Pallin' Around with Monsanto

[CitizenPatriot]

Are the Food Police really coming to dig up your organic garden?

There’s an email going around spreading fear into the hearts of home gardeners across America…People who love to garden or finally resorted to gardening to avoid food poising from our less-than regulated food supply courtesy of the under-staffed Bush FDA are now terrified that the Food Police are coming to our backyards to dig up our heirloom tomatoes and force us to eat hormone-injected, dyed-red tomatoes that taste like plastic.

Now, I don’t know about you, but these days when I hear fear-mongering like that, I immediately think: Republican agenda. After all, this is their modus operandi. By Republican agenda, I mean NeoCons, Big Business, and basically anyone who uses Republican tactics to successfully bring about better legislation for corporate interests.

So, I’m suspicious. I’ve been burned enough by their whisper campaigns to now question everything I hear. And I mean, if a Republican (or “moderate” as they now call themselves, in yet another effort to co-opt our language and win the war on Truth, but I digress) told me the sky was blue, I’d look up to check the color of the sky. After 8 years or more of their Ministry of Truthiness, one could say I’ve finally learned.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/Food-Police-HR-875

[wellstone dem]

1. I'm not sure it affects in-city gardners, but it is a worry for rural farmers and gardnets

No company has been more aggressive than Monsanto in defending its “intellectual property.” Monsanto currently holds 647 plant biotech patents, more than any other company. When farmers purchase seed containing Monsanto’s patented technology, they are required to give up their age-old right to save their own seed, to grant Monsanto broad rights to access their personal records and to come on to their property to inspect their crops. According to Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers (#9756), a report published by the Center for Food Safety, Monsanto maintains a staff of 75 employees with an annual budget of $10 million for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting farmers for patent infringement. It has a toll-free number that allows farmers and businesses to place confidential calls to snitch on alleged patent infringers and it hires private investigation firms such as Pinkerton to spy on suspected farmers. It has investigated hundreds of farmers, sent scores of threatening letters and made out-of-court settlements for alleged patent violations. The 90 lawsuits it has filed represent just the tip of the iceberg.

http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/monsanto.htm

And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.

1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.

2. They've written Monsanto seed laws
<http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/news/10040.htm> and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds). Does your state have such a seed law? Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted. That's been killed.

In Illinois, which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his staff is Monsanto lobbyists.

3. Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack's brainchild, actually) that remove community control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can't block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops. So if you don't want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, tough luck.

Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are <> and see if your state is still a democracy or is Monsanto’s. A farmer in Illinois told me he heard that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every state. People need to check on that.

4. For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that make a farmer's seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing but GM-seeds) because it’s now considered a "source of seed contamination." Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment … for EACH line of seed. Seed storage facilities are also listed (another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment. And manure. Something that can contaminate seed. Notice that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not mentioned.

You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay). Try that with pesticides and fertilizers. Indian farmers have. Their top choice for how to commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto pesticides.

5. Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest. In Pilot Grove, Missouri, <http://www.grain.org/bio-ipr/?id=548> in Indiana (Maurice Parr), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon). And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police <http://www.opednews.com/articles/MONSANTO-investigator-in-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090110-871.html> to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed. Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.

So, after demanding that seed cleaners somehow be able to tell one seed from another (or be sued to kingdom come) or corrupting legislatures to put in laws about labeling of seeds that are so onerous no one can cope with them, what is Monsanto's attitude about labeling their own stuff? You guessed it - they're out there pushing laws against ANY labeling of their own GM-food and animals and of any exports to other countries. Why?
http://nonais.org/index.php/2008/02/15/monstersanto-in-kansas/%20

We know, and they know, why.

As Norman Braksick, the president of Asgrow Seed Co. (now owned by Monsanto) predicted in the Kansas City Star (3/7/94) seven years ago, "If you put a label on a genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

And they've sued dairy farmers for telling the truth about their milk being rBGH-free, though rBGH is associated with an increased risk of breast, colon and prostate cancers.
http://www.keepmainefree.org/suesuesue.html

I just heard that some seed dealers urge farmers to buy the seed under the seed dealer's name, telling the farmers it helps the dealer get a discount on seed to buy a lot under their own name. Then Monsanto sues the poor farmer for buying their seed without a contract and extorts huge sums from them.

Here’s a youtube video that is worth your time. Vandana Shiva is one of the leading anti-Monsanto people in the world. In this video, she says (and this video is old), Monsanto had sued 1500 farmers whose fields had simply been contaminated by GM-crops. Listen to all the ways Monsanto goes after farmers.
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/CFSMOnsantovsFarmerReport1.13.05.pdf

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_16844.cfm