OLM: Can you tell us a little about the history of the companies that are making GMOs? Who are they? What did they do before they made GMO foods?
Mike Adams: Well, I think Monsanto is one of the most dangerous corporations in the world. I think it has a long history of oppressing the farmers and oppressing developing nations and their farmers. I think it has put profits before the people time and time again to such a degree that it really poses a threat to the sustainability of the human race. That’s about as bluntly as I can state it. [chuckle]
OLM: Are there other companies doing what Monsanto does with GMOs?
Mike Adams: There are smaller companies toying with genetics in the same way, but no one has dominance over the industry like Monsanto. It virtually holds a monopolistic control over seeds. I imagine Arthur Daniel Midland would be next in line in terms of culpability for destroying the food supply, but I don’t know if ADM has a GMO lab or not. That would be interesting to check out.
OLM: We hear that Monsanto bought many seed companies. The FTC didn’t take notice of this action?
Mike Adams: It’s very clear that the FTC is highly selective in its application of anti-trade action. It totally ignores some monopolies such as the pharmaceutical monopoly or the seed monopoly while attacking other things that are beneficial to consumers. For example, the FTC will attack a church that sells anti-cancer herbs. I actually documented one of those cases, so I’ve seen it
firsthand. But the FTC completely ignores these monopolies, which are the most dangerous to human beings. I think that the food supply and the pharmaceutical industries are two of the best examples.
OLM: How did these foods get approved without testing? Wasn’t it true that many FDA scientists took issue with the foods not being tested?
Mike Adams: GRAS – generally regarded as safe. It’s sad. It’s hilarious, but sad. You’re right; there was no testing done. No safety testing, at least not to the degree any reputable scientist would agree to be adequate. Basically, they just swept it under the rug and pushed it through the approval process. They declared it to be safe by decree, you know? Like, “The king declares this poison to be safe.” It’s kind of like the aspartame story—you know where Donald Rumsfeld was pivotal in getting aspartame approved by the FDA despite all the tests showing it to be dangerous. It just proves that decisions about the food supply are political decisions. They do not have anything to do with the actual science, or real safety, or prioritizing the health of the people. They are purely political/commercial decisions. That’s the sad state of the FDA today.
Why aren’t GMO foods labeled?
Mike Adams: It is very clear that the reason they are not labeled is because the industry does not want the consumers to know. This is a censorship campaign to prevent people from being informed. It’s the same reason that irradiated foods are not labeled. The FDA is on the record as saying that they are afraid people might not understand what irradiated means. It’s a remarkable statement all by itself.
OLM: Yeah, when in fact, the statement really means the opposite. They don’t want people to know. They don’t want us to understand.
Mike Adams: Industry is afraid of knowledge. It’s afraid of people being informed and having access to accurate knowledge about GMOs or irradiated foods, or even other toxic chemicals that are in the foods such as acrylamides. Essentially, the food industry supports a delabeling campaign. It wants to remove as much information as possible from the labels so consumers don’t have access to the information they need to make informed decisions.
OLM: Obviously there is an indirect link to the drug companies and the food industry. It seems as if they have made a deal to line each others’ pockets. It seems as though they’re working together.
Mike Adams: I think that’s a really great observation on your part. The food industry feeds the pharmaceutical industry in terms of profits. It’s the foods that make people sick; they cause chronic degenerative disease. So the foods create demand for the drugs, which are real profit centers. Of course these companies are making money off of foods as well, but GMOs fit into this picture in a very clever and insidious way. All the evidence so far shows that GMOs may pose a very real health threat to those who consume them. As you mention, that benefits the pharmaceutical industry by poisoning people, by creating patients who need pharmaceuticals or who can be diagnosed with diseases and sold pharmaceuticals whether they need them or not.
I think at the retail level Walgreens demonstrates it the best. Walgreens is a pharmacy, but it sells some of the most toxic processed junk food that you can find in America. In front of the store they sell foods that cause disease and in the back of the store they sell the drugs that they claim treat disease. It’s a system of toxicity. I have gone into the store to buy samples of processed
foods that I was sending to laboratories for testing. When I walk through the store I cannot believe the depth of the poisons that are in there: personal hair care products, fragrance, cosmetics, sodas, all the foods. Those stores should be completely shut down. They should be banned. They should be outlawed in this country. They are creating
a toxic America.
OLM: What was that quote about GMO consumers not being able to reproduce?
Mike Adams: What I talked about was that GMOs do damage to the ability to reproduce and as a result the future of the human race is going to be inherited by those who do not consume GMOs and who do not expose themselves to toxic chemicals like pharmaceuticals.
Along those lines I just want to clarify that especially in the natural health field, no one wishes death or suffering upon another human being. I’m not happy that unhealthy people die. But what I am pointing out is that they are making a choice. By consuming GMOs they are choosing not to have great- grandchildren. And that choice is given a label—it’s a Darwin Award [chuckle]. These people are all participating in this multi-generational or trans-generational Darwin award. And in the long term, it is probably a great benefit to the future of human civilization that the people who choose to consume poisons do not inherit the future of our race.
