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后院起火：阿根廷民众状告孟山都公司
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【明辨是非】阿根廷农民状告孟山都公司事件，至少说明了转基因作物带来危害不但有报告且有判决了，再次证明中国挺转帮所谓“转基危害无案例或无报告”都是欺骗。当然，中国对阿根廷蒙受的转基因作物之灾难性的危害，也有贡献：一个贡献是大量进口阿根廷的转基因作物，另一个贡献是向阿根廷大量出口转基作物捆绑的毒素农药。全球三个最大的转基因种植国家分别是美国、巴西和阿根廷，美国已经出现了强烈的反对声音，今天阿根廷民众也醒过来了。
不仅美国本土的“后园起火”，拉丁美洲也是“后园起火”了：阿根廷民众赢得与孟山都较量的第一回合。案件不是特大规模，但意义重大：[1] 它是首次（之前，该国对孟山都转基几乎是百依百顺的）。[2] 阿根廷被美国方面称为“转基因盟国”，而如今是“盟国”那里起火甚至颇有反叛味道了。（若我没记错，就阿根廷所经历的转基因商业化种植之灾难性危害的事情，美联社也有过报道、还有照片。）。
对中国来说，该事件证明转基因作物带来危害不但有报告且有判决了，再次证明中国挺转帮所谓“转基危害无案例或无报告”都是欺骗。当然，中国对阿根廷蒙受的转基因作物之灾难性的危害，也有贡献：一个贡献是大量进口阿根廷的转基因作物，另一个贡献是向阿根廷大量出口转基作物捆绑的毒素农药。
阿根廷蒙受的转基灾难再次说明，中国应该立即叫停转基作物（包括开发、种植、销售和进口等等），否则，中国就将在更大规模和更大损失方面去蒙受阿根廷所经历的转基灾难。
附后是相关报道。
Argentine Activists Win First Round Against Monsanto Plant。
By Fabiana Frayssinet, CORDOBA, Argentina, Jan 25 2014 (IPS)。
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/argentine-activists-win-first-round-monsanto-plant/
CORDOBA, Argentina, Jan 25 2014 (IPS) - Residents of a town in Argentina have won the first victory in their fight against biotech giant Monsanto, but they are still at battle stations, aware that winning the war is still a long way off.
For four months activists in Malvinas Argentinas, a town in the central province of Cordoba, have maintained a blockade of the construction site where the U.S. transnational company is building the world’s biggest maize seed treatment plant.
In this previously peaceful town, protestors continue to camp in front of the construction site and to block access to it, even after a provincial court order this month put a halt to the works.
The campaign against the plant, led by Asamblea Malvinas Lucha por la Vida (Malvinas Assembly Fighting for Life) and other social organisations, began Sept. 18 in this town 17 kilometres from the capital of Cordoba.
Tense situations ensued, with attempts by the provincial police to disperse the demonstrators and provocations by construction union envoys, but a provincial labour court ruling on Jan. 8 upheld the activists’ cause.
“The ruling shows that the residents’ arguments are just, because they are claiming basic rights that are recognised and established in the constitution and federal legislation,” Federico Macciocchi, the lawyer representing opponents of the plant, told IPS.
The court ruled that the municipal ordinance authorising construction of the plant in this mostly working class town of 15,000 people was unconstitutional.
It ordered a halt to construction work and banned the Malvinas Argentinas municipality from authorising the construction until two legal requirements are fulfilled: carrying out an environmental impact assessment and a public hearing.
“This is a big step forward in the struggle, achieved by working together on institutional demands, along with social activism on the streets,” Matías Marizza, a member of the Malvinas Assembly, told IPS.
“This struggle has resulted in guaranteeing respect for the law,” the activist said.
The Malvinas Assembly and other organisations have decided to continue to camp out at the site and block access until the project is abandoned for good.
Monsanto replied to IPS’s request for comment with a statement that describes local activists as “extremists” who are preventing their contractors and employees from “exercising the right to work.”
The court ruling arose from a legal appeal lodged by local residents and the Club de Derecho (Cordoba Law Club), presided by Macciocchi.
The labour court has ordered an environmental impact study and a public hearing, he emphasised.
The views expressed in the public hearing will be “highly relevant,” he said, although under the General Environment Law, participants’ objections and opinions “are not binding.”
However, the law does stipulate that if the opinions of the convening authorities differ from the results of the public hearing, “they must justify them and make them public,” he said.
