Monsanto Bans Employees From Eating GMOs

February 13, 2012

Greenpeace

By Caroline Jacobsson

There’s a story doing the rounds again, about how Monsanto, one of the world’s largest profiteers of genetically engineered (GE) food, banned GE food from its own corporate canteens!

Monsanto had its pants pulled down by Friends of the Earth in 1999, who revealed that the company was refusing to serve to its own staff the very same GE food that it incessantly foists upon impoverished nations on the premise that it will save populations from starvation. Although it has never been proved, Monsanto constantly claims that GE food is harmless – so why wasn’t it serving it in its own office?

In one canteen, run by external provider, Sutcliffe Catering, a notice read that a decision has been taken to remove, as far as practicable, GE soya and maize from all food products served in the canteen. “We have taken the above steps to ensure that you, the customer, can feel confident in the food we serve”, the provider said.

“We believe in choice”, said Monsanto, while the company actually made sure that by not serving GE food in its canteens they did not give staff the opportunity to ‘choose’ whether or not to eat GE food as they de facto ensure that the staff did not get to eat GE food. Yet the same choice isn’t available to farmers around the world, who most of the time have no choice but to plant GE crops, thanks to a seed market that is often dominated by Monsanto.

Once the GE seeds are in the ground, a vicious circle is started; farmers no longer have the opportunity to choose, as once GE seeds have been released into the environment it is not possible to contain or control them, as an individual seed travels with wind or is swept away by rainwater and may set root in soil owned by a farmer who does not at all want to plant GE seeds. In a recent protest in a Manhattan courtroom US farmers said it is no longer possible for them to keep GE seeds off their fields due to contamination.

If Monsanto decided for its staff that it cannot eat GE food, and actually removes the staff’s own right to choose, how come the rest of us cannot have the same opportunity? Over 90% of all processed food in the US – such as breakfast cereal and the chicken nuggets often served to kids -are now contaminated by GE, even if the farmers who produced the food actually did not intentionally grow any GE crops.

In one Monsanto office location, staff was reportedly happy to eat GE food, as they preferred food sprayed with fewer pesticides. However, the widespread and increasingly intensive use of pesticides in association with the use of GE crops poses suspected further risks to the environment and human health, such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and birth defects. Monsanto’s sales pitch to farmers continues to promise reduced labour and financial savings by simplifying and reducing the costs of weed control. The reality turns out to be somewhat different, with GE crops attracting increasing health, biodiversity and environmental concerns, and the development of weed resistance.

Click here for the full report from Greenpeace.

Why Was Gibson Guitars Raided By Authorities?

September 1st, 2011

The Wall Street Journal

By: James R. Hagerty and Kris Maher

Gibson Guitar Corp., a big user of ebony and other scarce woods, for years has allied itself with Greenpeace and other environmental groups to show it was serious about preserving forests.

That didn’t stop the Nashville-based company, whose guitars are used by such musicians as B.B. King and Angus Young of AC/DC, from running afoul of U.S. authorities over allegedly illegal imports of wood. Though no charges have been filed, Gibson factories have been raided twice, most recently last week, by federal agents who say ebony exported from India to Gibson was “fraudulently” labeled to conceal a contravention of Indian export law.

Henry Juszkiewicz, chief executive officer of the closely held company, said in an interview that a broker probably made a mistake in labeling the goods but that the sale was legal and approved by Indian authorities.

Gibson’s predicament, which raises concerns for musical instrument makers and other importers of wood, illustrates the pitfalls of complying with U.S. law while dealing with middlemen in faraway countries whose legal systems can be murky.

The law ensnaring Gibson is the Lacey Act of 1900, originally passed to regulate trade in bird feathers used for hats and amended in 2008 to cover wood and other plant products. It requires companies to make detailed disclosures about wood imports and bars the purchase of goods exported in violation of a foreign country’s laws.

Leonard Krause, a consultant in Eugene, Ore., who advises companies on complying with the Lacey Act, is telling clients they should hire lawyers in countries where they obtain products. “How many people know the statutes in India?” Mr. Krause said. “The net effect is that it raises everybody’s cost of doing business.”

Federal agents first raided Gibson factories in November 2009 and were back again Aug. 24, seizing guitars, wood and electronic records. Gene Nix, a wood product engineer at Gibson, was questioned by agents after the first raid and told he could face five years in jail.

“Can you imagine a federal agent saying, ‘You’re going to jail for five years’ and what you do is sort wood in the factory?” said Mr. Juszkiewicz, recounting the incident. “I think that’s way over the top.” Gibson employees, he said, are being “treated like drug criminals.”

Mr. Nix hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

A Justice Department spokesman declined comment. While Justice Department officials pursue what they say is a possible criminal case against Gibson, they and the company are battling in federal district court in Nashville over whether materials seized in the 2009 raid should be returned to Gibson. That civil fight provides indications of the case the government is trying to make against Gibson.

Mr. Nix went to Madagascar in June 2008 on a trip organized by environmental groups to talk to local officials about selling responsibly harvested wood to makers of musical instruments. Afterward, in emails later seized by the government, he referred to “widespread corruption and theft of valuable woods” and the possibility of buying ebony and rosewood from Madagascar on “the grey market.”

In a June 4 court filing, Jerry Martin, U.S. Attorney for central Tennessee, quoted the emails, and said “Nix knew that the grey market meant purchasing contraband.”

Gibson has denied the allegation and said Mr. Nix’s emails were quoted out of context.

The government has focused on a March 2009 shipment of ebony from Madagascar intended for guitar fingerboards. Madagascar law bars the export of certain unfinished wood products, according to both Gibson and the government. Gibson says the ebony had been cut into pieces and that local officials approved the export as a legal sale of finished goods.

U.S. officials described the wood as “sawn timber” and said Madagascar officials were “defrauded” by a local exporter about the nature of the product.

Gibson says the government is trying to “second guess” the Madagascar government. “The U.S. government’s startling position smacks of something from an Orwell novel,” Gibson said in a July 15 court filing in federal district court in Nashville.

After the 2009 raid, Gibson stopped buying wood from Madagascar. Gibson continued to use suppliers in India for ebony and rosewood.

As for last week’s raid, the government said it had evidence that Indian ebony was “fraudulently” labeled in an attempt to evade an Indian ban on exports of unfinished wood.

“It is very possible that a broker made the mistake in filling out a form,” Mr. Juszkiewicz said. Gibson says the ebony was partially finished for use as fingerboards and that Indian officials have endorsed such exports as legal. A spokesman for India’s commerce ministry had no immediate comment.

After the 2009 raid, Mr. Juszkiewicz resigned from the board of the Rainforest Alliance, which seeks to preserve tropical forests. He said he didn’t want to tar the nonprofit with bad publicity. A Rainforest Alliance spokeswoman said he wasn’t pressured to step down, and the group continues to praise Gibson’s efforts to promote responsible harvesting of wood.

Scott Paul, a Greenpeace official in New York responsible for forestry issues, said Gibson for years has done “great work” to promote better forestry practices. The question, he said, is whether Gibson did everything possible to avoid buying wood from dubious sources. “We have no idea,” he said.

Click here for the full report from The Wall Street Journal

Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn

December 16th, 2010

Natural News

By: David Gutierrez

The German government has banned the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) corn, calling it “a danger to the environment.”

The cultivation of all other GM crops is already banned in Germany. The variety in question, known as MON 810, produces a pesticide inside its tissues to repel insects such as larvae of the corn borer moth. Such corn is also known as Bt corn, after the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium that the toxin-producing genes come from.

MON 810 was approved for cultivation by the European Union in 1998, but E.U. law allows individual countries to impose their own bans. Such bans have since been implemented by Austria, France, Greece, Hungary and Luxemburg. According to German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner, Germany will now join their ranks.

The move was welcomed by environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany. Greenpeace spokesperson Stephanie Towe said that the decision is based on solid scientific evidence of environmental harm and should have been made long ago.

Critics say that GM crops can damage wildlife, spread their genetic material to wild relatives, and produce health problems in humans.

“As an example, it is now being discovered that pollen from genetically modified corn can kill monarch butterflies,” writes Ron Garner in his book Conscious Health.

“There is long-term concern that pollen from bio-engineered crops will spread and kill beneficial insects as well as create strains of superweeds that are totally-resistant to pesticides,” he writes. “Genetic engineering is changing the composition of foods, and most North American consumers are uninformed on the issue.”

Biotechnology giant Monsanto, manufacturer of MON 810, condemned the new ban and said it is investigating the possibility of a lawsuit. Analysts warned that the environment ministry may have trouble proving to a court’s satisfaction that the crop is harmful, potentially subjecting the government to millions of dollars in fines.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

The Fight Against GMO

September 29, 2010

Natural News

By: Jonathan Benson

The fight against genetic modification (GM) seems like a never-ending, uphill battle. But Lord Melchett, former director of Greenpeace and current policy director at the Soil Association, says that, despite what the biotechnology giants would have you believe, most nations of the world are rejecting GMs and thus preventing their takeover of the planet.

“[M]any people in Europe may be unaware of the extent of the resistance to GM in places like India and China, because they swallow the GM industry line that it is supported all across the world,” he was cited as saying in The Independent. “I have to say that where we are now with GM leaves me feeling very optimistic.”

