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Spokane Sues Monsanto Over Spokane River Contamination

By Associate Press - The city of Spokane is suing the international agrochemical giant Monsanto, which it blames for pollution in the Spokane River.Monsanto PCB's The Spokesman-Review reports that the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane, alleges that the company sold chemicals for decades that it knew were a danger to people and the environment. The suit doesn't specify the damages being sought. But Marlene Feist, the city's utilities spokeswoman, called the suit "long-term litigation," and noted that the city will spend $300 million in the coming years to keep polychlorinated biphenyls and other pollutants from entering the river.

3x More Donations For Anti-GMO Legislators From Agribusiness

By Alex Lazar in Open Secrets - Thursday’s House passage of a bill that would keep states from requiring genetically modified foods to be labeled was a big — and not at all close — win for agribusiness and food and beverage interests. The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, known to its critics as the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act, sailed through by a vote of 275 to 150. While the bulk of its support came from the GOP and most of its opponents hailed from Democratic districts, the vote didn’t break cleanly along party lines. Among its 107 sponsors were 92 Republicans and 15 Democrats. But a more telling predictor of where lawmakers came down was the amount of support they’d received from interests with a stake in the legislation.

House Votes For Monsanto’s Right To Deceive Consumers

By Katherine Paul in Organic Consumers - Today, 275 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of H.R. 1599, the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act. By voting for the DARK Act, these politicians voted against truth and transparency, against science, against the more than century-old right of states to legislate on matters relating to food safety and labeling. They voted against the 90-percent of Americans who are in favor of mandatory labeling of GMOs. They voted against the producers of non-GMO foods. They voted against you. Now that the DARK Act has been approved by the House, we’ll have to stop it in the Senate. We have to move fast—because Monsanto is desperate to pass a bill that preempts mandatory GMO labeling laws at the state and federal levels, before Vermont’s GMO labeling law takes effect next year.

Take Action To Stop The DARK Act

By Organic Consumers Association - Today, at 10 a.m., Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and their band of pro-GMO, anti-consumer, stomp-all-over-states’-rights outlaws will stand before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and ask the Committee to support H.R. 1599. We’ve been calling H.R. 1599 the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act, because that’s what the bill is intended to do—keep you in the dark about the toxic chemical-drenched GMOs in your food. But that’s only half the story. Since Pompeo introduced his bill-to-kill GMO labeling laws earlier this year, he’s been tinkering with the language. Now, the latest version of the DARK Act is even darker than the original.

Monsanto Proposes to Change Its Name, To Escape Its PR Woes

By Staff of US Right to Know, Documents released today by Syngenta include a letter from Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant to Syngenta, suggesting as a part of a corporate merger that, “We would also propose a new name for the combined company to reflect its unique global nature.” “Monsanto wants to escape its ugly history by ditching its name,” said Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a consumer group. “This shows how desperate Monsanto is to escape criticism: of its products, which raise environmental and health concerns, as well as concerns about corporate control of agriculture and our food system.” In a 2014 Harris Poll gauging the reputations of major corporations, Monsanto’s “reputation quotient” ranked 58 out of 60 companies. In other words, it was the third most hated company measured.

Oregon Farmers Defeat Monsanto In Court Win Against GMO’s

By Steven Rosenfeld in Occupy - On Friday, Mark D. Clarke, a federal magistrate judge, dismissed a legal challenge brought by commercial farmers who use Monsanto's genetically modified alfalfa seeds. The non-organic farms sought to overturn a 2014 ordinance passed by Jackson County voters that banned the use of such seed stock, claiming that the anti-GMO ordinance violated their right to farm. However Judge Clarke concluded that exactly the opposite was the case. He held that the county's no-GMO seed ordinance could take effect next week, citing earlier state legislation that protected commercial farms—in this case organic farmers—from harm from other commercial enterprises, such as the commercial farms whose GMO-laced alfalfa pollen gets carried by the wind and can't be stopped from tainting organic crops.

Community Advocates Win: Federal Judge Rules For GMO Seed Ban

By Steven Rosenfeld in Alternet - On Friday, Mark D. Clarke, a federal magistrate judge, dismissed a legal challenge brought by commercial farmers who use Monsanto's genetically modified alfalfa seeds. The non-organic farms sought to overturn a 2014 ordinance passed by Jackson County voters that banned the use of such seed stock, claiming that the anti-GMO ordinance violated their right to farm. However Judge Clarke concluded that exactly the opposite was the case. He held that the county's no-GMO seed ordinance could take effect next week, citing earlier state legislation that protected commercial farms—in this case organic farmers—from harm from other commercial enterprises, such as the commercial farms whose GMO-laced alfalfa pollen gets carried by the wind and can't be stopped from tainting organic crops.

Marching On Monsanto And Its Government Protectors

Controlling and knowing what we eat should be a fundamental human right beyond questioning. That it is not sent hundreds of thousands into the streets of cities around the world on May 23, the third annual March on Monsanto. People on every continent save Antarctica participated in a March on Monsanto — demonstrations took place in 452 cites in 48 countries in opposition to Monsanto Company’s attempt to gain control over the world’s food. More than 200 U.S. cities, 47 Canadian cities, 22 French cities and 13 Argentine cities were among the places hosting organized marches. RT, in an online roundup of events around the world, also noted that protestors in Berlin, one of 10 German demonstrations, made connections among health concerns even though there is no commercial cultivation of food containing genetically engineered organisms in the country, and GMO bans exist in nine of Germany’s 16 states and in hundreds of municipalities.

