Monsato Goon USDA Head Tom Vilsack Slapped With Lawsuit for Alfalfa Deregulation

The Center for Food Safety fights back against the corporatism of Monsanto.

The Center for Food Safety has announced an immediate challenge to the USDA’s unregulated approval of Monsanto’s genetically-modified (GMO) alfalfa.

“All farmers should be on notice that we will be suing again, so before they make their seed buying decisions, I would certainly caution them that we will be in court,” CFS’s Andrew Kimbrell told Agri-Pulse.com. “And I think that anybody who looks at our past record over the last five years will realize that we haven’t lost yet.”

Press Release

Washington, D.C. – January 27, 2011 –

ROGUE AGENCY CHOOSES “BUSINESS AS USUAL” OVER SOUND SCIENCE
CENTER ANNOUNCES IMMEDIATE LEGAL CHALLENGE TO USDA’S FLAWED ASSESSMENT

 The Center for Food Safety criticized the announcement today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that it will once again allow unlimited, nation-wide commercial planting of Monsanto’s genetically-engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa, despite the many risks to organic and conventional farmers USDA acknowledged in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).  

On a call today with stakeholders, Secretary Vilsack reiterated the concerns surrounding purity and access to non-GE seed, yet the Agency’s decision still places the entire burden for preventing contamination on non-GE farmers, with no protections for food producers, consumers and exporters.

“We’re disappointed with USDA’s decision and we will be back in court representing the interest of farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety. “USDA has become a rogue agency in its regulation of biotech crops and its decision to appease the few companies who seek to benefit from this technology comes despite increasing evidence that GE alfalfa will threaten the rights of farmers and consumers, as well as damage the environment.”

On Monday, the Center sent an open letter to Secretary Vilsack calling on USDA to base its decision on sound science and the interests of farmers, and to avoid rushing the process to meet the marketing timelines or sales targets of Monsanto, Forage Genetics or other entities.

CFS also addressed several key points that were not properly assessed in the FEIS, among them were:
Liability, Implementation and Oversight — Citing over 200 past contamination episodes that have cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales, CFS demands that liability for financial losses incurred by farmers due to transgenic contamination be assigned to the crop developers.  CFS also calls on USDA to take a more active oversight role to ensure that any stewardship plans are properly implemented and enforced.

Roundup Ready alfalfa will substantially increase herbicide use – USDA’s assessment misrepresented conventional alfalfa as utilizing more herbicides than it does, which in turn provided a false rationale for introducing herbicide-promoting Roundup Ready alfalfa.  In fact, USDA’s own data shows that just 7% of alfalfa hay acres are treated with herbicides.  

USDA’s projections in the FEIS show that substantial adoption of Roundup Ready alfalfa would trigger large increases in herbicide use of up to 23 million lbs. per year.

Harms from glyphosate-resistant weeds – USDA’s sloppy and unscientific treatment of glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds ignored the significant contribution that RR alfalfa could make to their rapid evolution.  USDA failed to analyze how GR weeds fostered by currently grown RR crops are increasing herbicide use; spurring more use of soil-eroding tillage; and reducing farmer income through increased weed control costs, an essential baseline analysis.

“We in the farm sector are dissatisfied but not surprised at the lack of courage from USDA to stop Roundup Ready alfalfa and defend family farmers,” said Pat Trask, conventional alfalfa grower and plaintiff in the alfalfa litigation.

The FEIS comes in response to a 2007 lawsuit brought by CFS, in which a federal court ruled that the USDA’s approval of GE alfalfa violated environmental laws by failing to analyze risks such as the contamination of conventional and organic alfalfa, the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds, and increased use of glyphosate herbicide, sold by Monsanto as Roundup. 

The Court banned new plantings of GE alfalfa until USDA completed a more comprehensive assessment of these impacts. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals twice affirmed the national ban on GE alfalfa planting.  In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Alfalfa until and unless future deregulation occurs.

“Last spring more than 200,000 people submitted comments to the USDA highly critical of the substance and conclusions of its Draft EIS on GE Alfalfa,” said Kimbrell.  “Clearly the USDA was not listening to the public or farmers but rather to just a handful of corporations.”
                                                        
The Center for Food Safety is a national, non-profit, membership organization founded in 1997 to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. CFS currently represents over 175,000 members across the nation. 

One of the 'intended consequences' of the war in Iraq was to allow the country, which is considered the cradle of the beginnings of all agriculture, to be taken over by US corporate giants, Cargill and Monsanto through Order 81. 

You never heard any of this in the mainstream press and that is because.....? Maybe they were too busy telling us that all Iraq was good for was growing Poppys for narcotics. They did not tell anyone the truth about that, because the US government didn't want them too. Why tell on yourself, right? And besides Monsanto wouldn't like the information being on the evening news, better to just distract the lefties with body bags and dead civilians.

And it worked like a charm.

It has caused the ruin of thousands of acres of some of the world's most fertile land and a way of life that goes back ten thousand years. (video link)

For the first time in history, Iraq can no longer feed itself.

America, through the USDA, is handing over the country to Monsanto so that they will have free rein over our agriculture, farming and seed supplies.They have the big farmers on board with their scheme because they're saving money on diesel costs with herbicide embedded crops. We understand that, the saving money part that is, but at what final cost to these farmers? (Read the soil analysis from GMO crops and the irreversible damage to the land to get the point.)

