Over the last weeks Big Mutant Meals’ effort to seize control of humanity’s food supply supply failed in France and Montville, Maine. The Frankencorps’ two-decade-long propaganda campaign also chewed dirt — despite a servile corporate media, almost 30 years of Presidential sell-outs to Monsanto and the Frankenpriests, and the modern-day heirs of Dr. Goebbels at their service, their Big Mutant Lie has failed: 53% of Americans don’t want to eat toxic crapfood made from GMO’s. Even after eight years of the Bush Reich, Americans still have the wits and common sense to know that lab food is for Petri dishes, not people.
Just a bunch of pagan DFH technophobes, you say? Au contraire. Even Catholic theologians damned GMO’s: three widely respected theologians condemned Terminator technologies as "grossly immoral". All in all, a good week on the frontline against mutant meals.
And that’s good news: The frontline against mutant meals is one flank in the megacorps’ global war to seize the commons — the living world that provides our food and oxygen, and the aquifers, rivers and lakes that give us water.
Immoral? Megacorps are sociopaths, wearing Articles of Incorporation stamped Made in Delaware Chancery Court. By the design and intent of the corporate counsel set, the only value the megacorps and all publicly-held corporations honor is the endless pursuit of ever-rising profits: at any price.
No surprise, then that the megacorps are trying to spin the same global famine created by the megacorps’ commodity profiteers and globalization shock troops into an excuse for GMOs to dominate the supply of even more of the planet’s food. Apparently, having the top 10 seed companies control 55% of the global seed market isn’t enough — the megacrops won’t stop until they’ve patented every foodstuff in the global commons. And no surprise, that. After a century of polluting the world into a toxic fetus cooker, the megacorps are running to patent the ancient DNA in plants we all may need simply to survive the global climate crisis the megacorps have brought upon us all.
Of course, the megacorps will share the DNA from hundreds of millions of years of evolution they so thoughtfully patented and purport to "own" — for a price, of course. Wow. Our saviors.
WTF are megacorps doing owning life? Well, the majority of the Supremes — America’s equivalent of the bewigged, closeted English judges known to Monty Python fans — is just as insular and scientifically ignorant as the benchwarmers the Pythons skewered. Up until 1980, U.S. patent law sensibly dictated that living things were not patentable. In arguably the most devasting example of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures in recorded history, the Supremely Ignorant Five of the Nine reversed the Fourteenth Amendment, granting corporations the right to own life itself — so long as the megacorp had sufficiently twiddled with a single genetic sequence to render it "novel". By this measure, the first human baby to benefit from somatic genetic therapy is not a sovereign person, but a "thing" owned by the docs who corrected a genetic disease.
Of course, what else to expect from Supremes led by Nixon’s pick Burger and ably infiltrated by Lewis Powell? Yep, that Lewis Powell: the corporate lawyer Lewis Powell and former ABA president, well-paid and tireless advocate for immaculately attired corporate counsel from the mahogany-paneled sector — promoted from serving on 11 corporate boards to servicing them from the Supremes’ bench? Hey, at least he told people he was in the megacorps’ pocket — the right people, of course. The corporate types to whom he sent the Powell memo.
That single ruling by the infinitely fallible and wholly politicized Supremes is the sole basis for the plague of genetically modified organisms released into our farms, forests, and oceans.
I love a clearly delineated target, don’t you? Especially a target that 53% of Americans want off their (dinner) tables. The Supremes purported to "clarify" ambiguity in Congressional intent. One single federal law will hand the Supremes — and the Frankencorps — their sorry pampered asses.
Put that in your genome and splice it, Monsanto.
Have we won? Nope. But we’re seeing the end of the beginning. Just as we saw in the tobacco wars, profound concerns once relegated to fringe activists (what happens when you declare a protest and nobody comes? BioDev2001) are now mainstream — 53% of the U.S. mainstream. Despite relentless Frankencorp propaganda, media consolidation, the Quayle-Clinton-Bush collaboration with Monsanto, and seven years of the Bush-Cheney Reich, the majority of Americans still don’t want to eat toxic mutant crap.
Who could have imagined? (well, my friends in San Diego for BioDev, but that’s another story. Must.not.say.Wetoldyouso.)
GMOs outside the lab are the latest example of a whole series of technologies designed to serve the most regressive forces on our planet: the megacorps. They’ve started the long slide towards the precipice fossil fuels and chemical toxins have begun to dribble over — right above the scrapheap nukes that will light up for a few hundred thousand years. And, just like the technology of nuclear power; the technology of coal-fired power; and the baby-mutating, gonad-killing, gender-bending, learning disorder-inducing technology of persistent organic pollutants — GMO’s will be in us and our fields for a long, long time. So too will the Frankenpriests who see careers (or PR budgets, or both) in the mutant megacorps.
