by Linn Cohen-Cole
March 9, 2009

from OpedNews Website
 

To begin reversing GM contamination will require ending the power biotech companies such as Monsanto exert over our government and through that, over our food.

HR 875, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenberg works for Monsanto.

Rosa DeLauro                                                      Stanley Greenberg                        

The bill is monstrous on level after level:

• the power it would give to Monsanto

• the criminalization of seed banking

• the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers

• the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals

• the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry

• the stripping away of their property rights

• the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international "industrial" standards to independent farms - the only part of our food system that still works

• the planned elimination of farmers through all these means

The corporations want the land, they want more intensive industrialization, they want the end of normal animals so they can substitute patented genetically engineered ones they own, they want the end of normal seeds and thus of seed banking by farmers or individuals. They want control over all seeds, animals, water, and land.

Our farmers are good stewards. That is who is threatened by Rosa DeLauro's bill (and because of that, we all are). At a time in this country when wise stewardship and the production of anything real - especially good food - is what is most needed, it is our best stewards whom Rosa DeLauro threatens, under the cruelly false name of "food safety."

And now Monsanto wants its own employee, Michael Taylor (image left) - the man who forced genetically engineered rBGH on us (unlabeled so us, unaware) when the Clintons placed him over "food safety" in the 90s - back in government, this time to act with massive police power as a "food safety tsar" from inside the White House.

HR 875 would give him immense power over what is done on every single farm in the country and massive police state power to wield over farmers and punishments to break them at will.

The following quotes show Monsanto and its biotech ilk are not "stewards" at all. Their inhuman focus on profit has led to inhuman, insane, sickening products that require intense corruption of democracy and science institutes and media, to foist them on country after country which don't want them.

It is our farmers who stand between us and this outrage which masquerades as science, as food, as normal business, as government. And it is or farmers who need not only protecting and but actual freeing from government intrusion, control and harm.

Vegetarians and vegans do not identify with farmers who raise animals but what is at stake here is critical for all of us.

"First they came for the Jews" is an apt reminder of what matters in standing with each other because,

• the overwhelming bureaucratic burdens

• the recording over every single thing done on a farm

• the warrantless inspections

• the end of farmers markets

• the criminalization of seed banking

• the ten years in prison for stepping out of line in any way,

...will next be applied not to animals breaking out of fence onto a neighbors' farm, but for such things as not spraying pesticides on an organic farm to eradicate earthworms (now listed as an invasive species) because the government's "food safety tsar" has deemed it necessary.

It is totalitarian control (and HR 875 epitomizes it) which we stand against, and now it is aimed with ferocity at farmers with animals. Stopping it now keeps all farmers safe.

Rosa DeLauro and Stanley Greenburg have a great deal to account for in attempting through a mislabeled bill with hidden intent to wipe out our farmers and harm all of us.

HR 875 gives Monsanto greater power and opens doors wider to the following ...



GM and non-GM crops cannot coexist

"OK, we know that cross-pollination will occur but we’ve got thirty years of experience to say we know how far pollen will travel. And therefore what we’ve done is we’ll grow a GM crop at a distance away from a non-GM crop, so the people that want non-GM can buy non-GM, and the people that want GM can buy GM. The two will not get mixed up. Everybody will have the right to choose."
Paul Rylott, Seed Manager for Aventis CropScience, and later chief spokesperson for the agricultural biotechnology industry in the UK, "Matter of fact”, BBC2 Eastern Region, broadcast 12 October 2000


"Global incidents of genetic contamination from genetically modified (GM) crops are on the rise, while the companies responsible ignore the consequences. Since 2005, the GM Contamination Register has recorded 216 contamination events in 57 countries since GM crops were first grown commercially on a large scale in 1996. While companies claim they can control the use of GM crops, the reality is very different."
Greenpeace International, “Biotech companies fuel GM contamination spread”, 29 February 2008


"If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GM foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GM. It’s a one way choice, like the introduction of rabbits or cane toads to Australia; once it’s made, it can’t be reversed."
Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development, “Choice: Less can be more", Food Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008