Time to pay attention people and raise some hell with your representatives (who all voted for SB 510) and the USDA. Monsanto is all about profit and control no matter how they spin their message, and the American public does itself a huge disservice by thinking this is an issue isolated to fringe groups and tree-huggers.

This is YOUR issue and it will be YOUR problem if you don't wake up and speak up!

Posted by Winger

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Monsanto Receives Full Deregulation From Vilsack's USDA For Roundup Ready Alfalfa

The Obama Administration continues to appease Big Ag despite known risks and *Alabama is following right along in lock step manner to the Monsanto drumbeat.
*(document linked from Auburn University Agricultural Dept. www.ag.auburn edu)

Monsanto shill supreme, USDA Head Tom Vilsack pushed hard for his favorite corporate demon, the dreaded Monsanto, to further gain total control of US agriculture with this latest power bestowal by granting full deregulation for Monsanto's genetically modified Alfalfa:

Organic and sustainable farming advocates were disappointed by the decision. "This creates a perplexing situation when the market calls for a supply of crops free of genetic engineering. The organic standards prohibit the use of genetic engineering, and consumers will not tolerate the accidental presence of genetic engineered materials in organic products yet GE crops continue to proliferate unchecked," said Christine Bushway, executive director and CEO of the Organic Trade Association in a statement.

Bill Tomson and Scott Kilman of the Wall Street Journal reported that Vilsack's rejection of a compromise proposal--partial deregulation, which was vehemently opposed by biotech companies and only tepidly accepted by non-GE interests--was the result of an Obama administration review of "burdensome" regulations.

Sources familiar with the negotiations at USDA, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Food Safety News they believe the White House asked Vilsack to drop proposed regulations so the administration would appear more friendly to big business.The White House did not respond for comment.

Read more here

Vanity Fair covered this issue in an investigative piece from May 2008 aptly entitled "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear" that is a compelling read and an in-depth probe into the frightening power that Monsanto has and wants.

And thanks to this latest ruling from the USDA, in conjunction with the false Food and Safety Bill that passed in the lame duck session of Congress, they are well on their way to getting it.

There were two choices here for Obama and the USDA: partially regulate the Monsanto Alfalfa or don't regulate it at all.

"...deregulation as one option and the other deregulation accompanied by a combination of isolation distances and geographic restrictions on the production of GE alfalfa seed and, in some locations, hay."

Obviously they made the wrong one for us, but it was the right one for Monsanto and future campaign contributions to spineless politicians on both sides of the aisle.

More consequences of the wrongheaded ruling reported by Grist.org:

Alfalfa is a prolific pollinator, meaning that GM alfalfa can easily cross-breed with non-GM alfalfa. If organic producers find their crop contaminated with GM material, they risk losing their organic certification and, likely, their livelihoods. The organic dairy industry, which relies on a steady supply of organic alfalfa, would also be imperiled.
The second problem is so-called "superweeds" -- weeds that develop resistance to Roundup, Monsanto's flagship herbicide. Such weeds are already rampant in the South, where Monsanto's Roundup Ready cotton holds sway, and are moving into the Corn Belt, which is blanketed by the tens of millions of acres with the agrichemical giant's corn and soy seeds. The rise of superweeds is unleashing a virtual monsoon of dodgy poison cocktails onto affected farmland.

It's worth checking out this recent Food & Water Watch report on the gusher of cash the biotech industry spends on D.C. lobbying. The industry spent more than a half billion dollars on lobbying between 1999 and 2009, FWW reports. In 2009 alone, the GMO giants dropped a cool $71 million pushing its agenda. It's also worth noting the number of Monsanto-related people now working in key policy positions in the USDA

Welcome to the Hope and Change of the best government that corporate money can buy. Let's all sit back and watch Alabama Agriculture Commissioner John McMillan become the next "farmer friendly politician" who caves into the corporate world of deceit that is Monsanto.

Scientific study on the dangers of GM crops and "Terminator Technology" from Dr. Mae-Won Ho and Professor Joe Cummins, Institute of Science in Society, London: "Chronicle of an Ecological Disaster Foretold"

No Alabama newspapers have taken Senators Shelby and Sessions to task for their last minute vote switching on the Monsanto backed Food Safety Bill and both senators offices continue to claim they were firmly against the bill. They lie.

They're hiding behind one of the first votes in November 2010 which recorded both as casting "Nay" votes. But another vote occurred in December of 2010 that was strictly a voice vote, no pesky records to point to later, that passed unanimously without a single "Nay" vote.

The infamous Senate Bill 510 “Food Safety Bill” was passed by the US Senate Monday night in a sneaky, last minute voice vote. All Senators voted for it, Republicans and Democrats alike. Not a single U.S. Senator — not even Senator (Dr.) Tom Coburn-R, one of the bill's loudest opponents — objected to its passage.

This last-minute sneak vote of unanimous consent is widely considered a betrayal of food freedom by the public and the few Republicans who had opposed this bill abruptly voted in favor of it. TheHill.com posted their report on this unexpected turn of events late last night and has since been overrun by comments from steaming mad members of the public who feel utterly betrayed by their Senators.

Moral of the story: what Monsanto wants, Monsanto gets.

Here's a Monsanto blog featuring an AU senior who's obviously fully indoctrinated in Monsanto's propaganda. Any guesses where she learned it from?

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We Gotcha Governor Bentley in a Boligee Big One

The $8 million dollar "simple man"

"Growing up the son of a sawmill worker I learned nothing's more important than a man's word." Robert Bentley

That didn't last long and my how your nose does groweth Governor.

Before viewing the following video clip, let's keep in mind that a biofuels plant was just announced by Alabama Governor "you will respect my authority" Bentley for the Boligee area of Greene County, Alabama. The deal has been in the works for two years.

Every US taxpayer is on the hook to the tune of $250 million to experiment with Cellulosic Ethanol thanks to the USDA passing out OUR money like candy to uber rich billionaires, hedge fund company investors and the French oil company Total, to come up with gasoline for one dollar a gallon.

It will never happen.

It's over-hyped, it's playing on climate change fever and it pays select interests very well with OUR money!

Never mind that Coskata already has a Pittsburgh location close to the GM plant it's researching CE for, and that they claimed to "have fuel online by 2009" (didn't happen), let's go build another plant courtesy of the US taxpayer, greedy Alabama politicians and special interests. We'll prop up our Monsanto buddies in the process with that fine, temperate Alabama climate that's perfect for genetically modified switchgrass and trees and some unsuspecting hick farmers will also get a federal hand out for planting Monsanto's wicked weeds.
(More on that here.)

It's one big fleece job being set up in West Alabama, period, end of story.

Monsanto has been sneaking around Auburn University for a number of years and have  firmly entrenched themselves in the agricultural programs. One person links all of this together: Bentley's Transition Team communications director, the (we hope) incomparable Stephen "Steve" E. Bradley, who lobbies for Monsanto and knows a thing or two about verbal slight of tongue and clandestine operations, among his other "talents."

And Bentley picked him and his BARD buddies to lead his transition into the governorship.

Bentley claimed, at the last "goobernatorial" debate, that Boligee was only good for "raising fish and big deer" not for a "biotech company."

Either he was lying then to appeal to a particular voting block, or he's lying now by making it appear this just all of a sudden materialized and Boligee, in the short span of three months, is now the perfect place for a biotech project.

October 28, 2010, right before the election

There is no way in hell he came up with that biotech reference last October without knowing something about the project.

How about an explanation from the "I am upright man" of his word"?

Word to the wise governor, you're playing with some dangerously crafty men who can chew a good "Badtist" up and spit him out without batting an eye and you're in way over your head, but you're just not quite smart enough to figure that out.

Better watch your bass Doc or you'll wind up as a bunk-mate of Langford or Scrushy before it's all over with.

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Stories That Have Us Scratching Our Heads and Wondering WTH?

"I think I am seeing the monkey business going on, yes?"" 

Hope Coal Co. was recently fined  $50,000 (further reduced by $16,500) for 174 environmental violations by the Alabama Department of Environmental (mis) Management (ADEM.) That’s roughly $190.00 per violation and the company paid less in corporate fines than an individual would pay for a speeding ticket. The price of doing business in Alabama comes cheap when you screw up. And screwing up is definitely encouraged.

The bastion of (almost) exclusively white brotherly love, the City of Vestavia Hills, is caught showing their religious intolerance and unabashed snobbishness when the faith-based Jimmie Hale Missions tried to become the latest new tenant in the city. Their full of the love of Christ attitude is quite pious as long as "undesirables" stay on their side of town and don’t mingle with the privileged ones in the occupied territory of VH. 
(MP3 file podcast local talker Matt Murphy on WAPI. More podcasts on their webpage)

One Shelby County Preacher makes his case for what Alabama really needs: God, not real ethics reforms. Never mind that we’re 49th in corruption and the state house is brimming over with “good, upright Christian men,” we just need to all get closer to God and the rest will take care of itself. 
We wonder if this Vincent preacher counseled Vincent Mayor Ray McAllister against any private meetings with the town citizens who don’t want their town swallowed up by the notorious Vecellio Group's White Rock Quarries, their mining subsidiary from Florida. The Mayor and Council had meetings a plenty in another county out of sight of their citizens with quarry reps Rob Fowler and Stephen Bradley. Something we've always wondered about is why a Florida rock mining outfit, instead of Martin Marietta or Vulcan, who operate all the other eight quarries in Shelby County? Controversial location for a company well-versed in controversy perhaps?  
Makes sense to us--does it to you?

Governor Mule Bentley (AKA "Dunkey" a cross between a dunce and donkey) shows his true colors to the republican faithful and appoints his "goobernatorial" democratic challenger to head the Alabama Economic Rural Development office, and frankly, we’re shocked they’re shocked. A YouTube clip from Sean Hannity’s FOX show has guest Dick Morris (former Clinton man turned republican shill) pinning the tail on the "Dunkey" on what the good "Badtist" Dr. Dr. really is. Caveat Emptor. We sure do hope Sparks doesn't do for any other rural Alabama community what he did to North Alabama as Ag Commissioner. That would be a real stinker of a move.

Speaking of Bentley, he’s carrying on Riley era economic deals and has announced the entry of a biofuels plant into the Greene County area, the same county that former Governor Riley sent over one hundred state troopers into and immediately put scores of residents out of work and out of luck when he closed down the gambling joint. The biofuels plant, *Coskata, is brainchild of billionaire financier Vinod Khosla, who partnered up with bailout baby GM in 2008. 
The most obvious question to us is this: Why would an enterprising successful entrepreneur partner with a CEO who oversaw the largest corporation in the world to within a hairs width of bankruptcy? GM invested an “undisclosed amount of money” into Coskata in 2008 and then received millions in TARP money the following year. Looks like we paid twice, all of us. Cellulosic Ethanol plants require large swaths of land and maybe an over hyped bio-engineered crop or two, which Monsanto is poised to be an integral part of. 
The word "sustainable" is being thrown about and AlterNet asks if corporations have hijacked "sustainable." The answer is yes, and they are redefining the word to their advantage, hoping the rest of us don't notice. We do.
A sure bet on this is that certain Alabama business men, select politicians and lobbyists will get rich off of this deal whether it pans out or not. The USDA has cleared a $250 million dollar loan for the project that's been in the works for two years. More federal handouts will go to "farmers" who agree to grow crops for biomass use. We're really concerned that the normally environmentally conscientious dems are on board with this. Expect construction to be drawn out through Bentley's term to help him save face on his campaign promises of jobs, jobs, jobs.

On a national level, why did the Obama administration hold over the controversial former EPA head Carole Browner for so long before finally showing her the door?

And finally, how to rack up 557 violations and still be in business. Amazingly, it isn’t an Alabama coal company, it's Massey Energy, who else?

*Coskata is privately held, and to date has been funded entirely by its equity investors, including Khosla Ventures, Blackstone Cleantech Ventures and the Blackstone Group, Advanced Technology Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, Total Energy Ventures International (part of Total, one of the world’s major Oil and Gas groups, and a top tier player in chemicals), Coghill Capital Management, General Motors, and Globespan Capital Partners.

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SB 510 Passes the House Minus 73 Votes

One sixth of the House of Representatives skipped out early and did not vote in some of the last lame duck legislation of 2010. SB 510 (disguised as HR 2751) passed the House by 216-144 and is on its way to becoming law without 73 votes.

Those 73 votes, if they had all been "nays," would have defeated the bill with one vote to spare. What will happen next? Get ready for skyrocketing food prices and greater importation of produce outside the US where regulations are lax.

Nothing about this bill is good.

Here are some of the unintended consequences of all this:

• An INCREASE in the importation of fresh produce from other countries.

• A worsening of the agricultural trade imbalance between the U.S. and other nations.

• An INCREASE in the pesticide contamination of fresh produce sold at U.S. grocery stores.

• An INCREASE in agriculture jobs in Mexico, Chile, Peru and elsewhere, even while agriculture jobs are lost in the USA.

• A DECREASE in the overall safety of the food supply because now the proportion of foods imported from foreign countries with little or no regulatory oversight will greatly expand compared to U.S. grown foods.

We think that it is a travesty that the bill "passed" minus so many votes and it should result in an automatic nullification, but with Monsanto thugs in high places in the Obama WH, we won't hold our breath.

To ensure that the bill would pass the media (led by CBS as the "breaker") dutifully released a news story about the next terrorist threat to America: our food supplies. There's nothing like evening news driven scare tactics to twist a few arms on the eve of the vote. This was a transparent scheme originating from the WH, Homeland Security and Monsanto to ensure submission from the House and propagandizing America into accepting this bill.

This is just another whittling away of our freedoms by the government who wants to assure us all that we need protection from another supposed threat and the only entity who can really do that is Big Brother. "If you give up your freedoms you'll be safer."

Crapola.

Let's have a look at who skipped out in Alabama. Two congressional members who were defeated of course, after all since they won't be in office why bother to hang around Capitol Hill and do the jobs they were sent there to do?

Who are these cads from Alabama?

Bobby Bright-D

Parker Griffith-D

You're a disgrace both of you, along with all of your cohorts who decided to skip town early and not bother to vote. Your absence serves as a glaring example of how unfit 90% of the politicians sent to Washington are and why our government is broken beyond repair. Representative government is non-existent in our current times and we can clearly see why.

Here's a listing of all of the jackwagons who bailed on the SB 510 vote

The nine defeated Democrats missing in action were:  
John Adler (N.J.)
Bobby Bright (Ala.)
Brian Baird (Wash.)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.)
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (Mich.)
Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio)
Michael McMahon (N.Y.)
Harry Mitchell (Ariz.)
Solomon Ortiz (Texas)
The three Republicans were
Joseph Cao (La.)
Parker Griffith (Ala.)
Bob Inglis (S.C.)

Also among the no-shows Tuesday were 15 retiring members, including Reps.
Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.),
Marion Berry (D-Ark.)
Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.),
Steve Buyer (R-Ind.)
Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.)
Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.)
Mary Fallin (R-Okla.)
Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.)
Paul Hodes (D-N.H.)
Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.)
Charlie Melancon (D-La.)
Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) 
John Linder (R-Ga.)
George Radanovich (R-Calif.) 
John Tanner (D-Tenn.)
Forty-six other members were not present, including 24 Democrats and 22 Republicans.

We would like to add that Senators Shelby and Sessions each received "contributions" of $70,000 plus to vote for this bill, which they did this past Sunday evening in a surprise unanimous voice vote by the republican senators.  

The November 30th vote on SB 510 records Shelby and Sessions as "nays," but the unanimous voice vote undid the political cover they were hoping to hide under. 

Calls to both senator's offices confirm the lie that they voted against it in the end. When questioned about the Sunday night vote, both offices placed us on hold for well over 20 minutes. Calling back yielded the same treatment.

Someone does not like questions it seems.