A quick visit to the website of GM-giant Monsanto, for instance, indicates that what Melchett says is true. Fancy, deceptive marketing and design tactics would have you believe that the world is lovingly embracing the alleged wonders of GM crops, but this is hardly the case. In fact, the only reason GMs even have any foothold at all is because, in some countries, they have been deceitfully approved beneath the radar of the general public.

But as the general public has begun to learn more about GMs — and the fact that they are dishonestly hidden and unlabeled in the U.S. food supply — things are beginning to change. In recent years, several new GM crops have been defeated due to public opposition.

“America is where we’re told GM is a huge success…but it’s simply not true,” said Melchett at the recent Sustainable Planet forum in Lyon, France. “If anybody tells you this, ask them, where is GM wheat? Monsanto had it ready to go but it was stopped by American farmers. Ask them, where is the GM version of alfalfa, the fourth most commonly grown crop in the world? American farmers went to court to stop it being commercialized.”

Continued efforts are needed to stop GM crops from gaining any further ground, and with enough dedication, the outspoken public may even help reverse the tide.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

Bayer Even Admits GMO Contamination Is Out Of Control

April 15, 2010

Natural News

By: David Gutierrez

Drug and chemical giant Bayer AG has admitted that there is no way to stop the uncontrolled spread of its genetically modified crops.

“Even the best practices can’t guarantee perfection,” said Mark Ferguson, the company’s defense lawyer in a recent trial.

Two Missouri farmers sued Bayer for contaminating their crop with modified genes from an experimental strain of rice engineered to be resistant to the company’s Liberty-brand herbicide. The contamination occurred in 2006, during an open field test of the new rice, which was not approved for human consumption. According to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Don Downing, genetic material from the unapproved rice contaminated more than 30 percent of all rice cropland in the United States.

“Bayer was supposed to be careful,” Downing said. “Bayer was not careful and that rice did escape into our commercial rice supplies.”

The plaintiffs alleged that in addition to contaminating their fields, Bayer further harmed them financially by undermining their export market. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the widespread rice contamination, important export markets were closed to U.S. producers. A report from Greenpeace International estimates the financial damage of the contamination at between $741 million and $1.3 billion.

Bayer claimed that there was no possible way it could have prevented the contamination, insisting that it followed not only the law but also the best industry practices. The jury disagreed, finding Bayer guilty of carelessness in handling the genetically modified crops. The company was ordered to pay farmers Kenneth Bell and Johnny Hunter $2 million.

“This is a huge victory, not only for Kenny and me, but for every farmer in America who was harmed by Bayer’s LibertyLink rice contamination,” Hunter said.

According to Hunter, the company got “the wake-up call they deserved.”

Bayer is still being sued by more than 1,000 other farmers from Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Click here for the full report.

Facebook Not Using Best Practices, but Promotes That They Do

March 2, 2010

CommonDreams.org

By Sandy Leon Vest

“Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of… In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”
-Edward Bernays-

 Anyone whose mission it is to ‘control the masses’ knows it all begins with good marketing.

Public relations aficionado Edward Bernays understood that.

One of the country’s original PR flacks, Bernays is perhaps best known for forging the decades-long marketing alliance between the AMA and the tobacco industry. The ‘Father of Spin,’ as he is known, also played a major role in the marketing and selling of the First World War to the American public with his now infamous slogan, “Making the World Safe for Democracy.” Having mastered the art of seduction, Bernays understood that luring the public into purchasing products they didn’t need was a simple matter of connecting those products to their unconscious desires and (perceived) unmet needs. He called this scientific technique of opinion molding the “engineering of consent.”

Corporations have come a long way since Bernays first began coaching them in the stealthy art of consumer seduction. And we have been forever changed by their success. From credit cards to satellite television to fossil fuels, American consumers, having succumbed to corporate seduction, are today paying a very high price for their acquiescence.

Coal-fired Facebook Fires Up Activists – sort of

The series of events following Facebook’s recent announcement that their ‘energy efficient’ data center in Prineville Oregon would be powered by the dirtiest fossil fuel on earth (coal) is illustrative of the problem.

When Facebook announced the opening of its new data center, its PR people made a point of emphasizing that the facility would be “among the greenest in the industry.” So, it was little wonder that clean energy activists were up in arms when it was revealed that the social networking site had contracted with mega-utility PacifiCorp for its power – since PacifiCorp’s primary power-generation fuel is coal.

What followed was a flurry of Facebook activity, mostly in the form of negative comments on the site itself, but also including at least two petitions – one initiated by Change.org and another by Greenpeace – demanding that FB’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg either clean up or abandon the company’s contract with PacifiCorp. At least so far, the contract is unaltered, although it remains to be seen whether Facebook will succumb to the pressure being applied by its more energy-conscious users.

