Written by Christina Sarich at theantimedia.org
What happens when one courageous attorney and a few citizens try to take down Monsanto? The MSM doesn’t cover it, for starters.
Efforts to publicize a class action lawsuit against Monsanto for false advertising it’s best-selling herbicide Roundup filed in Los Angeles County Court on April 20, 2015 have been rejected by almost every mainstream media outlet.
It’s no different than Fox, NBC, CNN, or ABC refusing to cover the DARK ACT which would give Monsanto legal immunity and disallow states to demand GMO labeling.
You would think that coverage of something the whole world wants to see – the first step toward the successful downfall of Monsanto –would be a hot news item; a newsworthy tidbit that every paper, radio station, and blog would want to spread across their pages with double bold headlines. But wait. . . just six corporations own ALL of the media in America, so there isn’t much luck there.
That’s why you have to go to sites like Russia Insider or Al Jazeera to find real news outside of certain alternative news channels in the US, and even those are white-washed from Facebook pages, and given secondary ratings on Google pages.
Matthew Phillips, the attorney suing Monsanto in California for false advertising on Roundup bottles, has asked the LA Times, New York Times, Huffington Post, CNN, and Reuters, one of the world’s largest news agencies to report on the lawsuit (Case No: BC 578 942), and most enforced a total media blackout.
When I spoke with Phillips over the phone, he said that he has tried posting the suit in Wikipedia’s Monsanto litigation section, but it keeps ‘disappearing.’ He says that he has also noticed posts on Facebook about this lawsuit get removed.
Phillips points out that as long as Monsanto can keep this lawsuit off of most of America’s radar, then his client base would be relegated to just the citizens of California.
If other attorneys were to follow his template-style lawsuit, which he wrote in English, devoid of extraneous legal-speak to encourage others to also take action against Monsanto, then suddenly the plaintiff count could be closer to several million. That is if you were to tally up all the citizens in the US who have purchased a bottle of Roundup from their local DIY store (Lowe’s, Home Depot or Ace Hardware, for example) in the last four years, not suspecting it could demolish their gut health.
Another possibility, according to Phillips, is that Monsanto could try to bump the case up to federal court in order to try to side-step a likely adverse judgment. But in this case the class action suit would also be open to residents other than those of just California. This is surely an idea that Monsanto doesn’t want seeded in the American psyche.
Phillips is extremely confident he has the goods on Monsanto in this case, and barring a sold out judge:
“This is a slam-dunk lawsuit that exposes Monsanto for LYING about Roundup. Contrary to the label, Roundup does indeed target and kill enzymes found in humans — in our gut bacteria — and this explains America’s chronic indigestion!”
His enthusiasm is palpable, as many well-known scientists and professors emeritus have offered to be key witnesses in this suit when it goes to trial. The attorney says he refuses to ‘settle’ the case and hopes that 49 additional attorneys in 49 states use his case as an example. He joked:
“When we allege that Roundup’s targeted enzyme is found in humans, it’s like alleging that the Golden Gate Bridge is found in California.”
The facts of the case really are that obvious.
Phillips also states that ‘false advertising’ and ‘misleading’ are synonyms in California law, so the fact that Monsanto has stated that there are enzymes in its product that don’t target humans – well that’s beyond just misleading. This obvious misjudgment by Monsanto is a well-known secret among many anti-GM scientists. This enzyme is definitely found in humans.
Here is how ‘misleading’ Monsanto’s statement that, “Round Up targets an enzyme only found in plants and not in humans or animals,” truly is:
EPSP synthase, also known as (3-phosphoshikimate 1-carboxyvinyltransferase) is found in the microbiota that reside in our intestinal tracts, and therefore the enzyme is “found in humans and animals.” It is partly responsible for immunity activation and even helps our gut and our brains communicate with one another.
EPSP synthase is among other beneficial microbes that produce neurometabolites that are either neurotransmitters or modulators of neurotransmission.
“These could act directly on nerve terminals in the gut or via ‘transducer’ cells such as enterochromaffin cells present throughout the intestinal tract and are accessible to microbes and in contact with afferent and efferent nerve terminals. Some of these cells may also signal and therefore modulate immune cell activity.”
Furthermore, although this will not be addressed in Phillip’s lawsuit:
“There is increasing evidence that exposure to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, may be an underlying cause of autism spectrum disorders (see [19]). Glyphosate, the active ingredient, acts through inhibition of the 5-enolpyruvylshikimic acid-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS synthase) enzyme in the shikimate pathway that catalyses the production of aromatic amino acids. This pathway does not exist in animals, but it does exist in bacteria, including those that live in the gut and are now known to be as much a part of our body as our own cells. A widely accepted dogma is that glyphosate is safe due to the lack of the EPSPS enzyme in our body. This however does not hold water now that the importance of our microbiota to our physiology is clear.”