The Frankenservants who pop here for their first visit to the Lake — usually minutes after a post with "Franken" or "GMO" in the title hits Google Alerts — remind me of the Nukepriests I endured at UCSB in the early ’80s. Even after Three Mile Island nearly made a hunk of Pennsylvania uninhabitable for millennia, the Nukepriests had their fervent, repetitive talking points.
Nearly twenty years later, while (successfully) fighting Monsanto and their co-conspirators in mass poisoning out of the LA Unified School District, I went to a Beyond Pesticides conference in Santa Barbara and heard from one of the authors of Trust Us, We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future. Reading Trust Us! I learned from Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber how effectively Dr. Goebbels’ co-conspirators in the US PR Industry have learned to misconstrue the culture of scientific inquiry into an eternal search for "certainty". As long as the technopriests can point to one irrelevant question, they protect whatever toxic product line they depend on to pay their rent.
Burston-Marsteller (run by Hillary’s muse, Mark Penn) and other tax-deductible scams the toxic megacorps use to cloud public perceptions — and hence delay public solutions — to lethal corporate product are renowned notorious for manipulating us with greenwash front groups, phony initiatives, and paid shills — in front of the camera and the keyboard.
This perception control — along with the legalized bribery known as campaign contributions — helped Big Tobaccco to kill millions long after they and their core opponents knew the deadly consequences of their product.
So tonight, and in any public venue where I or others confront the Frankencorps, I expect the Frankenpriests to slither out of the mutant labs and tell us that, this time, Toxic Sludge Is Good For Us.
Unlike the decades during which Monsanto knew PCBs are lethal posions, but told the public PCBs were safe; unlike the fact that aspartame is a mammalian neurotoxin, but we are told it’s safe for kiddie cereal; unlike the fact rBGH puts pus in our milk and causes abnormal cell growth — but we are told we needn’t know when we drink milk from rBGH cows …
Tonight we’re likely to be told to forget all that, forget that most of that toxic PR (along with the toxic products) came from Monsanto’s servants. We’ll be told that all the above is in the past.
And, to the extent dead parents and siblings and children are "past", that may be technically true: if we ignore our hearts and listen to the perception control industry and the Technopriests.
Is the fight against GMOs in our crops and food over? Nope. GMOs in our fields are a "gift" that keeps on giving: genetic pollution has spread GMOs throughout North America — especially in corn and soy. The pollution is so severe that, along with many others, I’ve dropped processed foods with soy or corn out of my meals. Reports of toxicity with GMO corn and soy are so dire that I’ve decided I don’t want to be an unwilling lab rat in the Frankencorps’ experiment in control of the global food supply.
And I don’t want you or your families and loved ones to be unwilling subjects, either. That’s why the successes against GMOs in France and Maine are worth taking time to appreciate and celebrate tonight.
Not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.
So I hope you all will excuse me if, just this once, I simply ignore the Frankenpriests who show up with the latest talking points from the Heartland Institute and the propaganda guides they publish. Any celebration will draw a few unwanted guests — but that doesn’t mean we have to bother with them.
Pups, Bon Appetit.
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Dr. Kirk!
Hi newtonusr! Pull up a (GMO free) plate…
g’evening dr kirk…
wow this is a lot to chew on, Dr Kirk!
I know I don’t like my shrimp laminated either.
Taking your word for it… Big time. But being a pasta freak, I’m glad wheat isn’t a tainted mess – oh, wait…
nevermind
this is some post!
I haven’t been able to digest everything just yet but if it hasn’t been mentioned, I am told farmers are FINED for keepig seed crops for the next season
FINED FOR KEEPING SEED CROP
this way they have to buy seed, bizarre
if they stop by often enough, perhaps they will eventually see the light
why yes, i am sitting in the pollyanna section…
After reading two books…. Real Food by Nina Planck and In defense of food by Michael Pollan… I spend a lot of time reading labels and work very hard to have a high fructose corn syrup life….. it is NOT easy….
If there are more than 5 ingredients…. if I can’t read it or pronounce it… then it is put back on the shelf…. now I am eliminating dehydrated milk [milk solids] which MAY be the offender in raising C-reactive Protein …
Aloha, Doc and Suz! 8-)
Wow, that’s some sheer audacity…!
bastards are trying to own as much as they can now in hopes of making financial killing in the future.
forkers… it is just like stockpiling food or water in case of a diaster so that huge profits can be made without regard to the fact that there are people affected by the disaster – only suckers to fleece.
Get the fundies on it! How can you patent something God created? And while we’re at it, what are they doing messing around with reproductive systems anyway?
just a question – is it financially impossible to farm organically or is the yield too small to supply major food chains? what is the problem as you see it dr kirk?
I think Monsanto and their ilk are the biggest blight upon humanity in the history of the Universe. Worse than nukes.
Fork Monsanto.
I keep rereading the Pollan book….good stuff there, especially the second half with the common sense suggestions; he also does great speeches. Will put your Planck book on the ever expanding reading list. Many thanks!
Look at the sudden rise in the profitability margins of ‘organic’ foodstuffs, it is sustainable in more aspects than one…! ;-)
I don’t understand it. Fork the “patent”. Fork them.
These so-called, sorry excuses for human beings that run these corporations are just sorry excuses for people. Don’t give them any power!!! The World should just look at them and tell them to fork off!!!
People are so stupid. We don’t have to pay one iota of attention to these goons. Just ignore them in and “organized” fashion. They are a bunch of idjiots in offices somewhere collecting money. Plant what you want. If they want to sue, fork them!!!
anybody else think bush’s policies have transported us back to the early 1900’s? Not only are we less safe from a national security standpoint, we are less safe from a health standpoint, given attacks on our environment, and the lax standards for meat inspection and food imports.
I haven’t had my favorite fish in a long time.
Digg the good doctor’s post HERE
thank you!
juslin, gmo crops don’t increase food crop yields – they merely increase inputs
(inputs are patented seed and industrial chemicals like Roundup: the weedkiller associated with increased lymphoma risk…
food and health and hope)
GMO’s don’t help feed the world – they just help feed the bloated frankencorps
gtg pups, dinner time! :P
great post Doc!
Kirk – I know we’ve had this conversation several times about seeds, and my particular interest in what was done to the ancient seed stocks in Iraq.
Is there any chance that Iraq’s farmers, being history’s greatest agriculturists, secreted the ancient seed away for when Monsanto and friends were finally chased out, so they could resume farming the fertile crescent as they had done for THOUSANDS OF YEARS?
dugg, thanks neuro
Yep. Leave our food alone and we’ll leave you alone. Get it? ;-)
another really useful book on the topic is Uncertain Peril by Claire Hope Cummings
You can be sure someone kept the seeds. The Iraqis know.
newton, I sure hope so – but I have no idea. From your keyboard to the (surviving) Iraqi farmers’ seed stores
We robbed them of so many things, but the ability to, you know, feed their nation, would be a nice legacy.
Sadly, thats not the biggest problem in Iraq now…
and limited electricity to run the pumps
Thanks, Perris.
Genetic pollution ensures Monsanto’s Frankenseeds pollute other (non-GMO) farmers’ crops.
Monsanto then goes after the pollution victims to sue them for unauthorized use of the Frankenseeds.
I have every reason to expect that the genetic pollution will be (one of) the tort causes that brings down the whole sorry industry – wherever export crops in the uS are polluted with GMO seeds, the crops lose value.
If you google “monsanto” and “vanity fair” you’ll find a long article that describes – among other abuses – Monsanto’s penchant for suing their own customers.
kirk, when did food become something that corporations were in charge of instead of farmers?
That contributes to the prob…! ;-)
They are probably culturally much smarter than we are. Their culture is much more mature. They didn’t attack us and get stuck in a quagmire. I’m sure they stashed what they could.
Yep, it really is audacious. They are literally trying to sieze the commons at the roots.
We’ll defeat them.
What I want:
MonsantoGreat question! Doc? You know?
seems like there is a need for more than seed:
Ancient Fertile Crescent Almost Gone, Satellite Images Show
We must not give them our power. They are operating in that same “Wizard of Oz” terrorism way…bugga, bugga…you come against us and we’ll destroy you…and they have…they have destroyed farmers…it is outrageous. If we are united, they can’t do it. Pushback. Attack, attack, attack!!!
and i think they spoil the land…
part of the axis of evil for sure.
and that is a warning from may, 2001 – before we trashed the place
Great question, suz -within living memory production/distribution of commodity crop seeds was an effective monoply of the USDA.
Different sectors of the food economy have fallen under centralized corporate control at different times. Over the last two decades, the war on labor led large chains to dump local butchers in favor of mass-packed meat and poultry from centralized slaughterhouses – oh, excuse me – meat packers.
The War Of The Seeds didn’t get underway until after the Supreme’s idiotic ruling in 1980…
Iraqi growers understand propagation as well, if not more, than anyone in the world. They will “preserve” their seeds. This is not their first “rodeo”.
Thanks, neuro – I’d love to see this post dugg in spades – the history of how the supremes (and the powell memo) opened the commons to corporate rule is too seldom told…
I want Monsanto banned worldwide….dismantled…kapoot!!
Yep – the new “gilded age”. Hope you are enjoying a great dinner, dosido. Thanks for joining us.
That can also be attributed to a determined effort by Saddam to drain the marshes…
Who is behind Monsanto? Who are the biggest shareholders? Who’s benefiting?
Frikkin’ New World Order..”Lizards”!!
How dare they patent rice!!!?? How can they get away with that???
NO.
“A strong case could most certainly be made that George Bush is skating on very thin ice to be making references to Nazis or Hitler, given his family connections to Nazi leadership and his disgusting fascist behavior. In other words, it is certain that George Bush, aside from being known as the worst president his country ever had will also be known as one of those evil, totalitarian dictators and Hitlers that fill all decent human beings with disgust and revulsion.”
Pravda doesn’t hold back on Chimpy.
-G
Yeah!!
I dearly hope so.
