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Monsanto Co. said Wednesday that it’s creating a separate division for its Roundup and other herbicides business and also plans to cut 900 employees across the company as part of a restructuring to be completed in fiscal 2010.

Recent articles have raised questions about whether or not it is ethical for David Chicoine to continue in his position as South Dakota State University president while at the same time receiving $400,000 per year as a member of the Monsanto board of directors. First of all, it should be noted that Chicoine's $300,000 yearly salary as SDSU president is quite modest by the standards prevailing in academia today. Salaries for university administrators are shooting up at an unprecedented rate. During the 2007-2008 school year, compensation packages for public university presidents averaged $427,000 per year. Topping the list: Ohio State...

South African farmers suffered millions of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of genetically-manipulated corn (maize) failed to produce hardly any seeds.The plants look lush and healthy from the outside. Monsanto has offered compensation. Monsanto blames the failure of the three varieties of corn planted on these farms, in three South African provinces,on alleged 'underfertilisation processes in the laboratory". Some 280 of the 1,000 farmers who planted the three varieties of Monsanto corn this year, have reported extensive seedless corn problems. Urgent investigation demanded However environmental activitist Marian Mayet, director of the Africa-centre for biosecurity in Johannesburg, demands an...

Some small farms and organic food growers could be placed under direct supervision of the federal government under new legislation making its way through Congress. Food Safety Modernization Act House Resolution 875, or the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in February. DeLauro's husband, Stanley Greenburg, conducts research for Monsanto – the world's leading producer of herbicides and genetically engineered seed. DeLauro's act has 39 co-sponsors and was referred to the House Agriculture Committee on Feb. 4. It calls for the creation of a Food Safety Administration to allow the government to regulate food...

"Some small farms and organic food growers could be placed under direct supervision of the federal government under new legislation making its way through Congress.... Our friends in Iraq are also looking at Seed Nazis controlling their family gardens...barf, gag, bleech... "Iraqi Order 81 was implemented in 2005 by Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). It promptly made criminals and terrorists of Iraqi family farmers. The order is pre-emptive seed legislation written by and for American agri-business. It prevents Iraqi farmers from saving their seed, which they have done for generations. Instead, all of their saved seed was...

HR 875 The food police, criminalizing organic farming and the backyard gardener, and violation of the 10th amendment This bill is sitting in committee and I am not sure when it is going to hit the floor. One thing I do know is that very few of the Representatives have read it. As usual they will vote on this based on what someone else is saying. Urge your members to read the legislation and ask for opposition to this devastating legislation. Devastating for everyday folks but great for factory farming ops like Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo and Tyson to name a...

Some say that if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, the simply shouldn’t buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds. But it isn’t quite that simple. Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples, and then sues, saying they own the crop. Meanwhile, Monsanto is taking many other steps to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of normal seeds: 1.  They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest. 2.  They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so...

Scary stuff...

While most governments are reacting to the global food shortage by growing more food, the Chinese have decided to grow the same amount of fruits and vegetables, but with A TWIST: giant versions of standard food staples: 210-pound pumpkins, 2-pound tomatoes, and cucumbers that are over 2-feet long -- that are currently feeding families in 22 of China's provinces, and governments in Europe, Japan and elsewhere are taking notice. This weird, believe-it-or-not scenario becomes even more fantastic as it turns out that the reason these foods can grow so huge is because they've been sent to outer space. The seeds...

Major six page article covering essentially three areas: * GM crops, extremely aggressive law suits, suing wrong farmers, buying up nonGM seed suppliers, etc. * Dioxin production, trying to get navy subs to use PCB hydraulic fluids, Nitro W.Va. plant explosion, hiding risk from victims, etc. * Manufacturing rGBH cow hormone, suing farmers advertising milk "From cows not treated with rGBH", recent PA milk advertising ban on mentioning rGBH where E-mail protest caused fast Eddie to reverse, etc.Interesting and worth reading..... but can not post excerpt due to Vanity Fair restriction. Article is Monsanto's Harvest of Fear at Vanity Fare...

Friday, August 10, 2007 Navy Vets Die To Protect Corporate Profits! We have said it before on several occasions, and now it is even more on target than ever: "It is a stain on this nation's honor that the Department of Veterans Affairs has become a deadlier and more difficult adversary to the American veteran than any they have ever faced on a battlefield." On more than one occasion we have accused the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs [DVA] with protecting the chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange by prohibiting Blue Water Navy Veterans from receiving presumptive benefits...

2001 was a bad year for bollworms in Gujarat. The pink larval creatures infested cotton fields across the Indian state, devastating harvests. But some fields, remarkably, were mostly immune. Mayhco, an Indian seed company partially owned by Monsanto, became suspicious. Mayhco and Monsanto had been striving for years to get permission to sell genetically modified Bt cotton in India -- a strain that produces its own anti-bollworm insecticide -- but the application had been fought at every step by India's vigorous anti-GM activists and was undergoing lengthy trials. Sure enough, after testing the cotton, Mayhco determined that it contained the...

High Demand Causes Surge in Corn Prices By LIBBY QUAID ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - Ethanol plants and foreign buyers are gobbling the nation's corn supplies, pushing prices as high as $3.40 a bushel, the Agriculture Department said Friday. Farmers haven't seen prices this high for more than a decade. The monthly crop report forecast even better prices than in December, raising the estimate 10 cents to $3 to $3.40 a bushel. Robust prices have made corn more expensive for livestock feed and as food for people. But a drop-off in those uses was more than offset by growing demand...

They don't look like much, those beans cupped in Kevin Cole's work-stained hands. But soybeans -- about the size of rosary beads -- will be the main ingredient in biofuel produced at the old International Paper site starting next fall. Lake Erie Biofuels will consume 750,000 acres of soybeans each year. So could these little beans cupped in Cole's hands be the salvation for area farmers? Doubtful. Local farmers like Kevin Cole aren't expecting to see any more of an impact than their peers nationwide. That's because the 21,000 acres of beans grown in Erie and Crawford counties is, literally,...

In a June 12 letter to the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Monty Patterson, the father of 18-year-old Holly Patterson, who died in 2003 after taking the abortion pill RU-486, has accused a former official of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of deliberately leaving out her associations with pro-abortion advocacy groups in her testimony on RU-486. “I question if there are ethical issues and a potential conflict of interest surrounding Susan F. Wood, Ph.D., testifying at the Subcommittee Hearing on May 17, 2006,” Patterson wrote. Formerly Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health at the...

Media coverage of environmental regulators makes them look like dispassionate scientists. But too often they are dangerous religious fanatics. Years ago, when ranchers and farmers told me that our government's environmental regulatory agencies had been captured by fanatics so hostile to the idea of private property that they'd use the endangered-species law to drive just about every landowner off his land, I thought they were overwrought. Then I learned the story of the lynx. Thousands of lynx live in North America, but since environmental officials weren't sure whether there were any in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee National Forests in...

The fake persuadersDetective work ... shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role in shaping scientific discourse. ...An article on its website...warns "there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved...   it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party..." ...So the campaign against the researchers was extraordinarily successful; but who precisely started it? Who are "Mary Murphy" and "Andura Smetacek"? The Bivings Group...

In his 2006 State of the Union address—between thanking outgoing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for her service and heralding his wife's Helping America's Youth Initiative—President Bush slipped in a call for a ban on "human-animal hybrids." It's probably a phrase that brings thoughts of centaurs, fauns and harpies to some minds. But, despite the President's stern disapproval of mixed-species clones, we may soon find food products derived from them not just in our research labs, but on our kitchen tables within the next year.A Dutch biotechnology company called Pharming has genetically engineered cows, outfitting females with a human...

A lengthy interview with Dr. Steven Best, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas-El Paso and prolific animal rights activist. His recent focus has been the Animal Liberation Front, whose actions have caused the FBI to identify them as one of the most dangerous domestic terrorist groups. And Interview with Dr. Steven Best by Erika Wardle and Nichali Ciaccio In the Fall of 2004, the UWM chapter of Alliance for Animals hosted Dr. Steven Best, animal rights activist and professor of philosophy at the University of Texas-El Paso. Best delivered a presentation followed by a question and answer session...

Full html version here: http://www.breederville.com/auction/forumtopic.php?topic=54&boardid=1 PDF Version for download here: http://www.agribusinessaccountability.org/pdfs/289_USDA%20Inc..pdf HOW AGRIBUSINESS HAS HIJACKED REGULATORY POLICYAT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE This paper was conceived by the ORGANIZATION FOR COMPETITIVE MARKETS www.competitivemarkets.com It was commissioned by a working group of the AGRIBUSINESS ACCOUNTABILITY INITIATIVE www.agribusinessaccountability.org Each working group member had responsibilities for different case studies.The organizations listed do not necessarily endorse every detail of every case study. However, all collaborating organizations subscribe to the thesis that “revolving door” industry appointments at USDA constitute a problem that must be addressed. The following working group members helped research and edit the...