Monsanto’s Worst Fear May Be Coming True

The decision of the Chipotle restaurant chain to make its product lines GMO-free is not most people's idea of a world-historic event. Especially since Chipotle, by US standards, is not a huge operation. A clear sign that the move is significant, however, is that Chipotle's decision was met with a tidal-wave of establishment media abuse. Chipotle has been called irresponsible, anti-science, irrational, and much more by the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and many others. A business deciding to give consumers what they want was surely never so contentious. The media lynching of Chipotle has an explanation that is important to the future of GMOs. The cause of it is that there has long been an incipient crack in the solid public front that the food industry has presented on the GMO issue.

Monsanto Weed Killer Poisoning Youth?

Genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, have led to an explosion in growers’ use of herbicides, with the result that children at hundreds of elementary schools across the country go to class close by fields that are regularly doused with escalating amounts of toxic weed killers. GMO corn and soybeans have been genetically engineered to withstand being blasted with glyphosate – an herbicide that the World Health Organization recently classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The proximity of many schools to fields blanketed in the chemical puts kids at risk of exposure. But it gets worse. Overreliance on glyphosate has spawned the emergence of “superweeds” that resist the herbicide, so now producers of GMO crops are turning to even more harmful chemicals.

Monsanto Is In Hot Water – Again

It's been a tough few weeks for Monsanto. Late last week, companies "such as Monsanto" were implicated in a watchdog group's petition to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on behalf of anonymous scientists within the agency who say their research is suppressed when it upsets powerful agrichemical interests. The allegations enraged the industry's critics, who have been busy touting recent reports linking popular herbicides often used in tandem with genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, to cancer and antibiotic resistance. Both controversies are renewing calls for tougher restrictions on certain herbicides and mandatory packaging labels for groceries containing GMO ingredients. "If true, this is a major scandal at the USDA," wrote Gary Ruskin, director of the pro- labeling group US Right to Know, in a March 30 letter to the US House and Senate agricultural committees demanding an investigation. "It is not the proper role of the USDA to engage in a cover up for Monsanto and other agrichemical companies."

Monsanto Lobbyist: ‘Glyphosate Safe,’ Offered Drink

A controversial lobbyist who claimed that the chemical in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer was safe for humans refused to drink his own words when a French television journalist offered him a glass. “You can drink a whole quart of it and it won’t hurt you,” Moore insists. “You want to drink some?” the interviewer asks. “We have some here.” “I’d be happy to, actually,” Moore replies, adding, “Not really. But I know it wouldn’t hurt me.” “If you say so, I have some,” the interviewer presses. “I’m not stupid,” Moore declares. “So, it’s dangerous?” the interviewer concludes. But Moore claims that Roundup is so safe that “people try to commit suicide” by drinking it, and they “fail regularly.” “Tell the truth, it’s dangerous,” the interviewer says. “It’s not dangerous to humans,” Moore remarks. “No, it’s not.” “So, are you ready to drink one glass?” the interviewer continues to press. “No, I’m not an idiot,” Moore says defiantly.

El Salvador Farmers Successfully Defy Monsanto

The perils of ingesting food that has any contact with a Monsanto-produced product are in the news on nearly a weekly basis. As Dr. Jeff Ritterman has documented, Monstanto's herbicide, Roundup, has beenlinked to a fatal kidney disease epidemic, and has also been repeatedly linked to cancer. Recently, a senior research scientist at MIT predicted that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, will cause half of all children to have autism by 2025. Farmers in El Salvador are acutely aware of the importance of producing their own seeds, and avoiding those from the bioengineering giant.

Four Court Victories Uphold GMO Ban In Mexico

The legal battles over the existing ban on the planting of transgenic maize in Mexico continue to unfold with a string of four important court victories by anti-GMO activists. On February 28, 2015, the collective of social movement organizations known asAcción Colectiva del Maíz announced that they had secured four more favorable court decisions involving amparo (shelter) corporate challenges seeking to end the GMO corn ban in Mexico. These are pivotal victories but the group explains that more administrative and judicial reviews remain to be adjudicated, including five by Monsanto and Syngenta against the use of precautionary measures to manage the biosafety risks posed by transgenic corn.

San Diego Sues Monsanto For Dumping PCB’s In Bay

The City of San Diego and San Diego Unified Port District want chemical agricultural giant Monsanto to pay for its role in polluting San Diego's bay and tidelands with polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly known as PCBs. On March 16, the municipal agencies sued Monsanto for concealing the hazards associated with PCBs, despite being aware of the health risks associated with ingesting and inhaling the chemical compounds since the 1930s. According to the lawsuit, the risks did not deter Monsanto from trying to protect profits and prolong the use of PCB compounds such as Aroclor, as shown in a report from an ad hoc committee that Monsanto formed in 1969.

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