22 May 2008
The Threat of Monsanto
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: Emergency Preparation .
Friends and family have for years kept me up on the travesty of the genetic seed manipulation by Monsanto. Peter Anderson sent me this article. I could only share a little but I would highly recommend following the link and reading all of the article to learn more about what is happening. I would also recommend buying seeds that are not genetically engineered while they are still available.
Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from a Wellesley College Alumna
by Linn Cohen-Cole
Dear Hillary,
By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.
I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide [see here and here]. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto’s Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they’d ever experienced.
And farmers couldn’t collect seeds from their own fields [see here and here] to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto “patents” their DNA-altered seeds as “intellectual property.” They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers [here]. Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.
Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.
What does this have to do with you?
You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named “Rural Americans for Hillary” was planned with Troutman Sanders, Monsanto’s lobbyists.
Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world’s largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE’s most controversial project (DP&L’s - now Monsanto’s - terminator genes) [here], the world’s largest meat producer (Tyson), the world’s largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Wal-Mart) [here].
5 Comments so far...
Sharon Anderson Says:
22 May 2008 at 8:23 am.
Here are excerpts of another pertinent part of the article.
A snap shot of our food:
Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.
Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto’s GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity.
Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). “[E] ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company.” The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM traits.
Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals - more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?
Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill’s USFDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all).
American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.
Sharon Anderson Says:
22 May 2008 at 8:53 am.
This whole Monstano thing makes me sick. (Apparently it literally makes a lot of people sick). The video clip (link in the excerpt Joy posted) about the farmers committing suicide is heartbreaking.
It all reminds me of the pact that Cain made with Satan. “And Satan said unto Cain: . . . this day I will deliver thy brother Abel into thine hands. . . And all these things were done in secret. And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain. . . (Moses 5:29-31)
The people who do this will ultimately receive their reward. (”Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person.” Dueteronomy 27:25) In the meantime so many suffer.
Much of Montsano’s gain comes from prosecuting those who gather and plant seeds from their GE plants. Montsano even went after a farmer who harvested a crop that was contaminated by their seeds which blew into his field. As for doing this in secret, here is a video about the media coverup. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trWcqxrQgcc Amazing.
Angela Rogin Says:
22 May 2008 at 9:11 am.
Wow, this is pretty shocking to me. Where have I been? Talk about control freaks! Seeds are a pretty basic necessity and control them puts the screws to people.
Jan W. Says:
22 May 2008 at 9:53 am.
My husband knows about this and that is why he ordered a bunch of seeds that aren’t genetically altered. We want to be able to harvest our own seeds if we want. With Montsano’s seeds, they won’t grow if you replant them. You are right Angela. They are very controlling.
M.G. Says:
22 May 2008 at 12:16 pm.
I wanted to know why they would do this so I did a little googling. It’s pretty creepy that their reason is greed and nothing good. Here is a little of what I read:
USDA and Delta & Pine Land received U.S. patent no. 5,723,765 this past March on a technique that genetically alters seed so that it will not germinate if re-planted the following season. The technology aims to prevent farmers from saving seed from their harvest, thus forcing them to return to the commercial seed market every year.
Without a technology protection system to prevent unauthorized seed-saving, seed companies argue that they cannot earn a fair return on their investment. Around three-quarters of the world’s farmers routinely save seed from their harvest for re-planting. If farmers save commercial seed, the company loses repeat business
Melvin J. Oliver, a USDA molecular biologist and the primary inventor of the technology, likens seed-saving to theft of intellectual property. “My main interest is the protection of American technology,” he says. “Our mission is to protect U.S. agriculture, and to make us competitive in the face of foreign competition. Without this, there is no way of protecting the technology [patented seed].”
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