Poison Spring (31 page)

With decades of experience in biological warfare and crop diseases, Don Huber was convinced in 2011 that glyphosate had probably brought to life a potent pathogen threatening the health of American agriculture. This pathogen is new to science, he said. Its most insidious effect is prompting devastating diseases in genetically engineered crops including soybeans and corn. Huber also linked this pathogen to diseases striking farm animals and, possibly, human beings.

On January 17, 2011, Huber wrote a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack. “For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks,” Huber wrote. “Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.”

Huber explained that the pathogen is “a medium size virus” and “a micro-fungal-like organism” that can reproduce itself. It has been found in livestock feed made by soybeans and corn genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate (“Roundup soybean meal and corn”). In addition, the pathogen has been found in pigs, cattle, and other animals that have been struck by spontaneous abortions and infertility. The pathogen “may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations,” Huber added. “These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.”

“It is well documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases,” Huber continued. Furthermore, glyphosate “dismantles plant defenses” against disease by immobilizing vital nutrients, which means the growing crop is starved of the nutrients it must have to defend itself against disease and to be nutritious. Such impoverished crops, says Huber, are causing “animal disorders.”

Someone leaked the letter Huber
sent to Secretary Vilsack. Huber then sent his original letter to the European Union and the European Commission with a cover letter, dated April 20, 2011, explaining why he had felt compelled to write so urgently to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

“I feel I would be totally irresponsible to ignore my own research and the vast amount of published research now available that support the concerns we are seeing in production agriculture,” Huber wrote. He cited evidence showing this new pathogen kills chicken embryos in 24 to 72 hours. The pathogen also intensifies many of the diseases afflicting crops, including an affliction known as Goss’s wilt that in 2010 caused American farmers to lose fully a billion bushels of corn.

Huber pleaded for help investigating the risks of the pathogen, and for a moratorium on genetically engineered crops, especially alfalfa, which Huber considered America’s most valuable forage crop. Allowing the use of Roundup Ready alfalfa “could strike a mortal blow to struggling dairy and beef operations.”

Huber’s hopes were quickly dashed. Two weeks after he sent his letter to Vilsack, he received a letter back from the USDA: the government was determined to side with Monsanto on alfalfa. The letter assured Huber that the decision was based “on sound science informed by peer-reviewed research.”
10

I don’t know Huber personally, but in early December 2011, I watched him being interviewed by Dr. Joseph Mercola; the clip can be viewed on YouTube. Huber is a cautious, comprehensive master of detail. As an accomplished scientist, he uses peer-reviewed research for drawing conclusions. But he is angry that farmers skeptical of using modified seeds, and scientists who study genetic engineering, are effectively being muzzled.

“It’s almost as though you have to belong to that religion [of genetically engineered crops] if you’re going to do any research or publish your research,” Huber said.
11

Given his background, Huber can’t help but see parallels between biological warfare and crop diseases; glyphosate is doing to crops in America what only an enemy would have liked to do to undermine our agriculture and food security. Huber later emailed me to say that ten days after he received the USDA’s letter, the agency deregulated alfalfa and other crops. The spread of Roundup Ready seeds would promptly explode.
12

Huber responded to the USDA with a long and impassioned letter citing 135 scientific studies supporting his position. He was furious at the intimidation of scientists working on the risks of bioengineered crops, especially on the links between glyphosate and the now-unregulated alfalfa.

“The current crop and animal production environment is NOT normal and NOT sustainable!” Huber wrote. “We are experiencing an escalating incidence of crop, animal, and human diseases, the emergence and reemergence of diseases once rare or under practical control, and new diseases previously unknown to science.”

Increasing incidences of disease in animal production programs, especially cattle, dairy, and swine, had become associated with low manganese or other micronutrients, Huber wrote. Manganese deficiencies are associated with infectious diseases, bone and tissue deformities, reproductive failure, and death. Discovered just a decade previously, this new “electron-microscopic-sized ‘organism’ ” was causing infertility and miscarriage in animals. “The excessive use of glyphosate is a major contributor to the increased severity and epidemics of plant and animal diseases, reduced nutrient quality, high mycotoxin levels, and toxic chemical residues we are experiencing in production agriculture,” Huber wrote. “I urge your reconsideration of the decision to deregulate Roundup Ready alfalfa based on the principle of ‘Scientific Precaution’ until essential research can be completed relative to its safety, equivalency, and sustainability.”
13

Huber must have known that asking the USDA to undo the deregulation of alfalfa was hopeless. The Monsanto-controlled agency would not tolerate scientific resistance. So, on November 1, 2011, Huber left for England, where he made a presentation to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology of the British House of Commons, in which he repeated the conclusions he had reported to the USDA, the European Union, and the European Commission.

Now outside the suffocating atmosphere of USDA, Huber expressed himself in less diplomatic language. Glyphosate “predisposes plants to disease” and “stimulates pathogens” in the soil, he said. Glyphosate compromises the defense of crops against disease and kills the targeted plants by acting as a biological war agent—in a sense, by boosting disease organisms in the soil while killing disease resistance organisms.

For the last thirty years, glyphosate has been sterilizing the land of beneficial organisms essential for the health of crops. These microorganisms are the pathways through which plants absorb essential micronutrients and are responsible for fixing up to 75 percent of the nitrogen that legumes such as soybeans, alfalfa, and peas need for protein. By killing microorganisms, glyphosate reduces the ability of crops to absorb essential micronutrients such as calcium, nickel, copper, iron, manganese, and zinc from the soil. These micronutrients are absolutely essential not only for the health and nutritious quality of crops, but for the health of animals and people eating these crops. Huber also connected the micronutrient deficiencies in crops to the birth of stillborn calves and animal disease.

