Link Discovered Between The Dolphin's and The Planets' Health...
SUPER WEEDS invade U.S. food crops while more toxic herbicides are used to fight the super weeds, evolving into a serious environmental and economic concern.
"Most of the public doesn't know because the industry is calling the shots on how this should be spun," Mortensen said.
"I'm convinced that this is a big problem," said Dave Mortensen, professor of weed and applied plant ecology at Penn State University, who has been helping lobby members of Congress about the implications of weed resistance.
Since Monsanto introduced its glyphosate-resistant crops, 21 new weed species have evolved to resist the herbicide, up from none in 1995. The list is still growing by one to two new weed species per year, Mortensen said.
http://www.Reuters.com/article/2011/09/20/us-monsanto-superweeds-idUSTRE78J3TN20110920
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see:
http://ecodelmar.org/roundup/
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Government Tests Find
Roundup Widespread in Water and Air.
EWG: "What did Monsanto officials know, and when did they know it?"
Washington, D.C. -- Glyphosate, one of the most heavily used plant (weed)- killers on Earth, is now in the air, rain and the rivers tested by government scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey.
EWG President Ken Cook, a St. Louis native, has written to Hugh Grant, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Monsanto Company, asking him when the company had reason to believe glyphosate would extensively contaminate water and air and if the company had conducted tests of its own.
EWG President Ken Cook reported that "
Monsanto has notoriously hidden PCB contamination of the environment for decades".
"We want Monsanto to tell the public what it knew about the contamination, and when it knew it."
"We believe that Monsanto has a special obligation to ensure that glyphosate does not pollute our drinking water.
http://www.EWG.org/release/government-tests-find-roundup-widespread-water-air
In Monsanto's Brief History ::
Monsanto :: was heavily involved in the creation of the first nuclear bomb for the Manhattan Project during WWII. In 1967, Monsanto entered into a joint venture with IG Farben. (The) German chemical firm that was the financial core of the Hitler regime, and was the main supplier of Zyklon-B to the German government during the extermination phase of the Holocaust." [5], [6] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto
Agent Orange contaminated more than 3 million civilians and servicemen, and an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese children have been born with deformities attributed to Agent Orange, leading to calls for Monsanto to be prosecuted for war crimes.
Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems of dioxin contamination of Agent Orange when it sold it to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam.
In 1991 Monsanto was fined $1.2 million for trying to conceal the discharge of contaminated waste water.
Monsanto was ranked fifth among U.S. corporations in EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, having discharged 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land, water and underground. In 1997 The Seattle Times reported that Monsanto sold 6,000 tons of contaminated waste to Idaho fertilizer companies
Today PCBs are considered one of the gravest chemical threats on the planet.
Monsanto produced PCBs for over 50 years and they are now virtually omnipresent in the blood and tissues of humans and wildlife around the globe.
The new company name "Solutia"... was spun off from Monsanto as a way for Monsanto to divest itself of billions of dollars in environmental cleanup costs and other liabilities for its past actions - liabilities that eventually forced Solutia to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The key to Monsanto's metamorphosis into a biotechnology company was the run away success of the herbicide "Roundup" (glyphosate)...
Today, "Roundup" (glyphosate) remains the world's biggest herbicide by tonnage of sales.
Monsanto eventually achieved this by introducing into crop plants genes that give resistance to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup). This meant farmers could spray Roundup onto their fields as a weedkiller even during the growing season without harming the crop plant.
Monsanto's corporate strategy led them for the first time to acquire seed companies. During the 1990s Monsanto spent $10 billion globally buying up seed companies - a push that continues to this day.
As a result, Monsanto is now the world's largest seed company, accounting for almost a quarter of the global proprietary seed market.
In 2008 the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations condemned corporate profiteering: "The essential purpose of food, which is to nourish people, has been subordinated to the economic aims of a handful of multinational corporations that monopolize all aspects of food production, from seeds to major distribution chains, and they have been the prime beneficiaries of the world crisis. A look at the figures for 2007, when the world food crisis began, shows that corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill, which control the cereals market, saw their profits increase by 45 and 60 per cent, respectively."
Monsanto spent $6,560,000 for political lobbying in 2010. $1,030,000 was to outside lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists.[29]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto
