Monsanto is an American-owned international agro-chemical and foods conglomerate. It employs about 45,000 people and peddles over eight billion dollars a year in chemical products all over the world. While Monsanto has been critised for some time for their production of NutraSweet and the genetically engineered rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormone), the latest criticism is for it’s moves into the world of GMOs (genetically manipulated organisams). They produce ‘RoundUp Ready’ soya beans that are genetically altered to be resistant to their chemical herbicide ‘Roundup’ (the biggest selling agro-chemical in the world with sales totalling more than $620 million a year), which provides 40% of the companies operating profit.
Monsanto’s Pledge
They pledge to:
- Reduce all toxic and hazardous releases and emissions, working toward an ultimate goal of zero effect;
- Ensure no Monsanto operation poses any undue risk to our employees and our communities;
- Work to achieve sustainable agriculture through new technology and practices;
- Ensure groundwater safety;
- Keep our plants open to our communities and involve the community in plant operations;
- Manage all corporate real estate, including plant sites, to benefit nature; and
- Search worldwide for technology to reduce and eliminate waste from our operations, with the top priority being not making it in the first place.
Take a look at Monsanto’s website and it might be mistaken for a company who cares. The Coal industry has taken the same advertising tactic (learn more about the so-called ‘Clean Coal’ industry) as have many others.
Let’s see if Monsanto is what they say they are…
GE Sugar Beets to Hit Stores in 2008!
Kellogg’s responded (read the response) to a letter that Organic Consumers Associationand allies sent to Kellogg’s on June 12. The letter requested that Kellogg’s not use sugar from Monsanto’s genetically engineered sugar beets in its products or face a consumer boycott. Kellogg’s claim that US consumers do not care if their food contains Genetically Engineered (GE) food or not.
Monsanto Corporation’s RoundUp Ready Genetically Engineered Sugar Beet is designed to withstand massive doses of toxic weed killers. Roughly half of all processed foods contain sugar from sugar beets. Monsanto’s GE sugar beets will expose millions of consumers to untested and unlabeled “Franken Foods” that threaten human heath, the environment and farmers’ rights everywhere.
American Crystal, a large Wyoming-based sugar company and several other leading U.S. sugar providers have announced they will be sourcing their sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets beginning this year and arriving in stores in 2008. Like GE corn and GE soy, products containing GE sugar will not be labeled as such.
Since half of the granulated sugar in the U.S. comes from sugar beets, a move towards biotech beets marks a dramatic alteration of the U.S. food supply. These sugars, along with GE corn and soy, are found in many conventional food products, so consumers will be exposed to genetically engineered ingredients in just about every non-organic multiple-ingredient product they purchase.
The GE sugar beet is designed to withstand strong doses of Monsanto’s controversial broad spectrum Roundup herbicide. Studies indicate farmers planting “Roundup Ready” corn and soy spray large amounts of the herbicide, contaminating both soil and water. Farmers planting GE sugar beets are told they may be able to apply the herbicide up to five times per year. Sugar beets are grown on 1.4 million acres by 12,000 farmers in the U.S. from Oregon to Minnesota.
Meanwhile, candy companies like Hershey’s are urging farmers not to plant GE sugar beets, noting that consumer surveys suggest resistance to the product. In addition the European Union has not approved GE sugar beets for human consumption.
Genetically Modified Food and World Hunger
The biggest study of its kind ever conducted – the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger
Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.
The study carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.
Professor Barney Gordon, of the university’s department of agronomy, said he started the research reported in the journal Better Crops because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had “noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions”. He added: “People were asking the question ‘how come I don’t get as high a yield as I used to?’”
He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one. Continue reading...
In the 1980s, Monsanto Corporation got a bad name for polluting every square foot of the planet with noxious PCBs, dioxin, and harmful pesticides. Now Monsanto is a leader in the biotech revolution that threatens to engineeer the genes of every food crop on the planet with potentially desasterous consequences for the environment.In 1996 Monsanto introduced its RoundUp Ready soybean – which has been geneticallyaltered to be resistant to the chemical herbicide glyphosate which is marketed by Monsanto as Roundup. The inbuilt resistance allows farmers to use the herbicide while the crop is growing. Other altered crops likeky to be marketed include maize, wheat, sugar beet, letuce, potatoes and poplar.
Monsanto also owns 49.9 percent of Calgene, the maker of the Flavr Savr tomato engineered for longer shelf life.
The US Secretary of Agriculture Doesn’t Stand a Chance in the Multi-Nationals
The Secretary of Agriculture at the time when Monsanto was pushing for approval of their GM Round Up Ready seed… Dan Glickman, Bill Clinton’s Ag secretary from 1995-2000 said… “In the early years of BioTechnology, there was a general feeling in Agra Business and inside our government – if you weren’t marching lock-shock in favor of rapid approval of bio-tech products, rapid approval of GMO crops, then somehow you were ‘anti-science and anti-progress… when I was in the Depart of Agriculture on me ‘not to push the issue’ too far, so to speak. When I was in the Clinton administration, I got slapped around a little. By not only the industry but some of the people in the administration.”
How are GMO’s Regulated in the US?
The FDA. Which is legally responsible for regulating the safety of food and medicine.
Foods Derived From New Plant Varieties: defining the criteria
The most crucial piece of information was published by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).
Federal Register May 29, 1992
Principle 1: Foods derived from Genetic Modification are regulated within the existing framework that applied to foods developed by traditional plant breeding.
Clearly, the FDA decided NOT to create a special category for GMO’s. For further information contact James Maryanski, who headed the biotechnology department at the time.
James Maryanski (Oct 1999 wrote then) and said now…
“Basically, the government had taken a decision that would not create new laws. They felt that there were already sufficient laws in place that had enough authority for the agency to deal with these new technologies. Yes, this was a political decision [not based on scientific data], it was a broad decision, it didn’t just apply to foods. It applied to all products of biotechnology.”
The World According to Monsanto
How Did They Justify Their Decision?
Principle 2: In most cases, the components of food related to genetic engineering modification of a plant will be the same as or substantially similar to that of substances such as commonly found in food.
This means that the FDA thinks that a genetically modified plant is the equivalent of its non-genetically modified counterpart.
How could the FDA say that a GMO is the same as a conventional plant?
James Maryanski, “What we do know, is that the genes that are being introduced currently by biotechnology, are proteins that are very similar to proteins that we’ve consumed for many centuries.”
Gene Modification Considered as “Food Additives” By FDA
Jemery Rifkin, the first to denounce the Principle of Equivalence…
“The reason why GM crops are here is based on a deception that occurred within the FDA, they said that these foods are not different. They used the words ’substantially equivalent’ [a way to paper-over the need for companies, like Monsanto, to move their products into the environment quickly with the least amount of government interference]. They used the words ‘not meaningful or uniformly different’ – and what that turned into was a terminology called GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe). Typically, if something is to be recognized as GRAS it needs lots of peer reviewed studies and an overwhelming consensus of the scientific community. With GM crops, they had neither.”
When you want to put a coloring or preservative into a food, you have to go through all of these criteria to make Reasonable certainty of no harm.
But when you genetically engineer a food, which can cause untold differences in that plant the FDA does not require anything.
Monsanto has overwhelming influence over the highest levels of regulatory decision making.
On May 15, 1987, nine years before Monsanto’s Round Up Ready soybeans were sold, George Bush Sr. while vice president under Ronald Reagan, met with Monsanto scientists for a demonstration how soybeans were genetically modified. They took DNA apart and mixed little pieces and splice them back together. DNA that was made from a bacterium that resists herbicide. Monsanto, “we have a fabulous herbicide,” stated one of Monsanto’s people. When discussing the hurdles, Bush Sr. replied, “Call me, we’re in the de-reg business. Well, maybe we can help.”
“De-regulation” was this administrations watch-word. The intention of this meeting was to boost industry by eliminating, what White House hardliners called “Bureaucratic Hurdles” like health and environmental safety testing – which were Monsanto’s key problems.
In 1988, Bush Sr. became president, and Dan Quail vice president, four years later – Quail announced the policy regarding GMO’s, drafted just as Monsanto had wanted. “We are taking the step, as part of the presidents regulatory relief initiative, now in its second phase. The US is already the world leader in biotechnology – and – we want to keep it that way! In 1991 alone, it was a 4 billion dollar industry. It should reach at least 50 billion dollars by the year 2000. As long as we resist the spread of unnecessary regulation.”
Jeffrey Smith, author, on whether he thinks this was a conspiracy…
“Conspiracy is a strong word. From a corporate standpoint, it was a brilliantly executed take-over.”
Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation for Economic Trends said…
“Early on, a gentleman by the name of Michael Taylor, became the deputy administrator of the FDA, right at the time they were about to set out their policy.”
Michael Taylor before working for the FDA he was an attorney for Monsanto for seven years “I was a partner in a law firm, King and Spalding [who also had clients from the 'Food, Bar and Technology Council" and he drafted a proposal for how they would like to see GM foods regulated], for which Monsanto was a client and in his words, “worked on some Monsanto matters.” The FDA created a ‘new position’, in July 1991, for Taylor so he could author the GMO policies and provided the leadership for the project.
Monsanto played the political and regulatory game very well. Monsanto played a key role in getting bovine growth hormone approved and how genetic engineering was dealt with.
Today, Michael Taylor, heads a foundation called, “Resources for the Future.”
Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)
A transgenic hormone that’s injected into cattle to increase dairy production by 20%. It’s an understatement to say, rBGH is a health risk. Monsanto began selling it to dairy farmers in 1994 under the brand name Posilac.
“In 1985, Monsanto submitted Posilac to the FDA for market approval. The experts at the FDA center for veterinarian medicine reviewed the studies that Monsanto had carried out on experimental herds.” At the FDA the veterinarian in charge of reviewing the data, Richard Burroughs, who said, “agency officials had suppressed and manipulated data. They didn’t ask questions about the diseases of rBGH such as mastitis, which is an infection of the mammary glands and reproductive problems…”
“So, when the data came in and that was missing, I said, OK guys you need to go back and get information. That set it back probably two or three years…. I never got to see a lot of the later studies, the FDA side tracked me. Because they figured if you’re in the way, we’ll get you out of the way. One day I was fired and escorted to the door and was told that was it, I was done. Yes, I have been threatened. Mainly by the lawyers from Monsanto. When I was going for my appeal, Monsanto told my lawyer, that if I went in and revealed any company secrets in my defense that they [Monsanto] would sue me.”
In the end, the FDA was forced to reinstate this conscious veterinarian, who eventually resigned disheartened.
Stolen Monsanto Files
Sent to Dr. Samuel Epstein, who heads the Cancer Prevention Coalition. In 1990, Epstein published an article in The Milkweed, the standard for dairy reporting. The article was based on the material he scrutinized.
“In October of that year, I came into my office and found a great big box of documents. It came from Washington but no indication as to who sent it. This was a box of files, of all of Monsanto’s records which had been submitted to the FDA. All of the battery tests and the proceedings of the past six years or so. This was great fun… [most of the documents are original, "Company Confidential" which may not be reproduced, or sent out to unauthorized persons outside the company without proper authorization].”
Revealing this information made Monsanto very angry because what they were able to establish is that there were dramatic physiological changes in the animals that received the rBGH shots compared to their control group peers.
For instance, the ovaries of the cows receiving the synthetic hormone and the different treatment group were for the right ovaries 34% larger, 42% larger, and 44% larger.
Elsewhere in the stolen files, it shows there were severe reproductive problems with the rBGH animals.
Monsanto feels this rBGH is completely safe and “beneficial for consumers” [Monsanto's words, not mine] for humans to consume animals who are given the shots. What do you think? Do you feel it’s safe to consume dairy products and eat the meat from these animals? Yes, dairy cows DO end up in the meat aisle, even if it requires a forklift to get them in to slaughter.
“It’s untrue, it’s a lie, which ever adjective you want to use,” states Samuel Epstein, “it’s a very different product [than dairy that has not been administered rBGH] it’s a very, very different product in many ways. First of all, the high incidence of Mastitis, there will be puss in the milk. And then, you’ll find antibiotics, given to the cows to treat the Mastitis. So, a wide range of antibiotics would be in the milk. Apart from that, and very importantly, very substantial increases in levels of IGF1. There have been a series of studies, somewhere in near 60, relating increased levels of IGF1 and breast and prostrate cancers.”
Monsanto Sweeteners
Since April 1995, the U.S. FDA has reported over 10,000 volunteered consumer complaints stemming from NutraSweet (aka Equal , Aspartame). Among the symptoms listed are blindness seizures, memory loss, loss of limb control, slurred speech, skin lesions, extremity numbness, depression, mood swings, anxiety attacks, coma and death.Absorbed very quickly into the bloodstream it metabolizes into six to eight byproducts including methyl alcohol and the class A carcinogen, formaldehyde.
The early research history of aspartame was plagued with deception. Although the US FDA gave the product approval, it later emerged that the results of animal experiments conducted when researching the chemical, had been manipulated to improve them.
Are you Sick to Your Stomach Yet?
The hormone was banned in Europe and Canada. Interesting, Canada… they usually model their decisions on the FDA’s.
Monsanto Accused of Attempt to Bribe Health Canada for rBGH, The Ottawa Citizen article. Monsanto tried to pay the scientists of Health Canada between 1 and 2 million dollars [gee, Monsanto sounds like a real trustworthy company don't they!?]
The two main crops in America, corn and soy – the basis of most our food, and now grains that are used for biofuels – are controlled by Monsanto. 90% of soy is GMO and of that, 90% of those traits “belong” to Monsanto. And for corn, the largest crop, 60% is GMO, nearly 100% are Monsanto “owned” traits.
Which Companies Does Monsanto Own?
Products and brandnames:
• NutraSweet, Equal
• G.D. Searle (producer of Demulen, Flagyl, Kerlone, Lomotil)
• BGH (aka rBGH, rBST, Posilac)
• Simplese (an artificial butter fat)
• Simple Pleasures Frozen Dairy Desserts, Salad Dressing and Mayonnaise
• Astroturf and Wear Dated Carpets (artificial fibers)
• Fome-Cor (home insulation foam sheeting)
• Roundup (garden herbicide)
• Dimension (garden herbicide)
• Butachlor (herbicide)
• agricultural chemicals: Lasso, Harness Plus, Far Go, Avauer, Machete, Bronco, Bullet, Cropstar GB, Freedom, Landmaster BW, Micro-Tech Partner, Ram Rod, Accord, Buckle, Fallow Master, Lariat, Rodeo
• Alimet (a feed supplement and preservative)
• Flavr Savr tomato (the most disgusting tomato on earth)
• GM sugar beets in Kellogg’s cereal’s (Special K is right, a Special Kind of Killing)
• GM Soybeans (YES, that includes ALL of those soy and Tofu products that we’ve been told are healthy for us – they LIED!)
Irresponsible
Monsanto’s herbicide Butachlor, marketed in foreign countries such as Machete and Lambast, has never been permanently approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. Adverse effects of the chemical include weight loss, weight changes in internal organs, reduced brain size together with lesions. Multinational Monitor reports that Butachlor can be found in the U.S. food supply. It’s used in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Venezuela. This implies that the majority of rice imports could contain it.
New Warning Label for ALL Monsanto Products
These products should come with warnings, just like big pharma advertises their drugs: eating this food or using this product may cause breast cancer, prostrate cancer, cause you to drop dead of a heart failure at 16 years of age (watch the video and you’ll know what I mean), cause your daughters to begin puberty at the tender age of 6, will absolutely cause the PCB levels in your body to elevate into the thousands (the acceptable world limit is 2 PPB), will cover the entire earth and waterways with high levels of PCB’s, will kill fish, frogs/toad’s, will kill our pollinators such as Honey Bee’s and butterflies, will cause you to have long-term illnesses that will cost you more money than you have for meds… let’s hear from reader’s what else should we add to this list???
Monsanto Bullies Small Farmers
Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City.
The Square Deal is a fixture in Eagleville, a place where farmers and townspeople can go for lightbulbs, greeting cards, hunting gear, ice cream, aspirin, and dozens of other small items without having to drive to a big-box store in Bethany, the county seat, 15 miles down Interstate 35.
Everyone knows Rinehart, who was born and raised in the area and runs one of Eagleville’s few surviving businesses. The stranger came up to the counter and asked for him by name.
“Well, that’s me,” said Rinehart.
As Rinehart would recall, the man began verbally attacking him, saying he had proof that Rinehart had planted Monsanto’s genetically modified (G.M.) soybeans in violation of the company’s patent. Better come clean and settle with Monsanto, Rinehart says the man told him—or face the consequences.
