Monsanto is another word for elitist ethnocentrism

This is Monsanto & Co. on Twitter last week:

MonsantoCo
Even after supplying those who need it this year, the US be able to save 10% of this year's corn harvest for the future. #ThankaFarmer about 5 hours ago from Twuffer

This is what the media reported in the five days before Monsanto made that boast:

• It's estimated one-sixth of the global population, about one billion people, are malnourished and going hungry every day. And there are real fears that number will be much bigger by 2050, when the world's population is projected to pass nine billion.
• In Guatemala, over 400,000 families are in desperate need of food due to a disastrous drought and crop failure. Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom has declared a national state of calamity due to extreme food shortages. Hardest hit are young children and pregnant women, who are vulnerable to malnutrition and need sufficient nourishment to grow and fight off disease.
• The United Nations children's fund (UNICEF) has urged for more action to be taken in southern Sudan to stop severe food shortage in parts of that region. UNICEF's Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson who visited in the vast region said now is the time to act. "Now is the time to act. Everybody needs to do their best to stop this humanitarian emergency, which is already affecting 1.5 million people across southern Sudan," said Johnson in a statement received here Friday.
• The number of U.S. households unable to put adequate food on the table increased sharply during the latest recession, reaching the highest level recorded since USDA began monitoring household food security in 1995. Proportionally, increases in food insecurity were greatest in groups that were historically less vulnerable to food insecurity.

I don't know what is more confronting - Monsanto's corporate elitism when it comes to American society, its insular ethnocentricity (based as it is within a global super power which is also one of the leading cereal-growing nations) or its determination to treat its audience like dumb idiots. No wonder this multinational appears to be losing market share.

More on Monsanto:
Monsanto Pulls GM Corn Amid Food Safety Concerns,Scoop, 17 November 2009
Monsanto faces 'distrust' in seed battle, Delaware Online, 15 November 2009

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

The lights weren’t on, but Monsanto was at home

MADGE Australia and friends went to see Monsanto and came away with a story to tell:

Monsanto turned out the lights yesterday after the ladies of MADGE Australia, Cropwatch, and Gene Ethics arrived to deliver bags of GM canola roadside weeds.

Agri-chemical giant Monsanto is the patent holder of the GM Roundup Ready canola crop recently planted in Australia. Bob Phelps of Gene Ethics also attended.

After obligatory photos in the Monsanto lobby, the ladies went to the door. It was locked. Then the Monsanto lights went out.

MADGE Australia's Madeleine Love explained the visit.

"The GM weeds were Monsanto's property, and they were on our roadsides. We'd prefer not to be cleaning up, but we didn't want to leave them there to contaminate GM free crops."

"They were physically removed from beside farmer Gai Marshall's GM free canola crop near Berrigan, NSW. There are many more, further up the road."

"Monsanto was told about their GM weeds, but they didn't come and clean them up.

Monsanto has a record of suing farmers who accidentally have these GM plants on their property [Percy Schmeiser]."

"We don't know anyone in Australia who would want GM weeds, so we were returning them to their owners. Strangely, Monsanto didn't seem to want them either."

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

In 2007 Monsanto spent US$4M+ on lobbying, in 2008 it spent US$8M+, while in 2009....

Graph U.S. Agricultural sector lobbying expenditure 2009

Monsanto & Co. continues to expand its dominance of the world seed and genetically modified food additive markets with certain of its corporate expenses rising each year this century.

In 2006 this biotech multinational spent over US$3 million on lobbying governments and government agencies. By 2008 it was spending over US$8 million. In 2009 so far Monsanto & Co has spent over US$6 million on similar activities.

It is only one of 342 agricultural sector lobbyists in the United States listed by Open Secrets but is by far the biggest spender this year.

The U.S. agricultural lobby sector in 2009 is worth $25,721,913, has made over $2 million in campaign contributions for the American 2010 election cycle to date and Monsanto is in the top five donation contributors.

In February of this year Monsanto approached the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking a ruling that stearidonic (SDA) omega-3 soybean oil was generally recognised as safe.

Monsanto intends to market SDA soybean oil as a food ingredient in the United States in a variety of food products including baked goods and baking mixes, breakfast cereals and grains, cheeses, dairy product analogs, fats and oils, fish products, frozen dairy desserts and mixes, grain products and pastas, gravies and sauces, meat products, milk products, nuts and nut products, poultry products, processed fruit juices, processed vegetable products, puddings and fillings, snack foods, soft candy, and soups and soup mixes. SDA soybean oil will be added to foods at levels that provide 375 mg SDA/serving.

