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Is Monsanto in Your Garden?

From the article:

"The commercial seed industry has undergone vast consolidation in the last few decades, with several agro giants buying up many seed companies around the world.  The majority of these companies target the commercial agriculture industry, but companies such as Monsanto and Swiss-based Syngenta produce a range of seeds for the home vegetable gardener as well.  

Aside from the anti-trust issues raised from having a few large corporations control the world's seed supply, there are other concerns as well. The recent consolidation frenzy has resulted in a drastic decrease in the variety of seeds. Insects and disease tend to attack monocultures, so the strength of any ecosystem is the level of its plant diversity. Monocultures, where the same type of crops grow on large plots of land year in and year out, also lead to an increase in pesticide usage.  This is convenient for the giant seed companies, since they're in the pesticide and herbicide business as well."

Remain informed. Read the rest of the article in the link.

This is from a woman who is doing her absolute best to get the word out to the people of this earth about Genetically Modified foods and the corprations that are shoving their products down the people's throat....literally.

The following is a post by guest blogger, Jan Morre (aka JanforGore).

You can follow her on Current’s the sustainable agriculture channel.

In covering the environmental abuses of Monsanto one who is cognizant of the special relationship we have with the Earth cannot help but be repulsed by them. There is not one redeeming quality about them. They are arrogant, heartless, greedy, manipulative power brokers that use people, governments, organizations, consumers, and anyone else who gets in their way of domination. It is a domination of the global seed and pesticide market that is now bringing our Earth to a biodiversity and pollution crisis and a climate change precipice.

They destroy and defile the environment with impunity, contaminate natural seeds with unstable toxic bacteria seeds, deforest our planet to make corn for gas tanks and GM soy that brings nothing but poverty and disease to places such as Paraguay, Argentina, Mexico, India, etc., (where farmers have been committing suicides in massive numbers due to economic ruin brought on by BT cotton.) They toxify our water with PCBS and Round Up, strong arm farmers, deceive consumers, intimidate scientists who seek answers and who disseminate the answers they find about just what their GMOs are made of and their effects, and then claim to be part of the “sustainable agriculture” movement that is looking to feed the world. It is one of the greatest and most sinister hoaxes perpetrated upon the world.

In the more than one hundred years they have been in business, Monsanto has not made one product that has benefitted the Earth. From saccharin, to aspartame, to Agent Orange, to PCBs, to genetically modified organisms, there has been one and only one motive:  profit at any cost. And where we stand now that cost is the biodiversity of our planet and control of the very seeds and water that give us life. It is a control we cannot give up as it would then mean the loss not only of food sovereignty but our very freedom as human beings. But even in the midst of all of this there are some bright spots. This past year saw two court rulings against Monsanto regarding their GM alfalfa and GM sugar beets:

• Federal court upholds ban on genetically modified alfalfa: Monsanto petition denied in full
• Bitter fight developing over gm sugarbeets

Will this set a precedent for review of their other “seeds” such as BT corn, GM soy, BT cotton, etc.?  We can only hope.

In that vein there is also a Supreme Court case coming forth involving Monsanto and the Center for Food Safety:

And also, a DOJ investigation into monopolies set for March 2010:

Hopeful signs that more are waking up to the deceptions and doing the necessary research to become aware of what they are eating and modifying their habits to be more healthy. The one organization that is helping tremendously in that is the Institute for Responsible Technology headed by Jeffrey Smith, a world renowned GMO activist. They have just put together a Non GMO website that gives you top information on how to avoid GMOs and eat more healthy thus perpetuating the 5% of American consumers it will take to get to a tipping point of awareness to begin turning the tide against Monsanto and all other companies using GMOs as a profit motive while compromising our food safety in the process. This is the one true way we can all be activists: through the wallet.

Of course, I also have no illusions regarding the DOJ investigation nor the court cases coming up involving Monsanto’s link to PCB poisoning. A recent trial regarding PCB contamination of Anniston Alabama and the ensuing deaths and disease from it wound up in Monsanto’s favor with those sickened left with little justice for their suffering. The major clout Monsanto carries with Washington DC even now under the Obama Administration and the Vilsack USDA and their known methods of bribery leaves one wary of such attempts to hold them accountable for their many crimes against humanity, and their agricultural and environmental terrorism.

