Creating more organisms with less predators will damage the balance and cause radical shifts, which will make the global warming caused my mankind crowd to mis interpret the data to what actually is going on. The bio-fuels for fossil fuels market now under way will be rich pickings for Monsanto, who will be able to offer cheaper forms of production minus the petrochemical components to do with fertilization and pest control. Big oil will give way to big GMO, and this will be given the going green tick of approval, and any1 who tries to debunk/stop the global warming caused by mankind crowd and the positive effects of GMO on the environment crowed will be labeled a eco-terrorist. Make no mistake, these crises have been manufactured and so the solutions will also be manufactured so that freedom will be traded for security, problem, reaction, final solution style.
spiritual_mistress User ID: 426396 5/9/2008 7:30 PM
I detest these companies. Corn doesn't look like corn anymore. It has this weird super yellow color. Corn bread doens't taste like cornbread. Not the yellow or the white. The white cornbread now looks a butter yellow. My favorite veggie down the tubes. So many unidentified proteins in these franken-foods. Auto-immune diseases are running more rampant now. anybody know a brand of good white cornmeal that tastes like it is supposed to taste?
Best way is to grow your own and I suggest Baker creek for the seeds-and they are perfect corns for making corn meal and tortillas. I have already posted several links and Baker Creek is one of them-there is no monsanto there-the couple who own it are serious about protecting our bio-diversity
I called them and spoke with them about it as monsanto has a habit of buying out all the seed companies for the last 30-40 yrs
for truth
# Roundup Ready Wheat = More Pesticides: Genetically Engineered Wheat may lead to More Use of Chemicals - Canadian Press 12jan04
# Saskatchewan Organic Farmers File Lawsuit Against Monsanto and Aventis - The Canadian Press 10jan04
# AgCan Ends Testing of GE Wheat Developed with Monsanto - The Canadian Press 9jan04
# Bias Issue Faces Judge in Monsanto Case - NY Times 9jan04
# Monsanto Posts Loss of $97 Million - St Louis Post-Dispatch 8jan04
# Monsanto Accused of Price-Fixing - The Guardian (UK) 7jan04
# Monsanto Posts Loss of $97 Million - St Louis Post-Dispatch (plus Dow Jones Newswires and AP) 8jan04
# 'Confident' Business Practices 'Above Board' - Dow Jones Newswires 7jan04
# Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred: Questions Seen on Seed Prices Set in the 90's - NY Times 6jan04
# Monsanto Co. and The Scotts Co. Availability of petition for determination of nonregulated status for genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant creeping bentgrass; Request for information and comment - Federal Register 5jan03
# GM - The Great Betrayal - Daily Mail (UK) 20feb04
# Biotech Giants Accused of using new EU member states as Trojan Horse - The Guardian (UK) 14feb04
# Anniston: Cleanups Wait as Companies Debate Liability (Monsanto, Pharmacia, Pfizer, Solutia) St. Louis Post-Dispatch 7feb04
# Retired farmer files class-action lawsuit against Monsanto - St. Louis Post-Dispatch 5feb04
# Biotech Giant Pulls Out of Zimbabwe - The Daily News (Harare) 30jan04
# Kerry and Monsanto: Sleeps With Wolves - Notmilk 2feb04
# Monsanto: Ready to Blossom? - Business Week Online 3feb04
# GM Foods Dangerous If Used As Main Meals - East African Standard (Nairobi) 2feb04
# rBGH: FDA, Monsanto Need to Reveal Truth about Growth Hormone - The Capitol Times 2feb04
# Observations on the Supreme Court hearing of Percy Schmeiser - E Ann Clark Ph.D. / Cropchoice 2feb04
# Biotech Industry Gives Record $150,000 to Fight Proposed Altered-Crop Ban - The Press Democrat 31jan04
# Monsanto's Chapati Patent Raises Indian Ire - The Guardian (UK) 31jan04
# Monsanto May Drop GMO Wheat Without Grower Backing - Reuters 24jan04
# rBGH, rBST: Monsanto Media Statement on the Pricing of Posilac aka: rBGH, rBST, Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, and so on. 22jan04
# Monsanto plans to dump GM wheat in South Africa - Sunday Times (South Africa) 22jan04
# Percy Schmeiser: Canada's Supreme Court Hears Monsanto's Seed Dispute Case - AP 21jan04
# Piracy Impels Monsanto to Suspend Seed Sales to Argentina- AP 20jan04
# Percy Schmeiser: Activists At Mumbai Meeting Back Canadian Farmer Vs Monsanto - Dow Jones Newswires 20jan04
# Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto: Supreme Court Grapples with Arguments on Patenting of Genes and Plants - Canadian Press 20jan04
# Percy Schmeiser: Small Canadian Farmer Fights Monsanto - AP 20jan04
# Percy Schmeiser's Battle Over GMOs Heads to Canada's High Court - Reuters 19jan04
some court cases to follow or articles to prove the truth
A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Pests can be insects, mice and other animals, unwanted plants (weeds), fungi, or microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. Though often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, the term pesticide also applies to herbicides, fungicides, and various other substances used to control pests. Under United States law, a pesticide is also any substance or mixture of substances intended for use as a plant regulator, defoliant, or desiccant.
