agribiotech

Majestic monarch butterflies cover the fir trees in the forests of Central Mexico every winter, but fewer of them have been calling these woods home, thanks mostly to humanity’s destruction of their natural environment. [1]

The number of monarchs have been dwindling for 2 decades, but the situation seems to have reached a tipping point this year.
Karen Oberhauser, co-chairwoman of Monarch Joint Venture, a national collaboration of 50 conservation, education and research groups, confirmed it, saying:

Glyphosate, a controversial ingredient found in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is showing up in streams, rivers, and other aquatic systems around the world due to runoff. Unfortunately, this may be damaging a type of green macroalgae that is common in streams, a new Brazilian study published in the journal Phycologia shows. [1]

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials said last week that an unapproved variety of wheat was found growing in a Washington state field, though there are no signs that it made its way into commercial grain shipments.
The Monsanto-produced wheat is a RoundUp-resistant variety that was never commercially released. USDA officials said it was discovered in a farmer’s planted field. Department officials are in the process of testing the farmer’s wheat harvest for the GMO variety, but so far none has been found.

The government isn’t particularly interested in making sure Americans know what they’re eating. It seems like knowing what is in the food should be a basic right, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, last week Congress passed a federal requirement for labeling products containing genetically modified ingredients that signifies a big win for food companies.