From the March 2007 Idaho Observer:

On a collision course with the natural world

The Smithsonian magazine reported in its Feb., 2007 edition that about 30 million vultures have died in India, Pakistan and Nepal over the last few years. The once-numerous birds are now facing extinction. The evidence suggests that the die-off is linked to the veterinary use of the pain-killing, anti-inflammatory drug "diclofenac."

People in these areas use oxen, buffalo and donkeys as work animals and beasts of burden. When lame or muscle strained, they can be given dicolfenac and be back up and working within hours. Though they seldom eat them when they die, they do leave them for the vultures. "An aged buffalo slated to become vulture food was dosed with diclofenac, slaughtered and fed to captive vultures. All the birds died within six days; their necropsies showed visceral gout," the Smithsonain article reported.

Further testing supported the diclofenac connection to this vulture holocaust and it was noted that less than one percent of the livestock carcasses in the region "would have to contain diclofenac to kill vultures at the rate observed," noted the Smithsonian.

Researchers collected samples from nearly 2,000 livestock carcasses in the Indian cowbelt. "Almost 10 percent contained diclofenac."

It should be a cause for alarm when 30 million buzzards die from what they are eating.

Note: In the first week of March, I needed some tech help and the 1-800 number connected me to a very nice young man from southern India. Though he did not know the story about millions of vultures dying off in his country, he did say that he had been noticing that there weren’t very many around now though up until a few years ago they had been plentiful ever since he could remember. (DWH).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved for commercial production the first genetically-modified (GM) food crop containing human genes. The GM rice strain contains proteins found in human breastmilk and saliva.

California-based VentriaBioscience claims their patented GM rice could be used to treat children with diarrhea which, they claim, is a major killer of third world children.

Ventria has been given preliminary approval to grow their rice on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yogurts and muesli bars.

GM critics believe the mixing of human genetics with food crops under the pretense of medicating food could cause health risks of, as yet, unknown proportions. Friends of the Earth campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: "Using food crops and fields as glorified drug factories is a very worrying development."

Ventria chief executive Scott Deeter said, "We have a product here that can help [sick] children get better faster."

He said any concerns about safety and contamination were "based on perception, not reality" given all the precautions the company was taking. Deeter said producing medicine in plants with sun, soil and water was far cheaper than producing it in factories, making the healing of sick children less expensive.

"A die-off of honey bees has beekeepers struggling for survival and farmers worried about whether bees will be around to pollinate their crops this year," the Environmental News Service reported January 29, 2007.

"Beekeepers in 22 states have reported losses of up to 80 percent of their colonies in recent weeks, leaving many unable to rent the bees to farmers of crops such as almonds and, later in the year, apples and blueberries," Reuters reported Feb. 12, 2007.

"Since the beginning of the year, beekeepers from all over the country have been reporting unprecedented losses," said Maryann Frazier, an apiarist associate from Penn State’s College of Agriculture Sciences.

Just like bird kills The IO reported in Dec., 2006 and January, 2007, the experts claim to be mystified as to what could be causing North America’s honeybees to be dying in such apocalyptic numbers. For the time being, the phenomenon is being called "colony collapse disorder (CCD)." Initial testing has shown that large numbers of disease organisms are present among bees from collapsed colonies, but no specific pathogens or toxic chemicals have been (publicly) identified as the culprit.

"The rate of loss is startling," said Jeff Pettis, a bee researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland.

Pettis noted that beekeepers in Europe, Spain in particular, are also reporting honeybees dying in unprecedented numbers.

To those who understand the true nature of health and disease, the causal factors are simple: Bees, like the rest of us, are exposed to the toxic residues of chemicals that are currently omnipresent in our environment. These residues are carried into our bodies and concentrate in our tissues. The concentrations increase until the body is immunologically compromised, infections develop and the opportunistic organisms associated with diseases are provided the environment to proliferate.

The first waves of the effects of this epidemic will be known by early summer. Honeybees are, in a very real sense, the creature responsible for "jump starting" the food chain by pollinating the plants both humans and animals depend upon for survival.

Note: There is some speculation that honeybees are not adapting well to the pollen from GMO crops. Could GMOs be a significant factor in the disruption of the food chain at the plant pollination level?

Judith Moriarty of New Hampshire was "having a cup of tea" March 10, 2007, when she heard a brief blurb on the news describing that a million fish had died in the Colorado River and that the fish kill covered an open water area of about seven miles. Moriarty snagged a couple photos off the Internet and posted a story to www.rense.com. The most impressive photo showed the vast area of dead fish. The photo would not have reproduced well in newsprint, but if you have ever seen the carnage after a lake has been poisoned with rotenone, that is what it looked like. Curiously, rotenone kills fish by removing oxygen from the water. According to Moriarty, the reason given for the Colorado river fish dying was a "lack of oxygen."

"I waited to hear more on evening broadcasts and there was NOTHING ­ just that one 30 second announcement," she said.

So Moriarty started "surfing" and found that large fish kills were happening all over in the country’s rivers & lakes from California, Oregon and Washington to Pennsylvania and the Potomac in Washington, D.C. " Looking further, I found that this is happening world wide, from Romania to China! Combine these massive die-offs with thousands of dead whales, sea turtles, porpoises, birds, honey bees, and butterflies. Well, it’s not hard to reason that the planet is dying."

It appears that these massive deaths among various animals in nature are generally only being reported locally and, even then, only in passing. This style of reporting ensures that people’s concern remains minimized because they are not seeing the big picture. It is also curious that the world’s most politically-influential environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and the United Nations Environmental Programme are not alerting the global community to the environmental collapse being foreshadowed.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is also, apparently, tacitly approving the utter collapse of the environmental sphere over which it has regulatory authority.

A 1998 agreement between Monsanto and the Russian Academy of Medical Science (RAMS) reveals that Colorado potato beetle-resistant GM potatoes developed by the biotech giant were fed to sick people in an experiment. Rats fed similar potatoes during the research period lost weight in hearts and prostates while gaining kidney weight. Spokesmen for Monsanto said changes in the rats were within "permissible limits." Dr. Irina Ermakova, of RAMS calls the GM potatoes "dangerous" for rats, adding, "On this evidence, they cannot be used in the nourishment of people." Too bad—According to Monsanto, Americans have been consuming its patented, Colorado beetle-resistant GM spuds for several years.