Protecting Mr. Monsanto

As a candidate for president of the United States back in 2007, Barack Obama made a bold promise to the U.S. public about the controversial issue of labeling of food products that have genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in them:

“Here’s what I’ll do as president: I’ll immediately implement ‘country of origin’ labeling because Americans should know where their food comes from. ...We’ll let folks know whether their food has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they’re buying.”

Six years later, not only has Obama as president broken that promise about GM labeling of foods, but he went a step further this week by signing into law a bill with provisions that would allow major legal protection to multinational biotech corporations like Monsanto that deal in controversial GM seeds and crops.

The law is being derisively called the “Monsanto Protection Act” by its critics, and for good reason. The law reportedly prevents U.S. federal courts from being able to stop the planting or sale of GMO crops or genetically engineered (GE) seeds — regardless of any health or safety issues that may come up in the future. This means that the courts will have no power to stop the spread of the seeds and the crops they bear, and no way to stop Monsanto from making massive profits from them.

In the United States, corporations are allowed certain rights in a court of law that individual citizens enjoy. But this latest law by President Obama allows “Mr. Monsanto” far more legal protection than any individual U.S. citizen would ever get. Mr. Monsanto has a long, dirty record of environmental pollution in the U.S. and abroad, and some of its chemical products are known to kill people and other living things. People in countries around the world — especially farmers — have risen up in righteous anger over Monsanto and its heavy-handed tactics to destroy small farmers, corner the international market on seeds and smear any of its critics along the way. Would any private citizen be able to get away with that in any court? No way.

Then, how does Mr. Monsanto get away with it? Because Mr. Monsanto has friends in very high government places that ordinary working persons like us don’t have. Sometimes those friends retire from government and go to work for Mr. Monsanto essentially as lobbyists to make sure the doors of business are well-greased and kept open.

But one wonders if this time, President Obama’s latest broken promise on an issue affecting the environment and public safety has gone too far. It is no exaggeration to say that Monsanto is a corporation that is hated in countries around the world (ask people in India, for one, what they think about the company). Will President Obama’s recent signing of the law that offers sweeping legal protections to companies like Monsanto be the spark that ignites and unites a broad-based environmental movement in the U.S. and abroad? We’ll see.

In the meantime, about 80 percent of all processed food products that are sold in the United States today reportedly contain some GMOs in them. Most of those products have no GMO labeling and therefore are unknown to the public. Will that figure become 100 percent in the not-too-distant-future? Or will consumers now finally say they’ve had enough, stand up in great numbers, and force the U.S. government and corporations like Monsanto to back down and label all GMO foods in the future?

I, for one, am standing on the side of the consumers. Let this uprising for truth, health and Life begin.

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