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Dublin - Event Notice Thursday January 01 1970 March against Monsanto May 25th Dublin, Cork, Clare and Galway dublin |
consumer issues |
event notice
 Tuesday May 07, 2013 15:09 by asdf
The fight for our food!! ************************************************************************** The World According to Monsanto
There’s nothing they are leaving untouched: the mustard, the okra, the bringe oil, the rice, the cauliflower. Once they have established the norm: that seed can be owned as their property, royalties can be collected. We will depend on them for every seed we grow of every crop we grow. If they control seed, they control food, they know it – it’s strategic. It’s more powerful than bombs. It’s more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world. The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting disproportionate influence over policymakers via the “revolving door”. One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. While at the FDA, the authority that deals with all US food approvals, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company’s vice president for public policy. Thanks to these intimate links between Monsanto and government agencies, the US adopted GE foods and crops without proper testing, without consumer labeling and in spite of serious questions hanging over their safety. Not coincidentally, Monsanto supplies 90 percent of the GE seeds used by the US market. Monsanto’s long arm stretched so far that, in the early nineties, the US Food and Drugs Agency even ignored warnings of their own scientists, who were cautioning that GE crops could cause negative health effects. Other tactics the company uses to stifle concerns about their products include misleading advertising, bribery and concealing scientific evidence. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/
Caption: Video Id: N6_DbVdVo-k Type: Youtube Video |
Join us on a worldwide march against MONSANTO on May 25th in Dublin and Cork at 2pm and Clare at 2:30pm
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Comments (11 of 11)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11A march is also planned for galway at 2pm Eyre square
There is some more info on the activities of monsanto and it's army of lobbyists here:
https://www.indymedia.ie/article/103472
Sligo town, the Source Café 1.00, meeting and info...
Castlebar 1.30, meeting at the Mall area, protest, heading to Enda Kennys office..
The excerpts in the section below are from:
http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-march-against-senate-766/
Published time (by RT): May 24, 2013 18:09
=== === ===
Protesters will demand a ban on GMOs, which many believe have detrimental health effects. They will also rally against Monsanto’s patenting rights, which allow the corporation to monopolize the seed industry.
“For too long, Monsanto has been the benefactor of corporate subsidies and political favoritism,” states the Facebook page of the March Against Monsanto, Washington, D.C. “Organic and small farmers suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup.”
=== === ===
Related Link:
"Monsanto, corporate subsidies, and political favoritism ..."
http://tinyurl.com/oap7hnm
A few weeks back Obama signed into law what is basically a Monsanto Protection act. As reported at the link below and widely reported elsewhere Monsanto had a key part in drafting the legislation.
The bill was apparently written by freshman Sen. Roy Blunt in collusion with Monsanto, with them helping to craft the exact language of the document.
- “The Center for Responsive Politics notes that Sen. Blunt received $64,250 from Monsanto to go towards his campaign committee between 2008 and 2012. The Money Monocle website adds that Blunt has been the largest Republican Party recipient of Monsanto funding as of late.”
- Many members of Congress were apparently unaware that the “Monsanto Protection Act” was a part of the spending bill that they were voting on.
But most importantly or rather horrifyingly the act states that if any future research shows that GMOs or GE seeds cause significant health problems, cancer, etc, anything, that the federal courts no longer have any power to stop their spread, use, or sales. And a number of years ago the original home of the corn plant -Mexico where many species exist -and where Mexico was proudly selling it as non GM corn, the entire crop in the country was shown to be contaminated through cross-pollination and it is now reckoned there are no corn plants that haven't picked up the genes.
Similar things have happened with other crops where GM ones have spread out of control. Much of this is related to the fact that food must be labelled in Europe if it contains genetically modified plants whereas in the US it does not have to be labelled and the likes of Monsanto and others fought tooth and nail to step a recent attempt (and succeeded) to introduce GM labeling. How this relates to cross-contamination is that these corporations encouraged practices that lead to it and made no effort to keep GM and non GM separated. The intention is that once all the non GM crops are contaminated then it makes it impossible for people selling non GM food to label it as non GM food because of contamination and in all likelihood they would challenge them in the courts and win if they did.
Returning to the Monsanto Protection Act, here are some more points raised in the report:
“On Tuesday, Pres. Obama inked his name to H.R. 933, a continuing resolution spending bill approved in Congress days earlier. Buried 78 pages within the bill exists a provision that grossly protects biotech corporations such as the Missouri-based Monsanto Company from litigation.”
“In light of approval from the House and Senate, more than 250,000 people signed a petition asking the president to veto the spending bill over the biotech rider tacked on, an item that has since been widely referred to as the ‘Monsanto Protection Act.’”
“But Obama ignored [the petition],” as the IB Times notes, “instead choosing to sign a bill that effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future.”
Full text of the above report at:
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/05/monsanto-p....html
This is from Jan 3rd 2013 Poland banned cultivation of GM crops and the legislation specifically bans two genetically modified crops – MON 810 maize from Monsanto and BASF Amflora potato.
Before the Poland joined the EU there was very very little use of pesticides and chemicals in general in Polish agriculture and the vast majority of the farms were small holdings. Effectively the entire food supply in Poland was high quality organic food. Since then things have been changing for the worse as corporations attempt to push their products and trend towards larger farms which tend to use more industrial and harmful methods, is increasing.
Irelands future lies in the production of high quality organic food. Any idiot can see that. What other natural resource have we left that hasn't been stolen or given away to some corporation at this stage by corrupt government actors?
Allowing GM in here effectively gives away our only hope of a self sustaining future and sentences us to dependency and serfdom, as our GM food is sold for "race to the bottom" prices and most of the cost of production goes into the huge volume of expensive toxic chemicals we pour on the soil supplied by psychotic corporations like Monsanto, which, as entities with the rights of humans but none of the basic needs of humans, don't have to worry about poisoned food or air or water or soil.
It is great to have good news to report now and again and on Monday (27th May) GMWatch reported that Hungary took the very wise decision to torch 500 hectares of GM crops.
The initial opening paragraphs says:
Hungary decided to eliminate all plantations using GMO seeds from Monsanto. According to the Minister of Rural Development Lajos Bognar, around 500 hectares of corn crops were burned this week - equivalent to five million square meters. The intention is that the country has no produce originating from genetically modified material. [ Ireland should be doing this to protect our own integrity as a source of good wholesome food. ]
According to the information portal Real Pharmacy yesterday (23 May), the cornfields that were destroyed were scattered around the Hungarian territory and had been recently planted. Thus, poisonous corn pollen was not about to be dispersed in the air, and so there was no danger to the population..........
As we can see their is a sting in this story because it would appear that Monsanto and other biotech seed companies are intentionally trying to distribute these seeds and get them grown in such a way as to cause the maximum cross-contamination as possible.
Full report at the link below
it's great to hear stories like this. I remember when we burned the first GM crops here in Ireland.
Alas, we'd probably roll over now and let them plant them.
T is right in his observation regarding the strategic placement of the GMO's for maximum contamination.
Once the genes spread widely, it's game over.
In yet more good news Japan has halted the importation of US wheat which was supposed to be GM free but has found to be contaminated with GMOs. This is both good news and bad news at the same time. Good because countries are beginning to reject this stuff and it sends a signal to farmers that their GM crops will be largely worthless and bad news because it shows widespread GM contamination has occurred and as planned by Monsanto and other biotech companies like them.
The story as reported at the link below goes onto to explain this:
Monsanto is a ticking time bomb for U.S. agriculture
This proves, without any question, that Monsanto's genetic experiments which "escaped" into commercial wheat fields are now going to devastate U.S. wheat farmers. Expect the floor to drop out on wheat prices, and watch for a huge backlash against the USDA by U.S. farmers who stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on this.
As the USDA has now admitted, Monsanto's GMO experiments from 1998 - 2005 were held in open wheat fields. The genetically engineered wheat escaped and found its way into commercial wheat fields in Oregon (and possibly 15 other states), causing self-replicating genetic pollution that now taints the entire U.S. wheat industry.
"Asian consumers are keenly sensitive to gene-altered food, with few countries allowing imports of such cereals for human consumption," writes Reuters. It continues:
Asia imports more than 40 million tonnes of wheat annually, almost a third of the global trade of 140-150 million tonnes. The bulk of the region's supplies come from the United States, the world's biggest exporter, and Australia, the No. 2 supplier.
another successful worldwide march against monsanto went ahead this year.
some info here:
http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/
Here's an interesting related article that appeared today on http://www.counterpunch.org
which discusses monsanto buying syngenta, glyphosate toxicity, and the banning of aerial
glyphosate spraying in Columbia and along the Ecuador border due to fears of carcinogenic effects and
other toxic effects of the chemical:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/29/monsantos-chemic...mbia/