China’s Ministry of Agriculture accused of allowing Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant soybean and maize to flood the Chinese market without safety tests, condoning deception, faked samples, and fabricated safety test report; Chinese citizens are demanding a shakeup of the Ministry Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Add your name to the Independent Scientists Manifesto on Glyphosate calling on governments at all levels to ban glyphosate spraying based on overwhelming evidence of harm here: https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Independent_Scientists_Manifesto_on_Glyphosate.php
A petition signed by more than 600 people all over China submitted to the State Council Legislative Affairs Office alleges that the Ministry of Agriculture has allowed Monsanto’ glyphosate-tolerant GM soy, maize and canola products that cause systematic harm to “mankind, animals, plants, microbes and the ecological environment” to flood the Chinese market without proper assurance that the products are safe [1]. On the contrary, the Ministry has “colluded” with Monsanto, allowing the company to provide “fake samples”, to carry out “false tests” and “falsify safety conclusions”.
The petition says the Ministry of Agriculture and the China Disease Control & Prevention Center, in partnership with Monsanto, have “cheated” the Chinese government and Chinese people, and seriously violated the State Council’s “Agricultural GMOs Safety Administration Regulation”, amounting to a “crime of endangering public security.” (The “Agricultural GMOs Safety Administration Regulation” makes clear that “Agricultural GMO safety stated by this regulation is intended to prevent the danger or potential danger caused by GMOs to mankind, animals, plants, microbes and the ecological environment.”) China, as party to the United Nation’s Convention on Biodiversity and its Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, should strictly implement the Protocol, which stipulates that lack of scientific certainly regarding the potential adverse effects of a GMO on health and the environment shall not prevent the importing party from taking appropriate action to minimize the adverse effects. The Ministry of Agriculture has “blatantly violated” those stipulations of the Protocol.
Most controversially, the petition states: “We must therefore perform a cancer-like surgery: first investigate the extent of collusion between officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Monsanto in cheating the Chinese government and the Chinese people; second carry out a shakeup and reorganization of the leadership of the ministry; and third, establish new leadership with a clear understanding that ecological agriculture is the only correct sustainable development direction for China’s agriculture..”
And, furthermore, “we cannot exclude the possibility that GMOs could very likely be used by overseas evil forces as a means of bio-warfare” on Chinese people. Therefore, agricultural GMO is a major bio-defence issue, and cannot be regulated, supervised and administered by just one government department such as the Ministry of Agriculture. Instead, it must be placed under a special agency of the National Security Council, together with military medical research institutions undertaking bio-defence and biochemical warfare tasks, and specialists carrying out research in agricultural GMOs, inspection and quarantine, public health, and environmental protection.
The petition includes 23 attachments containing documentary evidence bearing out its allegations of the Ministry of Agriculture’s wrongdoings, four of which are in English, the rest in Chinese. Among the attachments are collections of scientific papers published in Chinese and in English on the toxicities of glyphosate herbicides.
The petition points out that for many years now, China has annually imported 50-70 million tonnes of glyphosate-tolerant GM soybeans contaminated with glyphosate residues (see [2] How Grain Self-Sufficiency, Massive GM Soybean Imports and Glyphosate Exports Led China to Devastate People and Planet, SiS 67) to be extracted chemically into food soil with soybean meal as by-product. The soybean meal is partly processed into animal feed, and partly into soybean protein powder added to sausages, ham, frozen food, soybean milk power, biscuits, cakes, bread and even wheat flour and infant formula milk powder [1]. GM soybean ingredients have been tested and glyphosate residues detected in soy sauce, soy paste, tofu, etc. Soybean and soy products are the GM ingredient consumed the most by the Chinese.
Not only has the Ministry of Agriculture ignored the harm that can be caused by glyphosate residues in the GM soybeans, it has refused to tell the truth on how Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide obtained its pesticide registration in China in 1988, and how Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybean 40-3-2 and NK603 maize obtained their bio-safety certificate from the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture.
It transpired that for its pesticide registration of Roundup, Monsanto “cheated” the Chinese government and Chinese people. First, Monsanto intentionally did not inform the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture that glyphosate was patented as a chelator, which causes systematic harm to the health of the soil, microbes, crops, animals and humans. Second, Monsanto failed to inform the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture that the US Environment Protection Agency had in 1985 classified glyphosate as a possible carcinogen. Third, Monsanto did not provide reports on the long-term, lifetime and three-generation study revealing the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. And fourth, Monsanto submitted a “Roundup toxicology test report issued by Younger Laboratories on 23 December 1985”, which has all the appearances of being an “outright fraud”. All those wrongdoings are documented in Attachment 1 to the petition.