After all, it was the FDA under the auspices of the last four administrations that gave them free reign over our environment and health by determining that their organisms were the same (principle of substantial equivalence) as all other food in order for them to circumvent labeling, when as we now see that is far from the truth. It was the USSC that gave them the patent to life itself thus opening the door to Intellectual Property Rights that now challenge indigenous peoples and the natural breeding of seeds for climate change tolerance which they can now purchase in biopiracy scams. In simple terms, our planet has been sold to the highest bidder by people we the people did not even have a say in electing! That is not only undemocratic, that is immoral and criminal.

However as with any crisis we are now in regarding our planet, we have one hope: ourselves. Our consciences, our morals, our reasoning, our logic, our love for our families, our love for the Earth, our sense of justice, and yes, even our spirituality that tells us in line with the scientific facts as presented to us that we in large numbers have the ability to take back our food, our planet, and our futures. So even in the face of what Monsanto has been able to accomplish I remain hopeful of the global food movement having major victories in the coming year. But we must remain focused, cohesive, determined, and yes, even angry. We must remain so for the following:

For the farmers of  India and their families, especially the widows of those whose lives were cut short by BT cotton.

For the American farmers whose farms and livelihoods are under threat from Monsanto’s strong arm tactics in their desire to control all seed.

For the deforested lands of South America stripped to create a monoculture that has left many poor farmers poorer and sicker in the wake of greed over sustainability, and exacerbated a climate crisis no cap and trade scheme can heal.

For the soil of our Earth, its skin, that cries out for help to us as it is eroded, stripped, abused, and toxified for profit.

For our water, polluted, toxic, acidic, filled with pesticides and run off as the cost of industrial agriculture.

For our children, who deserve a cleaner, safer, more natural world to live in.

http://current.com/items/91623469_stop-monsanto-in-copenhagen.htm

Let this next year be the year to truly hold Monsanto as an example of all of those things to be the first step in our moral imperative to save this planet and in turn the human species and all others we have so cavalierly dismissed in our desire to be masters of the universe.

I leave you with this: may we all seek this level of awareness of conscience, and act on it

Check this link for a current list Monsanto's contribution to your elected officials. Courtesy of Jan and Current

 

This article may be a couple of years old, but the ongoing fight against Monsanto tactics and their genetically modified seeds is not.

We, as a people, need to keep on our elected officials about this. Presumably, they know very little about GM foods, as they are too busy covering their butts and trying to get relected. But if we do not do this, no one will.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine

Warns People About Gentically Modified Foods

Here are few headings from the article. Please read them. Your health and the health of your children and grandchildren are at great risk.

Pregnant Women and Babies at Great Risk

Food that Produces Poison

GMOs Provoke Immune Reactions

Animals Dying in Large Numbers

Worst Finding of All—GMOs Remain Inside You

Warnings by Government Scientists Ignored and Denied

How You Can Opt Out of Being a Guinea Pig

Download a copy of Non-GMO Shopping Guide here

New Studies Show Genetically Modified Corn Can Cause Organ Failure

Studies into Monsanto's Roundup Ready genetically modified corn and other types show organ failures in rats. The study comes from the E.U. and you may wonder why the study comes from there.

Read this article titled Roundup that will tell you why these studies are not done in the United States.

Read up on the pretty pink slime you now get....right along with your ground beef!

Yummy! Ammonia-Treated Pink Slime Now in Most U.S. Ground Beef

By Jennifer Poole, Daily Kos. Posted January 1, 2010.

Here is an excerpt:

According to today's New York Times, The "majority of hamburger" now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings "the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil," "typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass" that contains "larger microbiological populations."
This "nasty pink slime," as one FDA microbiologist called it, is now wrung in a centrifuge to remove the fat, and then treated with AMMONIA to "retard spoilage," and turned into "a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips".