Biotech, GMOs and gene editing with Jeffrey Smith

This week on the Less Stressed Life, I invited Jeffrey Smith to talk about his passions for controlling biotechnology. He caught my attention at a small dinner I attended for a lifestyle medicine conference I attended in September when talking about how gene editing is getting as accessible as EasyBake ovens once were, which could unleash superbugs into the environment with catastrophic outcomes. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

• Genetic engineering
• Shikimate pathway and microbiota interruption 
• CRISPR and gene editing 

ABOUT GUEST:
Jeffrey Smith is an international bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, and the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). His book, Seeds of Deception, ignited a movement by exposing industry and government lies about GMO safety. Jeffrey has spoken in 45 countries and is the creator of the Healing from GMOs and Roundup summit and the 90 Day Lifestyle Upgrade. He is the founding executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, which is pioneering a new global effort to protect the microbiome from genetically engineered microbes.

WHERE TO FIND JEFFREY:
Website: https://responsibletechnology.org/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
On IG:  instagram.com/anti.inflammatory.nutritionist/
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Jeffrey: One of the most toxic pieces in the formulation is P O E A, which is a surfactant, which basically drives it into the plant. It also drives it into human skin, so it acts if we get exposed to the glyphosate. We, it could drive through the skin and become systemic and dangerous. 

[00:00:23] Christa: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness.

[00:00:28] Christa: Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down. We're overmedicated and underserved at the less trusts life. We are a community. Savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

[00:00:48] Christa: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

[00:01:05] Christa: All right. Today on the Less Stress Life I have Jeffrey Smith, who's an international bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, and is the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of genetically modified organisms. His book, seeds of Deception, ignited a movement by exposing industry and government, lies about G M O safety.

[00:01:22] Christa: He has spoken in 45 countries and is the creator of the Healing from GMOs and Roundup Summit and the 90 Day Lifestyle Upgrade. He's the founding executive director of the Institute for. Technology, which is pioneering a new global effort to protect the microbiome from genetically engineered microbes.

[00:01:40] Christa: And I heard Jeffrey Smith speak at a dinner at a conference at the end of September hosted by Dr. Jeffrey Blands nonprofit company. I think it's personalized lifestyle medicine and Microbiome Labs about this topic, and that's why I invited him here today. Welcome Jeffrey Smith. 

[00:01:59] Jeffrey: Thank you, Christa. Great to be here.

[00:02:01] Christa: Yeah, so. First of all, I wanna jump into talking about the microbiome and glyphosate. This is a hot topic because I work with people with food sensitivities and we talk a ton about gluten and is it this and is it that? And, and we'll come to that later, but first of all, you are wearing some big shoes.

[00:02:19] Christa: You're leading the charge on things that could change all of our lives. How did this happen? How did you end up in these shoes, where, this is where you're standing now, where were you inspired and how did it all?

[00:02:30] Jeffrey: Well, 26 years ago I went to a lecture by a whistle-blowing genetic engineer who realized that Monsanto was about to disperse genetically engineered soy and corn throughout the food supply, and the scientist who was an award-winning genetic engineer.

[00:02:46] Jeffrey: Doing cancer research said there's no way in the world any human on this planet can predictably manipulate the DNA in a safe way. The technology was just not there. It's prone to massive collateral damage in the genome. It could create allergens and toxins and carcinogens and nutritional problems, and it was entirely irresponsib.

[00:03:08] Jeffrey: and very dangerous for human health, but even more so once released into the environment, you could not recall them. So the gene pool of these crops, corn, soy, canola, et cetera, would be forever contaminated. So when I heard this, I realized this is an A plus. Priority issue that hardly anyone knew about.

[00:03:29] Jeffrey: And my background was in strategic communications, education, marketing, and I realized we needed to get things happening. We needed to get this information to the right people. So I figured I'd chip in for a little while, and that was 26 years ago. And two, two books, and five movies and 45 countries. And the Institute for Responsible Technology.

[00:03:53] Jeffrey: I've ended up as the leading spokesperson on this health danger stuff. And now with GMO 2.0, we're looking at existential threats that go way beyond what I learned about in 1996. And so we're spearheading a new global movement and campaign. To immediately lock down gene editing, especially of microbes, which could be a disaster.

[00:04:18] Jeffrey: That would have unprecedented implications. 

[00:04:21] Christa: And I know you have such a great story about that, that really kind of stopped. What I was, how I was thinking at the, at the time when I met you two months ago. But before we get into that, I wanna talk about kind of like this top level things that people's brains go to and as a clinician.

