" Rady Ananda" - Monsanto GM Corn in Peril: Beetle develops Bt-resistance

Rady Ananda
People's Voice, August 24 2011
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2011/08/24/monsanto-gm-corn-in-peril-beetle-develop

Nature herself may be the best opponent of genetically modified crops and pesticides. Not only plants, but insects are also developing resistance.  The Western rootworm beetle – one of the most serious threats to corn – has developed resistance to Monsanto's Bt-corn, and entire crops are being lost.

Farmers from several Midwest states began reporting root damage to corn that was specifically engineered with a toxin to kill the rootworm.  Iowa State University entomologist Aaron Gassmann recently confirmed that the beetle, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera, has developed resistance to the Bt protein, Cry3Bb1.

Bacillus thuringiensis - Bt - is a bacterium that kills insects.  Different proteins are engineered into cotton as well as corn plants.

Click to read more ...

"Kevin Gosztola" - US Sought "Talking Points" to Combat Impact of French Documentary on Monsanto

Kevin Gosztola
The Dissenter, August 25 2011        
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/08/25/us-sought-talking-points-to-combat-impact-of-french-documentary-on-monsanto

There are multiple indications in the large cache of US State Embassy cables WikiLeaks has been releasing that the US State Department is willing to do just about anything to ensure the multinational agricultural biotech corporation, Monsanto, has its interests protected in countries around the world.

Cables show the State Department has been very active in defending Monsanto in France during the past decade. In one particular case, a French documentary, "The World According to Monsanto," was released. A diplomat with the US embassy in Madrid immediately felt the need for "talking points" so it knew what to say in response to the content in the film.

The diplomatic cable summary sent on February 4, 2008 reads:

Click to read more ...

"Oliver Lee" - Monsanto's 5 Most Dubious Contributions to the Planet

By Oliver Lee, Take Part
Posted on August 12, 2011, Printed on August 17, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152006/monsanto%27s_5_most_dubious_contributions_to_the_planet

Oh, Monsanto, you sly dog.

You keep trying to make us believe you are "committed to sustainable agriculture" with your canny advertisments on American Public Media, even as you force-feed farmers your lab-grown Frankenseeds that expire every year (which are, let's be honest, opposite of sustainable).

But we shouldn't be surprised by the mixed message, should we? After all, you've been doing this for decades. With long-running corporate sponsorships, like Disney's Tomorrowland, building reserves of goodwill as you spray us with DDT, it's clear you're entitled to send out products into the world with nary an environmental or health concern—just as long as you spend a bit of that hard-earned cash convincing us otherwise.

On that note, let's take a quick look at some of the biotech giant's most dubious contributions to society over their past century in business.

Click to read more ...

"Ethan A. Huff" - Monsanto preys on popularity of omega-3s by developing GMO soybean that produces fake fish oil

by Ethan A. Huff, NaturalNews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/033305_GMO_soybeans_fish_oil.html

(NaturalNews) Leave it to Monsanto to take a good thing and corrupt it for financial gain. According to a recent report in Forbes, the multinational biotechnology-slash-agriculture-manipulating monolith has developed a new genetically-modified (GM) soybean that artificially produces stearidonic acid, a type of omega-3 fatty acid -- and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve the "frankenbean" sometime this year.

Monsanto appears to be introducing the omega-3 enhanced GM soybean oil, called Soymega or "stearidonic acid soybean oil" (SDA oil), at a craftily strategic time when much of the world is still reeling from the Fukushima Daiichi mega-disaster, which left ocean waters ridden with radioactive isotopes. And since omega-3s just happen to be most readily found in fatty ocean fish, the perpetual fear over radioactive and other poisons that may be lurking in such fish could drive many to embrace Monsanto's fake fish oil instead.

According to an FDA letter responding to Monsanto's request to have SDA oil approved for use as a food additive and acknowledged as being "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS), the FDA noted that Monsanto intends to use its omega-3-enhanced oil in a variety of food applications. These include baked goods, breakfast cereals, fish products, frozen dairy desserts, cheeses, grains and pastas, gravies, nuts, poultry, fruit juices, processed vegetable products, and soups -- yes, basically every processed food product in existence.

Click to read more ...

Council for Responsible Genetics: Monsanto enters into market for fresh sweet corn

Council for Responsible Genetics, 8 August 2011

http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/blog/post/Monsanto-enters-into-market-for-fresh-sweet-corn.aspx

Monsanto Co. is expanding its reach -– into the grocery store's produce aisle.

The company said it plans to launch this fall a genetically modified sweet corn seed for farmers to grow. The corn, once ripe, would be harvested and then be carried in grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Though biotech sweet corn is already sold in many grocery stores in California and across the country, the news marks the first time the St. Louis-based biotech giant has rolled out a product for a consumer-oriented food that has been genetically altered to let farmers spray their fields with Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

Like farmers who grow corn for animal feed or fuel, the farmers who raise sweet corn are interested in        using Monsanto’s glyphosate to battle weeds and insects, said Consuelo Madere, the company’s vice president of its global vegetable business.

Click to read more ...

"Ethan A. Huff" - Monsanto-spawned superweeds growing three inches daily, destroying farm equipment

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

http://www.naturalnews.com/033195_superweeds_farm_equipment.html

(NaturalNews) The proliferation of superweeds -- weeds that have mutated to develop resistance to popular herbicides like Monsanto's Roundup formula -- continues to rise. But the individual plants' overall size and strength is also increasing. According to a series of new studies published in the journal Weed Science, farmers are having more trouble than ever dealing with out-of-control superweeds in their fields, some of which grow up to three inches a day in size, and are so strong and thick that they are destroying farm equipment.

The studies reveal that there are currently at least 21 different weed species known to be resistant to Roundup, also known generically as glyphosate. These species include ragweed, pigweed, horseweed, waterhemp, and ryegrass. Since 2007, the total acreage of farmland known to be infested with superweeds has also jumped more than 450 percent, from 2.4 million acres to 11 million acres, which means that the problem is only going to get exponentially worse.

Click to read more ...

"Ethan A. Huff" - Consolidation of seed companies leading to corporate domination of world food supply

by Ethan A. Huff, naturalnews.com  July 27, 2011

http://www.naturalnews.com/033148_seed_companies_Monsanto.html

(NaturalNews) Throughout the history of agriculture across the globe, farming has always been a diversified sector of the economy. Small, self-sustaining, family farms were the order of the day in most cultures. Even as small farms grew larger and more specialized over time, many of them still saved seeds or purchased them from other farmers, which kept control of farming in the hands of the people.

But today everything has changed, as large chemical and agribusiness firms have acquired or merged with seed companies and other agricultural input companies. They have successfully gained a foothold on genetically-modified (GM) crops with transgenic traits.

These primary factors and several others have facilitated a crescendo towards the global domination of agriculture by corporations, and thus the world's food supply.

Click to read more ...

Lenore Daniels: The First Lady and The Monsanto-Washington Unification Process Vs. Our Human Rights

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-First-Lady-and-The-Mon-by-Lenore-Daniels-110723-957.html

July 24, 2011 By Lenore Daniels The First Lady and the Monsanto-Washington Unification Process Vs. Our Human Rights The effect is again a magical and hypnotic one--the projection of images which convey irresistible unity, harmony of contradictions. Thus the loved and fear Father, the spender of life, generates the H-bomb for the annihilation of life; "science-military' joins the efforts to reduce anxiety and suffering with the job of creating anxiety and suffering. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man Monsanto has great respect for all of us, little people, and for Mother Earth, the source of all its (Monsanto's) material wealth. But Monsanto would like to remind the world that however much those activists transgressors in Brazil condemn its connection to the use of dioxin in a current project to defoliate the rain forest or however much those Vietnam Vets agitators shout about the long-term harmful effects of Agent Orange, Monsanto is a new humanitarian enterprise, working with struggling farmers on behalf of the poor and starving children of the world. Monsanto, along with the cooperative government of the U.S. and other Western nations, envisions a future filled with healthy and happy humans.   Chuckle. Chuckle.

Click to read more ...

"Anne Mendenhall" - MONSANTO'S CRUEL PLANS

http://www.opednews.com/articles/MONSANTO-S-CRUEL-PLANS-by-Anne-Mendenhall-110717-947.html

July 17, 2011

By Anne Mendenhall

Monsanto began to take over our food supply in the 1990s.   First came soybeans with genes manipulated to withstand Monsanto's chief money maker, Roundup.   Shortly thereafter came Bt corn.   Bacillus thuriengensis is a natural organism which was being used by organic farmers for pest control.   Monsanto blasted it into corn seed and had its second patented crop.   GM canola and papaya followed soon after, and then along came Roundup Ready corn and rice.   Other biotech seed companies entered the game and applied for patents on vegetable crops and trees.   My understanding is that rice was manipulated to contain vaccines and to my knowledge has not been grown commercially.   

Recently, in spite of many protests and comments to the contrary, the US Department of Agriculture approved Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beets and alfalfa for unlimited planting.   GM Kentucky bluegrass is also just approved without restrictions.   

Click to read more ...

"Mike Ludwig" - Monsanto and Gates Foundation Push GE Crops on Africa

Tuesday 12 July 2011

by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

http://www.truth-out.org/second-green-revolutionaries-gates-foundation-and-monsanto-push-ge-crops-africa/1310411034

Skimming the Agricultural Development section of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation web site [5] is a feel-good experience: African farmers smile in a bright slide show of images amid descriptions of the foundation's fight against poverty and hunger. But biosafety activists in South Africa are calling a program funded by the Gates Foundation a "Trojan horse" to open the door for private agribusiness and genetically engineered (GE) seeds, including a drought-resistant corn that Monsanto hopes to have approved in the United States and abroad.

The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) program [6]  was launched in 2008 with a $47 million grant from mega-rich philanthropists Warrant Buffet [7] and Bill Gates. The program is supposed to help farmers in several African countries increase their yields with drought- and heat-tolerant corn varieties, but a report released last month by the African Centre for Biosafety [8] claims WEMA is threatening Africa's food sovereignty and opening new markets for agribusiness giants like Monsanto.

Click to read more ...