Moms Take on Monsanto

enero 31, 2018 Zen Honeycutt and Anne Temple of Moms Across America attended the Monsanto Shareholder meeting held at their corporate headquarters in St. Louis.

Zen represented John Harrington of Harrington Investments and presented a three minute presentation for the forming of a Human Rights Committee. Unfortunately the vote was taken before Zen spoke on behalf of the proxy. A document was presented to the board and Executive Team listing just some of the examples of 11 categories of crimes against humanity attributed to Monsanto's products. You can read that document here.

Below is Zen's presentation for the forming of a Human Rights Committee.

Good morning. My name is Zen Honeycutt and I am here today on behalf of John Harrington of Harrington Investments to request that you pass Proxy item No. 4 to create a Human Rights Committee.

Actions taken by your Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Committee simply have not been sufficient to protect the reputation of Monsanto and the shareholders. We feel that a designated committee to investigate human rights is necessary to pre-empt devastating harm to the company and life on the planet. To name just a few:

20,000 farm workers who used glyphosate based herbicides and family members died both in Sri Lanka AND in Nicauragua due to kidney and liver disease, which has been directly linked to glyphosate herbicides. Sri Lanka was the first of many which have now restricted or banned the use of glyphosate herbicides based on scientific evidence of harm to human health.

84% of the 300,000 farmer suicides in India, have been directly attributed to Monsanto’s products. Scientists link pesticide use to the suicide and depression rates in US farmers being higher than any other career.

Lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto for the poisoning of cities such as Seattle, Portland, Long Beach, and San Diego. Alabama and 7 neighboring states sued Monsanto for dumping millions of pounds of PCB’s in their waterways and soil. Over 1,100 plaintiff’s across the country claim their non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma was caused by Monsanto’s products.

These are globally recognized human rights violations which must be addressed to protect the economical viability of Monsanto company and prevent further harm. I have a document on possible human rights violations for each of the board members and it is posted on MomsAcrossAmerica.org for shareholders to view.

The question is, how does Monsanto address these issues without admitting responsibility and therefore becoming legally and fiscally responsible?

Form the human rights committee, address the issues internally, and identify which practices need to discontinue in order to prevent further violations. Then take those steps.

For instance, choosing to discontinue the sale of products which cause harm and investing instead in business which support human rights, like non toxic methods of waste removal, chemical clean up and renewable energy would be celebrated around the globe. Being proactive and responsible is admirable and encourages investments.

Monsanto has the opportunity to be a world leader in shifting from a toxic chemical system which is contaminating our food, water, breast milk, beer, wine, and vaccines with glyphosate, arsenic and heavy metals, to one which supports a healthy sustainable world instead. I urge you to change your vote if you voted no, to a yes vote or to vote yes NOW for Proxy 4. Be the one to stand for your company, for the future of your children, and the health of our nation.

Thank you.

Once Zen completed her statement, we were asked if there were any questions. Anne got up and said the following:

I’m Anne Temple with Moms Across America, proxy for shareholder Karen Selick and I have a few questions.

First of all I am in favor of the formation of a Human Rights Committee.

My questions are:

Is it a human rights violation to hire hundreds of people to discredit scientists, citizens, and doctors? To harass them with character assassination, threats, and slander?

Because it was revealed by the the law firm Baum, Hedlund, Arestei and Goldman in 2017 that is in fact what Monsanto is doing.

I wonder, is it a Human rights violation for your lead toxicologist Donna Farmer to edit out the word “suggested” to hide that study results suggested that glyphosate caused miscarriages? Is it a human rights violation to hide such information which could prevent the deaths of thousands or even millions of babies? Because Monsanto has been found to be covering up such information.

Is it a human rights violation to be a part of the contamination of vaccines with glyphosate and likely arsenic and heavy metals, injecting poison into babies and contributing to thousands of recorded incidents of vaccine damage and an increasing number of deaths, of our children?

I wonder, is it a human rights violation for Monsanto employees to collude with the EPA and hide information which could have revealed to the public that glyphosate herbicides ARE linked to cancer decades ago? How many have died from cancer because of Monsanto’s collusion with the EPA? Lawsuit discovery documents have revealed Monsanto has indeed colluded with the EPA.

I wonder as a mother, an American citizen and a human being, when will Monsanto face and investigate these human rights violations and stop them from not only re-occurring but from causing the downfall of Monsanto, loss of jobs, affecting the economy of the city of St. Louis and communities around the world?

Thank you.

When we were allowed to comment (this year we were only allowed to comment once), Zen spoke vaccines and Anne spoke about Monsanto's claim that they are "Feeding the World. "

Zen's comment about vaccines is below:

Last year I sent 5 childhood vaccines, including a flu shot, to a lab and had them screen tested for glyphosate. All 5 came back positive. The MMR vaccine came by 24X higher in glyphosate residues than the other 4 vaccines. This is the vaccine that CDC whistleblower William Thompson admitted to causing autism in children.The results were confirmed by another independent scientist and lab, but no regulatory agency or manufacturer of glyphosate has made any testing for glyphosate in vaccines available to the public to confirm or deny these results.

Scientists believe that glyphosate is getting into vaccines through the GMO ingredients in vaccines and the gelatin, which is in vaccines as a stabilizer and is made of pig tendons. Pigs commonly eat grains sprayed with glyphosate.

Here are just 3 reason why glyphosate weed killer in vaccines is a problem for Monsanto and citizens.

Glyphosate has been shown to break down the blood brain barrier and allow toxins into the brain, amplifying the harm caused by aluminum, mercury in flu shots, formaldehyde and likely, arsenic and heavy metals which has been shown to bein glyphosate herbicides. So the ingredients that have been in vaccines for decades may be suddenly causing vaccine damage and autism because glyphosate is present. 1 out of 36 children in America now has autism and it will be 1 out of 2 in just 16 years.

Glyphosate herbicides have never been tested for harm or safety in conjunction with the other toxins in vaccines or the viruses. This means that all vaccines on the market that one must presume from the preliminary screening, may have glyphosate in them, cannot be assumed to be safe. There is no scientific evidence.

Injection into muscle tissue is very different from ingestion which allows for filtering by the pancreas and liver. Monsanto’s own Donna Farmer admitted on the TV show The Doctors that glyphosate caused harm when injected into animals, therefore the only available evidence we have on glyphosate being injected into animals is one which calls for immediate action to be taken to protect children.

Glyphosate herbicides showing up in vaccines is a problem beyond the willingness of our regulatory agencies to fix. So I am calling up Monsanto, as a leader of GMO farming and the use of glyphosate, to call upon farmers across the region to discontinue the practice of spraying glyphosate before harvest. France and Germany discontinued this practice 4 years ago. Why not US farmers? Because you continue to tell them it is safe to spray glyphosate on crops before harvest. Whether it is for weeds or dry down is irrelevant. This practice, if discontinued, will prevent an enormous amount of glyphosate residues from contaminating vaccines and poisoning our children. Will you recommend a discontinuation of the practice of spraying glyphosate herbicides as a pre-harvest treatment?

Anne's comments about feeding the world are below:

Feeding the World

Monsanto executives have claimed that one of the company’s noble goals is to “Feed the World.” It is asserted that GMOs and their related pesticides and herbicides are needed to get higher yields and that this will decrease the use of additional agri-chemicals. Neither are true.

In fact, the Rodale Institute’s 30 year study showed that during drought, organic crops had a 17.7 % higher yield than crops genetically engineered to be drought tolerant.

GMO Crops are not substantially feeding the world. The fact is that 98% of Soy and 79.5% of Corn crops go directly to animal feed or fuel.

Only 9% of the food that feeds the world is meat. So clearly GMOs are NOT feeding the world.

The New York Times reported, using United Nations data in 2015, that pesticide and herbicide use has increased in the US by 21% since the introduction of GMO crops in the mid-1990s. Over 9.4 million TONS have been sprayed on our food crops worldwide since 1974.

GMOs are not producing the yield as promised. The related chemicals and toxins are destroying the soil, water, and food supply.

At present, we have more than enough food to feed our growing population. In fact, there is enough food to feed 1-1/2 times the current population.

Quantity is not the problem.

The problem is that the chemical sprayed mono crops and animal agriculture are destroying the planet.

Rain forests are being wiped out at the rate of an acre a second, to either clear the land for grazing or to grow the GMO mono crops to feed livestock.

Did you know that it takes over 2500 gallons of water to produce 4 Big Macs? 1-½ acres can grow 37,000 pounds of vegetables which do contain enough protein and only 375 pounds of meat.

Factory farming waste runoff along with the herbicides from GMO chemical farming are entering our water supply and ending up in our oceans. The Gulf of Mexico now has a dead zone the size of New Jersey.

According to the EPA, animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution and habitat destruction.

What can Monsanto do? Be leaders for a healthy future and develop the technology to remove the toxic chemicals from the soil and water. Work with the farmers to convert their farms from growing mono-crops to growing organic diversified crops in a sustainable manner. Move away from producing these toxic chemicals.

So how do we feed the world? 82% of of starving children live in countries where the crops they grow are exported for livestock for western populations.

If countries fed themselves with local, diverse vegetable and permaculture crops and humans moved to a plant based diet, children would not be starving.

If Monsanto is truly committed to Feeding the World, I ask, will you support local, diverse, regenerative farming and clean up the toxins that you produced, which are poisoning our planet?

Thank you.

It's was a unique, frustrating but valuable experience to be able to present before the shareholders, board and executive team.

Unfortunately new federal laws have been proposed to prevent this from happening in the future, as corporations are requesting that Annual Meetings be held by webinar. This would prevent people like Zen and Anne from attending these meetings in person.

Nonetheless, this will not stop us. We will continue to spread the word about the damage being caused by these agri-giants, because our love for our kids will never stop.

We will find a way.

Thank you!