[00:04:38] Christa: Things that I see that you talked a little bit about a couple of months ago was that I have clients that will go to Europe and they will consume. There and they will be just fine. And then they'll come back to the United States and no more than land in the United States and eat something with gluten and have a reaction to it.

[00:04:58] Christa: So, and I, I've always found this a bit perplexing. Because so often with gluten, for example, people wanna blame glyphosate as the issue. And I thought, well, that doesn't really make sense in my brain because so many things are sprayed with glyphosate. That would mean you'd be reacting to orange juice in the same way and all kinds of different things.

[00:05:19] Christa: But you talk about how. glyphosate is different than the brand name Roundup in Surfactin. So will you talk about that a little bit and any other thoughts you have about this, about this particular topic? But this is where I thought that this was an interesting piece where there's kind of a very specific delineation besides what we're seeing here in the US perhaps and maybe we're seeing abroad.

[00:05:43] Christa: I. 

[00:05:44] Jeffrey: So, first of all, Krista, you said something that was just so pleasing to hear. You said everyone wants to now blame glyphosate for gluten sensitivity. I was the first person to talk about that . Uh, it was 10 years ago, or 12 or 11 years, or 11 years ago, where I raised the issue that GMOs and Roundup sprayed on GMOs was a like, Promoter of the explosion of gluten sensitivity in the United States.

[00:06:11] Jeffrey: So what I wanna say is there's really three things going on here. There's the impact of GMOs on the gluten sensitivity. There's the impact of glyphosate. Which is the chief poison in Roundup, and there's the impact of how we prepare and have hybridized our wheat compared to the wheat in Europe. So to judge to talk about the last thing there, we have actually cross-bred wheat in the United States to have higher levels of gluten.

[00:06:46] Jeffrey: We create rises in a way that's faster for commercial. Doesn't actually eat up the gluten. There's a FODMAP basis as well that others can talk about better than I. But there is a difference between the wheat that's consumed in Europe and here. But the problem is that glyphosate is used over in Europe and here, glyphosate based herbicides like Roundup.

[00:07:12] Jeffrey: Very, very few people will eat GMOs directly in Europe. So that doesn. Promote the sensitivity to glyphosate, I mean to gluten, like we're talking about. That happens here cuz people in the United States eat more than their weight in genetically engineered foods. Each year I've given webinars recently linking Y GMOs and Roundup, create a gluten response or promote a gluten response, and it comes down to these categor.

[00:07:44] Jeffrey: It suppresses the digestive abilities of our intestines and stomachs so that the proteins survive longer. And that can create a response. It damages the walls of the intestines. The microvilli further suppressing the ability to digest. It promotes leaky gut, both between the cells of our intestinal walls and within the cells.

[00:08:12] Jeffrey: If the BT toxin and insecticide is active in high concentrations, it also messes up our microbiome. Which can mess up the immune system. And create more leaky gut and whole, so many other things. And finally, it activates the immune system and creates inflammation, et cetera. And so we become more trigger happy, so to speak, to react to anything once we've hit our fill of immune activation, all of those things.

[00:08:47] Jeffrey: He reviewed published studies, clinical evidence, correlational data for epidemiological charts, all you know, experience among animal feeding studies, pets, farm animals, and lots and lots of experience with humans and their practitioners reporting. So I, for example, surveyed 3,256 people. Who got better from 28 different conditions when they switched to organic and largely organic and certainly non G M O and huge numbers got better from gluten sensitivity and more than 50% had improvements in digestion and weight problems and fatigue and anxiety and depression, and allergi.

[00:09:33] Jeffrey: So we realized that eating non-organic food that contains GMOs and Roundup or the glyphosate residue, Could be damaging to dozens and dozens of diseases and people can just on their own switch to organic, take notes about what happens, and they will be convinced as well. Well, 

[00:09:53] Christa: I forgot to mention something that's important that I think people don't always realize, or we think of it one way and not the other.

[00:10:00] Christa: And I mean, I'm in the middle of. Farming country. So this is how I know this. From talking to farmers, most many crops are sprayed with glyphosate or a product like glyphosate or that has glyphosate Roundup, which we should talk a little bit about this surfactant difference there a little bit. But before we do, I wanted to mention that.

[00:10:21] Christa: Wheat is on its own, not roundup, ready. So a lot of corn is Roundup ready. Most soybeans, I mean most if not all, corn is roundup ready. Soybeans are Roundup ready, but wheat is killed by Roundup and now wheat has to be dead to harvest it technically cause it needs to be dried down, but it's not common practice to spray it with Roundup like it is these other crops, however, , you said Regardless of that, because of our exposure to other Roundup sprayed or glyphosate sprayed or other genetically edited crops, it is affecting our digestive potential and affecting the microbia.

