In Western Australia organic farmer Stephen Marsh has had his organic accreditation suspended after independent testing showed his oats and cereal crops had been contaminated by genetically modified (GM) seeds from a neighbouring property in Western Australia's Great Southern region. Tests by the WA Department of Agriculture have confirmed the contamination.
Related: GM canola growing in Melbourne suburb (Nov 2009) | Gene Ethics Network | Countercurrents: Wikileaks Memos Reveal U.S. Gov't Pushing Gene-Altered Crops Worldwide
The Liberal Party Barnett Government allowed Genetically Modified (GM) canola crops to be grown commercially early this year, despite warnings that contamination of organically grown crops was a palpable risk.
"Our livelihood is at stake as we are a certified organic farm and rely on the premium that comes with selling guaranteed GM-free organic food, in Australia and in overseas markets," Mr Marsh said in a media release on the Geneethics website, "Governments that allow GM canola to be grown must ensure whatever a farmer does within their boundary does not impact on neighbouring farms. But clearly, the technology can't be contained." he said.
The National Association of Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA) is conducting an official investigation.
Jessica Harrison, a Gene Ethics Cropwatch technician said that governments have favoured only the GM industry and their growers. "In a letter to Mr Marsh, WA Agriculture Minister Terry Redman recently wrote: '... zero per cent thresholds are unrealistic in biological systems'. Yet on March 11 this year, when announcing an end to the GM canola ban, Redman had said: 'The trials proved GM and non-GM canola can be segregated and marketed separately'.
"The government mislead us and now our farmers and consumers are paying the price. Laws need to be enacted to protect the majority of farmers want to stay GM-free. Farmers must be compensated for any loss of premiums and certification that result from GM contamination." said Harrison, "A majority of people will not buy GM contaminated food products and are flocking to organics but this incident puts that trust under a cloud."
In February 2010 three European grain traders wrote to Premier Barnett saying they would not buy WA grain if GM canola was introduced because of the risk of contamination. This statement was hidden from parliament during the disallowance debate in April, according to Geneethics.
Opposition Shadow Minister for Agriculture Mick Murray also attacked the Barnett Government and Food and Agriculture Minister Terry Redman in media statement on December 23 "Our greatest fears have become reality and the Minister must now deal with the consequences of his reckless and irresponsible decision."
Monsanto has pledged legal support to the GM canola grower if legal action is taken against them. "Mr Marsh could be left with overwhelming court costs as well as destroyed crops." said Mick Murray, "Well done Mr Redman, you may well have not only destroyed a farmer's livelihood but you have, in your wheeling and dealing with Monsanto, put the farmer in a position where he financially may not be able to defend himself."
The shadow minister has called for Terry Redman, the current Agriculture and Food Minister, to allow WA shires to declare themselves Genetically Modified (GM) crop-free.
The confirmation that organic crops have been contaminated follows revelations by Greenpeace through Freedom of Information requests that the Western Australian Government has failed to test for the illegal presence of genetically modified (GM) DNA in food.
"The FOI evidence shows that Agriculture Minister Terry Redman has completely abandoned the property rights of WA farmers and failed in the most basic duty of care," said Greenpeace GM campaigner Laura Kelly.
The WA Government has an obligation under Australia's Food Standards to test for compliance with GM labelling laws. Greenpeace submitted FoI requests in September 2010 for details of all tests conducted by the WA Government on food and food products to determine whether they contained novel DNA or proteins, between 2005 and the present. A reply was received from the WA Department of Health advising that "... the Department has not conducted or participated in, and does not hold any documents relating to, received any tests of the nature described in your application."
"Minister Redman has done nothing to protect farmers from inevitable contamination from GM crops. Now these FOI results show his government isn't fulfilling its legal requirement to test food for GM contamination and ensure it is correctly labeled under Australian food standards." said Kelly.
"This amounts to a big green light to foreign chemical companies like Monsanto to contaminate Western Australian farms, because there will be no legal or financial repercussions in the field or at the check-out, regardless of the costs this creates for our farmers and Australian consumers."
"Because of Redman's leadership failure, farmers have lost their non-GM market premium, WA consumers have lost their fundamental right to know if they are eating GM and foreign chemical companies will increase their control of Western Australia's food supply," concluded Kelly in a media statement on December 16.
Photo: Canola field by kju from Flickr - Creative Commons licenced
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Protect our agriculture, biodiversity and food supply from GMOs
"Opposition Shadow Minister for Agriculture Mick Murray also attacked the Barnett Government and Food and Agriculture Minister Terry Redman in media statement on December 23 "Our greatest fears have become reality and the Minister must now deal with the consequences of his reckless and irresponsible decision.""
Mr Murray is also describing the recklessness and irresponsibility of his ALP counter parts in the Victorian and NSW State Governments as well as his Federal ALP Government. Is he really trying to say that his WA ALP would be any different? If so, then you should get on the National bandwagon Mr Murray, and get your party in order so that the whole of Australia's agriculture and biodiversity and food supplies, can be protected from GMOs. You should also support an inquiry into the processes of the FSANZ and OGTR as they have been proven themselves inept, by issuing licenses to the single most 'unsuitable' company, ignoring their own requirements for licensees. While you're there Mr Murray you could also suggest an investigation into the positioning of people on the Food Labelling Review Panel who clearly have 'conflict of interest' issues as did the chair of the Victorian inquiry into the GMO moratorium. Sir Gustav Nossal, who had publicly stated his pro GM stance yet these inquiries were meant to be *independent*.