Rinehart was incredulous, listening to the words as puzzled customers and employees looked on. Like many others in rural America, Rinehart knew of Monsanto’s fierce reputation for enforcing its patents and suing anyone who allegedly violated them. But Rinehart wasn’t a farmer. He wasn’t a seed dealer. He hadn’t planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a small—a really small—country store in a town of 350 people. He was angry that somebody could just barge into the store and embarrass him in front of everyone. “It made me and my business look bad,” he says. Rinehart says he told the intruder, “You got the wrong guy.” Continue reading…
Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready seeds are required to sign an agreement promising not to save the seed produced after each harvest for re-planting, or to sell the seed to other farmers. This means that farmers must buy new seed every year. Those increased sales, coupled with ballooning sales of its Roundup weed killer, have been a bonanza for Monsanto.
Monsanto Seed Police
This radical departure from the age-old practice of saving seed for next years planting has created turmoil in farms. Some farmers don’t fully understand that they are ‘not’ supposed to save Monsanto’s seeds for next year’s planting.
Others do, but ignore the stipulation rather than throw away a perfectly usable product.
Still others say that they don’t use Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds, but seeds have been blown into their fields by wind or deposited by birds.
It’s certainly easy for GM seeds to get mixed in with traditional varieties when seeds are cleaned by commercial dealers for re-planting. The seeds look identical; only a laboratory analysis can show the difference.
Even if a farmer doesn’t buy GM seeds and doesn’t want them on his land, it’s a safe bet he’ll get a visit from Monsanto’s seed police if crops grown from G.M. seeds are discovered in his fields.
As was the case with Percy, and many other farmers, regarding The Future of Food…
Controlling Nature
For centuries—millennia—farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head.
Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without killing their crops. Monsanto patented these seeds.
For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. “It’s not like describing a widget,” says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto’s activities in rural America for years.
In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover “a live human-made microorganism.” In this case, the organism wasn’t even a seed. Rather, it was a Pseudomonas bacterium developed by a General Electric scientist to clean up oil spills. But the precedent was set, and Monsanto took advantage of it. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
Monsanto Controlling the the World
Monsanto is not just seeking control over grains, but is genetically engineering vegetables and trees, bought Delta and Pineland in order to own its (and its partner, the USDA’s) terminator technology (seeds built to go sterile after one season, establishing TOTAL control over seeds it sells while risking cross-pollination and thus seeds in nature going sterile, too), is buying up fish farms and privatizing water.
Some Farmers Prefer Death After Involvement with Monsanto
I found it!!! Three years ago I heard on All things Considered (PBS Radio) about how an American working with Monsanto was forcing Iraqi’s to use ONLY GM seed from Monsanto. Hearing that disturbed me greatly, as a landscaper and plant lover the last thing we want are terminator seeds and lack of diversity in species. Here it is…
Central India’s ongoing epidemic of farmer suicides, where growers are killing themselves at a terrifying clip after finding themselves caught in a loop of crop failure and debt rooted in genetically modified and patented agriculture – the same farming model that the once-grand poobah of post-invasion Iraq, U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer forced on farmers. He introduced to Iraq, during his tenure as administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American body that ruled the “new Iraq” in its chaotic early days (aka Monsanto).
In his 400 days of service as CPA administrator, Bremer issued a series of directives known collectively as the “100 Orders.” Bremer’s orders set up the building blocks of the new Iraq, and among them is Order 81 [PDF], officially titled Amendments to Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, enacted by Bremer on April 26, 2004.
Order 81 generated very little press attention when it was issued. And what coverage it did spark tended to get the details wrong. Reports claimed that what the United States’ man in Iraq had done was no less than tell each and every Iraqi farmer — growers who had been tilling the soil of Mesopotamia for thousands of years — that from here on out they could not reuse seeds from their fields or trade seeds with their neighbors, but instead they would be required to purchase all of their seeds from the likes of U.S. agriculture conglomerates like Monsanto.
What Order 81 did was to establish the strong intellectual property protections on seed and plant products that a company like Monsanto. Iraq was open for business. In short, Order 81 was Bremer’s way of telling Monsanto that the same conditions had been created in Iraq that had led to the company’s stunning successes in India. Continue reading…
Kissinger said that if you control food, you control populations. That’s what’s happening. Fascism is arriving through food, Seeds of Destruction: The Geopolitics of GM Food
Monsanto’s Worldwide Totalitarian Control
The fight for farmers here and abroad is not some happy-go-lucky interest in organic and better tasting food. It is a fight against worldwide totalitarian control over land and food and animals and water and all natural substances by multinationals. Farming is at the heart of everything and is deeply political.
