(illustration: Occupy Monsanto)
Senate to Kill Monsanto Protection Act
25 September 13
controversial legislative rider added by Monsanto to the Agriculture
Department budget last spring will no longer be effective after Sept. 30
under a draft stopgap government funding bill being drafted by Senate
Democrats.
The provision touched off a storm last spring as
critics accused Monsanto of "court-stripping" to protect its sales of
the genetically modified seeds for which the St. Louis-based giant is a
pioneer in commercializing.
The continuing resolution approved by the House last
week would extend the rider without comment for the first months of the
new fiscal year. But the Senate substitute, to be unveiled Wednesday,
will explicitly go back and make clear that that Monsanto-backed
provision will end this month.
"That provision will be gone," said Sen. Mark Pryor
(D-Ark.), confirming the change to POLITICO. The Center for Food Safety,
a Washington-based non-profit, welcomed the decision as "a major
victory for the food movement" and "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, director of
government affairs for the Center.
The whole dispute has been overshadowed by the larger
fight over Republican efforts to use the same CR to cut off funding
needed by President Barack Obama to implement his health care reforms.
But for many environmental and food safety groups, the so-called
"Monsanto Protection Act" -as the rider was called-became a major cause
last spring, generating a huge amount of Internet traffic and calls on
Obama to veto the agriculture budget. READ MORE