Both of Alabama's senators ran unopposed and did not need the money for their campaigns, yet they took Monsanto's money and gave them something in return for their "generosity."

They gave the rest of us something too, but we didn't get a kiss first. 

2010 will go down as a dark year in America for many reasons, but we fear this one will have some very dire consequences that none of us will realize until the damage is done and irreversible. America has been for the most part completely asleep on on SB 510 and has failed to fully understand what it will mean.

We can now see the future and it is a genetically modified nightmare called Monsanto and the systematic expansion of intrusion by the government into areas of our lives they should have absolutely no control over. EVER.

"Control the food, control the people." Henry Kissinger

Think we're over the top about this? 

Take a look at what happened to a Georgia farmer just this year.

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In Sunday-Evening Surprise, Senate Unanimously Passes SB 510 - The Hill's Healthwatch

SB 510 IS ALIVE AND WELL AND ALMOST LAW.

CNN reported Friday night: "Democrats then wanted to attach [S.510] to a narrower government-funding bill that is expected to pass Saturday but Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, warned he would object if they did. A GOP leadership aide told CNN it would be impossible to approve the food bill quickly unless all Republicans support doing so. Coburn has said he opposes the bill because, he claims, it spends billions and increases government regulations without actually making the food supply safer. A Democratic leadership aide held out hope an 11th hour deal could save the bill the GOP leadership aide warned that it is not likely."

Senator Coburn-R who had been a very outspoken opponent to this bill lifted his objection at the last minute--a move that even caught the lobbyists off guard.

All of the GOP Senators passed SB 510 with unanimous consent.

Senator Harry Reid-D will now send the bill, with the clerical error remedied that had held up the bill, back to the House for approval.

We're one step away from Monsanto and Big Ag controlling all of the US food supplies.

Welcome to 1984 and Codex Alimentarius.

"Control the food, control the people." Henry Kissinger (and Monsanto)

Ag Committee Republican Senators who should all be out of a job:

Saxby Chambliss-R  GA

Richard Lugar-R  IN

Thad Cochran-R  MS

Mitch McConnell-R  KY

Pat Roberts-R  KS

Mike Johanns-R  NE

Charles Grassley-R  IA

John Thune-R  SD

John Cornyn-R TX

Note how many of these states are farming and agriculture states. FCRA records indicate that these Senators have all been bought and paid for by Big Ag.

The House meets Tuesday on this issue. If you're not calling your representatives, you're giving in to Monsanto people and nothing good ever comes from Monsanto.

In Sunday-evening surprise, Senate unanimously passes food safety bill - The Hill's Healthwatch

An additional issue that's getting close to pitchforks and torches: Net Neutrality is quickly gaining momentum with the Dems. It's nothing more than a federal power grab and censorship of free speech. We can't allow the citizens to have an opinion and learn about what the government doesn't want us to know now can we?

One day we'll all look back and say "I remember when America used to be free..."

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SB 510 Now Hidden--Attached to Appropriations Bill HR 3082

In a last ditch effort to pass the highly controversial SB 510 Food Safety Modernization Act, House Democrats have tucked the bill into another bill meant to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs, reports Natural News.

"Health freedom attorney Ralph Fucetola has been monitoring this situation closely and warns that the House could "sneak" approval for S.510 through as early as tomorrow (Thursday)."

HR 3082 is fast tracked and they will vote on it quickly.

Make the calls people or hand control of your food over to Monsanto.

Natural News recommends this language:

"I am calling to strongly opposed adopting the language of S. 510, the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act. This language is currently attached to 'CR/Food Safety House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 3082 - Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011/FDA Food Safety Modernization Act'. I urge Representative [name] in the strongest possible terms to vote against this amendment and to oppose this language in any bill or amendment."

They've done a great job staying on top of this issue and keeping the public informed. Kudos!

Learn more here

Twitter updates 

 

US District Court Tells Monsanto to Beat It With Their GE Sugar Beets--"Environmental Harm" Cited

Monsanto loses a round and judge orders the entire crop to be destroyed. (Applause!)

Tom Vilsack, USDA Secretary and Monsanto goon approved this, surprise, probably during one of the many closed door "negotiations" that have been going on between Monsanto and the USDA. This is the same idiot who rushed to judgment and fired Shirley Sherrod before he knew the facts, who supports ethanol despite the fact that it's proven to be too costly and problematic to be viable, and drives up the cost of food, and it was nothing more than a corporate shell game for special interests. Some even say he is against black farmers.

He's a problem child and an extremely poor choice for the USDA. 

But not if you're Monsanto.

This issue of the GE Sugar beets has been written about before and questions were previously raised about the legality of the plantings that occurred this past fall without any public notice or comment;

These GE beets have been altered so that they can tolerate being sprayed with Monsanto’s (NYSE: MON) herbicide Roundup.

The unprecedented permitting process for a commercially-grown genetically engineered crop was initiated without public notice and comment or any environmental review, according to environmental law firm Earthjustice, which said the agency last week met with companies involved and invested in promoting the gene-altered crop.

And now we have a judge who gets it and makes the right call, but we'll have to wait and see if it stands. Secretary Vilsack is a formidable foe, so is Monsanto and they've wasted no time in beginning the appeal of Judge White's ruling.

 (Monsanto's defenders are busy in the comment forums)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A federal judge has ordered what is believed to be the first-ever destruction of a genetically modified crop in the United States, saying that the altered sugar beets were planted illegally.

