Agricultural giant Cargill and others behind anti-organic 'Stanford Study'

Saturday, September 15, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: organic foods study, Stanford, Cargill

(NaturalNews) The corporate media machine has once again done the people of the world a great disservice by shirking its responsibility to conduct a proper investigation and inquiry into the issue of organics following the recent release of the infamous Stanford University anti-organic study. It turns out that the study, which many mainstream media outlets have been citing as divine truth, is nothing more than corporate-sponsored propaganda pushing an industrial agriculture agenda.

If the "lamestream" media had bothered to take even 10 minutes to investigate who was behind this latest attack on organic food, it would have realized that corporate food giant Cargill, the Monsanto-aligned Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, British Petroleum (BP), and Goldman Sachs are among the many corporate donors that made the study possible. And since both Cargill and Monsanto have a vested interest in seeing organics fail, it is no surprise that the study came to the ridiculous conclusions that it did.

Stanford's Food Security and the Environment program a product of Cargill

Another important little factoid that mainstream news readers are not being told is that Stanford University's Food Security and the Environment program, which was responsible for producing the study, exists primarily because of large cash infusions made to it by Cargill. According to Cargill's own website (http://www.cargill.com), the agri-giant has established a 25-year partnership with Stanford to conduct "research, teaching, and outreach" as part of the program.

An announcement made last November also reveals that Cargill has awarded Stanford several large cash infusions totaling $5 million (http://foodsecurity.stanford.edu). This money has been specifically earmarked for fostering "long-term solutions for issues of food security, food and diet diversification, food subsidies, and food safety," among other purposes. As can be expected, part of this effort includes deliberately conducting junk studies like the anti-organic study that advance the corporate food agenda.

Big Ag trying to squash organics, normalize GMOs

What all this means, of course, is that the Stanford anti-organic study is anything but an unbiased assessment of organic food. By design, the study appears to have been intended to both minimize the value of organic food, and maximize the supposed value of conventional and genetically modified (GM) food. And the ultimate goal of this equalization effort is to increase public acceptance of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), particularly as states like California ramp up to pass mandatory GMO labeling laws. (http://www.carighttoknow.org/)

"When entire news cycles are dominated by headlines built on a single university study, with editorials attempting to hammer in big-agri talking points, a lobbying effort is clearly afoot," writes Tony Cartalucci on his blog Land Destroyer Report about the mainstream media's blitzkrieg on organics following the release of the fraudulent Stanford study.

"The Stanford study intentionally dismisses concerns regarding the presence of pesticides by simply claiming levels were within legal tolerances. No discussion was made on whether legal tolerances equated to safe tolerances, nor was there any mention made of the harmful effects of genetically-modified organisms (GMO) or other controversial food additives found in non-organic food products."

Be sure to check out Cartalucci's complete report, which serves as a solid rebuttal to yet another inane editorial that tries to use the Stanford study to advocate feeding pesticides and GMOs to babies: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com