VIVE LA NON-GMO FRANCE!!!!! C'EST MAGNIFIQUE!

Monsanto’s GM Maize Retreat

Gordon Davidson        

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26 Jan 2012

FRANCE HAS held firm in its opposition to Monsanto’s genetically modified MON 810 maize – and the agri-chemical multinational has admitted defeat.

Monsanto had been putting legal pressure on the French government to lift its 2008 cultivation ban on MON 810, firstly with a successful appeal to the European Court of Justice, then with a follow-up case heard in France’s own highest court, the Council of State.

But despite both these institutions ruling that the ban was “insufficiently justified in law”, the French Government, backed by President Sarkozy, has insisted that it will still not allow cultivation of the biotech maize.

Now Monsanto has announced that it would not be selling seeds for MON810 in France this year.

France’s stand – and Monsanto’s capitulation – has been warmly welcomed by anti-GM lobbyists GM Freeze, whose campaign director Pete Riley said: “The decision by Monsanto not to market MON810 seeds in France in 2012 is yet another sign that Monsanto has failed to convince the public or policy makers that there is any benefit to growing to growing GM crops. 

“This needs to be acknowledged by industry and politicians and there should be a big shift to agricultural research and development which addresses the future sustainability of farming in Europe. EU policy needs to forget about the bottom line of biotech corporations and focus on developing agro-ecological farming which provides for the needs of farmers, consumers, the environment and future generations.”

Five other EU countries – Germany, Greece, Austria, Luxembourg and Hungary – have current bans on MON810 cultivation in place, and the issue has recently been complicated by another European Court of Justice ruling requiring honey contaminated with GM pollen to be fully authorised as a novel product and labelled as such before it can be sold. 

Source: http://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/news/this-weeks-news/monsanto-s-gm-maize-retreat-1.1145278

UPDATE ON CLASS ACTION SUIT OF ORGANIC FARMERS AND GROWERS IN NYC COURT 1-31-12

OSGATA et al. v. Monsanto: Will Farmers Receive Justice?

WASHINGTON - February 3 -

It was standing room only as family farmers from around North America filled Federal Court Judge Naomi Buchwald's courtroom in Manhattan on Tuesday, January 31.  The topic was the landmark organic community lawsuit OSGATA et al v. Monsanto and the Oral Argument Monsanto's pre-trial motion to dismiss which it filed last July. Plaintiffs from at least 21 States and Provinces were in the courtroom including Oregon, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Saskatchewan, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine.

Meanwhile, outside the courthouse in Foley Square, hundreds turned out for the Citizen's Assembly of support for family farmers, an action organized by several 

groups including Occupy Food Justice.  A depiction of Monsanto's infamous 100 year history including Agent Orange, Dioxin, PCBs and now gene-spliced food was presented.  Speakers addressed topics ranging from sustainable agriculture to risks associated with GMOs to issues of good food and food justice. After the conclusion of the courtroom Oral Argument, the plaintiff farmers and their legal team from the Public Patent Foundation provided details and comments on the courtroom proceedings, to supporters at the Citizens' Assembly.

"We were very pleased that the court granted our request to have oral argument regarding Monsanto's motion to dismiss our case today," said Daniel Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation, lead lawyer for the Plaintiffs.  "The judge graciously permitted both parties to raise all the points they wished in a session that lasted over an hour.  While Monsanto's attorney attempted to portray the risk organic farmers face from being contaminated and then accused of patent infringement as hypothetical and abstract, we rebutted those arguments with the concrete proof of the harm being suffered by our clients in their attempts to avoid such accusations.  The judge indicated she will issue her ruling within two months.  We expect she will deny the motion and the case will then proceed forward.  If she should happen to grant the motion, we will most likely appeal to the Court of Appeals who will review her decision without deference."

The large group of 83 Plaintiffs in OSGATA v. Monsanto is comprised of individual family farmers, independent seed companies and agricultural organizations. The total number of members within the plaintiff group exceeds 300,000 and includes many thousands of certified organic farmers.  The Plaintiffs are not seeking any monetary compensation.  Instead, the farmers are pre-emptively suing Monsanto and seeking court protection from Monsanto-initiated patent infringement lawsuits under the Declaratory Judgment Act. 

President of lead Plaintiff, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, Maine organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen was in the courtroom and witnessed the Oral Argument. Gerritsen had this to say, "Our lawyer did a good job explaining the current injustice farmers face. We have a right to be secure on our farms and to be free from Monsanto's GMO trespass. If we become contaminated by Monsanto, not only is the value of our organic seed crop extinguished but we could also be sued by Monsanto for patent infringement because their contamination results in our 'possession' of their GMO technology. We have farmers who have stopped growing organic corn, organic canola and organic soybeans because they can't risk being sued by Monsanto. It's not fair and it's not right. Family farmers need justice and we deserve protection from the court."

Early on in the legal process, Monsanto was asked by lawyers for the Plaintiffs to provide a binding legal covenant not to sue. Monsanto refused this request and in doing so made clear that it would not give up its option to sue contaminated innocent family farmers who want nothing to do with Monsanto's GMO technology.

In a remarkable demonstration of solid support by American citizens for family farmers, co-plaintiff Food Democracy Now! has collected over 100,000 signatures on it's petition supporting the rights of family farmers against Monsanto. "For the past 12,000 years farmers have saved the best seeds each year to increase yields and improve traits for the food we eat," said Dave Murphy, founder and Executive Director of Food Democracy Now! "In 1996, when Monsanto sold its first patented genetically modified (GMO) seed to farmers, this radically changed the idea of how farmers planted and saved seed. Less than two decades later, Monsanto's aggressive patent infringement lawsuits have created a climate of fear in rural America among farmers. It's time for that to end. Farmers should not have to live in fear because they are growing our food."

A complete 36 page transcript of the Oral Argument is available here.
Further information on OSGATA et al. v. Monsanto is available at osgata.org and pubpat.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 3, 2012
1:08 PM

CONTACT: Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association

Jim Gerritsen
Phone(207) 425-7741

###

The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association is a not-for-profit agricultural organization made up of organic farmers, seed growers, seed businesses and supporters. OSGATA is committed to developing and protecting organic seed and it's growers in order to ensure the organic community has access to excellent quality organic seed free of contaminants and adapted to the diverse needs of local organic agriculture. www.osgata.org

THE VP WHO COULDN'T SPELL POTATO - OPENED OUR WORLD TO TODAY'S AGENT ORANGE UNREGULATED GMO FOOD CONTAMINATION

Help stop former Monsanto VP from attaining top position at the FDA - sign the petition

Thursday, February 02, 2012 by: S. D. Wells   

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034847_Michael_Taylor_Monsanto_FDA.html#ixzz1lKVSNSeR

(NaturalNews) The one man who may be responsible for more food related illnesses and deaths than anyone in history, Michael R. Taylor, has just been promoted from US Food Safety Czar to Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of the FDA, a position which would enable the giant biotech company Monsanto to silently and legally feed cancer causing vegetables to every living person who is not 100% strictly organic.

President Obama has appointed the former Monsanto Vice President and lobbyist Michael R. Taylor to the throne. This is the same man who was Food Safety Czar for the FDA when Genetically Modified Organisms were allowed into the US food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety or risks. This is like putting a terrorist in charge of the world's food supply. What will the cancer numbers look like in 2016? (http://www.counterpunch.org)

The GMO nightmare all started with the Dan Quayle led FDA/GMO marriage. Under George Bush Senior's Administration from 1989 to 1993, Dan Quayle single-handedly catapulted GMO's into existence through FDA's anti-consumer right-to-know policy, which stated that GMO foods did not have to be labeled or safety tested. Yes, you read that correctly: There is no safety testing required whatsoever to take some Agent Orange pesticide and genetically mutate the seeds of vegetables in a chemical laboratory so that nothing on planet earth will eat the plant that grows from the ground except for all the humans who have no idea what happened.

Michael Taylor is part of a revolving door at the FDA, where Monsanto Execs just come and go as they please. First, Michael R. Taylor was an assistant to the FDA commissioner. Then he left to work for a law firm in the 1980's to help gain FDA approval of Monsanto's artificial growth hormone (rGBH), which is directly linked to cancer. Then he became deputy commissioner of the FDA in 1991, and was later re-appointed to the FDA in 2009 by Obama. He is the food villain who tried his best to keep this "malignant milk of the turn of the century" from being labeled.

Michael Taylor is the epitome of everything Monsanto represents. Taylor is like a vehicle for Monsanto's patenting of seeds and global domination of farming. He implements the government's "favorable" agricultural biotech policies because it's much more of a financially sure shot to use RoundUp in food than to farm organically and ethically. If the investments aren't paying enough at the corporation, Execs just switch over to Federal Regulations and write some new Legislation based on "tainted research", which allows them to pile more toxins on the American public and bankroll off it when they flip back to the corporate side.

The 4-headed Administration of thieves

This marks the pinnacle so far of a long ascent of evil profiteering and corporate executives making it to the top. It's like one big 4-headed company of thieves: The FDA, EPA, Supreme Court, and Monsanto's Board of Executives, and these organization hoppers include Clarence Thomas, Michael R. Taylor, Ann Veneman, and Linda Fisher, who conveniently bounce back and forth between positions at Monsanto and the EPA.