US District Judge Jeffrey White in California granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday sought by the Center for Food Safety and other groups, which contended that the Monsanto-produced sugar beet crops were planted without proper environmental review.

Paul Achitoff of Earthjustice, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the US Department of Agriculture, which was named as the defendant for issuing the permits "thumbed its nose at the judicial system and the public by allowing this crop to be grown without any environmental review."

Read more here

Another recent story about the psyops of Monsnato's propaganda machine and blatant lies (do they we cannot fact-check things?) planted in a piece that ran in the November issue of New Scientist entitled "Vatican Scientists Urge Support For Engineered Crops" turned out to be less than truthful.

The Vatican came out on December 1 and rebuffed the article's claims without mincing words on the issue, but remaining neutral to an expected degree and saying they have not endorsed one way or the other in essence. However, one fact that was reported in the Vatican Newspaper L'Osservatore Romano does nothing to bolster the Monsanto claims of we'll feed the world if you let us shove our GM food down your throats;

The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said earlier this year that it was not a coincidence that in 2009 the use of genetically modified food crops grew by 13 percent in developing countries and that GM crops covered almost half of the world's total arable land. And yet "the number of hungry people in the world has for the first time reached 1 billion people," the paper said.

Standby for some ridiculous spin to follow that one.

Monsanto will always be associated with the Anniston, Alabama PCB case and has worked very hard to shed the "ghosts of its past" (spun off into Solutia) and then changed again, through mergers, Monsanto with Upjohn and Pharmacia creating Pharmacia which owns 85% of Monsanto and created an agricultural subsidiary. Spin-offs and mergers, the list may surprise you.

It sounds confusing and that's the whole idea with this diabolical company. 
Read more here: Chronology of Monsanto's Evolution and (Supposed) Extinction from the Environmental Working Group.

Documentary The Future of Food 

"Genetic engineering of food crops is as controversial today as ever, as many of the large agro corporations that use this technology position themselves as the answer to the world food crisis and further consolidate the seed supply. The Future of Food continues to be a key tool used by activists and educators who call for increased attention to this issue."

The film was released in 2004, but it's still being shown to audiences worldwide and it remains relevant, maybe even more so with the current debate over the dangerously close to becoming law SB 510.

 

Why Every American Should Rail Against SB 510--Reason: # 1 Monsanto

*Update 12:46 pm 11/30-- Obama Applauds Passage of SB 510
The bill now goes back to the House for a final vote, please call your legislators and tell them NO! Check the sky for flying pigs...Vote breakdown yea and nay.
Here's another way to take action (be patient, server is being bombarded and edit the letter to suit your concerns and political affiliation.) 2nd action ask House to block.

This bill has nothing to do with "Food Safety Modernization" and the public good, it's a Trojan Horse for Monsanto and a government supported control of the food supplies. We urge all citizens to pay very close attention to this issue because it will affect each and every one of us in ways we cannot yet begin to imagine, but the history of Monsanto gives us a big clue--it won't be good.

The bill enjoys a majority of democratic senators supporting it. 15 democrats (including Dick Durbin (D-IL) as the primary sponsor) and 6 republicans as co-sponsors. We can only speculate that their support is because of political contributions and the deep Monsanto ties in the current administration that we covered in an earlier posting on the Monsanto/Solutia PCB contamination of Anniston, Alabama.

The elephant in the room is Monsanto, along with the abysmal federal government, who will, by way of passage of this bill, have complete control of our sustenance. That should never be allowed to happen for any reason, ever, but if the people don't pay attention and raise some hell with their legislators, it will.

They're readying a vote right on the bill now.

Credit: Global Political Awakening

We're going to refer to two compelling articles and their excerpts on this issue:

Who designed the “food safety” bills which are now in Congress? 

The same man whom Clinton put at the FDA in the 1990s, the same man at the FDA now – Michael Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and VP.

Who is likely to be appointed as “the Administrator” of the powerful, centralized agency the bill would set up? 

Michael Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and VP.

Who is backing the “food safety” bills? Winrock International which receives financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the DOE, USAID, the US Department of State, the USDA, the World Bank, the FAO, SYSCO and the Tides Foundation. 

Winrock International also has long-standing ties with Monsanto.

How good has the FDA been in protecting American food? 

Abysmal? Horrendous?

Shiv Chopra, a food safety expert, says American and Canadian food are the most toxic of all food in the world. Ignoring its central duty to test for their safety before allowing anything into the food chain, the FDA has allowed in antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. In the years since their introduction, studies now prove they are dangerous to human health (three are banned outright in Europe and the other two are under consideration). But the FDA still has done nothing to stop them and, now, despite public outrage at deaths and the dangers to human health from antibiotics in animals, the FDA is attempting to ensure their continued use.

Read more here

Why the Tester Amendment won't fix a really bad bill to begin with;

 "The voice of controlled opposition wants Americans to believe that the Tester Amendment to S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, elevates the bill to something we should adopt. The Tester Amendment puts a Band-Aid on a head wound. It does not stop the most lethal agency in American history from seizing control of the food supply from farm to fork."

Even though Big Ag now opposes S 510, we should continue to oppose the bill, as it amounts to federal assault on food freedom. 

