Farmers and Seed Producers Launch Preemptive Strike against Monsanto

reply to post by wayouttheredude

....These guys are more than willing to fight dirty. I think they would go so far as to hire mercenaries in fact to harass the plaintiffs if they felt that was necessary....

I thought it was well know that that is exactly what Monsanto does. It is Pinkerton they hire.

....Here’s what typically happens to US farmers who fall under suspicion of planting saved seed. Private investigators from the Pinkerton agency hired by Monsanto arrive on the farm without warning, sometimes accompanied by local police. They then proceed to take samples and photographs over the course of a few hours to a few weeks, without the farmer being present.

One Mississippi farmer who runs a farm shop from his farmhouse was subjected to constant surveillance by Monsanto investigators who watched the family coming and going, warned off customers, and even rented an empty lot across the street from where to position their cameras.

Monsanto used entrapment to file a lawsuit against another farmer, when one of their investigators begged seeds from him to help solve an erosion problem too late in the season to plant crops. If personal intimidation fails, Monsanto resorts to another violation of privacy by sending a registered letter threatening to "tie the farmer up in court for years" if he refuses to settle out of court for patent infringement. One farmer who challenged this intimidation had his name blacklisted on thousands of seed dealers’ lists. He concedes, "It is easier to give into them than it is to fight them."

A further example is seed dealers who sell seeds in plain brown bags so farmers sow them unknowingly. This happened to Farmer Thomason who was harassed into court by Monsanto and sued for over a million dollars. He had no choice but to file for bankruptcy despite never intending to plant Bt cotton.

In 1999, The Washington Post reported that the number of farmers under investigation in US and Canada was 525. A later report confirmed that Monsanto was investigating 500 farmers in 2004 "as they do every year." Once a farmer agrees to settle out of court he may be forced to present all documents relating to farm activity within 24 hours of request, purchase a specific quantity of company product and disclose the names of other people that have saved company seed.... www.i-sis.org.uk...

reply to post by hp1229

Can you imagine what the plight of the humans will be after few generations....

It is the reason I am STILL doggedly fighting.

I have no children and I am retired (well sort of) but I still care what happens to my country and the AG Cartel is a blight that needs to be eradicated!!!!

THE FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL GLOBAL CARTELS OF THE 1990s:

www.agecon.purdue.edu... 03.asp

Just two of the papers put out by Purdue University. the list is HERE Just the titles are eye openers!

reply to post by ItsEvolutionBaby

Anyone remember the lone farmer Percy Schmeiser who was one of the first "Davids" to battle the goliath monsanto--

OH yes, He made it onto all the farmer blogs I read.

We all cheered him on.

reply to post by antar

Here's your list of grassroots NonGmo seeds,...

Thanks for the list.

I ran across an article (Pajamamedia???) about a seed-saver co-op that had a Monsanto Spy sneak onto the Board. The person grabbed samples of all the seeds and gave them to a "Seed Bank" that makes the seeds genetics available to Monsanto.

Do you perhaps have the link to the story???

reply to post by Sounds_of_Silence


I'm going to say "because they own the largest private army in the world". Why a GE company needs an army is beyond me. Scary though.

reply to post by Jazzyguy

I do found americans to be rather weird sometimes...

About that travesty of the law.

We Yanks DO have Criminal Trespass law. Unfortunately it is more a matter of who has the big bucks. Once Monsanto wins a few cases then you get into "Case Law"

Case Law

(n) Case Law is the decisions, interpretations made by judges while deciding on the legal issues before them which are considered as the common law or as an aid for interpretation of a law in subsequent cases with similar conditions. Case laws are used by advocates to support their views to favor their clients and also it influence the decision of the judges. www.legal-explanations.com...

So the strategy is to pick farmers with a poor case who will fight. This allows a win in court. In the next cases you point to that case as legal precedent.

PRECEDENT

Legal principle, created by a court decision, which provides an example or authority for judges deciding similar issues later. Generally, decisions of higher courts (within a particular system of courts) are mandatory precedent on lower courts within that system--that is, the principle announced by a higher court must be followed in later cases. For example, the California Supreme Court decision that unmarried people who live together may enter into cohabitation agreements (Marvin v. Marvin), is binding on all appellate courts and trial courts in California (which are lower courts in relation to the California Supreme Court). Similarly, decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court (the highest court in the country) are generally binding on all other courts in the U.S.

Decisions of lower courts are not binding on higher courts, although from time to time a higher court will adopt the reasoning and conclusion of a lower court. Decisions by courts of the same level (usually appellate courts) are considered persuasive authority. That is, they should always be carefully considered by the later court but need not be followed.

