While millions of Americans were busy celebrating freedom from tyranny during the
recent Independence Day festivities, Monsanto was actively trying to thwart that freedom
with new attacks on health freedom. It turns out that the most evil corporation in the
world has quietly attached riders to both the 2012 Farm Bill and the 2013
Agriculture Appropriations Bill that would essentially force the federal
government to approve GMOs at the request of biotechnology companies, and prohibit
all safety reviews of GMOs from having any real impact on the GMO approval process.
The Alliance for Natural Health - USA (ANH-USA), the Organic Consumers
Association (OCA), and several other health freedom advocacy groups have been actively
drawing attention to these stealth attacks in recent days, and urging Americans to rise up
and oppose them now before it is too late. If we fail to act now as a single,
unified community devoted to health freedom, in other words, America's agricultural future
could literally end up being controlled entirely by the biotech industry, which will have
full immunity from the law.
You can fight back now against these threats to food freedom by visiting:
www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25711.cfm
Authored by Congressmen and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural
Development, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Related Agencies Jack Kingston
(R-Ga.), the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill rider, known as the "farmer
assurance provision" (Section 733), specifically outlines that the Secretary of
Agriculture will be required, upon request, to "immediately" grant
temporary approval or deregulation of a GM crop, even if that crop's safety is in question
or under review.
In other words, if the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is strong-armed into
approving a new GM crop that is later legally challenged in court (which is basically what
happened for GM sugar beets and GM alfalfa), the Secretary of Agriculture, under the
provisions of the Kingston rider, will be required to approve the cultivation and sale of
that crop anyway, even if a higher court has already ordered a moratorium on that crop.
"A so-called 'Monsanto rider,' quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013
Agriculture Appropriations Bill, would require -- not just allow, but require -- the
Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or cultivation of a
genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted
until an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is completed," wrote Alexis Baden-Mayer
and Ronnie Cummins in a recent piece for AlterNet.
"All the farmer or the biotech producer has to do is ask, and the questionable crops
could be released into the environment where they could potentially contaminate
conventional or organic crops and, ultimately, the nation's food supply."
You can read the rider for yourself, which begins on page 86, Sec. 733 of the following
document:
http://appropriations.house.gov
According to the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations website, the
2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, with the Kingston rider, was already approved
by the committee on June 19. (http://appropriations.house.gov) But it will move next to the House
floor, where debate and further amendment proposals will take place -- this means there is
still time to fight it.
One amendment being proposed by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Or.) seeks to altogether eliminate
the Kingston rider, which has now been dubbed by the health freedom community as the Monsanto
Protection Act, from the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill. You can urge
your Congressmen to support Rep. DeFazio's amendment to kill the Monsanto Protection
Act by emailing (www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25711.cfm) or calling (www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25778.cfm)
them.
Another serious food freedom threat exists in the House Agriculture Committee's
discussion draft of the contentious 2012 Farm Bill, where Monsanto et al. have
inserted key language, via corrupt legislators of course, that will dismantle existing
federal law as it pertains to regulating GM crops, and replace it with a free-for-all
system where biotech giants are basically free to grow and market whatever GMOs they
please without resistance or legal challenge.
"Deliberately buried in the House Agriculture Committee's voluminous discussion draft
of the 2012 Farm Bill, these significant changes to the Plant Protection Act (PPA)
-- one of the few statutes that regulate GE crops -- will counter the gains that have been
made to protect our food supply and the farmers who grow it," writes Andrew Kimbrell,
Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS), one of the key groups
fighting back against this Monsanto sneak attack.
"The provisions (Sections 10011, 10013 and 10014) would force the rushed
commercialization of GE crops, create a backdoor approval for Dow's 'Agent Orange' corn
and eliminate any meaningful review of the impacts of these novel crops" (www.huffingtonpost.com).
These provisions would explicitly outlaw any review of the environmental or human impacts
of GM crops under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered
Species Act (ESA), or any other environmental laws as well. Only the USDA would be
allowed to review the safety of GM crops, and this review process would be so severely
neutered that the USDA would essentially operate as a formal "rubber stamp" for
approving the biotech industry's offerings.
Both sets of riders threaten to eliminate every remaining semblance of regulatory power
that "We the People" have over our own food system. If passed, these riders will
abolish virtually all remaining protections over the American food supply, and allow
Monsanto and the rest of Big Ag to completely control what is grown, and how
it is grown.
There is still time to fight back against these heinous threats to food freedom, but swift
action is necessary to stop Congress from hammering the last few nails into the coffin
of American food freedom.
Be sure to contact your Congressmen right now and demand their support for
Rep. Peter DeFazio's amendment to eliminate the Monsanto rider from the 2013
Agriculture Appropriations Bill, as well as their opposition to Sections 10011,
10013 and 10014 of the 2012 Farm Bill:
(www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25711.cfm)
(7.15.2012, Jonathan Benson, staff writer) www.naturalnews.com/036477_Monsanto_immunity_GM_crops.html
Sources for this article include:
http://www.anh-usa.org/urgent-action-alert-on-two-gmo-amendments/
http://www.alternet.org
http://rt.com/usa/news/monsanto-bill-immunity-court-862/
http://fooddemocracynow.org
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson