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.
Unfortunately, the shareholder resolution was withdrawn in October 2014 and will not be voted on at the 2015 Annual Shareholder Meeting. More details of the demise of the shareholder resolution can be viewed here [PDF].
On August 11, 2014, the following shareholder resolution was submitted to the Monsanto Company:
Roundup has never been tested or assessed for long-term safety for regulatory purposes. However, independent studies show it is highly toxic to animals and humans. Glyphosate alone is toxic, and some of the added ingredients (adjuvants) in Roundup are, on their own, toxic. In addition, some of these adjuvants increase the toxicity of glyphosate by enabling it to penetrate plant and animal cells more easily. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257596/
Roundup interferes with CYP enzymes, disrupts the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, and impairs serum sulfate transport. https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416 The consequences include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
In 2014 in Brazil, the Federal Public Prosecutor https://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15365 requested the Justice Department suspend the use of glyphosate herbicides, and ordered the National Health Surveillance Agency to re-evaluate the toxicity of glyphosate.
Herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready crops increased herbicide use in the U.S. by an estimated 527 million pounds between 1996 and 2011. https://www.enveurope.com/content/24/1/24
RESOLVED:
Shareholders request that the Board establish an independent panel, controlling for conflict of interest, to publish by July 2015, at reasonable cost and excluding proprietary information, a report analyzing the extent to which Monsanto’s Roundup/glyphosate may cause the above health problems, and describing public policy initiatives, and Monsanto policies and activities, to phase out or restrict uses of Roundup/glyphosate that increase human exposure.
Supporting Statement: Proponents believe the report should include all evidence linking Roundup, glyphosate, or Roundup’s inert ingredients or adjuvants, to the above health problems.
Genetic engineering technology was introduced 20 years ago with the notion we could make enough food to feed everyone in the world. However, many are becoming increasingly concerned about the growing number of genetically modified foods in our food supply. FOX 5 Consumer Reporter Laura Evans has more on this story.
Crew:
Ben Zolno – Story, Producer, Director, Shooter, Editor
AshEl “Seasunz” Eldridge – Lyrics, Performance, Casting, Locations
Stic Man – Final Verse Lyrics, Performance
Rebecca Quinn – AD/Key PA, 2nd Assistant Editor
Matt Davis – 1st AC, 2nd Unit Director, Shooter
Sashwa Burrous – 1st AC, 2nd Unit Director, Shooter, Titles, FX
Sabrina Davidson – Production Coordinator
Cameron Williams – 2nd AC, PA
Elana Issacs – PA
Ashleigh Papp – PA
Brian Pierce – PA
Ryan Dexter – Titles, FX
song produced and mixed by J.Bless & Golden Horns
Cast:
Guide – AshEL “Seasunz” Eldridge
Final Verse Writer/Performer – Stic Man
Kid – Anthony Samuels and Chioke Bakari
Mom – Kanchan Hayes
Vandana Shiva – TV interviewee
Powdered Doughnut Junkies – Franceyes Jackson
Energy-Drink Junkie – Jahahara Alkebulan-Maat
Corn Chip/Nacho Cheese Junkie – Ambessa Cantave
Twizzlers Junkie – Jose Manuel Ramirez
Suit (Fried Chicken Dealer) – John Harrison
Suit (Driver) – Aaron Lehmer
Hamburger Helper – Jessica M. Young, Rana Chang, Sabrina Davidson
Toucan Sam – Lisa Aurora
Lucky Charms – Alexia Stratton
Tony the Tiger – Manuel Martinez, Jake Schoneker, Rebecca Quinn
Homeless Man – Colin Hussey
KFC Junkie – Gary Whitaker
Little Debbie – Becca Hike
LYRICS
VANDANA SHIVA:
“Once they have established the norm —
that seed can be owned as their property —
royalties can be collected.
We will depend on them
for every seed we grow
of every crop we grow.
If they control seed, they control food, they know it; it’s strategic.
It’s more powerful than bombs.
It’s more powerful than guns.
This is the best way to control the populations of the world.”
CHORUS:
That’s what the streets them say.
That’s what police them say.
That’s what the Babylon say.
Put cola upon lips
and get popped the same way now.
That’s what The Pentagon say.
That’s what the generals say.
That’s what the empire say.
Put death down your throat,
you get dropped the same way.
SEASUNZ:
There’s a war going on inside,
no man is safe from:
DDTs, PCBs,
every corner in the hood got a KFC
or McD’s. It’s crack speed like RED
Bull-ish they pulpit — so caffeine,
Kit Kat like a click-clack holes in your genes
Cuz everything at market ain’t all what it seems.
Little Debbie bussing biscuits at sugar-high fiends.
Ain’t nothing but a G thing —
GMO, MSG, genocide of street gangs.
Aspartame or street cane.
Monsanto is Rambo.
Round Up with ammo.
Who would have known you can die from a diet
Diabetes and the -itis from the dairy and the dose
of the high fructose
cuz your ribs too close
so you might start a riot.