As for the bio-safety certificate for glyphosate-tolerant GM soybean 40-3-2 and maize NK 603, the petition alleges that the leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture, China’s Centers for Disease Control and Monsanto “colluded internally and externally.” They used “fake samples, falsified tests, and made false safety conclusions”.
First, when Monsanto applied for the bio-safety certificate for its glyphosate tolerant soybeans and maize in 2004, the company did not inform the Ministry of Agriculture that glyphosate is a powerful, wide-spectrum biocide/antibiotic, capable of killing a few hundred species of microbes in animal and human gut flora, and has been patented as such. Monsanto submitted its patent application to the US Patent Office on 29 August 2003, which was granted on 22 April 2004. The patent document stated with regard to the dosage of glyphosate as biocide/antibiotic: “Generally a dosage of as little as about 1-2 milligram (mg) per kilogram (kg) of body weight is suitable.”
Second, when Monsanto applied for the bio-safety certificate for their glyphosate-tolerant soybean in 2003, the company failed to inform the Ministry of Agriculture that glyphosate is also an acaricide, arthropodicide, insecticide, molluscicide, and rodenticide, and patented as such (patent submitted 29 August 2003 to US Patent Office, and patent granted 2004). The “dosage” for use stated in the patent documents: “It includes use in mammals and humans, by injection, orally, anally, intravenously, intramuscular. Generally a dosage of as little as bout 1-2 milligram (mg) per kilogram (kg) of body weight is suitable.”
Third, the Ministry of Agriculture officials allegedly colluded with Monsanto in rapidly approving bio-safety certificates for insect-resistant soybean MON87701 and stacked insect-resistant/glyphosate-tolerant soybean MON87701 x MON89788 (Intacta RR2) without sufficient safety testing; and as revealed by overseas media reports, the rapid approval was to help save Monsanto 600 thousand bags of Intacta RR2 seeds. To avoid public scrutiny of this “lightning approval”, the Ministry of Agriculture has refused to disclose the “food safety” toxicology animal test report for the GM soybean.
Hence, Monsanto and the officials and public scholars of the Ministry of Agriculture are charged with “using dangerous methods to harm public security”, and must be investigated to that effect.
To make matters worse, according to the GM Food Hygiene Management Method implemented 1 July 2002, Article 3 states that GM food must be examined and approved by the Ministry of Health before production or import. But the Ministry of Health in response to application for disclosure on 18 November 2011 confirms that they have “never accepted or approved” applications to process food oil from Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant GM soybean 40-3-2, nor applications to process them by chemical extraction.
Similarly, the Ministry of Agriculture in response to application for disclosure issued on 27 June 2014, also confirms that they have not evaluated nor approved the production and sales of food oil and soybean protein powder processed from Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant GM soybeans!
Yet, school lunches in primary and middle schools in Beijing, paid for by the government, have all been cooked with chemically extracted GM soybean oil. Since early 2011, representatives of student parents and food safety volunteers have approached the Beijing Education Committee, requesting a change to non-GM compressed food oil.
On 12 March 2012, the parents’ representatives were invited to hold discussions with the leaders of one of the departments in the Ministry of Education. During the meeting, the parents’ representatives pointed to official documents issued by the Hangzhou Education Bureau, the Wulumuqi Education Bureau, the Shandong Anqiu Education Bureau, and the Qingdao Food & Drug Supervision and Administration Bureau, requesting that school lunches for students should change to healthy non-GM compressed food oil. But an official of the Education Ministry explained that they “have difficulty”, and showed the parents’ representatives an official letter dated 28 September 2011 from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Education, asking them to stop local education bureaus issuing official documents banning school canteens from using GM food oil. Again, the Ministry of Agriculture refuses to disclose this official letter with the excuse that it is a “secret letter”!
The petition also charged Luo Yun-bo, and Huang Kun-lun, president and professor respectively of Food Science Nutrition Engineering College of China Agriculture, and Zhang Qi-fa, academician at Huazhong Agriculture University for using a natural bacteria Bt protein toxin instead of the GM Bt protein toxin to carry out “a falsified test with a fake sample to falsify a conclusion of safety.” In their published paper (in Chinese) “Analysis of intestinal microbiota in mice fed with Cry1C protein in acute oral toxicity test”, in fact proved that “Cry1C protein harms health.” But the authors falsely concluded that “Cry1C protein is safe for mice from the point of intestinal microbiota”, and therefore that GM Bt rice is “safe to eat”. This conclusion goes against a host of other findings both from laboratories in China and in Europe that the petition goes on to elaborate.
Finally, the petition points out that China’s legislation on GMO is riddled with loopholes. GM crops and/or hybrid crops developed from crossing GM crops with non-GM crops are “smuggled” through the regulatory system under the guise of traditional species or hybrid species. Two information disclosures issued by the Ministry of Agriculture have confirmed that the Ministry not only allows GM varieties disguised as traditional varieties, and GM hybrids without control, it also allows through as conventional varieties transgenic plants developed with gene silencing or gene editing, as well as those developed by chromosome hybridization.
The petition alleges that a “consensus” between former Minister of Agriculture and Monsanto during the Minister’s visit to the USA. Attachment 12 contains the response from the Ministry of Agriculture on 1 April 2013 to request for disclosure. It stated: “The application you submitted requesting to disclose the information regarding Sun Zheng-cai, former Minister of Agriculture, meeting with Grant, President of Monsanto during Sun’s visit to USA has been received. Response herewith: The information you require to disclose does not belong to the government information referred to by the PRC Government Information Disclosure Regulation.”
Among the attachments is quotation from an article entitled “We must face the harm caused by imported GM soybeans to 1.3 billion Chinese people” written by Mi Zhen-yu, former Vice President of Academy of Military Science, Doctoral tutor, and Lieutenant General, and published by Science & Technology Abstracts Newspaper 25 April 2014 [3]. It points to the marked deterioration of public health over the past 10-20 years, coinciding with the rapid increase in imports of GM soybeans. The figures make grim reading.
• In 1996, the rate of birth defects among the newborn in China was 0.87 %; in 2000, it increased to 1.09 %; and in 2010, to 1.53%
• A survey reported by Reference News on June 2, 2013 found the rate of severe depression in people over 60 years old in China is as high as 40 %
• The Xinmin Evening News reported on 22 November 2011 that the rate of precocious puberty in Chinese girls has increased 10-fold over the past 10 years
• The first “Public Health White Paper” issued by the Beijing Municipal Government in 2010 revealed that Type II diabetes has increased 11.7 fold
• The Zhengzhou Daily News reported on 2 April 2013 that the number of children confirmed with autism has increased 100 fold during the past 20 years
• The Chengdu Daily reported on20 February 2013 that the prevalence of childhood cancer is increasing, on average there is one cancer patient for each 10 000 children. Among juvenile cancer patients, leukaemia, brain tumour, malignant lymphoma and neuroblastoma are the top 4.
• The “2012 Chinese male sperm quality survey white paper” of the China Population Association reports that the total number of infertility patients in China already exceeded 50 million, accounting for 15.6 % of the child-bearing age population. Ten years ago in 2002, this figure was 8 %, and 20 years ago in 1992, it was 3 %, 40 years ago during the 1970s, infertility was not more than 1 %
• According to a report by the Xinhua website, the prevalance of Parkinson’s patients in China has increased more than 20-fold during the last 20 years
• Currently, the prevalance ofcardiovascular disease has exceeded 13 %; and prevalence of chronic kindney disease has reached 10 %.
These figures in China echo the increases in 22 diseases in the US that closely parallel the rise in GMOs and glyphosate use [4, 5] (Marked Deterioration of Public Health Parallels Increase in GM Crops and Glyphosate Use, US Government Data Show, SiS 65). Similar upsurges in birth defects and cancers in Argentina have been found as GM soybean cultivation increases [6] (Devastating Impacts of Glyphosate Use with GMO Seeds in Argentina, SiS 66). China is by no means the only country being poisoned by glyphosate herbicides and GMOs.