[00:11:01] Christa: And specifically, I was trying to think of theran. Christian does a beautiful job talking about this, but there's something that glyphosate does with the Shate. Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, Oh yeah. Will you say that? That's not the right word. It is Chiate. It is Chiate. Chiate, yeah. Shate pathway, which will tell us about the Shate pathway a little bit.

[00:11:21] Jeffrey: Sure. I just wanna say that unfortunately wheat is orphan sprayed with Roundup To kill it to just before harvest, three to five days before harvest is the recommendation from the Bear Mon Sano website. And so, The glyphosate gets absorbed into the crop, pushed in there by the surfactant so that it gets really deeply into the crop.

[00:11:44] Jeffrey: You can't wash it off, and then most of it rushes to the grain, the grains also because it's dying. It's like the parent says, quick, protect the next generation. Make sure they survive, and so it sends energy. Into, uh, ripening the grains and then it gets harvested, and the wheat in this United States has a lot of glyphosate in it.

[00:12:05] Jeffrey: Same with the oats and chickpeas and mung beans and lentils, and so many things. If you go to responsible technology.org, which is the website for our Institute for Responsible Technology, we have a glyphosate residue database. So if you can't eat organic, where glyphosate based herbicides are not allow.

[00:12:26] Jeffrey: You can read which food products have high levels of residues. So you certainly wanna avoid them when you can, if you can't get the organic version. So let's talk about Chiate for a minute because this is interesting. I mentioned that there was a moment ago that there was five different aspects. Of how GMOs in Roundup can promote gluten sensitivity.

[00:12:49] Jeffrey: And if you look at the nature of GMOs and Roundup, it also can promote cancer and birth defects and hormonal problems and whatnot. Myka mitochondrial damage, basically, if you're a healthcare professional or looking at. The leading edge of health in our current understanding, glyphosate and GMOs, but particularly cuz research, there's more research on glyphosate, damages the foundation of our health.

[00:13:17] Jeffrey: Virtually every major system gets pushed out of WAC just by this one simple chemical. Now one of the ways that it works, and this is, was bragged about by Monsanto for years, they said plants have a pathway called the chiate pathway that is blocked by glyphosate. And what you do is if you block the chiate pathway, it will kill the plant.

[00:13:52] Jeffrey: But we don't have the chiate pathway in humans. So it is safe for humans. They were pretending that the Chika made pathways the only way that glyphosate works, and it's not, and they've pretended it was the only way that it killed the plant, which it's not. And they were pretending that it was safe for humans, which it's not.

[00:14:13] Jeffrey: It turns out that the gut bacteria in us use this chiam made pathway to produce certain amino acids. Which are essential amino acids, including l tryptophan and tyrosine, and these are the precursors to serotonin and dopamine. 90% of our serotonin is produced in our gut, largely from the L Tripp produced by our healthy got bacteria.

[00:14:45] Jeffrey: But if we eat foods that have glyphosate residues because of the way farmers. Treated their crops to kill weeds, then it could block our chiate pathway and theoretically starve the process that normally creates serotonin and dopamine and serotonin translates into melatonin. So if we have a deficiency of these three neuro transmit, Then we could expect that would be one of the reasons why more than 50% of the people who reported getting better from anxiety and depression and mood disorders, why it was, what was the mechanics when they switched to largely organic food.

[00:15:32] Jeffrey: And it's also true that lack of dopamine might lead to Parkinson's, but also the chiate pathway produces a lot of our own internal medicine. So there's a lot of things that get disabled, but if we just look at the serotonin and the melatonin, that can explain why, for example, insomnia and sleep disorders skyrocketed in the United States, in parallel with the increased use of Roundup on GMO crops.

[00:16:04] Jeffrey: Same with A D H A A D D, and a D H D, and a whole host of. Mental disorders. These are examples of a very clear pathway. Take Roundup in our diet block the production of serotonin, melatonin and dopamine suffer the consequences. Go to an organic diet, now you're producing it. Things get reversed. 

[00:16:28] Christa: So the shumate pathway is used by all bacteria and fungi, et cetera.

[00:16:33] Christa: And so Monsanto said, Hey, humans don't have the shate pathway. However, humans are made up of bacteria. In theory, yes, we have a lot of sugar debate pathway, but let, as you said, it disrupts other areas as well. And something you said earlier, you talked a lot about how, you know at the very beginning you'd heard a whistleblower talk about how, hey, this could create allergens and carcinogens and things that we just don't understand.

[00:16:58] Christa: And what I really heard from that is that our toxic burden is high. And I would say, I say this to clients all the time, our toxic burden is high . We always have to be supporting clearing out toxic. . And so this is such a challenge when most food has residues. And so you've mentioned this just a little bit and I wanna make sure, I think these topics get talked about from big picture and we don't always understand them very well, and so I.