Might be a FOOD FIGHTER!
CHORUS REPEATED
SEASUNZ:
They shootin’!
Made you look
at the labels on the food that you cook.
Just say no to cocoa box
cuz when you Google the ingredients, you might get got.
Is your milk on drugs? Cuz your brain on Fox.
Factory farming spawning the Meatrix plot,
Globally warming us all, enough cows and NOx
driving the climate, driving a hummer or not.
Drive-in like a drive-by.
E.coli served super sized with a side of super lies.
so tell me what’s more gangsta than that?
Bullets or burgers both blaze burners to black.
Breakfast is a little like Texas,
Petro is everything that you’re eating on
My pesto is backyard like choppin’ chard.
My school lunch pack a punch.
FOOD FIGHT IS ON!
CHORUS REPEATED
STIC.MAN:
What’s Beef?
Beef is when you’re 12 years old and obese
clogged arteries, can’t see your own feet
until you’re up in ICU, guaranteed to be an ‘I see you”
From that processed food.
Suicide. It’s a suicide.
Don’t want no microwaves, no pesticides.
Fast food’s a slow death in disguise.
It’s the wild wild westernized world of deception and lies.
What’s Beef?
Beef is when you starve in a famine.
Nothing won’t grow and the land stays barren.
Pollution in the river, mercury in the salmon.
What sense do it make, being at war with the planet?
We’re at war for the mind so impressionable.
Instead of vegetables,
we reach for Red Bulls.
Poor diets kill more brothers than pistols.
We’re fighting for our lives like Michael Vic’s pit bulls.
Dog eat dog, America eats the young,
We die from beef, but more from meat than the gun.
Bullets for breakfast and mass murder meals.
Enemy of the state, and your plate is the battlefield
Political heavyweight Monsanto took on an Indiana soybean farmer today in the U.S. Supreme Court over Monsanto’s patents of its Roundup-resistant seed.
And, once again, Justice Clarence Thomas was on the bench, hearing the case with the other justices. Thomas worked as a corporate lawyer for Monsanto in the 1970s. Thomas has participated in at least one other case involving the company, Monsanto v. Geertson, which resulted in a favorable decision for Monsanto; Thomas joined the majority in that case.
Some have criticized Thomas’ participation in cases involving a previous employer. Monsanto is so used to the question that it gets space on the company website.
Thomas knows something about the subject of today’s case: In 2001, he authored an important decision in this field, J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, which — while it didn’t involve Monsanto — held that new, developed plant breeds are patentable.
At issue today were Monsanto’s patents of its herbicide-resistant seed. Monsanto requires farmers to use its purchased seed for just one planting cycle; they must buy new seed every spring. Farmer Vernon Bowman has not reused any of the soybean seeds hepurchased. However, Monsanto’s patent does allow growers to sell second-generation seed to a grain elevator, where Bowman purchased his seed and has been planting it in some of his fields since 1999.
That’s where Monsanto took issue. It claims Bowman’s use of the second-generation seed infringed the company’s patent rights, even if it was sold by a third party and is not the original Monsanto seed, but descended from it. Monsanto won its case in a lower federal court.
Monsanto typically reaches a settlement with farmers it has sued for patent infringement. This time, The Guardian reports, the case traveled to the Supreme Court because 75-year-old Bowman — already bankrupt from an unrelated land deal — couldn’t pay damages and is fighting the case with literally nothing to lose.
Monsanto itself contributed more than $500,000 to federal candidates in the last election cycle, primarily favoring Republicans. Monsanto spent nearly $6 million on lobbying in 2012, down from its $8.8 million record in 2008. That’s still enough to keep Monsanto the big guy on the agribusiness block — it has spent the most on lobbying by far in the industry since 2008; the American Farm Bureau is the only other to even come close. The majority, by far, of Monsanto’s lobbyists have made at least one trip through the revolving door; in-house lobbyist Michael Holland, Jr., for instance, logged 13 years working for various House Republicans before he jumped to Monsanto in 2011.
The Obama administration pushed the Court not to take the case in the first place, echoing concerns of those filing briefs for Monsanto that a reversal of the lower court’s decision could adversely affect other patents involving DNA, nanotechnology or other self-replicating technology, according to the Huffington Post.
Monsanto Annual Shareholder Meeting
Building A
800 Lindberg Road
Creve Coeur, MO
January 31, 2013
Good Afternoon. I am here speaking on behalf of Harrington Investments, the Pesticide Action Network and my 75 shares . Our resolution for consideration by fellow shareholders addresses serious and potential risks associated with our Company’s genetically engineered crops, the toxic chemicals applied to these crops, and the related civil liability our Company may face due to their continued sales.
I realize our resolution is the same as last year and is unlikely to receive enough votes today to pass. So instead of speaking to the merits of the resolution or the Board’s prepared response, I am going to use my limited time to inform fellow shareholders that a massive tidal wave of consumer rejection of foods derived from our company’s patented technology has yet to crash down, but will soon.
What I am speaking of is a historic re-ordering of what crops farmers will be permitted to grow and the near-complete collapse of our customer base if we don’t change our business practices. Customers in our value chain are beginning to reject our patented technology due to the unsustainable consequences its use brings for human health and that of our soil and water.
First of all, why is our Company and it’s industry partners as a whole so vigorously hostile to new independent, peer-reviewed research? Last Fall, Dr. Seralini’s research clearly showed that rats fed this Company’s NK603 corn over their lifetime had serious health issues versus rats fed the control, a non-genetically engineered diet. We know the Company’s Technology Agreement does not permit farmers to give their seed away to scientists for research purposes. But in order for Monsanto to uphold its official pledge of “Transparency,” the Company’s patented technology must be scrutinized by scientists in every country in the world, without restrictions. The Company must embrace all research, in all its forms, to be truly transparent with current and future customers.
It is clear from the research of Dr. Seralini, that exposure to glyphosate and our Roundup Ready family of herbicides in only trace amounts of drinking water was linked to severe tumors in these rats over a lifetime of feeding. Moreover, our Company’s own rat feeding trials were woefully inadequate in measuring the long-term health risks of foods derived from our Company’s technology because our studies took place over only 90 days versus a rat’s entire lifetime as shown in Dr. Seralini’s study. To dismiss long-term animal feeding studies that were reviewed by the same scientific journal that years earlier did not reveal the long-term impacts of eating GMOs in Monsanto’s own studies is another example of this Company being two-faced and opaque. Customers, government regulators, and concerned scientists deserve nothing less than crystal-clear transparency from this Company. This starts by welcoming research by scientists who may be critical of our patented technology.
Secondly, last year I warned shareholders and the Board of Directors that the Company’s misguided hostility to safe food activists and farmers was fueling a consumer backlash. There was the Just Label It campaign, which last year sent over 1.1 million petition signatures to the FDA requesting labels for GMO foods. This effort led by Stoneyfield Organic CEO Gary Hirshberg, set the record for the most public comments on a petition to the FDA ever. And most recently social media campaigns have emerged, like the GMO Inside campaign, which urges grocery shoppers to label the suspected GMO foods and post the photos to Facebook and Twitter, as they have done by the thousands.
And then there was Proposition 37 in California. When I asked you Mr. Grant straightforwardly last year, “How much would this Company spend to defeat the California Right2Know Ballot initiative,” you refused to answer my question. Today fellow shareholders I am displeased to report our company wasted $8.2 million dollars to defeat transparency in food labels. Spending millions of dollars through lies and misinformation is not the way to stop the customer backlash towards GMOs. It’s only made it worse. Shareholders need to take this breech of trust very seriously.
While the proposition to label GMO foods in California failed to pass by a slim margin, people now say that if this Company was so proud of its patented technology, it would demand labels just as much as grocery shoppers do. This paradox exists because the Company is not being transparent with itself. This blatant denial of the wishes of customers in our value chain has the fuel to generate a wild fire of grassroots activism against this company. Customers recognize the lack of transparency in our food labels means there must be something to hide and they are wising up to the fact that its our patented technology that is being concealed.
For that matter why is this a closed-door meeting and no video feed made available to the hundreds of millions world-wide who eat our patented technology? Why must we meet in secret if the Company truly embraces transparency?
Since last year’s shareholder meeting we know more than 6 million Americans have voted & signed petitions demanding more transparency in food labels. This voting block is not going away because they vote three times a day- breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Throughout 2012 there were over 150 large-scale protests against this Company’s opaque & undemocratic control of global food policy. There were at least 50 protests at Monsanto facilities world-wide this past September 17 alone and just this last Tuesday there were thousands who took to the streets of Argentina protesting this company. Unless things begin to change and become more transparent, these protests will increase in size and number. Mr. Grant, the grassroots are Roundup resistant.
The way forward is by upholding the Company’s pledge to transparency. First, this means following the lead of other Fortune 500 companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, and Walmart and begin to stream over the Internet audio & video of all future shareholder meetings. Second, the Company should cease its efforts to stymie legislative solutions that provide increased transparency around GMO foods. States like Washington, Hawaii, Connecticut, Oregon, New Mexico, Vermont, and even here in Missouri have legislative solutions in the works. These efforts should be embraced by the Company, not fought off with lobbyists & lawyers. Third, the company needs to provide scientists access to the Company’s seeds & existing body of research. Let independent scientists provide the much-needed peer-reviewed studies, so the public at large believes this Company is being truly transparent.
A video published yesterday on the Wall Street Journal’s website, Mr. Grant said quote “we need to do much better job explaining where food comes from” We wholeheartedly agree. From independent scientific experimentation to honest food labels to streaming future shareholder meetings, this Company needs to look inward and become transparent.
Thank you for your time and I will answer questions shareholders may have.
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.