But of all the things they were expecting, a frontal assault on their agricultural capacity couldn’t have been foreseen. Even Western plunders of the past wouldn’t have dared undermine that ag capacity, as it was counter to their interests, or so I would have thought. Suddenly, their seed is confiscated in a flash…
Heh, GSD you should take a gander at my latest post… ;-)
yes, but i think he had help: satellite pics :(
Ta, I think….seein’ as how you just ran the reading list onto page 3 (at single space 10 pt font). *g*
OTOH, it’s so good to see more and more progressive refs, of varying themes, available on the shelves these days. :-)
When people flee…the things they take include seeds to their crops..their food. Ancient societies understand this.
Oh, yeah…but in our society…the IPod’s get grabbed first. Just sayin’.
Wasn’t arguing one bit, Ma’am! As I had pointed at the link in my #30 comment…! *g*
sorry, waccamaw – but i’m guessing you had a great list on pgs 1-2!
Here’s something else related to WW2. Odd…
‘The National Archives has released findings of our investigation into forged documents. The investigation papers, as well as the forged documents, are now available on our website.
In July 2005, it was discovered that a number of files held at The National Archives contained forged documents. These files related to the Second World War. This resulted in a thorough internal investigation, the findings of which are being released today.
A police investigation followed, with the full cooperation of The National Archives. Forensic examination confirmed that the suspected documents were recent forgeries and had been introduced to the files from 2000 onwards. The investigation identified 29 individual forgeries from 12 separate files.
http://www.nationalarchives.go…..epage=news
Their seed is their most precious possession.
What talk when can threaten, berate and belittle.
Pathetic.
-G
I assume that was directed at me…! *g*
kirk, to defeat frankenfoods, do we have to rely on a supremes decision that reverses the 1980 ruling?
Dr Kirk,
This is really is a great post and the links were highly informative..Thank-you :)
(sorry, about the OT..)
Yeah. I hadn’t read that.
These pricks have war on their minds and they’re gonna have it come hell or high gas prices.
-G
Sorry for going OT Kirk;)
-G
THe Supremes chose to interpret the intent of Congress re patents in their 1980 ruling.
One single Federal law establishing that living creatures used for food or fiber (aside from microbes used for non-food pruposes) may not be patented will cut the Frankencorps out of our meals.
The other solution will be the runious tort claims for genetic pollution: we’ll need all of Monsanto and BASF and the other Frankenfood megacorps assets to help clean the crap off of our planet. That task will take generations, and we may NEVER be fully rid of the genetic pollution.
But – just as we may never be fully rid of human slave-taking, that’s no resaon to delay opposing the bastards.
In light of this, I have to pass along a story that my Muslim friend from Qatar told me. One of their “teachings” or “fables” or whatever you call it is a story that they are taught in the the desert tribes….They are taught that they can survive for a long time by dividing up a date. The date has one of the highest energy contents of any food…that and camel or horse milk and/or water from desert plants. They can subsist for 2 weeks on 1 date. That is the law of the desert. They are an ancient culture. They think ahead. They know that they have to save what they will need to plant. We, on the otherhand….idjiots.
I’m glad you enjoy the post, jackie!
didn’t think so, but missed your 30 – so thanks for pointing it out to me!
Attack the Bastids say I!!!! I despise them and anyone who profits by them and who supports them.
They are the plague on our world. Worse than global warming. They are a tool for genocide. War crimes.
amen!
Yep. I’m searching for the reference, but some GMO crops appear to accelerate depletion of soil fertility.
(I gotta organize my bookmarks better.)
I’m pretty sure Monsanto has a solution for that, too.
That’s OK. This topic makes me so damn mad I wonder how anyone can focus on it – and then I realize that (along with others) I’ve been fighting these bastards since 1999.
How time flies when you’re fighting Frankencorps.
It is not impossible to farm organically and make money – and you can do it on a large scale. You might want to Google “Stonybrook Farms”, they make organic yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese and other dairy products, and of course Earthbound Farms, the country’s largest producer of organic vegetables.
Yields of organic crops are equal to or in some cases surpass commercial crops – and they certainly beat out GMO stuff.
And GMO crops actually produce anywhere from 10-18% LESS food than their non-GMO counterparts – so…..
Wow – thanks lokywoky. Can you tell us more about yields / econoomic sustainabiltiy of organic vs. conventional ag (and not to challenge you, but if you have links I’d love to add them to my [disorganized] references.)
F*ck them!!!
So many books, so little time. *g*
And belated thanks for a most excellent post! I come from farming stock so the horror of GMO’s maybe hits a little closer to home than for many people in this country who have been divorced from the land and the realization of the damage we do to it at our peril.
We’ve given them a market to plunder. It should come as no surprise that they will seek to expand it.
So…everybody should support them — invest in them if you can! That kind of activity would counter the Monsanto types…as long as Monsanto doesn’t buy them out.
F*ck them.
Waccamaw, your interest – and that of the other pups who are commenting here – is all the thanks I need.
For readers who have yet to comment at the Lake: please join us. Everybody eats, and GMO foods can affect all our meals. What questions or ideas could you bring to the table tonight?
[I’m assuming Speaker Pelosi isn’t reading, so we can use the table…]
There is evidence beginning to accumulate that GMO crops do indeed “spoil the land”. The toxins in the GMO pollens kill butterflies, and scientists who work with all the microorganisms in soils are concerned that in GMO fields, populations of these teensy critters are dropping like the proverbial rock.
Another concern is that when Monsanto makes a GMO, it inserts the gene in a particular place. Once that plant “wilders”, the gene insertions are then uncontrolled and you wind up with “monster” plants that look straight out of a Stephen King horror flick. That’s one of the reasons they don’t want you to save seeds. The other is the control issue of course….
And of course, all the new weeds are “round-up ready” so this whole thing is an exercise in complete and total futility. That round-up-ready gene transfers fairly easily between species – one of the “unexpected consequences no one (at Monsanto anyways) was expecting”.
and change can be brought from within – by those who own monsanto stock pressuring the corporation
After Obama and the dems win in November our next effort should be taking back the commons. Just because it is now “legal” doesn’t make it moral. Next Conag and Monstanto will want to patent God. Same thing as a patent on DNA.
Actually, Doc, he was referring to the last half of my post that I linked to at 54! Whereby, we allowed a golden opportunity slip by with Shrub’s bluster…! That’s why he apologized for the OT, and I’d like to extend the same apology…! *g*
I have to modify what I’m saying, because this is one of my most “push my button” peeves….
Do not let them have the power. Take the power back. Don’t buy their products and disregard their threats. They are tyrants. It makes no logical sense that they can patent nature. It is a scam.
Not Likely
:(
Heh! *gasp* It’s just not natural…! ;-)
Heh, heh, heh…I love a cause.
but my point is still valid – it is hard to effect change from the outside without the help of those inside who also want the change
just like the tobacco scientist blowing the whistle on enhancements that make tobacco more addicting, we need those on the inside who want change to help.
Civic duty overcomes significant financial incentive.
Not.Often.Enough.
Count me in the 47%. To paraphrase Muhammad Ali, I ain’t got nothin against no GMOs.
GMOs in the abstract don’t bother me at all. Happy to chow down on them, personally. And there may be a significant number of other people like me, for whom “mutation” isn’t a scare word, but a name for a universal biological reality.
Which doesn’t mean that Monsanto, and that fool Supreme Court decision, aren’t evil incarnate. They are. I comment only to suggest that, because there are other people out there like me, once Democrats return to real power, a crusade against GMOs in general may fail, whereas a more tightly targeted campaign may well succeed, aimed at:
(1) Ending patents of organisms (patents of genes are a much trickier issue and more of a mixed bag, but that’s another post)
(2) Outlawing Terminator technology, considering that in the world’s current food crisis it amounts to a crime against humanity
(3) Requiring labeling of all GMOs, so that people who are scared by words like “mutation” have the chance to exercise their free choice as consumers and
(4) As new GMOs arise, conditioning approval of each one’s mass marketing on at least some loose variation of the precautionary principle.
No market, no power.
Yup. Hmmm.
and looking at the stock ownership… most of the folks who own monsanto stock, don’t even have a clue… it’s just mutual funds and shit
how do you find and convince these folks?
just sayin
YES!
Now that the bastards have started trying to privatize water, taking back our commons is literally a matter or life and death.
I’m hoping we in the ancestral home of the megacorp and globalization can finish off what the good folks of Cochabamba started.
To a certain extent, we’ve already reversed the flow: even the serial baby-killers Nestle had to downsize their plans to grab water from the aquifers that feed the Sacramento River…the river where the salmon runs just crashed (largely) due to diversions.
publicity. posts like this one. the more bruhaha is raised over the issue, the more those folks will recognize the name monsanto when they get their reports from the mutual funds.
talking to people about the problem. pushing msm to cover the issue (just as we do with all the other issues they don’t wanna cover)
one solitary voice is not heard. the sound of hundreds of voices increases that it will be heard. the sound of hundreds of thousands of voices are heard.
commercials….
It’s 10PM do you know that your children probably just ate genetically manipulated food?!!!
Aloha! Nice to see new faces at the Lake! I’d agree with much of what you say, however, I think the FDA should force the Megacorps to conduct similar testing of GMO products as they are supposed to for new drugs…!
I heard an inteview on air america, I believe with the pap
there is a farmer who is suing, it seems the genetic code is air born and attacks everything permanently, there is no way to keep from being infected
the company claims any other organism, ANY other organism that shows the genetic code is theirs by property rights
SO, if somehow an animal becomes infected with this gene, they own that animal as well
this is really really scary stuff
we cannot allow property rights of genes, it cannot be allowed
we have to make it so they can be SUED for contaminating other crops
as a matter of fact, I don’t think the affected principles looked at the legal ramifications of THAT strategy;
“sue the company for contaminating crop, sue for more damage then they can possibly claim by their property rights”
I think that might solve the problem of them trying to own the earths crops
Here is a link to a French documentary that was released in March 2008 detailing many of the problems with GMO crops, the science, and the politics surrounding it. (It’s available in English – just click the link in the upper right hand corner) http://www.arte-boutique.fr/de……id=245754
As far as farming sustainably/organically and doing it on a competitive basis – I first saw a film in my biology class in 1991 and Humboldt State University on the subject – and that particular film (I cannot remember the name of it) was already years old. Since then, there have been huge advances in this area, I will try to find a couple of the best references for you to use, but there are tons and tons of info on this subject available.
Our junior Senator from Montana Jon Tester is an organic farmer – so he is an impeccable source. Farming is a business most people cannot afford to be in unless they make enough money to feed their families and pay the bills. Senator Tester is not independently wealthy. Ask him!
Given all the controversy over frankenfoods – there are polls that show that people are generally willing to spend more money on food that is “safe” (non-GMO, non-rBST, no hormones, pesticides, antibiotics, etc). The how much more is always the question, but an answer to that might be the amount and wide variety of organic foods now offered at WalMart for crying out loud! WalMart doesn’t stock stuff if it doesn’t sell – and sell lots – and yes it’s more expensive than the commercial stuff!
Please email me at lokywoky at aol (don’t worry, I can deal with the spam).
not so
they claim that if the marker is in ANY crop they own that crop, it doesn’t natter if the marker RUINS the crop, it doesn’t matter if the marker was a contaminent, they own the crop and any seed that comes from that crop
this looks to me like a snap to reverse, they have to face DAMAGES, they cannot reap rewards for their contamination
off for drive home. will read more later
GREAT FRIGGIN POST
True, through the cross-pollination of GMO crops with non-GMO crops, it is virtually impossible to control any cross-pollination…! I’ll be interested to see the outcome of that case…!
are you thinking of silent spring?
ptbridgeport, I like your four points.
My too-long post precluded mention, but the “dammned GMO’s” in the first few graphs links to Progressio’s May 15 reprot that that the EU/UK are apparently seeking to overturn the UN’s 10 year moratorium on “terminator” genes..
In favor of – I couldn’t make this up – “zombie” genes: genes that keep a plant unless the megacorps’ proprietary chemical is applied.
Given the way other Frankengenes have crept into gene pools, the Zombie idea is a killer. IN the global famine sense of the world.
Why do corporations hate people who have to eat?
Fork. Right.
“They” are stealing and sealing up “ownership” to what it takes the rest of humanity to survive. That is my point!!!
We have to stop allowing them…stop giving away our power…to control the necessities that humanity needs. It needs to be made “off limits” in international law. They cannot be allowed to “own” that which supports life. Period. It must be banned internationally.
We have the power. We have to stop them. They take it and laugh behind our dying backs. When are we going to get this?
lokywoky, i look forward to being in touch – and i’m glad you joine d us here tonight.
Exactly, start countersuing their sorry *sses for contaminating natural food sources and affecting the property of the neighboring properties.
Fight back.
We are many, they are few.
oh double crap – i got so caught up in doc’s post that i completely forgot to welcome lokywoky and ptbridgeport to the lake.
i am looking forward to hearing your voices here. welcome and if you have any questions, just ask :)
Ding!
That’s the “genetic polluton” strategy I believe will bankrupt the Frankencorps.
401k
suz, thanks you – I’ve also forgotten to welcome both ptbridgeport and lokywoky here tonight. Welcome – I’m glad you’ve joined us, and I hope yo’ll swim here often. I appreciate both of your contributions tonight.
yeap, pension fund disclosure listings, etc. when ya start thinking about it, it really gets down to talking about it to folks in your every day interactions.
No, Silent Spring was written back in the 1980s I believe and its primary thrust was the use of DDT along with other pesticides and herbicides. GMO crops were still on the distant horizon at that time.
Well, their friggin’ marker fu*ked up the neighbor’s crop. They are the holder of the damages. They are ruining the neighbor’s crop and the entire globe’s food supply….$$$$$$$$$.
The legality of their so-called “marker” is BS. F them once and for all. Stop them, because they are the destroyer of the lives of billions of people. Surely, someone can counter them. It is supreme stupidity to allow them to have those legal powers.
Oh, yeah…there is no longer a rule of law…
suz, thanks you – I’ve also forgotten to welcome both ptbridgeport and lokywoky here tonight. Welcome – I’m glad you’ve joined us, and I hope
yo’lly’all’ll swim here often. I appreciate both of your contributions tonight.fixed
1962
1962. just apply the lessons of pesticide use with forking with the food we eat genetically. terminator genes – what happens when it terminates after being eaten is just one area where the lessons of 1962 can be used again.
Suzanne, will you have cartoons for us tonight? :)
shhhh (yes much later)
Heh, can I correct the corrector…? ;-)
dugg. another great post, Dr Kirk. *ndfg climbs on chair and applauds*
what? only 10 diggs? dont’ make me put my hands on my hips pups. i know there are more than 10 of you here.
Works in Arkansas
The genetic pollution lawsuit is already too little and too late. Monsanto has already got precedent in the US Courts for the reverse action. They have successfully sued into bankruptcy numbers of farmers for “illegally” having their seeds when the farmer’s problem was a contamination by wind/animals/pollen transport of some sort.
Also, like I stated earlier, (and is documented in the French film linked above), farmers’ crops get contaminated if they plant GMOs one year and the following year plant non-GMOs. The non-GMOs get contaminated if even ONE plant was left from the previous year, or pollen, and then the company tests your crop and bam, you are in court. One family, the guy, his father and both his brothers got sued over a case like this. They settled because they would have lost hundreds of acres of land that had been in their family for five generations.
Monsanto actually has people who go around and trespass on peoples farms collecting samples to catch people with ‘non-authorized’ crops!
Aloha, NDFG! Btw, I keep seeing the sawdust at Al’s new abode…! ;-)
all the more reason to have a d president making appts to the supremes.
that 1980 ruling needs to be overturned.
Percy Schmeiser won his case in Canada to force Monsanto to clean up their geneitc pollution in his fields. Percy and Louise earned (in every sense of the word) a Right Livelihood Award for their courage and defiance.
“there’s a drop of water on the wall”
i do believe that – i’m just curious as to why farmers had to abandon organic farming…. maybe b/c the agri-business demanded they accept frankenseeds? and ugh sludge fertilizer?
…so, start Digging!
Suz, in this case I believe Federal legislation (”clarifying” the Patent law he Supremes miscontrued in 1980) and ending Monsanto’s legal extortion for gentic polluiton will be the fastest remedy.
[but I’d love to see new appointments and an expanded Court, as well. As Teddy has observed here, the Court isn’t fixed at nine….]
Thank God, and that is what we have to keep fighting against.
No food, no planet.
all i hear is shovels and pick-axes
:)
Thanks, ndfg – and congrats once agin to you and Al!
Thanks and to suzanne also. I was just too lazy to get up and actually look at my (real hardbound) copy of Silent Spring to see what the copyright was.
And you are right, the principles are the same – but in this case I think far more frightening. Most herbicides/pesticides, while they do persist in the environment, do stay pretty locallized, that is they don’t have a tendency when sprayed to drift across an entire continent – or cross the ocean on their own.
In the case of the frankenfoods – we still don’t know the mechanisms by which a lot of (supposedly) unintended contamination has occurred. You may remember Starlink corn. For those of you who don’t, this was a GMO corn that was licensed to be planted on less than 9,000 acres, and only for one year. It was not permitted for the food supply, and was supposed to be only test plantings to determine yields, among other things.
Lo and behold, at the end of the harvest, Starlink was not only in the food supply in this country, but testing found it in Japan, several other countries in southeast Asia, and 3 countries in Central America. And yes, it was in food in those countries as well. The Starlink corn grown by the licensed farmers was pretty well-controlled (they thought), no one could find any records that any of it had been exported, even accidentally, but there you are.
Food and water are the ultimate WMD’s. Amazing that people don’t get that.
it really is a problem that has to be addressed on many fronts – legislatively, judicially, and financially.
yeap, silent spring but multiplied thousandfold.
I like the way you think.
Didn’t the US try to pawn off the Starlink corn to Japan and the ships were turned away?
Criminal.
lokywoky, here I differ. Monsanto’s suits against indivdual farmers pose ruinous risks for the farmers, so of course the farmers settle. But co-ops and aggreagators of GMO commodity crops – entities that don’t grow anything – are one of many clasees of plaintiffs who can go after Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, and the other Frankencrops for lost markets from genetic polluton: each and every season in which exports are lost due to contamination.
ONthe broader level, this is analogous to state AG’s (rather than individaul smokers) smashing big tobacco for the collective costs of tobacco use.
and like with tobacco, it has to start with increased consumer awareness and education – which is where kirk’s post comes in.
thank you.
That is why the farmer must “organize”, so that they are bigger than the monopolizers…
I curse Reagan’s union busting crappola influence.
Doctor Murphy – Loved, and DUGG your post!
You know what? If the producers of goods and the transporters of goods were to unite…
Heh, heh, heh…problem solved.
thers is upstairs
Why people stopped organic farming is a lot of the same reason we are all driving cars.
Organic farming works well, but is more labor intensive and requires planning. In the past, when farms were small and most farmers kept (and used) livestock, fertilizer was manure. But as family farms began to be replaced by large agri-business, animals disappeared from farms and were replaced by machines. Without constant applications of compost (putting back what the plants take out), aha – chemical fertilizers – and then because chemical fertilizers are not complete, the plants are weak and cannot defend themselves from insects or compete with weeds so we need more chemicals to fend off the bugs and plants we don’t want.
Companies like Monsanto (who started out as large chemical companies) found a ready market for all this stuff and they grew by leaps and bounds. By adding seed production to the mix, they now controlled the entire “farming” operation from planting to harvest. It was just a matter of time before they got into the frankenfoods business.
But a few things happened on the way. Scientists have now discovered that yes, organic foods ARE better for you – they have higher levels of nutrients, both vitamins and minerals. AND the herbicides and pesticides are (no surprise) bad for you. So organic farming is coming back into vogue.
It’s difficult but not impossible to turn a commercial farm back into an organic one. The USDA standard says you have to farm for 4 years without chemicals in order to get certification. In California it’s 7 years. And during those seven years you have to really work hard to get the soil back into condition to grow healthy plants. All the chemicals damage the soil micro-organisms, and if the nitrogen content is too high, the soil can actually resemble concrete. So, during that 4-7 year period, you are “farming” organically, but are not allowed to label your stuff that way, and it requires quite a bit of input (compost) to get the soil healthy again.
And in the beginning, it does cost more to farm that way. While you are working on getting the soil healthy, you have to pull weeds, in some crops by hand (rather than spray them with round-up), and you have to figure out what to plant to help you fight the insects (like marigolds in lettuce) and during those first few conversion years – your yields will not be very high.
So it does take a real commitment in terms of effort and dollars to get back to organic. But once you are there – the benefits are great! Unfortunately, you also have to be wary of what your neighbors are doing. You can be doing everything right – and then your neighbor decides to have a crop-duster fly over. Oops!
Or plants some of the frankenfoods in the field next to yours. Back to square one.
So true…well said!!
I have a strange sense of optimism….I have no idea why…
Actually, Monsanto apparently deliberately contaminated the entire corn crop of the country of Paraguay, causing its government to have to retro-actively certify the entire country’s corn crop as GMO in order to be able to sell it. (See the movie link above). The Minister of Agriculture leveled this charge directly. Now, the indigenous people are being oversprayed with Round-Up which kills their animals and of course all their non-round-up-ready corn.
I think Starlink was banned after that one year of planting – but it was already all over the place so it’s probably still showing up in food around the world.
well said lokywoky… your name makes me laugh but i understand perfectly what you and dr kirk have said….. the sooner we get back to organics the planet will be a whole lot better off!! thanks
Folks, it’s 8PM and Thers’s post is here. I’m going to check in with dinner.
Thanks to all – new and familiar – who joined us in the discussion tonight – and thanks to all of you for making it productive. Thanks also to those who joined us to read (sitemeter tells us you’re there.)
I look forward to checking back later on to read the discussion here.
Working together, we’ll win.
And don’t forget: Food and Health and Hope
“We’ve got the soya, we’ve got the lawyers,
the politicians in our pockets all the way to the President!
The press and TV, to guarantee the
co-operation of your nation in our new experiment!”
g’nite kirk. enjoy dinner and hope to see ya for dessert
Kirk, or anybody who reads in this area. I’m looking for a good book dealing with the evolution of ownership of farmland from individuals into the current behemoths. Any suggestions?
I don’t know of one – but it would certainly be interesting to link the mass exodus of farmers from the prairies during the huge foreclosures of the Dust Bowl era, to mechanization and following that to the “chemical” era, and the rise of the mega-farm. Wow!
I’d be interested in reading it too!
Try Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the global Food Supply, Southend Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2000.
Dr Shiva is a micobiologist and physicist who has campaigned since the mid 1990s against GMO crops, labelling such genetic engineering as the technology of absolute control. She has established community seed banks across six states in India.
Though the book was published a while ago, its contents remain as relevant today as they were back then. She presents a series of personalised case studies, meticulously researched and narrated with intimate poignancy. The cases presented in the book are all from India but they have relevance to what is happening in the USA and has happened in Latin America.
Leave you with a chilling memo penned by Lawrence Summers, Chief Economist with the World Bank, in 1991:
Get your head around the central concept of this line of thinking : LDCs are under-polluted, peoples in LDCs have lower life expectancies so its ok to export polluting industries there bc these peoples are unlikely to live long enough to succumb to illnesses which are the byproduct of such pollutants.
I call Godwin on this silly man.
I may even agree with many of his points. But Murphy’s rhetoric is, as usual, juvenile, pandering and appalling. How can FDL keep this guy around while canning T-Rex for being too inflammatory?
http://firedoglake.com/2007/11…..tion-bell/
Dump this clown, Christy and Jane, and bring back TRex! Murphy is really not doing your reputation for mature, reality-based coverage of politics any good.
SunnyNobility, thanks for your great question – and Sona, thanks for your helpful answer. I look forward to reading Dr. Shiva’s book.
Thanks to both of you and all who came here to help in this work.
Food and Health and Hope.
Hi juslin -
Just saw this and thought of your question. Hope this helps!
Biodiverse systems are more productive
and this:
New Study Shows Organic Farming Can Feed The World
Bon Appetit!