Kate Mason

By TONY MOBILIFONITIS
Part 2
NSW researcher and blogger Kate Mason has raised the alarm over Australian fake-food companies using so-called “immortalised” cells she says are technically pre-cancerous and in some cases fully cancerous, to grow their concoctions in large vats.

Because real meat cells, for instance, don’t divide and reproduce, food makers make cells that continuously reproduce, in order to make commercially viable quantities of their frankenfood products, fake meat included. And yes, they will tell you, it really does taste like meat!

Mason, who spoke at the Reckless Rewewables Rally in Canberra in February, is not claiming these foods cause cancer, she is simply asking a question based on a biological fact.

But according to the powers that be, there’s no need to be alarmed folks, because this gee-whiz scientific innovation is part of “following the road to help push the world closer to achieving Zero Hunger, the second of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, as New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries so nicely puts it.

Now if governments like the one in Queensland were genuine in their desire to feed the world, why are they and our friends at the CSIRO shooting buffalo and wild cattle across the top end of the state and in the Northern Territory and leaving them to rot?

Cairns News is aware that the CSIRO is tagging wild buffalos in the NT with RFID tags, enabling satellite tracking so in the future the buffalo can be shot, thereby removing a food source for Aborigines or anyone else.

CSIRO, NPWS, ALP destroying cattle and buffalo herds across the north of Australia

They are also moving to Cape York this year to do the same with feral cattle. This is why the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) has been aerial shooting these wild cattle on Cape York for several years, again, removing a food source. They received federal funding 12 months ago to track these buffalo and cattle.

If “feeding the world” was the priority of these governments and their agencies, wouldn’t it be better to round up these cattle and bring them to the indigenous or other beef properties in these outback regions? But no, wild cattle and buffalo, and livestock generally, don’t fit with the grand plan to lock up the landscape and produce our protein in factories.

Our sustainability masters, who inhabit the global green NGOs and environmental agencies at the UN and regularly attend the COP gatherings, know just how to carry out this “bold, global plan to save the planet from hunger and deprivation” – or so they say.

These enlightened folk have worked it all out in something called “Agrifood Systems”. Apparently we ordinary folk should feel a warm inner glow when we discover the wonders of global central planning, We can also be reassured that the corporate agricultural elite such as those who run the CropLife conglomerate and our own CSIRO really do know what they are doing. Or do they?

They reassure us that the big Agrifood Systems plan is all about “planetary health”, and we all want a healthy planet, don’t we? Agrifood Systems encompasses “how the food we eat is farmed or raised, how it is transported and how and where we dispose of it”. This amazing plan is about “growing harvesting from net emitters into a carbon sink by 2050, capturing 1.5 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually” – whatever that means.

As noted by Kate Mason on RealityCheck Radio “The big guys behind this are the world’s largest chemical companies with lots and lots of tech companies assisting. In 2020 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation signed a partnership with CropLife to transform our food systems- with biotech.”

Now we get it! It’s obvious that you can’t have a transformed food system with biotech, while at the same time having wild buffalo and cattle protein running around willy nilly in Australia’s northern outback. Next thing you know we’ll have a black market for genuine, wild beef!

According to Mason’s research, the only farms in the not-so-distant future will be those operating under the banner of “regenerative agriculture”. These will most likely be corporate-owned and producing expensive real produce for an elite market. The family farm will have been regulated out of existence.

Vast areas of previous traditional agricultural land will have been locked up under corporate, government or indigenous control earning carbon credits. Bill Gates in the US, the notorious promoter of insect protein, is said to be buying up vast areas of agricultural land already.

But back to our “delicious meat” from the factory vat. Mason says the tech food makers must have a cell that multiplies itself using a medium to keep growing the cells, such as foetal bovine serum. She says Vow Foods in Sydney says it doesn’t use this, but it’s processes are not public.

Vow Foods, on its website, gives the impression that it’s so-called “cultivated meat” is safe and nutritious, even “yummy” with eye-catching pictures of their product on platters alongside gourmet cheeses, bread and fruits. It’s all very hip and compelling, no doubt done by marketing experts.

“We take a tiny bit of animal and select the perfect cells,” Vow’s marketing spiel notes. “They’re the building blocks of our meat we so meticulously curate the absolute best. We culture these cells and grow only the meat you want to eat. This happens in huge tanks that give our cells loads of space to grow. We craft food unlike anything else you’ve eaten. We’re not out to replicate meat as you know it; we’re aiming to make it yummier and more nutritious.”

It all sounds so creamy, smooth and wonderful – like one of those chocolate adverts on TV. But Kate Mason has some serious questions to ask. “So that is a cancerous cell, where a cell just keeps developing and doesn’t stop. So I don’t know how Vow Food are doing that, because as I said before, there’s 30 documents that we’re not allowed to see. They’re not going to tell you the process whereby they do that because that’s commercial, confidential information,” she said.

“But it [a multiplying cell] is a pre-cancerous cell state. There’s nothing that can be said about that, that is 100% what it is, and then if you’ve got cells dividing indefinitely they can come up with different gene patterns, so you’re ending up with something, who knows what it is.”

Cairns News has emailed Vow Foods asking for their reaction to Mason’s claims. However we don’t expect any reply soon, by the time their media people have hummed and hahed over the advantages or otherwise of replying or just pretending we don’t exist.

So, with most of the beef you see in butchers or supermarkets, you basically know where it came from, and how it was raised ie grass-fed or grain-fed or both. There are also smaller boutique beef and lamb suppliers you can find on social media.

Mason said her action group was seeking a foresnic audit of factory foods. “It’s not OK that we can see what company gives the cell originally, the cell line, and creates that cell line. It’s not OK that we don’t know any of the processes.

“It’s not alright that we don’t know who in FSANZ is saying yes to this being put into our food market… and there’s no testing for this, as I said before, when they do a literature search for safety, they’re just comparing it to actual, real quail.”

She said it was worrying that in the US CropLife was seeking to get legislation passed to indemnify it’s member companies so that they can’t be sued. Monsanto and Bayer, for instance, were facing lawsuits worldwide over alleged links between glyphosate and cancer. “So yes, there’s a bigger picture to this no-transparency, no-accountability big picture which we see forming around our food systems.”

Nicholson said it sounded like a “buy-off” deal between the big corporations and governments, in which governments get the lawsuits off the companies, which in turn give in to whatever the governments demand of them. Mason said if CropLife was going to “transform our food systems”, what does that mean if they cannot be sued in any way, shape or form.

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