Monsanto sued small famers to protect seed patents, report says

[farminator3000]

28. their 'terminator' tech (see my screen name) is BANNED, possibly...but, a big mess as usual

natural hybrids are NEVER sterile, nature would never do something as insane as that.
big Ms latest is buying up naturally created hybrids, too, to cover their butts if GMOs are banned like they should be:
Tip of the iceberg
A locally invented lettuce variety is now owned by Monsanto
http://www.newtimesslo.com/news/8001/tip-of-theiceberg/

***

http://www.globalresearch.ca/genetically-engineered-terminator-seeds-death-and-destruction-of-agriculture/5319797
Previously, farmers just replanted their own seeds and exchanged them among themselves. As with the forced enclosure of common land in England hundreds of years ago, ordinary farmers today are being denied access to their heritage too: the common exchanging, saving, evolving and breeding of seeds. By using various legal and political instruments, through seed monopolies and seed patenting, big agribusiness has taken over the cotton seed market, especially in India, where over 90 to 95 percent of all cotton is now genetically modified and controlled by big corporations.

It is frequently argued that the high debt incurred by Indian farmers and resultant farmer suicides (over 250,000 since 1997) have largely resulted from the need to purchase costly pesticides and expensive seeds each year because they contain a ‘terminator’ gene. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva has taken a good deal of flak from some quarters for implying that seeds with ‘non-renewable’ genetic traits are responsible for the mass farmer suicides in India. Her most strident critics say that this is a much-propagated myth or outright lie, given the global ban on the commercial use of ‘terminator’ seeds. So, who are we to believe?

Tiruvadi Jagadisan worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations. The former Monsanto boss said government regulatory agencies with which the company used to deal with in the 1980s simply depended on data supplied by the company while giving approvals to herbicides.

As reported in India Today in 2009, he is on record as saying that India’s Central Insecticide Board simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto and did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked. Jagadisan stated that Monsanto was getting into the seed business and that he had information that a ‘terminator gene’ was to be incorporated in the seeds being supplied by the firm.

It begs the question, who can we trust? Monsanto, a company with a more than dubious history of safety standards and scruples, and state regulatory bodies in India, a country where corruption throughout officialdom runs deep and is well documented, or people like Vandana Shiva and farmers on the ground who suspect terminator technology is already a reality?
Previously, farmers just replanted their own seeds and exchanged them among themselves. As with the forced enclosure of common land in England hundreds of years ago, ordinary farmers today are being denied access to their heritage too: the common exchanging, saving, evolving and breeding of seeds. By using various legal and political instruments, through seed monopolies and seed patenting, big agribusiness has taken over the cotton seed market, especially in India, where over 90 to 95 percent of all cotton is now genetically modified and controlled by big corporations.

It is frequently argued that the high debt incurred by Indian farmers and resultant farmer suicides (over 250,000 since 1997) have largely resulted from the need to purchase costly pesticides and expensive seeds each year because they contain a ‘terminator’ gene. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva has taken a good deal of flak from some quarters for implying that seeds with ‘non-renewable’ genetic traits are responsible for the mass farmer suicides in India. Her most strident critics say that this is a much-propagated myth or outright lie, given the global ban on the commercial use of ‘terminator’ seeds. So, who are we to believe?

Tiruvadi Jagadisan worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations. The former Monsanto boss said government regulatory agencies with which the company used to deal with in the 1980s simply depended on data supplied by the company while giving approvals to herbicides.

As reported in India Today in 2009, he is on record as saying that India’s Central Insecticide Board simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto and did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked. Jagadisan stated that Monsanto was getting into the seed business and that he had information that a ‘terminator gene’ was to be incorporated in the seeds being supplied by the firm.

It begs the question, who can we trust? Monsanto, a company with a more than dubious history of safety standards and scruples, and state regulatory bodies in India, a country where corruption throughout officialdom runs deep and is well documented, or people like Vandana Shiva and farmers on the ground who suspect terminator technology is already a reality?