Fascist Alito Rules In Favor Of Monsanto’s GM Alfalfa

From Bloomberg, some bad news for small farmers fighting agribusiness giant, Monsanto. Libertarians shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that adoption of the precautionary principle is anti-libertarian. It’s not. How can any company give an assurance that it won’t do substantial, irreversible damage to other people’s property through pollination of other alfalfa strains? It cannot. Thus, any assurance that it can is patently fraudulent. Besides, Monsanto, like BP and Goldman Sachs, is a state-created, state-subsidized crony-capitalist outfit and not a product of the free market anyway. Continue reading

Monsanto Claims Patents On Bacon, Steak, and Fish

From GM Watch:

Meat claimed as invention by Monsanto
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 11:22

Meat claimed as invention by multinational company of Monsanto
No Patents on Seeds, Press release, 27 April 2010
http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=3&Itemid=28

*Stop patenting the food chain!

Multinational seed corporations are following a consequent strategy to gain control over basic resources for food production. As recent research shows not only genetically engineered plants, but more and more the conventional breeding of plants gets into the focus of patent monopolies: International patent applications in this sector are skyrocking, having doubled since 2007 till end of 2009. Continue reading

Monsanto’s Toxic Path in South America

Agribusiness titan Monsanto is the goliath every activist would like to slay:

Its patented Round Up brand of herbicide is ubiquitous in farmland world over, but new research suggests the product poses a danger to human health. [Note: an earlier version of this post dropped the word herbicide by accident so it read as though soy contained the chemical. I corrected it but the google cache still shows the old version in the header. Apologies. I often think I’ve corrected something and saved it and find that the save didn’t actually take place…]

From Marie Trigona at America’s Program

“A study released by an Argentine scientist earlier this year reports that glyphosate, patented by Monsanto under the name “Round Up,” causes birth defects when applied in doses much lower than what is commonly used in soy fields.

The study was directed by a leading embryologist, Dr. Andres Carrasco, a professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires. In his office in the nation’s top medical school, Dr. Carrasco shows me the results of the study, pulling out photos of birth defects in the embryos of frog amphibians exposed to glyphosate. The frog embryos grown in petri dishes in the photos looked like something from a futuristic horror film, creatures with visible defects—one eye the size of the head, spinal cord deformations, and kidneys that are not fully developed.

“We injected the amphibian embryo cells with glyphosate diluted to a concentration 1,500 times than what is used commercially and we allowed the amphibians to grow in strictly controlled conditions.” Dr. Carrasco reports that the embryos survived from a fertilized egg state until the tadpole stage, but developed obvious defects which would compromise their ability to live in their normal habitats.

Pointing to the color photos spread on his desk, Dr. Carrasco says, “On the side where the contaminated cell was injected you can see defects in the eye and defects in the cartilage.”

For the past 15 months, Dr. Carrasco’s research team documented embryos’ reactions to glyphosate. Embryological study is based on the premise that all vertebrate animals share a common design during the development stages. This accepted scientific premise means that the study indicates human embryonic cells exposed to glyphosate, even in low doses, would also suffer from defects.

“When a field is fumigated by an airplane, it’s difficult to measure how much glysophate remains in the body,” says Dr. Carrasco. “When you inject the embryonic cell with glysophate, you know exactly how much glysophate you are putting into the cell and you have a strict control.”

Glyphosate is the top selling herbicide in the world and is widely used on soy crops in Argentina.

Monoculture soy is grown on more than 42 million acres of fields across Argentina and sprayed with more than 44 million gallons of glyphosate annually. It is part of a technological package sold by Monsanto that includes Round Up Ready seeds GM to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate. This allows growers to fumigate directly onto the GM soy seed, killing nearby weeds without killing the crop. In the winter, crops are sprayed to kill off weeds and seeds are then planted without having to plow the soil, a process commonly referred to as “no-till farming.” Nearly, 95% of the 47 million tons of soy grown in Argentina in 2007 was genetically modified, adopting the Round Up ready technology marketed by Monsanto.

The study on the top-selling agrochemical has alarmed policymakers, so much so that Dr. Carrasco has received anonymous threats and industry leaders demanded access to his laboratory immediately following the study’s release. Industry leader Monsanto wouldn’t talk to the Americas Program for this story, but in a press release on its website, the company says that “glyphosate is safe.”

My Comment:

There – the cat’s out of the bag. Now you know why I’m down here. South America has the last remaining land masses suitable for agriculture, the greatest biodiversity, the richest vegetation, the richest fauna….

No wonder one of the most predatory and rapacious corporations in the world is also here…