It’s time to pay serious attention to a Press Release…
For Immediate Release: July 22, 2008
Contact: Fred Stokes, tfredstokes@hughes.net, 601-527-2459
Michael Stumo, stumo@competitivemarkets.com, 413-717-0184
Lincoln, NE – The Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) says Monsanto’s market power is driving up seed prices and devastating farmers and their communities. OCM sent a letter explaining the economic implications of Monsanto’s seed prices on rural communities to 23 state attorneys general today. The organization continues to encourage several state attorneys general to expand their antitrust investigation into Monsanto’s suspected anticompetitive practices in the U.S. seed industry
“Monsanto’s market power has been quietly accruing over several years and has now begun materially impacting price,” said Keith Mudd, OCM’s board president. “The lack of competition and innovation in the marketplace has reduced farmers’ choices and enabled Monsanto to raise prices unencumbered.”
Monsanto executives recently told DTN that they expect to raise the price of some seed corn varieties to $300. The Monsanto executives consider themselves only restrained by the “red-face test.” “There is no competitive restraint to this price hike,” said Mudd.
OCM points to a specific quote from the DTN article:
Even the list price on seed corn will topple the $300 per bag barrier starting this fall, up about $95 to $100 per bag, or 35 percent on average, according to Monsanto officials who met with DTN and Progressive Farmer editors this week.For 2009, 76 percent of the company’s corn sales will be triple stack, ’so we think we can get the pricing right to show farmers the benefits,’ John Jansen, Monsanto’s corn traits lead. ‘We can pass the red-faced test from the Panhandle of Texas to McLean County, Ill.’
“A $100 price increase is a tremendous drain on rural America,” said Fred Stokes, OCM’s executive director. “Let’s say a farmer in Iowa who farms 1,000 acres plants one of these expensive corn varieties next year. The gross increased cost is more than $40,000. Yet there’s no scientific basis to justify this price hike. How can we let companies get away with this?” continued Stokes.
The lack of innovation and choice in the seed industry, as well as increased prices, will only get worse over time. “If and when the ethanol boom subsides, Monsanto will not lower its prices, farmers will be forced into bankruptcy, and the lack of an effective remedy for antitrust in crop seed will be a substantial cause,” added Stokes.
OCM is a nonprofit organization working for open and competitive markets and fair trade for American food producers, consumers and rural communities. OCM’s Seed Concentration Project aims to foster competition, innovation and choice in the crop seed industry.
Monsanto an “Axis of Evil”
I think it’s high time we STOP buying any product or food that Monsanto touches. If in my lifetime, I can see this company vanish – I will one happy camper! I’ve had it with these companies… I want our government back – completely out of the hands of liars, manipulators and those who only care about one thing, their wallet. Let’s get ‘em where it hurts, in their piggy bank!
Boycott all Monsanto products. We all lived happily before Monsanto took over the US government, the FDA, the USDA – we do not need their tainted and poisoned products.
Did You Know
All of Monsanto’s seeds go one step further… they have what’s called a “Tracker Gene” inserted into the DNA of each any every seed they produce and sell. That’s how they can go onto a farm, get samples of a plant, bring it back to their lab and test it to see if it’s one of theirs.
Ok, it gets worse… in remote areas in Mexico, there are ordinary people with gardens who have NEVER purchased a seed from Monsanto. But, on occasion they do buy fresh corn to eat and since they are so used to saving seed they save some seed from these ears of corn and plant them. What researchers have found is that this corn is cross pollinating with wild and heirloom species of corn that have evolved genetically on their own various traits which make them adaptable in a particular climate. In essence, these Monsanto seeds are going to completely taint every single plant on earth, wild and cultivated.
This may not seem like a big deal, as the average person does not realize the implications of just how devastating this will be. To put it simply, we MUST maintain biodiversity of species – for our survival.
Scientists say, by 2050 at least 50% of all species will be extinct. What makes us think that we won’t be one of that 50%?
At the rate we’re going it is highly likely we will be extinct. We must take action and do it now! There’s no time to turn a blind-eye and leave it to other generations to take care of. If the atom smashing (I think there are just some things we’re not suppose to know the answers to) doesn’t wipe us out most certainly Monsanto will. I don’t know about you, but I certainly do NOT want to be controlled by greedy people with big companies whose wallets and power hungry appetites are never satiated.
This is Serious Stuff
I’ve only skimmed the surface of this issue, visit the Organic Consumers Association to learn more!
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