The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition. Minimally King and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today show, we'll go deeper into the local GMO labeling campaign, so pull up a chair and listen to why this is so important, but later we'll tell you what's new at mother's market and what's going on around town, but first step, we're gonna get the latest on labeling gmos. And joining us today is Howard Leger, a third generation farmer and GMO expert from Iowa.

Howard began using biological farming methods on his family farm in 1989, he advises family farmers and ten days how to successfully implement biological crop production programs on their farms.

Howard works with scientists and researchers from around the world on investigating and solving problems associated with GMO crops, he also gives education presentations to interested groups of concerned consumers and mothers all across America, and we welcome him to the mother's market radio show. How are you?

Good morning, Kim, and thank you for having me.

Happy you could join us and before we get to our topic, tell us the scope and focus of your work, I guess the best way to summarize it is the fact that we are at the ground level of the effects of gmos, we see it both in the crop production and the livestock production, and the problems that gmos and the chemicals that are in growing the game crops, howler intensifying for the family farmers every year.

Today we're talking about the ongoing battle to label gmos here in California, last November, the voters decided against crop 37 and that would have required companies to change the way they label their products. However, the fight is far from over... Let's get started by asking you, Howard, what qualifies you, Howard, to talk about this subject?

Well, the experience of working with the GMO crops, both in the field and looking at what they have done to the health of livestock since the mid to late 1990s, along with the work that I do from very outstanding scientists from around the world in an ongoing basis, for investigation and problem solving with Gemara and the effects on livestock, it's really given us a lot of experience, and that experience has led to the scientific research that's being published to back up everything that we've been seeing in an anecdotal fashion. And based on that experience, what is the result?

Yes, the one thing that's always been consistent from day one, when you feed a genetically engineered crop to livestock, there's a dramatic increase in problems with the digestive systems of the animals, there's inflammation, irritation, Alois, a host of different digestive disorders, there's a high incidence of ulcers in the animals, there's also been a very consistent correlation between feeding gmos and challenges or difficulties getting conception with animals that you wanna reproduce to increase your livestock herd and produce animals for me, and that has been consistent from day one, that when the gmos are fed to the animals, the St. disorders are very obvious, you take away the GMO feed from the animal and put the conventional non-GMO in the action. And those problems go away.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that has to be identified as anecdotal at the farm level, they call that common sense.

Yeah, well, now, why don't you talk a little bit about the motivation behind GMO crops, in my opinion, one of the significant driving factors for as far as motivation from the industry is the technology fees that they collect on the genetically modified seed.

I did the mathematical equations on totaling up the total dollars worth of technology fees or royalties that the biotech companies will receive on an annual basis based on all the acres of corn that could be raised in the United States, all the acres of soybeans. It could be raised in the United States. All the acres of cotton canola and sugar beats, and the only thing that was excluded was the genetically engineered alfalfa, when you do that math based on what the tech fees were and the planet acres were in the US in the 2010 crop here. Applying that technology to every acre, which it was close to having the majority of those acres implementing that technology seed, it was just under 87 billion worth of tech fee that would be generated for the royalties that was not paying for the seed, that was not paying for the fertilizer or the chemical that would be used to raise the crap, that was just the royalty that the farmers were paying in technology fees.

Wow, that's incredible.

Next question, are GMO crops proven safe in my opinion now, and independent science that is being conducted, all of the independent science that's being published is consistently finding specific problems, and the one thing that's quite interesting is how the so-called studies that we're supposed to document the safety of genetically engineered crops were designed in a fashion in many cases, to where they couldn't find a problem because they would set the study up with either too small of a sampling size for the animals in the study, and in virtually all of the cases, they had two short of a feeding period in the studies that they were doing, the Gallagher study that was commissioned by the Supreme Court in India, documented is fact, very effectively, the OECD guidelines of sound science have never been applied to industry-sponsored safety testing on genetically modified crops. And these inefficient seven-day or 14 day or 21-day or 30-day, at maximum 90-day studies, we're all finding significant health challenges to the animals, even though those studies didn't run as long as they should, in one particular case where the gem industry was trying to get a specific corn approved in France, they said that they had done the study and everything was fine, the French government required that company to turn over the data from the study that they said proved that corn was safe when an independent scientist analyzed the data from the company's own study, they found significant damage to the health of the Lamb animals in the test... Recently, their last fall, there was a study conducted independently, where they fed GMO grain to the animals for their entire lifetime. The expected lifetime of a rat is approximately two years, and in that study, they had 20 different groups of rats... No, excuse me, they had 10 different groups of rats and 20 rats in each group, 10 male and 10 female, and they had the untreated control or the check, they had three groups that had... They put varying levels of glyphosate in their water, glyphosate is the active chemical ingredient in Round herbicide, it is the most widely used herbicide in the world, it's non-selective, it's designed to kill everything except the genetically engineered crop that's designed to tolerate it.