[00:17:23] Christa: Roundup or glyphosate is sprayed on crops when they are Roundup ready or glyphosate ready to not kill the crop, but to kill the weeds around it so the crop can grow more efficiently. But the backend of that is that it's causing other things to happen to the plant or pushing it into the actual grain or whatnot.

[00:17:41] Christa: I know we kind of started here, but I don't think we've really fully. Explored it. Will you talk a little bit about the difference between surfactant, what happens when there's surfactant present in Roundup, and how is it that surfactant based glyphosate is not accepted in the other parts of the world, or that we just have a higher percentage of it in the us?

[00:18:03] Christa: Can we talk a little 

[00:18:04] Jeffrey: bit more about that? Sure. When you just put glyphs. On a plant, it's not gonna have a big impact cuz it may not get through the, the walls of the leaves and the stems. And just so you know, glyphosate was originally patented as a d scaler to clean industrial boilers and pipes. Mm-hmm.

[00:18:24] Jeffrey: The reason is it's a key later it grabs onto minerals and doesn't let go. So it actually grabs onto, Mineral buildup inside this industrial piping and pulls it out. And when it was spread on the ground, it killed all the plants. So Monsanto bought the molecule and patented as an herbicide. But if you, you can't use it just on its own, you've gotta package it.

[00:18:47] Jeffrey: And in the package there's a bunch of other petro chemically derived products, which are the. Toxic and also endocrine disruptors. So when you look at the formulation of Roundup, which is mostly glyphosate, it's up to 125 times more toxic than glyphosate alone. One of the most toxic pieces in the formulation is P O E A, which is a surfactant, which basically drives it.

[00:19:20] Jeffrey: The plant, it also drives it into human skin. So if we get acts, if we get exposed to the glyphosate, we, it could drive through the skin and become systemic and dangerous. Now there's an example of how much it drives it into the skin. When Monsanto was going to register and provide the data around Roundup to the E P A, they tested human skin absorption.

[00:19:49] Jeffrey: They took a cadaver, a human dead body, and took skin and applied Roundup, and it went in, I think 10% of it got absorbed, which was 3.3 at least times the allowable level. Of glyphosate absorption. So they did what I call typical Monsanto science, and I've exposed it for dec for two decades. How they rigged their research and cover up problems and hide it from the world.

[00:20:19] Jeffrey: They took new human skin and baked it in an oven. And you know what happens when you bake meat? It gets very tough, but that wasn't tough enough. They then took this tough over baked human skin and put it in a freezer and froze. Then they applied the roundup to this frozen baked human skin, and hardly any was absorbed.

[00:20:42] Jeffrey: And those were the numbers that they reported to the E P A, never telling the e p A, that it was not normal skin, but rigged research to force the conclusion of safety. So when we end up having Roundup, that's exposed to our skin. In our food it pulls, it allows that glyphosate to open up cell walls and get in there and make it more systemically damaging.

[00:21:12] Jeffrey: And as an example of just how serious it is, the people who were suing Monsanto, the lawyers and law firm for the impact of glyphosate based or of Roundup on non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in their plaintiffs, they. Roundup and sprayed it on one of those tyc suits, just held suspended in the air and it dripped through these suits that are supposed to protect like hazmat suits.

[00:21:39] Jeffrey: And I have a, a friend Anthony Sam, who he was spraying glyphosate in around his greenhouse. And he found later that his urine became an herbicide. And it turns out that the glyphosate, he thinks was going through his rubber boots into his skin. And then when he tried to use his urine, which cuz he had coyote urine to keep the deer away from his organic garden.

[00:22:05] Jeffrey: And then he tried to use his own urine and where he sprayed it, it was killing all the plants until he stopped spraying Roundup. So it's that powerful. How it gets in. And that's also one reason why we can't wash it off of crops because it goes into the crops. Mm-hmm. and it's there in the food. 

[00:22:23] Christa: So when I heard you speak a couple of months ago, you were telling a story about that you, I think have a, a short video or a, a little documentary about, about.

[00:22:33] Christa: Kind of unleashing some superbus and there was, I think some kind of experiment or a study or it was it college students, and maybe this is the place where we talk a little bit about CRISPR and how you can kind of like gene editing is becoming like an easy bake oven nowadays. 

[00:22:49] Jeffrey: I love that. I'm gonna use that.

[00:22:51] Jeffrey: Consider that stolen, Kristen. Easy, big problem. No problem. All right. I talk about, you know, in the days when I was growing up, the kids would get chemistry sets and they can can manipulate chemicals. Now you can buy a home hobbyist CRISPR kit to manipulate dna. The problem is when you release that new organism, if you've genetically engineered bacteria, for example, it's out there self propagating if it survives.