Now the Malvinas Assembly also wants a public consultation with a secret ballot.
Such a ballot would comply with the environmental law and “guarantee citizens’ full rights to decide on which model of local development and what kind of social and economic activities they want for their daily life, and what environmental risks they are prepared to take,” Víctor Mazzalay, another resident, told IPS.
“It is the people who should have that information and decide whether or not to accept the costs and risks involved,” said Mazzalay, a social researcher funded by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at the University of Cordoba.
“An environmental impact assessment should include a public consultation so that citizens can provide the ‘social licence’ necessary for developing any social, economic and productive activity that may affect their environment and health,” he said.
Monsanto’s statement said the company does not agree with the court ruling, but respects judicial decisions and will abide by the verdict.
The company stated that it had already conducted an environmental assessment, which is currently under review by the provincial Secretary of the Environment.
In Macciocchi’s view, the court’s ruling is definitive and “brings the legal conflict to an end.”
“The ruling arose from a legal appeal, so there is no further recourse in ordinary law,” he said.
Monsanto can still appeal to have the decision overturned by the provincial High Court (Tribunal Superior de Justicia, TSJ).
The company has already said that it will appeal. “We consider our right to build legitimate since we have complied with all legal requirements and have obtained authorization to build according to the regulations, as confirmed by the ruling of the Court of First Instance of Oct. 7, 2013,” their statement said.
However, in Macciocchi’s view “this appeal will not overturn the labour court ruling.”
“If we consider how long the TSJ takes to process an appeal, by the time there is a decision, the Malvinas municipality and the Environment Secretariat will have complied with the laws they previously violated,” he said.
According to the lawyer, the high court takes up to two and a half years for appeals lodged by individuals under sentence, and five to seven years in labour or civil cases.
“It would create a real institutional scandal if the TSJ were to deal with this case by leap-frogging all the other cases that have lain dormant in its offices for years,” he said.
The Jan. 8 ruling cannot prevent the definitive installation of the plant, which Monsanto plans should become operational during 2014.
“But if the citizens’ demonstrations against the plant and the environmental impact assessment are unfavourable to the company, Monsanto will not be able to instal the plant in Malvinas Argentinas,” Macciocchi predicted.
Mazzalay emphasised that the “substance” of the arguments of opponents to Monsanto’s plant was “the defence of the people’s right to decide on the kind of productive activities and the type of environmental risks they wish to undertake.”
The company announced it was planning to build more than 200 maize silos, and to use agrochemical products to treat the seeds. Monsanto is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of herbicides and genetically modified seeds, and has operated in Argentina since 1956 when it established a plastics factory.
“It is frequently argued that there is a reasonable doubt that this productive activity is harmless to human health,” Mazzalay said.
In his view, “a multiplicity of scientific studies have shown negative effects on health from both seed transportation and handling of and exposure to different agrochemical products.”
“When there is a health risk related to environmental issues, reasonable doubt should bring the precautionary principle into play, that is, an activity should not be developed until it has definitely been proved to be harmless,” he said.
Activists Halt Monsanto Seed Plant Construction in Argentina 。
Elizabeth Renter, Infowars.com, January 23, 2014。
http://www.infowars.com/activists-halt-monsanto-seed-plant-construction-in-argentina/
The seed-giant and GMO evil genius Monsanto is promising to appeal a recent decision by a labor appeals court in Argentina to stop construction of a seed-manufacturing plant there. Activists filed the initial complaint to put the brakes on the factory, citing health and environmental concerns associated with genetically-modified crops and their production. But Monsanto is fighting back.
“We have filed a criminal complaint to inform the prosecutor of certain irregularities in violation of environmental law that have occurred in the heart of the Ministry of the Environment which is involved with authorizations of projects,” attorney Raúl Montenegro told Revolution News, according to GMWatch.org.
The decision by the court is being celebrated by protestors in Malvinas Argentina in the Cordoba Province, where they’ve blocked Monsanto employees from working on the site for 113 days. They physically prevented the ongoing construction while awaiting a decision by the court.
“We consider our right to build legitimate since we have complied with all legal requirements and have obtained authorization to build according to the regulations,” said Monsanto’s statement.
The corporation also expressed disdain in the protestors’ actions that left their workers jobless, accusing them, “for over three months Monsanto employees and contractors had not been able to exercise their right to work, due to the action of extremists who blocked the site, incited violence, and systematically ignored judicial decisions.”