In addition to the glyphosate in the water, they also had goon in the feed for the one group of rats, another group had GMO feed and glyphosate both, they only had 11% of the feed that contained the GMO corn. The results of that study, both the rats that were fed the GMO corn and the glyphosate residues in their water, 50% of the males and 70% of the females died prematurely, there was also the formation of tumors in both the glyphosate rats, the GMO fed in the jungle-fed rats, they developed tumors at a rate of 7% to 80% higher than the control rats that received no contaminants in their feed supply. They were mammary tubers.

The thing that was very interesting about this was the tumors began to form between the fourth and the seventh month in the feeding trial, remember I said how the industry stopped all of their studies at most at 90 days.

Was there a reason that the studies didn't go any longer than 90 days, one can only wonder or ask why for that reason, but how important is that lifetime feeding study?

You look at the consumers in our country today, and especially our children, which are the most sensitive to this, the GMO crop ingredients are in the food supply, these children will be forced to consume that from the time they're conceived in their mother's womb throughout their entire lifetime, why wouldn't there be a study conducted to see if there was safety for a lifetime trial.

Wow, so given to what you just said, what is the solution to getting better data from another study, one of the huge challenges in this whole research thing is there's too many times there's influence on the results of the study based on who's funding this study, the best way, in my opinion, to take a step in the right direction for this is to require the company that's saying they're going to introduce these products to put up the money, the money or the for the study and have an independent body do the research, so there's no influence and that it's a properly conducted study, this has been done in other parts of the world, but the result of the lead scientists reporting the results of the study has been consistent, when the study is negative, that scientists will be viciously and brutally attacked by the industry and peers of his that the industry is sponsoring, and they basically, in a lot of cases, they've caused them to lose their jobs, they've defined them in significant manners... All for telling the truth.

Wow, this is really fascinating. And we have to take a quick break. We will be right back. But more on GMO labeling. Stay with us, we'll be right back.

To welcome back to the mother's market radio show, and we wanna remind you, if you've missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the podcast from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com. And now back to our interview with GMO expert, Howard liger, and we're talking about labeling gmos had what can we do about getting another study?

Independent studies are always challenged as far as the funding, there are options that people could... If they were interested in contributing towards that, I would certainly encourage them to contact me 'cause we have a 513 C that we can channel that money through for funding from the aspect of changing how things are done in a regulatory manner. Like I mentioned, if there was a requirement that they want to submit this, let them prove beyond the shadow of the doubt by putting up the money required to do sound research by an independent body to document the safety of the product, they're obviously proud of the fact that they have all these gmos, then let him prove how safe they are, I would think they would step up to the plate and be glad to say, here it is, it's the greatest thing we've ever made.