If farmers hate and fear Monsanto, why don't they just buy the older heirloom seeds?
If they buy the old seeds and even put up a small greenhouse specifically for the seed saving part of their operations, they could ensure the seed they save year to year is pure heirloom and not contaminated from neighboring Monsanto seed fields. Because out in the open fields, there maybe cross of the Monsanto and the heirloom and you might end up planting Monsanto by accident.
Just a thought. I'm not a farmer. But I do have a garden.
i can't even begin to tell you how much i hate monsanto
the kicker was in Iraq, where in the cradle of civilization, they have made it illegal for the farmers to save seeds, a practice which is thousands of years old
Monsanto is more dangerous than the Military Industrial Complex
Quoting: malu
Illegal for ALL Iraqi farmers to save ANY seeds?!
Next time some Monsanto thug goes threatening the next farmer, I hope they're met with a face full shotgun pellets. I can't believe they go around threatening people.
Hey free markets people, you don't want any trade resrtictions or restrictions on freedom right? This is this corporations freedom to conduct business however it pleases them, if you don't like how they do it? buy yer seeds from someone else....ooops, nobody else? welp tough crap then ya gotta follow their rules however they make em then if you want to guy their products.
Woo hoo! Ain't freedom great?!
Quoting: SHR
That's not a free market, SHR. In the free market, there are no corporate subsidies, no special deals for the likes of Monsanto or anyone else. Monsanto gets BIG tax bucks.
spiritual_mistress User ID: 426396 5/9/2008 9:19 PM
Thank you for the gourmetseed link. I will do that. I moved to the Ozarks from the Florida sandbar just for reasons such as this. I can grow my own veggies here without tons of pesticides and huge amounts of fertilizer. A country girl can survive!
