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by Jonathan Benson
staff writer
July 15, 2012
from
NaturalNews Website
While millions of Americans were busy celebrating freedom from
tyranny during the recent Independence Day festivities, Monsanto was
actively trying to thwart that freedom with new attacks on health
freedom.
It turns out that the most evil
corporation in the world has quietly attached riders to both the
2012 Farm Bill and the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that
would essentially force the federal government to approve GMOs at
the request of biotechnology companies, and prohibit all safety
reviews of GMOs from having any real impact on the GMO approval
process.
The Alliance for Natural Health-USA (ANH-USA), the Organic
Consumers Association (OCA), and several other health freedom
advocacy groups have been actively drawing attention to these
stealth attacks in recent days, and urging Americans to rise up and
oppose them now before it is too late.
If we fail to act now as a single,
unified community devoted to health freedom, in other words,
America's agricultural future could literally end up being
controlled entirely by the biotech industry, which will have full
immunity from the law.
You can fight back now against these threats to food freedom by
visiting this site.
Full exemption
from the law for the biotech industry
Authored by Congressmen and Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
and Related Agencies Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), the 2013 Agriculture
Appropriations Bill rider, known as the "farmer assurance provision"
(Section 733), specifically outlines that the Secretary of
Agriculture will be required, upon request, to "immediately" grant
temporary approval or deregulation of a GM crop, even if that crop's
safety is in question or under review.
In other words, if the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is
strong-armed into approving a new GM crop that is later legally
challenged in court (which is basically what happened for GM sugar
beets and GM alfalfa), the Secretary of Agriculture, under the
provisions of the Kingston rider, will be required to approve the
cultivation and sale of that crop anyway, even if a higher court has
already ordered a moratorium on that crop.
"A so-called 'Monsanto rider,'
quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013
Agriculture Appropriations Bill, would require - not just allow,
but require - the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary
permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically
engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the
planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
is completed," wrote Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins in a
recent piece for AlterNet.
"All the farmer or the biotech producer has to do is ask, and
the questionable crops could be released into the environment
where they could potentially contaminate conventional or organic
crops and, ultimately, the nation's food supply."
You can read the rider for yourself,
which begins on page 86, Sec. 733 of
this document.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Or.) introduces amendment
to...
Kill 'Monsanto
Protection Act'
According to the House of Representatives Committee on
Appropriations website, the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill,
with the Kingston rider, was already
approved by the committee on June
19. But it will move next to the House floor, where debate and
further amendment proposals will take place - this means there is
still time to fight it.
One amendment being proposed by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Or.) seeks to
altogether eliminate the Kingston rider, which has now been dubbed
by the health freedom community as the Monsanto Protection Act, from
the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill.
You can urge your Congressmen to support
Rep. DeFazio's amendment to kill the Monsanto Protection Act
by emailing or
calling them.
Committee Farm Bill
riders
...would destroy safeguards that protect farmers,
environment from untested GMOs
Another serious food freedom threat exists in the House Agriculture
Committee's discussion draft of the contentious 2012 Farm Bill,
where Monsanto et al. have inserted key language, via corrupt
legislators of course, that will dismantle existing federal law
as it pertains to regulating GM crops, and replace it with a
free-for-all system where biotech giants are basically free to grow
and market whatever GMOs they please without resistance or legal
challenge.
"Deliberately buried in the House
Agriculture Committee's voluminous discussion draft of the 2012
Farm Bill, these significant changes to the Plant Protection Act
(PPA) - one of the few statutes that regulate GE crops - will
counter the gains that have been made to protect our food supply
and the farmers who grow it," writes Andrew Kimbrell, Executive
Director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS), one of the key
groups fighting back against this Monsanto sneak attack.
"The provisions (Sections 10011,
10013 and 10014) would force the rushed commercialization of GE
crops, create a backdoor approval for Dow's 'Agent Orange' corn
and eliminate any meaningful review of the impacts of these
novel crops".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/will-congress-let-monsant_b_1663890.html
These provisions would explicitly outlaw
any review of the environmental or human impacts of GM crops under
the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species
Act (ESA), or any other environmental laws as well.
Only the USDA would be allowed to review
the safety of GM crops, and this review process would be so severely
neutered that the USDA would essentially operate as a formal "rubber
stamp" for approving the biotech industry's offerings.
Both sets of riders threaten to eliminate every remaining semblance
of regulatory power that "We the People" have over our own food
system. If passed, these riders will abolish virtually all remaining
protections over the American food supply, and allow Monsanto and
the rest of Big Ag to completely control what is grown, and how it
is grown.
There is still time to fight back against these heinous threats to
food freedom, but swift action is necessary to stop Congress from
hammering the last few nails into the coffin of American food
freedom.
Be sure to contact your Congressmen right now and demand their
support for Rep. Peter DeFazio's amendment to eliminate the Monsanto
rider from the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, as well as
their opposition to Sections 10011, 10013 and 10014 of
the 2012 Farm Bill.
Sources
http://www.anh-usa.org/urgent-action-alert-on-two-gmo-amendments/
http://www.alternet.org/food/156195/the_%27monsanto_rider%27%3A_are_biotech_companies_about_to_gain_immunity_from_federal_law/?page=entire
http://rt.com/usa/news/monsanto-bill-immunity-court-862/
http://fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2012/jun/29/house_language_monsanto_protection_act/
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