{"id":356,"date":"2010-12-26T07:39:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-26T12:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/the-biotech-bully-of-st-louis-is-having-a-bad-year.html"},"modified":"2010-12-26T07:39:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-26T12:39:00","slug":"the-biotech-bully-of-st-louis-is-having-a-bad-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/the-biotech-bully-of-st-louis-is-having-a-bad-year.html","title":{"rendered":"The Biotech Bully of St. Louis is having a Bad Year"},"content":{"rendered":"Ronnie Cummins writes in Counterpunch,\n\nCoexistence With Monsanto? Hell No!<\/a>\n
\n\n<\/a>\nMonsanto\u2019s Roundup, the agro-toxic companion herbicide for millions of\nacres of GM soybeans, corn, cotton, alfalfa, canola, and sugar beets,\nis losing market share. Its overuse has spawned a new generation of\nsuperweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as\n2,4, D and paraquat. Moreover, patented \u201cRoundup Ready\u201d crops require\nmassive amounts of climate destabilizing nitrate fertilizer. Compounding\nMonsanto\u2019s damage to the environment and climate, rampant Roundup use\nis literally killing the soil, destroying essential soil microorganisms,\ndegrading the living soil\u2019s ability to capture and sequester CO2,\nand spreading deadly plant diseases.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nIn just one year, Monsanto has moved from being Forbes\u2019 \u201cCompany\nof the Year\u201d to the\n\nWorst Stock of the Year.<\/a> The Biotech Bully of\nSt. Louis has become one of the most hated corporations on Earth.\n<\/blockquote>\nAll that and\n\nparaquat doesn’t work on mutant pigweed, either.<\/a>\nThe whole “no-till” fable is unravelling.\n

\nThe article mentions scientific studies about bad health effects\nof genetically modified foods,\nand goes on to warn of Monsanto maneuverings through the EPA\nand the Gates Foundation.\nThen he points to the European Union as leading the way:\n\n\n

\nIn practical terms coexistence between GMOs and organics in the\nEuropean Union, the largest agricultural market in the world, is a\nnon-issue. Why? Because there are almost no GMO crops under cultivation,\nnor consumer food products on supermarket shelves, in the EU, period. And\nwhy is this? There are almost no GMOs in Europe, because under EU law,\nas demanded by consumers, all foods containing GMOs or GMO ingredients\nmust be labeled. Consumers have the freedom to choose or not to\nconsume GMOs, while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at\nleast legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as they are\nlabeled. Of course consumers, for the most part, do not want to consume\nGM Frankenfoods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food\npurveyors like McDonald\u2019s and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the axiom\nexpressed by the Monsanto executive at the beginning of this article:\n“If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well\nput a skull and crossbones on it.”\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nSince in the U.S. we’re not getting any progress on labelling at\nthe national level, he has another suggestion:\n
\nTherefore we need to shift our focus and go local. We\u2019ve got to\nconcentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the\nmarketplace, at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to\nvoluntarily label their products; while on the legislative front we must\norganize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws,\nat the city, county, and state levels.\n<\/blockquote>\nSounds like a plan to me.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronnie Cummins writes in Counterpunch, Coexistence With Monsanto? Hell No! Monsanto\u2019s Roundup, the agro-toxic companion herbicide for millions of acres of GM soybeans, corn, cotton, alfalfa, canola, and sugar beets, is losing market share. Its overuse has spawned a new generation of superweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as 2,4, D […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,8,40,42,174,44,845,10,373,384],"tags":[375,2761,871,2775,902,826,15,377,2822,2824,376,179],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-agrochemicals","category-economy","category-food-and-drink","category-glyphosate","category-health","category-hfcs","category-history","category-no-till","category-paraquat","tag-2-4-d","tag-agriculture","tag-cafo","tag-food","tag-gmo","tag-local","tag-monsanto","tag-mutant","tag-no-till","tag-paraquat","tag-pigweed","tag-roundup"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-5K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}