GMO Controversy at Monsanto Shareholder Meeting

The meet­ing itself is only open to share­hold­ers but con­cerned cit­i­zens will be demon­strat­ing out­side the north­east entrance to Monsanto’s Lindberg cam­pus begin­ning at 12:00 noon. Monsanto Headquarters is located at 800 North Lindberg Boulevard in St. Louis, MO.

Adam Eidinger, an organic food activist who recently led a walk from NY to Washington DC on behalf of hon­est food label­ing, will present the share­holder res­o­lu­tion on behalf of Napa, California based Harrington Investments (HII) with help from the Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA).

Eidinger will be avail­able for inter­view before and after the share­holder meet­ing, which he will drive a “Label GMO” art car to attend. Representatives from HII and PANNA will be also avail­able for inter­view before and after the share­holder meet­ing. Eidinger’s writ­ten tes­ti­mony is avail­able by request.

In its state­ment rec­om­mend­ing share­hold­ers to vote against the HII res­o­lu­tion, Monsanto man­age­ment stated that, “Farmers should have the free­dom to choose which pro­duc­tion method is best suited for their needs, whether organic, non-GM con­ven­tional or biotech­nol­ogy traits. All of these sys­tems can and do work effec­tively side by side…”

John Harrington, CEO of Harrington Investments ques­tions the verac­ity of Monsanto’s state­ment: “While I am heart­ened by Monsanto’s sud­den con­cern for the free­dom of farm­ers, the unfor­tu­nate real­ity fac­ing American farm­ers right now, is that genetic drift from GMO crops is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their con­ven­tional and organic crops. This can be dis­as­trous because many GMO crops can­not be sold to impor­tant mar­kets, such as Europe, China and Japan. The poten­tial legal impli­ca­tions for Monsanto are staggering.”

Eidinger, who orga­nized last October’s a 100 per­son, 313 mile “Right2Know March” from New York City to the White House for fed­er­ally man­dated GMO food label­ing says: “With the rise or Round-Up resis­tant ‘super­weeds’ the com­pany is sim­ply telling farm­ers to spray even more toxic her­bi­cides includ­ing 2,4 D, the main ingre­di­ent in Agent Orange. Many peo­ple are strug­gling to avoid GMOs and chem­i­cals used on them in the food they eat due to seri­ous health and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns yet Americans have no right to know what we are eat­ing largely due to the close ties Monsanto has to President Obama’s USDA and FDA which has ignored more than 500,000 Americans who have signed on to the JustLabelIt.org peti­tion to the FDA.”

Source: © 2012 PR Newswire Release