Genetically Modified Foods Not Served in Monsanto Cafeteria

source: http://general.thoughts.com/theoneandonyTT/genetically-modified-foods-not-served-in-monsanto-cafeteria

monsanto is taking a beating this week in the artist/activist networks on facebook.  are they getting pounded on in the MSM at all?   somebody tried to claim that bill gates is holding almost 90% of their stock right now.  anybody know if there's any truth to that?

Genetically Modified Foods Not Served in Monsanto Cafeteria

crisisboom.com
Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:22 CDT

© crisisboom.com

The fight to ban genetically modified foods has won more converts - some employees of Monsanto - the company that is doing the most to promote GM products.

The Independent newspaper reports that there is a notice in the cafeteria of the Monsanto pharmaceutical factory is High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, advising customers:

"as far as practicable, GM soya and maize (has been removed) from all food products served in our restaurant. We have taken the steps to ensure that you, the customer, can feel confident in the food we serve."

The notice was posted by the Sutcliffe Catering Group.

Monsanto confirms the authenticity of the notice, but company spokesman Tony Coombes says the only reason for the GM-free foods is because the company "believes in choice." Coombes says in other Monsanto locations employees are happy to eat GM foods because they are "sprayed with fewer chemicals."

Adrian Bebb with Friends of the Earth says the notice in the Buckinghamshire plant is hard to misinterpret.

"The public has made its concerns about GM ingredients very clear - now it appears that even Monsanto's own catering firm has no confidence in this new technology."

 

270,000 Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto

Posted by admin on July 26, 2011 Leave a comment (101) Go to comments

5.8K

1/16/2012 - A Citizen’s Assembly in Support of Family Farmers vs. Monsanto
12/30/2011 – Click here for the Organic Seed Growers update on this law suit

Organic v. Monsanto

by Danielle Magnuson

More than 270,000 organic farmers are taking on corporate agriculture giant Monsanto in a lawsuit filed March 30. Led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, the family farmers are fighting for the right to keep a portion of the world food supply organic—and preemptively protecting themselves from accusations of stealing genetically modified seeds that drift on to their pristine crop fields.

Consumers are powerful. For more than a decade, a cultural shift has seen shoppers renounce the faster-fatter-bigger-cheaper mindset of factory farms, exposéd in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. From heirloom tomatoes to heritage chickens, we want our food slow, sustainable, and local—healthy for the earth, healthy for animals, and healthy for our bodies.

But with patented seeds infiltrating the environment so fully, organic itself is at risk. Monsanto’s widely used Genuity® Roundup Ready® canola seed has already turned heirloom canola oil into an extinct species. The suing farmers are seeking to prevent similar contamination of organic corn, soybeans, and a host of other crops. What’s more, they’re seeking to prevent Monsanto from accusing them of unlawfully using the very seeds they’re trying to avoid.

“It seems quite perverse that an organic farmer contaminated by transgenic seed could be accused of patent infringement,” says Public Patent Foundation director Dan Ravicher in a Cornucopia Institute article about the farmers’ lawsuit (May 30, 2011), “but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement.”

Even as the megacorporation enjoys soaring stock, the U.S. justice department continues to look into allegations of its fraudulent antitrust practices (The Street, June 29, 2011):

Monsanto, which has acquired more than 20 of the nation’s biggest seed producers and sellers over the last decade, has long pursued a strict policy with its customers, obligating them to buy its bioengineered seeds every year rather than use them in multiple planting seasons. Farmers who disobey are blacklisted forever.

It’s a wide net Monsanto has cast over the agricultural landscape. As Ravicher points out, “it’s actually in Monsanto’s financial interest to eliminate organic seed so that they can have a total monopoly over our food supply.”

Imagine a world devoid of naturally vigorous traditional crops and controlled by a single business with a appetite for intellectual property. Did anyone else feel a cold wind pass through them? Now imagine a world where thousands of family farmers fight the good fight to continue giving consumers a choice in their food—and win.
via Organic v. Monsanto – Environment – Utne Reader.

Thanks to Charles Councill for this story.