BREAKING: MONSANTO'S GMA FACES $14 MILLION FINE
Food Democracy Now!
Feb. 25, 2016
MONSANTO IS BACK IN CONGRESS with a new DARK Act! We need your help to defeat it!
Late last Friday evening we received terrible news. In case you haven’t heard, Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Associations (GMA) finally succeeded in finding someone corrupt enough, Senate Ag Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), to introduce a bill to preempt states’ rights and not allow Vermont’s GMO labeling law to go into effect on July 1st of this year.
If allowed to pass, this new bill in the Senate would kill mandatory GMO labeling in the United States for good!
Ironically, the same day that Senator Roberts betrayed our basic democratic rights in order to protect Monsanto’s toxic profits in Washington DC, across the country in Washington state, Attorney General Bob Ferguson was appearing in court to explain in great detail how Monsanto and the GMA plotted to deceive voters in Washington state’s 2013 GMO labeling ballot initiative – an initiative we lost by just 49% to 51%.
According to Ferguson, Monsanto and the GMA engaged in an “egregious” plot to evade campaign disclosure laws that ranks “among the worst in state history”. This only highlights the lengths that Monsanto and the GMA will go to defeat us and our right to know what we’re eating.
The good news is that we've got them on the ropes. They're scrambling not only in DC, but across the country in an attempt to preempt states’ rights to decide what’s best for their citizens all because of our efforts to put a simple label on genetically engineered foods. This is an assault on our democracy and we need your help today to defeat them in DC.
Emergency response fund: For the next 30 days, we have the fight of our life on our hands to make sure that Monsanto and their corrupt allies in Congress don’t succeed and end our right to know what's in our food forever. At the moment, we’re ramping up our efforts to stop Monsanto in Congress and we need your help to make sure we win what we started together in 2012 – the right to mandatory GMO labeling. Help us raise $100,000 in the next 30 days so we can stop Monsanto from corrupting our democracy and your donation will be doubled 2 to 1 by a generous group of donors.
For the past 20 plus years, Monsanto and their cronies at the GMA have intentionally deceived the American public about GMOs and hid these genetically engineered ingredients in our food, without our consent and without informing us.
For the past 8 years, at Food Democracy Now! we’ve been actively fighting the largest and most corrupt corporations on the planet and together we’re winning and forcing them to make major mistakes that will ultimately be their undoing. In the past 4 months alone, Monsanto has been forced to lay off more than 16% of their workforce because sales of GMOs and Roundup are rapidly declining because farmers are battling Roundup Ready superweed and facing declining yeilds. We need your help today to make sure we can stop them again in Congress like we did the past December! Every bit help!
Monsanto / GMA Dirty Tricks - How they broke the law in Washington State to Defeat GMO Labeling!
In 2013, while facing heated opposition from a growing grassroots movement across the country, lobbyists from the biotech industry and food manufacturers came up with a plot to launder money through the GMA in order to hide their members from public scrutiny – meaning they donated to a GMA slush fund and the GMA passed those contributions onto the NO on I-522 campaign illegally.
This clear violation of Washington state campaign laws, which was contested in court before the 2013 election, allowed Monsanto and other corporate members of the GMA to donate a record $22 million and ultimately defeat GMO labeling in Washington.
That’s right, we lost the 2013 Washington state election to label GMOs, as a result of Monsanto and the GMA’s illegal plot to hide money. Ultimately, the GMA donated more than $11 million from corporations like Monsanto, Pepsi, Coke, General Mills and Nestle to hide their company’s involvement in deceiving Washington voters and all American consumers.
The Seattle Times reported that the GMA’s plot to deceive Washington voters began at a January 2013 board meeting where GMA officials claimed the fund would “shield individual companies from public disclosure and possible criticism.”
According to Ferguson, “It was a detailed scheme over many months to purposely, in their words, shield their donors from public scrutiny, and that’s not OK.”
Monsanto and the GMA’s plot to deceive voters in Washington was so obscene that the state is recommending a $14 million fine - but it could be much larger than that.
Ferguson said that fine could be tripled if a judge agrees GMA intentionally flouted the law!
That’s right, because of their illegal activity, Monsanto and other GMA members face a potential fine ranging from $14 million to $42 million!
While this large fine is certainly appropriate, it will not change the results of the 2013 I-522 ballot initiative in Washington state. Outrageously, Monsanto and the GMA used illegal campaign contributions to defeat us in 2013 and now they’re back at it using large campaign contributions and dirty lobbying money to try to defeat us once and for all in Washington DC.
We're so close to victory – and they know it.
After 20 years of silencing America’s Right to Know what’s in our food, the biotech industry is getting desperate to stifle the growing number of Americans who are demanding labeling of genetically engineered foods!
From the states to DC: Demand Mandatory GMO Labeling
This week the Senate Agriculture committee is meeting to try to pass a bill that will permanently end our fight for mandatory GMO labeling in America. The only reason we’re at this point is because Monsanto and giant food corporations like Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, General Mills and Kellogg’s would rather lie to the American people and break our laws than provide basic transparency in our food supply.
These companies have fought us tooth and nail for years, employing every dirty trick in the book – and now that Vermont’s GMO labeling law will go into effect on July 1st of this year – a little less than 5 months away - they’re more desperate than ever. While this a testament to the power of our movement, it’s also a call to action.
Right now Monsanto and the GMA are building their campaign war chest to defeat GMO labeling in the U.S. and force untested GMOs on farmers and citizens around the world, but we can’t let them get away with it!
Together we're unstoppable!
Remember, democracy is like a muscle, either you use it or you lose it! Together we're unstoppable!
Thanks for participating in food democracy,
Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Action! team
P.S. -- None of what we have achieved would have been possible without you. We are a genuine grassroots movement funded by the people that make up this community. We might not have Monsanto’s might or cash, but we have you. Can you chip in $35 dollars right now, to make sure we are here to fight the good fight for the upcoming year?
Sources:
1. “Hidden corporate donors poured $11M into fight to stop GMO labels in Wash”, Seattle Times, February 18, 2016
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/1601?t=18&akid=1810.1133276.FC-xwT
All money raised for this campaign will go through Food Democracy Action!, a 501(c)4 allied organization of Food Democracy Now!, focused on grassroots lobbying and legislative action. Donations are not tax-deductible. Thank you for your support! This donation will be used to support grassroots lobbying and legislative action and is not tax-deductible