OLM: Can you tell us a little about the history of the companies that are making GMOs? Who are they? What did they do before they made GMO foods?

Mike Adams: Well, I think Monsanto is one of the most dangerous corporations in the world. I think it has a long history of oppressing the farmers and oppressing developing nations and their farmers. I think it has put profits before the people time and time again to such a degree that it really poses a threat to the sustainability of the human race. That’s about as bluntly as I can state it. [chuckle]

OLM: Are there other companies doing what Monsanto does with GMOs?

Mike Adams: There are smaller companies toying with genetics in the same way, but no one has dominance over the industry like Monsanto. It virtually holds a monopolistic control over seeds. I imagine Arthur Daniel Midland would be next in line in terms of culpability for destroying the food supply, but I don’t know if ADM has a GMO lab or not. That would be interesting to check out.

OLM: We hear that Monsanto bought many seed companies. The FTC didn’t take notice of this action?

Mike Adams: It’s very clear that the FTC is highly selective in its application of anti-trade action. It totally ignores some monopolies such as the pharmaceutical monopoly or the seed monopoly while attacking other things that are beneficial to consumers. For example, the FTC will attack a church that sells anti-cancer herbs. I actually documented one of those cases, so I’ve seen it
firsthand. But the FTC completely ignores these monopolies, which are the most dangerous to human beings. I think that the food supply and the pharmaceutical industries are two of the best examples.

OLM: How did these foods get approved without testing? Wasn’t it true that many FDA scientists took issue with the foods not being tested?

Mike Adams: GRAS – generally regarded as safe. It’s sad. It’s hilarious, but sad. You’re right; there was no testing done. No safety testing, at least not to the degree any reputable scientist would agree to be adequate. Basically, they just swept it under the rug and pushed it through the approval process. They declared it to be safe by decree, you know? Like, “The king declares this poison to be safe.”  It’s kind of like the aspartame story—you know where Donald Rumsfeld was pivotal in getting aspartame approved by the FDA despite all the tests showing it to be dangerous. It just proves that decisions about the food supply are political decisions. They do not have anything to do with the actual science, or real safety, or prioritizing the health of the people. They are purely political/commercial decisions. That’s the sad state of the FDA today.

Why aren’t GMO foods labeled?

Mike Adams: It is very clear that the reason they are not labeled is because the industry does not want the consumers to know. This is a censorship campaign to prevent people from being informed. It’s the same reason that irradiated foods are not labeled. The FDA is on the record as saying that they are afraid people might not understand what irradiated means. It’s a remarkable statement all by itself.

OLM: Yeah, when in fact, the statement really means the opposite. They don’t want people to know. They don’t want us to understand.

Mike Adams: Industry is afraid of knowledge. It’s afraid of people being informed and having access to accurate knowledge about GMOs or irradiated foods, or even other toxic chemicals that are in the foods such as acrylamides. Essentially, the food industry supports a delabeling campaign. It wants to remove as much information as possible from the labels so consumers don’t have access to the information they need to make informed decisions.

OLM: Obviously there is an indirect link to the drug companies and the food industry. It seems as if they have made a deal to line each others’ pockets. It seems as though they’re working together.

Mike Adams: I think that’s a really great observation on your part. The food industry feeds the pharmaceutical industry in terms of profits. It’s the foods that make people sick; they cause chronic degenerative disease. So the foods create demand for the drugs, which are real profit centers. Of course these companies are making money off of foods as well, but GMOs fit into this picture in a very clever and insidious way. All the evidence so far shows that GMOs may pose a very real health threat to those who consume them. As you mention, that benefits the pharmaceutical industry by poisoning people, by creating patients who need pharmaceuticals or who can be diagnosed with diseases and sold pharmaceuticals whether they need them or not.

I think at the retail level Walgreens demonstrates it the best. Walgreens is a pharmacy, but it sells some of the most toxic processed junk food that you can find in America. In front of the store they sell foods that cause disease and in the back of the store they sell the drugs that they claim treat disease. It’s a system of toxicity. I have gone into the store to buy samples of processed
foods that I was sending to laboratories for testing. When I walk through the store I cannot believe the depth of the poisons that are in there: personal hair care products, fragrance, cosmetics, sodas, all the foods. Those stores should be completely shut down. They should be banned. They should be outlawed in this country. They are creating
a toxic America.

OLM: What was that quote about GMO consumers not being able to reproduce?

Mike Adams: What I talked about was that GMOs do damage to the ability to reproduce and as a result the future of the human race is going to be inherited by those who do not consume GMOs and who do not expose themselves to toxic chemicals like pharmaceuticals.

Along those lines I just want to clarify that especially in the natural health field, no one wishes death or suffering upon another human being. I’m not happy that unhealthy people die. But what I am pointing out is that they are making a choice. By consuming GMOs they are choosing not to have great- grandchildren. And that choice is given a label—it’s a Darwin Award [chuckle]. These people are all participating in this multi-generational or trans-generational Darwin award. And in the long term, it is probably a great benefit to the future of human civilization that the people who choose to consume poisons do not inherit the future of our race.

