Who is fighting GMO labeling laws?

This is a list of companies fighting Measure 92 and Prop 105 in Oregon and Colorado. From this graphic.

Abbot Nutrition
Alexia
Annie's
Aurora Organic Dairy
Bear Naked
Betaseed
Bimbo Bakeries
Bumble Bee FOods
Cargill
Cascadian Farm Organic
Coca Cola
Dagoba
Dean Foods
Dow Agrosciences
DuPont
General Mills
Green & Black's
Grocery Manufacturer's Association
Hershey
Honest Tea
Hormel
Izze drinks
Kashi
Kellog
Kraft
Land O'Lakes
Larabar
McCormick (spices)
Mead Johnson Nutrition
Michael Foods
Mondelez Global
Monsanto
Morning Star Farms
Muir Glen
Musselman's
Naked Juice
Niagara Bottling
Ocean Spray
Odwalla
Rich's
RW Knudsen
Santa Cruz Organic
Shearer's
Similac
Simply Orange
Smithfield
Snyder's-Lance
Sunny Delight
Welch's
White Wave Foods

Show your support of GMO labeling by avoiding these products. If companies don't want to label GMOs, then they must be hiding something. Suspicious behavior doesn't happen for no reason.

Summary of Pharma industry

This is a good summary with historical and other graphs.

Link here.

Corporate welfare and profits

I'm more of a moderate when it comes to welfare. I've been on welfare myself, I've been homeless as a kid. It's not fun. But I'm not for giving away free money, we've already seen that doesn't significantly reduce the welfare rolls since 1980. I'm for working for welfare, as in a jobs program. I used to take advantage of a state jobs program, and I was very grateful for it. I was able to sacrifice and save for college to get myself out of poverty.

There are different ways to count personal welfare usage.

1. Some say that if one person in a household gets any welfare at all, all people in the household are counted, adults and children. That's where the 35% on welfare number comes from. 
2. Some only count the percent of the US population that are on only a few programs. 
3. Some count unemployment as welfare, some don't. 

Percent of families on Temporary  Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and General  Assistance (GA). From Census.gov. PDF page 5.

• Year 2000: 2.6%
• Year 2012: 2.9%

Above, poverty since 1947. Look at supposed "welfare reforms" since 1980.

Above, the poverty rate and spending per person. From Federal Safety Net. As spending per person has gone up, the poverty rate has remained much the same.

Above: US Participation in Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, housing assistance, SSI, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and General Assistance, 2009-2012.

Some of the corporate welfare programs I've found, from most amount to least.

1. Writing off CEO bonuses. $70 billion a year. 
2. Tax cuts for luxury corporate jets. $300 million a year. 
3. Big oil subsidies. $37.5 billion a year. 
4. Big pharma subsidies for mega profit corporations. $270 billion a year. 
5. Capital gains tax breaks. $51 billion a year. Cap gains are taxed a a lower rate, if you sell a stock or mutual fund, and have a capital gain. Every day Joe cannot afford to pay more on these as he buys and sells stocks in his retirement account. But millionaires can certainly pay more. They already have plenty of money to buy the basic necessities of life. 
6. Tax subsidies from local and state governments. $80.4 billion a year. 
7. Big agriculture subsidies. $18 billion a year. 
8. Wall Street Welfare. $83 billion a year. 
9. Export/Import subsidies. $112 billion. 
10. Federal contracts to top 200 biggest companies. $880 billion a year. 

What's the total of only these biggest subsidies? $1,602.2 billion dollars a year. 3 welfare programs only cost $158.5 billion a year. Corporate welfare gets 10x that amount. What if we gave every man, woman and child a piece of corporate welfare (population 319 million)? They would get $5203 per year every year. That's not enough to survive on but it's enough to give you an idea of the amounts of your tax dollars not going to most of the citizens.

Who are the biggest corporate welfare queens?

Corporate welfare can take the form of special tax breaks, or subsidies.

Company (symbol)	Welfare	Recent Net Profits (millions $)
Boeing (BA). Makes airplanes, contractor for Defense Dept.	$13.18 billion.	$5176 million, 12 months ending 12-31-2015
Alcoa (AA). Largest producer of aluminum.	$5.64 billion.	$-322, 12 months ending 12-31-2015.
Intel (INTC). Makes computer chips.	$3.87 billion.	$11,420, 12 months ending 12-26-2015
General Motors (GM). Makes automobiles.	$3.58 billion.	$9687, 12 months ending 12-31-2015
Ford (F). Makes automobiles.	$2.52 billion.	$7373, 12 months ending 12-31-2015
Fiat Chrysler (FCAU). Makes automobiles. The Fiat Chrysler financials site only goes up to 2013.	$2.06 billion.	$344, 2015 from Marketwatch,
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A). Oil company.	$2.04 billion.	$1939, 12 months ending 12-31-2015
Nike. Makes shoes. Shoes? Really? Is that really a matter of national security?	$2.03 billion.	$3273, 12 months ending 5-31-2015

NOTE: Preferred stock symbols used are from US NYSE or OTC.