As a practical matter, courts can usually find precedent for any direction they want to go in deciding a particular case. Accordingly, precedent is used as often to justify a particular outcome in a case as it is to guide the decision.The body of judicial decisions in which were formulated the points of law arising in any case. A previously decided case that is considered binding in the court where it was issued and in all lower courts in the same jurisdiction. A court decision in an earlier case with facts and law similar to a dispute currently before a court. Precedent will ordinarily govern the decision of a later similar case, unless a party can show that it was wrongly decided or that it differed in some significant way..... www.lectlaw.com...

In other words once the court system decided against the farmer ALL the farmers were SCREWED!!!

Bravo to the brave farmers and their lawyers for embarking on this VERY IMPORTANT battle! If for some reason they don't prevail then there will be NO doubt left that justice is a thing of the past. I hope this trial will be a jury trial, I wonder how that works? I see this as an outright attack against the peoples right to food ultimately. The insane restrictions being placed on small farmers, farmer's markets, organic food supplers is an outrage! What's next, they seize our homes if we have a vegtable garden in the backyard?

How interesting too that ' Franken Seeds' from monsanto are resistant to all the alluminum and bariam being found in the soil from what I have come to believe is a result of the Geo-engineering " tests" going on that our government denies is happening? Insider knowledge perhaps?

Thanks to the OP and person who posted petition, I signed and will also write my reps in congress, lol, probably won't mean much, but hope springs eternal.......

It is very interesting on here to see some of comments wishing the farmers luck as they seperate themselves from the problem. THIS EFFECTS YOU PEOPLE! Do you not eat vegetables? When Monsanto drowns out the small farmer then we will have to rely on them because they are the ones with the seeds and since their vegetables don't have any seeds that means seeds will be limited......VERY LIMITED! In fact it will be an OOPS kinda moment when we have allowed this to happen and have done nothing to stop it when all of a sudden there are no seeds left.

What can YOU DO? Buy Organic and support the small local farmer because he is the one with the power to save your #@$ when the SHTF!

If you grow a garden buy Organic Seeds Only!

Thank God, the people are waking up and fighting back against the corruption.

Monsanto should be liable for penalties if their seed infests another farmer's field.

In scrounging to find the data I wanted to convey I found this little nugget:
Round up ready causes infertility & misscarriages


I had mention that Monsanto's biggest weapon is the New Food Safety Law.

I doubt there are more than 90,000 people in the USA who have any idea of just what the American farmer is now facing. Those people are the US members of the American Society for Quality.

Why would I ever make such a strange statement???

Because as a 25 year member of ASQ who wrote quality manuals audited by the FDA, I know EXACTLY what is involved in writing documentation to FDA code. I was actually hired by a testing lab to write their documentation because neither their stable of dozens of PhD scientists nor their former FDA inspector could do so! As the FDA inspector stated, she could look at documentation and tell if it was correct but no way could she write it!!!!

What are the chances a farmer is going to get everything correct???? Much less have time to write a plan???

These are the facts no one ever bothered to tell the public when the talked of these horrible law.

Less than 1% claim farming as an occupation and about 2% actually live on farms but Agriculture contributes more than $950 billion — 16 percent — to the GNP each year!

There are 2.2 million farms in the USA. According to the 2007 census over half the farms, 1,167,751, reported losses, with an average loss $15,596.

Only 396,054 farms have gains of over $25,000 a year, that means 1.8 million are near or BELOW the poverty threshold.

1,070,668 farms have less than 25% of their income from farming.

Only 4,048 are full time farmers deriving 100% of the income from farming.

The average age is 55.4 years with many farmers beyond or approaching retirement age

According to the USDA, almost 90 percent of the total income of rancher or farmer households now comes from outside earnings. More than 60 percent of US farms are resource, residential or retirement farms.There is a widening gap between retail price and farm value. a USDA market basket of food has increased 2.8 percent while the farm value of that food has fallen by 35.7 percent!


Now tell me how the heck are American farmers, already working two jobs so YOU can get cheap food, going to afford the time or money to deal with the massive red tape the Food Modernization act is going to require?? Given the Food Cartel's Monopsony, the Food Cartel TELLS the farmer what they are willing to pay. Therefore farmers can not pass on the cost but the Food corporations sure will ... and pocket the difference.

REFERENCE MATERIAL

Who's making the bread?
Freedom to Farm's lower commodity prices have not translated into consumer benefits.

