March 4, 2014 – It’s March, everybody! Spring cannot be too far away. The birds are singing up a storm, and
though we’ve just gotten a fresh coat of snow on the ground, temperatures will
be in the 40’s later this week.
Thank heaven, the sun is shining very brightly.
You will be unsurprised to learn that Monsanto continues its
march toward world domination. Are
you as baffled as I am that they do so with Secretary of Agriculture Tom
Vilsack’s complicity? Is EVERYBODY
on their payroll? What does Vilsack
stand to gain by helping Monsanto, et. al. to own the world’s food
sources? Can this truly be some
form of horribly dysfunctional patriotism??
In 2011, Vilsack convened an industry-controlled panel of
stakeholders (known as AC21) in the ongoing confrontation between biotech
companies and organic farmers. He
ostensibly was seeking a fair solution to the problem of transgenic
contamination. After he and his
corporate cohorts racked their brains, trying to figure out what would serve
their duplicitous ends the best, they decided to brand the term
“coexistence.” It is Vilsack and
company’s pretty name for the end of organic farming.
You see, the makers of GMO crops have decided that
transgenic contamination cannot be allowed to stand in their way. Therefore, they are willing it out of
existence. There – with a sweep of
their magic wands, farmers of all and sundry ilks will simply co-exist. That’s not possible, you say? Everyone knows that GMO crops
contaminate non-GMO crops? Ah,
that’s the magic part.
In a world of “coexistence,” non-GMO farmers will be forced
to purchase contamination insurance.
Voila – problem solved! The
Mighty Monsanto has retracted the laws of nature. A pretty good trick, if they could do it. At the time of writing, they can’t, and
there’s the rub. Plants will
continue to reproduce as they always have. Pollen will continue to be spread by
means of the wind, insects, birds and animals. For as long as that is the case, GMO contamination of
non-GMO crops will continue.
Organic farmers, along with those who choose to farm conventionally but
without planting GMO seed, will have to spend their money on what is bound to
be expensive insurance, brought into being to protect them against the
inevitable. It won’t be long
before they are forced out of business; forced by either the cost of fake
insurance (which can’t protect them anyway, and can only compensate them when
their contaminated crops must be dumped), or the cost of having to grow their
crops under hoops or in greenhouses. Either way, the price of organic food in the marketplace will
go through the roof. At last: no
more inconvenient competition for Monsanto to have to deal with.
Let’s see if we’ve got this right. Rather than force the patent holders of genetically engineered
crops to compensate organic farmers when their fields are contaminated by
Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical and Syngenta, AC21 would shift the entire cost
of contamination’s consequences onto the injured parties. If the current AC21 plan is adopted, it
could exempt the aforementioned companies from any future legal liability. Instead, mandatory arbitration would
prohibit farmers from taking Monsanto to court because of GMO contamination. Ever.
If this infuriates you as much as it does me, please help
the good folks at Food Democracy fight this travesty. Go to
and sign the petition.
Email it to your friends.
Biotech wins only if we let them.
To show you jut how fair-minded a person I am, I’ll let
biotech have the last say.
In 2001, biotech industry consultant Don Westfall told the
Toronto Star, “The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so
flooded that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender.”
White flag, anyone?
With thanks to fooddemocracy.org.
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