The 2-1 decision by the court is not a permanent one. They called for an environmental assessment on the area to determine the future effects that the plant may have. The assessment could be complete as soon as next month. While Monsanto says they’ve already completed an environmental assessment, their objectivity is well-recognized as non-existent.
Monsanto would have everyone believe its products are safe—not only for human consumption, but for the environment as well. But as activists submitted to the court, not only have pesticides from Monsanto been linked to birth defects and cancer in South America, but they’ve led to water contamination as well.
Despite the growing global criticism of the company, they recently reported better-than-expected earnings in the first quarter, jumping from $339 million in the quarter ending November 30, 2012 to $368 million in the same quarter of 2013.
What is likely the most-hated corporation across the globe is still reporting gains. How is this possible if not for governments that allow them to prosper. Opponents of Monsanto and their plan to take over global agriculture as we know it, shouldn’t be discouraged by the company’s earnings, but motivated by stories like this one out of South America. By organizing, educating, and being active, we can beat down the giant.
This article first appeared at Natural Society.com.
This article was posted: Thursday, January 23, 2014 at 3:49 pm
Read: 800 Million Pounds of Pesticides Can’t be Washed Off
800 Million Pounds of Pesticides Can’t be Washed Off, are Bred into our Food with GMO。
by Christina Sarich, August 19th, 2013. Updated 08/19/2013 at 8:46 am。
http://naturalsociety.com/800-million-pounds-pesticides-unwashable-bred-food-gmo/
We already know that farmers and farm workers who use conventional methods of planting are exposed to egregious amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. They suffer from all kinds of serious health problems due to this contact with multiple poisons. The worst part? There is no eliminating pesticides from our foods once it is sprayed onto our plants, but as if that weren’t enough, now companies like Monsanto are ‘breeding pesticides’ right into our food crops with genetically modified organisms (GMO).
In a study of children who didn’t live anywhere close to a farm that were given organic foods for two weeks, they had incredibly lower levels of pesticides in their urine samples during those two weeks. As soon as they were given conventionally grown foods again – those contaminated with pesticides – the levels of poison in their urine spiked again. These pesticides can’t be washed off.
The irony of this is that pesticides were used in the first place to try to increase crop yields and protect crops from insect damage; however, a report issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists entitled Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops states very clearly that any increases in yield for either GMO or organically grown crops were due to improvements in agricultural practices and not GMO seed.
“Biotechnology companies maintain that genetic engineering is essential to meeting this goal. Monsanto, for example, was running an advertising campaign at the time of the report release warning of an exploding world population and claiming that its “advanced seeds… significantly increase crop yields…” The report debunks that claim, concluding that genetic engineering is unlikely to play a significant role in increasing food production in the foreseeable future.” (http://www.ucsusa.org )
Pesticides: The Unwashable Danger
The studies which outline the pesticide exposure endured by the farming industry are so prevalent we couldn’t list them all in one place, but a Cornell University study mentions the numerous ways that workers are exposed to pesticides, from dirt-dust on tractors to water contamination to chemical spraying, and just some of the outcomes of this exposure – including cancer.
In another study, children exposed to organophosphate pesticides (OPs) have higher chances of developing health problems including impaired motor-coordination and cognitive functioning as well as respiratory disease along with a host of other issues. Even infants can be exposed to high levels of OPs if they live on a farm, through consuming their mother’s breast milk. If farm workers are blatantly poisoned by their exposure to pesticides in our conventionally grown food supply, why is it not a logical conclusion to assume that we will suffer from similar issues even if we live in a more urban setting?
While biotechnology has been promising better crop yields since the early 1990s, they have yet to deliver and in the meantime our children are peeing out their poisons in lab tests. Exposure levels are continuing to affect not just farmers and their families, but also the public at large. Instead of 800,000,000 pounds of pesticides, might we not look to organic practices that actually do increase crop yields and save our future generations?
Organic farming practices are accumulating some steam. In fact, the number of organic farms nationwide has grown to well over 8,000. These farms have sufficiently dispelled the perception that organic farming is too difficult, too risky, or too expensive to be practical. Improving soil fertility, utilizing well timed interactions of crop rotation, intercropping combinations, planting schedules and maintaining beneficial habitats are just some of the ways we can ditch our pesticide habit as a nation, and make ditching GMO crops a forgone conclusion.
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Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/800-million-pounds-pesticides-unwashable-bred-food-gmo/#ixzz2riDJeV3I
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Read: 7 Nasty Effects of Pesticides
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-475-763213.html
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