Monsanto

partial reprint of an article by David Swanson

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. The organization is called Monsanto. Monsanto is, of course, the world's largest biotech corporation.  These are the people who brought us Roundup weed killer and the resulting superweeds and superbugs, along with growth hormones for cows, genetically engineered and patented seeds, PCBs, and Agent Orange, which Monsanto now wants us to use as herbicide on genetically engineered corn and soybeans. 

This chemical company - responsible for environmental disasters that have destroyed entire towns, and a driving force behind the international waves of suicides among farmers whose lives it has helped ruin - 

has monopolized our food system largely by taking over regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A recent study links Roundup to autism, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's.   

While Hungary has just destroyed all Monsanto genetically engineered corn fields, and Peru has also banned GM seeds, the USDA takes an entirely different approach toward the chemical giant. The USDA has, in fact, never denied a single application from Monsanto for new genetically engineered crops.  Not one.  Not ever.

Monsanto's growth hormones for cows have been approved by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lobbyist turned USDA administrator and FDA deputy commissioner.  This was after Margaret Miller, again, a former Monsanto employee, oversaw a report on the hormones' safety and then took a job at the FDA where she approved her own report.

Islam Siddiqui, another former Monsanto lobbyist, wrote the USDA's food standards, allowing corporations to label irradiated and genetically engineered foods as "organic."
Genetic use restriction technology, colloquially known as "terminator technology", produces plants that have sterile seeds. If put into use, these seeds prevent farmers from implementing the age-old basic farming method of planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to repurchase seed for every planting, because the terminator seeds are sterile! 

The recently passed and signed law nicknamed the Monsanto Protection Act strips federal courts of the power to halt the sale and planting of genetically engineered crops during a legal appeals process.  The origin of this act can be found in the USDA's deregulation of Roundup Ready sugar beets in violation of a court order.  The USDA argued that any delay would have caused a sugar shortage, since Monsanto holds 95% of the market. 

Monsanto's board members have worked for the EPA, advised the USDA, and served on President Obama's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. Clearly, an investigation of large-scale government corruption by this singularly destructive corporation is long overdue. Why do the people need to hold protest marches against these kinds of company dealings? How can the USDA fall down to endangering people instead of looking after them? 

Is this just one more step in the Government versus the People movement? Can anyone in Government explain this? Why is the mainstream media not asking the questions? It's not just the hippies protesting anymore, it is the people. YOU are the people, and you need to be heard.

Be afraid folks. It is all true.