Contact Person:
Yang Xiao-lu email: yanfanfzhou99@126.com
Petitioners:
Chen I-wan (former advisor, Committee of
Disaster History, China Disaster Prevention Association)
Yang Xiao-lu (Beijing food safety
volunteer)
Zi Ai-chu (old CPC
party member)
Bao Feng (Hefei University retired teacher)
and names/positions of over 600 petitioners (herewith
omitted) from different fields and regions of China
Attachment 1: During the process whereby Monsanto obtained the “pesticide registration”
for Roundup in 1988, Monsanto cheated the Chinese government and Chinese people
in four aspects.
https://www.i-sis.org.uk/china_petition_and_attachments.php#attachment1
Attachment 2: Thirteen studies by Chinese researchers
reveal that glyphosate damages protein and lipids, causes cell apoptosis and
necrosis, shows obvious damage to liver cells, is mutagenic, causes
reproductive toxicity, and has strong ability to cause birth defects.
https://www.i-sis.org.uk/china_petition_and_attachments.php#attachment2
Attachment 3: Forty six studies by overseas
scholars found that glyphosate or glyphosate formulated herbicides cause cell
toxicity, DNA damage, teratogenic, mutagenic, and reproductive toxicity, along
with miscarriage.
https://www.i-sis.org.uk/china_petition_and_attachments.php#attachment3
Attachment 4: Seventeen studies show evidence
that glyphosate is an Endocrine Disrupting Chemical (EDC).
https://www.i-sis.org.uk/china_petition_and_attachments.php#attachment4
Attachment 5: During the process of obtaining the “bio-safety certificate” for glyphosate-tolerant GM soybean 40-3-2 and maize NK603, the leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture, China CDC and Monsanto colluded internally and externally used “fake samples, falsified tests, and made false safety conclusions” to cheat the Chinese government and Chinese people. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vk4y.html
Attachment 6: The Ministry of Agriculture officials, colluding with Monsanto,
rapidly approved the “bio-safety certificates” for insect-resistant soybean
MON87701 and double stacked insect-resistant/glyphosate-tolerant soybean
MON87701×MON89788（Intacta RR). This is
illegal, having been granted without sufficient safety testing, and, as
revealed by overseas media reports, the rapid approval of MON87701×MON89788（Intacta RR2）was to help Monsanto
save 600 thousand bags of such seeds.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vk4u.html
Attachment 7: The Ministry of Health government disclosure application response issued on Nov. 18 2011 confirms that they have “never accepted or approved” applications to process food oil from the Monsanto glyphosate-tolerant GM soybean 40-3-2 nor such applications to process them by chemical extraction process. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vk4e.html
Attachment 8: The Ministry of Agriculture government disclosure application
response issued on June 27 2014 confirms that they have not evaluated nor
approved the production and sales of food oil and soybean protein powder
processed from Monsanto glyphosate-tolerant GM soybeans.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vk4a.html
Attachment 9: On Aug. 1, 2012, the government information disclosure application response issued by the Ministry of Agriculture stated: “The official letter issued by our Ministry on Sep 28 2011 is a 'confidential' document, according to the PRC Government Information Disclosure Regulation and concerned stipulations, shall not be disclosed.” http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vk3j.html
Attachment 10: “We Must Face the harm caused by imported GM soybeans to 1.3 billion
Chinese people”by Mi Zhen-yu (Former Vice President, Academy of Military
Science, Doctoral tutor, Lieutenant General) published by 'Science &
Technology Abstracts Newspaper' on April 25, 2014.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102edhg.html
Attachment 11: The Ministry of Agriculture monopolizes the responsibility of the
agricultural GMO bio-safety evaluation and the issuing of “bio-safety
certificates”, therefore at the same time undertakes the responsibility of monitoring
consumer health effects resulting from such actions. There is very clear
correlation between the 1.3 billion Chinese people consuming more and more
glyphosate-tolerant GM soybeans, GM canola and the rapid increase of a series
of malignant diseases during the past ten years, but the Ministry of
Agriculture refuses to organize any epidemiological investigation.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vk2n.html
Attachment 12: The Ministry of Agriculture refuses to disclose contents of “the consensus reached by Minister
Sun Zheng-cai when he met President Grant during his visit to USA in 2009.”
