Guest's Blog
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Sherri Dugger. I co-own Dugger Family Farm in Morristown, Indiana, with my husband, Randy. I serve as the executive director for Women, Food and Agriculture Network and also for Indiana Farmers Union.
I want to start out by telling you a little about me. I like to tell people I was born to eat. As a newborn, I weighed in at a hefty 12.3 pounds. I’m certain that I tumbled into this world hungry. And, for as long as I can remember, I have always loved food. The only trouble is that I—like most Americans—never really thought much about what was on my plate. I never considered how the food was raised, what chemicals it might have in it, or the impact those chemicals would have on my body.
The highly anticipated opening of what would have been a fourth Roundup cancer trial was postponed indefinitely on Friday amid settlement negotiations between Monsanto owner Bayer AG and attorneys representing thousands of people who claim their cancers were caused by exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides.
St. Louis City Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Hogan issued an order stating only “cause continued.” The order came after lead lawyers from the plaintiffs’ firms of New York-based Weitz & Luxenberg and The Miller Firm of Virginia left Hogan’s courtroom unexpectedly shortly before opening statements were due to begin at mid-morning Friday. Sources close to the legal teams initially said opening statements were pushed back until early afternoon to allow for time to see if the plaintiffs’ attorneys and lawyers for Bayer could finalize a resolution that would settle tens of thousands of lawsuits. But by early afternoon the proceedings were called off and it was widely speculated that a deal had been achieved.
It’s been nearly five years since international cancer scientists classified a popular weed-killing chemical as probably carcinogenic, news that triggered an explosion of lawsuits brought by cancer patients who blame the former chemical maker Monsanto Co. for their suffering.
Tens of thousands of U.S. plaintiffs – some lawyers involved in the litigation say over 100,000 – claim Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and other glyphosate-based weed killers caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, while Monsanto spent years hiding the risks from consumers.
The first three trials went badly for Monsanto and its German owner Bayer AG as outraged juries awarded over $2.3 billion in damages to four plaintiffs. Trial judges lowered the jury awards to a total of roughly $190 million, and all are under appeal.
In a hall filled to the rafters with agroecological and regenerative farmers, a man approaches the podium.
Most already know what he’s going to say, but they’ve come to listen anyway—only half believing that what they’ve seen and heard about his assault on farming and farmers could be accurate.
George Monbiot is a journalist and author specializing in environmental issues. His work is read all over the world. You could be forgiven for thinking that he might be on the side of agroecological farming. But increasingly he isn’t. And if there was ever any doubt of this, Monbiot’s performance at the UK’s prestigious Oxford Real Farming Conference, following the debut of his TV documentary, “Apocalypse Cow,” was enough to remove any last shred of that doubt.
Anticipation is building around the belief that there could soon be an announcement of at least a partial settlement of U.S. lawsuits pitting thousands of U.S. cancer patients against Monsanto Co. over allegations the company hid the health risks of its Roundup herbicides.
A highly anticipated Roundup cancer trial set to start later this month in the St. Louis area has been pulled from the docket, a court official said on Wednesday.
The trial, which was to pit a woman named Sharlean Gordon against Roundup maker Monsanto Co., was to start Jan. 27 in St. Louis County and was to be broadcast to the public. Notably, Gordon’s lawyers planned to put former Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant on the stand. St. Louis was the home of Monsanto’s corporate headquarters until the company was purchased by Bayer AG of Germany in June of 2018.
In taking the trial off the calendar, the judge in the case has ordered that a status conference be set for a month from now, said St. Louis County Court spokeswoman Christine Bertelson.
For decades, the biotech industry has spun a narrative around genetically engineered crops that could be summed up very simply as “jam tomorrow, instead of bread and butter today.”
Sustained—and financed—largely on the promise of spectacular success at some unidentified point in the future, the research and development of new types of GMO foods, made with a whole host of new genetic engineering technologies, has gathered pace in recent years.
These days, without most people being aware of it, genetic engineering is spreading from the crops in the field to the animals in the barn.
There’s a lot the industrial factory farm industry prefers to keep consumers in the dark about, including what happens when millions of confined, stressed out animals with weakened immune systems are exposed to disease.
What’s the latest food animal pandemic Big Meat has been trying to keep out of the news? African swine fever (ASF), caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV), a disease that just this year has killed one-fourth of the world’s pigs, including half of all China’s factory farm pigs.
So far, mainstream media’s coverage of ASF has focused almost exclusively on economic issues, including the disease’s potential impact on global trade. Questions about the pandemic disease potentials of intensive animal agriculture are skirted.
Former Monsanto Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant will have to testify in person at a St. Louis-area trial set for January in litigation brought by a cancer-stricken woman who claims her disease was caused by exposure to the company’s Roundup herbicide and that Monsanto covered up the risks instead of warning consumers.
Americans cherish the “family farm.” Most are also happy to be able to buy local foods at farmers markets, grocers or their favorite restaurants.
In the marketplace, consumers are sending the message that they want more sustainable and organic food, sales of which exceeded $50 billion last year. And the vast majority of people in our nation believe that climate change is real, and that urgent action needs to be taken.
While there is some variability depending upon one’s political affiliation, Democrats and Republicans alike hold these views. If this is what we collectively believe, across party, then surely our politics and public policies support these priorities, right?
Well, not so much.
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