North America needs to take note: Europe has defeated the biotech giant by refusing to be contaminated with Monsanto’s GMO offerings and toxic farming methods.
Monsanto announced that they will no longer continue to lobby for approval of its genetically modified seeds in Europe due to “low farmer demand.”
Monsanto Germany’s spokeswoman, Ursula Luttmer-Ouazane, said, “We’ve understood that such plants don’t have any broad acceptance in European societies. It is counterproductive to fight against windmills.”
So why, despite massive protests from anti-GMO activists in the US and Canada, has Monsanto been able to keep a foothold in North America?
One big difference: the government here allows Monsanto to do anything they want, right up to composing their own protection acts. There is a well-known revolving door between Monsanto, the judicial branch, the legislative branch, and Obama’s various nominees.
Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Luxembourg, on the other hand, placed an outright ban called the “Safeguard Clause” on banned Monsanto’s MON810 maize and other forms of GMO cultivation.
Fierce opposition in Europe has also caused other biotech companies like Bayer CropScience, BASF and Syngenta, to take their toxic products and leave too.
Over 2 million protesters worldwide joined in the March Against Monsanto last Saturday. It’s clear that some governments are listening to those who elected them.
Perhaps some of the pressure here needs to be diverted to the elected officials and the agencies that are allowing Monsanto to go about their toxic business unchecked. Maybe the next marches need to take place against agencies like the USDA and the FDA – those who have been charged with the responsibility of consumer safety and have blatantly sold out to Big Agri and the biotech industries.
While organic growers, small farms, and heritage seed companies are being regulated right out of business, Monsanto and their ilk have free reign to lay siege to our fields with chemical warfare.
Let’s follow in the footsteps of Europe – it is not reasonable to expect the creators of Round-Up and distributors of Agent Orange to do the right thing. We must insist that those entrusted with food and environmental safety do their jobs and begin making things less hospitable for the greedy corporations, and if they do not, we must hold them personally accountable.
Source: RT.com
It sounds wonderful on paper that Monsanto has backed down from trying to push GM foods into Europe, but can Europeans actually believe Monsanto’s claims? This is a company that for its entire history has lied to the world. It seems to me that this apparent capitulation by Monsanto should be taken as a warning to Europeans to not relax their guard. Monsanto will quietly go on scheming to get its poisonous crap into Europe (if it hasn’t secretly done so already), and will do it via the back door as it has done in North America; that is, get its executives to enter politics and fund their rise to the top. The whole American legislative and judicial system is run by former Monsanto employees. I have no doubt the same thing is happening or will happen in Europe if Europeans don’t pay attention.
Monsanto’s GM crops were rejected by Europe in 2002 and they have spent the years since trying to connive their way into Europe. Look at a map of Monsanto locations around the world. GM foods are apparently largely banned in Europe, yet Monsanto is entrenched there, with locations in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, The UK and more.
While I do believe the tide is slowly turning against GM foods, I think it will be a LONG road before we rid the world of this scourge, otherwise called Monsanto, simply because this is not a company that will give up its power without perpetrating countless more criminal acts in order to remain at the top, while giving the impression of conceding defeat.
A fantastic YouTube video for anyone interested:
http://12160.info/video/farmer-feeds-gmo-corn-to-his-pigs-they-all-become-sterile
We all need to keep up the fight against Monsanto, Nestlé and all the big corporations that are seeking to patent everything on the planet that nature gave us. They now want to make water a commodity we pay for, rather than treat it as a necessity of life.
Keep boycotting their products. Your health and the health of the planet is too important to give your money to these greedy, evil multinational giants.
Having seen the writing on the wall when the Patriot Act passed, unread by the legislators, I decided it was time to move on. I am now in the countryside of southern France. Upon my arrival, the big local news was the army of farmers on their tractors who had discovered a test field of GMO corn. They descended en masse on their tractors, ripped up the field and burned it. the Gendarme arrived to only direct traffic. They did not interfere. That was in 2004.
Today, even with Monsanto claiming capitulation, there are still their colleagues in Bayer, Pioneer, Syngenta, etc., active in Europe with the same agenda and probably using Monsanto patented technologies. The beast simply morphs into something else, but it does not go away.
Well said mate.
Unfortunately, OUR government is already bought/paid for by Monsatan. One of a hundred reasons why OUR government must be removed, replaced, and literally rebuilt from the ground up…ASAP!
Sounds rebellious, revolutionary, crazy, and possibly even insane.
“Sounds” like the “right song” at the “right time” to the likes of me. Keep on sounding the bugle and “call-to-arms” in whatever capacity possible. Our freedoms/liberties are already fatally compromised. OUR HEALTH and “future crops freedom” is on THEIR agenda unless WE organize as revealed in this article. GMO needs to GM-GO from the American diet and farmlands. Most of the rest of the globe apparently is ahead of US in this crucial understanding.
A definite thumbs up to what Yental said!
To claim that studies have been done and that GMO’s are safe is a farce! An increase in cancer in children of 10% (http://www.envirohealthpolicy.net/kidstest/graphs/trends.JPG), skin allergies in children more than triples since 1997, food allergies are also on the increase surprisingly dates are post 1990 (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AllergiesNews/kiFicds-food-allergies-spike-epidemic-medical-myth/story?id=9077872#.Ua4NE0BQ). The increase in tissue mass on the colon and stomach in the lab rats tested on GMO’s was quite frightful!
But too many of our people that have been voted into office have their pockets lined with blood money. Our blood! It seems that so long as there are companies willing to do the I’ll buy your tainted vegetables and fruit and you send me to tahiti for vacation it seems our hands are tied!
Our family tries to do mostly organic, since the talk about aspartame being added to the milk and it not being labeled as such. We have bought a goat. Even though we buy strictly organic at least we know our dairy products are most definitely ORGANIC.
Monsanto, honestly? They have won the battle here in the US. But they won’t be winning the war!
Bravo to the EEU for putting them in their place! Now if everyone else can be as bold there won’t be any problems. But the promise of high yielding crops and ‘prettier’ produce will con those who need that. Every apple being the same size and same color sometimes looking like ‘clones’. Perfection, that’s what most people want nowadays. I’m not one of those people and anyone at this site isn’t either.
They are still getting in the back door in the UK with the major supemarkets announcing in the last couple of months that they will feed animals gmo feed where in the past they did not. 90% of all english cheese is made using gmo rennet. The co-op is the ONLY super market that labels their cheese. Even organic cheese is made from gmo rennet. Most people in the UK stil have no idea who or what monsanto is all about. This is far from over. The EU are banning our supplements, and also taking over our seeds and plants. If the seed is not registered with the EU and a fee paid then then plant will be illegal.The farmers are saying that the reason for the change is that it is getting harder to buy non gmo feed stuff for their animals… and with supermarkets dicating the prices they pay the farmers, it makes it hard for them not to say no, as they have no idea what effect this food stuff will have on their herds. Most animals do not get anywhere near their old age before slaughter. The rats in the french study I understand were eating the gmo food stuff for the length of their natural lives. Cows are slaughter I think around 5 years as they are worn our, where there live span is 15 plus years. I’ve met bee keepers in the uk who have NO idea about monsanto, and even the effects of pesticides such as round up! I told a bloke in B and Q who was about to buy some that it turns the balls of hamsters and rats blue! And that he should use vinegar. And he left saying that he would… guess the way to get a man to listen is to mention the blue ball thing!
Love and life and keep spreading the word… SAY NO TO GMO! And Monsanto…. go and burn in hell!
I believe that their are 71 senators that need to be targeted for removal next time around as they declared by virtue of their vote that we consumers didn’t need to know if what we buy contains GMO. Lets remember who they are as the voters have a right to know when they go to the voting booth who they are voting for. This is the best way to send a message.
Debbie is absolutely right about the lacking public awareness of Monsanto. I continue to be shocked at how few people have ever heard of this evil-doer. That’s partly because Monsanto has for decades taken pains to operate under the radar. Before the Internet, people had few resources for information and had to place their trust in the government. That’s no longer the case. However, it appears that most of us use the Internet exclusively as a social tool, and rarely as a place to inform and educate ourselves and about what’s going on in the world, or to question things we are told is best for us.
I often ask people I meet if they’ve heard of Monsanto and it’s rare I hear a ‘Yes’. Yet what bothers me even more is that I get no sense of people WANTING to know. There’s a staggering gap between the gross reality of how corporations dictate the quality of our health and lives and people’s awareness of that.
We need a (peaceful) revolution to stop governments across the world granting patents on every last bit of nature to corporations. But how do we achieve this when most people are happy to remain clueless about what’s happening to nature and our food under our noses? If ignorance about GMOs and Monsanto is so widespread, how do we collectively ask our governments: ‘Who gave you the right to grant patents on nature?’
NATURE BELONGS TO NO ONE. We must all continue the fight to make governments and multinationals hear our voice.