The World According to Monsanto - A Documentary That Americans Won’t Ever See

[T.Ruth2power]

The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won’t ever see
Posted on March 22, 2008

Dandelion Salad

www.greenpeace.org

International — A new movie has dealt yet another severe blow to the credibility of US based Monsanto, one of the biggest chemical companies in the world and the provider of the seed technology for 90 percent of the world’s genetically engineered (GE) crops.

The French documentary, called “The world according to Monsanto” and directed by independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin, paints a grim picture of a company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals.


You can order a DVD of it (in English, French and Spanish) http://www.arte-boutique.fr/detailProduct.action?product.id=245754">here.

***

By Siv O’Neall
axisoflogic.com
Mar 19, 2008, 07:29

The gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years. The endless list of genetically modified seeds sold and controlled by Monsanto are putting at enormous risk age-old agricultural patterns under the presumptuous slogan of aiming at solving the huge problem of hunger in the world.

On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television (ARTE – French-German cultural tv channel) by French journalist and film maker Marie-Monique Robin, entitled ‘The World According to Monsanto’ (Le Monde selon Monsanto<1>). Starting from the Internet over a period of three years Robin has collected material for her documentary, going on to numerous interviews with people of very different backgrounds. She traveled widely, from Latin America, to Asia, through Europe and the United States, to personally interview farmers and people in influential positions.

As an example of pro-Monsanto interviews, she talked at length with Michael Taylor who has worked as a lawyer for Monsanto and also for the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), where he had great influence on the legalization of the genetically modified bovine growth hormone (BGH). It also became FDA policy during Taylor’s tenure that GM seeds are declared to be “substantially equivalent<2> to non-GM seeds, hence proclaiming proof of the harmlessness of GMs to be unnecessary. Michael Taylor<3> is a typical example of technocrats employed via ‘the revolving door policy’. He is now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.

The gospel according to Monsanto is that their patented GM seeds and their bovine growth hormone (BGH) will increase worldwide production of agricultural, dairy and meat products and Bt cotton to the extent that worldwide hunger and poverty will be eradicated.

The actual truth is rather the opposite. GMOs are creating serious damage all over the world and artificial BGH injection in cows<4> cause numerous health problems, and even death.

<snip>

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/the-world-according-to-monsanto-a-documentary-that-americans-wont-ever-see/

[China_cat]

1. What happens when all the heirloom and legacy seed is gone

and something comes along to wipe out the Monsanto 'offerings'?

Even the CEO will go hungry then.

And I'm beginning to wonder if GM crops might not be at least part of the reason for the disappearance of so many honeybees.

[earth mom]

3. It's up to us to save our Heirloom seeds.

http://www.rareseeds.com/

https://www.seedsavers.org/

[China_cat]

14. Saving the seeds isn't all there is to it.

Saving the right to grow them will be harder. When you can be sued out of everything you own for planting something not owned by Monsanto, how many will take the chance? What does it do for the seeds you saved if your tomatoes get ripped up and burned in the same way marijuana is? Or your wheat taken out by sprayed chemicals?

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. GM crops displacing honey bees - good possibility IMO

.
.
.

Us humans are infamous for coming up with "good" ideas that turn out badly.

Fucking around with momma nature is bound to fail just by design.

We were never meant to fly, but we learned - and then graduated to rain destruction down from the skies.

When was the last time we IMPROVED anything on this planet with our so-called "intelligence"?

OH

We learned how to split the Atom.

That's working well.

If there is one species on Earth that Earth could well do without,

That be us.

[Two Americas]

7. probably not

The crops that are GMO are propagated through wind distributed pollen, and the nature of the modification is to add a gene from the Bt bacteria, which produces a natural substance that binds the intestines of Lepidoptera larvae. It is not toxic in any other way.

The biggest hurdle we face in fighting biotech is public education, which is why it is important to be specific and informed about what we say. The CCD problem with bees has been a fertile field for fear-mongering and misinformation. Wild and misinformed speculation aids the biotech proponents, it does not help in the fight against them.

I also have to object to anti-humanism under the auspices of environmentalism - "if there is one species on Earth that Earth could well do without, that be us."

The "good idea" people came up with that turned out badly is unbridled and unregulated corporate capitalism.

[lovuian]

2. it is truly evil

but I see countries realizing whats going on
and fighting it

[reggie the dog]

5. I watched this on TV over here.

My friends in our organic food co op left me a text message about it. It starts off with the way monsanto polluted a black community with industrial waste. Sorry I forget the detail but it was about a certain chemical that builds up in people bodies and causes harm. That set the stage to show how much Monsanto cared about people. Then they talked about Genetically modified foods and how these products require Montsanto pesticides to be used in order to be productive, how Monsanto will control the sale of seeds etc. They explained how the FDA approved GM's in the USA, a scandal. etc. Top nothch tv from Arté, Arté is a joint French German version of what you call PBS in the USA.

[Canuckistanian]

6. BGH has always been banned in Canada

Canada prohibited the sale of Bovine Growth Hormone rbST in 1999 after nine years of studies and review by two independent external committees.

The main reason? BGH had been proven to be harmful to cattle, "and it presents a sufficient and unacceptable threat to the safety of dairy cows,"

http://www.life.ca/nl/66/nobgh.html

[JohnyCanuck]

8. Snip from a Deutsche Welle documentary "The Genetic Conspiracy"

(It's in English)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNRNT5QwgD4

You can view the whole program on line here:

http://ctc411.com/geneticconspiracy.html

[Orwellian_Ghost]

9. Monsanto's Raid on Brazil

Resisting Agrofuels and Biotech

Monsanto's Raid on Brazil

By ISABELLA KENFIELD

On March 7th-International Women's Day-dozens of Brazilian women occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, destroying the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-modified (GM) corn. Participants, members of the international farmers' organization La Vía Campesina, stated in a note that the act was to protest the Brazilian government's decision in February to legalize Monsanto's GM Guardian® corn, which came just weeks after the French government prohibited the corn due to environment and human health risks.

La Vía Campesina also held passive protests in several Brazilian cities against the Swiss corporation Syngenta Seeds for its ongoing impunity for the murder of Valmir Mota de Oliveira. Mota was a member of the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST)-the largest of the seven Brazilian movements in La Vía Campesina-who was assassinated last October in the state of Paraná during these organizations' third occupation of the company's illegal experimental site for GM soybeans. While Brazil already has a high number of land activist murders, Mota's was significant because it was the first to occur during an occupation organized by La Vía Campesina, and the first assassination in Brazil to occur on the property of a multinational agribusiness.

The expansion of agricultural biotechnology into Brazil is increasing agrarian conflicts and exacerbating historic tensions over land. The movements in La Vía Campesina reject seed patenting, claiming the practice traps poor farmers in a cycle of debt to corporations that own the seed patents, and undermines small farmers' autonomy to save and share seeds. They claim that GM technology threatens biodiversity and native seed varieties, and violates the rights of consumers and small farmers by contaminating conventional and organic crops. In the United States, where more than half of the world's GM crop acreage is grown, widespread contamination of conventional and organic crops by GM varieties is threatening the organic foods industry, which is finding it increasingly difficult to certify products. According to Greenpeace International, there were 39 cases of crop contamination in 23 countries in 2007, and more than 200 in 57 countries over the last 10 years.1

Resistance to agricultural biotechnology threatens a multi-billion dollar industry. In the midst of global economic downturn, Monsanto and Syngenta are realizing unprecedented profits-thanks largely to agrofuels. In January, results showed Monsanto's stock appreciated 137% in 2007,2 hitting a record on the New York Stock Exchange.3 In February, Syngenta-the world's largest producer of herbicides and pesticides with control of one-third of the global commercial seed market-announced its 2007 sales amounted to $9.2 billion. Latin America was Syngenta's "star performer" in 2007, where sales of herbicides, pesticides, and seeds increased by 37% respectively, and sales in Brazil increased for all product lines.4

...

http://www.counterpunch.org/kenfield03222008.html">LINK

[Lorien]

10. But here's one that you can see right now, for free:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNezTsrCY0Q

[JohnyCanuck]

11. Two journalists who tried to report on Monsanto's BGH were fired

Two investigative reporters were fired from a Fox owned TV station in Florida after they refused to alter or tone down their documentary on the health problems associated with Monsanto's Posilac, the BGH treatment used to increase milk production in dairy cows. Apparently when Monsanto got wind of the documentary which was all set to go on air, they pressured the station and Fox with threats of lawsuits and withdrawal of advertising etc., and the station in turn pressured the reporters to falsify their report to make it look better for Monsanto.

After they were fired, the reporters, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, filed a lawsuit under Florda's whistle blower protection act and won a substantial monetary award against the station, but the judgment was overturned on appeal. The reasoning of the appeal court was that the station was under no legal obligation to tell the truth in its news programming, and therefore the reporters were not covered under the terms of the whistle blower protection act.

In this Youtube clip from the documentary "The Corporation" the two reporters explain how it went down:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw

This is their web site www.foxbghsuit.com

[DCKit]

12. We'll have access to it if people like me ask Netflix to carry it.

And I'm sure I'm not the only Netflix customer on DU.

[upi402]

13. k/r n/t

[countryjake]

15. KICK & RECOMMEND!

[goforit]

16. Yes, Youtube also has exposed Monsanto for their sadistic contortion of nature

And Monsanto has to be stopped.

[JohnyCanuck]

17. Non-GM Breakthroughs Leave GM Behind

Non-GM Breakthroughs Leave GM Behind

Non-GM breakthroughs keep coming thick and fast for problems that GM proponents claim require GM, but GM solutions, if any, are years away

Does the mention of allergen-free peanut, salt-resistant wheat, beta-carotene rich sweet potato, and virus-resistant cassava make you think of GM? If so, you’ve missed the great unpublished story of 2007 – all the non-GM answers to precisely the problems (drought-resistance, salt-resistance, biofortification, etc.) that proponents claim only GM can solve.

While GM ‘miracle’ stories win vast amounts of column inches in the popular media, the non-GM stories are seldom reported. Without the GM lobby’s exaggerated crisis narratives and silver bullet solutions, it seems there is no story. The biotech industry and its PR people, of course, are keen to keep it that way; particularly as the non-GM solutions are often way ahead of the work on GM. They also bring with them none of the uncertainties over environmental and health hazards that surround GM.

Thanks to the lack of success of GM ‘solutions’, non-GM success stories can end up being claimed as GM breakthroughs. This happened most recently when the UK government’s retiring chief scientist, David King, claimed an important non-GM breakthrough in Africa as evidence of why we need to embrace GM <1>. This tells us why we need to stop being distracted by GM and support the non-GM solutions to crop production problems.

SNIP

Zambia gets better harvests from non-GM maize

Although drought-prone Zambia is still facing problems, huge improvements have been reported in its maize harvests – its main staple crop. Production is reported to have changed dramatically after President Levy Mwanawasa took over from Frederick Chiluba in 2001. He promoted innovations such as mixed farming and conservation farming. Mwanawasa rejected GM maize and encouraged the growing of non-GM maize, resulting in bumper harvests for the past three years <6>.

Ironically, when the Zambian government rejected GM maize in 2002 <7> (Africa Unites Against GM to Opt for Self-sufficiency, SiS 16), there were calls from the US Ambassador to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization for its leaders to be tried “for the highest crimes against humanity in the highest courts of the world” <8>.

Continued at:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/NonGMLeaveGMBehind.php