[00:23:16] Jeffrey: It can become a permanent part of the gene pool. It can be there for thousands of more millions of years, and not only in its own form, but as it travels, it can mutate. We all know from Covid that microbes can mutate doing things that were never intended. But most people don't realize that when bacteria have sex, they actually exchange genes with other microbes, other types of microbes.

[00:23:44] Jeffrey: This horizontal gene transfer can happen with bacteria, can happen with fungus, can happen with algae, higher organisms, and so you create some new genetic combin. In your home kit, which tho those are pretty rudimentary, but high school classes now have Chris Burn. It'll become standard and it'll, the power will go up and the cost will go down.

[00:24:05] Jeffrey: And so now we have the ability to redirect the streams of evolution for of all time of the microbes, which form the microbial community called the microbiome, which is mission and health critical for human beings and the environ. Now, most people at this point are aware of the term gain of function.

[00:24:28] Jeffrey: When you take, when there's a small number of scientists that take pathogens, which are very dangerous, and because they wanna study what would happen, if those pathogens were naturally evolved to become super dangerous, they will actually force it to change and. Increase its danger so that if it happened to escape, it would create a pandemic.

[00:24:55] Jeffrey: So this is gain of function studies on potentially pandemic pathogens, and it is so dangerous that. Scientists all over the world, and citizens and governments condemn it even though it's still going on, and some people blame it for the Covid 19 outbreak. I'm not gonna get into that, but we know that the gain of function of these pathogens is potentially dangerous.

[00:25:24] Jeffrey: The story I'm about to tell you, Is about gene manipulation of run of the mill, common microbes and how they can be just as dangerous, even more dangerous. And when you overlay that on the fact that virtually every science class, science high school science lab will soon have crispr, unless we stop. Which is an easy, cheap way to manipulate the DNA and it's being used in throughout universities, and there's thousands of companies excited about using it to apply to DNA changes in virtually anything that contains dna.

[00:26:08] Jeffrey: We're talking about a potential cataclysm, and I'll explain the example, which puts it into sharp relief about what could actually happen. So these were well-meaning scientists in the early. They wanted to provide a way to help farmers make more money and stop burning the crop residues. So they took a normal bacterium from the soil.

[00:26:35] Jeffrey: K clips, planula, and it's found in the root structure of every plant on the planet. Right along that. And they genetically engineered it so that it would break down plant matter and turn it into alcohol. They were planning to distribute it to farmers throughout the country, so instead of burning their crop residues after harvest, they would break it up, put it in big tanks with the bacteria, wait two weeks, turn a spigot at the bottom, and that would flow.

[00:27:10] Jeffrey: Alcohol to run their tractors or to sell off farm as fuel. At the bottom of the barrel was a nutrient rich sludge, which they were going to be encouraged to spread on their fields as fertilizer the company was going to release. The microbe into the environment to see how far it's spread. And you can hear Dr.

[00:27:32] Jeffrey: Elaine Ingham refer to this experiment by going to protect nature now.com and watching that 16 minute film called Don't Let the Gene Out of the Bottle. So Dr. Elaine Ingham, I interviewed her some years ago and she explained. Then on a Saturday morning for graduate students, she was a faculty member at Oregon State University.

[00:27:55] Jeffrey: She was advising a graduate student who was trying to get his PhD and gotten permission from the scientists to do research on this. Genetically engineered micro butch turns plant matter into alcohol. They didn't need him to do the research. They had already done the research required by the epa. It was fully approved to be released, and they were about to release it two weeks later.

[00:28:17] Jeffrey: But on a Saturday morning, this graduate student walked into the lab. And freaked out. He had planted in soil little wheat seeds into three types of soil. Plain soil, soil with the natural clipse of plant particular bacteria, and the soil that was mixed with the genetically engineered variety that produces alcohol.

[00:28:42] Jeffrey: And when he walked in there, all of the plants that he had put into the genetically engineered version, Were dead. They were turned to slime on the top of the soil. He had no idea why. He called up Dr. Ingram and was freaking out, and she said, let's figure it out. It turns out that it was still active in the soil and turned the roots and the plants into alcohol.

[00:29:11] Jeffrey: Now, if it had been released two weeks later, what would've happened? You'll. Dr. Elaine Ingham in, if you go to again, protect Nature now.com. She talks about how she described this event at a UN assembly in New York and was approached by the EPA whistleblowers, not the EPA officials, but whistleblowers, who told her about a secret unacknowledged study done with the agency, where they found out that when they released a different type of genetically engineered bacteria, it traveled around the.