Now it is reported that Monsanto is positioning itself to release soy-based GMO omega-3 oil on the market sometime after 2010 and according to a Monsanto media release the FDA has announced this month that genetically modified omega-3 oil is safe to use (however the FDA makes it plain that it has solely relied on Monsanto's own assessment).

Are we getting close to quod erat demonstrandum?

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Monsanto: St. Lois we have a problem

Despite its market dominance Monsanto & Co. is continuing to show financial loss according to the St. Lois Business Journal this month:

Monsanto Co. reported Wednesday a wider fourth-quarter loss on charges from recent layoffs and the sale of its sunflower operations. Monsanto lost $233 million in the quarter ended Aug. 31, compared with a loss of $172 million a year earlier. Results reflected restructuring charges that included the costs of staff reductions, streamlining brands, and office and facility consolidations. Monsanto recently cut 1,800 jobs, including 300 in St. Louis.

Monsanto's woes do not stop there however, because there is growing unease among government regulators around the world who suspect that anti-competitive practices abound in the global seed industry, not least in the multinational's home country America.

Here are the opening paragraphs of 23 October 2009 of The American Antitrust Institute white paper discussing the issue Transgenic Seed Platforms:
Competition Between a Rock and a Hard Place?:

With the widespread adoption by farmers of corn, cotton, and soybean seed containing transgenic technology, the U.S. seed industry has changed rapidly in the past twenty years. The largest changes include the creation of strongholds of patented technology and the gradual elimination of the numerous regional independent seed companies through consolidation. Resulting increases in concentration in affected markets has been driven largely by the industry’s dominant firm, Monsanto.

A threshold question to consider is whether Monsanto has exercised its market power to foreclose rivals from market access, harming competition and thereby slowing the pace of innovation and adversely affecting prices, quality, and choice for farmers and consumers of seed products. If the answer to this question is yes, remedying the intractable competitive situation that prevails in the transgenic seed industry may require antitrust enforcement, legislative relief, or both. The problem highlights both the importance of competition policy and the security and diversity of a key agricultural sector.

White Paper PDF download here.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

What's in that icecream you are eating?

What's in that icream you are eating that wasn't there in your grandmother's day?

In Australia the Federal Government has in total eight pages listing foods using gene technology and approved for sale under the Food Standards Australian New Zealand Act 1991.

Including nine versions of New Leaf potato, canola seed/oil/flour/syrup, corn/flour/oil/syrup/food grade ethanol, cotton oils/cottonseed oils, glucose made from fungus, soy foods/oil/protein meal, pectin, baker's yeast/yeast, icestructuring protein made from fish, food processing enzyme made from a bacteria, and sugar beet.

Genetically modified organisms can now form part of the production process or ingredients in foods - from takeaway foods like fish & chips/meat pies, frozen convenience food such as lasagna/pizza, to staples like bread through to traditional desserts that your grandmother used to make.

GM products approved as food, food additives and processing aids (PDF 79 KB)
GM products approved as therapeutics (PDF 19 KB)
GM products approved as pesticides or veterinary medicines (PDF 9 KB)

List of applications and licences for Dealings involving Intentional Release (DIR) of GMOs into the environment on behalf of CSIRO, BSES Ltd, Florigene P/L, Dept of Primary Industry (Vic), Bayer Crop Science P/L, Monsanto Australia Ltd, Queensland UT, University of Queensland, University of Adelaide, Hexima Ltd, Dept. of Primary Industries & Fisheries (Qld), Imugene Ltd, Dow AgroSciences Australia P/L, Syngenta Seeds P/L, Dept of Primary Industries, Aventis CropScience P/L.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Photo from Google Images

First Dog On The Moon takes the mickey out of Monsanto with Canolabees

First Dog On The Moon cartoon from Crikey
5 October 2009
Click on image to enlarge

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

The faces behind "Mr. Monsanto"

I've been told in no uncertain terms that it's my turn to do a post on Monsanto & Co., so here it is - a view of some of the faces behind Monsanto's media monitor, Mr. Monsanto.

PHOTO: Mica Veihman, head of Monsanto’s social media team (seated), with Chris Paton and Kathleen Manning, is tapping into Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. From the St. Lois Business Journal on 8th August 2009.

Regular readers will remember Kathleen for the noteworty line that no blog is too big or small for Monsanto to monitor.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Bless their cute curly heads! Monsanto blogs on morality

From Monsanto according to Monsanto post on 20 July 2009:

In this video I discussed the issue of other farmers saving patented seed with farmers who don't believe in that type of farming practice.