What's the biggest corporate welfare by US gov't department?

1. Dept of Agriculture: $25.165 billion
2. Energy: $17.330 billion. 
3. Other agencies, applied R&D: $17.094 billion. 
4. Housing: $16.041 billion
5. State: $5.201 billion
6. Defense: $4.737 billion.
7. Commerce: $4.095 billion
8. Other agencies combined: $3.347 billion.
9. Interior: $2.608 billion. 
10. Transportation: $2.024 billion. 

Total: $97.642 billion

Do all these companies with mega profits really need all this welfare? Would the welfare office give an individual making $100,000 a year food stamps? I think not.

Sources

1. Becker, Sam. The 8 Biggest Corporate Welfare Recipients in America. Cheatsheet. May 07, 2015.
2. Cahill, Tom. 10 Taxpayer Handouts to the Super Rich That Will Make Your Blood Boil. October 28, 2015. Link here.
3. Corporate welfare by US gov't department. 2012. Link here.

Monsanto might cause 50% of children to be autistic in the future.

(NOTE: This is speculation and a bit hysterical, but it's an important thing to consider anyway.)

A senior scientist at MIT, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, made these remarks during a panel presentation in Groton, MA last week, specifically cites the Monsanto herbicide, Roundup, as the culprit for the escalating incidence of autism and other neurological disorders. Roundup was originally introduced in the 1970s and could only be used as a weed killer, but is not regularly used on crops such as corn, soy and wheat to kill them right before harvest. Farmers have a problem where all the crop does not ripen at once, so Roundup is used to kill it all at once and then harvested 2 days later. (See the actual Roundup label.)

According to Dr. Seneff, glyphospate interferes with gut bacteria via the Shikimate pathway. Gut bacteria are a critical part of our lives and we are just learning how important they really are. With the gut bacteria depleted, humans are now missing several key amino acids. According to various studies, glyphosate depletes the amino acids tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine, which can then contribute to obesity, depression, autism, inflammatory bowel disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Monsanto, the seller of glyphospate products, naturally disagrees.


Some critics of Dr. Seneff argue she is confusing correlation with causation, which could very well be true. However, causation is nearly impossible to prove given the human body's complexity, and correlation has often been used in the past to determine the toxicity of a substance. Except when it comes to Monsanto products. And congresscritters that accept "donations" from Monsanto and biotech companies.

There are dozens of studies showing glyphospate danger has correlation with disease and conditions. Yet there are almost no studies saying the same thing about THC, cannabidiol, and pot. Since Congress, the DEA, and the FDA are inconsistent, their judgment cannot be trusted, nor can their decisions be assumed to be for the better of all people. The FDA, especially since they are being sued for covering up facts about glyphospate, appears to make decisions based on hysteria, and donations, rather than actual facts.


Source
Journal Neo.

Glyphosate in your pills

Almost every pill that is made in the US, pharmaceuticals and supplements alike, use corn starch as a filler ingredient. That means people who are allergic to corn cannot take any pills at all. 90% of corn grown in the US is GMO corn, and likely has glyphosate. That means most pills likely contain glyphosate. This includes gelcaps which are just a coated pill.

This does not include gel-type items like fish oil or vitamin D supplements.

Are you on an organic diet but still feeling sick? Think about it. How many pill supplements are you taking?

European vs US organic food laws

A comparison of US GMO and organic food standards and laws. Note: Standards are usually voluntary in the US, like the USDA National Organic Program of the Non-GMO Project Verified program.

This information is from publicly available sources on the WWW. The name of EU directives are taken from the format of the web page on which they are displayed, thus they might appear to have inconsistent formatting. I don't claim to understand the reason behind the inconsistent formatting. Directives appear to take the format YYYY/nnnn and regulations the format nnn/YYYY where YYYY is the year.


European Union

Quote: "The European Union (EU) has in place a comprehensive and strict legal regime on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), food and feed made from GMOs, and food/feed consisting or containing GMOs.  The EU’s legislation and policy on GMOs, based on the precautionary principle enshrined in EU and international legislation, is designed to prevent any adverse effects on the environment and the health and safety of humans and animals, and it reflects concerns expressed by skeptical consumers, farmers, and environmentalists."

