Free Republic

Michael R. Taylor's appointment by the Obama administration to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 7th sparked immediate debate and even outrage among many food and agriculture researchers, NGOs and activists. The Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001, Taylor exemplifies the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies that regulate it. He is reviled for shaping and implementing the government's favorable agricultural biotechnology policies during the Clinton administration.

George Soros' hedge fund bought 897,813 shares of Monsanto on Nov. 17. This deal equals $312.6 Million. Big Government: A questionable food safety bill in search of a crisis passed the Senate, but may hit a snag in the House. This power grab of the nation's food supply may end up benefiting a certain Hungarian billionaire. Why would the Senate take up precious time in the lame duck session considering a food safety bill? Just as ObamaCare wasn't really about health care reform but about government power, S510 is not really about food safety but about government control of agriculture...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has presided over the Senate for the past four years and we’ve just learned today that his current Lame Duck session is “RIGGED.” Color me surprised! A hot mic picked up Senator Michael Bennet’s words… “It’s all rigged. The whole conversation is rigged. The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck. It’s just rigged.” Welcome to our world Senator Bennet. We’ve known for quite a while that our government apparatus is rigged. Take for example, the Food Safety Bill which...

# Preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. # It will more than likely make Michael Taylor (mentioned above) the Food Czar. # End U.S. sovereignty over its own food supply by forcing compliance with WTO guidelines.

GM canola plant refugees from farms in North Dakota bear multiple transgenic traits Outside a grocery store in Langdon, N.D., two ecologists spotted a yellow canola plant growing on the margins of a parking lot this summer. They plucked it, ground it up and, using a chemical stick similar to those in home pregnancy kits, identified proteins that were made by artificially introduced genes. The plant was GM—genetically modified. That's not too surprising, given that North Dakota grows tens of thousands of hectares of conventional and genetically modified canola—a weedy plant, known scientifically as Brassica napus var oleifera, bred by...

(NaturalNews) Chemical and agricultural giant DuPont has accused rival Monsanto of maintaining a seed monopoly, in a complaint filed with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture. "Monsanto has engaged in numerous practices that improperly seek to expand the scope of intellectual property rights at the expense of competition, innovation, and choice," the 18-page DuPont report reads. DuPont, which owns the genetically modified seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred International, is Monsanto's main competitor in the agricultural biotech field. The two companies are already in court over a failed licensing deal. The complaint alleges that Monsanto controls 98 percent of the U.S....

“With genetic engineering, transferring genes from one species’ DNA to another is just like taking a page out of one book and putting it between the pages of another book.” This popular analogy is used often by advocates of genetically modified (GM) food. The words on the page are made up of the four letters, or molecules, of the genetic code, which line up in “base pairs” along the DNA. The inserted page represents a gene, whose code produces one or more proteins. The book is made up of chapters, which represent chromosomes—large sections of DNA. The analogy makes the...

Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.The opposition is significant, because Gates is left-of-center himself. The Bill and Melinda...

What would happen if a USDA scientist discovered that one of the most commonly used pesticides on the planet with a reputation for having saved millions of tons of US soil from erosion was -- rather than a soil savior -- a soil killer? That, to quote a certain paranormal expert, would be bad. And yet, it's true. This news came to the fore thanks to a recently published must-read article from Reuters on how government regulators are “dropping the ball” on agricultural biotechnology. It begins with the story of USDA scientist Dr. Robert Kremer. Kremer has spent the last...

The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds. Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds. But farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. “What we’re talking about here...

Genetically Modified crops (or GM) are genetically modified organisms (GMO) that have been altered to meet a specific profile. They have also been the subject of controversy almost since their introduction two decades ago. A new study pinpoints three variations of GM corn (maize) as being linked to organ damage in mammals. The three varieties in question are Mon 810, Mon 863, and NK 603. The "Mon" is for, you guessed it, Monsanto and the NK is also a Monsanto product, being engineered for herbicide tolerance. The study was conducted by the Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering...

jenningsthecat writes "A study published in December 2009 in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that three varieties of Monsanto genetically-modified corn caused damage to the liver, kidneys, and other organs of rats. One of the corn varieties was designed to tolerate broad-spectrum herbicides, (so-called 'Roundup-ready' corn), while the other two contain bacteria-derived proteins that have insecticide properties. The study made use of Monsanto's own raw data. Quoting from the study's 'Conclusions' section: 'Our analysis highlights that the kidneys and liver as particularly important on which to focus such research as there was a clear negative impact on the...

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write. No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former...

Despite some really eloquent speeches to the contrary, our “for sale” House of Representatives passed the Food Fascism Act….euphemistically called a food safety act, by a margin of about 140 over the naysayer’s. True to form, Rosa DeLauro spoke about things she knows nothing about and couldn’t care less; Rosa just loves her some Monsanto! And that exclusion for farms??? Gone! And that includes you organic idiots who thought you had kissed enough behinds to have your industry excluded. The newly revised bill that appeared overnight after the original was defeated 29th of July, now includes all those farms we...

Your right to eat healthy food and use supplements of your choice is rapidly vanishing, but every effort has been made to keep you in the dark about the coming nutricide. Codex Alimentarius is scheduled for full global implementation on December 31, 2009, and not a word has been spoken in main stream media about this threat to humanity. Yet, according to the projections based on figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a minimum of 3 billion people will die from the Codex mandated vitamin and mineral guideline alone. Former Nazi is...

The House has passed a far-reaching food safety bill requiring more government inspections and imposing new penalties on those who violate the law, reacting strongly to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that killed at least nine people. The legislation would require greater oversight of food manufacturers and give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to order recalls. It also would require the FDA to develop a system for better tracing food-borne illnesses. Food companies would be required to create detailed food safety plans. President Barack Obama praised the bill soon after it was passed, calling it "a major...

HR 2749 is being rushed through Congress, and the house may look to suspend the rules and fast track the bill at Obama’s request. Just what can we expect from this legislation? A lot more of the following: Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides. He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind. “I was...

WASHINGTON -- Legislation to overhaul the nation's food-safety system has spurred a backlash from livestock and grain farmers who don't want the Food and Drug Administration inspecting farms. The legislation, approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee last month, aims to give the FDA more money and authority to police food safety, and technically doesn't apply to foods the agency doesn't regulate: meat, poultry and some egg products, which are regulated by the Department of Agriculture. But livestock and grain farmers say the legislation isn't written clearly enough, and they gave lawmakers and regulators an earful Thursday at a...

WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - The United States will spend an another $1 billion for ingredients for an H1N1 vaccination, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Sunday. "There'll be another $1 billion worth of orders placed to get the bulk ingredients for an H1N1 vaccination. Congress has agreed with the president that this is the number one priority, keeping Americans safe and secure," Sebelius said on CNN. Sebelius has said plans were on track for a mid-October vaccination program, although it was not certain Americans would be offered the vaccine for the so-called swine flu.

The goal seems to be nothing short of eradicating American farms and self-sustainability. Even DEMOCRATS are opposing the Obama Energy Bill. Climate change legislation will be utterly devastating for American farmers. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) of the House Agriculture Committee says that not only will he not vote for it, but no one else on his committee will support it either. The bill would increase the cost of everything that farmers depend on, such as diesel fuel, gasoline, fertilizers, pesticides, and a host of other things. It would raise taxes on energy by $846 billion over the next ten years....