NEWS Round up on Monsanto Part 2 - April

Jury Clears Monsanto in PCB trial of allegations that it's Anniston Alabama plant sickened 5 people with exposure to PCB's

The five former residents of Anniston said the Monsanto plant dumped polychlorinated biphenyls into waterways and onto land for years, giving them diabetes and arthritis. The U.S. banned PCB production in 1979, and Monsanto stopped making PCBs in Anniston eight years earlier.

Aside from having been having the ban on MON810 being enacted in Germany this week, Monsanto had an extra set back from the Union of Concerned Scientists (USC), who released a report: "Failure to Yield" - that says that 13 years of commercialisation of GM crops have failed to deliver on industry promises to significantly increase, and calling for public money to go towards more results orientated science!

Speaking of results; think i should draw attention to the failure of Monsanto corn crops in South Africa :

"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." 

There's a bit of debate about how badly the crops failed, Monsanto have moved pretty quickly with an offer to compensate the farmers.

Environmental activitist Marian Mayet, director of the Africa-centre for biosecurity in Johannesburg, demands an urgent government investigation and an immediate ban on all GM-foods, blaming the crop failure on Monsanto's genetically-manipulated technology. 

Willem Pelser, journalist of the Afrikaans Sunday paper Rapport, writes from Nelspruit that Monsanto has immediately offered the farmers compensation in three provinces - North West, Free State and Mpumalanga. The damage-estimates are being undertaken right now by the local farmers' cooperative, Grain-SA. Monsanto claims that 'less than 25%' of three different corn varieties were 'insufficiently fertilised in the laboratory'. 

80% crop failure 
However Mayet says Monsanto was grossly understating the problem.According to her own information, some farms have suffered up to 80% crop failures. The centre is strongly opposed to GM-food and biologically-manipulated technology in general. 

SO, what does a company under fire for the efficacy of their product do? Well, I had a quick browse of the Monsanto Press Release  section of their website and was rather appalled by their aggressive tying in with various Universities and Research Institutions:They have, in the past MONTH:

1. Added David L. Chicoine to Board of Directors... Dr. Chicoine is currently president of South Dakota State University (SDSU) 

2. Entered into a research collaboration to source novel genes for crop improvement with Hunan University in China, one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the world. 

3. Committed $10 million to Rice and Wheat research program, to identify and support yound scientists interested in improving research into rice and wheat. The program will be administered by Texas AgriLife Research, an agency of the Texas A&M University System.

4. Committed $1million to sponsor plant breeding fellowships at South Dakota State University, where agriculture is South Dakota's number one industry.

On a slightly cheerier(ish) note, here's an article that outlines the experience of Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser and his wide Louise who ended up spending the past 12 years in court battling with Monsanto. Its quite an insight into Monsanto's litigious aggression, but the tale has a rather interesting end to it in terms of Corporate Liability for contamination and clean up costs:

Who Owns Life, Not Monsanto