[00:29:46] Jeffrey: Not immediately, 11 miles, the first growing season, another 11 miles. But eventually they found it all over the planet. And I asked to Dr. Ingram what would happen if this alcohol creating bacteria were had been released two weeks later after her, cuz it was stopped. Once this experiment happened, it stopped.

[00:30:08] Jeffrey: And it depends on a number of things, but imagine for a moment that it killed. It's natural counterpart, which dies in the presence of alcohol and took over that niche, which is at the roots of all the plants all over the world. I asked Dr. Laningham and you can watch, and she says It could have ended terrestrial plant life.

[00:30:31] Jeffrey: Now I wanna say that we don't know if it would, but we don't want to release it to find out. And I wanna remind you that this was a common everyday run of the mill bacterium. That is found all over the planet that was genetically engineered with good intentions that could theoretically have helped farmers and the environment because they didn't have to burn their crops and their economy.

[00:30:56] Jeffrey: And yet it could have created a cataclysm far worse than covid 19, far worse than so many of the potential gain of function experiments that we're trying to. So our Institute for Responsible Technology is spearheading a new global movement to create the laws so that some high school student cre buying mail order CRISPR sequences from one company and genetic and microbes from another.

[00:31:28] Jeffrey: Cuz there's millions of possible combinations, doesn't accidentally release a microbe that causes a cataly. The government has no law to prevent what I just described happening in a high school classroom. We want governments all over the world to prevent it. So when you go to protect nature, now, Please not only sign up to receive information, but please make a donation, an ideally recurring donation so we know what's coming each month because we have to grow a global movement quickly.

[00:32:00] Jeffrey: We were the spearheading group that pioneered the global non GMO movement, so now half of the world's population believes that GMO foods are unsafe. Now we have to start another movement, but not just to convince consumers. To create new laws, so it's actually very expensive and we're in a rush, so I want to make that pitch so that we can do our job and protect all living beings and future generations.

[00:32:25] Christa: Mm-hmm. , where was this? Where was Dr. Ink's lab? She 

[00:32:31] Jeffrey: was in Oregon State University. Mm. 

[00:32:34] Christa: I was just thinking about how many times this probably could have almost happened since then. 

[00:32:39] Jeffrey: Right? Well, you'll see, if you go to the film, you'll see another bacterium that was almost released that might have altered weather patterns.

[00:32:47] Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. And I mean, those permanently, you know, it's like, you know, the, the biotech advocates tend to. More than just skew their research experiments like Monsanto did. They'll create arguments that are so unscientific, but they have all these echo chambers of front groups and paid scientists so that they all say the same thing and try and drown out the real scientist's concerns.

[00:33:16] Jeffrey: So they may try and create an argument, oh, it's never happening. It's fear mon. , but actually it is a theoretical possibility that the microbes I'm talking about could have altered weather patterns or ended terrestrial plant life, or at least had a significant impact on the environment. Now we know from invasive species, they released 24 rabbits in 1859 in Australia.

[00:33:40] Jeffrey: By the 1920s there was over 10 billion rabbits cuz rabbits multiply like rabbits, but you can get more than 10 billion cells of bacteria in a few hours. . And not only that, you're not just changing one species, but once you release. That genetic construct could end up in thousands of other types of microbes, and now they're traveling and spreading it to other microbes, and they're spreading it to other microbes and possibly into plants, et cetera.

[00:34:10] Jeffrey: And so you're changing the nature of nature. I hope that. Your listeners know how important the microbiome is. Slight changes in our microbiome are associated with about 80% of human diseases, and the microbiome and the soil is being relied upon now by those wanting to reverse climate change, to draw down carbon.

[00:34:32] Jeffrey: If we start releasing new microbes out there, we could prevent the ability of to get healthy inside of us and also prevent the ability to draw down carbon. And out of the atmosphere, all these things and so much more are at risk. 

[00:34:47] Christa: Thanks for sharing about what your, I think the Institute of Responsible Technologies, the main objective is, which is now trying to help create, I mean this is a, a long journey, right?

[00:34:58] Christa: But to create, and like you said, you're on a fast timeline, so you're , so, so I feel like money is always the answer sometimes to those things, but you're trying to. Laws boundaries a, around what can be done with, you know, easy bake oven type genetic 

[00:35:17] Jeffrey: modification. And I, and I have to say that there's an interesting opportunity.

[00:35:20] Jeffrey: On September 12th, president Biden signed an executive order, basically telling the entire executive branch to promote biotechnology. And more than a dozen apartments and agencies within the executive branch are required to submit documentation or plans to the White House in terms of how they're gonna.

[00:35:38] Jeffrey: Biotech, but they're also charged with biosafety. And we have been leading a leading voice in biosafety, and we're the ones gathering scientific information and evidence about this and other problems related to gene editing. So we have a window. We have a window to. Move this whole issue onto the world stage, not just in the US government, but around the world right now.

[00:36:03] Jeffrey: So we're trying to get, you know, basically sound the alarm so that everyone realizes that humanity is now come to that inevitable time in our evolution where we can damage biological evolution completely, inadvertently, but completely. With CRISPR kits, you can buy for less than $200, but the more sophisticated and flexible ones only $2,000.

[00:36:32] Jeffrey: And that's enough to redirect the streams of evolution for all time. And this new power requires new responsibility and that all future generations and all living beings are in fact looking to us. So this has to be. A very big deal because so many people are trained, especially scientists, to look at their narrow area of interest.

[00:36:59] Jeffrey: Very few look at the big picture, and that's the reason so often why new technology bites us, ultimately, because they're not looking at the big picture. We don't wanna release and find out that we've been narrow minded. We want to put the laws into place quickly. Very quickly with international treaties and domestic laws, even local laws, so that we lock this down right away 

[00:37:26] Christa: so we've got some serious toxic burden.

[00:37:28] Christa: We've talked about crispr. We've talked about gene editing. We've talked about glyphosate, gluten. Surfactants. We've talked about protecting nature now, which is the 16 minute video, which kind of expounds upon the story that you told us plus some other stories that kind of encapsulates a little bit your current mission with some story.

[00:37:46] Christa: Is that right? Mm-hmm. , 

[00:37:47] Jeffrey: and there's one thing we haven't discussed that I'll mention briefly. CRISPR is very. In the news these days, and a lot of scientists believe that it will eventually be used to cure disease by fixing a defect in the genome of a human. But as they've tried it, there's so many unpredicted outcomes of the genetic engineering process that it's actually killed people.

[00:38:15] Jeffrey: Now, the agricultural bio technologists. Ignore a lot of the things that can go wrong and things go wrong in quite a big way. When CRISPR was applied to human embryo cells in three different studies, the prominent journal nature described the output as chromosomal mayhem, and yet the agricultural industry is ignoring those side effects, ignoring the fact that the crops that they're creating from CRISPR and other gene editing technique.

[00:38:47] Jeffrey: Could kill people or cause allergic reactions or increase our toxic load. So they're trying to push this out into the food supply and have convinced governments like the United States and the uk, and they're working on the eu, they've convinced India and Japan and Australia and Brazil and Argentina to turn a blind eye to all GMOs created with gene editing to within a particular category.

[00:39:17] Jeffrey: What that means is that everything with DNA is being targeted and can be manipulated and released into the environment and our food supply without any safety studies, and in some cases without anyone knowing about it whatsoever. So this means that not only is the microbiome at risk. We have the capacity to corrupt nature's gene pool and essentially replace nature in this generation so that all future generations no longer inherit the products of the billions of years of evolution, but rather the products of laboratory techniques prone to side effects.

[00:39:56] Jeffrey: We have a film. Called Seven Reasons Why Gene Editing is Dangerous and unpredictable. It's six minutes, it's animated, so you see what happens inside the dna and part of our GMO 2.0 campaign, GMO two oh.com. Part of our GMO 2.0 campaign is to implement appropriate. Responsible regulations and laws regarding gene editing to counter the disinformation and lies used by the biotech industry to get governments to deregulate and to really protect nature.

[00:40:34] Jeffrey: Now, not just in the microbiome, but in all kingdoms. Because now the way it is, everyone has keys to the kingdoms and can make the changes they want. And that's not how we wanna apply democracy. It's not that we should be able. change whatever genome we want. We need to preserve and protect biological evolution so that it can continue to preserve and protect all of us.

[00:40:58] Christa: Hmm. Well we covered a lot and I always think that listeners, or listeners definitely tell me they like something tangible that they can walk away with and say, okay, what is something I can do today? I think that this is everywhere. Right? And you're working really on. Global systemic actually did the big changes, right?

[00:41:19] Christa: So, right. Um, but I'm gonna make it a little bit more microscopic in our own lives. So I'm actually gonna ask you, how do you manage your overall intake of these things? Are you perfect or ? How do you deal with that? Because that's the thing is I think sometimes a lot of us tend to have perfectionist traits and so there isn't perfection.

[00:41:38] Christa: So I think you do your best, but I'm just curious what you think about that. 

[00:41:43] Jeffrey: Well in, in a film that I did with Amy Hart called Secret Ingredients, I interview my friend David Perlmutter, and he made it very clear. He says, you're not gonna be perfect. You're not gonna be able to avoid all glyphosate. It's so much in the food supply.

