Ag Ministry begins process to ban MON810
Rady Ananda
On March 15, over 1,500 beekeepers and their allies marched thru the streets of Warsaw, depositing thousands of dead bees on the steps of the Ministry of Agriculture, in protest of genetically modified foods and their requisite pesticides which are killing bees, moths and other agriculturally-beneficial insects around the globe.
Later that day the Minister of Agriculture, Marek Sawicki, announced plans to ban MON810, which has become ineffective at deterring pests in the US.
GM crops and the pesticides used with them have led to a host of problems (itemized here), including the development of new pathogens. One is associated with spontaneous abortion in cattle and another is responsible for massive methane foaming on manure lagoons which explode, killing thousands of animals in the US since 2001.
The Polish Beekeepers Association organized the protest, joining forces with International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) and the Coalition for a GMO Free Poland. Targeting Monsanto’s MON810 GM corn in particular, they also called for a complete ban on all GM crops and harmful pesticides.
In 2008, the Polish Parliament banned GM feed, including both the planting and importing of GM crops. “Despite this progressive step,” reports Food Travels, “the European Commission has refused to accept regional bans on GMOs, keeping Polish farmers, producers, and activists on the offensive.”
Regardless, says the ICPPC, “None of the nine European Union countries that have already prohibited MON 810 did so by asking the permission of the EU.”
Beekeepers dressed in their traditional working uniforms and ran their hive smoke guns as they marched. Some wore yellow jackets with the misattributed quote of Albert Einstein warning that if bees were to die, humanity would soon suffer the same fate. Though he did not say it, it’s true. Most food crops rely on bees for pollination.
Others wore a variety of original costumes, sported signs and banners and carried bee-like objects to draw attention to the plight of these all-important pollinators. More pictures at Stop GMO Festival.
Monsanto has recently been waging war on small organic farmers and their profits. The owners have engaged in large-scale lobbying efforts at the state level and even our “independent” judiciary system and its judges are not willing to protect the farmers. That’s why I fully support the protests against such practices. As a proponent of organic living in Toronto I am really afraid that Monsanto’s continuous fight against healthy competition will have a detrimental impact on this industry sector in the years to come.
I will tell you quite frankly that there is NO ONE in America’s entire JU$T U$ system that I would trust any further than I could blow his or her dead carcass down a brand new 2-inch fire hose….it’s going to be up to the independent farmers, of the pitiful few now left, thanks to Monsanto, to take it to the streets. Monsanto and its CEOs need to be hurt…they need to get themselves curb stomped in such a way that it will strike the fear of God into the breasts of any other financial parasites in this country who seek to aggrandize themselves off the people in America by tampering with the food we can no longer even trust on our own plates.
also an EU Austrian independent science report just said that GM crops are safe (and that country bans GM crops) so this has nothing to do with safety
Indeed, and who paid for that “report”?
Monsanto doesn’t sell any chemical insecticides and their Bt crops don’t harm bees and stop people using indiscriminate insecticide sprays and Bt crops are not whether bees are dying – what a bunch of idiots these people are…piny we can’t ban stupidity
The how did all those thousands of bees left on the steps of Parliament wind up dead?….peacefully in their sleep of old age? Anyone familiar with bees knows they go on a rampage of killing themselves off in the hive….but that is their eternal nature. I think these bee keepers know the difference.