Quail Hollow Farm was holding a Farm-to-Fork dinner for invited guests,
when a health inspector showed up and forced them to destroy the food.
In this
video of the event
you can hear the arrogance of the inspector:
That’s all the information you need.
Well, no, it’s not.
The inspector said it was a public event because the guests had paid for d inner.
The farmer eventually called their lawyer who said ask the inspector
to see her warrant.
She had none.
But they had already been told their food that they grew with their own hands
was not fit for a public dinner, nor a private dinner, not even to feed
to their pigs.
They were forced to pour bleach on it, making it unfit even for compost.
Given that every food contamination recall in recent years has come
from big factory farms, not from small organic farms,
does this raid seem right to you?
Continue reading →
The 83 family farmers, small and family owned seed businesses, and
agricultural organizations challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically
modified seed filed papers in federal court (13th August 2011) defending
their right to seek legal protection from the threat of being sued by
Monsanto for patent infringement should they ever become contaminated
by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed. The
Public Patent Foundation
(PUBPAT) represents the plaintiffs in the suit, titled Organic Seed
Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), et al. v. Monsanto and pending
in the Southern District of New York. The August 13 filings respond to
a motion filed by Monsanto in mid-July to have the case dismissed. In
support of the plantiffs’ right to bring the case, 12 agricultural
organizations also filed a friend-of-the-court
amici brief.
“Rather than give a straight forward answer on whether they would sue
our clients for patent infringement if they are ever contaminated by
Monsanto’s transgenic seed, Monsanto has instead chosen to try to deny
our clients the right to receive legal protection from the courts,”
said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director. “Filings include
sworn statements by several of the plaintiffs themselves explaining to
the court how the risk of contamination by transgenic seed is real and
why they cannot trust Monsanto to not use an occurrence of contamination
as a basis to accuse them of patent infringement.”
This goes well beyond control of seeds, of course, and beyond the plaintiffs:
Continue reading →
Tired of hacking and coughing after cotton fields get sprayed to open their bolls?
Tired of losing your garden or organic crops to Roundup drift?
Now there are two precedents for legal recourse.
Purveyors of conventional and genetically-modified (GM) crops — and the
pesticides and herbicides that accompany them — are finally getting a
taste of their own legal medicine. Minnesota’s Star Tribune has reported
that the Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled that a large organic
farm surrounded by chemical-laden conventional farms can seek damages for
lost crops, as well as lost profits, caused by the illegal trespassing
of pesticides and herbicides on its property.
Oluf and Debra Johnson’s 1,500-acre organic farm in Stearns County,
Minn., has repeatedly been contaminated by nearby conventional and
GMO farms since the couple started it in the 1990s. A local pesticide
cooperative known as Paynesville Farmers Union (PFU), which is near the
farm, has been cited at least four times for violating pesticide laws,
and inadvertently causing damage to the Johnson’s farm.
The first time it was realized that pesticides had drifted onto the
Johnson’s farm in 1998, PFU apologized, but did not agree to pay for
damages. As anyone with an understanding of organic practices knows,
even a small bit of contamination can result in having to plow under
that season’s crops, forget profits, and even lose the ability to grow
organic crops in the same field for at least a couple years.
And all most people have done so far is let it slide.
But the Johnsons did something.
Continue reading →
The SEC is investigating Monsanto’s tactics for defending the market
for its herbicide, Roundup. The news emerged just before the July 4
holiday weekend, during Monsanto’s press conference about its quarterly
financial earnings. Company execs boasted of a 77 percent increase in
profit before dropping a mini-bombshell, The Wall Street Journal
reported:
Monsanto said it was cooperating with a previously undisclosed
US Securities and Exchange Commission probe into its customer
incentive programs for herbicides in fiscal years 2009 and 2010,
and had received a subpoena to provide related documents.
A subpoena sounds like a start.
If they do a real investigation I wouldn’t be surprised if they find
enough evidence to pull some licenses.
It was huge, conducting telephone interviews with 17,372 interviewees
representing a population of 45,883,553 people in the listed ten states,
from May 2006 to April 2007.
Some people didn’t like the source of a recent post about
the toxic effects of agrochemicals and GM plants on the environment,
plants, animals, and people.
There are plenty of other sources, including:
Especially
vote at the checkout counter.
If you don’t know it’s local and non-GMO, don’t buy it.
There may be no labelling laws, but local supermarkets know what’s local.
The documentary points out many products in German stores that
include GM soy.
In Argentina, it’s even worse, with increasing numbers of birth defects.
They interview
Prof. Andrés Carrasco about his research on amphibians:
“The hemispheres do not separate, like you can see here.
If you look closely you can see one brain.
Glyphosate can cause this kind of mechanisms, for it is an enzymatic toxin.”
“To human cells glyphosate is already toxic in a very low dose.
A farmer uses a much higher dose on the field.
Roundup is even more toxic than glysophate,
for that is only one of the ingredients in Roundup.”
Roundup says none of this applies to humans and Roundup is safe.
Seralini
says:
Who should you believe?
A corporation repeatedly convicted of deception,
or scientists who say that GM crops
cause liver and kidney damage in animals,
according to research using Monsanto’s own data.
Forbes made Monsanto the company of the year last year in The Planet
Versus Monsanto. I know because I wrote the article. Since then
everything that could have gone wrong for the genetically engineered
seed company….has gone wrong. Super-weeds that are resistant to its
RoundUp weed killer are emerging, even as weed killer sales are being
hit by cheap Chinese generics. An expensive new bioengineered corn seed
with eight new genes does not look impressive in its first harvest. And
the Justice Department is invesigating over antitrust issues. All this
has led to massive share declines. Other publications are making fun of
our cover story.
Maybe Forbes should improve its “invesigating” [sic] skills.
As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the
year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different
accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This
may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.
The agricultural giant was found to have been selling genetically modified cotton seeds without labeling them as such. Between 2002 and 2007, Monsanto’s seeds were illegally sold in several Texas counties where the seeds are explicitly banned.
The seeds — known as Bollgard and Bollgard II — were genetically engineered to produce the insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), and Texas officials were concerned that using the seeds would lead to pest resistance.
But that didn’t stop Monsanto from bamboozling buyers into purchasing the illegal seeds.
Here’s the bad news: Monsanto’s market cap is $29.5 billion,
so the fine is less than a hundredth of a percent of that.
Still, the fines keep going up. Maybe eventually they’ll get big enough to sting.
Or we could just trust the company that made Agent Orange and DDT.
In this
video of the event
you can hear the arrogance of the inspector:
Some people didn’t like the source of a recent post about
the toxic effects of agrochemicals and GM plants on the environment,
plants, animals, and people.
There are plenty of other sources, including:
