Tell the USDA: Say NO to Monsanto's GMO corn

ORIGINAL: CredoAction (Use this link to support this campaign and send your message)

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Monsanto has claimed for years that its GMO corn reduced the need to apply toxic pesticides to crops, like the company's own product Roundup (the brand name of the toxic pesticide glyphosate which is believed to cause birth defects in laboratory animals).(1)

Yet the sale of "Roundup Ready" GMO crops immediately increased the use of the dangerous pesticide glyphosate. And as glyphosate use skyrockets, farmers are reporting outbreaks of superweeds that can be killed with larger doses of this hazardous chemical every year. It's a vicious cycle.

Now Monsanto has applied for USDA (US department of Agriculture) approval to let yet another Roundup Ready corn variety escape regulation under rules against plant pests, in spite of evidence that some of these superweeds are the product of transgenic crossbreeding with Roundup Ready GMO crops.(2) The USDA is now accepting public comments.

Tell the USDA to start saying no to GMO crops that breed superweeds and increase hazardous pesticide use.

Monsanto can't control genetic drift from its genetically engineered crops, and farmers' continued use of Roundup gives a potential survival advantage to weed populations that absorb Roundup Ready transgenes.

What's Monsanto's solution? Buy more Roundup from Monsanto. Buy more Roundup Ready crops from Monsanto. Spray more Roundup into our environment and, when it doesn't work, do it all over again. Enough.

Tell the USDA to stop superweeds and the pesticide brew at the source by rejecting GMO corn and conducting a full environmental review.

Thank you for standing up to Monsanto.

1. Claire Robinson, "The inside story on Monsanto and the glyphosate birth defect data," The Ecologist, June 13, 2011.

2. Carol Mallory-Smith and Maria Zapiola, "Gene flow from glyphosate resistant crops," Pest Management Science, 2008.