Here are just a few examples in case you didn't know: Prior to being the Supreme Court Judge who put G.W. Bush in office, Clarence Thomas was Monsanto's lawyer. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Anne Veneman, was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Calgene Corporation. The U.S. Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, received $50,000 in donations from Monsanto during his winning campaign for Wisconsin's governor. The two congressmen receiving the most donations from Monsanto during the last election were Larry Combest, Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee, and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The prior Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Searle Pharmaceuticals.

Monsanto has the money to win in court and/or settle with anyone who opposes them. Monsanto has been sued and has settled multiple times for damaging the health of its employees and residents near its Superfund sites through pollution and poisoning. A report released in June 2011 linked glyphosate (RoundUp) to birth defects in frog and chicken embryos at dilutions much lower than those used in typical agricultural spraying (including home gardens). (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22625.cfm)

Silent Anti-Nutritional Terrorism

FDA scientists once contended that genetic modification of the food supply is the "single most radical and potentially dangerous threat to public health." In addition to producing GMO foods, Monsanto pushes dozens of other toxic products such as aspartame, bovine growth hormone, Agent Orange, Dioxin, DDT, and Roundup - all of which cause birth defects and deformities.

Constitutional checks and balances are gone for the most part in the United States, especially when it comes to writing ethical policies regarding the environment, food, medicine and drinking water. The FDA and Corporations should not bleed over into one another, and the whole concept of lobbying is just a glorified form of "legal bribery."

Monsanto conveniently tramples on antitrust violations, which the Justice Department has supposedly been investigating for years. The Supreme Court of France found Monsanto guilty of falsely advertising Roundup as "biodegradable" and "environmentally friendly." The New York State Attorney General sued Monsanto and won in 1997 for claiming RoundUp was, "safer than table salt and "practically non-toxic" to mammals, birds, and fish. More than enough scientific research reveals glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, is "acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance."

On two other occasions, the EPA has caught scientists deliberately falsifying test results at research laboratories hired by Monsanto to study glyphosate.

This is not just another case of a ruthless tyrant trying to become the CEO of some big company, this could be end of organic food as we know it. If Taylor takes the position of Head of the FDA, have no doubts that keeping your own seeds to any eatable plant will soon be illegal. This will endanger all of humanity by "putting all of our eggs in one basket," because GMO seeds die after one year of growth; therefore, if a Nuclear bomb wipes out their facilities and seed storages, we would have zero growth of food from that point on. That's mass genocide. Plus, illnesses from GMO foods include changes in major organs, hormonal, immune, digestive, and reproductive systems.

Does FDA stand for "Food as Drugs for America?"

Monsanto and GMO toxic bioengineering dominates the production of food through the DNA manipulation and mutation of seeds, and the unethical growing and breeding of animals, fish, and crops in the USA right now at 80% or higher: Cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, "farm raised fish" (which means they're all juiced up with hormones and antibiotics in an overcrowded lake), milk, corn, soybeans, alfalfa (as chem-feed for cows), canola, tobacco and cotton (to infect the skin since the skin is your largest organ). GMO should be called GDDO - "genetically diseased and dying" organisms. (http://www.seedsofdeception.com)

What will America and the rest of the world be like when food is 95 - 98% GMO? It's not that far away if Taylor solidifies his FDA position. How high will that drive the price of organic food? This is more powerful than bombs. This is population control. Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company now basically owns Monsanto ... another big surprise, right? Combine that with FDA control over legislation and talk about the "evil tri-fecta!"

Consumers are winning some battles, however. In the wake of mass consumer pressure, major retailers such as Safeway, Publix, Wal-Mart, and Kroger and even Starbucks banned products containing Monsanto's rBGH milk. Vegetarians and vegans are on an accelerated upward population trend. The ratios have changed drastically since the anti-GMO movement began to snowball in the early 2000's, but this corporate co-op by the powers that be in Washington D.C. is a most dispiccable example of foxes guarding the chickens.

Help prevent the food Czar from becoming FDA's Senior Advisor. This petition already has over 60,000 signatures. We need 75,000 signatures. Sign the petition now.It's not too late to prevent this latest atrocity to the future of food!

Here's the link:
(http://signon.org)

There's no time to waste!

Sources for this article include

http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2515

http://www.counterpunch.org

http://signon.org

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/

http://trevoc.webs.com/evilmonsanto.htm

http://www.indiepundit.com

http://bestmeal.info/monsanto/facts.shtml

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22625.cfm

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/effec-cn.htm

http://www.mothering.com

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15588.cfm

http://www.seedsofdeception.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034847_Michael_Taylor_Monsanto_FDA.html#ixzz1lKV8yVID