Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto
From DEMOCRACY September 17, 2010
Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto: The Story of a Canadian Farmer’s Fight to Defend the Rights of Farmers and the Future of Seeds

Gathered here in Bonn this week are some eighty Right Livelihood Award laureates, including the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, who has battled the biotech giant Monsanto for years. When Monsanto seeds blew into Schmeiser’s property, Monsanto accused him of illegally planting their crops and took him to court. Ultimately his case landed in the Canadian Supreme Court. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1997 for fighting to defend the rights of farmers and the future of seeds.

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~and he shook his fist in our face and said, “Nobody stands up to Monsanto. We are going to get both of you, somehow, some day, and destroy you both.

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AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Bonn, Germany, where the thirtieth anniversary of the Right Livelihood Awards is being held. The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 and has become widely known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. Gathered here in Bonn this week are some eighty Right Livelihood Award laureates, including the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, who has battled the biotech company Monsanto for years. In 1997, Percy and his wife Louise won the Right Livelihood Award for their courage in defending biodiversity and farmers’ rights. I spoke with Percy Schmeiser yesterday in Bonn, but first I want to turn to Bertram Verhaag’s documentary Percy Schmeiser: David versus Monsanto.

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While those of us working on the GMO invasion have been focused on the GMO alfalfa fiasco, the moratorium on the planting of GMO-ized sugar beets has been lifted.

The US Department of Agriculture last Friday gave farmers the go-ahead to resume planting Roundup Ready sugarbeets, claiming [GET THIS] “it’s the only way to avoid a nationwide shortage of sugar”.

Now wouldn’t that just be terrible if the U.S., where people with type two diabetes (T2D) are poised to out-number people without the self-imposed condition, and where most of us are “starving from over-eating” nutrient deficient sugary junk were to fall into a nationwide shortage of sugar?

Junk food Personified

In a nation where misguided citizens literally eat their weight in ‘added’ sugar every year, our thoughtful overlords at the USDA are concerned about a sugar shortage. Thanks guys. Read more »

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced early this year (2011) that they will soon be publishing their lengthy (2300+ page) Environmental Impact Statement which will give final approval in favor of Monsanto for the planting of genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa.

Who is going to read the 2,300 pages? Our trusted representatives, I don’t think so. They don’t have to; they already know how the story ends. They put some more of Monsanto’s money in their pockets and steal the future from their kids.

Alfalfa is grown on something like 3-400,000 farms on many millions of acres.
Over twenty billion pounds of alfalfa are harvested each year in the United States and most is cycled through the meat that humans eat. Read more »

alfalfa

With the noble and irrepressible plant, Alfalfa poised to be the next big recipient of Monsanto’s War on Life, It is little enough to recognize the character and contributions of this wonderful gift of the green Earth.

Millions Against Monsanto

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no milk

Hormones in Milk, and Rat’s Milk for People

Some months ago I received several notifications of doctor’s news release focusing on the rBST (recombinant bovine growth hormone / Recombinant bovine Somatotropin, a synthetic duplicate of BGH) in milk issue.

I was compelled to respond because of the problems inherent in the presentation of false choices and the ways in which well meaning/health minded people could be hurt.

The false choice which begs for exposure in this case goes something like this:

“Some versions of commercial of cow’s milk may be unhealthful, so other versions will be healthful”. That is a dangerous leap-of-assumption, like the thought process which says: “conventional grocery stores sell junk, so I’ll shop at health food stores where everything on the shelves is clean, green and healthful” or “some republican politicians are corrupt so I can trust the democrats”. In just the same way as with these other false choice examples, there is no realistic rationale for the ‘milk leap’. In such cases the rash leap can produce unexpected harmful results. Read more »