"The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded [with GMOs] that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender."
Don Westfall, biotech industry consultant and vice-president of Promar International quoted in, “Starlink fallout could cost billions”, Toronto Star, 9 January 2001


"The industry is in reality making serious efforts, whether legally or illegally, to contaminate the cultivated species all over the world."
Devinder Sharma, trade policy analyst, “The great genetic scandal”, Center for Alternative Agricultural Media, 1 August 2002


"[Dale] Adolphe [of the Canadian Seed Growers Association] said it's ironic that even as public protests and opposition to GM food products seem to grow and even as new regulations and controls are put in place, the total acreage devoted to GM crops around the world is expanding.

 

That may be what eventually brings the debate to an end, said Adolphe.

'It's a hell of a thing to say that the way we win is don't give the consumer a choice, but that might be it.'"

Adrian Ewins, quoting Dale Adolphe of the Canadian Seed Growers Association in “Biotech wins by giving consumers no choice", The Western Producer, 4 April 2002


"People will have [GM] Roundup Ready soya whether they like it or not."
Monsanto spokesperson in Britian, Ann Foster, “The politics of food", Maria Margaronis, The Nation, 27 December 1999


"The US Department of Agriculture claims to know where the maize - banned from all food use globally and only recently approved for US exports - is located. Aventis, the French firm which developed the genetically modified maize sold throughout the US maize belt in 1999 and 2000, says it knows, also. So do I: StarLink maize is everywhere."
US agricultural journalist Alan Guebert, "Another contamination scandal dents US biotech hopes", Farmers Weekly, 8 December 2000


"It's important for countries around the world to adopt a uniform standard of acceptable levels of contamination."
Biotechnology Industry Organization spokesperson, Lisa Dry quoted in, "Engineered DNA found in crop seeds", Rick Weiss, Washington Post, 24 February 2004


"In 2006 it was discovered that 30% of the entire US long-grain rice supply had become contaminated by experimental GM rice varieties unapproved for human consumption. Not only was this a public safety disaster, but also cost the rice industry over $1 billion. The contamination source? 'Controlled' field trials."
The Soil Association, “Government to defy critics with secret GM crop trials", Today's News, 17 November 2008


"If they can’t prevent it there, there is little chance they will avoid it in the field."
Dr Brian Johnson of English Nature, after sugar beets genetically modified to resist one company’s herbicide accidentally acquired GM genes resistant to another company’s herbicide, despite being grown in greenhouses. “Stray genes highlight superweed danger", New Scientist, issue 2261, 21 October 2000


"Cross-pollination of the environment is an issue, and that has to be addressed. And for those countries that have very small landmass, there’s no way they can segregate GM crops from conventional crops or from organic crops, and so the likelihood of cross pollination exists."
Prof Patrick Wall, until 2008 the Chairman of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the EU Agency mandated by the European Commission to advise on the safety of genetically modified food and animal feed for the European Union, in an interview: "We cannot force-feed EU citizens with GM food", 2 December 2008


"The cultivation of genetically modified maize [in Spain] has caused a drastic reduction in organic cultivations of this grain and is making their coexistence practically impossible."
Conclusion of research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics: “An impossible coexistence: transgenic and organic agriculture", Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 30 June 2008


"Mexican plant biologist, Ignacio Chapela, and his student David Quist, were the target of attack for their painstaking research that established the spread of transgenes in the centre of origin of maize. Such genetic contamination would ultimately destroy the world's available genetic purity and in the very hotspots of diversity.

 

The National Biodiversity Commission of Mexico accepted the findings.

‘It is confirmed. There is no doubt about it,’ Jorge Soberon of the Commission was reported as saying. Two separate teams found transgenic DNA in around 10 per cent of crop plants sampled in Oaxaca province, describing it as ‘the world's worst case of GM contamination’."

Devinder Sharma, trade policy analyst, “The great genetic scandal”, Center for Alternative Agricultural Media, 1 August 2002. Quist and Chapela's findings were further confirmed by a study published in 2008, see "Modified genes spread to local maize"

 

Monsanto's Michael Taylor is BAAAAACC...KKK ...