Since 1984, the real price of a USDA market basket of food has increased 2.8 percent while the farm value of that food has fallen by 35.7 percent,

according to C. Robert Taylor, professor of agriculture and public policy at Auburn University. Taylor says there is a "widening gap" between retail price and farm value for numerous components of the market basket, including meat products, poultry, eggs, dairy products, cereal and bakery products, fresh fruit and vegetables, and processed fruit and vegetables.

At a major farm rally in Washington, D.C. in March, farmers served legislators a "farmers" lunch. The lunch included what would typically be an $8 lunch -- barbecued beef on a bun, baked beans, potato salad, coleslaw, milk and a cookie. The farmers charged only 39 cents for the meal, reflecting what farmers and ranchers receive to grow the food for such a meal.

A look at the figures for 2007, when the world food crisis began, shows that corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill, which control the cereals market, saw their profits increase by 45 and 60 per cent, respectively; the leading chemical fertilizer companies such as Mosaic Corporation, a subsidiary of Cargill, doubled their profits in a single year" Monsanto and the World Food Crisis





Here is the Tesser Amendment that was SUPPOSED to "exempt" small farms.... If you believe that I have this bridge I want to sell.....

tester.senate.gov...

‘‘(2) EXEMPTION.—A qualified facility—
‘‘(A) shall not be subject to the requirements under subsections (a) through (i) and subsection (n) in an applicable calendar year; and

‘‘(B) shall submit to the Secretary—
‘‘(i)(I) documentation that demonstrates that the owner, operator, or agent in charge of the facility has identified potential hazards associated with the food being produced, is implementing preventive controls to address the hazards, and is monitoring the preventive controls to ensure that such controls are effective;

or

‘‘(II) documentation (which may include licenses, inspection reports, certificates, permits, credentials, certification by an appropriate agency (such as a State department of agriculture), or other evidence of oversight), as specified by the Secretary, that the facility is in compliance with State, local, county, or other applicable non-Federal food safety law; and

‘‘(ii) documentation, as specified by the Secretary in a guidance document issued not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this section, that the facility is a qualified facility under paragraph (1)(B) or (1)(C).

‘‘(3) WITHDRAWAL; RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—
‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—In the event of an active investigation of a foodborne illness out-break that is directly linked to a qualified facility subject to an exemption under this sub- section, or if the Secretary determines that it is necessary to protect the public health and prevent or mitigate a foodborne illness outbreak based on conduct or conditions associated with a qualified facility that are material to the safety of the food manufactured, processed, packed, or held at such facility, the Secretary may with-draw the exemption provided to such facility under this subsection.

‘‘(B) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing
11 in this subsection shall be construed to expand
12 or limit the inspection authority of the Sec-
13 retary.
.....

19 ‘‘(B) QUALIFIED END-USER.—The term
20 ‘qualified end-user’, with respect to a food,
21 means—
22 ‘‘(i) the consumer of the food; or
23 ‘‘(ii) a restaurant or retail food estab-
24 lishment (as those terms are defined by the


13 ‘‘(C) CONSUMER.—For purposes of sub-
14 paragraph (B), the term ‘consumer’ does not
15 include a business.
.......

On page 18, strike line 1 through line 5 and insert
3 the following: ‘‘regulations—
4 ‘‘(A) to establish science-based minimum
5 standards for conducting a hazard analysis,
6 documenting hazards, implementing preventive
7 controls, and documenting the implementation
8 of the preventive controls under this section;
9 and
10 ‘‘(B) to define, for purposes of this section,
11 the terms ‘small business’ and ‘very small busi-
12 ness’, taking into consideration the study de-
13 scribed in subsection (l)(5).

FARM STATISTICS:
We have 2,2million (2,204,792) Farms in the USA according to the 2007 Ag census
(For a four-person family unit with two children, the 2009 poverty threshold is $21,756.)

Corporate farms 34,726
Corporate farms - -Non Family 5,105

The number of farms with losses was 1,167,751 and they had an avg loss $15,596!!!! That is OVER half of the US farms!
The number of farms with net gains was 1,037,041 and the avg net gain was $33,827 (salary)

I broke that $33,827 average out
Farms with gains of-
less than $1,000 ........................................................... 103,330
$1,000 to $4,999 ........................................................... 222,713
$5,000 to $9,999 ........................................................... 129,906
$10,000 to $24,999 ....................................................... 173,780
$25,000 to $49,999 ....................................................... 122,964
$50,000 or more ......................................................... 273,090

So out of 2,204,792 Farms only 273,090 are earning a reasonable amount and that is for ONE person!

