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Lobbying And GMO Giant Monsanto Buckles In Europe
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
The “March Against Monsanto” in 52 countries, an unapproved strain of its genetically modified wheat growing profusely in Oregon, cancelled wheat export orders.... A rough week for Monsanto.
But now it threw in the towel in Europe – where its genetically modified seeds have faced stiff resistance at every twist and turn. Even its deep corporate pockets and mastery of lobbying have failed: “It’s counterproductive to fight against windmills,” its spokesman told the Tageszeitung.
The propitious week started last Saturday with the “March Against Monsanto,” when people in over 400 cities in 52 countries protested against the company, its influence over governments, and its GMO seeds. Much of it was focused on the mundane issue of labeling. Protesters wanted GMO ingredients in food to show up on the label, just like fat or protein. A simple solution to the controversy: let consumers decide.
But a red line for the industry. It’s worried that consumers will read the label – and choose an alternative. So Monsanto continued to assure us through its minions that labeling would be too costly, that it would kill the cupcake shop down the street, that we don’t need to know anyway because GMO foods are safe for human consumption, etc. etc.
These assurances bring up echoes from the past. Monsanto’s previous flagship products included the once harmless DDT, now banned worldwide; a family of industrial chemicals called PCBs that are now considered highly toxic; Agent Orange, the defoliant liberally used during the Vietnam War and promoted as harmless to people, with grave results for the Vietnamese and US soldiers who came in contact with it. And there was saccharine, the sweetener that ended up being a carcinogen. More recently, Monsanto reinvented itself and decided to save mankind not with a DDT successor, but with genetically modified seeds, whether people wanted them or not.
The hubbub of the “March Against Monsanto” had barely died down when the USDA confirmed that genetically modified wheat was mysteriously growing on a farm in Oregon. Something that we’d been assured could never happen. Numerous impenetrable precautions would prevent that. Monsanto had developed that strain years ago, but field trials ended in 2004, and the thing had never been approved for sale or consumption. The reaction was immediate.
Japan would “refrain from buying western white and feed wheat effective today,” a Japanese farm ministry official announced on Thursday, adding that the ministry is pressing the USDA for details of its investigation. US wheat imports would be on hold until at least a test kit is available to identify GMO wheat, he said. South Korea, which bought about half of its wheat imports from the US last year, announced that it would suspend imports of US wheat. The EU’s consumer protection office announced that any shipments that tested positive for GMO could not be sold in the EU. Other countries were making similar announcements. And everyone is badgering Washington for more information.
GMO contaminations have occurred before, most notoriously in 2006, when much of the US long-grain rice crop had been contaminated by an experimental strain of genetically modified rice concocted by Bayer CropScience. Japan and Europe banned imports of American rice, which caused its price to collapse in the US. The company settled with rice farmers in 2011 for $750 million. But rice export is small business in the US, compared to wheat. And this time, it’s Monsanto that is on the hot seat.
And now Monsanto threw in the towel in Europe where its efforts to bamboozle people into loving its seeds have had mixed results. “We won’t lobby any longer for cultivation in Europe,” Brandon Mitchener, Monsanto’s public affairs lead for Europe, told the Tageszeitung. They had no plans to apply for the approval of new genetically modified crops “at this time,” he said, and the company would also forgo new field trials with GMO seeds.
Monsanto’s largest European competitors – Bayer CropScience, BASF, and Syngenta – had already pulled out of the GMO crop business in Germany and many other Member States. “We understand that this doesn’t have wide acceptance right now,” chimed in Ursula Lüttmer-Ouazane, Monsanto’s spokeswoman in Germany.
Mitchener blamed it on the lack of interest from farmers. They have their reasons: in Germany, the cultivation of genetically modified crops is banned; and GMO foods, broadly rejected by consumers, are practically unsalable. Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner, who’d thrown her weight around in 2009 to stop the cultivation of MON810 corn in Germany, explained it this way: “For agriculture in Europe, the promises of salvation made by the gene-technology industry have so far not been fulfilled.”
Monsanto’s surrender was only partial, however. In Spain, Portugal, and Romania, where laws and consumers were less squeamish about GMO crops, Monsanto would continue to hawk is MON810, Mitchener said. Nor was Monsanto finished lobbying in the EU: it would still try to get the EU to allow the import of GMO animal feed. But in terms of cultivation in Europe, Monsanto would focus on conventional seeds for corn, canola, and veggies.
