Fight for Non-GMO Foods and Proper GMO Labeling

[mosquitocontrol]

I think it's time we all go back to growing our own food, if we are concerned about the GMO. Then you have nothing to complain about. I sure there isn't much nutrition in GMO's.

[liskir]

http://naturalsociety.com/india-slams-mo...z2A24lenvg
"India has joined the conglomerate of nations directly opposed to the agricultural corruption brought upon by bloated biotechnology giant Monsanto, declaring legal action against the corporation for a crime dubbed ‘biopiracy‘. The charges were brought against Monsanto for utilizing a local eggplant variety to develop their own genetically modified version including the notorious biopesticide Bt. Monsanto’s Bt GMO crops are known to threaten the environment in addition to human health, and India considers Monsanto’s unauthorized testing of the crops to be biopiracy.

India’s National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) made the unprecedented decision as detailed in their official statements on the subject, joining nations like Hungary and Peru in their efforts to control Monsanto’s presence within their borders. Hungary was among the first to lead the charge, actually destroying more than 1,000 acres of Monsanto’s GM maize in direct defiance against the company. Peru also took a monumental stand against Monsanto, announcing a ten-year-ban on GMO crops and genetically modified ingredients...."



"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped" Dr. Ron Paul 2012

[liskir]

"The new president filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors' Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.



We should also remember that Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.



Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.



The deck was stacked. Obama hadn't simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn't just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn't just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.



And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let's see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency.



Monsanto GMO alfalfa.

Monsanto GMO sugar beets.

Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.

Coming soon: Monsanto's GMO sweet corn.

Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.

Syngenta GMO stacked corn.

Pioneer GMO soybean.

Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.

Bayer GMO cotton.

ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.

A GMO papaya strain.

And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.



This is an extraordinary parade. It, in fact, makes Barack Obama the most GMO-dedicated politician in America.



You don't attain that position through errors or oversights. Obama was, all along, a stealth operative on behalf of Monsanto, biotech, GMOs, and corporate control of the future of agriculture.



From this perspective, Michelle Obama's campaign for gardens and clean, organic, nutritious food is nothing more than a diversion, a cover story floated to obscure what her husband has actually been doing.



Nor is it coincidental that two of the Obama's biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010.



Now in 2012, we are seeing, as Mike Adams reveals, a new attack on organic food: organic is an elitist fetish, a nonsensical preoccupation of the 1%, as against the 99%. We are told that conventionally grown, pesticide-laden, genetically engineered food is just as good, is no problem, and patriotic Americans should be loyal to it.



In other words, we should be loyal to the corporate giants who are taking over the food supply, are exercising patent rights on food ownership, are doing whatever they can to squeeze small farmers out of business, are giving us nutritionally deficient food, are lying through their teeth about the heavy health risks of eating this GMO food.



We should be loyal to the police who are ordering homeowners to rip out their vegetable gardens on their lawns.



Yes, this is a coordinated attack on clean nutritious unpoisoned food, and it reaches all the way up into the White House, does a quick detour around Michelle Obama's smokescreen operation, and arrives in the Oval Office, at the desk of Barack Obama.



Why isn't Barack out there on the White House lawn picking a few delicious organic vegetables from the garden?



Why isn't he posing in front of a hundred media cameras taking a bite out of an organic non-GMO tomato?



Why isn't he leading the way on a campaign to have people in inner cities plant more community organic gardens, to fend off hunger, ill-health, and poverty?



Why isn't he?



Because he's working for Monsanto.



Monsanto, the same company, by the way, who took the advice of Mitt Romney, many years ago, to stop overtly promoting chemical pesticides and, instead, get into genetics.



Sources:



http://redgreenandblue.org/2012/02/02/mo...nt-part-2/



http://redgreenandblue.org/2011/02/09/mo...overnment/



http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/...fied-foods



http://fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2011/fe...-no-monsa/



http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/ge...red-foods/



http://news.yahoo.com/not-altruistic-tru...00462.html



Jon Rappoport

The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails atwww.nomorefakenews.com


"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped" Dr. Ron Paul 2012

[Rob Tucker]

liskir,

You have an opportunity to rework your post and bring it into a discussion of Hawaii or Puna related issues or watch it go away.

Assume the best and ask questions.

Punaweb moderator

[liskir]

Doesn't Monsanto lease huge chunks of land to grow GMO frankenfoods here on the BI?

"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped" Dr. Ron Paul 2012

[Obie]

No they don't.They have locations on Oahu,Molokai and 2 on Maui.

[Frank]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Obie

No they don't.They have locations on Oahu,Molokai and 2 on Maui.

---

seems to fit da Ha-wine part of this...no?

[liskir]

GMO frankenfoods are grown here in HI. Get ready for tens of thousands of acres in Ka'u to be grown in GMO frankenfuel for the military in the form of biodiesel. AKP (Aina Koa Pono) has already started bulldozing one of the most beautiful areas of the island.

"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped" Dr. Ron Paul 2012

[liskir]

Judge who ruled against Raw Milk quits to join Monsanto law firm

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/10...-law-firm/
"Food Rights, Gene Rights and Monsanto

By Rady Ananda

As courts and bureaucrats continue to assert that citizens have no fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice, we find Monsanto lurking nearby. The Wisconsin judge who recently ruled that we have no right to own a cow or drink its milk resigned to join one of Monsanto¡¯s law firms.

Former judge Patrick J. Fiedler now works for Axley Brynelson, LLP, which defended Monsanto against a patent infringement case filed by Australian firm, Genetic Technologies, Ltd. (GTL) in early 2010.

GTL had sued several biotechnology firms, a medical lab and a crime lab that had used its patented methods for analyzing DNA sequences. Though a federal case, the district court which heard the matter sits in Dane County, Wisconsin, where Fiedler coincidentally served as a state judge.

In that case, the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) ¡°upheld Genetic Technologies Ltd.¡¯s patent for noncoding DNA technologies, giving more firepower to the Australian company¡¯s patent infringement suit against Monsanto Inc., Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. and a slew of rival laboratories,¡± reports Law360.

In another link, Myriad Genetics, which holds the exclusive U.S. patent on human genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, granted the license to GTL in 2002. These human genes are associated with breast and ovarian cancer.

In 2009, the ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation (PubPat) sued the PTO, Myriad Genetics, and principals at the University of Utah Research Foundation, charging that patents on genes are unconstitutional and invalid. The suit also charges that such patents stifle diagnostic testing and research that could lead to cures and that they limit women¡¯s options regarding their medical care.

In an absurd ruling this year, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the patent on these human genes, even though the DNA sequence occurs in nature. The court decided that simply because researchers had been able to extract it, the firm owns it. Of course, under this thinking, all of nature can be patented if human technology allows extraction.

¡°The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted thousands of patents on human genes ¨C in fact, about 20 percent of our genes are patented,¡± said the ACLU. ¡°A gene patent holder has the right to prevent anyone from studying, testing or even looking at a gene. As a result, scientific research and genetic testing has been delayed, limited or even shut down due to concerns about gene patents.¡±

The US ruling gives Myriad monopolistic control over these human genes, and over diagnostic testing for that DNA sequence. The case is now headed to the US Supreme Court.

The Myriad patent was also challenged in Australia and at the European Patent Office. In 2009, the EPO granted a highly restricted BRCA1 patent.

Australia¡¯s case will be heard in February 2012. Dr Luigi Palombi, who supports the pending Patent Amendment Bill, believes the US decision ¡°is irrational, contrary to scientific fact and little more than a knee-jerk reaction to the fear mongering of the American biotechnology industry. It claims that without gene patents it will not have any incentive to undertake necessary research. Of course, this is a lie.¡±

Part of the problem, Palombi explains, is that much of the research that allowed Myriad to develop its breast cancer test was publicly funded. Going further:

¡°The decision turns patent law on its head because it means that the prize is given for the discovery not for the invention (a new, tangible and practical use of the discovery).

¡°The second problem is, Myriad¡¯s scientists discovered and linked genetic mutations to breast and ovarian cancers, but that¡¯s a long way off an invention. If there was any invention by Myriad (assuming it was also novel and involved an inventive step), it was in the development of a diagnostic test.¡±

Of note, in his dissenting opinion, Judge William C. Bryson wrote that the Dept. of Justice filed an amicus brief asserting that Myriad¡¯s gene claims are not patent-eligible, thus undermining the PTO¡¯s position. Bryson wrote:

¡°¡­ the Department of Justice speaks for the Executive Branch, and the PTO is part of the Executive Branch, so it is fair to assume that the Executive Branch has modified its position from the one taken by the PTO in its 2001 guidelines¡­¡±

Given the DOJ¡¯s protection of Monsanto interests, however, it is likely that its opposition to Myriad¡¯s patents may have more to do with stifling competition than protecting nature from theft by biotech firms. After DOJ attorney Elena Kagen moved to the Supreme Court, the high court ruled in Monsanto¡¯s favor allowing the planting of genetically modified alfalfa.

Earlier this year, Obama pressured the USDA to remove the buffer zone requirement for GM alfalfa, further ensuring genetic contamination of natural alfalfa. That decision ensures the destruction of the organic meat and dairy industries in the U.S. which rely on natural alfalfa feed. It will also strengthen biotech¡¯s monopoly control over our food.

Obama has stacked his administration with Monsanto employees and biotech proponents, including Michael Taylor as FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods, Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture, Islam Siddiqui as Ag Trade Representative, and Elena Kagen on the Supreme Court.

In a related matter, PubPat also filed suit this year against Monsanto over the patenting of genetically modified seeds which contaminate natural crops. ¡°As Justice Story wrote in 1817, to be patentable, an invention must not be ¡®injurious to the well being, good policy, or sound morals of society,¡¯¡± notes the complaint, citing studies showing harm caused by Monsanto¡¯s Roundup herbicide, including human placental damage, lymphoma, myeloma, animal miscarriages, and other impacts on human health.

That any official would approve gene patents is bad enough ¨C discovering nature is not inventing it. But in the Wisconsin case, Judge Fiedler ruled that humans:

¡ö¡°Do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;¡±
¡ö¡°Do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;¡±
¡ö¡°Do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;¡±
¡ö¡°Do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice;¡± and
¡öCannot enter into private contracts ¡°outside the scope of the State¡¯s police power.¡±
Ruling against raw milk forces consumers to drink genetically modified, antibiotic-laden milk from cows fed an unnatural diet of pesticide-loaded feed. No doubt that makes Monsanto a major fan of Patrick Fiedler. His decision was rendered on Sept. 9 and he stepped down from the bench on Sept. 30.

This case begs for competent legal counsel who can get the outrageous decision overturned."




"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped" Dr. Ron Paul 2012