This chart puts it another way:
Percent of operator's total household income from farming:
Less than 25 percent .................................................. 1,070,668
25 to 49 percent ......................................................... 73,057
50 to 74 percent ......................................................... 47,429
75 to 99 percent ......................................................... 15,709
100 percent ................................................................ 4,048

Ag. Statistics from:
www.agcensus.usda.gov...
www.agcensus.usda.gov...
www.agcensus.usda.gov...
www.agcensus.usda.gov...

This is what the new food law actually translates into:

Food Safety’s Scorched Earth Policy

HR 2749 is being rushed through Congress, and the house may look to suspend the rules and fast track the bill at Obama’s request. Just what can we expect from this legislation? A lot more of the following:

Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides.

He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind.

“I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop,” he said. “On one field where a deer walked through, didn’t eat anything, just walked through and you could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks and annihilate the crop.”

In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world’s biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national. (Lochhead, C. )

The question that must be asked is, do we really want to destroy our local organic farming industry by poisoning ponds, bulldozing crops and killing wildlife all in the name of food safety?Â

Recently someone asked why I thought that the current food safety legislation would jeopardize organic farming. This is why! People who have no idea what it is to farm, and are in collusion with large corporate food producers, buyers, and sellers, draft legislation that is intolerable to the environment and our health, all in the name of food safety, in order to promote corporate profit.Â

Not one instance in 16 years of handling nearly every major food-borne illness outbreak in America, has Seattle trial lawyer Bill Marler had a case where it’s been linked to a farmers’ market” (Marler, B.). Yet, farmer's markets and local organic food growers who sell at these markets are included in this legislation, and factory farming scorched earth methods are forced on them....

The requirements of this bill would put small farmers out of business entirely, but this is not the only threat to the little guy.

Large produce buyers have compiled secret “super metrics” that go much further. Farmers must follow them if they expect to sell their crops. These can include vast bare-dirt buffers, elimination of wildlife, and strict rules on water sources. To enforce these rules, retail buyers have sent forth armies of food-safety auditors, many of them trained in indoor processing plants, to inspect fields. (Lochhead, C.)

Most of these inspectors have little to no experience other than inside four walls. Take for example Ken Kimes, who owns New Natives Farms in Santa Cruz County. He was told that "no children younger than five can be allowed on his farm for fear of diapers" (Lochhead, C.)....

The last hazard to the farmer is ENFORCEMENT

. This is from HR 875 the original "food safety" bill. (We KNOW after the "compromise" gets a law passed, later amendments will be added so we end up with the original as written.)

It is cut and paste directly from HR 875 with nothing added. I went through HR 875 with a fine tooth comb. I do not have the stomach to do the same with S510 or the new law. Once was enough!

Civil Penalty
(A) IN GENERAL- Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law (including a regulation promulgated or order issued under the food safety law) may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such
B) SEPARATE OFFENSE- Each act described in subparagraph (A) and each day during which that act continues shall be considered a separate offense.

Criminal Sanctions-
(1) OFFENSE RESULTING IN SERIOUS ILLNESS- Notwithstanding section 303(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 333(a)), if a violation of any provision of section 301 of such Act (21 U.S.C. 301) with respect to an adulterated or misbranded food results in serious illness, the person committing the violation shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, fined in accordance with title 18, United States Code, or both.

(2) OFFENSE RESULTING IN DEATH- Notwithstanding section 303(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 333(a)), if a violation of any provision of section 301 of such Act (21 U.S.C. 331) with respect to an adulterated or misbranded food results in death, the person committing the violation shall be imprisoned for not more than 10 years, fined in accordance with title 18, United States Code, or both.

... each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;

include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water

include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal's health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption

The really nasty part is the Mega-Corporations have already been holding seminars on how to pass their liability for food borne illness to the farmers. THAT is what the changes to HACCP in 1996 were all about and 1995 the WTO Agreement on Ag. The use of "risk assessment " and "traceability" instead of traditional government inspection and testing of food so corporations are no longer inspected and the liability from the resulting illness can be passed off to the farmer.

Traceability techniques can provide additional guarantees as to the origin, type or organoleptic quality of food products.” www.oie.int...

Yet it is obvious that traceability does nothing to prevent disease, it only allows blame to be placed after the fact.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) changed how disease and food safety is handled around the world. The USDA decided to change focus from disease eradication to disease “prevention” by changing from a zero tolerance import policy to a “scientifically-based and transparent risk assessment,” and opening US borders to trade in “low risk commodities”. This is why the USA has suddenly been flooded by tainted imports. They are obviously considered “low risk” www.animalagriculture.org...

According to the World Trade Organization:

"Measures to trace animals...to provide assurances on...safety ...have been incorporated into international standards... The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary [SPS] Measures...Aims to ensure THAT GOVERNMENTS DO NOT USE QUARANTINE AND FOOD SAFETY REQUIREMENTS as UNJUSTIFIED TRADE BARRIERS... It provides Member countries with a right to implement traceability as an SPS measure."

In simple terms The WTO “free trade agreement” allows cheap imports to cross borders without quarantine or other food safety testing. Only Traceability is allowed. The “new food safety policy” (1995) is about opening borders to trade.

Transfer of Corporate Liability

Wisconsin was the first state to make NAIS (animal traceability) mandatory. The corporate response is quite interesting. Family farmers have feared that:

“One of the big goals of NAIS is to shift liability to the farmers and off of the packers and retail chains. This is despite the fact that virtually all food contamination happens at the slaughterhouse and beyond.” nonais.org...

Paul-Martin:Griepentrog on September 3, 2008 reported that this was indeed the case. He attended “quality assurance training required for Badger Vac 45.” And reported

“You [the farmer] will be required to cover ALL expenses in the event of contamination...The bottom line is that after 10 years [note the date] of below normal prices here in Wis because the state allowed Equity Livestock Coop to create a monopoly, our savior has now arrived to burden us with contracts shifting all liability to feeder cattle producers if they can’t prove they are innocent. “ SOURCE

There was even a conference scheduled in 2009 addressing how to pass the blame to farmers!

Conference to address food-borne illness litigation

“The conference will cover topics such as aligning damage assessments/expectations with the outcomes from recent resolved litigation; managing an outbreak effectively to minimize shareholder and reputational risk afterwards as quickly as possible; and how to measure and prove actual control of various players in the movement of contaminated food to accurately assess apportionment of liability....

Unfortunately, Monsanto has expendable cash and men they hire just to show up at court everyday. This will drain the farmers.These guys are no strangers to court anyway.They have experience.The Rockefellers and the like are funding these guys anyway, Monsanto does their will.They own the very government that will be trying Monsanto.

I suspect the only real functional weapon against Monsanto will be direct action.


Not that I'd condone anything like that.

reply to post by Phenomium

Unfortunately, Monsanto has expendable cash and men they hire just to show up at court everyday. This will drain the farmers.These guys are no strangers to court anyway.They have experience.The Rockefellers and the like are funding these guys anyway....

Yes the Farmers are fighting a real up hill battle and it has been going on for decades. That is why farmers have been portrayed in print as dumb hicks or money grabbing multi-millionaires.

The usual divide and conquer. Farmers have been separated from their customers and are now hanging in the wind. Only when they are gone will the idiots in the cities notice.

I have spent FIVE or more years trying to point out the danger and getting nothing but a big YAWN at FARMERS MARKETS!!!

As Doreen said Let Them EAT GRASS!

reply to post by Peter Brake

Our justice system has very little to do with "right" and even less to do with common sense. Its about who has the most money and power. Good luck to these brave farmers.

Originally posted by incrediblelousminds
I suspect the only real functional weapon against Monsanto will be direct action.


Not that I'd condone anything like that.

Or you can kill their CEO and board of directors and bomb their buildings with all their cronies inside them.

To me, violence seems to be the only way out of this.

These people may have a million lawyers and money, but they're still flesh and bone.

reply to post by die_another_day


Consider the fact that they have a mercenary army at their disposal. Someone as evil as these folks are sure to be prepared for the inevitable backlash. Consider also that you are not the only one that thinks of Monsanto as the most evil of corporations on the planet. If you do a google search for evil corporation Monsanto you get about 331,000 results. That is a lot of despising by a lot of folks. I am betting Xe will be watching their backs.

reply to post by iLoGiCViZiOnS

In fact it will be an OOPS kinda moment when we have allowed this to happen and have done nothing to stop it when all of a sudden there are no seeds left.....

It is really bad news with the terminator gene waiting in the wings and the "horizontal gene transfer" problem.

Boy am I glad I do not have kids or close relatives....

reply to post by incrediblelousminds

I suspect the only real functional weapon against Monsanto will be direct action.....

I have been in a Monsanto plant... It blew-up a short while later......

No I had nothing to do with it. It was a very old faulty reaction vessel that blew, but maybe my mentally cursing them helped.

(No injuries thank goodness)