If you think about it, it's pretty simple. The law is the law. When you sign an agreement, you must obey that agreement. Just like when I buy a CD of my favorite artist (which I do have quite the collection), I don't burn it for friends. At the same time, I download quite a bit of songs to jam to on my iPod and I buy each and every one of those songs from iTunes.

Although these examples are on a much smaller scale, it's the right thing to do.

My parents raised me to always do the right thing, even if it costs more or doesn't seem like the most appealing option. I was raised on good morals, which I credit and thank my parents daily for. Just as I was raised on these morals, so were the two farmers featured in this video.

I hope you see it that way.

Leaving aside the ungainly stretch inherent in likening perpetual seed patents to music copyright, the irony of Monsanto blogging about morals is readily apparent.

This is the same company which spent years happily spreading dioxin/PCB contamination across the world. Here is a brief potted history of its recent transgressions and another about heavy metal contamination due to Monsanto mining operations.

Sadly Monsanto does not appear to see that its recalcitrant past concerning environmental degradation and denial of human rights makes a mockery of its current claim that; The law is the law.

Picture from Google Images

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

If it's July it must be time to mention Monsanto again....

Another month has passed and the big biotech companies continue their push to dominate the basic mechanism of food production - seeds, fertiliser and chemical weed eradication/suppression.

Each month that passes highlights Monsanto & Co's abysmal safety record.

From the Idaho Business Review, June 29 2009:

Federal regulators say an Idaho mine that Monsanto uses to make Roundup weed killer has violated federal and state water quality laws almost since it opened, sending selenium and other heavy metals into the region's streams. The Environmental Protection Agency says problems at the St. Louis-based company's mine near the Idaho-Wyoming border were documented starting in April 2002, 15 months after it won Bureau of Land Management approval.
The mine recently has failed to halt metals-laden water seeping from a waste dump.
Eva DeMaria, an EPA enforcement official in Seattle, says, "The measures they have implemented aren't working.''
The disclosure comes as Monsanto Co. wants federal officials to approve a new mine in the region.
Monsanto lobbyist Trent Clark says his company has remedied some EPA concerns and continues to work to fix violations at the waste dump.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Monsanto can Twitter but it can't hide

Not long back I added MonsantoCo to my Twitter list.
It has been fascinating to watch the parallel universe in which its public relations employees live.

Equally fascinating is that this urge to tweet appears to follow on from its earlier advertising campaign which was apparently based around the concept of 'sustainability'.

One has to suspect that the campaign in print and radio was not the success Monsanto hoped for, hence the back-up.

Of course Monsanto & Co is not alone in pushing the GMO cause - its clones are out there doing their bit as well.

The Mid America Croplife Association apparently wrote to Michelle Obama trying to head that new White House vegetable garden off at the pass and, Croplife Australia is still plugging way.

Needless to say SourceWatch cites BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow Agrosciences, DuPont, FMC, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta as key funders for the Croplife group.

Such is Monsanto's chutzpah that through Croplife International (of which it is a member) the company attempted to hijack the U.N. sponsored International Day for Biological Diversity this month which had as its theme Invasive Alien Species.

Invasive alien species are plants, animals, pathogens and other organisms that are non-native to an ecosystem, and which may cause economic or environmental harm or adversely affect human health. In particular, they impact adversely upon biodiversity, including decline or elimination of native species - through competition, predation, or transmission of pathogens - and the disruption of local ecosystems and ecosystem functions.

If you believed Croplife, the international day was actually all about the pesticides/herbicides, genetically modified seed etc., supplied by its member companies.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

More GM lobby machinations?

Times Higher Education earlier this year:

A charity has come under fire for failing to declare all industry affiliations of the experts it enlisted to compile a booklet explaining genetic modification to the public.
The pamphlet was produced by Sense About Science (SAS), a charity that claims to promote scientific reasoning in public discussions.
According to anti-genetic modification campaigners and academics, it failed to mention links between some of the experts who wrote the booklet and GM firms.
For example, the guide's biography of Vivian Moses, emeritus professor of microbiology at Queen Mary, University of London, and visiting professor of biotechnology at King's College London, does not mention that he is also chairman of CropGen, a GM lobby group that receives funding from the biotechnology industry.
It says only that he has been "a full-time researcher in biochemistry and microbiology" and is now "primarily concerned with communicating science to the public".
Critics also argued that the guide should have noted that the John Innes Centre, where eight of its 28 contributors are based, received funding from biotechnology companies.
Michael Antoniou, a geneticist at King's College London, described the omissions as "outrageous".
He said: "GM is a sensitive issue. People have been extremely suspicious because of its industrial connections. So it is imperative that they declare these in this context, as in a journal publication."
Dr Antoniou, who himself provides technical advice to anti-GM campaign group GM Watch, speculated that SAS had not disclosed Professor Moses' directorship because it was afraid of arousing public suspicion.

GM Watch tells us that there are even more 'scientists' hidden in the woodpile:

The pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science (SAS) has been caught with its pants down by Private Eye. The famous satirical magazine has obtained a confidential draft copy of SAS's recently published GM guide which shows it had a "ghost writer" that SAS failed to declare. Here's the article.
Private Eye No. 1232, 20 March - 2 April 2009, Books and Bookmen (p.26)
A spat has broken out over a Times Higher Education article highlighting the failure of a new guide to GM food, 'Making Sense of GM', to disclose its industry connections. Tracey Brown of Sense About Science, publisher of the guide, condemned the T.H.E. article as "mischievous" and "rude" and claimed it relied on "tortuously indirect links" between the authors and the GM industry.
But the Eye has a copy of an unpublished draft of the guide - and it seems it wasn't just the industry links of some of its authors that didn't appear in the final published version. One of the guide's listed authors, Andrew Cockburn, is also missing. Who he? None other than GM giant, Monsanto's former director of scientific affairs, and a figure so controversial that when former PM Tony Blair invited him to author part of the government's official GM Science Review, it led to questions being raised in the House and the resignation of one of the expert panellists. No wonder Sense About Science felt erasure was the better form of valour.

*Sense about Science issued a statement to the effect that in the end Cockburn did not review its GM guide.

In addition,this month MADGE blew the whistle on Graincorp:

AUSTRALIANS will soon be eating genetically modified food whether they like it or not.

The nation's major grain handler, Graincorp, announced this week that genetically modified canola will be mixed in with the main crop in this year's harvest.

Anti-GM groups say the decision means canola oil and a large amount of commonly bought processed food made with canola will now be genetically modified.

They say staples that will become genetically modified include baby food, potato chips, biscuits, frozen vegetables, crackers and pre-prepared meals.

They claim the move is premature because GM food has yet to be tested properly.

"All GM food has been created randomly. The DNA of these plants has been altered and no one really knows where it will go," said Madeleine Love, spokeswoman for Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering (MADGE).....

Graincorp corporate affairs manager David Ginn confirmed the two streams of canola will be mixed together this year after the October harvest.

Meanwhile, GMO bananas are being trialled in Queensland and can be now added to North Coast Voices' March 2009 GMO watch list.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Biotech: the unmet promise of genetically engineered crops?

In the face of a review of GM crop yield studies which concluded that there was no appreciable difference between crops grown from conventional and genetically modified seed, talk of herbicide resistant weeds being associated with land used for GM crops and the banning of GM maize MON 10 by Germany on environmental grounds, the big biotech companies are pretending that is still business as usual.

And if you are a large multinational corporation like Monsanto, with lobbyist tentacles reaching into so many national or state governments around the world, I expect that it really is business as usual.

So usual that it is thinking of starting yet another court case in its pursuit of the 'golden' apex of a global agricultural food chain.

Still it doesn't hurt if you also create a slice of corporate propaganda like this:











View and Download this Ad
from Monsanto website











* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Monsanto According To Monsanto: no blog is too big or small, we read all of them

No blog is too big or small, we read all of them says Monsanto on its new blog Monsanto According to Monsanto.

On the first post by Kathleen our blog North Coast Voices gets not one but two links within the text.

So if all blogs are read - does someone also go out on behalf of Monsanto and take notes at any protest rally or town meeting?

Spin Watch tells us a little about corporate strategy in relation to the Internet.
Source Watch tells a similar story and Gene Watch records Monsanto's alleged attempts to deceive as well as quotes a section of the book Don't Worry, It's Safe to Eat .

Kathleen may like to think that she is the 'nice' face of a 'good' company.
Sadly for Kathleen I am too old to for fall for the froth and spin, when court transcripts and research papers (some discussed elsewhere on North Coast Voices) tell of a socially and environmentally irresponsible, destructive multinational who doesn't give a toss about the rest of the world.

Graphic is Kathleen's avatar

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Walking on the wildside: GMO transgenes found in wild maize

Evidence of the irresponsible nature of the biotechnology industry in general and Monsanto in particular.

Molecular Ecology:

A possible consequence of planting genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in centres of crop origin is unintended gene flow into traditional landraces.

In 2001, a study reported the presence of the transgenic 35S promoter in maize landraces sampled in 2000 from the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Analysis of a large sample taken from the same region in 2003 and 2004 could not confirm the existence of transgenes, thereby casting doubt on the earlier results.

These two studies were based on different sampling and analytical procedures and are thus hard to compare. Here, we present new molecular data for this region that confirm the presence of transgenes in three of 23 localities sampled in 2001.

Transgene sequences were not detected in samples taken in 2002 from nine localities, while directed samples taken in 2004 from two of the positive 2001 localities were again found to contain transgenic sequences.

These findings suggest the persistence or re-introduction of transgenes up until 2004 in this area.

We address variability in recombinant sequence detection by analyzing the consistency of current molecular assays.

We also present theoretical results on the limitations of estimating the probability of transgene detection in samples taken from landraces.

The inclusion of a limited number of female gametes and, more importantly, aggregated transgene distributions may significantly lower detection probabilities.

Our analytical and sampling considerations help explain discrepancies among different detection efforts, including the one presented here, and provide considerations for the establishment of monitoring protocols to detect the presence of transgenes among structured populations of landraces.

This is not the first time transgenes have been found in the wild as GMO seed dispersal also leads to engineered seed establishing itself amid original species and cross-pollinating, as appears to be the case in relation to certain grasses.

Thanks to Balneus for pointing me in the direction of this information.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Monsanto related environmental and health risks lead to court case - again

According to The Madison St Clair Record last week:

A group of Illinois residents who live in or near Sauget have filed a class-action lawsuit over the release of various hazardous substances that they claim has created a severe health risk and has contaminated their properties.

Lead class plaintiffs Vernon Lee Anderson Sr., Ernestine Lawrence, Katie Burnett-Smith, Martha Emily Young, Marcella Phillips and Bernice Laverne Collins argue that three release sites - a 90-acre landfill operated by Sauget and Co., a 314-acre W.G. Krummrich Plant and property owned by Cerro Flow Products - have released PCBs and other various substances, including dioxins and furans, into the atmosphere for more than 70 years.

Residents fear they will develop a deadly disease from the PCBs, which have been shown to result in toxic effects in the brain and nervous system and in low birth rates and birth defects.

"According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a lifetime dose of one milligram of PCBs is sufficient to cause cancer and other serious and life-threatening diseases," the suit filed Feb. 10 in St. Clair County Circuit Court states. "According to the World Health Organization, there is not safe level of exposure to PCBs."

Dioxins and furans are also known to be dangerous and to create significant health problems through inhalation, ingestion, dermal absorption and ingestion of homegrown produce.

In addition to the health risk, the residents claim the PCBs have contaminated property within a two-mile radius of the release sites, waterways and groundwater, the suit states.

The releases began after the W.G. Krummrich Plant, which is also referred to as the Monsanto Facility in the complaint, began producing, storing and disposing of PCBs at its facility, the residents claim.

In fact, "more PCBs were produced at the Monsanto Facility than at any other site in the United States, and perhaps even the free world," the suit states.

This Sauget flood plain region is well-known to the US Environmental Protection Agency and Monsanto had previously entered a negotiated settlement with the State of illinois.

Fox River Watch has a history of PCB health problems in the US here.

And with a corporate history like that Monsanto (along with the other biotech multinationals now operating here) expects Australians to take its word that the genetically modified crop types it is pushing onto often unwilling communities will do no harm?
Show us the longitudinal studies which scientifically demonstrate this, Monsanto.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Monsanto propaganda rules! Or does it?

Monsanto propaganda rules - or does it?

Here is Monsanto's spin laced with alternative images:

Monsanto's research program centers on increasing yields for three key crops used for food, feed, fiber and fuel - corn, soybeans and cotton. The company's research pipeline uses more precise breeding techniques to develop higher-yielding germplasm. Other technologies result in plant traits that provide better protection against pests and better weed control. Monsanto's objective under this new commitment is to double yield for these three crops by 2030 in countries where farmers have access to current and anticipated new seed choices offered by the company.
{Genetically Modified Crops Implicated in Honey Bee Collapse Disorder}

This would mean, for example, that corn production in the prominent agricultural markets of Argentina, Brazil and the United States would reach a weighted average of 220 bushels per acre by 2030, compared to 109.1 bushels per acre in 2000. Soybean production in those countries would rise from a weighted average of 39.5 bushels per acre in 2000 to 79 bushels per acre in 2030. Cotton would increase from 1.4 bales (672 pounds) per acre to 2.8 bales (1,344 pounds) per acre.
{GM crops have failed and Canola yeild stoush}

Monsanto will establish a five-year, $10 million grant for rice and wheat research to be administered by a panel of world experts on food production in developing countries. Rice and wheat are key crops for food security, but are not a primary focus for the company. The chairperson of this panel will be named in the near future. A panel of independent judges will select one project per year to receive a $2 million grant. Further details on this program will be developed and announced in the coming months. {GM trial results spark debate}

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Monsanto fruit?

