Friday, April 06, 2012
Monsanto planning to trample state's rights, again
Because they get very annoyed when states pretend they have the right to challenge a major corporation. And when that corporation is the world's leading producer of Frankenfoods, well that is like fire to the original monster.
If lawmakers in Vermont decide to require all genetically modified food be labeled as such, they could be facing a major lawsuit from one of the most hated companies in the world.Monsanto, where the good of the body politic takes back seat to profit.
A representative of Missouri-based food giant Monsanto, which has in its history filed hundreds of lawsuits over use of its seed gene patents, threatened lawmakers with civil litigation if they pass the bill, according to a report this week from Alternet.
The bill, H.722, otherwise known as the Vermont Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, was introduced to the Vermont House in February, but lawmakers have hesitated to cast their ballots ahead of a public hearing on April 12.
It wouldn’t be the first time Monsanto has sued Vermont, either: the company took the state to court in the ninties over a law requiring milk producers to label products containing bovine growth hormones. Not only did they sue, they won, rendering Vermont’s labeling law purely voluntary.
What’s more, Monsanto years later got into a legal fight with Vermont ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. over their practice of labeling ice cream free of hormones and forcing suppliers to promise they’re not using them. Monsanto was able to convince lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana to consider bills that would have made the ice cream maker’s practices illegal, arguing the labels implied some inherent harm to consuming recombinant bovine growth hormone. Only Pennsylvania passed the law, but it was later recalled.
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