Thank you again for the reference
It is YOU that has given this evel entity its power. Anyone with stock in this company or that lets investment management companies buy stock with your money, whether you are aware of it or not. Greedy stock holders will have to account for their actions in the end for all they have created. "Entities with no morals" or The Devel, Lucifer..all are the same. Enjoy your "investments"
Anonymous Coward User ID: 287857 5/9/2008 11:27 PM
It is YOU that has given this evel entity its power. Anyone with stock in this company or that lets investment management companies buy stock with your money, whether you are aware of it or not. Greedy stock holders will have to account for their actions in the end for all they have created. "Entities with no morals" or The Devel, Lucifer..all are the same. Enjoy your "investments"
Quoting: Truth 430647
wrongo
I do not own stock is said companies
I do not support them at all or in any conscious way-not knowingly
I avoid their products and many other companies that use GMO or multinationals
even Nestle and many 'respected' companies as they support wealth over wisdom
Oakhurst uses no hormones in their milk and I buy their products as a few companies that use the term 'organic' are heavily supported by the non organic/sterile/gestapo seed giants like monsanto
To slay the BEAST one must starve the beast
when it weakens the people move as One
we must protect our food and food sources
To me that means more backyard coops and more involvement in our own survival-not waiting for china or eu or UN to bail us out
We have allowed this-the few fighting it are finally being overcome-it is the food of the world, the food of our neighbor, the food our families will live on
Do not count on big 'bother' to save you-it is the path to the showerbades
BTW there is a learning curve and if this thread is news, you are behind the curve and it is accelerating
get informed, research, find your sources for food now when the big markets and large supply trucks stop
and they will
get back to basics and remember earth mother feeds us all that we need it is but a created shortfall to enhance their control and easy assimilation of all into the nwo
hungry people are not the people you know
but be assured, once hunger is widespread people will behave generally as animals
this is the truth but it does not mean I will be regarless
fasting is a learned art-prepare now to disconnect from control or concede to it everyone makes their choice
Hey free markets people, you don't want any trade resrtictions or restrictions on freedom right? This is this corporations freedom to conduct business however it pleases them, if you don't like how they do it? buy yer seeds from someone else....ooops, nobody else? welp tough crap then ya gotta follow their rules however they make em then if you want to guy their products.
Woo hoo! Ain't freedom great?!
That's not a free market, SHR. In the free market, there are no corporate subsidies, no special deals for the likes of Monsanto or anyone else. Monsanto gets BIG tax bucks.
Quoting: Anonymous Coward 385176
Got any info on those big tax bucks? I'd be interested to see it. Don't get me wrong I think all these huge corporation need some restraints. As the other poster said, capitalism run amok. I think we are past the age of truely free markets. ____________________________________________________
E-mail anytime SHRGLP@Yahoo.com
Inquiring about a ban?, include the IP address found here. [link to www.showmyip.com]
Precious cups within the flower, deadly petals with strange power
Faces shine a deadly smile, back up on you at your trial
Chill and numbed from head to toe, icy sun with frosty glow
Wall of Sleep is lying broken, sun shines in, you have awoken
Anonymous Coward User ID: 287857 5/10/2008 12:29 AM
Recent estimates suggest that 60 to 70% of foods in US markets contain at least a small quantity of some crop that has been genetically engineered. But which ones?
Nestle
Frequently-cited estimates that 60% of the US food products contain GE ingredients are due almost entirely to two crops: corn and soybeans. High adoption rates of GE varieties plus the widespread distribution of corn- and soy-based ingredients in processed foods accounts for the vast majority of foods containing GE. To these, add foods containing oil from canola and cotton, and you cover nearly 100% of the GE plant ingredients in the American diet.
Are you eating GE versions of these foods?
Soybeans: yes.
Varieties of GE herbicide-tolerant soybeans are the most widely-adopted class of GE plants on the market today, accounting for an estimated 81% of the 2003 soybean crop. Soybean-based ingredients-- including oil, flour, lecithin, and protein extracts-- are added to a wide array of processed foods.
Corn: yes.
In the year 2003, about 40% of the US field corn crop was grown to genetically engineered corn hybrids. Because GE corn is not separated from non-GE corn by growers and processors, and because many food ingredients are corn-based, GE corn is likely to be present in most processed foods. GE sweet corn-- sold as fresh ears-- is much less prevalent (3-5%). It is very unlikely that canned sweet corn or popcorn are GE.
Canola: yes.
The US imports most of its canola oil from Canada, where over 60% of rapeseed (the plant from which canola oil is extracted) are GE varieties. Canola oil is used in a wide array of products, including vegetable cooking oils, salad dressings, margarines, processed cheese, "non-dairy" products, chips, fried foods, cookies, pastries, chocolates, candy coatings, confections, cosmetics, soaps and detergents. One form of GE canola is labeled.
Cotton: yes.
GE cotton varieties now account for 71% of the total 2002 cotton crop. Although cotton is used more for textiles than foods, cottonseed oil may be present in a variety of products, including cooking oils, salad dressing, peanut butter, chips, crackers, cookies, and pastry crusts.
[top of page]
The Little Guys
Other approved GE crops are much less commonplace, and many of them have never even made it to the market.
