This is a Call to Action for a Non-Hierarchical Occupation of Monsanto Everywhere
Whether you like it or not, chances are Monsanto contaminated the food you ate today with chemicals and unlabeled GMOs. Monsanto controls much of the world's food supply at the expense of food democracy worldwide. This site is dedicated to empowering citizens of the world to take action against Monsanto & it's enablers like the FDA, USDA, EPA, GMA, BIO, and the processed food companies that use Monsanto's products.
We urge you to help organize and attend the closest March Against Monsanto taking place on Saturday, May 25, 2013!
Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.
FDA Commissioner
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20993
April 29, 2013
Dear Commissioner Hamburg,
We sincerely appreciated the response from your secretary on April 4, concerning your inability to attend our demonstration outside the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition that took place on Monday, April 8. The demonstration was successful and generated numerous newspaper articles across the country.
We write today to request a meeting with you concerning the labeling of genetically engineered foods in America. We are aware that representatives from the FDA have attended similar meetings with representatives from the chemical and processed food industries, and we deserve the opportunity to meet and discuss our concerns. We are willing to accommodate your busy schedule and can meet on the date and time of your choosing in May, June, or July. Upon confirmation from your office, we intend to invite business leaders in the organic food industry who share our concerns related to labeling of genetically engineered foods.
As you know, last year there were over one million signatures submitted to your agency asking you to require mandatory labels for foods produced using modern genetic engineering techniques. However, we still have not received a thorough reply from the FDA regarding this petition. We have reviewed the statements on the FDA website, and have concluded that instituting mandatory labels for genetically engineered foods is currently within your power and that such implementing such a policy does not require Congressional action.
Your failure to allay the concerns of American consumers and respond to the petition has resulted in growing distrust of your agency. We interpret the FDA’s resolve to ignore the people’s overwhelming support of mandatory GMO labeling as demonstrative of your true priority: protecting corporate interests, rather than protecting consumers’ safety and our fundamental right to transparency in food labeling. If the FDA is to regain the trust of American consumers you must demonstrate real action and commitment to introducing GMO labeling policy. Our proposed meeting is the crucial first step in beginning that process.
Consumers want the FDA to reject the purported authority of arbitrary biotechnology corporations as providers of safety studies. We demand independent tests conducted by the FDA or respected researchers at universities. Moreover, consumers are concerned that the existing body of safety studies are woefully incomplete and do not reflect the data recorded over the entire lifespan of animals fed genetically engineered foods.
The biotechnology industry says that there have been over 3 trillion meals served using genetically engineered ingredients without any health issues. We believe this statement is misleading; it is impossible to trace any health effects due to the consumption of genetically engineered foods when there are no mandatory labels on genetically engineered foods. Conversely, since genetically engineered foods entered the American food supply in the late 1990s, there has been a noticeable increase in diabetes, asthma, autism, cancer, and stomach maladies in America. Some concerned consumers believe this unfortunate increase is the direct result of consuming genetically engineered foods. This anecdotal evidence is not based on science. However, unless consumers are given the opportunity to choose between foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients and those that don’t, the anecdotal evidence will continue to yield further speculation on the dangers of consuming genetically engineered foods.
On May 25, activists around the world will unite to March Against Monsanto.
Why do we march?
Research studies have shown that Monsanto’s genetically-modified foods can lead to serious health conditions such as the development of cancer tumors, infertility and birth defects.
In the United States, the FDA, the agency tasked with ensuring food safety for the population, is steered by ex-Monsanto executives, and we feel that’s a questionable conflict of interests and explains the lack of government-lead research on the long-term effects of GMO products.
Recently, the U.S. Congress and president collectively passed the nicknamed “Monsanto Protection Act” that, among other things, bans courts from halting the sale of Monsanto’s genetically-modified seeds.
For too long, Monsanto has been the benefactor of corporate subsidies and political favoritism. Organic and small farmers suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup.
Monsanto’s GMO seeds are harmful to the environment; for example, scientists have indicated they have caused colony collapse among the world’s bee population.
What are solutions we advocate?
Voting with your dollar by buying organic and boycotting Monsanto-owned companies that use GMOs in their products.
Labeling of GMOs so that consumers can make those informed decisions easier.
Repealing relevant provisions of the US’s “Monsanto Protection Act.”
Calling for further scientific research on the health effects of GMOs.
Holding Monsanto executives and Monsanto-supporting politicians accountable through direct communication, grassroots journalism, social media, etc.
Continuing to inform the public about Monsanto’s secrets.
Taking to the streets to show the world and Monsanto that we won’t take these injustices quietly.
We will not stand for cronyism. We will not stand for poison. That’s why we March Against Monsanto.
So you want to March Against Monsanto? First, check and see if there’s already being one planned for your city, and if so, if there’s someone leading the organizing on it yet: http://bit.ly/ZTDsk8
If not, please read these guidelines for a general idea of what goes into planning a demonstration.
If you feel you can take it on, send a message to the page letting us know which city you’re in and that you’ve read this guide. We’ll then create an event for you and add you as a host.
Step 1: Decide whether to do a march or a single rally. If you can get at least 20 people, a march has the potential to reach a lot more people than a rally.
Step 2: Pick a good location. For a rally, a state capitol building or city hall is a good spot. If there are any GMO-related headquarters or corporations in your city, that’s another good spot.
If you’re doing a march, pick two well-known locations to start and end your march. You can do mini-rallies at each location. Keep in mind walking distance; around a mile is a good distance.
Step 3: Research which permits may be necessary to make your event legal. You can research this on the Internet by looking on city government websites or calling their offices. Requirements are usually different depending on whether you’re doing a march or a rally and where it will be held.
Step 4: Reach out to potential speakers if you plan to have a rally or mini-rallies along with a march; this is a great way to increase the turnout and get media coverage. Try reaching out to organizations in your city that oppose GMOs and/or Monsanto like farmers and organizations that promote organic foods. If there are politicians in your city/state who advocate GMO labeling, that’s another good idea as well.
Note: If you’re having speakers, you may need to get additional permits for a PA system and/or a bullhorn.
Step 5: Once you have all of the details worked out for your rally, it’s time to promote it! This is done by use of flyers, including large ones to post to telephone poles and small ones to handout.
Also send a press release to your local media alerting them to the event.
If you’re doing a march, be sure to create a banner to carry so people know why you’re marching. Also, make signs and have attendees bring their own as well.
*We will provide some guidance for you, but ultimately the success of your march will be in your hands, as this is a grassroots-led movement. Thank you!*
Official MAM statement
We would like to remind everyone that MAM does not support violence or aggression towards property or people. Violence will only set us back.
Please be clear this movement is non-violent. We want the world to hear us. We must behave like adults not stoop to the level of violence.
Our Marches are family events. We will have children, elderly, and disabled people present. Violence of any kind will not be acceptable.
Please be warned that often times Monsanto themselves will send in their own plants to try and incite or instigate aggression. Do not be fooled. They are trying to destroy our unity.
With that said, Please do not bring violence or abusive comments to our March or to our Event pages. Your comments will be deleted and if it continues you will be banned.
We encourage all organizers of the individual events to share this message.
Please be warned if you are an instigator you will not be tolerated at our march and we our organizers will ask you to stop or leave. If you continue we ourselves will politely and calmly ask a Police officer to remove you.
We encourage all organizers to be open and talk with your local police and make clear to them that these events are family events and we will cooperate and work with them to remove anyone who incites aggression.
Please understand, we are not trying to be authoritarian but that we have a responsibility to create a peaceful event for our children, parents, grandparents and all attending.
Remember the world will be watching and we have an example to set. Violence would be seized upon by the media and Monsanto. They would use this as propaganda to discredit the movement and label us as eco-terrorists. This is not a joke we are standing up against one of the most powerful corporations that ever existed.
This is why we reiterate no violence of any kind will be tolerated. We know most of you know this but for the few who did not you do now. For the instigators you are not welcome and we stand firm united in NON-Violence.
While we will be speaking up against the politicians and the corporations we will not condone any comments or threats of aggression towards them. We will expose their crimes and demand justice and change of policy. We do not by any means condone any type of vigilantism. Our mission is to raise awareness, expose, and legally stop Monsanto, and their cronies, crimes against humanity. We would like to see GMOs Labeled and/or banned until they can without a doubt be proven safe. So far we have seen the opposite. GMOs are not safe. Monsanto is an unethical unmoral corporation and they have been committing crimes against humanity for decades.
This event is a platform to bring us together in Unity. From here we can work together to create a powerful base of grass roots activism . We encourage all to network together and continue to work towards supporting ballot initiatives that are in place to label GMOs or Ban them, and create initiatives that have not yet been created. Continue working together to expose politicians that serve Monsanto and promote politicians that stand with the people. We encourage all to create mailing lists and or FB groups where you can continue working together after the march and until we have reached our goals. You may want to bring an ipad and have everyone who is interest type in their emails so you have a ready digital email list to bring people together for future efforts. This event has created powerful momentum and its in our best interest to brainstorm Ideas on how we can keep the ball rolling.
About a dozen protesters calling themselves Occupy Monsanto spent several hours near Monsanto’s headquarters in Creve Coeur, Missouri as shareholders voted on members for the company’s Board of Directors.
The protesters called for more transparency in the multinational company’s operations especially in labeling, research and business practices.
Adam Eidinger who owns 75 Monsanto shares read his speech to the protesters before heading to the meeting to address shareholders with a statement on behalf of Pesticide Action Network, the company, which submitted the study on potential risks of using GMOs.
RT: You are a Monsanto shareholder, so you’re obviously interested in the company making a profit. But you are planning to speak on behalf of the company which submitted the study on the potential risks of Monsanto products. Why are you doing this?
AE: Well the resolution we had would have required a report to be written that could be shared with researchers and scientists across the globe about the risks that they know – the company knows already – about their genetically modified crops. Which many safe food activists believe make us more reliant on herbicides and chemicals that the company also sells. And these chemicals may be what’s causing higher rates of cancer in industrialized nations across the globe.
We know how it caused tumors in rats that were fed in long term studies last year. Dr. Seralini’s study was a topic during this shareholder meeting, I brought it up. I was able to speak during the meeting.
And this meeting was closed to the public, as you said. And one of the things we are asking for is in the future this to be live-streamed. People around the world care about what’s going into the food. They may not want to own Monsanto stock.
I only bought the stock so I could speak at this shareholder meeting.
RT: A Chinese economist has criticized Monsanto for controlling the country’s soybean market and trying to do the same with corn and cotton in the country. How is this impacting local farmers?
AE: It devastates local farmers time and time again. We’ve seen countries where Monsanto has introduced ‘patented’ technologies, I like to call it. And they only provide hybrid seeds to farmers who then loose bio-diversity, loose varieties that have actually adapted to that area.
What we need on this planet is better distribution of food and we need better organic methods to be shared with farmers, not more reliance on chemicals and pesticides.
And now, it was quite alarming at this shareholder meeting, there are these new technologies where they are going to be modifying insects and viruses and introducing these novel viruses into the environment to handle pests, to kill pests.
We wonder why bee populations around the world are plummeting – it’s because of these chemicals and possibly because of this new technology.
RT: In 2009, Monsanto was accused by the US Justice Department of breaking anti-trust rules. But in 2012 the inquiry was closed without taking any enforcement action. Why?
AE: I think Monsanto is a perfect example of regulatory capture where an industry captures the levers of government, levers of our democracy that are supposed to protect us from companies that would profit over our health being impacted in a really negative way. I mean people may be allergic to these crops, to the chemicals that are used on them, and they are trying to avoid them. And in America they have no right to know if the food has been genetically modified or not. And that is something I brought up at the meeting, if you want to be transparent you ought to label the food.
So yes, you have people at the FDA like Michael Taylor who is the head of food safety who also was the vice-president of Monsanto for a decade and prior to that worked at the FDA as well. So it’s a revolving door, he was at the FDA, went to work for Monsanto and now he’s back at the FDA. It’s clear that secretary of state Clinton, she emphasized giving these hybrid seeds to Africa, yet there’s no proof this is going to help African farmers. I think quite the contrary – they are going to become dependent on buying seeds from the United States when they should be able to save their seeds and develop their own varieties in Africa.
Argentinians have said no to what they call Monsanto´s “deathly” business in Latin America.
In Buenos Aires, the action group “Millions against Monsanto” has led a protest at the House of Cordoba, a province located in the center of Argentina where the US multinational company is developing its biggest regional factory.
According to activists, the construction of the facility has been approved by provincial authorities but no official report on environmental damages has yet been conducted.
Political complicity, leaders of the protest said, is fostering the expansion of Monsanto´s “chain of profit and death”: Monsanto sells seeds that are resistant to its own glyphosate-based Roundup, a key herbicide used in Argentina´s “green gold” soybean industry.
In the meantime, thousands of farmers are exposed to serious health risks -cancer, birth defects, intestinal, heart and neuronal conditions- as a recent investigation by the University of Buenos Aires shows.
But Argentina is only one link of Monsanto´s billionaire expansion in Latin America.
In Paraguay, for instance, demonstrators denounced that the biotech company has managed to introduce its transgenic soy thanks to economic lobbies linked to the impeachment of President Fernando Lugo last year. They called it the “agribusiness coup”.
Monsanto has reported to have nearly tripled its profits in the first fiscal quarter of 2013 as its regional sales boom and governments allow the US-based firm to spread.
Meanwhile, on the margins of the anti-Monsanto demonstration, Argentine left-wing opposition lawmakers held a political meeting to condemn the corporate power of agribusiness and the increasing control of food sovereignty by transnational companies.
With over 75 actions worldwide this week to stand up against Monsanto and demand the right to know what is in our food, we knew we had to be a part with the Eco Womb family. With an Occupy Monsanto event scheduled in Ithaca, NY, where we just happened to be headed to meet up with friends, and with the help of the Genetic Crimes Unit team, we connected with Joanne, a local hydro-fracking activist. Together, with a handful of others who joined to stand with us throughout the day, we turned the Ithaca Commons into our educational ground from 12noon-5pm, connecting with hundreds on the importance of learning what is really in our foods, the dangers of GMOs, and why the government is not sharing this information. We handed out educational flyers from the Non-GMO Project to inform people on what a GMO is and what the detrimental effects are on farmers, our soil, and our health. We sang music to the tune of “All we want’s a simple label, for the food that’s on our table” carrying on the energy of the Right2Know March. And, we aired The World According to Monsanto all day so that passer-bys could get a glance at the evils behind Monsanto, and learn the history and ties between Monsanto and the government.
Monsanto is corrupt, and has built its fortunes as a chemical company. It claims to be a seed company, “a sustainable agriculture company” helping farmers by “improving agriculture, improving lives” – yeah right! Monsanto developed Agent Orange, PCB’s, RoundUp pesticides, and has continuously distributed false information on the level of toxicity in their products. They even claimed that dioxin was not cancerous, causing weaker environmental regulations based on falsified evidence! Now, they claim that Genetically Engineered seeds are safe – yeah right, again! We have been eating their foods since 1992 without anyone telling us, warning us, or letting us make the choice to not ingest their poisons.
The health ramifications from GMOs are so huge, and with an increase in autoimmune diseases, allergies, ADD/ADHD, asthma, decreased fertility, and even cancer over the past decade, there is no question in my mind that the two correlate. More toxins in our food, more toxins in our bloodstream, more diseases, as our bodies fight to adapt and try to keep up with all of the foreign elements we are ingesting. There have been studies that link GMOs with birth defects and cancerous tumors, and enough evidence to warrant at least restrictions or labeling laws. I personally think GMOs should be banned and Monsanto should go away! I mean why have they dumped billions of dollars into fighting against labeling with misinformation campaigns if they are so confident in their product? They want you to buy their frankenfoods. They want farmers to be dependent on them year after year. They want us to become sick ingesting their poisons and then have to circle back to the pharmaceuticals for medications to be even more dependent on drugs to prop us up. If they control the food supply, they control the people. Stop buying their products, they don’t control you anymore. If everyone did this, or enough of us did, and we voted with our forks and dollars, there would be change. And the only change that is going to happen is if they feel it in their pockets.
Did you know that Monsanto has a patent on GMO seeds? This means that they can sue farmers whose fields may become contaminated with GMOs through cross-pollination just by being near a GMO farm. GMO seeds also can’t be replanted the next year, they are a dead-end food source. Farmers are becoming dependent on Monsanto year after year to supply seeds, and the corporate giant can even step in and sue farmers for trying to replant. Farmers are supposed to save seeds and replant! That is how we have survived for the past millennium. With 94% of soy, 90% of canola, and 88% of corn grown in the U.S. being genetically engineered, and the government subsidizing farmers to grow these crops, and Monsanto controlling the patents on all of these seeds, it is pretty obvious that they are making huge profits. They don’t want us to understand these connections, or the detrimental effects of GMOs. They don’t care about how sick GMOs make the population. They want this, and they must be stopped.
That is why we marched 313 miles last fall with the Right2Know March to demand GMO labeling, that is why we Shopped for Truth at Trader Joe’s to uncover why they won’t label their brand, that is why our family has committed to shop exclusively Non-GMO, and that is why we are continuing to march and educate on the dangers of GMOs, so that we can reach as many people as we can to deliver this message. We are parents, our children NEED us to speak up. If we don’t, who will? We are truly the change we have been seeking. Our children are depending on us to wake up the world. And, it doesn’t have to mean conflict with the powers that be. Through peaceful non-violent protests, educational opportunities, and continuous connections with conscious souls along the way, we are collectively standing up and speaking out to create change one family at a time.
So, what can you do? Take steps to eliminate GMOs from your diet. Choose one of the top contenders first, like corn, or soy, or canola oil. Check what is in your cabinets and read the ingredients. If it has these foods listed and does not have either a Non-GMO Project Verified or USDA Certified Organic label, or you know exactly what farm it came from and you understand what their practices are, then it most likely has GMO ingredients. You do have the power to affect change. Vote with your fork and your dollar. For every bite you take that is Non-GMO and every food that you buy that is Non-GMO, you are voting for change in the one way that makes a direct impact, it affects the profits of those in control. You can also support Proposition 37, the ballot initiative in California that would require GMO labeling, and candidates that support this initiative. You can continue to learn and understand the issue, help spread the word by sharing this information with your friends and family, and support those businesses, organizations, and educational efforts that are standing up and speaking out on behalf of us all. We CAN collectively make a difference. We finally are.
