Socially Responsible Investor Demands Monsanto Allow Cameras Inside Annual Shareholder Meeting.

[proverbialwisdom]

http://occupy-monsanto.com/press-release-for-the-monsanto-annual-shareholder-meeting/

Press Release for the Monsanto Annual Shareholder Meeting
Posted: January 24th, 2013 |

Socially Responsible Investor Demands Monsanto Company Allow Cameras Inside Annual Shareholder Meeting

GMO Food Protests Outside Monsanto 2013 Annual Shareholder Meeting

CREVE COEUR, MO – On Thursday, January 31, 2013, the Monsanto Company officers and shareholders will vote on a shareholder proposal to create a study of “material financial risks or operational impacts” associated with its chemical products and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). However, the public does not currently have the right to witness what will be the only democratic vote of accountability on Monsanto’s leadership because the company bans cameras inside their Annual Shareholder Meeting.

“Monsanto pledges transparency, but provides very little,” says Adam Eidinger, an organic food activist and Monsanto shareholder who organized a march from NY to Washington DC on behalf of honest food labeling in 2011. For the second year in a row, Eidinger will present a shareholder resolution on behalf of Napa, California-based Harrington Investments (HII) with help from the Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA).

Monsanto Company’s website has a page titled “Our Pledge” which includes a section that says: “Transparency: We will ensure that information is available, accessible, and understandable.“

“By keeping cameras out of their Annual Shareholder Meeting, Monsanto is not fulfilling its pledge to shareholders who are unable to attend, the majority of Americans who are eating the products created by Monsanto Company’s patented technology, farmers who are keen to know about future plans of their seed & herbicide provider, and members of the media who report on the company,“ says Eidinger.

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[proverbialwisdom]

1. ...company officials to project gross profit in 2013 of $7.65 billion.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob363.htm

Monsanto’s fiscal 2013 first-quarter profit nearly tripled, according to the Wall Street Journal, prompting company officials to project gross profit in 2013 of $7.65 billion. To what do they owe their recent success? Sales of corn seed to South America, and climbing herbicide prices, the company said. In other words, they’re spreading their monopoly far and wide, and charging farmers higher and higher prices for more and more pesticides.

[proverbialwisdom]

2. Rematch: Farmers Take on Monsanto in Federal Court

http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob363.htm

Rematch: Farmers Take on Monsanto in Federal Court

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Nearly 300 farmers, activists and supporters from across the U.S. held a Citizens Assembly in Washington D.C. last week to demand, for the second time, that the courts protect them from Monsanto. They came from Maine and Iowa, from Connecticut and Maryland to support plaintiffs and lawyers who are appealing Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) vs Monsanto et al, a court case filed last year to protect non-GMO farmers from Monsanto ( http://www.osgata.org/2012/monsanto-oral-argument/ ).

The group lost their initial suit, filed in March 2011 in New York. But they demanded, and won, an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. At issue? Farmers want a guarantee that Monsanto won’t sue them if transgenic seeds from neighboring fields of genetically modified crops drift into their fields and contaminate their conventional or organic crops.

But there’s an even bigger issue here. Farmers want the right to grow non-GMO crops, and consumers want the right to buy non-GMO foods. But with Monsanto controlling the genetics of nearly 90% of all corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets grown in the U.S., it’s increasingly difficult for farmers to avoid contamination of their fields by Monsanto’s seeds. Once all the fields become contaminated, consumers will find it nearly impossible to buy GMO-free food. Unless they grow their own.

Watch this video of plaintiff Jim Gerritson: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=481789141867591&set=vb.100001095282093&type=2&theater

Listen to the lawyers argue their cases (click on link in lower right box): http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/oral-argument-recordings/2012-1298/all

Learn more: http://climate-connections.org/2013/01/15/farmers-join-hundreds-to-protest-outside-monsanto-hearing-oppose-genetic-engineering-of-plants-and-animals/