometimes it tastes a little burlapy!

It's a real pity, though, to have to buy from overseas instead of buying US because of stupid sloppy shit like this.

[Skidmore]

6. If you rinse the grains until the water runs clear, it eliminates

most of the burlapiness.

[tridim]

7. It also washes away the "enriched" part

Lately I've been eating 100% brown rice. White rice is tasty, but it just empty calories.

[azurnoir]

10. Buy rice in asian markets

Thai Jasmin rice is wonderful similar to basmati.

[aceman2373]

8. Doesn't matter...

It is just rice. Don't eat it... Not good for you anyway. :-)

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

24. Actually, rice is good for you.

Sure white rice is crap, but brown, black & red rice are all good for you. To me, this article is just proof of why it's important to try to eat organic as much as possible.

[JitterbugPerfume]

9. damn

I eat a boat load of brown rice ! Fu*king with our food supply is going to backfire on ALL of us , I fear

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Awwwww You can trust BAYER with your life!

Auschwitz: 60 Year Anniversary-- the Role of IG Farben-Bayer

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Soviet liberation of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. Elderly Holocaust survivors, former soldiers and world leaders have gathered in Poland to mark the 60th anniversary: "I would like to say to all the people on the Earth: This should never be repeated, ever," said Maj. Anatoly Shapiro, 92, who led the first Soviet troops to enter Auschwitz.

Lest we forget an important corporate participant in the Holocaust - two excerpts shed light on the role of IG Farben, ie. Bayer.

IG Farben was the most powerful German corporate cartel in the first half of the 20th century and the single largest profiteer from the Second World War. IG (Interessengemeinschaft) stands for "Association of Common Interests": IG Farben included BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

As documents show, IG Farben was intimately involved with the human experimental atrocities committed by Mengele at Auschwitz. * MORE...

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/01/27a.php

Bayer predecessor financed torture in concentration camps

by Co-ordination against the Dangers of Bayer, Germany

http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/bayer.html

The IG Farben - Cartel

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/The_Chemnitz_Programme/chemnitz12.htm

The Empire of I.G. Farben


Farben was Hitler and Hitler was Farben. (Senator Homer T. Bone to Senate Committee on Military Affairs, June 4, 1943.)


On the eve of World War II the German chemical complex of I.G. Farben was the largest chemical manufacturing enterprise in the world, with extraordinary political and economic power and influence within the Hitlerian Nazi state. I. G. has been aptly described as "a state within a state."

The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies — Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. These companies were merged to become Inter-nationale Gesellschaft Farbenindustrie A.G. — or I.G. Farben for short. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg for war crimes committed by the I. G. cartel. Other I. G. Farben directors were placed on trial but the American affiliates of I. G. Farben and the American directors of I. G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the archives.

It is these U.S. connections in Wall Street that concern us. Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I. G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.

German bankers on the Farben Aufsichsrat (the supervisory Board of Directors)1 in the late 1920s included the Hamburg banker Max War-burg, whose brother Paul Warburg was a founder of the Federal Reserve System in the United States. Not coincidentally, Paul Warburg was also on the board of American I. G., Farben's wholly owned U.S. subsidiary. In addition to Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz, the guiding hand in the creation of the Farben empire, the early Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler.2 All except Max Warburg were charged as "war criminals" after World War II. MORE...

http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_02.htm

Prescott Bush was IG Farben(Bayer's)man in the US during the war. IG Farben even made the Zyclon-B gas that the SS used in the death camps.

[struggle4progress]

23. Invented (and long sold) a wonderful health aid called heroin, too

[Double T]

12. Everything we eat has been genetically engineered or altered.......

would anyone trust a large corporation like bayer and/or bushco to tell you the truth about the frankenfood they are selling to the consumers?? For all we know, the genetically altered food might convert all of us to rethugs or bushbots.

[shain from kane]

14. "No Blade of Grass" novel turned people into armed mobs. n/t

[depakid]

13. "do your goddam job..."

It's the Washington Post- running cover for the far right and printing propganda for their corporate sponsers IS their job.

That paper's become nothing short of a laughing stock- especially their science articles.

[sui generis]

15. I pretty much don't care too much about gene-mod starch crops

I don't get or buy into the hysteria.

I don't like gene-mod mule seed and I generally don't like "seedless" varietals of anything just because they're generally also flavorless.

But come on, we got here because we can eat just about damn near anything. God only knows how many living wriggling microscopic things get sucked into your mouth every time you open it in a lake or on a dusty windy day, or just driving down the highway in a light rain.

We really AREN'T all that delicate.

Now having said that, and don't bother with the flame - advance notice I'll defend it, having said that, I DO have a problem with doing gene-mod and not informing people so they can make their own choices based on their own neuroses (or lack of).

Okay, I admit I'm flame-baiting just a teensy weensy bit :evilgrin:

[Usrename]

28. Nope, wrong.. just plain wrong.

There is a whole lot of stuff that will kill us dead if we eat it.

You know this, of course.

[sui generis]

32. b does not follow a

so, again, I'm not quivering in fear of starch, or even vat-grown meat when that comes available, and not gonna.

It's the mechanism of "kill you dead" that's important and in rice, there just isn't a whole lot of mechanism or room for extraneous hemorrhagic enzymes from outer space. But if you remain unconvinced, don't forget burlap is a great source of fiber. :P

Now, hormoned milk does worry me for the environment's sake - pseudoestrogen prevalence is worrysome when we're pissing it right out and it's the biosphere downstream from us we need to worry about. Soft plastics disturb me, as does formalin and aldehyde decomposition which can aromatize into all kinds of bio-analogue nasties.

However, I'm also of the school that says peanuts should not be universally banned for everyone just because a few people are deathly allergic to them.

I am actually all FOR sensible gene-mod foods like "golden rice", except for the cross pollinating Monsanto crap that won't let farmers collect seed.

Edited to reiterate, and not wrong at all. We really aren't all that delicate. Really not. Maybe a few gated community hot house flower crustless wonderbread kids who refuse to eat local produce and who've never been exposed to a mississippi mud pie, but that's just not natural. If it ain't asthma that will get them, it will be permanently reduced lung capacity from constant exposure to ionized air and air fresheners, or choking to death on a cheeto that'll get 'em long before American Basmati, which incidentally IS a rice engineered from the same rice kernel used for jasmine rice, which was manually gene-modified by human selection.

Life is too short to live in fear of every new thing.

[Tinksrival]

16. U.S. Rice Supply Contaminated

[ChairmanAgnostic]

21. my idea as well.

although I am still laughing at MAD's interview with Bushie and her.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

31. Where's her S.S. arm band?

Did she forget at home or did the media edited it out?



Every time I see her.. :banghead:

[QuestionAll...]

17. Condi supplies contaminated information...

is how I read the title at first glance.

but yes, our corporate food supply... another great nightmare to thrash at night about.

[damntexdem]

18. So that's what happened to Condi!

;-)

[Deja Q]

19. Not 'yet' approved for human consumption or they didn't pony up to the FDA

:rofl:

[texpatriot2004]

22. "Safe" they say...bullshit nm

[flyarm]

25. rice is in many products..not just eating rice will protect you

it is used as filler in many products..

and who wants to bet it gets sold off to be used in other products where you can not know it is being used!

fly

[KT2000]

26. they are using rice a lot

in pet foods now.

[Unbowed]

27. Oh this is just great.

Probably safe. Wonderful. This is just one more reason why our government and our media sucks.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

29. EXTREMELY contaminated.

Just look at the mutations!

[Phrogman]

30. Japan has banned all imports of US long grain rice

e0m