Congress passes legislation to protect Monsanto and GMO products from lawsuits

Date:03-27-2013

On March 26, a rider placed in the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations bill which would protect companies like Monsanto from lawsuits due to their Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) products, reached the Senate floor after passing the House last week. This rider, which was placed by an anonymous Congressman at the last minute before the House vote, was missed by most Representatives, and ignored during debate as the full bill passed through the Senate.

GMO lobbying at both the state and national levels run into the hundreds of million of dollars. In August of 2012, biotech giants spent tens of millions of dollars alone just to lobby against Prop 37, which would have forced companies to label all product containing GMO materials. This proposition was defeated despite the enormous grass roots efforts by the people in California.

Currently, many European countries, as well as many Asian countries, outlaw GMO as both a health risk, and as a detriment to food crops. Substantial testing of animals show that not only do many abstain from eating GMO food when offered, but those that do accept it have been known to grow tumors from corn based GMO products.

GMO sales are a multi-billion industry, with Monsanto earning over $1.5 billion in the first quarter of 2012 alone. In fact, Monsanto's power over legislators to push for more GMO induction in the food supply has even allowed one of their executives to become the current head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

With Congress passing a new farm appropriations bill that protects GMO companies from litigation for health concerns over their products, and the head of the FDA being a former executive of biotech giant Monsanto, the protections that guard the food Americans eat have been supplanted by the massive lobbying power and money by the GMO industry.