OLM: Is it true that executives from these companies are hired in top positions by the USDA and FDA?

Mike Adams: Yeah, definitely. That’s called the revolving door policy. You’ll see many examples of top managers or executives at drug and food companies who become top people at the FDA or the FTC or the USDA. They often go back and forth between the regulators and the industry several times.

OLM: And then they write the laws?

Mike Adams: Well, it’s not laws. They enforce regulations. Sometimes they write regulations. It’s important to distinguish between the two. Laws are passed only by the legislative branch, members of congress. But the USDA, the FDA and the FTC are essentially lawless regulatory agencies. They are not required to follow any law in their day-to-day decision making. They are above

the law. In fact they are violating the law. If you or I did what the FDA or the FTC did, we would be charged with felony crimes. We can’t just pick up an assault rifle and walk into a company that sells products we don’t like and seize all their computers and handcuff their people and march them off to prison. But that is what the FDA does on a regular basis. It’s a violation of law. It’s a violation of the constitution. So these are lawless organizations.

OLM: Does the president appoint the heads of the USDA and the FDA?

Mike Adams: Yes, the president does appoint the heads of those organizations without a public vote. That’s important to note. All that has to happen is that the senate confirms those appointments. The public is never given a chance to vote on them, so it’s bypassing the democratic system.

OLM: What do you think of Obama’s appointee for the Department of Agriculture?

Mike Adams: I’ve been following that on the Organic Consumers Association. Ronnie Cummins there has reported on that appointment with a lot of good details. I think clearly Obama’s siding with big business. He is going to continue the policies of Monsanto and he is not going to speak up for the people, for the farmers, you know. I see a lot of this with the Obama administration which is kinda frustrating because he came in under a platform of change, you know, talking about protecting the people. And certainly, of course, none of us wanted to see the Bush policies continue, at least not on human rights, and war, and all that. But then with Obama in office, not just for agriculture, but for the treasury, and many other areas, the policies are quite disturbing. They show that the Obama administration, at least through its appointments so far, is largely continuing business as usual, at least in my opinion. I’m optimistic that maybe there will be some changes, but you know, I don’t see any big changes so far, other than a whole lot of money being handed out. And that’s not change. That’s just the same old scam.

OLM: Are you keeping up with the new laws they are trying to pass?

Mike Adams: Ronnie Cummins would have a lot more detail on this, but I keep up with some of it. The big picture is very clear. They are working at federal and state levels to destroy small family farms, to destroy even the definition of organic so that anything could be called organic. They are the enemies of anyone who believes in sustainable agriculture or true organic foods.

OLM: What’s going on with GMOs in Europe?

Mike Adams: GMOs had been banned in certain parts of the U.K. I think that issue has come to the surface again with codex and the harmonization of the European Union. They’re trying to keep GMOs in the food supply. But the thing is, GMO labeling is now mandatory in the U.K. At least that’s my understanding of it. And U.K. citizens are much better informed about this issue than U.S. citizens. And in the U.K. they are very vocal in their opposition to GMO foods, as they should be. And it is in America that people have this kind of bizarre acceptance of whatever the government tells them to do. It’s like America has been drugged into a state of complacency. Pharmaceuticals and fluoride maybe have something to do with that.

OLM: What’s your take on Monsanto’s claims that GMOs are a better way to grow food, that they produce better yields and can help stop world hunger?

Mike Adams: Sure, it’s all about short-term thinking versus long-term thinking. Of course, Monsanto and ADM and other such companies are really focused on short term thinking. In the short-term, it’s true that a single planting of a genetically modified crop can out-produce a non-GMO crop. You look at that season and you weigh how much corn came out of the field and so on. But in the long term, what risks are there to the viability of the food supply? How do GMO organisms affect honey bees, for example? We have colony collapse disorder, which is really threatening the global food supply. We had the issue of cross pollination, cross contamination, which is a huge threat to the food supply.

These long-term threats are never factored into the equations that are being decided by Monsanto or these other companies. So they ignore the long-term risks and they just highlight and focus on the short-term benefits. And it is this kind of short-term thinking that could very well spell the destruction of human civilization as we know it today. All it would take is one year of crops being wiped out around the world due to monoculture farming, and perhaps genetically, GM contamination. One season of the food disappearing and the human population collapses by maybe 70 to 80 percent.

That’s a loss of billions of lives. That’s what’s at risk here. These companies are essentially putting billions of lives at risk in order to obtain a short-term profit.

OLM: What are your favorite GMO information sources?

Mike Adams: Well, definitely the Organic Consumers Association is a top source on this issue, but there is also the Environmental Working Group which is doing great work, although they don’t post as much content as the OCA.

Recommended Supplements (These supplements help detoxify GMOs):

• Shillington’s Total Nutrition Formula
• FloraMend Prime Probiotic – Thorne Research
• Fundamental Sulfur Powder (MSM Powder) – Douglas Labs
• Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse Formula
• Shillington’s Intestinal Detox

Further Reading:

• How to Avoid GMOs
• Foods That Are GMO
• The Difference Between Heirlooms, Hybrids, and GMOs
• The Unspoken Link Between GM-Foods and Cancer
• GMO-Bananas are Going Into Human Trials

If ever there was a company that stands for everything Organic Lifestyle Magazine stands against, it’s Monsanto. To us they are the villain, a company that embodies virtually everything we at OLM believe to be wrong with big business today. We would be hard pressed to find a company whose products have done more to harm our planet.

• Click here to read part II
• Click here to read part III
• Click here to read part IV

Many argue that Monsanto’s potential to devastate life as we know it is second only to producers of atomic bombs. Ironically, Monsanto was also heavily involved in the Manhattan Project and the creation of the world’s first nuclear bomb.

Monsanto started in 1901 as a chemical company. Their first product was saccharine, a coal tar product, which has had a controversial history. You may know it as Sweet‘N Low, the artificial sweetener sold in little pink packages.

Though saccharin was their first, Monsanto is also well known for many other chemical and chemically based products including Agent Orange, Bovine Growth Hormone, Polychlorinated biphenyl (commonly known as PCBs), Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT), and RoundUp.

Today, Monsanto is a leader in the bio-tech industry selling RoundUp ready GMO seeds. Its main crops are soy, cotton, sugar beets, and canola. Its controversial bovine growth hormone, rBST, was sold to the Eli Lilly Company earlier this year.

We asked Brad Mitchell, Director of Public Affairs for Monsanto if we were dealing with a new Monsanto since our take on Monsanto’s reputation is one of deception, corruption, bribery, and environmental degradation, a company that made significantly bad choices.

“I think more than anything, it’s a new age,” he said. “…I think you’re holding the Monsanto of the middle part of the 20th century against the standards of today. So, for instance, if you look at PCBs we all know today that what Monsanto did there was wrong. It shouldn’t have been done. Did we, Monsanto, or society as a whole know in the 60s or the 50s that that was wrong? I don’t think that we were as environmentally sophisticated as we are today.

“…I’m not saying that we’re not liable, that we shouldn’t have done it, and all that, but you know, when you make these kind[s] of statements about how Monsanto obviously disregarded human health and public safety and the environment for profit, I wasn’t there. I can’t tell you what was in people’s hearts and minds. I do believe, however, that to some extent we’re being held against today’s standards for actions that occurred half a century ago.”

Perhaps we could agree that these actions occurred half a century ago if Monsanto had voluntarily embarked on a clean-up of PCB contamination in Anniston, Alabama, in any decade following the 50s or 60s. If they had, perhaps we could believe the corporation has grown a conscience. According to The Washington Post, it was February 2002 when Monsanto was held liable by an Alabama jury for all six counts it considered: negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass and outrage. The Post quotes the legal definition of outrage under Alabama law as conduct, “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.”

The Center for Food Safety maintains a website, www.monsantowatch.org. On this site they report, “In August, 2003, Monsanto and its former chemical subsidiary, Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.), agreed to pay $600 million to settle claims brought by more than 20,000 residents of Anniston, AL, over the severe contamination of ground and water by tons of PCBs dumped in the area from the 1930s until the 1970s. Court documents revealed that Monsanto was aware of the contamination decades earlier.”

History tells us Monsanto was well aware of the damage their silence and lack of action brought Anniston as The Center for Food Safety also reports,

The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state. By 1982, nearby Times Beach, Missouri, was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated.”

Monsanto can, however, claim the Monsanto of today is not the Monsanto of yesteryear. According to Wikipedia, the Monsanto of 1901-2000 and the current business are now two legally separate corporations, though they share the same name as well as many of the same executives and workers. The “new” Monsanto is an agricultural company (as opposed to a chemical company).

Are Monsanto’s misdeeds a thing of the past? In 2005, BBC News reported that Monsanto agreed to pay a $1.5 million dollar fine for bribing an Indonesian official “to avoid environmental impact studies being conducted on its [bio-tech] cotton.” Monsanto said it accepted full responsibility for its “improper activities” and agreed to three years of close monitoring of its business practices by American authorities.

GMO seeds were approved by the FDA under the GRAS designation—generally recognized as safe. As such, Monsanto’s bio-tech seeds were granted exemption from premarket approval by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Due to this ruling, the onus to ensure the safety of genetically altered food created by Monsanto rests with Monsanto, a company whose actions have revealed an unparalleled disregard for human life and environmental safety.

Opponents of GMOs often quote a cavalier statement made by Phil Angell, Monsanto’s former director of corporate communications to author Michael Pollan. In Pollan’s article, Playing God in the Garden, published in the New York Times Magazine in 1998, Angell is quoted as saying,

Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”

We asked Brad Mitchell, Director of Public Affairs for Monsanto if we were dealing with a new Monsanto since our take on Monsanto’s reputation is one of deception, corruption, bribery, and environmental degradation, a company that made significantly bad choices.   “I think more than anything, it’s a new age,” he said. “…I think you’re holding the Monsanto of the middle part of the 20th century against the standards of today. So, for instance, if you look at PCBs we all know today that what Monsanto did there was wrong. It shouldn’t have been done. Did we, Monsanto, or society as a whole know in the 60s or the 50s that that was wrong? I don’t think that we were as environmentally sophisticated as we are today.

…I’m not saying that we’re not liable, that we shouldn’t have done it, and all that, but you know, when you make these kind[s] of statements about how Monsanto obviously disregarded human health and public safety and the environment for profit, I wasn’t there. I can’t tell you what was in people’s hearts and minds. I do believe, however, that to some extent we’re being held against today’s standards for actions that occurred half a century ago.”

Perhaps we could agree that these actions occurred half a century ago if Monsanto had voluntarily embarked on a clean-up of PCB contamination in Anniston, Alabama, in any decade following the 50s or 60s. If they had, perhaps we could believe the corporation has grown a conscience. According to The Washington Post, it was February 2002 when Monsanto was held liable by an Alabama jury for all six counts it considered: negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass and outrage. The Post quotes the legal definition of outrage under Alabama law as conduct, “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.”

The Center for Food Safety maintains a website, www.monsantowatch.org. On this site they report, “In August, 2003, Monsanto and its former chemical subsidiary, Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.), agreed to pay $600 million to settle claims brought by more than 20,000 residents of Anniston, AL, over the severe contamination of ground and water by tons of PCBs dumped in the area from the 1930s until the 1970s. Court documents revealed that Monsanto was aware of the contamination decades earlier.”

History tells us Monsanto was well aware of the damage their silence and lack of action brought Anniston as The Center for Food Safety also reports,

The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state. By 1982, nearby Times Beach, Missouri, was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated.”

Monsanto can, however, claim the Monsanto of today is not the Monsanto of yesteryear. According to Wikipedia, the Monsanto of 1901-2000 and the current business are now two legally separate corporations, though they share the same name as well as many of the same executives and workers.  The “new” Monsanto is an agricultural company (as opposed to a chemical company).

Are Monsanto’s misdeeds a thing of the past? In 2005, BBC News reported that Monsanto agreed to pay a $1.5 million dollar fine for bribing an Indonesian official “to avoid environmental impact studies being conducted on its [bio-tech] cotton.”  Monsanto said it accepted full responsibility for its “improper activities” and agreed to three years of close monitoring of its business practices by American authorities.

GMO seeds were approved by the FDA under the GRAS designation—generally recognized as safe. As such, Monsanto’s bio-tech seeds were granted exemption from premarket approval by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Due to this ruling, the onus to ensure the safety of genetically altered food created by Monsanto rests with Monsanto, a company whose actions have revealed an unparalleled disregard for human life and environmental safety.

Opponents of GMOs often quote a cavalier statement made by Phil Angell, Monsanto’s former director of corporate communications to author Michael Pollan. In Pollan’s article, Playing God in the Garden, published in the New York Times Magazine in 1998, Angell is quoted as saying,

Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”

When we asked Mr. Mitchell if he was familiar with this statement, he said he thought the statement had been made by a Monsanto foreman and that it was taken out of context. “I don’t know the gentleman, but I do know the general feeling here. There is nobody here at Monsanto that I know that says, ‘Screw safety, that’s not our problem, it’s FDA’s.’ I think what the gentleman quoted is referring to is that when it comes down to it, the law, by the law, it’s FDA’s responsibility. I don’t know a single person at Monsanto who does not believe that we have the responsibility. But if you want to look at the law, the final say on this, and the final arbiter, and the people legally charged with safely stating whether it’s safe or not is not Monsanto, it’s FDA.”

Mitchell tells us he and Monsanto’s scientific team have never seen a study that shows any significant risk associated with GMO foods.

I’ve worked with our scientific affairs team, so when studies come out to do analysis and that sort of thing, we have yet to see a study which we think shows us any significant risk with these things. So, those studies are best addressed on a one-on-one basis, and I would say that there are just as many studies, independent as well, that show (chuckles) that there are not risks with them [GMOs].”

He argues that the oft referenced study by Árpád Pusztai showing GMO potatoes was flawed. “My understanding is that there were only six animals in each control group, so statistical significance is pretty weak there.” In addition, he states that Pusztai did not go through the basic safety processes. “The premise of biotech safety in virtually every country that allows these things is something called substantial equivalence. You compare a genetically modified potato to a non-genetically modified potato against a whole bunch of parameters on stuff they contain. And essentially if it doesn’t cause any physiological or physiochemical differences in the potato, they’re deemed to be substantively equivalent, which means that they are pretty much the same with the exception of the protein that’s expressed in the genetically modified one. …Now the ironic part is that Pusztai, when he did his test, never analyzed the potatoes for substantial equivalence. And in fact there is very good evidence that snowdrop lectin [used in the study] will actually—the protein itself, will change the physiology of that potato where it would not meet the standards of substantial equivalence. So he’s testing a GM product that was never commercialized, that has never even been even through the most basic level of safety, with a poor study, that basically shows and basically came to the conclusion that all genetically modified crops have risks, when he hasn’t even done the basic tests that genetically modified crops go through before being approved.”

In 1997, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre were hired by Fox Television as the researchers and stars of a new investigative news show, called The Investigators. Akre says they were told, “Do any stories you want. Ask tough questions and get answers.”  One of the first stories they proposed was an expose on Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone, rBST, also known as Posilac. Their investigation revealed that Canada refused to approve Posilac, citing health concerns, that Posilac was linked to cancer, and that the FDA had rubberstamped the product without proper testing.

While Monsanto’s publicity stated, “Posilac is the single most tested new product in history,” Wilson and Akre’s investigation revealed that the longest test Monsanto had done for human toxicity was for 90 days on 30 rats.

Legal threats from Monsanto prompted Fox to kill the story and set in motion a chain of events that resulting in Fox firing Steve Wilson and Jane Akre for insubordination after several attempts failed to convince them to kill the story, re-write the story, or out and out lie about its contents.  Fox even attempted to bribe the pair, offering them the rest of a year’s salary in exchange for their silence about the story and Fox’s part in it.

Brad Mitchell stated, “We would still contend that Monsanto [rBST] is a safe product. The FDA would support us on that. It’s still being used, albeit by a different company.”

Mitchell also tells us recent Internet rumors that Monsanto was opposed to or tried to prevent the labeling of milk as rBST free were absolutely untrue.

What we were trying to prevent was misleading labeling of milk as being rBST free. And many of the milk companies out there who were labeling it were doing so in a way that was in violation of FDA guidelines and made it basically sound like our product wasn’t safe, and the scientific consensus, at least in this country, was that it is.

“You know, we obviously would prefer that it wasn’t labeled that way, but our gripe was not against people who were labeling milk as rBST free; our real concern was people who were labeling it in opposition to what FDA guidelines set. And the vast majority of the state legislation and the things you saw really were just forcing milk labelers to label in accordance to those guidelines.

“I’ll give you an example, where some milk labels said it’s hormone free. Well, no milk is hormone free. It’s just misleading to say so. Now, if you want to say it’s rBST free, that’s better. What the FDA suggested was that it says this milk comes from cows not treated with rBST. Obviously we would prefer that people didn’t put that in writing and that people didn’t see a problem with our products. But if they were labeling milk accurately, we would not have had an issue with them.”

This company Highlight is continued in our next issue. Click to read Monsanto Company Profile Part II, Monsanto’s Turn. We will discuss Monsanto’s stand on patent infringement lawsuits and high yield potentials of GM crops, Europe’s attitude toward GMOs, and more.

Recommended Reading:

• Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods
• Monsanto part II
• Monsanto part III
• Monsanto part IV

At age 30, Mike Adams was fifty pounds overweight. He suffered from chronic back pain, depression, high cholesterol, and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The son of a Pfizer contractor and a clinical trial tester for some of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies, he had grown up trusting conventional medicine. Extensive research led him to the truth about health: the vast majority of all diseases can easily be prevented and even cured without drugs or surgery. Within months he had cured himself of diabetes and he quickly achieved optimal health. The founder of Natural News.com, The Consumer Wellness Center, Better Life Goods, and Truth Publishing, he is known today as Mike Adams, The Health Ranger.

OLM: Tell me about what’s going on with the FTC and the FDA these days.

Mike Adams: The biggest issue that affects your readership is the irradiation of the food supply. Many people choose organic foods because they want the increased nutritional potency of those foods. Everybody knows that organic fruits and vegetables have more nutrients, more vitamins, more minerals than conventionally grown. But when you irradiate those foods you destroy the delicate phytonutrients and phytochemicals that are responsible for protecting us from chronic degenerative disease. So by irradiating the food supply, the FDA and the USDA are in fact depleting the nutritional potency of the food supply. And on top of that, they don’t want anyone to know the foods are being irradiated. They want to be able to label foods as “pasteurized” if they’ve been irradiated. Louis Pasteur would be rolling in his grave to hear his name was being associated with irradiation of foods. But it’s a symptom of what’s happening in our nation. Even this financial fiasco that is going on is all about just sweeping things under the carpet, misleading consumers, and trying to pretend these problems don’t exist. It’s what the FDA is doing as well as Wall Street.

OLM: How do they irradiate food? Do you know what the process actually is?

Mike Adams: Yes. There’s an irradiation machine. It’s a lot like the conveyor belt at the airport where you put your luggage through. There’s a tunnel and there’s a belt and the food is already packaged so it’s usually already wrapped in plastic. And then it’s just fed through this machine and it simply radiates it for a few seconds with a very high power radiation machine, higher power than what they use at the airport by the way, and then it comes out, and that’s it. It’s been irradiated, and from that point forward it’s been altered. The genes, the DNA of the plant have been altered, and so have the nutritional properties.

OLM: I know they are doing this with spinach. Are they doing it with any other produce?

Mike Adams: Well, they do it with spinach. You’re right. They are considering doing it with green onions, peppers and tomatoes. And it’s only a matter of time. You know how these things go. They will expand this effort to include other veggies. Because, you see, our federal government, in my view, would rather destroy the food supply than to try to make farmers and ranchers more accountable for the cleanliness of their own operations. You see, E. coli contamination of foods is not caused by plants. It’s caused by upstream cattle factories. E. coli doesn’t grow in plants. It only grows in animals. So the contamination of lettuce or tomatoes or anything along those lines with E. coli is really caused by upstream cattle operations. And rather than clean these up they’d rather just irradiate the food supply.

OLM: And my understanding is that the E. coli that can hurt us is actually manmade. The E. coli has to survive acidic conditions and antibiotics before it mutates and becomes dangerous.

Mike Adams: Well yeah, exactly. By Industrial Farming pumping those cattle full of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, they are breeding in, essence, E. coli superbugs. And that is what gets into the food supply when they don’t have clean operations. The problem here is upstream. And again, this is very typical of what is happening in the U.S. today, which is to ignore the root causes of the problems and simply treat the symptoms or try to mask the symptoms in some way.

OLM: Do you know of any E. coli or salmonella outbreaks with organic produce?

Mike Adams: No, I don’t know of any. I’ve heard of some organic almonds being contaminated. But they were all contaminated during the shipping or transportation phase. Organic almonds are never contaminated at the source. It’s only distributions, shipping, that kind of thing, because they don’t clean the containers. You know, the big trucks. They might ship some other contaminated food first and then they don’t wash it out properly and then the almonds get contaminated.

OLM: And what they are doing with spinach they might be doing with organic spinach, as well as conventional, right? There’s no rule that says they can’t irradiate organic spinach, correct?

Mike Adams: Well, I think there is a rule that you can’t label it organic if it’s been irradiated but I’m not actually sure about that. I’d have to check on that. Regardless, what’s happening is a trend towards irradiation of more foods and a weakening of the definition of organic. And that’s where institutions like the Cornucopia Institute, which I consider to be good friends and good allies, are working very, very hard to protect the integrity of the word organic, the definition of organic.

OLM: I’ve just recently looked at their website pretty extensively and I am pretty pleased with them. I just found out about them from… I think it was one of your emails.

Mike Adams:They represent small farms all over the country. That’s their constituency, so to speak. They are trying to protect those small farms and doing so requires the protection of the definition of organic. Because if you can let big business come in and put chemicals on the crops and chemicals in the animals and then still call it organic then, of course, the small farmers can’t compete.

OLM: It seems that they are what the FDA should be.

Mike Adams: Yeah. Yeah. (Laughing wryly) It’s very clear that the FDA and the FTC and even the USDA no longer work to protect the people, not by any wild stretch of the imagination. They work to protect the interests of the corporations that control this country. The people are protected only by the non-profits. It’s organizations like the Cornucopia Institute that are suing the USDA  or organizations like the Organic Consumers Association, which  I also support , that are suing the so called organic deputy operations. These non-profits are doing the job that the regulators should have been doing but are refusing to do.

OLM: Yeah, and you know a lot of people have a really hard time swallowing the idea that there are people in Congress, the FDA, and the FTC who want us to be sick.  But it does seem like that’s what they’re doing. That’s certainly the end result.

Mike Adams: It’s a well known phenomenon that every regulatory agency eventually becomes the marketing branch of the very industry it’s supposed to regulate and the reason is because all the people working at the FDA, or most, used to work in the industries they regulate. And the people who leave the FDA go to work at those companies. So it’s a revolving door policy is what it’s called. So it’s all the same people and they’re just pretending to be on two sides of the fence when in fact they are all working in the same direction which is more drugs, more power, more profits for the corporations.

Now none of these people actually want Americans to be sick. They don’t fall asleep at night dreaming of a nation full of sick, diseased people.  However, they are willing to look the other way while this happens.  We’ve seen the lack of integrity in Western culture where people are willing do anything to make money. We saw it with Enron. We’re seeing it right now with the big financial fallout on Wall Street where people are walking away with billions of dollars in profits while causing taxpayers to foot the bill for all the debt and fraud that they created. People in positions of power will almost always compromise the safety or the health of the public if it means more money or more power for themselves. And that’s just a basic human law.  People are inherently selfish. And there are some individuals who have high spirituality, who have learned ethics, who can overcome that basic human nature of selfishness. I think you and I are certainly among those people; however, we are in the minority. Most people think about themselves and their own financial gains, and that’s it.

OLM: The FTC is suing companies that are trying to help people, companies that say they can cure cancer or companies that say they can treat or cure disease. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mike Adams: The FTC is joining the FDA in running what I call a campaign of terrorism and oppression against companies offering legitimate cancer solutions. There are many, many anti-cancer plants and herbs and natural medicines that exist. And this is widely acknowledged everywhere in the world except in the United States.  The FTC has now taken it upon itself to insist there is no such thing as an anti-cancer nutrient and anyone who says there is, is automatically guilty of a serious crime.  And they are now suing and threatening prison time and threatening bankruptcies to these companies that offer legitimate scientifically validated anti-cancer solutions. This is being done, of course, to protect the highly corrupt, fraudulent cancer industry that depends on the continuation of cancer in the population in order to stay in business. The truth is we could cure 90% of cancer right now, using what we know right now.

OLM: And the 10% we can’t cure are just people who are so far gone.

Mike Adams: Right. Those would be the 10% who got chemotherapy, who suffered freakish radiation events or things like that, that are just very, very difficult to reverse.  But 90% with confidence, we can reverse. And certainly we can easily prevent 98% of all cancers. We could live in a world without cancer. But the cancer industry absolutely does not want to see that happen.

OLM: Well, cancer, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, anything that requires continued care, is just too profitable.

Mike Adams: That’s it. And realize a full quarter of our national economy is now invested in the business of disease and sickness care. What are you going to do? Give the cures to the population? Then you will have a 25% unemployment rate. You’ll have trillions of dollars in losses, because there’s been so much investment in hospitals and clinics and oncology centers and medical schools and all of these things that are based on people staying sick and diseased. Sothey don’t want the population to be free of cancer. It would cause too much economic devastation.

OLM: Speaking of that, I think it was in one of your newsletters I read that talks about where our taxpayer dollars go. And a big chunck of that is health, or lack thereof.

Mike Adams:  Yes. The three biggest areas where our tax dollars go right now, and I believe it’s 96% of our tax dollars—that’s war, disease, and debt. If you just go look at the numbers, that’s what it’s paying for. War, which they call security. Disease, which they call health care. And debt which is just interest payments on the national debt, which is now, as of the recent financial situation, 10 trillion dollars.

OLM: And you know not one of these three could really last forever. I just don’t see how a country can spend the majority of its money on any one of these three and be profitable forever. It sounds like a house of cards.

Mike Adams: It’s absolutely a house of cards. And its ultimate outcome is not in doubt by anyone who can do math. That is the complete—the complete collapse of the United States government and a re-booting of the global economy. The USA as we know it today will not exist in a few more years. It cannot. It is mathematically impossible. Even if you could pay off all the debt. If aliens showed up with money, just paid off the debt of everybody in the world, you still have a nation that’s diseased. And you have a generation of children who are diseased and are being raised on junk food, and pharmaceuticals, and vaccines, and toxic chemicals but not getting sunlight and not getting nutrition. You don’t have a future. No nation has a future if the health of its children is compromised. So the future for the United States of America looks very, very bleak in my opinion. And it may be several generations before people learn these hard lessons and realize that if you want to have an abundant future you must invest in health rather than investing in disease.

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To learn more about Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, go to healthranger.org

Author of the breakthrough books Never be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again.

An MIT-trained scientist, internationally recognized leader in health, and called “…one of the few scientists who has achieved a breakthrough understanding of health and disease,” Raymond Francis is on the cutting-edge of biological science and an internationally recognized leader in the field of optimal-health maintenance.

He has proposed an entirely new concept of health along with a simple program for achieving it called the Beyond Health Model. Raymond is chairman and CEO of Beyond Health Corporation, a supplier of highly advanced health education and world class health-supporting products to the public. In addition to being an author of two best-selling books, Raymond Francis is the creator of the internationally-presented Beyond Health Seminar and author of the Pathways to Health newspaper columns. He has been a guest on more than 1,500 radio and television shows.

For more than fifteen years, Raymond has been the host and producer of his own syndicated radio talk show, The Beyond Health Show. Raymond is also the founder and president of the nonprofit, Health-e-America Foundation (HeAF). The foundation’s purpose is to end the epidemic of chronic disease by using revolutionary technology to teach the basics of good health. HeAF is the sponsor of TPED (The Project to End Disease), a growing international movement to teach people how to end disease in their lives.

What was the catalyst that caused you to learn about alternative healing and nutrition?

I took very sick and almost died.  In fact, my death was a medical certainty.  The doctors gave up all hope that I would live but at the last moment, I used my own knowledge of biochemistry to save my life. That event has led me on a quest to learn more about why people get sick, what we can do to make them well, and to share what I have learned with others.

How has your field helped you understand the human body?

An understanding of biochemistry is fundamental to understanding health and disease.

Why do you think most physicians don’t view health and illness as you do?

Physicians have almost no training in biochemistry.  Their education is focused on anatomy, diagnosing diseases, and treating diseases with drugs and surgery.  They have virtually no understanding of the biological processes that cause disease or how to reverse these processes after they happen.  This is why they are so ineffective.  Medicine is about “managing” disease, suppressing the symptoms of disease, not about curing disease.

Most alternative health care practitioners seem to be fairly narrowly focused, yet you have such a broad understanding about health and illness. How did you develop such a broad range of knowledge?

