And one more bit of good news on a different topic:The Monsanto Protection Act is dead. The House included it in its version of the Continuing Resolution but the Senate has stripped it out and there appears no move in the House to put it back in. It will now expire.
The fact that you likely don't even know what the Monsanto Protection Act is, is part of the reason this is good news.
"The Monsanto Protection Act" wasn't it's actual name. It referred to a rider that was mysteriously inserted into an emergency government spending bill signed in March; "mysteriously" because no one would admit to being responsible for getting the language into the bill. Ultimately, GOPper Sen. Roy Blunt confessed to working with Monsanto to get the rider included.
The Monsanto Protection Act effectively stripped from both government agencies and the courts the ability to regulate GMOs, genetically-modified organisms - particularly the seeds, the genetically-modified, patent-protected, seeds of grains and other plants sold to farmers by outfits like Syngenta, Bayer, Dupont, and yes and most particularly, Monsanto.
I'm not here going to get into the arguments about GMO seeds, about whether they will ultimately be boons or banes. I will say that on the evidence so far I go with the latter and that I as a general rule oppose them scientifically because there are still too many unknowns, economically and socially because they wind up trapping farmers into an economic bondage with these corporations (since they have to buy new seeds every year and then use the particular pesticides or herbicides to which the plants are designed to be resistant, products made - of course - by those same corporations), and politically because their development and survival in the market has so far depended on government largesse and the corporation campaign donations that buy it.
But regardless of whether or not my objections - which are hardly mine alone - can be overcome, the Monsanto Protection Act still stood as a prime example of the dirty, sneaky, slimy way corporations get their way. So it's good news that at least this time, they failed.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/monsanto-protection-act-extension_n_3908249.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/25/1241315/-Sen-Tester-Kills-Monsanto-Protection-Rider
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/short-take-sneaky-monsanto-protection-act-set-to-expire/article_dbdeb20a-68ea-56d2-a7a2-9224bc210079.html
http://www.foodlawfirm.com/2013/04/the-monsanto-protection-act/
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=no+gmo
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