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Kentucky bluegrass is one of four primary grasses foraged by or fed to grass-fed animals, along with alfalfa (the GM version of which has also been approved).
It is a inadequate to speak only of GM "lawns" (though the impact of its use for lawns is huge) when the entire organic meat and dairy industry is also threatened by GM bluegrass.
Jeffrey Smith of the Institute for Responsible Technology sums up the seriousness of the deregulation that is occurring:
USDA abdicates GMO oversight and welcomes Roundup Ready lawnsWhat is being missed by focusing on "lawns" is that between the recent USDA approval of GM-alfalfa and now the deregulating of GM-Kentucky Bluegrass, even animals living on grass who are not being fed GM-corn or GM-soy and are part of an organic food chain, would be left eating an all genetically engineered diet.
"The US Dept of Agriculture just dropped a bomb on GMO regulations inAmerica. Their announcement, released on the Friday afternoon before the July 4th weekend to reduce the media coverage, eviscerated government oversight over a whole new class of GMOs. The USDA announced that Roundup Ready Kentucky bluegrass would be exempt from regulation. That means that a new variety GM grass, produced by Scotts Miracle-Gro, will hit US markets without any government review, not from the USDA, EPA, or FDA. The modified grass, destined for lawns, playgrounds, soccer fields, and golf courses, is designed to survive applications of the weed killer Roundup. This will dramatically increase the use of the toxic herbicide, which is linked to birth defects, cancer, and reproductive problems. Its overuse will also speed up the spread of Roundup-resistant superweeds, requiring a return to other acutely toxic herbicides scrapped decades ago.
"The approval also means that biotech companies can now exploit the same loophole used by the GM grass to put their crops on the market without anyone in government paying attention. The significance of this cannot be overstated. The USDA's loophole is based on the fact that they regulate GMOs using two "regulatory hooks": the GM crops must pose the threat of a "plant pest" or a "noxious weed." In the bluegrass decision, the USDA signalled that it won't apply those hooks to any GM crops that are not created with pest material (e.g. bacteria or viruses). The GM bluegrass was created with a gene gun, and not from bacterial infection; the inserted gene was not from bacteria; and it did not have the normal "promoter" taken from a virus - which is used as the "on-switch" for most other GM crops on the market. Even without these materials, the GM grass still carries huge risks.
"In a letter to Scotts, for example, agriculture secretary Vilsack acknowledged concerns that GM bluegrass will contaminate non-GM bluegrass, destroying markets in the process. Vilsack's suggestion? Scotts should talk to "stakeholders" and work out ways of minimizing cross-contamination. In other words, industry can regulate itself - but only if it wants to. See Mother Jones' excellent two articles here and here, Wired, or the New York Times."
Given what such a diet is already doing to animals in terms of sterility and spontaneous abortions and plants in terms of an AIDS-like disease, the threat spreads to every farm, even the ones insulated from GMOs and roundup by organic practices (or just non-GMO use).
And thus the USDA deregulation of GM-Kentucky bluegrass is an additional Monsanto assault on Americans' lives as well for GMOs are not food, even for animals, who recognize that and do what they can to avoid it.
Second, one can see numerous instances of Monsanto having prepared in great detail in advance for any resistance to these crops by introducing laws that prevent communities from banning GM-crops or even GM-trees. Called seed-preemption laws or democracy preemption laws, they were the brainchild of Tom Vilsack, Obama's head of the USDA and the person now releasing GMOs based on a clever loophole.
(Obama has done more that giving Monsanto absolute power over all farms and food in theUS. PEER reported that in late 2010, the White House worked with the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), a lobby group whose most prominent member is Monsanto, to legally pave the way for GM plantings on 75 wildlife refuges in 30 states. The White House formed the Agriculture Biotech Working Group, which includes more than 35 officials from ten agencies to promote GE agriculture.)
Monsanto, beside controlling the White House and creating interagency power to introduce GMOs everywhere, appears aware that what it is doing threatens others and has prepared for that as well.
In terms of lawsuits against it for damage, Monsanto recently shifted all liability to farmers for any harm done by its products (within weeks of the pharmaceutical industry getting all liability removed for its vaccines - including GMO vaccines). And in terms of any attempts to go after it (or other biotech/ agribusiness firms) by exposing criminal activity, Monsanto is the driving force behind laws being introduced in a number of states that would make whistleblowing (exposing malfeasance or crimes) illegal, and even a felony for the person telling the truth.
Monsanto has used investigators for a number of years to threaten and even rough up farmers on their own land. They have hired Blackwater as well. Does this Monsanto criminalizing of whistle blowing, including taking photographs even from the road of farms, have anything to do with blocking evidence of Monsanto attacks on farmers and of the groups involved, and not just about hiding what is done in CAFOs?
The third element is the most disguised and most disturbing. For as unconstitutional and undemocratic as Monsanto's pre-arrangements were and current efforts are, the preparation for these GM-crops, GM-trees, and GM-animals goes even further and is considerably more serious. In this additional aspect of what Monsanto is doing to block all avenues of resistance to GMOs, one sees both its legal stealth and its absolute awareness of the extreme threat to life they are posing. Both are apparent in a court case going on right now.
The FDA is being sued for trying to stop raw milk transport across state lines. In response, the Food Safety Division of the FDA, run by Monsanto VP Michael Taylor and now with military power over all food and farms in the US via the Food Safety Modernization Act, is asserting in court removal of fundamental human rights.
Monsanto says Americans have no right to choose their own food, or to feed their children the food one decides is best for them. It is also asserting Americans have no right to contract (such as to contract with farmers to receive the food they want).
But Monsanto, thanks to Obama making it Czar of Food Safety at the FDA, is asserting something even more dire.
In an article at Huffington Post entitled "Please Obama, Say It's Not So!", Jeffrey Smith says that Taylor is "[t]he person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history..." And it is around illness and death that Taylor/Monsanto makes one of the most horrific assertions ever made in law.
Because it is so surrounded by food language, and broken up itself within the sentence, Dr Joseph Mercola did not even highlight it, seeing only the issue of right to food. With Mercola's highlighting:
"Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish."Look again:
"Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish."Monsanto, via the FDA, is asserting that Americans do not have a fundamental right to their bodily and physical health. They have cannily tried to hide their attempted removal of the most profound human right of all.
Monsanto, via the FDA, is asserting Americans have no right to be well. On this basis, any case people might try to bring to say they have been injured by Monsanto or by the pharmaceutical industry (to which Monsanto is closely tied) would have no weight in court.
At the same time that Monsanto is getting its GMOs deregulated and is dangerously contaminating nature and threatening our health with them, the pharmaceutical industry is using the FDA and the Durbin bill, to try to criminalize all natural supplements, which bring health and got the FDA to ban the mass production of IV vitamin C after a New Zealand man recovered from the swine flu by using mass doses of it.
Under "food safety" in the EU, the pharmaceutical industry has gotten all herbal remedies banned and Australia is attempting to ban thousands of common garden plants.
Uncontaminated nature, health itself, is under attack as the recent Monsanto/ FDA organized SWAT team raids on an organic coop in LA makes clear. The people were arrested for selling raw milk - the only safe milk in the country.
By looking at the fact that Monsanto removed communities' democratic rights in advance, removed its own liability, is working to criminalize whistle blowing (the right to free speech), and is working to remove the fundamental right to health, one can deduce facts about Monsanto:
- It knows their GM-crops and GM-trees are unwanted;
- It knows it is creating damage people would normally sue them for;
- It knows it is potentially involved in criminal activity; and
- It knows GMOs are a threat to people's bodily health and to the environment.
All that Monsanto has done has been filed under business or corrupt business, but the nation is increasingly aware this is a war against the land, the plants, the animals and the people and of who is involved. And the insanity of GMOs becomes rational when one learns what they want.
Perhaps Anonymous could leak the names and private data of all these corporate/government swine....