Are you eating GE versions of these foods?
Potato: probably not.
At their peak, GE potato varieties amounted to no more than 2-3% of the US potato market. Due largely to poor sales, all GE potato varieties were discontinued by the developer in March of 2001 and since have not been sold to farmers for planting.
Squash/Zucchini: possibly, but very unlikely.
Several varieties of GE yellow crook-neck squash and green zucchini are marketed by Asgrow Vegetable Seed Co, but very few farmers are growing them.
Papaya: probably not yet.
In the last few years, GE varieties have amounted to more than 50% of Hawaii's papaya production. But most US papayas are imported from Brazil, Mexico, and the Caribbean (and not GE). Your chances are highest in Hawaii or the continental west coast.
Tomato: no.
Although several GE tomatoes have been approved, only Calgene's FlavrSavr-- a financial flop that was only in a few markets from 1995 to 1997-- has ever made it to US consumers.
Sugarbeets: no.
Two varieties of GE sugarbeets have been approved in the US, but they have never been planted commercially, primarily due to growers' concerns over international markets.
Rice: no.
Herbicide-tolerant GE rice was cleared for commercial production in 1999 and given FDA approval in 2000. Its developer, Aventis CropScience, has not yet marketed seeds to growers, and awaits EPA approval.
Flax: no.
Concerned with risking valuable flax markets in Europe, the Flax Council of Canada has prevented GE flax from being grown commercially.
Radicchio (red-heart chicory): no.
Approval for use of a GE male-sterile variety of radicchio for breeding purposes was granted in late 1997, but was voluntarily withdrawn by the developer (Bejo Zaden) in 1999. GE radicchio has never been marketed.
[link to www.geo-pie.cornell.edu]
who regulates it:
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
-U.S. Food and Drug Administration
-U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
These are the folks you complain to and very loudly but oh so politely or who knows what madness the masses will go through
* Cookie Mixes
o Chocolate Chip
o Double Chocolate Chunk
o Sugar
o Peanut Butter
Bisquik
(Betty Crocker/General Mills)
* Original
* Reduced Fat
* Shake 'n Pour Pancake Mix
* Shake 'n Pour Buttermilk Pancake Mix
* Shake 'n Pour Blueberry Pancake Mix
Hey free markets people, you don't want any trade resrtictions or restrictions on freedom right? This is this corporations freedom to conduct business however it pleases them, if you don't like how they do it? buy yer seeds from someone else....ooops, nobody else? welp tough crap then ya gotta follow their rules however they make em then if you want to guy their products.
Woo hoo! Ain't freedom great?!
That's not a free market, SHR. In the free market, there are no corporate subsidies, no special deals for the likes of Monsanto or anyone else. Monsanto gets BIG tax bucks.
Got any info on those big tax bucks? I'd be interested to see it. Don't get me wrong I think all these huge corporation need some restraints. As the other poster said, capitalism run amok. I think we are past the age of truely free markets.
also:
The Monsanto Co. will get a tax break of as much as $681,000 over five years following a decision that came during a special meeting of the Ankeny City Council on Monday night.
[link to www.topix.com]
i can't even begin to tell you how much i hate monsanto
the kicker was in Iraq, where in the cradle of civilization, they have made it illegal for the farmers to save seeds, a practice which is thousands of years old
Monsanto is more dangerous than the Military Industrial Complex
Quoting: malu
I'm with you, MALU. Yet I can't help but wonder...are they any different from the M/IC?
Redheaded Stepchild nli User ID: 430589 5/10/2008 12:48 AM
Farm Broadcaster Ousted after Ripping Monsanto’s Goon Squads
22 Corporate Crime Reporter 18, April 30, 2008
If you have heard of Learfield Communications, it is probably from listening to college football and basketball games.
The Jefferson City, Missouri based Learfield is one of the nation’s largest broadcasters of college sports.
But it also produces news programming heard throughout the farm belt.
Learfield was started 35 years ago by Clyde Lear and Derry Brownfield.