Like Morton Biskind sixty years earlier, Don Huber spoke of “a new factor” in our civilization causing havoc in nature, human health, and global food security. The new factor for Biskind in 1953 was the “miracle” of DDT; for Huber in 2011, the danger was posed by a pathogen associated with another “miracle” chemical named glyphosate. In both cases, we have the sick feeling that little, if anything, has changed. The same irresponsible agribusiness policies reign, threatening the very integrity of our food and our health.

Like all good scientists, Huber sees agriculture and the human body as systems. “It’s how that ecological system is modified and changed that brings us a new level of diseases and problems with sustainability of our agriculture, our own health, and well-being,” he writes.

Huber denounces the betrayal of public trust by government and industry and academia. He cites a letter composed by more than two dozen entomologists complaining that the money their universities receive from genetic engineering companies effectively prohibits them from doing research that might question the safety of the companies’ products.

“Technology/stewardship agreements required for the purchase of genetically modified seed explicitly prohibit research,” the letter said. “These agreements inhibit public scientists from pursuing their mandated role on behalf of the public good unless the research is approved by industry. As a result of restricted access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology, its performance, its management implications, and its interactions with insect biology. Consequently, data flowing to an EPA Scientific Advisory Panel from the public sector is unduly limited.”

A telling comment was attached to this letter: “The names of the scientists have been withheld from the public docket because virtually all of us require cooperation from industry at some level to conduct our research. How willing we’ve been to sacrifice our children and future generations, and to jeopardize the sustain ability of our entire agricultural infrastructure that is the very basis of our existence as a society.”
14

Huber, now an emeritus professor at Purdue, wrote to me in August 2012 to say that all his efforts with the USDA had “fallen on deaf ears.” The USDA was busy deregulating genetically modified crops, and scientists working at universities with industry contracts were in hot water: “Several scientists have been limited in what they can say or share, while others have been denied promotion or tenure,” Huber wrote. Thankfully, he said, his own research was still privately funded, “since we couldn’t take a chance on it being shut down earlier.”
15

Huber’s dire warning is like a sword hanging by a thread. The USDA “regulators” of genetically engineered crops continue with business as usual. In early 2012, they were ready to approve the dangerous herbicide 2,4-D (which, you will remember, was half of Agent Orange) for a new genetically modified corn. This action is certain to double the adverse effects of genetically modified crops. 2,4-D may even trump glyphosate as the greatest chemical threat to American agriculture. Its history of more than seventy years as a chemical weapon, and as a weed killer contaminated by the lethal 2378-dioxin, doesn’t bode well for America.

The effects of genetically engineered crops on American agriculture have already acted like an earthquake. The huge increase of herbicides has introduced “super weeds” that are very difficult to kill and that are now spreading across 13 million acres of land in 26 states. In 1996, the year genetically engineered crops took off, there was one super weed. In 2012, there were twenty-six.

Another major ecological effect of dumping countless millions of pounds of powerful weed killers in rural America—especially in a Midwest and South blanketed by more than 170 million acres of genetically modified crops—is the near destruction of the monarch butterfly. Herbicides kill milkweeds, where monarch butterflies both feed and lay their eggs. No milkweed, no monarchs. It’s as simple as that. It’s as hard to imagine living in a world without monarchs as it is to imagine living in a world without bees. The future of both depends absolutely on what we decide to do about these obnoxious poisons.

In 2011, USDA approved a genetically modified corn for ethanol production that speeds up the process of turning starch to sugar. However, contamination of food corn by the ethanol corn can dissolve starches and “ruin food for starch uses,” according to Lynn Clarkson, president of Clarkson Grains of Gerro Gordo, Illinois. “If you were the Japanese [who buy a lot of American corn], would you want to be buying from an area that grew this corn, that approved this corn?”
16

These are good questions, and they are not being asked by Dow Chemical, maker of both 2,4-D and 2,4-D-resistant corn and soybeans. Nor are they asked by Monsanto, the maker of Roundup and Roundup Ready soybeans. Dow has convinced the “regulators” of America, Canada, and the European Union that 2,4-D is safe. And now that the overuse of glyphosate has been triggering an “invasion” of glyphosate-resistant farm weeds, Dow is pushing Canada to approve its “Enlist” field corn, which is genetically engineered for both 2,4-D and glyphosate; the company claims this new concoction will kill the unwanted super weeds. The strategy is “to target weeds that have not yet developed immunity.” The Save Our Crops Coalition opposes Enlist because it fears 2,4-D will poison fruit and vegetable farmers and will add to the already heavy toxic burden on honeybees.
17

Indeed, all genetically modified crops harm the natural world and human health, in large part because they (by definition) invite and encourage the spraying of toxic pesticides. But their supporters also mislead regulators and society with claims about the seeds themselves that fail to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Industry says that GMO crops are no different from crops developed by natural breeding. They are safe to eat, they say; they need fewer pesticides than conventional crops and make a positive contribution to reducing global warming and world hunger.

The truth, however, is different. Three British scientists reviewing the scientific evidence about genetically modified crops have concluded that the far-reaching claims of safety and efficacy and usefulness of the genetically modified crops are not true. Genetically modified crops are “laboratory-made, using technology that is totally different from natural breeding methods,” they wrote.