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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe "Monsanto Rider": Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity from Federal Law?
While many Americans were firing up barbecues and breaking out the sparklers to celebrate Independence Day, biotech industry executives were more likely chilling champagne to celebrate another kind of independence: immunity from federal law.
A so-called "Monsanto rider," quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013 Agricultural 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 is completed. 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.
Unless the Senate or a citizen's army of farmers and consumers can stop them, the House of Representatives is likely to ram this dangerous rider through any day now.
In a statement issued last month, the Center For Food Safety had this to say about the biotech industry's latest attempt to circumvent legal and regulatory safeguards:
Ceding broad and unprecedented powers to industry, the rider poses a direct threat to the authority of U.S. courts, jettisons the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) established oversight powers on key agriculture issues and puts the nation's farmers and food supply at risk.
In other words, if this single line in the 90-page Agricultural Appropriations bill slips through, it's Independence Day for the biotech industry.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10210-the-monsanto-rider-are-biotech-companies-about-to-gain-immunity-from-federal-law?
joycejnr
(326 posts)...it's amazing how this House crew seems to think that corporations are not only people - they can rule the people.
It's only a matter of time before every multinational corporation get power like this...if there is any Democratic majority in the future, what can they do to prevent legislation like this from ever happning again?
Omaha Steve
(99,660 posts)brentspeak
(18,290 posts)"...until it completed an Environmental Impact Statement. The USDA allowed farmers to continue planting the crop even while it was being assessed for safety on the grounds that there were no longer enough non-GMO seeds available to plant."
So, essentially, Obama is working for Monsanto as much as the Republicans are.
msongs
(67,417 posts)kristopher
(29,798 posts)The nuclear industry pulled a similar coup in 2005, and now they are immune from virtually any and all oversight by anyone (including courts, legislative committees and state law) and in essence are answerable only to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
And, of course, they own the NRC so it has become virtually impossible for anyone to shut down a nuclear plant that the owners want to keep in service.
Let's hope the Senate takes action.
roody
(10,849 posts)liquidsouljah
(2 posts)Supporting Monsanto is like supporting the devil. There are many documentaries explaining how destructive the company is going back to the Vietnam War chemical warfare and now our food supply.
So, I recently created a website describing my perspective on organic food, which currently is the fastest growing food sector in the US.
http://www.organichawaii.org
Aloha~