Will you allow our beloved soil to be contaminated with GM seed?
Many today in Australia are watching a deliberate and sinister corporate take over of our land,TRUE organic food, natural medicine and pure water. What is becoming all to obvious to many today is nothing but real fascism hitting us from many levels and many directions.
Terry Redman here is a resident from Nannup who asks you a question- with the revelations from wikileaks of the American GM agenda exposure- which threatened retaliation for those countries in europe who would not allow GM crops in their country (Thus exposing a deliberate and very fascist agenda) will you still allow our beloved soil to be contaminated with the GM seed? That means you are the one committing a crime...and that you may be getting away with such things in the moment but you will answer to a higher justice. Selling out your people for whatever supposed gain or delusion you may suffer is also selling your own soul! This may sound hard but it is the simple truth!Do not expect smiles in the towns you visit for you are poisoning our children and future children.
I hope you wake up Mr Redman...for your own sake!If you had any true connection with the land and its spirit you would not allow what you allow! Look at your own childrens eyes and what kind of world you are selling them into...
Monsanto is a war criminal corporation
Monsanto is a war criminal corp. it produced and provided chemical poisons known as the rainbow poisons, such as agent orange and other poisons such, as round-up ready, and 2-4-D, and 2-4-5-t in huge amounts to acutely and chronically poison over four million Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laos people during the U.S. aggression against Indo-China.
When the first Canadian Division ended the Nazis-Fascist axis powers war in Germany, the soldiers asked that I.G. Farben, the nazis poison chemical monopoly be dismantled as it was a pseudo-scientific criminal enterprise.
However the U.s. Imperialist military said no, it was a multi-billion dollar chemical corporation, and instead of dismantling it they merely name-changed it to Basf, Bayer, and Hoekest, and interlocked their directorates with Monsanto, Dupont, and Dow.
Since that time in 1945, the U.s. Imperialist military, Pentagon, Whitehouse, and Supreme Court have been waging and illegal chemical war against the ecological green organic life on the planet, while stealing the public treasury, and posing as an agricultural expertise that all modern farmers must use or be considered expendable and unusable, extinguishable etc.
This Monsanto is in fact or origin a chemical poison company and works with the U.S. Military spreading chemical poison warfare weapons on a global scale.
Herbicide and pesticides are not needed and are ruinous to the natural ecologically balance world. Restoring the 'Peasant Class' is necessary, and the fact is the organic method of hand weeding produces non-poisoned food.
Organic seed produced by peasant-farmers for tens of thousands of years are the best selecte seeds, and companies such as Monsanto have developed Terminator seeds, that will not grow fertile seeds so the farmers lose the freedom of planting their own seeds and turn to Monsanto monopoly seed as his or her ownly source.
This monopoly extorts the peasant-farmer growers by buying off public officials and law makers to fine and allow liens to be put on the farmers property if by chance their dominator seeds blow-on the farmers property.
That is not justice law but a continuation of monopoly that the third reich sanctioned during last century. It is so bad in Canada that they even make the farmers under their contracts sign silence clauses, in which the farmers cannot talk about the contracts to their friends and fellow farmers, and the Monsanto take away of their freedom of choice seeds that they always in the past grew themselves.
Monsanto is really an assault on the feedom and democracy of the Peasant-worker-farmer- student alliance.
It is posed as expert agricultural scientific farming technique. One farmer in Canada named Schmeiser along with his wife, grew canola seed on his own fields for over fifty years. However, because some seed blew into his fields, Monsanto found out and forced this farmer to go to court, where the ex-RCMP officiers who run Monsanto, had bought off the Judges and the farmer was found guilty of having contaminated crops with monopoly captialist genes, and the judge found that, ' it does not matter how the seeds of Monsanto got onto his fields, it is now the property of Monsanto, and fined Schmeiser 143,000 dollars of his private retirement money, that he and his wife live on for their old age.
Monsanto has done this to other farmers in the regine even getting leins on their properties to take away all the property of the idividual farmers they accuse. That is robbery and not lawful.
Still when the Vietnamese took Monsanto to the U.S. Supreme court to seek reparations for poisoning millions of Vietnamese people when they supplied the U.S. Military with Rainbow poisons on thier food crops for years and years. The U.S. Supreme court said that Monsanto and the U.S. Military were innocent, and there was no scientific proof that Monsanto did these war crimes.
The Supreme Court of the U.S.A. lied and is not elected by the people of the U.S.A., that to be program was shot in the head when President Lincoln was shot after being elected for the second time.
He was shot to death by a former slaveholder. He did that for Lincoln trying to put forth the programe of a government for, by, and of the peoples.
The formers enslavers are the ones that rule in Monopoly capitalist America and they cancelled reparations for slavery, and disallowed forty-acres and a mule compensation, and reconstuction of the South and put in Jim Crow discrimination against blacks.
Today the larger proportion of Blacks and Latinos in privatized U.S. Imperilist Prisons proves that they are not on the level, but racist as in fascism, in their discrimination to this very day.
So indeed New Zealand, it would be wise to suspend Monsantos license and dismantle that company, and sieze its ill-gotten monies and give them back to the farmers, so this war criminal company does not contaminate your food sources any longer.
Viva socialist liberation. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution.
Viva NZ's First Division that fought fascism up the boot of Italy, along with the Cnd. 1st Div. the Polish first Div. and the East Indian first Div. Workers of the world, unite!!