Lear went on to be the chairman of the company. He bought out his friend and partner Brownfield in 1985.
Brownfield went on to do market news reports for the Learfield news division until 1997 or so, when he started broadcasting a daily call-in show called The Common Sense Coalition.
Derry Brownfield would broadcast The Common Sense Coalition from the studios of Learfield Communications.
Learfield would subsidize the program and allow Brownfield to use its studios and satellite hook-up.
Monsanto happens to be a big advertiser of the Learfield news division – to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Brownfield happens to think that Monsanto is an evil corporation.
Therein lies the rub.
For weeks, Brownfield had been ripping Monsanto on air for its policies of enforcing its seed patents against farmers.
On the April 16 show, Brownfield’s topic was seed industry concentration in America.
His guests were Fred Stokes, president of the Organization for Competitive Markets, and Michael Stumo, general counsel of the group.
Stokes and Stumo were promoting a new project to study corporate concentration in the seed industry.
Monsanto is the dominant player in the global seed industry and has a reputation for playing rough.
On air, Brownfield quoted from a newly published Vanity Fair article titled “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear” by Donald Barlett and James Steele.
“Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country,” Barlett and Steele write. “They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops, infiltrate community meetings, and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the ‘seed police’ and use words such as ‘Gestapo’ and ‘Mafia’ to describe their tactics.”
After reading from the Vanity Fair article, Brownfield then begins to riff on the Mafia theme.
“Multinational corporations are doing everything possible to change agriculture – and not for the better,” Brownfield says on the show. “I know a little bit about this – not a lot, just a little bit – but Monsanto literally they have Mafia goons out, do they not? They show up on farmers’ property, they try and harass them, they say if you don’t sign this, we are going to take you to court. They have literally tried to destroy agriculture as we know it. They have a goon squad. Maybe that’s not what they like to be called. But if it was the Mafia, we would call them the goon squad.”
Calling Monsanto’s patent enforcers goons was apparently the straw that broke this camel’s back.
Brownfield’s stint at Dearfield was about to end.
Last week, Brownfield was told that he could no longer broadcast out of the Dearfield studios. His buddy, Clyde Lear, posted a blog on the Learfield web site saying that Brownfield’s last show will be in mid-May.
“The Common Sense Coalition grinds to a halt on our system,” Lear wrote.
“Most of his listeners loved him as did his affiliates,” Lear wrote about his buddy. “He didn't mind controversy or taking on giants like the Monsanto Corporation. He thought they were bad for farmers, too big for their britches and generally bad for America. Increasingly he's been saying so, without seeking balance, in my opinion.”
And then later, in response to listeners who were upset that Brownfield was being let go, Lear wrote:
“Some seem to think the reason Derry is leaving is because Monsanto threatened to stop advertising if we didn’t put a gag on him. If that were the only reason Derry was asked to leave, then I can see why they think we are selling out. We've parted ways because accusations being made about not only advertisers, but individuals, corporations, government, (fill in the blank) were based on fear and lies with absolutely no truth to back them up. I abhor radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh...and Derry Brownfield where half-truths are articulated. I won't be a part of them. And, that's my right.”
But in an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter, Lear admits that the Monsanto issue is what drove his buddy Brownfield out.
“If the Monsanto issue had not come up, we would not be here today,” Lear said.
Lear said that the President of Learfield Communications, Roger Gardner, talked recently with John Raines, Monsanto’s director of public affairs.
“John Raines talked to Roger Gardner about the difficulties they felt Brownfield is giving them,” Lear said. “(Gardner) told me he talked to John Raines about the Vanity Fair article.”
“The pressure I got came from the president of the news division, Stan Koenigsfeld,” Lear said. “Stan is the guy that has responsibility for selling and maintaining the financial viability of our news division. Stan is a no nonsense guy. So, Stan comes in and says – why are we doing this? Why do we continue to do this? We give him all of these things and he spits in our face by lambasting our good advertisers, without giving them an opportunity for fair and balanced reporting. And it is not reporting – it’s just entertainment. Why do we continue to do this?”
Lear says that the complaints have been mounting over the past five years about Brownfield.