This Time to Control "Food Safety" From The White House
by Linn Cohen-Cole
March 8, 2009

from OpedNews Website

Michael Taylor, perhaps stowed away in Hillary Clinton's trunk as a nostalgic reminder of the good ole days when Bill put him in charge of the FDA and he approved rBGH, has reentered government along with her.

He slipped onto Obama's transition team somehow (just how?) and is now hoping to slip into an office... in the White House.

What would he do there, he who subjected this country and many others to the increased risk of breast cancer (7 times greater risk), prostate and colon cancer because of what he did to milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream with rBGH as well as to all the foods that rely on milk solids and other parts of milk? Why, over see "food safety."

Food Democracy Now wants people to "[w]rite Secretary Vilsack (AgSec@usda.gov) and tell him to stand strong on food safety."

But isn't that the same Vilsack who has no record on food safety, a strong record of support for Monsanto and genetic engineering, and oversaw a huge increase in CAFOs in Iowa and the loss of thousands of small farmers? How is he supposed to "stand strong" on something he has never stood on before and actually supports the opposite of?

And he's Monsanto's boy and the guy who dreamed up the Monsanto laws that preemptively remove democracy from communities wishing to control what is planted on them or how farms are used.

Food Democracy Now describes Taylor as:

"Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto executive, whose career literally fits the definition of the revolving door between government, lobbying and corporate interests. Before serving on the Obama ag transition team, Taylor made a name for himself rotating in and out of law firms, Monsanto, the USDA and FDA. While at the FDA he helped write the rules to allow rBGH into the American food system and our children’s milk.

They go on to say "We need a food safety system with some teeth - one that is independent of corporate interests," yet, mysteriously, they have not even mentioned or yet opposed the bogus "food safety" bills that Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, and giant surveillance companies want which are designed to destroy our farmers and give control of the US food supply and control of US farmland to multinationals.

Deborah Bryceson of Oxford UK calls it “de-peasantization” – the phasing out of traditional family farms to make fertile farmland available for intensive capital accumulation using factory farming.”

Third world countries were the original target, now it is our turn.

Food Democracy Now wants people to write "Secretary Vilsack and ask him to reconsider these decisions" but they don't seem to have the picture yet: There is a huge plan in place for Monsanto to take over control of all food in the US. Vilsack was potentially put in at the USDA to help.

Putting Michael Taylor back in charge of food is likely the deal that Obama struck to get her to stop her incessant "running" - let the Clinton's Monsanto connections back into government with her, this time with monstrously centralized power. This centralization of the FDA and USDA into a "Food Safety" department was one of Hillary Clinton's major platforms while standing at her side was her campaign strategist and long term advisor, Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a major (and reviled) PR firm for Monsanto.

It appears that Food Democracy Now is being played by Vilsack and as they focus on him and what he does, good or bad, they accidentally distract the whole organic community from the most massive danger we have ever faced - a take over of our food supply through those bogus "food safety" bills. I believe the timing on Merrigan's appointment was chosen to distract progressives until the bills have been shoved through, and then, additionally to throw people off-guard, Vilsack goes and makes a PC speech on civil rights.

Burson-Marsteller is not one of the largest PR firms in the world for being inept at staging things - right now they are likely helping to direct everyone's attention away from the bills. And, to keep people busy, meanwhile, the USDA is going through the motions of asking for comments on NAIS which they have no intention to listening to (though our filing comments is incredibly important because we'll have numbers to indicate how much this matters.

So, use this link and comment repeatedly . Your comment will go to the USDA as well as Congress and newspapers. Get all your friends and family to, as well.

Meanwhile, they are doing their best to keep people busy with democratic exercises which they intend to be exercises in futility. We need to use those exercises, not to expect their action, but to tabulate their injustice.

Meanwhile the real show is going on down the street, where Monsanto is taking massive control over all farms through the falsely named "food safety" bills, introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband, Stanley Greenburg got rich from working for Clinton and Monsanto.

And the agriculture committee is loaded with people who have gotten large donations from ... who else? ... Monsanto.

Connecting the dots is not hard. The same laws in the EU have already wiped out 60% of Polish farmers, and that is only so far. HACCP, also (like NAIS and "best farming practices" which are also included) was an international harmonization of laws that Monsanto wanted - another Clinton's gift also billed as "food safety." In Kansas alone HACCP wiped out 72 small local meat processors who'd hadn't had any problems, and vastly lowered the number of inspections to the point where we have over 70 million food borne illnesses a year now.

Fool us once, shame on you (Clintons and Monsanto). But here comes a really huge "twice" - and by the same folks.

The left has been completely taken unawares and except for frantic efforts now to wake them up, they have been busy either being happy about Merrigan, or looking forward to an organic White House garden, or trying to figure Obama's budget for agriculture - entirely unaware the "food safety" bills will destroy literally everything they have been working on and dreaming of and entirely ignorant of the bills' content, scope, intent and horror.

Those bills are Monsanto triumphing over "organic."

It will be taking control over every farm in the country, eliminating as many possible farmers in the process as they can, with Michael Taylor, their lawyer, running the whole thing from the White House.

Meanwhile, the media, despite being constantly written to and begged, has not done a single story on this.

With Michael Taylor looking to head food safety from the White House, the penny should finally drop for everyone.

Even that appointment may be timed to throw attention away from the bills themselves and to set people scrambling to stop it. But if people don't want Michael Taylor in charge of a centralized "Food Safety" department, they only need kill the department itself. Kill the bills.

The:

• sustainable agriculture

• local farmer

• organic farming

• community garden

• environmental

• anti-GMO

• anti-pesticide

• anti-data banking

• anti-NAFTA

• anti-CAFTA

• anti-GATT

• anti-CODEX

• anti-globalization

• pro-alternative health

• pro-natural healing

• pro-constitutional rights

• pro-farming rights

• pro-health rights

• pro-religious freedom

• pro-freedom of speech

• pro-property rights

• pro-American business

• pro-saving this country

• pro-family groups,

...need to wake up fast and join farmers who have been doing their damnedest to say things were beyond rotten and they were about to be eliminated.

Don't reach Vilsack (though be sure to comment at the USDA, Congress and your newspapers on NAIS and those bills) - reach Rosa DeLauro . She introduced HR 875 - the biggest of the Monsanto bills. Her husband, Stanley Greenburg, got rich working for Clinton and Monsanto.

She has betrayed every man, woman, and child in the country by introducing a bill that will turn our lives over to Monsanto. She has made a mockery of any feminist position she has ever espoused in support of women and children.

At what point does working for Monsanto become toxic to whomever does it? Do these people's careers ever collapse from such a betrayal of their country?

DeLauro:

Washington Office. Phone: (202) 225-3661. Fax: (202) 225-4890
Connecticut Office. Phone: (203) 562-3718. Fax: (203) 772-2260

The sponsors need to withdraw their support entirely and they very well might if they know they stepped in it.

Remember that everyone has been faked out and most of these sponsors would have been as well. In addition, there are a lot of women on this list who will likely believe they are standing up for children and families against unsafe food so are being used as easy marks here.

This is a very carefully and well planned attack on our food supply, using progressives to make it happen, and pulling along the progressive community with them.

Here are the list of sponsors. Let them know they are being used and the bills are being pushed by Monsanto (and the Dirt Pack of big meat packers) and point out that Monsanto's Michael Taylor, who gave us rBGH, is back and wants to run this centralized lie of "food safety" from the White House.

Call these offices even if you are not in their district to tell them they stepped in it and the whole organic community is now onto this game and rising up. This is the death of organic food and the criminalization of seed banking. It is a Monsanto take over and Taylor is here to run it.

If someone wants to locate emails for these people and post them for others to use, that would be great.

And make good use of this link to tell your Congress people and newspapers AND the USDA how you feel about any of this.