Corrupt Senate Republicans defended the Monsanto Protection Act, which had to be secretly and corruptly inserted into another piece of legislation in order to pass through congress. In other words, the Act is another conspicuous example of quintessential corruption running amok through government. The Act “specifically allows the secretary of agriculture to block a judicial injunction and allow planting of particular seeds.”
Tom Vilsack is the current US secretary of agriculture. A former governor of Iowa, Vilsack was appointed by Monsanto President Barack Obama. “Vilsack has a glowing reputation as being a schill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto.” See the story from Organic Consumers.
According to the Organic Consumers Association, “As Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack was a leading advocate for Monsanto, genetic engineering, and factory farming. President Obama proudly lauded his new Agriculture Secretary for “promoting biotech.”
Vilsack has, in fact, promoted the most controversial and dangerous forms of agricultural biotechnology, including pharma crops, plants genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals. When grown outdoors on farmland, where most pharma crop trials have occurred, pharma crops can easily contaminate conventional and organic varieties.
In one chilling example from 2002, a corn crop engineered by ProdiGene to produce a vaccine for pigs contaminated 500,000 bushels of soybeans that were grown in the Nebraska field the next season. Before this incident, a similar thing had happened in Iowa where the USDA ordered ProdiGene to pay for the burning of 155 acres of conventional corn that may have been contaminated by the firm’s biotech plants.
ProdiGene eventually went out of business, but not before it received a $6 million investment from the Governors Biotechnology Partnership, chaired by Iowa Governor Vilsack. Vilsack didn’t want any restrictions placed on experimental pharma crops. In reaction to suggestions that pharma crops should be kept away from food crops, Vilsack argued that “we should not overreact and hamstring this industry.”
In other words, Vilsack will do Monsanto’s bidding and he will block any judicial injunction that will harm the profits of Monsanto. In other words, he will place the profits of Monstanto ahead of the health and wallets of the rest of the nation.
During debate on the farm bill last Thursday, Oregon’s Senator of the 99 percent, Jeff Merkley, offered an amendment that would have repealed the measure, but it was blocked by corrupt, corporate Senate Republicans, led by the most likely corrupt Senator in congress, Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
“Earlier on Thursday, in an interview with The Huffington Post, Blunt said that the point of the provision was to protect farmers who had already purchased seeds that were later deemed unsafe. “I was raised — my mom and dad were dairy farmers. Once you’ve made a decision to plant a crop for that year, you can’t go back and undo that decision,” he said.
Blunt, of course, is lying. The Act was signed less than a month ago. And it can be repealed. Sure, maybe you can’t go back on some seeds that have already been planted, but repealing the Act would prohibit any more seeds from being planted. Blunt isn’t as stupid as he appears, he’s simply lying and not making sense so as to justify not repealing this god awful piece of legislation.
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