Triumphs against multinational lobbying giants are rare. So, even mini triumphs count. And Monsanto’s admission that it would quit trying to force GMO crops down people’s throats in Europe, limited as this admission may be, is now celebrated as one of them.
Meanwhile, hunger is spreading from its strongholds in the global south to depression-hit Southern Europe. In Greece, reports are growing of children having to scrounge for food from classmates, while in Spain city dwellers have become inured to the spectacle of people rummaging in trash cans for a bite to eat. But there’s a reason. Read.... Starving the World for Power and Profit: The Global Agribusiness Model.
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Westinghouse used pcb's in their transformers but..... Monosanto made the PCB's.....
". In the United States, commercial production of PCBs was taken over in 1929 by Monsanto Company from Swann Chemical Company. Manufacturing levels increased in response to the electrical industry's need for a safer (than flammable mineral oil) cooling and insulating fluid for industrial transformers and capacitors. PCBs were also commonly used as stabilizing additives in the manufacture of flexible PVC coatings for electrical wiring and electronic components to enhance the heat and fire resistance of the PVC.[18]"
“It’s counterproductive to fight against windmills,”
That statement is self righteous and cynical at the same time. Considering the context it was made in, it is as arrogantly smug as anything I have ever read.
Agree but I'll propose a challenger in the arrogance scale; IRS Chief Lois Lerner staring down Congress in self-righteous indignation that she did nothing wrong, then closing the investigation by asserting her fifth amendment right not to answer any questions. Or, how about Hillary shouting about what could it possibly matter that Ambassador Stevens and three others perished while their government ignored their pleas for help. Nothing is more arrogant than our federal government.
" "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.""
They're smart and conniving enough to have worded it that way on purpose. Make no mistake.
may i take note that all monsanto threads are the best/most unified i have read 'round these parts in more than a year. the new solidarity-food. please replicate and let a 1000 blog tylers bloom!
I hate that company. When WWIII starts I hope someone takes them out.
World War III has already begun and
Few shots will be fired.
Fear and Financial shell games
Are all that's required.
I would weep with gratitude and relief if our military did that for us
When ww3 starts thats who the people should fight, the international corporations and the international banks that feed war?
Disrupt the engineers of war and the war will end quicker?
But they program us to hate and fight the poor brainwashed fucks like us.
Monsanto's track record speaks for itself. Chemical weapons used against humanity.
I f this company was Assad in Syria, O'Blammer would have nuked the living rat fuck out of them already.
Well there is a difference between Syria and Monsanto, one of the is actually using chemical weapons against their own people, Monsanto.
Here's a list of GMO foods sold in the U.S.
http://shiftfrequency.com/comprehensive-list-of-gmo-products/
Would it not have been easier to list the ones not GM'd? That would be more useful.
I don't think the list is complete. The man in the produce section says the papayas are GMOs from Mexico.
Civilized countries would go in and hang the CEO of the Monsanto Eugenicists. This is not justice.
Civilized countries would start by hanging their Emperor-wannabe Gubbamint puppets.
This fight's far from over. The Monsanto & Co. Malthusian GMO-fuckers are only acting as if they retreat from Europe's public domain, while behind the scenes there already exists a draft law proposal on seed regulation, eerily similar in scope to USSA's law on registering plant seeds...
Mr. Richter, how about shedding some light on this?
If they won't label it. There must be real problems with it and they just want to sneak it into the system knowing that most people have the memory needed to get through a commercial break.
Here's the issue with labeling: it would be easier to label products that do NOT have any GMO. For example, high fructose syrup which finds its way into all sorts of products, besides sodas, if derived from corn would be labeled GMO.
But, it is probably a moot point to be even discussing labeling as within a few years GMO is going to get into most ag products. Besides the wheat recently reported in Oregon, I understand that there are 42 weed varieties which now show GM traits. And their pollen will cross withothers, etc.
Labeling the raw wheat itself probably isn't the issue; having it trickle down the chain and show up on tens of thousands of products, everything from the bread you expect to the filler in your vitamins that you don't, is likely the real worry.