[00:41:57] Jeffrey: Even if you eat organic as you look at our residue [email protected]. You'll see that plenty of the organic products still have tiny levels of glyphosate. Why? It's in the rain, it's in the air, and it's throughout the environment. Three to 4 million pounds of it were sprayed last year, so you can't avoid it completely.

[00:42:23] Jeffrey: We also have times when we have no control over our. Spoken in 45 countries, there's times I go to restaurants and I can't even speak the language of the weight staff, let alone figure out if my food was cooked in genetically engineered soybean oil, et cetera. So what I first say is, if you end up eating GMOs around, don't worry about it because worrying is toxic and the GMOs and rounder are toxic.

[00:42:49] Jeffrey: Now you have three toxins to worry about. So don't worry about it. Just do your best, and so people will. Their own level of criteria in part, depending on what's possible and in part, depending on how sensitive they are. But I do recommend, and in the movie secret ingredients, a lot of the physicians that I interview say they'll take someone off of.

[00:43:13] Jeffrey: The normal diet and put 'em on organic and they'll, their autoimmune system problems will go away, their joint pain goes away. All these things happen, and then they'll cheat in either in a single meal or a weekend or a vacation, and then their symptoms come back and then they get it, and then they are more committed than ever.

[00:43:31] Jeffrey: So it's really a self-exploration. That's why I say when you switch to organic, immediately today, create a spreadsheet. Every single column is a different day. Along the left-hand side, you put, what percentage of your food is organic? What is your energy level, what is your mood than all of the symptoms?

[00:43:50] Jeffrey: And that it's one to 10, everything one to 10, and every. , when you switch to organic watch what happens because you may do it in order to lose weight or because you have acne or or eczema, or because you have anxiety or depression, but you might find completely new things come online, whole new ways of health that you weren't aware of.

[00:44:12] Jeffrey: Then you realize what's been going on and what the causes are of your discomfort. So switching to organic and trying. For at least for the first few weeks as much as possible, as close to a hundred percent as possible can. Don't stress if you miss it, but watch what happens, and then you can get a sense of how sensitive you are.

[00:44:35] Jeffrey: And then what else we can do in terms of bringing this out. The Institute of Responsible Technology is working on. Plans not only for local action that we can do, but also national and international, and we need help with that. So when you go to responsible technology.org, please sign up to receive our notifications so we can let you know when there's something you can do locally.

[00:45:00] Jeffrey: If there's a new GMO out there, we'll let you know about it. And also please make a donation. It's really a team effort. I've been living off of the good graces and generosity of donors to our nonprofit for 20 years, and so has the staff. We have to quadruple the staff immediately and then more and open up offices around the world.

[00:45:23] Jeffrey: So we need a lot more members of the team. So that's something people can do. And even if it's five or $10 a month given on a recurring basis, it adds. So we're looking, for example, for a thousand practitioners to give something each month and 250 businesses and 500 farms, and this, you know, one person's donation will multiply by a thousand or 2000.

[00:45:47] Jeffrey: And then we're talking about the amount of money that we need. To spearhead a movement and bring in other movements. The regenerative agriculture movement needs microbes. The health movement needs healthy microbiomes. Environmental movements need healthy environmental microbes. Oceans need their algae and microbes to function, even national security.

[00:46:10] Jeffrey: Needs it. So we have natural allies all over the planet, some very well organized who don't yet know that their success depends on our success to protect the microbiome. So it shouldn't be due difficult to build a global movement with millions if we get the word out correctly. 

[00:46:29] Christa: Hmm. Jeffrey Smith, thank you so much for coming on today.

[00:46:32] Christa: I know you mentioned a couple sites, a couple different sites, so you had protect nature. Now for the 16 minute video, where else do you want people to go to find you online? Okay, 

[00:46:40] Jeffrey: so protect nature now.com. We have GMO two oh.com, and the mothership is really responsible technology.org. If you go to jeffrey smith.org, then you'll get links to 'em.

[00:46:56] Jeffrey: Plus some of the online courses that I have. The film I talked about, secret ingredients, the 90 day lifestyle upgrade to help people switch to organic. The healing from GMOs and Roundup Summit in terms of how to extra cleanse and rebuild and repair your body, things like that. So Jeffrey smith.org can be the portal for a lot of these other locations.

[00:47:16] Jeffrey: Cool. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you, Krista. 

[00:47:20] Christa: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission. To help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story, just go to review this podcast.com/less stressed life. That's review this podcast.com.

[00:47:40] Christa: Less stressed life, and you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.