Monsanto Atrocities – Read and Take Action
Multi-Billion $$ Monsanto Sues
More Small Family Farmers
Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Saskatchewan Canada, whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto’s genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola by pollen from a nearby farm. Monsanto says it doesn’t matter how the contamination took place, and is therefore demanding Schmeiser pay their Technology Fee (the fee farmers must pay to grow Monsanto’s genetically engineered products). According to Schmeiser, “I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract.
If I would go to St. Louis (Monsanto Headquarters) and contaminate their plots – destroy what they have worked on for 40 years – I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away.”
Rodney Nelson’s family farm is being forced into a similar lawsuit by Monsanto.
Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.
Sign OCA’s “Millions Against Monsanto” petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings.
Monsanto Brings Small Family Dairy to Court
Oakhurst Dairy has been owned and operated by the same Maine family since 1921, and Monsanto recently attempted to put them out of business. Oakhurst, like many other dairy producers in the U.S., has been responding to consumer demand to provide milk free of rBGH, a synthetic hormone banned (for health reasons) in every industrialized country other than the U.S. 
Monsanto, the number one producer of the rBGH synthetic steroid, sued Oakhurst, claiming they should not have the right to inform their customers that their dairy products do not contain the Monsanto chemical. Given the intense pressure from the transnational corporation, Oakhurst was forced to settle out of court, leaving many other dairies vulnerable to similar attacks from Monsanto.
Monsanto Hid PCB Pollution for Decades
ANNISTON, Ala. — On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn’t know their dirt and yards and bass and kids — along with the acrid air they breathed — were all contaminated with toxic chemicals. They didn’t know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.
Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” — show that for decades, the corporate-giant concealed what it did and what it knew… (Read more…)
Monsanto’s Agent Orange: The Corporation Continues to Refuse Compensation to Veterans and Families for Exposure to the Toxic Chemical
The negative health effects, due to exposure to Monsanto’s Agent Orange, have been well documented over the past three decades. The dioxin in Agent Orange has been accepted internationally as one of the most toxic chemicals on the planet, causing everything from severe birth defects, to cancer, to neurological disorders, to death. But Monsanto has successfully blocked any major movement towards compensating veterans and civilians who were exposed to the company’s Agent Orange.
Long before Agent Orange was used as a herbicide in the Vietnam war, Monsanto knew of its negative health impacts on humans. Since then, Monsanto has been unsuccessful at covering its tracks and has even been convicted of fabricating false research documentation that claims Agent Orange has no negative health effects, other than a possible skin rash. Thanks to Monsanto’s influence, the Center for Disease Control also released a report claiming veterans were never exposed to harmful levels of Agent Orange.
As a note, from 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 72 million liters of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, on over one million Vietnamese civilians and over 100,000 U.S. troops. As a result, within ten years of the close of the war, 9170 veterans had filed claims for disabilities caused by Agent Orange. The VA denied compensation to 7709, saying that a facial rash was the only disease associated with exposure.
In 2002, Vietnam requested assistance in dealing with the tens of thousands of birth defects due to Agent Orange. In order to avoid medical compensation expenses, Monsanto continues to claim this now banned chemical is not toxic. (Read more..)
Taxpayers Forced to Fund Monsanto’s Poisoning of Third World
Monsanto has also been implicated in the indiscriminate sale and use of RoundUp Ultra in the anti-drug fumigation efforts of Plan Colombia. Of the some $1.3 billion of taxpayers’ money earmarked for Plan Colombia, Monsanto has received upwards of $25 million for providing RoundUp Ultra.
RoundUp Ultra is a highly concentrated version of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide, with additional surfactants to increases its lethality. Local communities and human rights organizations charge that Ultra is destroying food crops, water sources and protected areas in the Andes, primarily Colombia.
Paradoxically, the use of RoundUp Ultra has actually increased coca cultivation in the Andes. As local farming communities are increasingly impacted by RoundUp Ultra fumigations, many turn to the drug trade as a means of economic survival. Regional NGOs have estimated that almost 200,000 hectares have been fumigated with Ultra under Plan Colombia.
Monsanto’s Roundup Pesticide Killing Wheat
Monsanto also produces the most commonly used broadleaf pesticide in the world, glyphosate–or Roundup. In addition to its inherent toxicity as a chemical pesticide, Roundup has now been found to aid the spread of fusarium head blight in wheat. This disease creates a toxin in the infected wheat, making the crop unsuitable for human or animal consumption. Canada’s wheat industry is currently being ravaged by this disease. At the same time, the widespread use of Roundup has resulted in the formation of “super weeds” — unwanted plants that have developed an immunity to these pesticides. Read study linking Monsanto’s Roundup to Cancer.
Monsanto Takes Ownership of Public Water Resources
Over the past century, global water supplies have been contaminated with the full gamut of Monsanto’s chemicals, including PCBs, dioxin and glyophosate (Roundup). So now the company, seeing a profitable market niche, is taking control of the public water resources they polluted, filtering it, and selling it back to the people. In short, Monsanto is making a double profit by polluting the world’s scarce freshwater resources, privately taking ownership of that water, filtering it, and selling it back to those who can afford to pay for it.