Agribusiness giants have always opposed the exemption provided in the Tester Amendment. Now that it’s included in the current form of S 510, they’re only making clear that they oppose giving any wiggle room to competition. But from their sudden opposition to S 510, because it now includes an amendment they have always opposed, the public is being lulled into a false sense of confidence in S 510.

Despite the voice of controlled opposition trying to convince the American public that the Tester Amendment will solve all the problems with S 510, many food freedom activists recognize this is a red herring. One letter to the editor was titled, “Pry my turnip from my cold, dead hand.” The highly-touted exemption diverts attention away from the many, serious problems with S 510, like:

• It does not address the real causes of food safety issues stemming from the centralized, industrialized food supply chain;

• It ensures that international trade agreements have supremacy over local laws;

• It destroys States’ rights to define a culturally-appropriate legal platform under which food is produced and distributed;

• It transfers authority over food regulation enforcement from the FDA to the Department of Homeland Security which disastrously handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

• It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – it eliminated small and medium-sized meat packers; and

• It significantly increases FDA’s power, an agency which has stated on public record that the American people have no “fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health” and “do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.”

Finally, we cannot ignore that Monsanto is behind the food “safety” legislation being foisted on us. 

We cannot ignore that the US Secretary of Agriculture was once dubbed “Biotech Governor of the Year.” 

We cannot ignore that President Obama has appointed a GMO and pesticide pusher as the US Agricultural Trade Representative. 

We cannot ignore that he nominated Monsanto-defender Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court, who sits there now with former Monsanto attorney, Clarence Thomas.

In Seeds of Destruction, F. William Engdahl issues a warning: “In the mid-1970’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a protégé of the Rockefeller family and of its institutions stated, "Control the food and you control the people."
Read more here


Scared yet?
You should to be. 
This is serious business and not simply the ramblings of the often maligned and dismissed greenish Birkenstock wearing crowd.
Top Ten Lies About SB 510
*Update 12/1--House May Block Bill Over Senate Error 

 

Monsanto PCB Contaminant Warning Continuing for Alabama's Lake Martin--Calhoun, Chilton, St. Clair, Shelby and Talladega Counties

*Video added at conclusion (Fox13 reporters offered bribes to keep quiet 83 rewrites.)
We've covered this issue of the ongoing fish consumption warnings resulting from the Monsanto/Solutia PCB contamination to Alabama's Lake Martin in a previous post, but it has come back around as current news with another warning "issued." The warnings have never really been lifted in actuality, and perhaps this is in the current news cycle because of some testing results that didn't turn out well. Sources tell us that is the case, but don't expect ADEM and EPA Region 4 to say much more about this.

Monsanto's the primary culprit responsible for this PCB contamination, but they're not the only ones who have seriously degraded the Coosa River that feeds Lake Martin--it has been under assault for years from coal fired power plants like Alabama Power and Georgia's GE plant.

*(See page at blog footer "The Most Contaminated Place On Earth" The Anniston PCB contamination ranks # 7 of America's Worst Man Made Environmental Disasters.)

November 16, 2010

TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP) - The Alabama Department of Public Health says there's a potential health risk from eating fish caught in the Lake Logan Martin area.

Possible polychlorinated biphenyl contamination caused the department to issue advisories Oct. 7. PCBs were used as electrical insulation until they were banned in 1979. PCBs are listed by the department as a possible carcinogen.

The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating and working on cleanup strategies.

Pam Scully, the EPA's remedial project manager for the Anniston PCB site, says the investigation includes the Monsanto plant site in Anniston and the area from Snow Creek down to Choccolocco Creek.

Scully says PCB concentrations have been decreasing, but the EPA needs to make sure they keep going down.

The Daily Home's Matt Quillen has a lengthier article on this;

The Monsanto Company plant site in Anniston dumped PCBs onto the ground and into water from the 1930s until they were banned, according to reports.

"The (Monsanto) facility itself had landfills that were not properly capped or the caps were compromised in some way,” Scully said. "In the mid-1990s, those caps were re-installed and there were some diversion ditches built to prevent contamination from being released into water bodies." 

"We still have areas that need protective measures, but the surface water discharges that were occurring in the 1990s were much higher than they are now. So now we are dealing with residuals that were either in the water body or in the floodplains."

From the Chemical Industry Archives a project of the Environmental Working Group website;

The story of Anniston is a cautionary tale.... of shocking corporate deception and dangerous secrets.

Monsanto's defense of its actions surrounding PCBs can best be summarized this way: the company claims it didn't know that PCBs were harmful to human health or persistent in the environment until the late 1960s, and as soon as the company learned of these threats, it acted quickly and responsibly to address the problem in a cooperative, forthright manner with the government.

"And the truth is that in 1966 when we found out that PCBs were in the environment, we started an investigation journey and we tried to gather information and we acted responsibly." [Trial Transcript, Owens v. Monsanto CV-96-J-440-E, (N.D. Alabama April 4, 2001), pg. 454, line 6] ...

"When Monsanto learned that PCBs could possibly be in the environment, it acted promptly and responsibly and continues to do so." [Trial Transcript, Owens v. Monsanto CV-96-J-440-E, (N.D. Alabama April 4, 2001), pg. 455, line 14]

But as the company's own documents show, Monsanto went to extraordinary efforts to keep the public in the dark about PCBs, and even manipulated scientific studies by urging scientists to change their conclusions to downplay the risks of PCB exposure. 

Monsanto's conduct, throughout the entire period that the company made PCBs, was less than commendable.

