Monsanto: A Modern Day Plague

'Monsanto’s history is one steeped with controversial products, deadly consequences, massive cover ups, political slight of hand, and culminates as a modern day plague on humanity, a plague that is about to peak to biblical proportions. Created in 1901, the company started producing its first form of poison, the artificial sweetener saccharin. 


The rise in use of saccharin really began 70 years later. Monsanto had plenty of time for a realistic and long term study on the impact of saccharin on human health. Instead, Monsanto learned how to finagle political support and grow its empire despite the growing consensus that saccharin caused cancer.


No surprise then that the company continued on a path of controversy. Here’s a bullet point history.'


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Beekeepers Win Ban on Monsanto’s GMOs in Poland

'Monsanto’s Mon810 corn, genetically engineered to produce a mutant version of the insecticide Bt, has been banned in Poland following protests by beekeepers who showed the corn was killing honeybees. Poland is the first country to formally acknowledge the link between Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn and the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that’s been devastating bees around the world.'

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Monsanto's Roundup May End Bananas—And They're Merely the Canary in the Mine

'The bananas we eat today are not the same ones that were eaten in the first half of the 20th century. Those were tastier and creamier. They were lost to monoculture. A fungal infection, Fusarium, couldn't be overcome because nearly all bananas were clones, and therefore susceptible to the same disease. 

The bananas we eat today, a different variety that had been secure from Fusarium are now falling to the same fungal infection. Agribusiness responds simply by closing up shop where the disease has taken over and starting up in a new area. In true earth scorching approach, they walk away from their disasters and do exactly the same thing elsewhere, thus recreating the same disaster again and again.'



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The Monsanto Anschluss: Long Laid Plans to Undo the Rule of Law

'To begin to appreciate the scope of Monsanto’s attack on the American
people, one can look in three places, beginning with the USDA’s ruling
on genetically modified Kentucky Bluegrass, and the agricultural – that
is to say, food – element involved.




Kentucky bluegrass is one of four primary grasses foraged by or fed to grass-fed animals, along with alfalfa (the GM version of which has also been approved).




It is a inadequate to speak only of GM “lawns” (though the impact of
its use for lawns is huge) when the entire organic meat and dairy
industry is also threatened by GM bluegrass.


Jeffrey Smith of the Institute for Responsible Technology sums up the seriousness of the deregulation that is occurring:'





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Monsanto GM corn harvest fails massively in South Africa

'South African farmers suffered millions of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of genetically-manipulated corn (maize) failed to produce hardly any seeds.The plants look lush and healthy from the outside. Monsanto has offered compensation. 

Monsanto blames the failure of the three varieties of corn planted on these farms, in three South African provinces, on alleged ‘underfertilisation processes in the laboratory”. Some 280 of the 1,000 farmers who planted the three varieties of Monsanto corn this year, have reported extensive seedless corn problems. Urgent investigation demanded.'

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Monsanto back in court: Center for Food Safety challenges GMO alfalfa ruling

 

'The Center for Food Safety has announced an immediate challenge to the USDA’s unregulated approval of Monsanto’s genetically-modified (GMO) alfalfa.
“All farmers should be on notice that we will be suing again, so before they make their seed buying decisions, I would certainly caution them that we will be in court,” CFS’s Andrew Kimbrell told Agri-Pulse.com. “And I think that anybody who looks at our past record over the last five years will realize that we haven’t lost yet.” '


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Monsanto’s Neotame molecule allowed in USDA certified organic foods

Neotame is an artificial sweetener made by NutraSweet that is between 7,000 and 13,000 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). The product is attractive to food manufacturers as its use greatly lowers the cost of production compared to using sugar or high fructose corn syrup (due to the lower quantities needed toachieve the same sweetening)

 

'Everyone wants to indulge a sweet tooth at this festive time of year, without suffering the inevitable consequences of weight gain. But, be aware of the hidden (not listed on ingredient labels) dangers of Neotame sweetener in almost everything consumed by humans, and now even in feed for livestock raised for human consumption.'

 

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Court Orders Monsanto's GMO Sugarbeet to be Destroyed

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the destruction of plantings of genetically modified sugar beets developed by Monsanto Co after ruling previously the U.S. Agriculture Department illegally approved the biotech crop.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in August banned the planting and sales of Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” biotech sugar beets after determining that their approval in 2005 by the USDA was illegal. He said the government must conduct a thorough environmental review before approving the crop to comply with the law.


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Africa, Chocolate, Bill Gates, Monsanto, and the Genetically Modified Land Grab

By Barbara H. Peterson

Farm Wars

On October 25, 2010, the ETC Group issued a report titled “Gene Giants Stockpile Patents on “Climate-ready” Crops.” It seems that the biotech giants along with Bill and Melinda Gates, are teaming up once again to force genetically modified (GM) crops down the world’s throat, and Africa is high on the list of targeted countries.

Download the PDF HERE: Gene Giants Stockpile Patents on “Climate-ready” Crops in Bid to Become Biomassters

To gain desperately needed moral legitimacy, Gene Giants like Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta and DuPont are forging high-profile partnerships with public sector institutions that aim to deliver proprietary technologies to resource-poor farmers.

(Gene Giants Stockpile Patents on “Climate-ready” Crops”)

Not surprisingly, the Gates foundation has invested heavily in the biggest gene giant, Monsanto. “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s investment portfolio includes 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock with an estimated worth of $23.1 million purchased in the second quarter of 2010” (Farm Wars).

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How Monsanto Owns and Manipulates the World's Food Supply

'Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.

The company has used the agreements to spread its technology — giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto's genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto's genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.

For example, one contract provision bans independent companies from breeding plants that contain both Monsanto's genes and the genes of any of its competitors, unless Monsanto gives prior written permission — giving Monsanto the ability to effectively lock out competitors from inserting their patented traits into the vast share of U.S. crops that already contain Monsanto's genes.'

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