I developed my holistic approach because, as I researched health, it became very obvious that a holistic approach was required.  While what is going on at the cellular level determines health or disease, there are many factors that influence events at the cellular level.  These include nutrition, exposure to toxins, your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, the amount of physical activity you get, the amount of sunshine you get, and even your exposure to electromagnetic fields.

You have written two best-selling books: Never Be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again. How have doctors responded to the information in your book Never Be Sick Again?

Doctors all over the country, and even in foreign countries, are telling us that they are changing the way they practice medicine after reading Never Be Sick Again. This is because the book provides a fundamental understanding of what causes disease and how to prevent and reverse disease.  It changes the equation from merely managing disease to curing disease. More than a few physicians have called it one of the most important books they have ever read.

Tell us about the “one disease theory”.

All so-called diseases have a common root. All disease is the result of malfunction at the cellular level—so there is only one disease—a malfunctioning cell.  The many different symptoms produced by these malfunctions have led to the belief that there are many diseases.  This confuses our physicians and leads to a chaotic approach to treating disease. There are not many diseases, only many symptoms produced by one disease—cellular malfunction.  For example, mercury toxicity can cause cellular malfunction producing various symptoms including allergies, asthma, arthritis, depression, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis.  Your doctor will diagnose you with six different diseases and prescribe drugs for each disease.  The diseases will remain chronic and the drugs will damage your health and produce many unpleasant side effects.  However, once you understand that these six “diseases” are merely symptoms of cellular malfunction, you can then look for the true cause of your cellular malfunction, get rid of the excess mercury, and get well.  All these so-called diseases will simply disappear.  There is only one disease—cellular malfunction.

Will readers be able to cut back on their prescription drugs by following the advice in this book?

If they follow the advice in the book and get well, they will be healthy and have no need for drugs.

What are your feelings about typical store bought vitamins?

As an expert in vitamin chemistry, I call tell you with confidence that most of them are junk.  They are not worth what you pay for them, and some even have toxic effects.  When I was struggling to save my life and restore my health, all the vitamins I took made me sick.  Now I know why, and I have my own brand of vitamins, the Beyond Health brand that is the highest quality obtainable.

Never Be Fat Again has been called the “first diet book worth reading.” What makes it different?

What makes it different is that it is the first weight-control book that allows you to lose weight—permanently.  It is scientifically proven that diets don’t work.  Just look around you for the proof.  If diets worked, few would be overweight.  Never Be Fat Again is different.  It is not a diet book. It is a cause and effect breakthrough that gives readers the knowledge to reverse the causes that created the weight in the first place.

Why do you refer to being overweight as a disease?

Because it is a disease.  Overweight is not a cosmetic problem.  It is a serious, chronic, degenerative disease.  If you are even five pounds overweight, we can begin to measure damaging biochemical abnormalities in your body.  This is why overweight people have more of all kinds of diseases, die younger, and suffer more disability than people of normal weight.  Fat doesn’t just sit there and look back at you in the mirror.  Fat cells are biologically active, producing a flood of dangerous, health-damaging chemicals, including excess estrogen that contributes to breast and prostate cancers.

What do you see as the biggest problem with most approaches to weight loss?

The biggest problem is that most approaches are aimed at losing weight.  This is a mistake.  Excess weight is only a symptom of this disease.  Almost anyone can lose 5 to 10 percent of their weight on any number of popular diets.  However, almost everyone will gain the weight back, usually gaining more than they lost. The only real solution is to cure the disease, and then the weight (the symptom) goes away automatically.

How does toxicity cause one to be overweight?

There are two control centers in the brain that control your weight.  One is the appetite control and the other is the fat-storage control.  Certain environmental toxins, such as artificial sweeteners and flavor enhancers (glutamates) will jam these controls and keep you hungry and storing fat, no matter how much or how little you eat.  In fact, toxins are a major cause of overweight disease.

What can the average person do right now to lose weight?

Buy a copy of Never Be Fat Again and learn how to eat a good diet, avoid toxins and improve your health so you can feel better, have more energy, think more clearly, lose weight, and enjoy a higher quality of life.  Since overweight is a disease, the only way to lose weight permanently is to improve health and get well.

What are the three most common things people do to make themselves sick?

1.  They eat poor diets consisting mainly of factory produced, processed foods that are low in nutrition and high in toxins.

2.  They needlessly expose themselves to dangerous environmental toxins that are avoidable.

3.  They put needless stress on themselves.

What are the first steps that most everyone can take to get well?

First understand that health is a choice. Then determine what is necessary to achieve it.  This means learning how to get adequate nutrition, to avoid avoidable toxins, to get regular physical activity, to get adequate sunlight, to learn to manage stress, and have a positive mental attitude.  Even if you are willing to do only one thing, get the sugar out of your life. It will have a tremendous positive impact on your health.

Raymond Francis is an MIT-trained scientist, internationally recognized leader in optimal health maintenance, and author of the breakthrough books: Never be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again.

Raymond makes free health reports available to the public on his website: www.beyondhealth.com