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vk2j.html (deleted by webmaster)
Attachment 13: When Monsanto applied for the “bio-safety certificate for glyphosate-tolerant GM soybeans and maize, Monsanto purposely did not inform the Ministry of Agriculture that glyphose is a powerful, wide-spectrum biocide/antibiotic. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vkcc.html
Attachment 14: When Monsanto applied for the “bio-safety certificate” for their glyphosate-tolerant soybean in 2003, Monsanto purposely did not inform the Ministry of Agriculture that glyphosate residue is acaricide, arthropodicide, insecticide, molluscicide, rodenticide! http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vkew.html
Attachment 15: Luo Yun-bo, President, Huang Kun-lun, Professor (Food Science &
Nutrition Engineering College of China Agriculture), and Zhang Qi-fa,
Academician (Huazhong Agriculture University) carried out a test using a “natural
bacteria cultured Bt protein toxin,” essentially different from the “GM Bt
protein toxin”; this constitutes a false test with a fake sample to falsify a
conclusion of safety.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vkir.html
Attachment 16: The observation and measurement results of “Analysis of intestinal microbiota in mice fed with Cry1C protein in acute oral toxicity test,” led by Luo Yun-bo, President, and Huang Kun-lun, Professor, clearly prove that Cry1C protein harms health. Yet they falsely concluded, “Cry1C protein is safe for mice from the point of intestinal microbiota,” to support the lie that GM Bt rice is “safe to eat.” http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vkmm.html
Attachment 17: “Unintended compositional changes in transgenic rice seeds (Oryza sativa L.) studied by spectral and chromatographic analysis coupled with chemometrics methods” by A Zhongshan University team published in Feb 2010 by JournalAgric Food Chem. It reveals significant changes in nutritional contents of the GM Bt rice developed by academician Zhang Qi-fa compared with the corresponding non-GM rice species, which are harmful and not beneficial to human health. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vkn4.html
Attachment 18: Three GM Bt rice fed rat studies by three different Chinese universities show that GM Bt rice is harmful to health: “Small intestine slices shows intestinal gland of experimental mice develops lesions and hyperplasia”; “A small number of haematology indices and viscera coefficient index are significant difference ... compared with controls [including] testis cell cycle, reproductive organ viscera coefficient “; “Low dose groups of female mice: mononuclear cell count ... mean platelet volume ... significantly lower than controls; ... Low dose groups of male mice: Aspartate aminotransferase significant lower than controls.” http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vknf.html
Attachment 19: Three separate GM Bt rice 90 day feeding rat toxicology studies by three different European teams (including one team that cooperated with Chinese scholars of the Zhejiang University) also showed that GM Bt rice is harmful: GM fed group drank significantly more water; differ in blood biochemistry, immune response and in intestinal bacterial colonies (GM fed group coliform bacteria levels 23% higher than controls). There were also differences in the weight of male organ, the adrenal gland, the testicle and uterus. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vkni.html
Attachment 20: Overseas studies prove that the Bt toxin produced by GM Bt crops, or
glyphosate residue contained in glyphosate-tolerant GM crops, alone or
together, even if very low dosage, significantly affect the development of
human embryonic kidney cells. Before organizing similar toxicology tests by
independent institutions, there is no reason to consider that the GM Bt protein
toxins produced by GM Bt rice do not cause similar consequences.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vknu.html
Attachment 21: “Hematotoxicity of Bacillus thuringiensis as spore-crystal
strains Cry1Aa, Cry1Ab, Cry1Ac or Cry2Aa in Swiss albino mice” by research team at University of Brasilia published by Journal of Hematology & Thromboembolic
Diseases. Bt toxins caused red blood cells to rupture, supporting
earlier conclusion by other researchers that GM Bt protein are toxic to mammals.
It also exposes the “food safety” toxicology tests by academician Zhang Qi-fa,
President Luo Yunbo, and Prof. Huang Kun-lun to support the false claim that GM
Bt rice is safe to eat is fraudulent, and a blatant case
of academic misconduct!
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vknz.html
Attachment 22: “Healthy conditions of soil is the precondition for normal growth of crops and sustainable agriculture.” Scholars from the Life & Environment Science College of the Shanghai Normal University and the Resource & Environment College of the Northeast Agriculture University proved that GM Bt rice, GM Bt cotton, and GM Bt maize damage the balance of the microbial colony, i.e. the most critical condition of healthy soil. A study by an environmental science scholar of the Zhongshan University proves: The growing of GM papaya also causes “significant increase of both the numbers and resistance of resistant microorganisms (bacteria, actinomyces and fungi)”, providing important evidence that GM papaya endangers the ecosystem health of the human gut microbial colony and facilitating the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vko6.html
Attachment 23: During the 'Biosafety International Forum 5th Workshop' in May 2013, a citizen representative pointed out, China's legislation on GMO exists with many loopholes, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4bb17e9d0102vkp7.html
Article first published 15/06/15
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Brian Sandle Comment left 16th June 2015 15:03:03
The Chinese Military reported a year ago they would no longer use GMO food. China has leased land in Ukraine to grow non-GMO food and it has to be considered that the associated burning of fields in the Ukraine war may be intended to stop that and keep up the GMO market.