Tasmania extends GMO ban for 5 years

By Prism Webcast News, May 26, 2009

Tasmania’s ban on the release of genetically modified organisms to the environment will continue for at least another five years under a Bill passed by Parliament today. The Minister for Primary Industries and Water, David Llewellyn, said today that the State’s GMO-free status is a key factor in the Tasmanian Brand.

Earth’s Enemies: GE, Monsanto and Obama’s AG Pick, Ignacia Moreno

May 16, 2009
By Rady Ananda

With Obama’s Department of Justice pick to head the Environment and Natural Resources Division, there can be little doubt the man of “hope and change” shills for the worst corporations on the planet.

African land grabbers on shaky ground

By Gwynne Dyer, May 12, 2009

In the past two years, various non-African countries – China, India, South Korea, Britain and the Arab Gulf states lead the pack – have been taking over huge tracts of farmland in Africa by lease or purchase, to produce food or biofuels for their own use. Critics call them “neo-colonialists,” but they will not be as successful as the old ones.  

Tell Congress not to Force GE Crops on other Countries

By The Center for Food Safety

An effort to fight global poverty and hunger may become a Trojan horse to force genetically engineered crops on countries and farmers that do not want them. The Global Food Security Act requires that foreign agricultural development aid include investment in genetically engineered (GE) crops.

Have Monsanto, Oxfam America, Gates, Rockefeller and more teamed up to foist GM onto Africa? – MADGE follows the money trail

By MADGE, June 5, 2009

Congress may pass the Global Food Security Act – Senate Bill 384. This would “boost spending on foreign agricultural development and nutrition programs from $750 million in 2010 to $2.5 billion by 2014. …the money can go to ‘biotechnological advances appropriate to local ecological conditions,’ including genetically modified seeds.’”

GFC: Similarities between Global Food and Global Financial Crises

By MADGE June 5, 2009

The Global Food Crisis is being compared to the Global Financial Crisis. Like the financial system the food system has:

• Dramatically globalised in the past generation
• Has become increasingly concentrated
• Sent ripples across the world – the increasing use of food for biofuels in Europe and the US pushed hundreds of millions of people into hunger

Seed Treaty: La Via Campesina Declaration

June 2, 2009

Submitted to the members of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Genetic Plant Resources for Food and Agriculture on the occasion of the Third Session of the Governing Body, held June 1-5, 2009, in Tunis.

FOOD, Inc. Exposes Horrors of a Centralized Food System

Factory food sickens humans, livestock and the environment

By Rady Ananda   June 14, 2009

What we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the last 10,000. So asserts Robert Kenner’s new film, FOOD, Inc., which opens nationwide June 19^th. The vast bulk of food production is now controlled by just a few mega-corporations with one value: profit. Relying on genetic engineering, pesticides and antibiotics, factory food is cheap, requiring little land. But the external costs to our health, the environment and the natural food industry are enormous.

HR 2749: Totalitarian Control of the Food Supply

A new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.  The bill needs to be stopped.

HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency.  The bill would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.