The Nightmare World of GM Mice
“This film is released along with our report Science Corrupted: The nightmare world of GM mice (animalaid.org.uk/images/pdf/booklets/ScienceCorrupted.pdf).
For the first time, they reveal the true scale and nature of the GM mouse revolution. The appalling animal suffering and immense squandering of scientific resources are at last laid bare.”
If you are here there is a good chance you just thunderclapped Marineland - or saw someone who did. Thank you!
For folks who don’t know about this campaign, it is a pressure campaign that is anti-captivity and that wants to see the closure of the captive animal park Marineland (Niagara…
Plaza monumental de playas 12 de mayo del 2013, manifestación antitaurina no nos rendiremos hasta acabar con el sufrimiento de quien no tiene voz.
Nunca tengas miedo de lo que la gente pueda decir de ti,has lo que creas que esta bien para ti mismo sin miedo a lo que piensen los demas
by Jacob Chamberlain for commondreams.org
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of biotech giant Monsanto, ordering Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, 75, to pay Monsanto more than $84,000 for patent infringement for using second generation Monsanto seeds purchased second hand—a ruling which will have broad implications for the ownership of ‘life’ and farmers’ rights in the future.
In the case, Bowman had purchased soybean seeds from a grain elevator—where seeds are cheaper than freshly engineered Monsanto GE (genetically engineered) seeds and typically used for animal feed rather than for crops. The sources of the seeds Bowman purchased were mixed and were not labeled. However, some were “Roundup Ready” patented Monsanto seeds.
The Supreme Court Justices, who gave Monsanto a warm reception from the start, ruled that Bowman had broken the law because he planted seeds which naturally yielded from the original patented seed products—Monsanto’s policies prohibit farmers from saving or reusing seeds from Monsanto born crops.
Farmers who use Monsanto’s seeds are forced to buy the high priced new seeds every year.
Ahead of the expected ruling, Debbie Barker, Program Director for Save Our Seeds (SOS), and George Kimbrell, staff attorney for Center for Food Safety (CFS), asked in an op-ed earlier this year, “Should anyone, or any corporation, control a product of life?”:
Bowman vs. Monsanto Co. will be decided based on the court’s interpretation of a complex web of seed and plant patent law, but the case also reflects something much more basic: Should anyone, or any corporation, control a product of life?
[Monsanto’s] logic is troubling to many who point out that it is the nature of seeds and all living things, whether patented or not, to replicate. Monsanto’s claim that it has rights over a self-replicating natural product should raise concern. Seeds, unlike computer chips, for example, are essential to life. If people are denied a computer chip, they don’t go hungry. If people are denied seeds, the potential consequences are much more threatening.Bowman had argued that he was respecting his contract with Monsanto, purchasing directly from them each year, but couldn’t afford Monsanto’s high prices for his riskier late season crops. Bowman’s defense argued that Monsanto’s patent was “exhausted” through the process of natural seed reproduction and no longer applied to Bowman’s second generation seeds.
“If they don’t want me to go to the elevator and buy that grain,” Bowman had stated, “then Congress should pass a law saying you can’t do it.”
The Center for Food Safety released a report in February which shows three corporations control more than half of the global commercial seed market.
As a result, from 1995-2011 the average cost to plant 1 acre of soybeans rose 325%.
As AP reports, more than 90 percent of American soybean farms use Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” seeds, which first came on the market in 1996.
Vandana Shiva, an expert on seed patents and their effects on farmers around the world, wrote recently:
Monsanto’s concentrated control over the seed sector in India as well as across the world is very worrying. This is what connects farmers’ suicides in India to Monsanto vs Percy Schmeiser in Canada, to Monsanto vs Bowman in the US, and to farmers in Brazil suing Monsanto for $2.2 billion for unfair collection of royalty.
Through patents on seed, Monsanto has become the “Life Lord” of our planet, collecting rents for life’s renewal from farmers, the original breeders.[See other Lone Pamphleteer posts about Monsanto and watch a trailer for the documentary David vs. Monsanto.]
Excerpt:
A lot can happen in 48 hours—including the slaughter of approximately 50 million animals (not including fish and other sea animals) for food in the United States alone. While ag-gag laws are indeed bad for all the reasons that people have pointed out, including that it often takes much longer than 48 hours to document a pattern of law-breaking, it is simply not true that without these videos we will be completely blind to the violence in animal agriculture, much of which is perfectly legal—unless we’re talking about willful blindness to the fact that, even if those pigs had not been punched, those turkeys not been beaten, and those cows been able to walk to slaughter, all of these animals would still have had their throats slit. Whistleblower attorney Gordon Schnell put this point well, if unintentionally: “Afterall [sic],” hewrote, “we cannot rely on the animals to tell us when farmers behave badly. …Until we can talk to the animals, the furtive photo or videotape is the best we can do…”
But what about when farmers aren’t misbehaving? What about when they are just doing their job of killing animals for us to eat? If we could talk to the animals, would they ask only that we not beat them or keep them intensively confined, that we not let them enter our food supply if they have gotten too sick awaiting their slaughter to walk to it? Or would they beg us not to slaughter them at all, plead with us to eat plants and leave them alone to live out their lives? Undercover videos are extremely important to trigger the emotions that might allow these very rational concerns to resonate. When we watch those videos, however, we should not let revulsion at particular acts of cruelty blind us to an entire system that is violent at its core, one in which we can’t help but participate when we eat animals. If we have no better explanation for why we eat some animals but not others—“[F]ine we eat cows and everything, but horse meat? No.”—perhaps we shouldn’t be eating animals at all.
- Tigers may be extinct within 12 years
- Amur leopards - of which only about 35 are thought to exist in the wild - may be extinct within 3 or 4 years.
- In the 70s and 80s, 18,000 jaguars were killed each year for their fur. The numbers are still rapidly declining.
- Half of Africa’s lion populations face extinction within the next 40 years.
Credits are noted in the image.
In 1959, psychologist Russell Church conducted a study on the empathy of rats. In the study, he trained the rats to push a lever to receive their food. Then, in a twisted change, he fixed the lever to a floor in the neighboring cage. Every time the rat would push the lever, the rat in the other cage would get an electric shock. Rats that had previously experienced shocks were very empathetic to the rat in the other cage.
Instead of selfishly pushing the lever and receiving its food at the expense of the other rat, the rat would quit pushing the lever and eventually starve to death rather than eat off of another rat’s suffering.
I sometimes suspect that the real experiment is finding out how long polite society will ignore the worst tortures conducted by murderers in white lab coats. What is your breaking point, and what will you do when you reach it?
Our last “Social Media Tuesday” before May 18th and it is a simple reminder - we are now only 4 days away!
We need everyone to help out over these last 4 days to give us a final push. RSVP/SHARE/INVITE friends to the event page. Spread by word of mouth. Pack your cars. Get people on buses. Do everything in your power to help make this day a powerful and historic stand against Marineland and against animal captivity.
https://www.facebook.com/events/155401654604350/