Monsanto’s GE Seeds are Pushing US Agriculture into Bankruptcy
Genetically engineered crops are causing an economic disaster for farmers in the U.S. So says a new report released by Britain’s Soil Association. The report is a massive compilation of data showing GE crops have cost American taxpayers $12 billion in farm subsidies in the past three years. “Within a few years of the introduction of GM crops, almost the entire $300 million annual US maize exports to the EU had disappeared, and the US share of the soya market had decreased,” the report said. In addition, the study says that GE crops have lead to an increased use of pesticides, while resulting in overall lower crop yields. (Read more…)
Cotton Farmers Going Bankrupt from Monsanto’s GE Cotton
In India the financial figures for the recent cotton growing season have finally been crunched. 
Although Monsanto convinced many of India’s farmers that buying the more expensive GE cotton seeds would result in higher yields and better cotton, the reverse is actually true. Crop yields for GE cotton were 5 TIMES LESS than traditional Indian cotton and the income from GE cotton was 7 TIMES LESS than conventional cotton, due to Monsanto’s cotton having lower quality short fibers. As a result of the insurmountable deluge of debt accrued from paying more for the GE seeds and having a weak crop, more than 100 Indian farmers committed suicide in the last year. (Read more...)
Here is a short summary of how a major ecological malfunction occurred within 4 years of the first GM crops in Africa.
The African Stalkborer (Busseola fusca), known as the stalkborer, has lived in Africa for thousands of years. It bores into the stalks of all indigenous grasses and thus plays a vital role in the natural ecology of Africa.
The Bacillus Thuringienis (Bt) is a bacteria which has existed throughout the world for thousands of years. It plays a vital role in the balance of the ecology of all grasses throughout the world by attacking, inter alia, the vulnerable diapause larvae of insects hibernating in the dormant dry stalks of all grasses throughout the world. (Diapause is a period of suspended development or growth occurring in many insects and other invertebrates during which metabolism is greatly decreased.) This important bacteria (Bt) secretes a crystal pesticide (Cry Toxin) which is toxic to the diapause larvae whilst they are in this vulnerable diapause state. For thousands of years the perfect balance between grasses, diapause larvae and Bt has existed. For thousands of years no insect resistance to naturally occurring Bt has ever developed. Dr Rami Kfir of the South African Agricultural Research Council (ARC) : Journal of African Zoology 107:543-553, prior to the introduction of GM crops, confirmed the high winter mortality rate of larvae of the stalkborer which he attributed partially to Bt which he had significantly isolated, among other pathogens, on the cadavers of diapause stalkborer in the stover (stalks) of maize.
Natural Bt spray. Decades prior to the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops, microbial preparations of the entomopatho-genic bacterium Bacilllus thuringiensis (Bt) containing the Cry Toxin were commercially formulated. This had numerous applications in the control of insects, but it’s most significant use for the purposes this discussion was that it was extremely efficient as a spray in the control of stalkborer throughout the world. This toxin was particularly popular with irrigation farmers who simply used their overhead sprays to strategically target vulnerable hatching and infantile crawling larvae. A most important, economic factor, is that natural Bt spray is used by organic farmers because it is natural and also biodegradable in water so no residue remains on the produce. Because insects in some areas have become extremely resistant to synthetic insecticides, particularly the pyrethroids, Bt spray has replaced synthetic pesticide in many areas. It therefore has significant agricultural and economic importance.
After twenty years of use, no stalkborer resistance to natural Bt spray has developed in any field population of maize throughout the world. (Tabashnik 1994).
The first genetically modified (GM) Bt maize containing an edible Cry Toxin was planted in South Africa 1994 and it took only four years for the first resistant African Stalk borer to appear in a number of localities. The first reported cases cases arrived at the Agricultural Research Centre ARC in Potchefstroom during the 1998/1999 growing season. Prof Van Rensburg attributed this to larvae feeding on the silks which when mature penetrated the stalks and went into diapause later to mature into the first seasonal flight of moths.
Bearing in mind that there are two flights of moths each growing season, each moth producing some 1500 eggs, it is not surprising that during the 2004/2005 growing season an alarming number reports of severe damage to GM maize crops flooded in to the ARC. What was even more alarming was that they originated from many widely dispersed locations throughout the country. It was not only restricted to Monsanto’s GM maize but to all brands of GM maize. The one thing in common was that the wide spread reports of severe damage were widely spread throughout South Africa and all involved irrigation schemes.
The fact that the stalkborer has a propensity for developing a resistance to the ever present edible Cry Toxin in Bt maize and the stalkborer’s virile reproductive capacity, has effectively neutralised commercial Bt sprays with severe economic implications to agriculture.
The biggest and probably the most unexpected ecological malfunction was that the natural control reported by Dr Ramy Kfir in the preferred hosts, indigenous grasses, has been compromised beyond repair.
I dont understand how this company is still in business after agent orange, suing small farmers for something they absolutely nothing to do with, and also spilling there chemicals into waters and who knows where else. WHAT KIND OF SCAM IS THIS. I personally was affected by agent orange. My dad is a Vietnam Veteran and I was born with spinal bifida because of this. I had to have surgery when I was one day old to repair it. Then in 2006 I had to have brain surgery because of a brain tumor, and in 2009 I had to have 3 spinal surgeries to remove a tumor, a cyst, repair a disk and put in a shunt. And am currently living in a wheelchair and am numb from the waist down. This is what they have done for me. When is this going to end. When will someone realize what a bad thing this company is doing to this planet and more important to the human beings that live on it.