“And I’ve been saying to Stan, settle down, it will all be alright,” Lear said. “But I imagine Stan is getting a lot of pressure from his sales executives. We have three that call on Monsanto for different products. And I would assume that he is getting pressure from those sales executives. When those sales executives call on Monsanto, Monsanto is complaining to the sales executives. That is where the connection happens. But you would have to talk to them about the kind of leverage Monsanto is putting on them. They have never to my knowledge threatened to pull any advertising.”
Lear finally confronted Brownfield.
“I went to him and said – Derry, look, lay off of this,” Lear said. “Lay off of this Monsanto thing. I am getting a lot of complaints.”
Lear said he was the only one in the company who could approach Brownfield.
“I’m the only one who can talk to him,” Lear said. “No one else in the company will go to him. He is kind of persona non grata. He is one of the guys who helped start the company years ago. He was my partner for years until 1985 when I bought him out. He is a dear friend of mine. So, there is no one else – all of the rest of the guys are half my age. They won’t go to him. They are afraid of him. They just won’t go and talk to him.”
“They all came to me and said – go talk to Derry,” Lear said. “We’ve got to quit doing this. Plus, it came at a bad time. It came during the same week that the National Association of Farm Broadcasters national convention was being held in Kansas City. And at that convention, of course, Monsanto was omnipresent. They are there trying to woo farm broadcasters, because they want them to say nice things about them, right? So, here are all of the Monsanto people at this convention. And their advertising agencies – Osborne & Barr out of St. Louis – among others. They were all there. And it was embarrassing, because all of that week, Derry is lambasting Monsanto.”
“We have explained to Monsanto, in any way we can, that the Brownfield Network has nothing to do with Derry’s show,” Lear says. “This is a completely independent show that he puts on. Well, Monsanto says – he’s doing it from your studios, isn’t he? And we say yes, we give him space because of the history.”
“And they ask – how else do you help him? If he weren’t doing the show, would this problem disappear?”
“So my guys came to me and said – we’ve got to do something about this.”
“So, I went in to Derry and I sat down with him,” Lear said. “It was very good natured. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t planning on doing anything. I said – let this Monsanto thing go for awhile. Just let it go.”
“He said – ‘Clyde – Monsanto is an evil empire,’” Lear recalled. “‘This is evil. He said – every farmer hates Monsanto. You know what they have done – and then he would lambast Monsanto and lay out this litany of stuff that they do. It included milk. Apparently there is a human growth hormone that they put in the milk. I don’t know a thing about it, but apparently they won a court case that prohibited milk retailers from putting on the milk carton the label – hormone free. I didn’t know anything about this, but Brownfield was complaining about how the liberal judges of America are siding with the evil empire. And Monsanto pays them off. All kinds of allegations which I’m sure are not true. But Derry believes them.”
“So, I said – will you let Monsanto be on the air? And he said – I’m not going to give them a forum. But then he changed his mind and said – yeah, bring them on. I'll let them on the show.”
Lear then went to hole up with his executives. And his execs told him – “It’s bigger than this now. We just don’t need to be associated with him.”
“So, I just walked back there and said to Derry – you say you are not going to lighten up. And he said no, I’m staying the course. And I said – not with us you are not. You are going to have to find some other way to distribute your program, and you are going to have to find some other office to do it out of.”
Given that he was willing put Monsanto on his show, why not keep him on?
“Maybe we should have,” Lear said.
Would you reconsider your decision?
“I don’t think so,” Lear says. “It is just not a business I want to be in anymore.”
Lear says he feels sad about parting with his old buddy, but he wants to help set up an internet radio studio for Derry out of Derry’s home office.
“We are helping him build a new facility in his home,” Lear says. “But we won’t have a connection to him. Then we can easily say to Monsanto – we don’t have a thing to do with Derry. We don’t have a thing to do with him. He’s not on our property. We can’t control him.”
Brownfield said he couldn’t comment on the situation until after May 30.
revolving door politics
Biotechnology's Revolving Doors
In spite of polls showing that most people want food containing genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) to be labeled, the biotech industry refuses to do so. Libby Mikesell, communications director with the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), says the industry opposes mandatory labeling because genetically engineered food would be stigmatized, since "requiring a label implies a health or safety concern." And the U.S. government agrees, maintaining a no-labeling position except when genes from common allergens, such as peanuts, are inserted into a food.
The politics behind this decision illustrate the revolving door between government officials and the industry they are supposed to regulate. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration's (FDA) no-labeling policy was written by Michael Taylor, a lawyer who represented Monsanto, a BIO member, at the corporate law firm King and Spalding from 1981 to 1991. In July 1991, Taylor became a deputy commissioner for policy at the FDA. After FDA approved Monsanto's rBGH, the controversial hormone that enhances milk production, Taylor moved to USDA as director of food safety. He's now back at Monsanto as head of public policy in Washington.
Concern about Taylor's and two other FDA scientists' ties to Monsanto prompted a report by the Government Accounting Office. "While the GAO found no conflicting financial interest, there is little doubt that [Taylor and the others] had close ties to Monsanto," says Anthony Pollina, former aide to Representative Bernie Sanders (D-VT), who requested the investigation. "The report even found that FDA supervisors didn't understand the distinction between FDA duties and outside duties," Pollina adds.
Another camouflaged industry insider is Carol Tucker Foreman, head of the Safe Food Coalition and an assistant secretary of agriculture in the Carter Administration who became one of Washington's most influential food lobbyists. Foreman has defended the fat substitute Olestra and worked to ease the way for FDA approval of rBGH. "Foreman calls herself a public interest activist, when in fact she has been a corporate lobbyist with incredibly deep Democratic party connections, working for Bristol Myers Squibb, Monsanto, and Procter & Gamble," says John Stauber, co-editor of PR Watch.
people like this
In 1995, Representative James Walsh (R-NY) attached an amendment, written by a National Meat Association lobbyist, to one subcommittee report. The amendment changed the direction of USDA plans to modernize meat and poultry inspections and required USDA to allow input from the industry. This resulted in the new voluntary inspection system called Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points (HACCP) -- or what many USDA inspectors have dubbed "Have A Cup of Coffee and Pray." Walsh received more than $61,000 from the food industry from 1987 to 1996.
I know that these same multinationals are blocking the hormone and anti biotic free meat or meat that is not cloned to be prevented from listing that fact. Just as monsanto fights Oakhurst dairy and Maine on the rBGH...monsanto and their ilk want to charge premium prices for inferior goods and products
Of course to them the products are technically 'equivalent' and no different but being I AM the CONSUMER shouldn't my needs and wants be considered??? For good business it is advised
for truth
Attacking Organics
At first glance, the evolution of the National Organic Standards looks like a victory for the average consumer. While USDA's first draft rule would have allowed GMOs, ionized radiation, and municipal sludge in organic production, the agency backed off after receiving 280,000 protesting public comments in the spring of 1998. However, Michael Sligh, former chairman of the National Organic Standards Board, warns that the U.S. government and industry feel threatened by the existence of organic alternatives to biotechnology and pesticides. BIO spokesperson Libby Mikesell, for one, expects GMOs to be considered for organic status in the future.
If not watered down in the proposed standards, organic could vanish by attrition. As seed companies are swallowed up by biotech multinationals, transgenic seeds may become the only ones produced. If organic farmers can't get non-GMO seeds, consumers will have no other choice, says Fred Kirschenmann, an organic farmer and president of the third-party certifier Farm Verified Organic. He adds, "I'm cynical enough to believe that's exactly the strategy of Monsanto and others who are working on this." The others include DuPont, whose merger this spring with Pioneer Hi-Bred splits most of the U.S. seed industry between DuPont and Monsanto.
Then there's the industry-backed disinformation campaign against organic. Its most vocal crusader, Dennis Avery, author of Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic, broadcasts the message that organic food is lethal and environmentally damaging, and that only pesticides and genetic engineering can deliver a safe and abundant food supply. According to the New York Times, Avery is financed by agribusiness. Still, he's respectfully cited as an expert in the media.
