To the Editor,
Re: Fears based on misinformation, Letters, June 2.
Robert Wager is once again using his credentials at Vancouver Island University to get on his high horse and tilt at the windmill of public resistance to Monsanto, genetically modified foods and various pesticides, with an endorsement of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Would this be the same EPA named in author Mark Schapiro’s book Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power in which, according to the EPA itself, only five of all chemicals in the U.S. have undergone even minimal testing for toxicity?
Or the EPA which the Government Accountability Office concluded lacks safeguards to “evaluate or manage potential conflicts of interest” in corporate research agreements as it is taking money from companies and corporations it is supposed to be regulating?
Maybe it is the EPA, while cleaning up a Superfund industrial dump site near Denver, Colo., planned to pump the toxic waste water into Denver’s sewer system. The sludge from treated water would then be use to “fertilize” Colorado farmland.
The EPA does not do its own testing, rather depends on the tests from the corporation producing the product.
Industrial Bio-Test used to be America’s largest testing lab; in 1981 the former president and three underlings were indicted for fraudulent tests on four specific chemicals. They have conducted tests for more than 30 years, and the EPA used their test results to certify products.
A word about glyphosate (Roundup). Regardless of the EPA classification of this chemical, the other ingredients that also make up the chemical are generally not placed on the label, and little testing has been done on them.
For example, polyethoxylated tallowamine has an acute lethal dose three times that of glyphosate alone and destroys red blood cells. Not tested, not listed as an ingredient.
Wager says every food authority in the world agrees there is not a single documented case of harm resulting from consuming genetically modified foods. How does he explain Europe spending so much time, energy and money to prevent the spread of these “foods” to their part of the world?
Rod Hancock
Nanaimo