OLM: Is it true that executives from these companies are hired in top positions by the USDA and FDA?
Mike Adams: Yeah, definitely. That’s called the revolving door policy. You’ll see many examples of top managers or executives at drug and food companies who become top people at the FDA or the FTC or the USDA. They often go back and forth between the regulators and the industry several times.
OLM: And then they write the laws?
Mike Adams: Well, it’s not laws. They enforce regulations. Sometimes they write regulations. It’s important to distinguish between the two. Laws are passed only by the legislative branch, members of congress. But the USDA, the FDA and the FTC are essentially lawless regulatory agencies. They are not required to follow any law in their day-to-day decision making. They are above
the law. In fact they are violating the law. If you or I did what the FDA or the FTC did, we would be charged with felony crimes. We can’t just pick up an assault rifle and walk into a company that sells products we don’t like and seize all their computers and handcuff their people and march them off to prison. But that is what the FDA does on a regular basis. It’s a violation of law. It’s a violation of the constitution. So these are lawless organizations.
OLM: Does the president appoint the heads of the USDA and the FDA?
Mike Adams: Yes, the president does appoint the heads of those organizations without a public vote. That’s important to note. All that has to happen is that the senate confirms those appointments. The public is never given a chance to vote on them, so it’s bypassing the democratic system.
OLM: What do you think of Obama’s appointee for the Department of Agriculture?
Mike Adams: I’ve been following that on the Organic Consumers Association. Ronnie Cummins there has reported on that appointment with a lot of good details. I think clearly Obama’s siding with big business. He is going to continue the policies of Monsanto and he is not going to speak up for the people, for the farmers, you know. I see a lot of this with the Obama administration which is kinda frustrating because he came in under a platform of change, you know, talking about protecting the people. And certainly, of course, none of us wanted to see the Bush policies continue, at least not on human rights, and war, and all that. But then with Obama in office, not just for agriculture, but for the treasury, and many other areas, the policies are quite disturbing. They show that the Obama administration, at least through its appointments so far, is largely continuing business as usual, at least in my opinion. I’m optimistic that maybe there will be some changes, but you know, I don’t see any big changes so far, other than a whole lot of money being handed out. And that’s not change. That’s just the same old scam.
OLM: Are you keeping up with the new laws they are trying to pass?
Mike Adams: Ronnie Cummins would have a lot more detail on this, but I keep up with some of it. The big picture is very clear. They are working at federal and state levels to destroy small family farms, to destroy even the definition of organic so that anything could be called organic. They are the enemies of anyone who believes in sustainable agriculture or true organic foods.
OLM: What’s going on with GMOs in Europe?
Mike Adams: GMOs had been banned in certain parts of the U.K. I think that issue has come to the surface again with codex and the harmonization of the European Union. They’re trying to keep GMOs in the food supply. But the thing is, GMO labeling is now mandatory in the U.K. At least that’s my understanding of it. And U.K. citizens are much better informed about this issue than U.S. citizens. And in the U.K. they are very vocal in their opposition to GMO foods, as they should be. And it is in America that people have this kind of bizarre acceptance of whatever the government tells them to do. It’s like America has been drugged into a state of complacency. Pharmaceuticals and fluoride maybe have something to do with that.
OLM: What’s your take on Monsanto’s claims that GMOs are a better way to grow food, that they produce better yields and can help stop world hunger?
Mike Adams: Sure, it’s all about short-term thinking versus long-term thinking. Of course, Monsanto and ADM and other such companies are really focused on short term thinking. In the short-term, it’s true that a single planting of a genetically modified crop can out-produce a non-GMO crop. You look at that season and you weigh how much corn came out of the field and so on. But in the long term, what risks are there to the viability of the food supply? How do GMO organisms affect honey bees, for example? We have colony collapse disorder, which is really threatening the global food supply. We had the issue of cross pollination, cross contamination, which is a huge threat to the food supply.
These long-term threats are never factored into the equations that are being decided by Monsanto or these other companies. So they ignore the long-term risks and they just highlight and focus on the short-term benefits. And it is this kind of short-term thinking that could very well spell the destruction of human civilization as we know it today. All it would take is one year of crops being wiped out around the world due to monoculture farming, and perhaps genetically, GM contamination. One season of the food disappearing and the human population collapses by maybe 70 to 80 percent.
That’s a loss of billions of lives. That’s what’s at risk here. These companies are essentially putting billions of lives at risk in order to obtain a short-term profit.
OLM: What are your favorite GMO information sources?
Mike Adams: Well, definitely the Organic Consumers Association is a top source on this issue, but there is also the Environmental Working Group which is doing great work, although they don’t post as much content as the OCA.
Recommended Supplements (These supplements help detoxify GMOs):
Further Reading:
