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Report from the UNSTOPPABLE Book Tour

At Moms Across America, we focus on mothers for many reasons, one being because they buy 85% of the food. However, the food we buy comes from global sources. And GMO crops grown in the USA are not only purchased by American mothers. In fact, the largest consumers of GMO crops grown in the USA are animals; livestock such as cattle, pigs, and chickens in Asia... as a result, the people of Asia actually consume more GMOs than Americans. 

I was surprised to learn that Japan plays one of the largest roles in the global food supply because they own the largest grain distribution center in the world, based in the USA. They distribute 60,000 tons of grains a day from the American Midwest to China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Latin America. 94% of these grains are currently GMO glyphosate-sprayed grains. If, after learning the truth about the dangers of GMOs and related agrochemicals, Japan decided to transition purchases to regenerative organic grains then they could not only transform the food supply and health of America, but they could impact the US farmers to transition to regenerative organic agriculture and reduce climate change by sequestering millions of tons of carbon. This would help to prevent 29 million homes from being lost on the coasts of both Japan and the USA by 2050, improve soil/water quality, and human/animal health. Japan has a huge opportunity to lead the way in transforming the food supply.

From diciembre 1 to the 14th, 2019, I embarked on a 2-week IMPARABLE book tour, speaking in 9 of the largest cities in Japan in front of delightfully full theaters, audiences of 200-500 at each location, 2300 people total. This is my third year going to Japan to speak, raising awareness about GMOs and the use of glyphosate, at the invitation of Green Coop, a food cooperative with 400,000 members in southern Japan. My book IMPARABLE was published in Japanese by Gendai Shokan, whose founder was an activist in his college days. Due to courageous reporters, publishers, activists, and dedicated mothers, Japanese consumers are becoming more aware and more active. For example, recently thanks to pressure from a mom named Jeanne-san from Hokkaido, Daiso, one of Japan’s largest chain stores, stopped selling Roundup. 

Who do you trust with your family’s health?

Too many reports of glyphosate weedkiller in Cheerios and snacks, heavy metals in baby food, and chemicals that are banned in Europe being allowed in our food are hitting the newsstands today. There is something going on with our regulatory systems and it’s called a failure to do their jobs. It’s in times like this when we cannot wait around for these agencies and our elected officials to “see the light” through the piles of cash that have been given to them by the chemicals and GMO companies. No, we must take matters into our own hands.

Today Moms Across America posted our 2019 Informe de impacto on our website. It is a document that was literally 12 months in the writing. This time last year, as we published our 2018 report, we made a promise to our supporters to step boldly into 2019. We didn’t know at the time what the future held, we just knew that there would continue to be challenges. We weren’t wrong. On behalf of mothers everywhere we vowed to continue to rise to those challenges.

A new study is bound to be a major headache for the maker of Aspirin, Bayer, which purchased Monsanto last year for $66 billion. In purchasing Monsanto, Bayer took on the legal burdens of Monsanto’s flagship product, Roundup, and now faces over 42,000 lawsuits just for Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma alone. Thousands more await their turn to sue Monsanto, however, as recent studies have shown that Roundup and its main ingredient glyphosate, at very low levels, cause liver and kidney disease, aggressive breast cancer growth, and now the destruction of the gut microbiome which can lead to a host of chronic and mental illnesses.

In the midst of the holiday season, Moms Across America would like to make you aware of another reason to come together and celebrate during the month of December. Many of us are unaware, or have forgotten, that in Paris on diciembre 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly created a milestone document setting out, for the first time, fundamental, universally protected human rights. That document has since been translated into over 500 languages.

Today, during December, people all around the world come together and stand-up for equality, justice, and dignity of all humans. We believe it is something we should be remembering to do every day.

Zen Honeycutt and the MAA Team

I travel a lot to tell the world about the harm from Monsanto/Bayer products such as GMOs and Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide. Sometimes, it seems like the healthiest option at an airport, for instance, is a Chicken Caesar salad. Low and behold... chicken (fed grain genetically engineered and sprayed with toxins Bayer/Monsanto makes) is apparently a major reason for UTIs.

On octubre 23, 2019, Moms Across America requested a list of the gene-edited GMOs currently in the marketplace from the FDA. Gene-edited foods include the use of biotechnological techniques to make changes to specific DNA sequences in the genome of a living organism. They are the “new” GMOs that manufacturers claim are “more precise” and edit a food for a desired trait (like masking the browning of a vegetable) instead of genetically engineering the plant to contain toxic pesticides or resist herbicides (like 80% of the GMOs currently in the market). These new gene-edited GMOs are being created quickly and it is unclear how many are in the marketplace. Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth warn that “In julio 2018, scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the U.K. found that new genetic engineering techniques like CRISPR may cause “genetic havoc”.

At Moms Across America we have been talking about the health problems posed by glyphosate for over 6 years now. In January of 2018, MAA reported on the findings of Seralini and Team in the article Arsenic and Heavy Metals found in Herbicide Sprayed on Food Crops. Their findings disproved the pesticide industry claim that “inert” ingredients found in glyphosate-based herbicides do not need regulating, meaning arsenic did not need to be a declared ingredient, despite the fact that it is highly toxic and proven to bioaccumulate. Ongoing exposure over time can lead to lung, kidney, skin, and bladder cancers, and can interfere with hormones that regulate the metabolism and immune system.

Food. It is a necessity and usually a joyful part of life. We create entire communities and cultures around the stuff. Food is there for every major event in our lives whether joyous or sorrowful. Food can heal. But food can also be the pink elephant in the room. The thing we don’t talk about when we eat differently than others. The thing that excludes us and our kids from their tribe. The thing we are uncomfortable talking about when our kids have a food allergy and their exposure could put them in the hospital or worse. Then, food can be isolating and separating and scary.

Moms Across America has many advisors who support our educational outreach to mainstream American families. One of them is the esteemed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., founder of nonprofit WaterKeepers, an environmental lawyer who is on the legal team suing Monsanto, Chairman of the Board and Chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense, and father of seven. He is also the author of eight books, his most recent being American Values, Lessons I Learned from My Family. It is this book and his current work at Children’s Health Defense that Moms Across America most wants the public to know about. We are at a turning point in history... and without the values, as so lovingly shared in his recent book, and the truth, as it is exposed through the work of Children’s Health Defense, our future looks unimaginably bleak.