Terminator Crops
Monsanto, the evil biotech company is at it again. This time aggressively trying to get developing nations to buy into “terminator crops”. Terminator crops are crops that are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds, which farmers cannot replant. Most of the farmers in India rely on replanting home-grown seeds that they store after harvest every year. Farmers just manage to scrape through making a living off their yield. Making them purchase these seeds can just eat into whatever returns they make, forcing them to starve. Another danger is that the pollen from these crops could contaminate and threaten normal crop as well, forcing even farmers who did not opt to purchase seeds from Monsanto into doing so.
Monsanto is a multi-billion dollar company that cares little about public opinion or about being eco-friendly. Just as a reminder to everyone (because you won’t get this sort of information on prime time news), a brief refresher on Monsanto:
- It is the company that is poisoning Americans with the dangerous sugar substitute, Aspartime (aka NutraSweet, Splenda), which is derived from formaldehyde (the very same substance used to knock out frogs in dissection lab in high school) and rapidly breaks down in the body producing slow formaldehyde poisoning. One wonders if Saddam Hussein (the same guy who poison gassed the Kurds) were to sell you a sugar substitute like Aspartime saying it was “safe”, would you trust him? If you find this comparison unfair, read the next bullet.
- It is the same company that created the deadly chemical “Agent Orange” used to kill millions of Vietnamese during the Vietnam War (the largest use of chemical weapons was by the USA; just google “agent orange” and Vietnam).
- It is the same company that created the highly toxic weed-killer, called Roundup (deadly not just to weeds, but humans, and wipes out all beneficial insects and has crippling effect on birds and fish that drink from rainwater run-offs or feed on insects exposed to the weed-killer). See earlier article, Spring Allergies.
- It is the company that is poisoning Americas milk supply by pumping dairy cows with drugs – all in order to produce “super cows” that produce milk months at a stretch, before their udders “burst” and are sent for butchering; all in the name of efficiency and profit making. These same drugs and bovine growth hormones (BGH) enter into our body through the milk we drink and really messes up our hormones (considering hormones are regulators of body functions, it really messes things up). For that specific reason, people are switching to organic milk. See earlier article, Not Milk.
- It is the same company that owns 90% of the soy bean industry by having monopoly over soy beans seed supply. In particular they produced a GMO soy bean that is resistant to the weed killer chemical, Roundup (made by guess who? same company Monsanto!). Imagine how bizarre the soy bean must be altered to be resistant to such a powerful weed killer (if you ever hang around an area sprayed with weed killer, you’ll file nauseated by the smell). In other words if your farm is made up of natural soy beans, it will not survive being sprayed by weed killers. They force you to buy the weed killer, then the GMO soy bean. Evil company.