OR-Sen: Jeff Merkley (D) Praises Senate Plan To End The Monsanto Protection Act

DailyKos:

Here's some good news for ya: http://www.rawstory.com/...

Senate Democrats are drafting a government funding bill that would allow the so-called “Monsanto Protection Act” to expire at the end of the month. According to the New York Daily News, the Republican-supported Farmer Assurance Provision rider will expire on Sep. 30 because it was attached to to the previous Continuing Resolution, and Democrats have no plans to renew it. In a last-ditch effort, Republicans have attached the rider to H.J. Res. 59, the Republican bill to defund Obamacare, but that law stands virtually no chance of passing in the Senate. The House Republican’s government funding bill, which passed in the House last week, contains a three-month extension of the Monsanto Protection Act, which shields companies like Monsanto and Dow Chemical from legal action resulting from Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) crops. The Act also places the authority of whether or not GMO crops can be grown and sold domestically into the hands of Federal Department of Agriculture rather than with the courts or public referendum. The Democratically-controlled Senate is making no plans to work to keep the rider active beyond its current expiration date. - Raw Story, 9/25/13

Here's a little more info: http://rt.com/...

The Senate version of the legislation will make clear the provision expires on Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. “That provision will be gone,” Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) told Politico. Pryor chairs the Senate subcommittee on agriculture appropriations. The Center for Food Safety said the Senate’s eradication of the rider was “a major victory for the food movement” and a “sea change in a political climate that all too often allows corporate earmarks to slide through must-pass legislation.” “Short-term appropriations bills are not an excuse for Congress to grandfather in bad policy,” said Colin O’Neil, the Center for Food Safety’s director of government affairs. The biotech rider first made news in March when it was a last-minute addition to the successfully-passed House Agriculture Appropriations Bill for 2013, a short-term funding bill that was approved to avoid a federal government shutdown. Following the original vote in March, President Barack Obama signed the provision into law as part of larger legislation to avoid a government shutdown. Rallies took place worldwide in May protesting the clandestine effort to protect the powerful companies from judicial scrutiny. Largely as a result of prior lawsuits, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is required to complete environmental impact statements (EIS) to assess risk prior to both the planting and sale of GMO crops. The extent and effectiveness to which the USDA exercises this rule is in itself a source of serious dispute. The reviews have been the focus of heated debate between food safety advocacy groups and the biotech industry in the past. In December of 2009, for example, Food Democracy Now collected signatures during the EIS commenting period in a bid to prevent the approval of Monsanto’s GMO alfalfa, which many feared would contaminate organic feed used by dairy farmers; it was approved regardless. - RT- 9/25/13

And Senator Jeff Merkley (D. OR) is praising this as a victory: http://www.eurasiareview.com/...

“This is a victory for all those who think special interests shouldn’t get special deals. This secret rider, which was slipped into a must-pass spending bill earlier this year, instructed the Secretary of Agriculture to allow GMO crops to be cultivated and sold even when our courts had found they posed a potential risk to farmers of nearby crops, the environment, and human health. I applaud the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have worked hard to end this diabolical provision.” - Eurasia Reviews, 9/25/13 Merkley has long been an outspoken critic of the Monsanto Protection Act: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Merkley has opposed the measure since it quietly passed in March, when it was attached to another spending resolution. Merkley led an online petition to oppose the extension, and unsuccessfully offered an amendment to the farm bill intended to kill what opponents have dubbed the Monsanto Protection Act. Monsanto is the world's largest seed company. - Huffington Post, 9/24/13 This is good news indeed.  Senator Merkley spearheaded efforts in the Senate against Monsanto and has never given up.  Now it's paying off.  Please do thank Senator Merkley by donating to his 2014 re-election campaign:

https://services.myngp.com/...

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