Their attempts today to backpedal on the science and shirk responsibility for the global saturation of PCBs is equally discouraging, as are their repeated attempts to "green" their image with flashy, expensive *PR campaigns.

 *(Who do we know in Alabama that is the sole lobbyist for Monsanto? Stephen Bradley. 2010 lobbyists Alabama Ethics Board records, pg 8 of 84.)

Today Monsanto does not deny that everyone is contaminated with PCBs. They argue instead that since they have contaminated the entire planet they are innocent of all liability.

This sounds eerily similar to what ADEM said to what Moulton, Alabama's Mayor Alexander said in the press after the Synagro contamination of North Alabama:

For one day, Alexander, the Moulton mayor, banned Morris Farms from dumping its leachate into the Moulton wastewater treatment plant. ADEM officials sat him down, however, and he reversed his position.

“ADEM said we were already contaminated, and it was too late to do anything about it,” Alexander said Friday. “Nobody notified us of the danger until it was too late. We were already contaminated.” 

In our previous posting of the radioactive elements in Texas' drinking water, the state agencies followed a similar path, they didn't tell anyone until after the fact, lowballed the exposures, and protected the offenders, NOT the unsuspecting public who counts on these state agencies to be the community watchdogs for public health risks from the companies they oversee, permit and regulate.

All of this is going in the same direction--intentional lying and putting the public at large at risk of arduous health risks.

Is this kind of thinking the new frontier for these fiends and their next PR push: "You're already contaminated so what do you want us to do now? We may as well just let the companies keep right on doing what they are doing."

If we follow that line of thought, we'll reach the real end-goal of big business and its enablers, (which are almost, *but not quite, exclusively republican) to abolish the EPA and remove all federal regulatory rules. They would much prefer that state's rights drafts the rules because all their own people are already in place in these agencies.
*Obama's Supreme Court Justice pick Elena Kagan, in her capacity as Solicitor General, intervened (Dec. 2009) in the first case the SCOTUS was to rule on involving genetically modified crops, Monsanto vs Geertson Seed, and defended Monsanto's right to contaminate the environment with its GM Alfalfa. Obama appointed Monsanto goon Michael Taylor as Food Safety Czar, "biotech governor of the year" Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture and Monsanto lobbyist Islam Siddiqui as the US Ag Trade representative.

Comforting isn't it? If the republicans don't get us the first go around, then the dems who have sold their souls to special interests will finish us off.

Alabama has a law that limits the time frame for bringing a legal action from a toxic exposure to two years from the actual date of exposure. If you don't get sick in that time frame, your fight to hold those responsible becomes much harder and you can be assured of a legal battle lasting from at least 5-10 years, and longer.

With some exposures, such as the ones that cause cancers, you'll probably be dead before you collect, if you ever do collect. You can also count on a greatly reduced sum thanks to the Big Mules ensuring that Alabama's Supreme Court is packed with big business friendlies.

The indisputable evidence is in the public record for related court trials such as Owens vs. Monsanto. The Owens case settled in 2001 for $43 million, but Monsanto has never admitted wrongdoing. The amount awarded was pathetic, but it was clear to the plaintiffs that Monsanto/Solutia would keep the matter in court long after the money would be useful to anyone living.

In subsequent attempts to distance itself from the toxic skeletons in its closet, *the "new" Monsanto Company claims that it's not the same Monsanto Company that polluted the community of Anniston, Alabama and other communities. 

While its current parent company, Pfizer-Pharmacia (nice folks in their own right), prepares to spin off Monsanto into an independent company, the ghosts of Monsanto's past fade from the public's mind.

*They've hired the right "governmental affairs" man in Stephen Bradley.

These are not "cautionary tales." They are very real but we're still not listening...it always happens to someone else, somewhere else.

It's quite insidious and sinister in our opinion--the interweaving of political and corporate interests and how they systematically undermine the state and federal regulatory agencies responsibilities and influence them to put profit before people every time.

The consequences of these kinds of clandestine alliances must not continue to be ignored by any citizen and simply brushed off as nonsense and the ramblings of "environmentalist wackos."

Are you listening El Rushbo blowhardo?

US Senate Bill S510 The Food Modernization and Safety Act is Monsanto at work. They even want to place it under the watch of TSA twit "Big Sis."

Monsanto also does friendly "new image polishing" things like hiring Blackwater:

Agribusiness giant Monsanto, which genetically modifies plants to exude or tolerate pesticide or to produce nonviable seed, hired the services of the mercenary firm Blackwater to spy on activists, Jeremy Scahill reports.
A death-tech firm weds a hit squad.
This is no doubt in response to a decade of GM crop sabotage efforts around the globe.  Since the publicly-announced introduction of GM crops in 1996, concerned citizens have vandalized such crops every single year somewhere on the planet. Several thousand GM plants have been partially or wholly destroyed.

FOX "Kills" Monsanto Milk Story 

Washington Post "Monsanto Hid Decades of Pollution"

The stories linger: The cancer cluster up the hill. The guy who burned the soles off his boots while walking on Monsanto's landfill. The dog that died after a sip from Snow Creek, the long-abused drainage ditch that runs from the Monsanto plant through the heart of west Anniston's cinder-block cottages and shotgun houses. Sylvester Harris, 63, an undertaker who lived across the street from the plant, said he always thought he was burying too many young children.

"I knew something was wrong around here," he said.