Well, that makes a lot of sense, and I guess we won't hold our breath there, what are the behavioral problems you see in animals and the things that we have seen very consistently, and again, and from a scientific standpoint, it has to be termed as anecdotal, but when you do a comparison side by side. Of feeding an animal a conventional grain or a go green, we see significant behavioral issues, which I think mimic a lot of what we see in children today, we will see a tremendous short temper or irritability in these animals that are fed to GM, they have difficulties performing simple tasks in one of the small trials that was conducted, they had to pass through a series of like a maze almost to get to a scale on a weekly basis for the non-gem and animals, they thought this was fun, they got in the routine and they did it every week, but the ones that were on the GM diet, especially the females, for whatever reason, I don't know, they were irritable, they would pick on one another, they would bite at each other, or there were also neutered males in that same pen, they had difficulties their contentment level was never in place, the animals that were fed the non-GM feed would eat, drink and lay down and be comfortable and be satisfied were the GMO-fed animals, they just never found a sense of comfort... They were never happy. Well, when we look at how the insight of their digestive system is irritated and inflamed as a result of eating the GM crops, that's kind of easy to understand, if you have a stomach ache, you'd probably a little irritable too, but their symptoms that these animals are exhibiting that makes you wonder, Wait a minute, they're acting like they're autistic when they're confused and they can't do these simple tax... We also have seen issues, skin-related enema type issues that rashes that absolutely do not express themselves in any way, shape or form in the angled animals, so that's very concerning. When you see that similarity in animals and again, watching for it, the thing that the industry will say, Well, if this isn't all happen and how come everybody isn't dead by now, well, let's pay attention to what has changed in what's happened, this has been implemented in such a dynamic ground wealth fashion, and if it happens to all of the fields or all of the animals in all of the operations in the whole neighborhood... What do you call it? Normal, well, wait a minute, it's not normal, it may be a new normal as a result of these problems just coming in like a tidal wave, but it is absolutely not normal, and the problem that we're seeing now, some of the young, younger animal health professionals or veterinary, they have been seeing these problems consistently for the last 10 to 15 years, so they are calling them normal, and as we start to see more of our experienced veterinary retire, and I'm sure the same thing may be happening in the medical community with our pediatrics and what have you... If they see it all the time, they be soon began call normal, but it's not normal, and we've seen it in plant diseases in the cornfields in Iowa, the majority of the fields will be GM old Roundup-Ready corn fields, and the disease will be fully expressed in that entire plant by the end of August and they'll be Brown regardless of how much pesticide they put on it to try and keep it healthy, you have an island and a stream, there's a non-GMO corn field there, 'cause there's one farmer that didn't believe this was a way to go. And there's a green corn field... It's like an oasis in the desert. Well, when there's one field that's green amongst all these brown ones... What do you call that? abnormal when it's actually the way things are supposed to be... Well, it seems pretty simple.

So the real issue is, this is in our food supply... Yes, and why wouldn't it be in the food supply because... And the problem that there's not been researched, first of all, to document what may be happening as either the foreign proteins that are developed as a result of... They're making the GMO crop in the laboratory, it's not a natural process that what ever occur in nature, but where's the research to document any sign of safety as it moves up the food chain, first it affects the animals... Is it in the meat? We're finding glyphosate residue in all of the grain that's being raised in the round-up pretty production systems, that glyphosate residue is affecting these animals, and there's more and more scientific studies that are documenting significant harm from that, both from the damage of a mineral tie-up situation where it's tying up nutrition and making it unavailable in the soil, in the plant and in the feed supply for the animals, but also that glyphs is a very potent antibiotic, it's killing beneficial organisms in the soil, it's allowing opportunistic organisms to thrive, in many cases, the beneficial organisms would be the control for the opportunistic, so this is accelerating the amount of disease that the farmers deal with, and now we're seeing studies published where it only takes a tenth of a part per million of glyphosate residue to kill beneficial organisms to cause chronic botulism. The chronic and the tolerance level, by the way, for glyphosate residue in the site products in the US and the world is 20 parts per monotony, 200 times higher than what's required to kill an animal with toxic co-infection, which is what botulism is. And there have been white paper, there was a white paper done in Germany, they had professional people give a urine sample, they found significant glyphosate levels in every one of the people's urine samples in Germany, and they don't have Round-Up Brady crops in that country, they're using round up as a burn down or a descent or ripening agent for some of their small grain crops, so what would you find in this country if you started testing to people... When the US Geological Service published a study in 2011, CE, they monitored for residue levels in the air and the rain and the rivers in Iowan Mississippi. They found significant levels in the air and the rain and the rivers, the only reason they didn't find it any place else, that's the only two places they looked for, and the scientists that published that study, to say the least, I believe his life is taking a significant change.

Well, that's incredible, incredible information. What can we do about this and how can we get involved?

People have to educate themselves in every means and way possible, the concerns that have been expressed by myself and highly credible individuals in the research arena, two regulatory agencies in our country have fallen on deaf ears and been ignored.

The way we're going to turn this around is grow the consumer awareness and don't take no for an answer, that's a long... In the short of it, the people, they cannot call this normal, that as a result of the foreign proteins and the lack of nutrition and the contaminants in the food supply is affecting the health of our young, and they go to the doctor and they automatically get on performance enhancing drugs and anti-depressants and every kind of other antibiotic that you can imagine that is not normal, that's a system that's addictive, and to say the least, in my opinion... It's abusive to the children.

Thank you so very much for your time and we really appreciate your knowledge, your passion for this topic, but in the meantime, you can get more information by emailing Howard at Howard at Verity farms dot com. That's V-E-R-I-T-Y. farms dot com and learn more about how you can get involved. Thank you so very much for being with us.

Thank you.

So thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show. And for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.