1. The European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) conducts testing. EFSA Home page. EFSA page on GMO Science. (The EFSA sometimes things GMOs are safe despite the independent studies.)
2. Marketing and importing GMO foods is regulated by the EU, but growing GMO is regulated at the EU country level. 
3. "Regulation No. 1829/2003 prohibits placing on the EU market a GMO for food use, or a food containing or consisting of GMOs or food products produced “from” GMOs, unless an authorization is granted.  Food and feed produced “with” a GMO are excluded from the scope of this Regulation."
4. GMO labeling required except where an ingredient is less than 0.9% of the total (VI.b): "Labeling requirements apply to foods delivered to the final consumers or mass caterers in the EU that either contain or consist of GMOs, or are produced from or contain ingredients produced from GMOs.  Regulation No. 1829/2003 requires that the phrase “genetically modified” or “produced from genetically modified [name of the organism]” must appear clearly next to the ingredient list." 
5. The EU requires traceability for GMO substances. 
6. Directive 2001/18/EC addresses GMO releases into the environment.
7. 1830/2003 addresses more GMO labeling. Labeling of all GMO ingredients is required, even for ornamental things like cut flowers.

Sources
Restrictions on Genetically Modified Organisms: European Union. loc.gov. Last accessed Apr 17, 2016.


US

1. Roundup can be sprayed onto Roundup Ready crops to kill them, and harvested in 2 days thus leading to Roundup in the food chair.
2. Plants that product Bt CRY toxin are allowed in the food system. 
3. Labeling products that contain GMOs are not required except in Vermont, which recently passed a law requiring products containing GMOs to be labeled. Several manufacturers have already indicated they will use the same GMO label for Vermont as for the rest of the country.
4. "Free range" chickens does not mean sunlight ever touched their back. It means chickens are packed into a large, crowded barn together.  

   

   "Free range" chickens collapsing under their own weight.

5. The US uses the "it's safe until proven otherwise" philosophy regarding GMOs. 
6. Non-Organic seeds and other items can be used if  organic seeds are not available, and the "organic" label can still be used. 
7. US companies, like Monsanto, are well-known for lobbying for GMOs, and lobbying against third-party studies.Monsanto job titles even included "influencing the EPA".

Sources

USDA National Organic Program. Link to website.

Now, how do we organize all these studies and information?

I started wondering how to allow people to search all the studies I'm collecting online. I'd like to organize studies with tags for substances tested (BPA, glyphosate/Roundup, etc), body systems affected (brain, lungs, liver, reproductive), diseases caused (neurological, cancer, developmental, fertility, etc) and animals tested (lacewing, tadpole, human, etc).

Use XML with XSLT.

Another product I'm trying is Zotero.org.

1. It's free. No ads. These are all the free features.
2. It has plugins for Firefox and Chrome and a standalone app. It allows you to go to an NIH/PMC study, click the plugin icon, and save the reference to that study. Zotero breaks up the info into many different fields like authors (more than 1 possible), title, journal, date of publication. And it has tags, where you can make your own custom tags, and search on tags. For example if I search on '#lead' Zotero will pull up all studies that cover lead. Some if I search for '#anxiety' Zotero will pull up all studies that found anxiety as a result of exposure. 
3. I also make tags for the animal studied like: #fish, #frog, #human, #mouse, #rat, #plant, etc.
4. Make subfolders for grouping your bibliographies by topic. I have some for lead, BPA, and glyphosate.
5. Export a folder to various biblio formats. 
6. Make notes on every study. 
7. Sync your biblio between different PCs and browsers. 
8. As of yet, there are no user-defined fields where I can study the number of subjects that were tested. If only 4 humans were studied, that's not a great study. 

Firefox Plugins

Sticky Notes. Allows you to put sticky notes on webpages. Why? To take notes or summarize each study you find.

Substandard software in medical devices?

(As a computer programmer I'm going to comment on this. I've been programming for 35+ years and I've worked in a variety of companies from Fortune 500s to small 1 man operations. My comments are based on my experience and illustrate how things could possibly go wrong.)

Background of the development process

Medical device and other companies sometimes try to develop software overseas. There are a few good software developers in say, India, I've used their software. But many of them lack attention to detail and polish, and this could actually kill someone, say, if they are using a computer to deliver morphine via IV. The problem here is not necessarily the developers, but the US management teams. Managers are often clueless about how development works and the development cycle. They are given a fixed budget and must release the software as soon as the date arrives or the budget is used up. This is one of the best ways to develop poor software.


The development cycle for a piece of software is roughly like this:

1. Work with the customer to determine what the software needs to do. 
2. Design the software, and go over details with the customer once again. Keep in mind the customer contact the programmer deals with is usually NOT a computer person nor a programmer!. They might be an executive who doesn't even know how to use computers, or, as in my case, a marketing person who doesn't understand the importance of data consistency. 
3. Develop a test plan. 
4. Write the software.
5. Begin testing, looking for bugs and generally trying to break the software.
6. If a bug is found during testing add more code and go back to step 5.

The testing phase, which includes finding bugs and removing them, typically takes up 40% of the whole development process. Because computers are so complex, and there are so many unknown and unexpected variables, it is not humanly possible to write a flawless test plan from the beginning. So as new test ideas emerge during the testing phase, more code is added, the test plan is changed to reflect the new test case, and costs increase. Software development managers who are familiar with the dev process often have another 30-50% additional secret budget in reserve for cases like this. A software dev manager without access to an additional budget will slow the company down and possibly close it due to financial difficulties. Programmers are wise to avoid a  manager like this and programmer applicants should ask the manager open-ended questions to ferret out their experience with software development.


Software development often goes over budget and past the original deadline because of finding and fixing previously unknown bugs.

On to the article

The kind of software developers that device manufactures hire also leaves a lot to be desired. They tend to rely on externals, mostly unvetted, who are hired on short-term contracts and have no stake in the future of the product. They are typically hired not for their software development experience, but for how they seem on paper. 

This is just more evidence of either an inexperienced software development manager or clueless executives who are hiring contract programmers. To get good at programming, the programmer needs years of programming experience not just with the languages in question (and they could be using 4+ languages for a single project!) but with the system in question too.

Using a programmer experienced in the needed languages, and retaining programmers who know the specific software, will cost the company less in the long run, because it means the software is done well up front, leading to fewer lawsuits and recalls for the company that issued the software-driven device. Common mistakes for executives inexperienced with software development leads to short-term profits, but long term problems. Rewriting code is VERY expensive because it takes time for a new developer who has never seen the code before to just figure out what it's doing in the first place. Then they have to figure out what it's supposed to do, and then make the code do what it was supposed to in the first place.

The article is a good read and what it describes does happen. But when a person's life is at stake, if it happens once that's one too many times. 


Sources
Skankworks. April 22, 2016.

FDA fast tracks risky flu vaccine

(Take this article with a grain of salt. The tone is laced with zombie-apocalypse and bible-thumping hysteria. Ignore the overly fantastic end-of-the-world tone and focus on the facts they are trying to deliver.)

The Novartis oil in water vaccine was banned in Italy due to 19 deaths but the FDA approves it in the US.

...the Food and Drug Administration just fast-tracked Novartis’ oil-in water, squalene adjuvant flu shot for approval in individuals 65 and older… Adjuvants are added to vaccines to hyper-stimulate the immune system. They are designed to remain in the body for a prolonged reaction... It’s a game of ‘Russian Roulette’ resulting in unpredictable adverse side effects ranging from heart attacks, stroke, myelitis and blindness to cognitive disfunction, skin disorders, miscarriages and fetal death.

Isn't an overreaction of the immune system part of asthma, some arthritis, and allergies and some other immunological conditions?

In 1991, the squalene adjuvanted anthrax vaccine was first experimentally given to tens of thousands of Gulf War soldiers which resulted in severe, permanent injuries. Squalene antibodies caused a cascade of autoimmune reactions known as Gulf War Syndrome (GWS). Symptoms included severe headaches, nausea, muscular pain, joint swelling, short term memory loss, night sweats, depression. Autoimmune conditions ranged from fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, autoimmune thyroid disease, chronic fatigue syndrome to malar rashes, chronic headaches, non-healing skin lesions, musculoskeletal disorders (ALS), among others. More than twenty years later thousands of veterans are still ill. (And they are largely being ignored by the budget-strained Veterans Administration.)

I haven't found a direct connection between the series of shots given to Gulf War participants but the correlation is high. If you have studies about this please put links in the comments.

Source
News Target. Apr 28, 2016.

How to test your food and water for pesticides

Go to this site: http://www.abraxiskits.com/products/pesticides/

They have a kit for many different pesticides. You can test for the CRY proteins (the BT protein that is produced by the plant to kill insects), 2,4-D, DDT, glyphosate, and more. Some kits have test strips.

Links to how to test for pesticides.
http://www.abraxiskits.com/publications/#pesticides