Saturday, July 7, 2012
Appeal against Monsanto
Organic farmers file appeal against Monsanto
Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA
July 6 2012
Farmers and organizations file brief Appellate Court today
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Seventy-five family farmers, seed businesses, and agricultural organizations representing over 300,000 individuals and 4,500 farms filed a brief today with the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington asking the appellate court to reverse a lower court’s decision from February dismissing their protective legal action against agricultural giant Monsanto’s patents on genetically engineered seed.
The plaintiffs brought the pre-emptive case against Monsanto in March 2011 in the Southern District of New York and specifically seek to defend themselves from nearly two dozen of Monsanto’s most aggressively asserted patents on GMO seed. They were forced to act pre-emptively to protect themselves from Monsanto’s abusive lawsuits, fearing that if GMO seed contaminates their property despite their efforts to prevent such contamination, Monsanto will sue them for patent infringement.
“It’s time to end Monsanto’s scorched earth legal campaign of threats and intimidation against America’s farmers. Family farmers should be protected by the courts against the unwanted genetic contamination of their crops,” said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots community of more than 300,000 farmers and citizens dedicated to reforming food and agriculture, that is co-plaintiff in the suit.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Monsanto payout?
Monsanto faces $7.5 billion payout to Brazilian farmers
CorpWatch
by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
June 28, 2012
Monsanto, the largest seed corporation in the world, may have to pay as much as $7.5 billion to five million Brazilian soy farmers.
The company has long dealt out severe legal sanctions against farmers it suspects of “pirating” its seed. But now the farmers have turned the tables on Monsanto, by suing the company and winning.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Syngenta criminal charges
Syngenta corporation faces criminal charges for covering up livestock deaths from GM corn
By Ethan A. Huff
naturalnews.com
June 27 2012
Biotechnology giant Syngenta has officially been outed for deliberately hiding data that proves the company’s genetically-modified (GM) Bt 176 corn is directly responsible for killing livestock. Dr. Eva Sirinathsinghji writing for QW Magazine explains that Syngenta is now facing criminal charges for willfully concealing the results of an internal, company-run study on Bt 176 corn from 1996 that was abruptly ended when four cows died after just two days of consuming the “Frankencorn.”
Gottfried Gloeckner, a German farmer from Woelfersheim, originally filed the suit roughly a decade after dozens of his own dairy cows died from exposure to Syngenta’s Bt 176 corn. Gloeckner first began feeding his cattle Bt 176 corn as part of their diet back in 1997 when Syngenta gained government approval to run field trials of the crop on Gloeckner’s property. And by 2000, Bt 176 corn was the only thing Gloeckner was feeding his cows.
As this transition from natural feed to GM feed was taking place, however, Gloeckner noticed that his cows were increasingly developing serious illnesses, many of which resulted in the animals’ rapid death. By 2001, five of Gloeckner’s cows had died, and another seven died by 2002, upon which Gloeckner decided to remove all GMOs from his livestock feed. But most of Gloeckner’s remaining cows ended up suffering intestinal damage, decreased milk production, and other ailments that resulted in their having to be put down as well.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Syngenta charged
Syngenta charged for covering up livestock deaths from GM corn
By Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji
ISIS Report
June 13, 2012
Biotech giant Syngenta has been criminally charged with denying knowledge that its genetically modified (GM) Bt corn kills livestock during a civil court case that ended in 2007 [1].
Syngenta’s Bt 176 corn variety expresses an insecticidal Bt toxin (Cry1Ab) derived from the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and a gene conferring resistance to glufosinate herbicides. EU cultivation of Bt 176 was discontinued in 2007. Similar varieties however, including Bt 11 sweet corn are currently cultivated for human and animal consumption in the EU.
The charges follow a long struggle for justice by a German farmer whose dairy cattle suffered mysterious illnesses and deaths after eating Bt 176. They were grown on his farm as part of authorised field tests during 1997 to 2002. By 2000, his cows were fed exclusively on Bt 176, and soon illnesses started to emerge. He was paid 40 000 euros by Syngenta as partial compensation for 5 dead cows, decreased milk yields, and vet costs (see [2] Cows ate GM Maize and Died, SiS 21). During a civil lawsuit brought against the company by the farmer however, Syngenta refused to admit that its GM corn was the cause, claiming no knowledge of harm. The case was dismissed and Gloeckner remained thousands of euros in debt.
Gloeckner continued to lose cows and many more had to be put down due to serious illnesses, compelling him to stop using GM feed from 2002. He approached the Robert Koch Institute and Syngenta to conduct a full investigation. However, only one cow was ever analysed and the data are still unavailable to the public. Unsurprisingly, no causal relationship between the GM feed and deaths was determined; and there is still no explanation for the deaths.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Syngenta charged
Syngenta charged with lying over cattle deaths
Press Release
Gottfried Glöckner, Aktion GEN-Klage, Public Eye on Science, Basler Appell gegen Gentechnologie
May 02, 2012
Frankfurt am Main - There is a dramatic new development in the widely-discussed case of the German farmer Gottfried Gloeckner.
Between 2000 and 2002 Gloeckner, whose dairy farm was then in North Hessen near Frankfurt, witnessed a mysterious death of numbers of his cows after he had fed them genetically manipulated Bt176 corn from the Swiss company, Syngenta.
Gloeckner, who lost an earlier civil law case asking damages from the company in the Frankfurt Regional Court, has now filed a criminal case against Syngenta.
The charges are new and shocking: In the new filing Gloeckner charges that the director of Syngenta Germany GmbH, Hans-Theo Jachmann, knew about a Bt 176 corn feeding test in 1996 in the USA and that he did not inform either Gloeckner nor the judge in the later legal proceeding of Gloeckner against Syngenta about the outcome. In the US feeding test with Bt 176, which was commissioned by Syngenta, four cows died in two days at which point the company ordered the test stopped. The cows in the control group not fed the GMO corn of Syngenta remained healthy and normal. Gloeckner and a renowned French molecular biologist learned of the study in Paris in 2009. That reinforced Gloeckner’s conviction that his cows in fact died due to the feeding of the GMO corn. He then had a respected German legal expert on GMO give his expert opinion.