Huge GMO News

It hasn’t been a good week for Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry.

Just three days ago, Mexico banned genetically engineered corn. Citing the risk of imminent harm to the environment, a Mexican judge ruled that, effective immediately, no genetically engineered corn can be planted in the country. This means that companies like Monsanto will no longer be allowed to plant or sell their corn within the country’s borders.

At the same time, the County Council for the island of Kauai passed a law that mandates farms to disclose pesticide use and the presence of genetically modified crops. The bill also requires a 500-foot buffer zone near medical facilities, schools and homes — among other locations.

And the big island of Hawaii County Council gave preliminary approval to a bill that prohibits open air cultivation, propagation, development or testing of genetically engineered crops or plants. The bill, which still needs further confirmation to become law, would also prohibit biotech companies from operating on the Big Island.

But perhaps the biggest bombshell of all is now unfolding in Washington state. The mail-in ballot state’s voters are already weighing in on Initiative 522, which would mandate the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Knowing full well that 93 percent of the American public supports GMO labeling, and that if one state passes it, many others are likely to follow, entrenched agribusiness interests are pulling out all the stops to try to squelch yet another state labeling effort.

This time, however, things aren’t going quite as planned. On Wednesday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Feguson filed a lawsuit against the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). The GMA, a lobby for the junk food industry, has been by far the largest donor to efforts to defeat the labeling initiative. The lawsuit alleged that the GMA illegally collected and spent more than $7 million while shielding the identity of its contributors.

The source of the money has now been exposed, and it turns out to be Pepsico, Coca-Cola, NestleUSA, General Mills and a few other junk food companies. The lawsuit revealed that GMA leadership held a series of secret meetings to plot how to perpetrate a money laundering scheme and illegally hide member donations from Washington state voters, in direct violation of campaign disclosure laws.

Unlike the junk food companies that feared consumer backlash, Monsanto hasn’t even bothered to hide the more than $4 million the company has given to the “no” campaign. In fact, GMA, Monsanto and a handful of other corporate donors have now broken a state record by pouring more than $17 million into their effort to stop Washington’s GMO labeling ballot initiative.

Source

Mexico banning GMO crops is just the beginning. Hopefully now more countries will follow suit. I mean if they have to spend that much money and fighting labelling, what the hell is in it?!
A friend once gave me some advice.. Never eat anything that has an advert on TV, never eat anything they have to spend millions of pounds in advertising to get people to eat it.

Mexico is big on corn, they have been selectively breeding it for thousands of years. It's where most of the different corn varieties have originated.
To have a large corporation come in with their greed and tamper with or take over generations of seed selection is an insult to them.
Mexicans have been taught how to spot GM corn and pull it as fast as they can, they don't want it cross pollinating and destroying thousands of years of careful breeding with some greedy corporations 'years' of research.
But not only that, but to take away the right for them to do what they have been doing for generations?
To grow their own corn.

And for me, I get served corn on my plate, I eat it, but I don't know what I am eating.
I hate that!
Then there is tuna, but that's another story.

It's about time to hear some encouraging news about the banning of GMOs'.

Long time coming.

But what about all the fields that have cross pollinated already with nearby GMO fields? The problem isn't going to go away too soon even with banning.

eta: Just saw that while typing the poster above me already brought up the pollination thing. Oh well.

Disregard. Double post.

I'm glad to see this happening. A couple of years ago I wouldn't have had any hope of seeing this backlash to GMO agriculture.

S&F for that little bit of hope that a post like this helps to inspire.

sarahlm
The lawsuit revealed that GMA leadership held a series of secret meetings to plot how to perpetrate a money laundering scheme and illegally hide member donations from Washington state voters, in direct violation of campaign disclosure laws.

Let me know when the bolded text is properly defined as conspiracy. Hopefully some of these criminals will be facing felony charges near-term.

Unless I missed hearing about it, isn't Europe having a hard time banning GMO's because of the companies flooding cash into keeping them?

Monsanto, and their kin, are a cancer to our world.
The greed will dry up the lakes, make the fields barren, and effectively empty out the wallets of each person (starting with the real food producers: our farmers).

BUT! Let's not forget!! They're not all that bad right?? They don't feed their own employees GMO at all! LOLROFLMAO K thx bye. *sarcasm definitely implied*

How did we ever let this problem grow so big?

Thank God, Mexico has banned GMO. I used to see all these small efforts for the reclamation of their crops from big Agribusiness.... and now it's finally taking hold and growing fruit (non GMO fruit for that matter!).

Now if only the rest (US, India, South America, Africa, South East Asia, Etc.) would follow suit and send those money-launderers back to the dark abyss from which they came. lol

Maybe the exiled can all start a support group together... one where they can circle stories about how good it used to be... while suffering from their own GMO-induced illnesses.

reply to post by sarahlm


That's good news, though ultimately I don't think the American corporate machine will distinguish between GM protesters and "terrorists," if they really get in the way. Opium in Afghanistan, rice in Mexico, whatever.
It's just another facet of world dominance, just another theatre of war.

And when we buy anything from ---- " Pepsico, Coca-Cola, NestleUSA, General Mills and a few other junk food companies." ---- we are part of the problem.

Perhaps there are imaginative ways in which the public images of these companies could be inexorably linked with some of the damage they do ?

Posters of kids with bad teeth drinking cola, -- fat slobs serving burgers in Mc D's -- babies with water-borne diseases courtesy of Nestle; wouldn't these be nearer the truth?
I wish more artists had political awareness.
Now that Damian Hirst has redefined art as doing something silly with a sheep, there are more artists in my Yorkshire dale than on Paris's left bank.


mistersmith.

sarahlm
It hasn’t been a good week for Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry.

Whoa there...do we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? There's more to biotech than Monsanto and "Big Pharma."

Good for the lawsuit. On top of that illegal collections, right now the opposition against the initiative raised the biggest funding ever in Wash. State.

Please ask me this Phage and other GMO supporters Why is it that the GMO companies and the elites don't eat their own GMO foods? I mean you do say that its not bad for you lol. Well if its not bad for you then why isn't our members of parliament, the royal family, bankers, Monsanto, etc saying that they will not be eating GMO. Maybe because they full well know the truth that GMO causes cancer, causes obesity, and other illnesses. After all we are all useless eaters and we must be put to death slowly so while we die they take take take from our pockets.

GM foods are banned from restaurants in the Houses of Parliament despite government claims it is ‘probably safer’ than other meals. Government ministers are demanding that ordinary families should abandon their reluctance to eat genetically modified food, however they are banned from MPs’ plates. This week the food and farming secretary, Owen Paterson, launched an extraordinary propaganda campaign to encourage the nation to accept GM crops and farming.

source

Great news,
Phage?? where are you?


anyone against monsanto and any other company like them is a friend of mine

these big companies are all in bed with each other...the only way to have an affect on them is to not purchase the products they sell....... we have to beat them at their own game ....GMO crops need to go......and so do the companies that support and use them

reply to post by sarahlm


Oh, absolutely excellent news. Thank you for your report.

S&F& : up :