Latest News on Monsanto

November 2009: Monsanto has sued four Ontario farmers for saving and reusing Monsanto's patented herbicide tolerant soybeans called Roundup Ready. Not only did the courts rule that the famers must pay Monsanto any profits they derived from growing the soybeans, they must also pay a significant portion of Monsanto's costs for taking them to court -- amounts ranging from $9,000 to $63,000 per individual. As well, the four farmers are among the first to be confronted with Monsantos new Violator Exclusion Policy. They will be denied all access to Monsantos current and future technologies forever. Monsanto calls this "Seed Piracy".

July 15, 2009: Monsanto has invested in developing new GM wheat. Monsanto bought WestBred, a Montana company specializing in wheat germplasm. Monsanto stated they will now develop new GM wheat varieties. Monsanto's announcement follows the May statement from industry groups in Australia, Canada and the US stating that they would work together to synchronize commercialization in the three countries. Join the Global Rejection counter statement - sign on here!

May 2009: Monsanto says it expects its U.S. gross profit from sales of seeds and traits to double by 2012 from the 2008 level, while its international businesses should grow by 85 percent. Monsanto says it will launch a "high impact technology product" every one to two years, with the goal that each project will deliver more than $300 million in gross revenue opportunities by 2020 in the country where it is launched. Check the story.

Resources about Monsanto:

Combat Monsanto: Building a World Free From Monsanto - new website dedicated to exposing Monsanto

Monsanto’s 7 Deadly Sins, Greenpeace

New Film: The World According to Monsanto

Monsanto's Reach:

Agrofuels
Monsanto now talks about the “world’s growing food, feed, fiber, and fuel needs” (Annual Report 2007). Monsanto stands to gain substantially from the rush to produce fuels from our agricultural base - biofuels (agrofuels) - because the acreage of GE crops could now be expanded to grow fuel as well as food. Monsanto’s major GE crops of corn, canola and soy are all used for ethanol or biodiesel in the current so-called "first generation" biofuels. To counter the public relations problem of the world food crisis and the problem of “food vs fuel” Monsanto with Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), DuPont, John Deere (Deere and Company) and the Renewable Fuels Association had set up a new lobby group called the “Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy.” Monsanto is looking towards owning the seeds for food and fuel. Click here for more information on agrofuels.

Bovine Growth Hormone
In August 2008 Monsanto sold its controversial and widely rejected recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), a genetically engineered veterinary drug designed to boost milk production in dairy cows, to pharmaceutical company Eli Lily. Rejected in 1999 by regulatory agencies in Canada, BGH is still used in the United States.
Click here to read the book chapter about what happened in Canada to BGH.

Patents
Monsanto owns patents on its genetic sequences and enforces its patent rights over these traits by suing farmers it believes have saved and used its seeds without authorization. When farmers buy Monsanto’s seeds they must sign a “Technology Use Agreement”, a contract with Monsanto whereby farmers agree not to save Monsanto’s seed for planting again. Monsanto now owns Terminator technology which would be the perfect tool for the corporation to protect its patents, without the bad public relations of suing farmers (see below).
Click here to see an example of a Technology Use Agreement.
Click here to see Vandana Shiva describe what patents mean to Monsanto.
Click here to read the report Monsanto vs Farmers from the Center for Food Safety.
Click here to see Percy Schmeiser’s website

Terminator Seeds
• Terminator seeds are genetically engineered to be sterile after first harvest in order to prevent farmers from saving and reusing seed.
• The technology would be the perfect tool for Monsanto to protect its intellectual property without costly legal action against farmers.
• Monsanto recently bought the original patent on Terminator as well as the most advanced research when it purchased the cotton and soybean seed company Delta & Pine Land.
• In 1999, when Monsanto was first preparing to buy Delta & Pine Land, the Rockefeller Foundation wrote a letter to Monsanto pleading the company to disavow Terminator. Monsanto responded with a pledge never to commercialize Terminator. However Monsanto never pledged to stop research.
• The technology has never been field tested or commercialized but when Monsanto bought Delta & Pine Land in 2007, the company had the most advanced Terminator research in the world including greenhouse tests in the US.
• Due to international protest, a moratorium on Terminator seed field testing and commercial use was established at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in 2000, and strengthened in 2006.
• For details on Terminator click here to see the website of the International Ban Terminator Campaign.

Vegetables
Though fruits and vegetables remain, for the most part, free of genetic engineering (some GE squash and papaya varieties have been commercialized), Monsanto now owns a large part of the fruit and vegetable seed market. In 2005 Monsanto bought fruit and vegetable company Seminis, giving Monsanto control over more than 30 percent of the North American vegetable seed market, as well as more than 20 percent of the world's tomato seed market and more than 30 percent of the global hot pepper seed market. (Monsanto To Buy Vegetable Seed Company, Carey Gillam, Reuters, April 1, 2008) Seminis had already developed a genetically engineered virus resistant squash (their online catalogue includes GE varities of yellow crookneck and straightneck, zucchini) – Seminis’ squash is currently the only GE vegetable on the market. In 2007 Monsanto formed the International Seed Group, a holding company to invest in vegetable and fruit seed businesses. And in early in 2008 Monsanto bought De Ruiter Seeds Group BV for $860 million – the company sells tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other produce that grow in greenhouses.

More coming soon...