Sen. Jon Tester, on his Montana Organic Family farm. Sen. Jon Tester’s office/Flickr
UPDATE 3/21: “Bad news. Monsanto Rider is in the Senate passed continuing resolution (CR) and will likely remain in the final version passed by the House later today. Good news. The rider will only be in effect for the next 6 months until the CR ends. We’ll have to make sure the Monsanto Rider does NOT make it into the any new funding bills.” Source.
Food Democracy Now has a petition to try and get President Obama to veto this. Click here.
Excerpts:
Last summer, the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee inserted an odd provision into a 90-page ag appropriations bill—one that had something to do with money, but nothing to do with the matter at hand, federal appropriations. In what became known as the biotech rider, the provision would have allowed the planting of genetically modified crop varieties even if a federal judge rules that they have been approved by the USDA improperly—as happened, for example, in 2010, when a federal judge issued an injunction against the planting of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets on the grounds that the USDA had approved them without a substantial environmental review.
In a post last year, I laid out why such protection is so important to the handful of companies that dominate ag biotech: Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Agrosciences, BASF, Bayer, and Pioneer (DuPont). Short story: Their current products are failing, hounded by weed and insect resistance, and they need to get their next-generation products—which are really just intensified versions of their currents ones—to market as quickly as possible. Lawsuits and court rulings on environmental grounds can only gum up the works.
Well, the biotech rider failed last year, but now it’s back—showing up this time in another bill that has nothing to do with the regulation of ag biotech, the Senate’s Continuing Resolution. This monster piece of legislation is necessary to fund the government once the next (absurd) fiscal deadline hits March 27. The rider in question can be found lurking on page 80 of its 587 pages (it’s section 735).
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mon.), whose organic family farm makes him the Senate’s only working farmer, delivered a scathing speech against the rider on the Senate floor Wednesday before sponsoring an amendment that would nullify it. “Not only does this ignore the Constitution’s idea of separation of powers, but it also lets genetically-modified crops take hold across the country—even when a judge finds it violates the law,” he declared.
In his remarks, Tester stressed that the source of the rider is murky—there’s no way to find out which senator inserted it. “I don’t know who authored this provision,” he said. “Maybe someone in Washington knows, but no one is willing to put their name to it. And that’s a shame.” I put calls into the offices of a couple of potential suspects, and got nowhere.
Read the Full Article Here: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/03/yet-again-agribiz-sneaks-friendly-riders-unrelated-bill#13636233186921
URGENT! Stop the Monsanto Rider in the Senate!
At this very moment, a Continuing Resolution (CR) for the big Appropriations funding bill (H.R. 933) is being debated in the Senate. It’s supposed to be about funding the government, but the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (who has always stood by our side in the past), has included a dangerous GMO rider that has no place in a funding bill.
Fortunately, Senator Tester, joined by Senators Boxer, Gillibrand, and Leahy, have introduced amendment #74 to strike the dangerous rider from the CR. This is our one chance to ensure this heinous language does not become law. Tell your member of Congress to support the Tester amendment and dump the dangerous biotech rider.
The good news is that this amendment is our best opportunity to halt the GMO rider before the bill goes to conference committee, which will reconcile the House bill (which was passed without the GMO rider language) with this Senate bill. The bad news is that during the previous Congress, the House passed a bill with this exact same GMO language, so if we don’t stop the rider now, the House is unlikely to oppose it.
This is the same rider we’ve told you about before—the so-called Farmer Assurance Provision (Section 735)–that will strip federal courts of the authority to halt the sale and planting of illegal, potentially hazardous genetically engineered crops while USDA is performing an environmental impact statement . If this provision becomes law, it will be a huge blow to the justice system, completely overriding judicial safeguards that protect both farmers and the public, and rendering judges’ rulings irrelevant.
This Monsanto-driven rider is simply a biotech industry ploy to continue to plant GE crops even when a court of law has found they were approved illegally.
This is our moment—and perhaps our only chance–to be heard and have the GMO language pulled. Government funding expires on March 27, and the CR is a “must-pass” before that deadline, so we need a big push from you and other concerned citizens RIGHT NOW. Forward this email to everyone you know and urge them take immediate action by sending a quick message through our Action Alert system.
Then—and this is just as important—pick up the phone and call your senators today! We must tie up their phone lines to tell them they won’t be re-elected if they do not act to oppose this language! Follow this link to find your senators’ phone numbers—just choose your state from the drop-down menu.
Please take action right away. Please don’t put it off! We can’t begin to express how important and urgent this is.
1. Send your Action Alert message
2. Phone both your senators
3. Forward this email to as many like-minded people as you can think of, post the Action Alert it to Facebook, and Tweet about it (use the hashtag #GMOrider).