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On July 3, 2003, Monsanto sued Oakhurst dairy because their labels stated, "Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones."
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Oakhurst eventually settled with Monsanto, agreeing to include a sentence on their cartons saying that according to the FDA no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbGH-treated and non-rbGH-treated cows.
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The statement is not true.
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FDA scientists had acknowledged the increase of IGF-1, bovine growth hormone, antibiotics, and pus, in milk from treated cows.
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Nonetheless, the misleading sentence had been written years earlier by the FDA's deputy commissioner of policy, Michael Taylor, the one who was formerly Monsanto's outside attorney and later their vice president.
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Monsanto's public relations firm created a group called the Dairy Coalition, which pressured editors of the USA Today,Boston Globe,New York Times and others, to limit negative coverage of rbGH.
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A Monsanto attorney wrote a letter to Fox TV, promising dire consequences if the station aired a four-part exposé on rbGH.
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The show was ultimately cancelled.
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A book critical of Monsanto's GM foods was three days away from being published.
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A threatening letter from Monsanto's attorney forced the small publisher to cancel publication.
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14,000 copies of Ecologist magazine dedicated to exposing Monsanto were shredded by the printer due to fears of a lawsuit
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After a ballot initiative in California established Mendocino County as a GM-free zone -- where planting GMOs is illegal.
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Monsanto and others organized to push through laws in 14 states that make it illegal for cities and counties to declare similar zones.
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Monsanto's promises of riches come up short
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Biotech advocates have wooed politicians, claiming that their new technology is the path to riches for their city, state, or nation.
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This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable, said Joseph Cortright, an Oregon economist who co-wrote a report on the subject.
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This is a bad-idea virus that has swept through governors, mayors and economic development officials.
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Indeed,The Wall Street Journal observed, Not only has the biotech industry yielded negative financial returns for decades, it generally digs its hole deeper every year.
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The Associated Press says it "remains a money-losing, niche industry."
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Nowhere in the biotech world is the bad-idea virus more toxic than in its application to GM plants.
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Not only does the technology under-deliver, it consistently burdens governments and entire sectors with losses and problems.
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Under the first Bush administration, for example, the White House's elite Council on Competitiveness chose to fast track GM food in hopes that it would strengthen the economy and make American products more competitive overseas.
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The opposite ensued.
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US corn exports to Europe were virtually eliminated, down by 99.4 percent.
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The American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) calculated that the introduction of GM corn caused a drop in corn prices by 13 to 20 percent.
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Their CEO said, The ACGA believes an explanation is owed to the thousands of American farmers who were told to trust this technology, yet now see their prices fall to historically low levels while other countries exploit US vulnerability and pick off our export customers one by one.
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US soy sales also plummeted due to GM content.
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According to Charles Benbrook, PhD, former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture, the closed markets and slashed prices forced the federal government to pay an additional $3 to $5 billion every year.
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He says growers have only been kept afloat by the huge jump in subsidies.
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Instead of withdrawing support for failed GM crops, the US government has been convinced by Monsanto and others that the key to success is to force open foreign markets to GMOs.
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But many nations are also reeling under the false promise of GMOs.
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Canola crashes on GM
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When Canada became the only major producer to adopt GM canola in 1996, it led to a disaster.
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The premium-paying EU market, which took about one-third of Canada's canola exports in 1994 and one-fourth in 1995, stopped all imports from Canada by 1998.
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The GM canola was diverted to the low-priced Chinese market.
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Not only did Canadian canola prices fall to a record low.
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Canada even lost their EU honey exports due to the GM pollen contamination.
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Australia benefited significantly from Canada's folly.
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By 2006, the EU was buying 38 percent of Australia's canola exports.
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Nonetheless, Monsanto's people in Australia claimed that GM canola was the way to get more competitive.
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They told farmers that Roundup Ready canola would yield up to 30 percent more.
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But when an investigator looked at the best trial yields on Monsanto's web site, it was 17 percent below the national average canola yield.
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When that was publicized, the figures quickly disappeared from the Monsanto's site.
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Two Aussie states did allow GM canola and sure enough, they are suffering from loss of foreign markets
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In Australia and elsewhere, the non-GMO farmers also suffer.
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Market prices drop, and farmers spend more to set up segregation systems, GMO testing, buffer zones, and separate storage and shipping channels to try to hold onto non-GMO markets.
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Even then, they risk contamination and lost premiums.
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GM farmers don't earn or produce more
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Monsanto has been quite successful in convincing farmers that GM crops are the ticket to greater yields and higher profits.
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You still hear that rhetoric at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
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But a 2006 USDA report "could not find positive financial impacts in either the field-level nor the whole-farm analysis" for adoption of Bt corn and Roundup Ready soybeans.
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They said, Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of [GM] crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.
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Similarly, the Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU) flatly states,
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The claim that GM seeds make our farms more profitable is false.
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Net farm incomes in Canada plummeted since the introduction of GM canola, with the last five years being the worst in Canada's history.
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In spite of numerous advertising claims that GM crops increase yield, the average GM crop from Monsanto reduces yield.
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This was confirmed by the most comprehensive evaluation on the subject, conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2009.
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Called Failure to Yield, the report demonstrated that in spite of years of trying, GM crops return fewer bushels than their non-GM counterparts.