When it comes to educating the public about pesticides, the EPA has done little better than Avery in its new supermarket brochure on pesticides published under the FQPA. Downplaying the health risks of pesticide residues on food, as well as the organic alternative, the brochure is "a propaganda piece for the food industry," says Jeannine Kenney of Consumers Union.
The government and the conventional food industry insist the U.S. has the safest food supply in the world. But no amount of political lobbying and disinformation can cover up the risks of pesticides, the uncertainties of biotechnology, or what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control now characterize as an epidemic of food poisoning. For these, consumers can thank lobbyists, dirty money and revolving doors.
Monsanto has filed dozens of patent infringement lawsuits asserting the four challenged patents against American farmers, many of whom are unable to hire adequate representation to defend themselves in court. The crime these farmers are accused of is nothing more than saving seed from one year's crop to replant the following year, something farmers have done since the beginning of time.
One study of the matter found that, "Monsanto has used heavy-handed investigations and ruthless prosecutions that have fundamentally changed the way many American farmers farm. The result has been nothing less than an assault on the foundations of farming practices and traditions that have endured for centuries in this country and millennia around the world, including one of the oldest, the right to save and replant crop seed."
I first became aware of this issue when I saw the excellent documentary ”The Future Of Food.”
goliath is rabid
One of the most under-reported stories out of Tennessee concerns Covington cotton farmer Kem Ralph. Ralph was sued by Monsanto and actually sentenced to prison and fined $3 million for allegedly violating Monsanto’s copyright agreement -- an agreement he says he never signed. Ralph put up a strong fight but last year had to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Anonymous Coward User ID: 287857 5/10/2008 1:36 AM
thank monsanto for AGENT ORANGE and the many deaths that have already occurred and the many more still dying while they deny the truth
"The piece then steps back into Monsanto’s chemical past—PCBs and dioxin—before fast-forwarding to the company’s current attempt to prevent dairies from advertising that they don’t use rBGH, Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone. It’s a head-to-toe indictment of the company, and it seems to have been picked up by the CBS Evening News, which this weekend ran a story on Monsanto’s legal pursuit of small farmers it suspects of piracy. What’s perhaps most galling, and was reported by both outlets, is Monsanto’s lawsuits against seed cleaners, who cull and clean seeds for farmers to replant—an ancient practice."
[link to www.chow.com]
[link to www.organicconsumers.org]
The wild card like genetic changes on the seed DNA is changing the plants themselves. If it is creating grotesque plants, it doesn't bode well for what it will do to human genetics. I wonder if the Monsanto execs and their families eat their altered foods ?
theresident Forum Moderator User ID: 379066 5/10/2008 2:14 AM
I detest these companies. Corn doesn't look like corn anymore. It has this weird super yellow color. Corn bread doens't taste like cornbread. Not the yellow or the white. The white cornbread now looks a butter yellow. My favorite veggie down the tubes. So many unidentified proteins in these franken-foods. Auto-immune diseases are running more rampant now. anybody know a brand of good white cornmeal that tastes like it is supposed to taste?
Quoting: spiritual_mistress 426396
I did a search for whitel cornmeal, it didn't come up, but possibly you could order it from them? Any chance you would settle for yellow corn meal?
[link to www.bulkfoods.com]
Anonymous Coward User ID: 409356 5/10/2008 3:30 AM
Thing is, eventually the pollen from those GM plants will infect EVERYTHING. So even if you grow your own food, even if you have a garden, you could become a victim of Monsanto if any of your plants are affected.
Anonymous Coward User ID: 173853 5/10/2008 5:24 AM
I would settle for any cornmeal that tasted right. I simply tried the white hoping it would taste more like what I have known all my life. Because the yellow doesn't anymore. I have tried the meal from local companies, but I don't like it either. This isn't the only food that doesn't taste the same to me anymore....there are several others, like fish and cabbage. Thank you for your search. <chuckle> maybe I am just getting old???? The taste buds are gone???? But I do hear others around me complaining of the same.
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