No Monsanto GMOs For The UK
UPDATE from Natural News:
We regret to inform our readers that this story is based on a Daily Mail article that we have now been informed is from 2003, not 2012. In their own search engine, Daily Mail mistakenly listed their own story as being published on February 3, 2012…
Oh well – let’s pressure Monsanto to get out of the UK anyway!
Mike Adams reports for Natural News:
A massive victory against Monsanto and genetically engineered seeds has been achieved in the United Kingdom today. Monsanto has announced a total withdrawal from the UK, shuttering its Cambridge-based wheat production operation. UK newspaper Daily Mail was instrumental in promoting opposition against Monsanto through its “Frankenstein Foods” educational campaign.
The paper is now reporting that Monsanto plans to sell off GMO crop-breeding centers in France, Germany and the Czech Republic. Daily Mail reported, “…the company has given up hopes of introducing GM crops to Europe.” (Are you grinning…
Seedbank Vaults In Case Of Mass Extinction
Via Wired, Dornith Doherty’s photographs offer a glimpse inside several of humanity’s vital seed-saving facilities, where samples of our planet’s flora are stored and protected in case of future mass extinction (be it due to climate change, nuclear war, astroid impact, or disease epidemic). Perhaps most stark is the Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault, located on an island near the North Pole. One of these tiny outposts could someday be the savior of life on Earth:
Dornith Doherty’s documentary images of seed-saving facilities capture the logistics — and existential anxiety — behind the elaborate steps now in place to preserve the world’s crop diversity.
Once a traditional, year-to year practice by smallholding farmers to develop sturdy varietals, this simple act of putting seed aside has more and more become the concern of international affairs and corporate policy.
“Seed saving and its role in preserving biodiversity is of utmost importance. We are in an era…
Scientist Warns That Roundup Ready GM Seeds Could Cause Crop Collapse
The Institute of Science in Society’s Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports that a USDA senior scientist has sent an “emergency” warning to US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack regarding a new plant pathogen in Roundup Ready GM soybean and corn that may be responsible for high rates of infertility and spontaneous abortions in livestock:
An open letter appeared on the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance founded and run by Judith McGeary to save family farms in the US [1, 2]. The letter, written by Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University, to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, warns of a pathogen “new to science” discovered by “a team of senior plant and animal scientists”. Huber says it should be treated as an “emergency’’, as it could result in “a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”
The letter appeared to have been written before…
Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds
Beverly Bell, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, writing for Huffington Post:
“A new earthquake” is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto’s seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation’s presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.
In an open letter sent of May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the Executive Director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds…, and on what is left our environment in Haiti.”[1] Haitian social movements have been…
Mark Of The Beast: Obama’s Latest Monsanto Pick, Elena Kagan
Photo: Doc Searls (CC)
Rady Ananda writes for Thepeoplesvoices.org:
First, we spit out our coffee over President Obama’s appointments of former Monsanto goon Michael Taylor as Food Safety [sic] Czar and ‘biotech governor of the year’ Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture. Then we choked on our grits when he made Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, the US Ag Trade Representative. Now, the real food movement has completely lost its appetite with Obama’s nomination of Monsanto defender, Elena Kagan, to the US Supreme Court.
In December 2009, in her capacity as Solicitor General, Kagan intervened in the first case on which SCOTUS will rule involving genetically modified crops, Monsanto v Geertson Seed. She defended Monsanto’s fight to contaminate the environment with its GM alfalfa, not the American people’s right to safe feed and a protected environment.
The lower court ruled that “contamination of organic and conventional alfalfa crops with the genetically engineered gene has occurred and defendants…
A New Earthquake Hits Haiti: Monsanto’s Deadly Gift Of 475 Tons Of Genetically-Modified Seeds
By Fr. Jean-Yves Urfie for the Center for Research on Globalisation:
Haiti’s earthquake on 12 January this year has been a lucky business break for some. The transnational firm Monsanto is offering the country’s farmers a deadly gift of 475 tonnes of genetically-modified (GM) seeds, along with associated fertiliser and pesticides, which will be handed out free by the WINNER project, with the backing of the US embassy in Haiti. Do Haitians know Monsanto made the “Agent Orange” defoliant sprayed over Vietnam by US planes during the war there, poisoning both US soldiers and Vietnamese civilians?
Do Haitians know that these GM seeds have been declared dangerous by many countries? They often come in kits along with a Monsanto herbicide called “Roundup,” which contains glyphosate. In my native Brittany, it has already polluted the water table. But Monsanto insists its product is biodegradable. It is being sued for this by anti-frauid officials…
Is It Time To Stockpile “Survival Seeds”?
Are seeds the new gold? Advertisements for “survival seeds” are being run during Glenn Beck’s prime time show on Fox News, advising viewers to stockpile nonhybrid seeds rather than gold or silver. When the “politicians and bankers bring the whole thing crashing down,” you’ll be able to grow your own “crisis garden” with nutrient-rich foods to sustain your family…scary times.
Genetically Modified Seeds ‘Are Everywhere’
by Andy Coghlan for New Scientist:
Genetically modified crops are everywhere, it seems – even in Europe. Strict laws designed to keep the European Union free of unauthorised GM crops and products are not working, and are posing problems for the EU’s €150 billion livestock industry, according to farmers’ representatives. They say that supplies of animal feed for poultry and pigs are being refused entry at European ports when found to contain even trace amounts of unauthorised GM material.
Under Europe’s “zero-tolerance” laws on GM contamination, introduced in 2007, the presence of even a few seeds of unauthorised GM material will rule out an entire shipment. The animal feed industry says that the laws are unworkable because GM material is almost ubiquitous, given today’s global supply chain.
“Though we understand the consumer concern in Europe, we don’t understand zero tolerance because it closes down trade,” says Pekka Pesonen, secretary general of Copa-Cogeca, a…
