from NaturalNews Website
Of course "coexistence" and "controlled deregulation" are now irrelevant in regard to Monsanto's herbicide-resistant alfalfa.
Just after my essay was posted last week, the White House gave marching orders to the USDA to allow Monsanto and its minions to plant GE Roundup-resistant alfalfa on millions of acres, from sea to shining sea, with no restrictions whatsoever.
This post-holiday gift to Monsanto from the White House is ominous.
After the deliberate contamination of 20 million acres of U.S. alfalfa, we can then expect Monsanto and corporate agribusiness to call for GMOs to be allowed under the National Organic Standards.
But of course let us hope we get another
temporary reprieve from the same federal judge in California who
halted the planting of GE alfalfa previously, since the USDA has
still failed to demonstrate in their current Environmental Impact
Statement that Monsanto's alfalfa is safe for the environment.
In an internal company memorandum, marked "For Internal Use Only - Do Not Distribute" January 30, 2011, Whole Foods execs basically told their employees that the OCA is spreading lies to "uniformed consumers" in exchange for money and publicity.
Quoting directly from the WFM company memo:
After bashing the OCA, Whole Foods then goes on to admit that WFM stores are filled with conventional and "natural" products that are contaminated with GMOs (they neglect to mention to their staff that these conventional and "natural" products make up approximately two-thirds of WFM's total sales).
Again quoting directly:
But of course we are not asking WFM to lie to or "mislead" their customers, to claim that all their products are GMO-free, or to sell only organically certified foods.
On the contrary, we are simply asking them to abandon the "business as usual" industry practice of remaining silent on the scope and degree of contamination in the billions of dollars of non-organic food they are selling to unwitting consumers every year. What we are asking is that WFM ethically lead the way - in what is now a very unethical marketplace - by admitting publicly (not just in an internal memo) that a major portion of the non-organic foods they are selling (especially processed foods and animal products) are contaminated with GMOs.
Then we want them to take the next step
and announce that they will start labeling these GMO and/or CAFO
foods truthfully, meanwhile pressuring their non-organic food
suppliers to either reformulate products with non-GMO ingredients or
start making the transition to organic.
However, if WFM and other grocery stores
refuse to voluntarily label GMO and CAFO products, OCA is prepared
to mobilize nationwide to press for mandatory labeling ordinances at
the city, county, and state level.
...have been making strong statements about fighting against GMOs.
In a lengthy telephone conversation two days ago with Organic Valley CEO George Sieman, George told me how angry he was at me and the OCA, but he also said that Organic Valley was going to step up the fight against Monsanto.
I said I was glad to hear this. I told
him that OCA was going to do the same. I told him that our Millions
Against Monsanto Truth-in-Labeling campaign is already attracting
thousands of volunteers all across the USA and that we weren't going
to give up until grocery stores, natural food stores, and co-ops
start labeling conventional and "natural" products containing GMOs
or coming from CAFOs.
But given the need for a united front, OCA would like to stress that,
OCA wants the organic community to unite
our forces, cut the B.S. about "coexistence," and move forward with
an aggressive campaign to drive GMOs and CAFOs off the market.
The White House, Congress, and the Mass Media
Despite Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton's) campaign operatives in 2008 publicly stating that Obama supported mandatory labels for GMOs, we haven't heard a word from the White House on this topic since Inauguration Day.
Michele Obama broke ground for an organic garden at the White House in early 2009, but after protests from the pesticide and biotech industry, the forbidden "O" (organic) word was dropped from White House PR.
Since day one, the Obama Administration
has mouthed biotech propaganda, claiming, with no scientific
justification whatsoever, that biotech crops can feed the world and
enable farmers to increase production in the new era of climate
change and extreme weather.
...Obama has not come though on his 2008 campaign promise to label GMOs.
His unilateral approval of Monsanto's
genetically engineered alfalfa, overruling the federal courts,
scientists, and the organic community, offers the final proof: don't
hold your breath for this man to do anything that might offend
Monsanto or Corporate America.
President Obama has taken his team of food and farming leaders directly from the biotech companies and their lobbying, research, and philanthropic arms:
Of course, America's indentured Congress is no better than the White House when it comes to promoting sane and sustainable public policy.
According to Food and Water Watch, Monsanto and the biotech industry have spent more than half a billion dollars ($547 million) lobbying Congress since 1999. Big Biotech's lobby expenditures have accelerated since Obama's election in 2008.
In 2009 alone Monsanto and the biotech
lobby spent $71 million. Last year Monsanto's minions included over
a dozen lobbying firms, as well as their own in-house lobbyists.
However, do a Google search on the
supposed benefits of Monsanto's GMOs, and you'll find more articles
in the daily press than you would ever want to read.
Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the outrageous "Citizens United" case gave big corporations like Monsanto the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent.
Keep in mind that one of the decisive
Supreme Court swing votes in the "Citizen's United' case was cast by
the infamous Justice Clarence Thomas, former General Counsel for
Monsanto.
We've got to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie - in the marketplace at the retail level. We need to pressure retail food stores to voluntarily label their products, while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels.
And while we're doing this we need to
join forces with the growing national movement to get corporate
money out of politics and the media and to take away the fictitious
"corporate personhood" (i.e. the legal right of corporations to have
all the rights of human citizens, without the responsibility,
obligations, and liability of real persons) of Monsanto and the
corporate elite.
These "commodity farmers," who receive billions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies to plant their Frankencrops and spray their toxic chemicals and fertilizers, don't seem to give a damn about,
Likewise they have expressed little or
no concern over the fact that they are polluting the land and the
crops of organic and non-GMO farmers.
"Coexistence" is a joke when you are dealing with indentured minions whose only ethical guideline is making money.
When I asked a French organic farmer a few years ago what he thought about the idea of coexistence with GE crops and farmers, he laughed.
Thousands of European farmers and organic activists have indeed uprooted test plots of GMOs over the past decade.
Unfortunately if you get caught destroying Frankencrops in the USA, you'll likely be branded a terrorist and sent to prison. Apart from direct action, it's time to start suing, not just Monsanto and the other biotech bullies, but the Frankenfarmers themselves.
Attorneys have pointed out to me that the legal precedent of "Toxic Trespass" is firmly established in American case law. If a farmer carelessly or deliberately sprays pesticides or herbicides on his or her property, and this toxic chemical strays or "trespasses" and causes damage to a neighbor's property, the injured party can sue the "toxic trespasser" and collect significant damages.
It's time for America's organic and non-GMO farmers to get off their knees and fight, both in the courts and in the court of public opinion.
The Biotech Empire of Monsanto,
...will collapse if its
Frankenfarmers are threatened with billions of dollars in toxic
trespass damages.
Retail Grocery Stores, Factory Farms, Restaurants, and Garden Supply Stores
This means we need to identify and boycott, not only so-called conventional or "natural" foods containing soy, soy lecithin, corn, corn sweetener, canola, cottonseed oil, and sugar beet sweetener, but all non-organic meat, dairy, and eggs that come from factory farms or CAFOs.
Once Truth-in-Labeling practices are
implemented it will be relatively easy for consumers to identify and
avoid products that are labeled "May Contain GMOs" or "CAFO."
Municipal and state governments also
spray Roundup in parks and along roadways, while the DEA sprays
large amounts of Roundup in rural villages in Colombia and the
Andes, part of the insane and murderous
War on Drugs.
Unfortunately, millions of others are still mindlessly consuming and over consuming processed foods, junk foods, and cheap, contaminated meat and animal products.
The only guaranteed way to avoid GMOs completely is to buy organic foods or to grow your own, and stay away from restaurants (unless they are organic) and fast food outlets. Otherwise, if you are contemplating the purchase of a conventional or "natural" food check the ingredients panel carefully.
Avoid all non-organic products that contain,
After 16 years of non-stop biotech bullying and force-feeding Genetically Engineered or Modified (GE or GM) crops to farm animals and "Frankenfoods" to unwitting consumers, Monsanto has a big problem, or rather several big problems. A growing number of published scientific studies indicate that GE foods pose serious human health threats.
Federal judges are finally starting to
acknowledge what organic farmers and consumers have said all along:
uncontrollable and unpredictable GMO crops such as alfalfa and sugar
beets spread their mutant genes onto organic farms and into non-GMO
varieties and plant relatives, and should be halted.
...is losing market share. Its overuse has spawned a new generation of super-weeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as 2,4, D and paraquat.
Moreover, patented "Roundup Ready" crops require massive amounts of climate destabilizing nitrate fertilizer.
Compounding Monsanto's damage to the environment and climate,
rampant Roundup use is literally killing the soil, destroying
essential soil microorganisms, degrading the living soil's ability
to capture and sequester CO2, and spreading deadly plant
diseases.
But as African-American revolutionary Huey Newton pointed out in the late 1960's,
Join us as we take on Monsanto and their Minions.
Our life and our children's "right to a
future" depend upon the outcome of this monumental battle.
Please
sign up now as a volunteer
grassroots coordinator for OCA's Millions Against Monsanto and
Factory Farms Truth-in-Labeling Campaign.
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