Slowly strangling the farmers

Massive seed corporation Monsanto -- through acquisitions and cut-throat business practices -- has cornered 90% of the soy, 65% of the corn, and 70% of the cotton market, and has a rapidly growing presence in the fruit and vegetable market, all without government anti-trust officials raising an eyebrow.

Not only that, but in order to be productive, the entire line of Monsanto's seeds all but require the use of Roundup herbicide, trapping all of their customers into buying it. And who owns Roundup? You guessed it, Monsanto.

Monsanto has, it seems, cornered the market on abusive monopolistic practices as well. In the middle of a recession, while farmers' incomes are dropping, Monsanto recently announced a 42% price hike on its most popular genetically modified seeds. When in many areas of the country distributors carry nothing but these seeds, this sure looks like evidence of a monopolist abusing its market position.

President Obama's antitrust chief Christine Varney has promised rigorous enforcement of antitrust law with a special focus on the agricultural sector. She should start with the worst of the worst, Monsanto. Sign the petition to demand that Varney immediately open an investigation into Monsanto and its abusive business practices.

And:

Last year's food riots in Haiti, India, Indonesia and elsewhere sounded the alarm bell for a painful level of global hunger that is only going to increase with a growing population and a changing climate. In a promising move, the G8 -- a group of the world's eight wealthiest nations -- has just announced a shift away from providing direct food aid to developing countries and towards helping farmers abroad produce and distribute their own food.

That's a laudable goal. But the Obama administration along with members of the U.S. Congress are using this singular moment to move their own agenda: propping up U.S. biotechnology companies like Monsanto. They hope to accomplish this by promoting genetically modified seeds and chemical inputs as tools to fight hunger through an exclusive focus on increasing crop yields. One powerful Senate committee has already passed a bill, sponsored by Senators Casey (D-PA) and Lugar (R-IN), that requires GMO technology to be part of the U.S. agricultural research agenda abroad. We need to tell them not to use our tax dollars to market Monsanto's products abroad!

Despite all the hype, GMOs have simply failed to deliver: there is no evidence that exporting this technology to the developing world will actually boost productivity. A recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that GMOs have had almost no impact on crop yields in the United States. Further, GMOs have little to offer drought-prone regions like Africa. Simply put: there are no drought-tolerant GMOs currently on the market. The only two GMO seed traits available -- sold by the biotechnology giants Monsanto and Bayer CropScience -- are herbicide tolerance and pest resistance for a handful of commodity crops like corn, soy and cotton. And not only are the existing seeds expensive but the use of these seeds would also tether poor farmers to the synthetic pesticides and fertilizers GMOs require.

Dedicating millions of dollars in aid money to biotechnology companies also reduces the funding available for proven agro-ecological systems and infrastructure improvements that are more appropriate for small and limited-resource producers.

Sign this petition today to tell your Senators that the path out of poverty isn't through Monsanto's doors. Ask them to oppose Casey-Lugar and any development aid bill that promotes GMO technology.

The contamination is bigger than we thought

And more dangerous. Pizza and baby formula???: (my bold)

Consumers may want to steer away from eating pork after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that hog farms in at least five states, including New York, have been quarantined amid concerns that hog feed at those farms have been contaminated with melamine. Thousands of hogs could have been affected.

One poultry farm in Missouri was also affected.

Pet food which has been salvaged from manufacturers that have issued pet food recalls because of potential melamine contamination has been traced to hog farms in California, North Carolina, South Caroline, New York, Utah and possibly Ohio. Samples of hog urine from farms in three of the states, California, North Carolina and South Carolina, have tested positive for melamine. FDA said it hadn't yet received test results from the identified hog farms in other states.

Six grain products-wheat gluten, corn gluten, corn meal, soy protein, rice bran and rice protein-which are used in foods ranging from bread to pizza to baby formula, are to be inspected by the FDA for traces of melamine, the same industrial chemical used in plastics and fertilizer that is said to have killed over 4,000 cats and dogs by kidney failure and have sickened thousands more.

Update 4/26:
Steve Bates at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat:

This speaks to a complete breakdown in the food safety protocols for foods obtained from international sources, although I doubt they are being observed much more effectively toward food from domestic sources. The Bush administration has systematically eviscerated the regulatory agencies that protect us from corporations and individuals who have strong financial incentives to do us harm either willfully (as this case appears to be) or through negligence. No other government in the civilized world sees such regulation as burdensome or unnecessary: only Bush's clients, cronies, and contributors benefit from lax regulation of the food supply.

If ever we needed an object lesson in the folly of hands-off government in the arena of public safety, this is that lesson. We can learn it well... or we can die of our ignorance.

Spocko of Spocko's Brain has the latest on the investigation on the recall of peanut butter and introduces us to Lisa Shames of the GAO.

Soy is making us lose the war in Iraq

There is no other explanation.