From Animal Magic: or what happens when graphic artists get bored

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Australian genetically modified foods update

This post is by way of a catch-up on news about genetically modified (GM) food and crops in Australia.

ABC News reported last week:

When New South Wales and Victoria dropped their bans on genetically modified canola crops, GM supporters claimed farmers would have greater yielding crops as a result.
However recent trials showed there was little difference between the two.
So why bother growing GM canola if you can't get anything extra out of it?....
Chris Preston is associate professor at the School of Agriculture at the University of Adelaide.
He says trial results depend on region and climate, and the drought hampered the GM canola trails.
He says the trials do give an indication how canola performs in drought conditions, and if that's where it's being grown it's probably not worth growing GM canola variety. xxxx

WA Business News also ran this short article on 16 January:

Genetically modified canola crops in Victoria have performed no better than their non-genetically modified counterparts as Western Australia prepares to hold trials later this year.
Results from Grains Research and Development Council showed the yields, from the first independent trial crops in Horsham and Forbes in Victoria, were 0.7 tonne per hectare for GM and 0.8t/ha ha for non-GM.
The results are not good news for those wanting to farm GM canola, as to break even with the technology, profits must increase by up to 16 per cent.

Comment on the Business News article:

This article talks of yields, but what about sales? Thanks to this environmentally toxic rubbish being foisted on us Australians I simply boycott everything with Canola in it now because no-one can quickly prove to me it's GM free.

I'm not going to waste my time trying to find out either as you either encounter people who don't have a clue or spin doctors.

I'm becoming more aggressive with fish shops etc too, if they are using canola or cottonseed oil, the food could be GM contaminated.

We Can't Eat A Scorched Earth! Climate change and food security

Free public meeting promoted by Gene Ethics

Thursday 5th February 2009
5.45 pm for 6.00 pm talk start, concluding 7.15pm
NSW Teachers Federation

23 - 33 Mary St, Surry Hills Sydney - (between Albion & Reservoir)

True Food Network latest guide to GM-free food and what to avoid

Australian Office of Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) list of genetically modified product approvals:
GM products approved as food, food additives and processing aids (PDF 79 KB)
GM products approved as therapeutics (PDF 19 KB)

OGTR current list of applications and licences to release GMO into the environment, laboratory trials and low risk dealings.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Monsanto, I presume........

Cartoon found at Red, Green and Blue

environmental politics from across the spectrum

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

We haven't forgotten you, Mr. Monsanto

It has been a while since North Coast Voices ran a post on Monsanto, the US-based biotech giant which dominates around 95 per cent of the global genetically modified seed market.

Here are some recent items:

Gene-altered crop studies grow

Labs move beyond corn and soybeans into rice, wheat

Worst Companies in the World: US, Monsanto, Peabody and Barrick

The United States was voted the Worst Company in the World, followed by Monsanto, Peabody Energy Corp. and Barrick Gold

Monsanto acts quickly to resolve harvest mistake
Monsanto Co. has claimed responsibility and pledged "to take appropriate actions," to prevent experimental cotton and cottonseed from entering the marketplace as either fiber, livestock feed or oil products.

Anger over first large-scale GM canola trial

OPPONENTS of a commercial trial of genetically modified canola in WA say there is no guarantee the 1000 hectare operation can be contained.

The State Government announced yesterday that 20 farmers would be involved next year in WA's first large-scale trial of GM canola.

It will be carried out by global seed and pesticide giant Monsanto, the Department of Agriculture and Food in WA and private grain carrier Co-operative Bulk Handling (CBH).

MADGE Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering

MADGE is a network of individuals interested in how our food is grown and the effects it has on our health. We are concerned about the lack of adequate labelling and testing of GM foods.
We advocate on behalf of consumers for the right to know what is in our food. We promote information on natural foods and healthy farming practices.
Click here to receive our weekly newsletter.

Historical photograph found at Google Images.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.