The proverbial ‘rub,’ of course, lies in just how much pressure FB users will be willing to apply. It may be that the Internet, as Chris Hedges recently asserted, “has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline.” Yet, the inevitability of such a prediction is far from certain. How social networking tools like Facebook ultimately impact our collective future and whether or not they actually live up to their promise to “promote democracy and unleash innovation and creativity” may well be up to those who use them.

Having become the most popular social networking site in the world (and the one most utilized by activists of all stripes), Facebook is clearly holding most of the cards. And this is where Bernays’ theory of ‘perceived need’ kicks in big time. After all, FB users need to communicate with one another. We have products to sell, thoughts to express, ideas to flesh out and events to publicize. And, let’s face it, social networking is the most effective and efficient means toward those ends. Given this (perceived) need, the threat of a boycott – likely the only truly effective tool activists have to make their point – seems all but out of the question. The irony of consumers feeling empowered by the same technology that captivates them is difficult to miss. 

One liberal-leaning blogger expressed the dilemma succinctly: “Do I want more ads and more privacy issues to deal with so Facebook can afford to buy more expensive but cleaner power? Definitely not. Would I use a greener Facebook competitor if it existed? Yes, but not if I had to sacrifice functionality.”

To continue reading this report, click here.

Climate Skeptics Give Greenpeace a Dose of Their Own Medicine in Copenhagen

December 18, 2009

Info Wars

By Patrick Henningsen

On Wednesday, Global warming skeptics from CFACT pulled off an international climate caper by using GPS triangulation from Greenpeace’s own on-board camera photos to locate and sail up long-side its famous vessel, Rainbow Warrior. Then in Greenpeace-like fashion, the ‘climate realists’ dropped a banner reading “Propaganda Warrior” in order to highlights how the radical green group’s policies and agenda are based on a series of scientific myths, lies and exaggerations about global warming and climate change.

Earlier that day, CFACT’s “skeptivists” also boarded Greenpeace’s other seafaring vessel, the Arctic Sunrise, gaining passage on deck by distracting Greenpeace crew with boxes of doughnuts whilst they unfurled yet another banner hand-painted with the slogan “Ship of Lies” off of the ship’s starboard side.

Using its well-known radical approach to activism, campaigning group Greenpeace has become one of the key components behind the proliferation of man-made global warming theory, as well as its subsequent rebranding into what is now commonly known as “climate change”. Greenpeace leader Gerd Leipold was recently forced to confess during an interview with the BBC that his organization issued misleading and exaggerated information claiming that Arctic ice would disappear completely by 2030. Greenpeace’s own members commonly cite the group’s reports on climate change as ‘trusted’ science, when in reality their claims are politically motivated, promoting selective science. The organisation’s co-founder,  Patrick Moore, who has long since been chased out by radical left elements in the group, foresaw this as a genuine flaw in Greenpeace’s hierarchy. Moore stated in 2008 that “I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.”

After nearly a decade of campaigning for vague concepts as ‘climate action’ and ‘climate justice’ with virtually no direct public opposition, Greenpeace members will certainly be shocked and horrified to see a genuine physical challenge their assumed moral hegemony over all things environmental.

CFACT executive director Craig Rucker masterminded the operation and explains, “Greenpeace has been using these kinds of tactics for decades, and now they can find out what it’s like to have a little taste of their own medicine“.

After nearly a week of fundamentally meaningless street protests by climate action groups and their hundreds of arrests, how refreshing to see climate realists take action- certainly they are an environmental movement with a brain. It might seem like a modest skirmish on the high seas, but with any luck, The Battle of Copenhagen will be remembered as a rallying cry for lovers of real science and common sense everywhere.

Click here for full report

Bayer Admits GMO Contamination is Out of Control

December 18, 2009

Organic Consumers

 Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices [to stop contamination]‘(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

$2 million US dollar verdict against Bayer confirms company’s liability for an uncontrollable technology

Greenpeace welcomes the United States federal jury ruling on 4 December 2009 that Bayer CropScience LP must pay $2 million US dollars to two Missouri farmers after their rice crop was contaminated with an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing in 2006.

This verdict confirms that the responsibility for the consequences of GE (genetic engineering) contamination rests with the company that releases GE crops.

Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices [to stop contamination]‘(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

A report prepared for Greenpeace International concluded that the total costs incurred throughout the world as a result of the contamination are estimated to range from $741 million to $1.285 billion US dollars.(2) The verdict indicates that Bayer is liable for what could turn out to be a large proportion of these costs, as it awards damages in the first two of more than 1,000 currently pending lawsuits. The decision must be used to support all claims for losses incurred by other US farmers whose crops have suffered from GE contamination.

Click here for  full report