West Virginia sues Monsanto over access to soybean data

[kmar]

West Virginia sues Monsanto over access to soybean data


http://www.stltoday.com/business/article_c8358c2d-d9bc-5798-bdf9-ae5b359a99d2.html

BY Jeffrey Tomich • jtomich@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8320 | (19) Comments | Posted: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 12:25 am
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West Virginia's attorney general is suing Monsanto Co. for refusing to turn over information to support claims that the company's biotech soybeans are as good as promised.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in circuit court in Charleston, W.Va., seeks to force Monsanto to comply with the subpoena, and would prohibit the company from doing business in the state until it does.
The lawsuit is the latest legal threat to the world's largest seed company. Monsanto also faces inquiries by the Justice Department and the state of Arkansas concerning its Roundup Ready soybeans. Other states also are said to be investigating Monsanto's biotech seed business, and the company faces antitrust claims by its archrival, DuPont.
At the center of the West Virginia lawsuit are Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans, which contain a patented gene that allows farmers to spray fields with Roundup or another glyphosate-based weed killer without damaging soybean plants.
The genetic trait has been available in soybeans since 1996, and it is in more than 90 percent of soybeans cultivated nationwide today. But Monsanto's patent expires in 2014, meaning other seed producers can begin selling the herbicide-tolerant seeds without paying royalties.
Monsanto last year began selling a second generation of Roundup Ready soybeans, promising growers a 7 percent to 11 percent yield gain over the original Roundup Ready varieties. The company wants farmers to switch to its higher-priced Roundup Ready 2 Yield seeds before the patents expire.
In 2010, Roundup Ready 2 Yield seed cost about $5 an acre more than Roundup Ready varieties, excluding extra costs for optional seed treatments. The company said prices will remain "pretty flat" next year.
West Virginia began investigating claims surrounding Monsanto's Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans after studies in 2009 by two universities and a pair of independent research firms questioned whether the new seeds delivered advertised yield gains.
Farmers "need to know if it is worth the extra money to buy new products that may not live up to the hype," said Darrell McGraw, West Virginia's attorney general, in a statement.
The subpoena, issued Sept. 2, seeks a range of information, including the names of the 20 largest seed companies that bought or license soybeans and the amount of annual payments received from each; copies of complaints about Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans; and documents related to efforts to switch farmers or seed companies to the new seeds.
Monsanto said it hasn't complied with the subpoena because McGraw has refused to sign a protective order to prevent the public release of confidential information.
"A protective order is a customary practice when intellectual property is involved," Monsanto spokeswoman Kelli Powers said in a statement.
The company said a federal court in St. Louis has already agreed to such an order in ongoing litigation with DuPont.
Douglas L. Davis, an assistant attorney general in West Virginia, said state law provides the confidentiality sought by Monsanto until there is an enforcement proceeding. The company asked for protection beyond what the law provided and without court oversight, he said.
The investigation being conducted in West Virginia is similar to one in Arkansas. Last month, the Arkansas attorney general opened an investigation of Monsanto's soybean marketing practices.
While Arkansas is a sizable soybean producer, West Virginia isn't, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Just seven growers in the state planted Monsanto's Roundup Ready 2 Yield seeds in 2010, Powers said.
Monsanto said separately on Monday that 16,000 head-to-head comparisons in nine key soybean-growing states indicate Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans are yielding more than 3 bushels per acre more than first-generation Roundup Ready varieties.
The company declined to be more specific about percentage gains in Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans this year and has said it will provide a detailed report on yields on Nov. 8.

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[carla]

This Evil company is going to in sole charge of the Worlds food within a few years .
They remind me of that Company in The Omen film .The one the Devil run !!

Monsanto took over Kraft Foods a few years back .AndI just found out today that Kraft Foods was the company that brought the UK s Cadburys last year.


Kraft Foods and Cadbury Strategic Company Profile: food market research

[xiblanque]

from Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates - English pravda.ru



Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates
Silvia Ribeiro

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater's Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State "security services," that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training - for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to
keep track of "public disclosure" of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a "totally separate entity from Blackwater."

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become "Monsanto's intelligence arm," spying on activists and other actions, including "our people to legally integrate these groups." Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the "science of death" as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of "philanthropy." Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of "market competition" of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really "donating" anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their "donations" finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.


not too good folks...

[jonsi]

Hi!

Most of us "older" members here know what Monsanto & genetically modified foods (GMO) are. To us "morgies", our bodies do not recognize these altered genes and can make us sick.

It is hard to wrap the mind around what companies and the governments (Obama endorses Monsanto: Genetic Engineering - Monsato's Roundup Ready Soybeans Exploratory Essays Research Papers ) are doing to our food. They want to "feed" the world by altering seeds and they make a lot of money by doing this. Cross pollination is a serious problem for native (clean) seeds.

When we discuss Monsanto & GMO's we want to let all of you know how dangerous this is. Please, I encourage all new members to do a search on your own on these topics.

This is why many of us who are healthy now stress the importance of an organic (non-GMO) diet, not eating processed foods (ones with a long "shelf-life"), not eating at fast food restaurants or fancy chain restaurants... This "M" recognizes toxins and anything unnatural that we put into our bodies.

And, again IMHO pharmaceuticals do no work in the long run. I have never taken a prescribed drug & I am healthy.... Not "M" free, but doing good.

So, pay attention to your diet, get your 20 minute dose of sunshine (vit D) everyday, turn off the scary television and listen to some good music (tonal therapy). Find a good support group so you don't feel alone. YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

In the white light,
~jonsi

[Bustercat]

Advanced poliferating consumming aspergillus, hot and heavy in our blood, those fuzzy white balls nestling in experiments.

Dr. D Wang came from China to U.Cal Berkeley to GM studys Bio- genius, he is also the Soya Bean expert with connections to Montsanto. Aspergillus,was really studied at UC Berkeley The Army used his brain too, for God only knows what.

Bill Gates resides in China, and Warren Buffett, and the rest of the global players, link up to exterminate us.