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Even the 2006 USDA report stated that "currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential of a hybrid variety. . . .
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In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars.
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US farmers had expected higher yields with Roundup Ready soybeans, but independent studies confirm a yield loss of 4 to 11percent.
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Brazilian soybean yields are also down since Roundup Ready varieties were introduced.
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In Canada, a study showed a 7.5 percent lower yield with Roundup Ready canola.
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The Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU) observed, Corporate and government managers have spent millions trying to convince farmers and other citizens of the benefits of genetically-modified (GM) crops.
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But this huge public relations effort has failed to obscure the truth:
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GM crops do not deliver the promised benefits; they create numerous problems, costs, and risks. . . .
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It would be too generous even to call GM crops a solution in search of a problem:
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These crops have failed to provide significant solutions.
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Herbicide use rising due to GMOs
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Monsanto bragged that their Roundup Ready technology would reduce herbicide, but at the same time they were building new Roundup factories to meet their anticipated increase in demand.
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They got it.
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According to USDA data, the amount of herbicide used in the US increased by 382.6 million pounds over 13 years.
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Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans accounted for 92 percent of the total increase.
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Due to the proliferation of Roundup resistant weeds, herbicide use is accelerating rapidly.
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From 2007 to 2008, herbicide used on GM herbicide tolerant crops skyrocketed by 31.4 percent.
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Furthermore, as weeds fail to respond to Roundup, farmers also rely on more toxic pesticides such as the highly poisonous 2,4-D.
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Contamination happens
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In spite of Monsanto's assurances that it wouldn't be a problem, contamination has been a consistent and often overwhelming hardship for seed dealers, farmers, manufacturers, even entire food sectors.
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The biotech industry recommends buffer zones between fields, but these have not been competent to protect non-GM, organic, or wild plants from GMOs.
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A UK study showed canola cross-pollination occurring as far as 26 km away
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But pollination is just one of several ways that contamination happens.
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There is also seed movement by weather and insects, crop mixing during harvest, transport, and storage, and very often, human error.
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The contamination is North America is so great, it is difficult for farmers to secure pure non-GM seed.
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In Canada, a study found 32 of 33 certified non-GM canola seeds were contaminated
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Most of the non-GM soy, corn, and canola seeds tested in the US also contained GMOs.
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Contamination can be very expensive.
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StarLink corn -- unapproved for human consumption-- ended up the US food supply in 2000 and resulted in an estimated price tag of $1 billion.
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The final cost of GM rice contamination in the US in 2006 could be even higher.
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Deadly deception in India
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Monsanto ran a poster series called, "True stories of farmers who have sown Bt cotton."
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One featured a farmer who claimed great benefits, but when investigators tracked him down, he turned out to be a cigarette salesman, not a farmer.
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Another poster claimed yields by the pictured farmer that were four times what he actually achieved.
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One poster showed a farmer standing next to a tractor, suggesting that sales of Bt cotton allowed him to buy it.
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But the farmer was never told what the photo was to be used for, and said that with the yields from Bt, "I would not be able to buy even two tractor tires."
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In addition to posters, Monsanto's cotton marketers used dancing girls, famous Bollywood actors, even religious leaders to pitch their products.
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Some newspaper ads looked like a news stories and featured relatives of seed salesmen claiming to be happy with Bt.
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Sometimes free pesticides were given away with the seeds, and some farmers who helped with publicity got free seeds.
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Scientists published a study claiming that Monsanto's cotton increased yields in India by 70 to 80 percent.
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But they used only field trial data provided to them by Monsanto.
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Actual yields turn out to be quite different:
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India News reported studies showing a loss of about 18 percent.
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An independent study in Andhra Pradesh "done on [a] season-long basis continuously for three years in 87 villages" showed that growing Bt cotton cost 12 percent more, yielded 8.3 percent less, and the returns over three years were 60 percent less
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Another report identified a yield loss in the Warangal district of 30 to 60 percent.
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The official report, however, was tampered with.
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The local Deputy Director of Agriculture confirmed on Feb. 1, 2005 that the yield figures had been secretly increased to 2.7 times higher than what farms reported.
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Once the state of Andhra Pradesh tallied all the actual yields, they demanded approximately $10 million US$ from Monsanto to compensate farmers for losses.
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Monsanto refused.
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In sharp contrast to the independent research done by agronomists, Monsanto commissioned studies to be done by market research agencies.
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One, for example, claimed four times the actual reduction in pesticide use, 12 times the actual yield, and 100 times the actual profit.
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In Andhra Pradesh, where 71 percent of farmers who used Bt cotton ended up with financial losses, farmers attacked the seed dealer's office and even "tied up Mahyco Monsanto representatives in their villages," until the police rescued them.
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In spite of great losses and unreliable yields, Monsanto has skilfully eliminated the availability of non-GM cotton seeds in many regions throughout India, forcing farmers to buy their varieties.
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Farmers borrow heavily and at high interest rates to pay four times the price for the GM varieties, along with the chemicals needed to grow them.
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When Bt cotton performs poorly and can't even pay back the debt, desperate farmers resort to suicide often drinking unused pesticides.
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In one region, more than three Bt cotton farmers take their own lives each day.
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The UK Daily Mail estimates that the total number of Bt cotton-related suicides in India is a staggering 125,000.
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Natural News
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