Thread: Sell-out?
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Old 30-01-2011, 09:48 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
Nad R Nad R is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jan 2011
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Default Sell-out?

Billy wrote:
OK, I'm not sure about this, but I'm giving you a heads up.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...icle_22449.cfm


headline:

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?
By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011
Straight to the Source


"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for
other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must." - Whole Foods
Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically
Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic
farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are
facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite,
spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield
Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives
from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose
the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's
controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and
cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech
cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its
customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their
support for organics and "seed purity," gave the green light to USDA
bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's
genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the
regulatory euphemism of "conditional deregulation," this means that
WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive
planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop,
alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the
nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals;
guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and
destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide,
Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that
will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed
on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.

In exchange for allowing Monsanto's premeditated pollution of the
alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants "compensation." In exchange for a new
assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale
Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers' and
rural residents' risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech
USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In
payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil's crucial ability
to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous
greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates
essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and
sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the
Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay "compensation" (i.e. hush
money) to farmers "for any losses related to the contamination of his
crop." .... (cont)


A sell out?
More than likely, blackmailed. Threatened with financial destruction by the
mega Corp.

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)