Source
By Lisa Shumaker

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Trace amounts of genetically modified varieties of rice that were found commingled in the U.S. rice supply in 2006 caused more than $1.2 billion in damages and additional costs, the environmental group Greenpeace International said on Monday.

U.S. rice exports fell sharply after Bayer CropScience, a division of Bayer, reported in 2006 that trace amounts of its biotech LibertyLink rice variety LLRICE601 were found in a widely grown variety of U.S. rice called Cheniere. Later, a second variety called Clearfield 131 was found to be contaminated with LLRICE604.

"Until we've seen the report, we really can't comment," said Bayer spokesman Greg Coffey.

If the following is true, Monsanto has escalated their war on the world's food supply to what would seem to me to be all out strong arming seed cleaners out of business... I guess the 8 billion dollars Monsanto spent in the 1990's to aquire alot of the seed suppliers wasn't enough control, now they have to go after the seed cleaners as well?
Rural Cleansing?

opednews

Monsanto Investigator in Illinois Laughs They Are Doing 'Rural Cleansing'
by Linn Cohen-Cole

As of last night, a US marshall, 2 state police and a county police are all over Mr. Hixon's area, serving notices to farmers that they are being sued by Monsanto. They arrive in pairs, with two cars parked a quarter mile and half mile down the road. They've served 3 so far and said "a bunch more are coming." No telling how many will be served since Hixon has between 200-400 farmers he cleans seeds for and these farmers have been repeatedly threatened by Monsanto thugs for the last two months, getting "visits," letters, and calls daily.
Farmers report that a Monsanto investigator laughed that they were doing "rural cleansing."...

Mr. Parr reports that when he was sued, the first think out of the judge said was how "honored to have a fine company like Monsanto in my courtroom."
"Shortly after someone broke into Mr. Hixon's office and he found his account book on his truck seat where he would never have left it, evey one of his remotely located and very scattered customers had three men (described as goons with "no necks") arrived at each farm, going out onto it without permission ... Mr. Hixon and state police who were called in, believe a GPS tracking device may have been put on Mr. Hixon's equipment." ...
In 2002, when Mr. Hixon was at the state legislature for a meeting, he said he told a Monsanto representative there, "If you guys wnt to tak over the seed industry so bad, you ought to buy guys like me out." The Monsanto agent is supposed to have responded "We'd rather put you out of business, it's more fun that way."

Originally posted by twitchy
reply to post by twitchy

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I'm shocked there isn't more response from the scientific community about this. I'm even more shocked that they are allowed to even develop anything that would interfere with the natural gene expressions of any living animal, let alone apply it to food crops.

"The crops, which initiate a gene-silencing response called RNA interference, are a step beyond existing genetically modified crops that produce toxic proteins."
They're probably going to get away with it too. That's about the creepiest damned thing I've ever read. Good bye grasshoppers, good bye, blue eyes.

Originally posted by Kakugo
I did a little bit of research and I found out that Monsanto has deleted all references about the BT Cotton from their catalogs, both on paper and on line. Right now, according to their catalogue and their website, there are only two brands available: Asgrow (both normal and Roundup Ready), which includes soybeans, corn, sorghum and alfalfa, and Dekalb, which includes sunflower, sorghum, corn and various types of forage seeds. Apparently this has nothing to do with the impending lawsuits, but because the company was stung by the fact that the BT Cotton is a failure, comparing very poorly with the varieties currently grown. Even the Indian government says so. Nevertheless, the product is selling extremely well: see here.
I don't know how this is achieved, since BT Cotton is both more expensive and less vigorous than current, cheaper varities: maybe someone here can look into it.