Monsanto Records $156 Million Loss For Fourth Quarter

Monsanto Co. reported that the company recorded a loss of $156 million in the latest quarter, a loss that was considerably higher than expected. The loss amounted to about 31 cents per share. Analysts expected a loss of around 24 cents per share. Revenue rose to $2.63 billion in the quarter, an increase of more than 19 percent. That was higher than analysts’ forecasts of revenue of $2.42 billion. The company expects to post earnings of $5.75 to $6 for the full fiscal year.

During the quarter, two of the company’s business units, genetically-engineered seeds and herbicide, posted higher than average sales. Sales of biotech seeds increased to $1.38 billion, a 16 percent rise. Herbicide and agricultural product sales increased to 1.25 billion, a 23 percent rise.

rinf.com - Occupy Monsanto

What Is Monsanto?

The World According to Monsanto

Thanks to these intimate links between Monsanto and government agencies, the US adopted GE foods and crops without proper testing, without consumer labeling and in spite of serious questions hanging over their safety. Not coincidentally, Monsanto supplies 90 percent of the GE seeds used by the US market. Monsanto's long arm stretched so far that, in the early nineties, the US Food and Drugs Agency even ignored warnings of their own scientists, who were cautioning that GE crops could cause negative health effects. Other tactics the company uses to stifle concerns about their products include misleading advertising, bribery and concealing scientific evidence.

The World According to Monsanto is a 2008 film directed by Marie-Monique Robin. Originally released in French as Le monde selon Monsanto, the film is based on Robin's three-year long investigation into the corporate practices around the world of the United States multinational corporation, Monsanto The World According to Monsanto is also a book written by Marie-Monique Robin, winner of the Rachel Carson Prize (a Norwegian prize for female environmentalists). Wikipedia

X-Men superhumans a reality in 30 years

Super-humans like the X-Men will exist by 2045, defence boffins claim. They say genetic experiments will create a superior race within 30 years.

Mutant humans like Wolverine, Storm and Rogue from the X-Men movies are possible, a Ministry of Defence think-tank was told. A two-day summit to predict the future reported: “Advancements in gene technology could lead to a class of genetically superior humans by 2045. “Human augmentation is likely to increase over the next 30 years. Discussions highlighted that it is possible that advances in biology, unequally shared across society, could generate genetic inequality.”

The Sun

Indiana Farmer's Supreme Court Challenge to Corporate Control of Food Supply

A David versus Goliath case heard by the US Supreme Court this week pits a 75-year-old farmer from Indiana against Monsanto, the world's largest seed company. The dispute began when soybean farmer Vernon Bowman bought and planted a mix of unmarked grain typically used for animal feed. The plants that grew turned out to contain the popular herbicide-resistant genetic trait known as Roundup Ready that Monsanto guards closely with patents. Monsanto accused Bowman of using their technology without paying for it. Their contracts with farmers give them the exclusive rights to supply the Roundup Ready soybeans. They sued Bowman for patent infringement. Monsanto won the Federal Circuit decision. Farmers, safe food activists, and concerned citizens will gather on the sidewalk outside of the Supreme Court to demand the Supreme Court side with Farmer Bowman!

Democracy Now!

Millions of GMO Mosquitoes Released Without Risk Assessment or Oversight

London/ Munich Thursday 8^th November 2012 A briefing published today by public interest groups highlights how regulatory decisions on GM insects in Europe and around the world are being biased by corporate interests.

The briefing shows how UK biotech company Oxitec has infiltrated decision-making processes around the world. The company has close links to the multinational pesticide and seed company, Syngenta. Oxitec has already made large-scale open releases of GM mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Brazil and is developing GM agricultural pests, jointly with Syngenta. Plans to commercialise GM insects would result in many millions of GM insects being released in fields of crops, including olives, tomatoes, citrus fruits, cabbages and cotton. In future, any insect species might be genetically modified.

The briefing also highlights problems with a World Health Organisation (WHO)-funded project which has allowed the company to bypass requirements for informed consent for the release of GM mosquitoes. The WHO-funded Mosqguide project, which was supposed to be developing best practice, also allowed the company to gain approval from Brazilian regulators to release 16 million GM mosquitoes before draft regulations on the release of GM insects had been finalised or adopted, without publishing a risk assessment.

Dr Helen Wallace, Director of GeneWatch UK said “The public will be shocked to learn that GM insects can be released into the environment without any proper oversight. Conflicts-of-interest should be removed from all decision-making processes to ensure the public have a proper say about these plans.”

Full story on Farm Wars

More about Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes on Pakalert Press

GMO (genetically modified organisms) Ticking Time Bomb

Monsanto told us that DDT was safe. Monsanto told us that Agent Orange was safe. Now Monsanto and other chemical companies are in charge of telling us that their own genetically modified foods are safe.

The Real Food Channel

Stephen Hawking: "Humans are Designing their Evolution"

Physicist Stephen Hawking believes that we have entered a new phase of evolution. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information."
But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.

"I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race," Hawking said.
In the last ten thousand years the human species has  been in what Hawking calls, "an external transmission phase," where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. "But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage," Hawking says, "has grown enormously. Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes."

Full story on dailygalaxy.com

UK scientists secretly grew human-animal hybrids in laboratory experiments

One hundred and fifty animal-human hybrid embryos have been produced by mad scientists in the UK -- with full government approval -- under the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act. The UK's Daily Mail newspaper is reporting that a committee of scientists recently blew the whistle on the operation and expressed alarm over the possibility of the experiments going "too far" and resulting in a real Planet of the Apes scenario, where animals escape from the lab and begin reproducing in the wild.

Sound like science fiction? It's actually just an extension of science fact: human-animal hybrids have been produced by these UK scientists for the last three years. Among the monstrosities they created were animal eggs fertilized with human sperm, and cybrids -- animal cells that are injected with human cell nuclei. They also created chimeras, a mixture of human cells and animal cells, much like what happened in the sci-fi Planet of the Apes depiction of science gone wrong.

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