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As world marches against Monsanto, senators protect it from labeling laws

by gerdi Posted on May 27, 2013

As world marches against Monsanto, senators protect it from labeling laws

By John Upton

Any U.S. senators paying attention to what was happening in the entire world over the weekend may have noticed a teensy disconnect between their protectionist votes for Monsanto and global discontent with the GMO giant.

Steve Rhodes

Marching against Monsanto in San Francisco

On Saturday, protestors in dozens of countries took to the streets to “March against Monsanto.” The coordinated day of action against genetic engineering and reprehensible business practices by the Missouri-based company came just two days after the Senate rejected a bid by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) to ensure that his state and others are free to mandate labels on transgenic foods.

First, to those protests. Organizers tallied rallies in 436 cities across 52 countries, according to the AP:

The ‘March Against Monsanto’ movement began just a few months ago, when founder and organizer Tami Canal created a Facebook page on Feb. 28 calling for a rally against the company’s practices.

“If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success,” she said Saturday. Instead, she said an “incredible” number of people responded to her message and turned out to rally. …

Protesters [marched] in Buenos Aires and other cities in Argentina, where Monsanto’s genetically modified soy and grains now command nearly 100 percent of the market, and the company’s Roundup-Ready chemicals are sprayed throughout the year on fields where cows once grazed. They carried signs saying “Monsanto — Get out of Latin America.”

In Portland, thousands of protesters took to Oregon streets. Police estimate about 6,000 protesters took part in Portland’s peaceful march, and about 300 attended the rally in Bend. Other marches were scheduled in Baker City, Coos Bay, Eugene, Grants Pass, Medford, Portland, Prineville and Redmond.

Across the country in Orlando, about 800 people gathered with signs, pamphlets and speeches in front of City Hall. Maryann Wilson of Clermont, Fla., said she learned about Monsanto and genetically modified food by watching documentaries on YouTube.

Now, to those senators. From The Guardian:

The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would allow states to require labeling of genetically modified foods.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said his amendment was an attempt to clarify that states can require the labels, as several legislatures have moved toward putting such laws into place. The Vermont house and the Connecticut senate voted this month to make food companies declare genetically modified ingredients on their packages.

The Senate rejected the amendment on a 71-27 vote, during debate on a wide-ranging, five-year farm bill that includes generous supports for crops like corn and soybeans that are often genetically modified varieties. Senators from farm states that use a lot of genetically modified crops strongly opposed the amendment, saying the issue should be left up to the federal government and that labels could raise costs for consumers.

The vote did not affect a bill introduced in April by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) that would mandate labeling of all products containing genetically ingredients sold in America. But it was a reminder that the labeling bill doesn’t stand a honey bee’s chance in a field full of Roundup of becoming law.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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As world marches against Monsanto, senators protect it from labeling laws

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Connecticut Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

by 0df53x21 Posted on May 23, 2013

Connecticut Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Is this corn genetically modified? Connecticut lawmakers think you have the right to know.

Does your mouth water at the thought of corn that’s engineered to produce a poison that kills insects? If not, Connecticut might be the place for you.

The state’s Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation that would require food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically engineered ingredients such as GM corn. The bill sailed through on a 35-1 vote, and now moves to the state House.

From the Connecticut Post:

Speaker of the House J. Brendan Sharkey [D] wants to support legislation that would require the labeling of products that contain genetically modified organisms.

But he’s not sure whether the House will approve the version approved in the state Senate late Tuesday night that would depend on three nearby states to approve similar legislation by July of 2015.

Sharkey, in an interview near the House podium around the time the Senate was approving the bill, said his majority caucus met behind closed doors earlier in the day to discuss the controversial measure.

“The caucus confirmed my own sense that obviously we want to do something,” Sharkey said. “My concern all along has been the question of whether Connecticut should put itself out on its own, requiring this labeling and whether that puts us at an economic disadvantage being the first and only state to do this.”

Unlike 64 other countries, the U.S. lacks any labeling laws for GMO food (though Americans who want to avoid it could do so by buying certified organics). Some countries outright ban GMOs — officials in Hungary just burned 1,000 acres of Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn after new crop-testing regulations led to its discovery.

So lawmakers in Connecticut, Vermont, and elsewhere are trying to take matters into their own hands, pushing forward with state-level labeling legislation. Bills in both of those New England states are cautious, setting long timeframes for the start of a ban and including caveats based on whether other states adopt similar laws. That caution is a response to fears of lawsuits from the powerful food and ag industry, which opposes GMO labeling.

From the Hartford Courant:

“I’m concerned about our state going out on its own on this and the potential economic disadvantage that could cause,” House Speaker Brendan Sharkey said. “I would like to see us be part of a compact with some other states, which would hopefully include one of the bigger states such as New York.” …

Even if the bill passes the House and is signed into law by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy [D], it would not take effect until at least three other states pass similar legislation. GMO labeling legislation is pending in more than a dozen states.

The Center for Food Safety reports that legislation in Maine is also moving forward:

In addition to the Connecticut victory, [on Tuesday] Maine’s GE food labeling bill passed through the state’s Agriculture Committee — a major hurdle — which voted 8-5 in favor of their labeling bill. The bill passed the state Assembly earlier this month.

“Both of these victorious votes show the power of the voice of consumers, who through their vocal and powerful demand for GE food labeling, are finally getting their state lawmakers to listen and take action,” said Rebecca Spector, west coast director of Center for Food Safety.

All of this action has some Monsanto backers nervous. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) recently inserted an amendment into the Farm Bill that would forbid states from requiring labels on GMO foods.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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Connecticut Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

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Meet Roy Blunt, the senator from Missouri — and Monsanto

by Gwenda Bischof Posted on April 4, 2013

Meet Roy Blunt, the senator from Missouri — and Monsanto

By Susie Cagle

After much hemming, hawing, and Hulking, some crack reporters have solved the case of the Monsanto rider, the new law that gives GMO crops legal immunity.

It was Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) in the boardroom with the inappropriate relationships with Big Ag lobbyists!

Politico first broke the Blunt story, but Tom Philpott at Mother Jones highlights just how cozy the Missouri senator is with the GMO giant, who he “worked with” to write and pass the rider.

“If Sen. Blunt plans to continue carrying Monsanto’s water in the Senate, the company will have gained the allegiance of a wily and proven political operator,” he writes. More from MoJo:

The admission shines a light on Blunt’s ties to Monsanto, whose office is located in the senator’s home state. According to OpenSecrets, Monsanto first started contributing to Blunt back in 2008, when it handed him $10,000. At that point, Blunt was serving in the House of Representatives. In 2010, when Blunt successfully ran for the Senate, Monsanto upped its contribution to $44,250. And in 2012, the GMO seed/pesticide giant enriched Blunt’s campaign war chest by $64,250.

This is all so obvious that even Monsanto “appears a touch embarrassed,” according to The Guardian.

In a statement, [Monsanto] says: “As a member of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), we were pleased to join major grower groups in supporting the Farmer Assurance Provision, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Seed Trade Association, the American Soybean Association, the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, the National Corn Growers Association, the National Cotton Council, and several others.”

The good news? Well, at least the “Monsanto Protection Act” expires on Sept. 30 along with the underlying spending bill onto which it was tacked. The Hulk may be a genetically modified beast, but he’s not all-powerful. Now someone please get me Thor’s hammer.

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Meet Roy Blunt, the senator from Missouri — and Monsanto

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Too big to prosecute: How Monsanto slipped the DOJ’s grasp

by olikellopas Posted on March 16, 2013

Too big to prosecute: How Monsanto slipped the DOJ’s grasp

By Susie Cagle

Hey so remember a few months ago when we told you about how the Department of Justice quietly slipped its Monsanto investigation into the shredder? The global GMO giant  was “pleased,” activists were pissed, and we were left wondering how that whole thing even happened.

Today, Lina Khan at Salon breaks down the what-the-fuck of it all. The investigation was first fertilized at the state level in 2007, when officials in Iowa, Texas, and other states began looking into Monsanto’s restrictive, anti-competitive contract agreements with seed companies and farmers. Monsanto’s trademarked genes are in more than 90 percent of American soy and 80 percent of corn.

Monsanto started in chemicals, only moving into genetically modified seed traits in the 1980s, and then buying up seed companies of its own in the ’90s. “Over the next decade Monsanto spent more than $12 billion to buy at least 30 such businesses,” Khan writes.

Alarmed by the fact that they were losing access to many key seed gene pools and seed breeders, biotech competitors – including DuPont, Dow and Syngenta – scrambled to keep up, grabbing suites of seed companies to secure their own arsenals.

Once mimicked by its rivals, Monsanto’s strategy redrew the industry. Competition and variety have dwindled as a result. Since the mid-1990s, the number of independent seed companies has shrunk from some 300 firms to fewer than 100. Many businesses not bought out directly were pushed out by bankruptcy.

The antitrust lawsuit against Monsanto proved difficult for the DOJ for a number of reasons, not least of which was Monsanto’s Hulk-like influence over Washington politics: The company spent nearly $6 million on lobbying last year.

When contacted, a spokeswoman for the DOJ acknowledged only that the antitrust division had shut its investigation into “possible anticompetitive activity” in the seed industry, due to “marketplace developments that occurred during the pendency of the investigation.” The spokeswoman would not detail these developments. “We believe it would not be appropriate to comment further,” she said. The state attorneys general who initiated the probe five years ago also closed their inquiry and have chosen not to comment. …

Those close to the investigation also note that it became easier for officials to justify inaction because Monsanto cleaned up its act as soon as authorities came knocking. Seed companies say Monsanto began loosening its licensing agreements in 2008, less than a year after the state attorneys general opened their inquiry. Months after the Justice Department followed suit in 2009, Monsanto announced it would allow farmers to continue using its leading soybeans, Roundup Ready 1, even after its patent expired in 2014. This gesture — at least in theory — opens the market to generic competition. …

[University of Wisconsin Law School professor Peter] Carstensen, a former DOJ attorney, believes antitrust officials may have been reluctant to wage a close fight given Monsanto’s political connections. “There was a good case to be made, but at the end of the day nobody was prepared to bite the bullet and move forward,” he said. …

“It’s a great frustration,” Carstensen says. “If the Obama administration really cared about technological innovation, they would have come in and tried to free technology from being captured by a single company.” Instead, he says, they have “protected Monsanto’s interest.”

But Monsanto learned its lesson, right, and cleaned up its act? Monsanto’s not Hulking out anymore, it’s just a calm big-agriculture Bruce Banner now, right? Yeah, not so much. The company’s lobbyists are now pushing the “Monsanto Protection Act” into a Senate spending bill. “Even if a court orders Monsanto to stop planting seeds until an environmental review is carried out, this bill overrules that,” reports SustainableBusiness.com. Gee, thanks for setting some precedent, DOJ!

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Too big to prosecute: How Monsanto slipped the DOJ’s grasp

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Too big to prosecute: How Monsanto slipped the DOJ’s grasp

Justice Department ditches Monsanto investigation

by Myrna Posted on December 3, 2012

Justice Department ditches Monsanto investigation

By Susie Cagle

While we were celebrating Thanksgiving, Monsanto had much to be thankful for, too. Last month, the Department of Justice quietly scrapped an investigation begun in January 2010 into anticompetitive practices in the American seed market that Monsanto dominates like an extra-mean, extra-genetically-modified Hulk. Today, Hulk “pleased.”

Monsanto

Tom Philpott at Mother Jones reports:

The DOJ didn’t even see fit to mark the investigation’s end with a press release. News of it emerged from a brief item Monsanto itself issued the Friday before Thanksgiving, declaring it had “received written notification” from the DOJ antitrust division that it had ended its investigation “without taking any enforcement action.”

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed to me that the agency had “closed its investigation into possible anticompetitive practices in the seed industry,” but would divulge no details. “In making its decision, the Antitrust Division took into account marketplace developments that occurred during the pendency of the investigation,” she stated via email. I asked what precisely those “marketplace developments” were. “I don’t have anything else for you,” she replied. Monsanto, too, is being tight-lipped — a company spokesperson said the company had no statement to make beyond the above-linked press release.

Monsanto’s proprietary traits end up in 98 percent of genetically modified soybeans and 79 percent of GM corn grown stateside. Along with other toxic seed avengers DuPont, Syngenta, and Dow, Monsanto owns more than 80 percent of the seed market.

We may not know why the DOJ abandoned its investigation, but we know it probably shouldn’t have.

[O]ne sign of an uncompetitive industry is the ability to raise prices at will, unimpeded by price pressure from rivals. It’s impossible to say, without more information, if the GMO giants have done that — but prices have risen briskly over the past decade. In her … 2009 paper, the American Antitrust Institute’s [Vice President Diana] Moss points out that in truly competitive markets, “technologies that enjoy widespread and rapid adoption” — like GM seeds — “typically experience precipitous declines” in price. But between 2000 and 2008, Moss writes, “real seed costs [for farmers] increased by an average annual rate of five percent for corn, almost 11 percent for cotton, and seven percent for soybeans.”

MONSANTO SMASH FARMERS. MONSANTO HAVE NO REGRETS.

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Justice Department ditches Monsanto investigation

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