Steven Druker, a US-based public interest attorney who in the 1990s sued the US Food and Drug Administration over its release of GM foods onto world markets, has written a new book on the birth of GM in the US.

While Druker lost his case on a technicality, the lawsuit forced disclosure of FDA records that showed the agency allowed the release of inadequately tested GMOs against the warnings of its own scientists and experts that these foods were different from conventionally bred foods and could create unexpected toxic or allergenic effects.

In September 2011 a Green Member of the Dutch Parliament, Rik Grashoff, put forward a Parliamentary motion proposing a ban on the "commercial use" of Roundup outside agriculture. In the motion, Grashoff cited evidence presented in Earth Open Source's report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?".

This report revealed that industry's own studies carried out as long ago as the 1980s showed that glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient, causes birth defects in laboratory animals.

A new video of Andres Carrasco, professor of Molecular Embryology Laboratory at University of Buenos Aires, talking about his research showing birth defects cause by glyphosate, present in Roundup Ready Soy.

By Evaggelos Vallianatos, 12 July 2012

Walter Goldschmidt, 1913-2010, was an anthropologist who worked for the US Department of Agriculture. In the early 1940s, he brought to light the undoing of rural America by large farmers and warned USDA officials that large farmers were destabilizing rural communities in the Central Valley of California.¹