GMO Blog: How Monsanto Messes with Farmers

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… and with the truth

Do you like being lied to? Do you want all your future food to come from genetically modified seeds … what some call Frankenfood? No? Then here are some things you should know.

You may already know that Monsanto is the agricultural giant that produces genetically modified (GMO) seeds so that they can survive lethal (to everything else) doses of its herbicide called RoundUp. Monsanto is good at lethal – it also is responsible for Agent Orange (the defoliant used in the Vietnam War that has caused so many health problems), DDT (the persistent pesticide that Rachel Carson wrote about in Silent Spring, the 1962 bestseller credited with helping launch the environmental movement), and more.

When the USDA recently ruled that Monsanto’s GMO alfalfa, corn and sugar beets could be planted anywhere, despite the fact that these cross pollinate and pollute traditional or organic crops, a shock wave rolled through the nation.

Recently producers of organics and regular farmers got together and decided to sue in order to keep from being sued by Monsanto for patent infringement when Monsanto’s GMO plants were found growing in the field of a farmer who didn’t pay for them.

Pish posh! cried Monsanto in its company blog. “It has never been, nor will it be Monsanto policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means.” The company calls the lawsuit a “publicity stunt.”

Really?

How would it explain then the hundreds of lawsuits Monsanto has filed against unsuspecting farmers who have been “discovered” by Monsanto’s seed police who wander America’s farmlands looking for “patent infringers?” Monsanto says they are growing Monsanto’s GMO plants in their fields without paying for them. The farmers say if there are such plants in their fields, they got there by cross pollination.

Or how to explain the hundreds of threatening letters farmers have received from Monsanto lawyers. How would it explain the company’s annual budget of $10 million and a staff of 75  devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers and the multiple cases of harassment against farmers over alleged unauthorized use of its seed products?

This is truly a sordid tale, and one of which all Americans should be aware. You can read more about all of this at the following links. We suggest writing or emailing the White House (the only place that seems to have the ability to reverse USDA’s GMO decisions) here.

Read about Monsanto’s scorched earth tactics in well-researched article published in Vanity Fair. 

Other resources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJcZLXX39KA

http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

http://www.nelsonfarm.net/

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml

James Townsend is editor in chief of WellWise.org, a nonprofit organization for the dissemination of science-based information about supplements, nutrients and strategies for health.   You can read more of James Townsend's health blogs here.

Read other WellWise health bloggers here.