Though Monsanto is only being sued for false advertising in this case, it is an important precedent to set in order to eventually take down one of the biotech giants that is poisoning the planet. It should send a clear message to Dow, Bayer, Cargill, and Syngenta as well.
Please show the corporate media that we will not be silenced, and pass this information along however you can. If you live in California, consider being a part of the suit yourself. If you are an attorney, Phillips is happy to discuss his suit with you in hopes that you will add your state to the growing list of those standing up to Big Ag.
You can read more about Phillips’ his case, here. The plaintiff also has a go fund me site for this lawsuit.
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This article (Major Lawsuit Against Monsanto Completely Blacked out by Media) originally appeared onNaturalSociety.com, was edited and used with permission. Image credit: Mike Mozart.
Thank you Anonymous for Daring to publish such articles, and thanks to those Davids out there that are willing to take on Goliath’s. Which may ultimatley save lives and the planet.
A little bummed I cant print the page with all the damn ads! Thanks doesnt quite cut it, you all have woke me and many many others’ eyes, in return I pledge my loyalty to humankind and by being the change I wish the world to see! Fuckin not a hacker tho!
That’s some of the best news out there so far Jeannie. If you really want to help, make sure you keep telling your friends and family and make sure they do the same with their friends and fam too. Only by more people waking up like you did and taking a stand can we actually bring down all the evil that has been against humanity for centuries. I for one am with you anonymous always.
As soon as I read your claim “that the whole world wants to see the downfall of Monsanto ” I knew there just MIGHT be a bit of bias in the article, so I stopped reading.
If you want to be seen as a legitimate source of info by people trying to make up their minds, please stop the emotional and untrue statements, and stick to facts!
Tony, how much more facts do you need? Or maybe you work with Monsanto or the government and are just trying to cover up the truth by choosing to smear the honest work of anonymous to justify the bull shit that all corporate America and the world are trying to do as well. How about you truly educate yourself before you open your mouth and spew out more ignorance that people don’t need or want anymore.
Luis. I think his point is entirely valid. A statement such as that is clearly bullshit. It panders to the majority to hype up the story. If it is true, it does not need it!
If you want these companies to fall, millions of poeple will loose their jobs and the world die of starvation within a few years. Instead of trying to bring down companies that you believe are killing the earth and is playing a major role in the food production try and support them on teaching poeple to use chemicals safely.
Woooooowwwwwww!!! I don’t know who’s dumber you or Tony. Instead of thinking like that, try thinking about what happens if these companies continue to do what they are doing illegally. Here’s the answer… humanity dies off and then we are left with nothing except those with deep pockets. Get a clue you!!!!
You really have to be kidding. Monsanto is doing none of what you suggest and is instead working effectively to corner the market on foods that were grown naturally and could be grown by anyone. Monsanto has made it clear that their aim is to create fruits and vegetables that can be patented and thus be controlled such that no one without a license can grow them–even if these fruits/vegs got into your private farmland by pollination by bees/winds/birds/etc. Monsanto is not concerned with feeding ‘millions’; they are concerned with making billions and billions with absolutely no worry whatsoever what effects they have on the poor, on biodiversity, nor on the environment. Their propaganda is pervasive and their means of stopping bad press is an immensely powerful machine in use constantly much like the cigarette industry’s in the 1960s-1980s was. You should really attempt to do some research before publicly posting nonsense.
trying to make up your minds? WOW! so you stopped reading as you felt that the article may be biased…you say that like this is the only thing that gives you a biased opinion…you really have got a way to go my friend. get clued up please Tony.
It is indeed true that glyphosate affects bacteria at levels that are found in our gut. I’ve been studying the science around it for months now, and i have a background in microbial ecology. It’s quite clear to me that we need to know how glyphosate affects the human gut microbiome, and i think it’s negligent and not accidental that it has not yet been studied. You can look up papers from Ernest Jaworski’s 1972 seminal paper about glyphosate, to the present, and find so many clues that suggest that this health effect is happening because of glyphosate ubiquity in our diets, and yet it’s not actually studied? Who makes the rules about approval of pesticides? Who does the studies? The industry generally controls itself, and that’s the fox guarding the henhouse. Governmental regulation is largely a facade. We need to know what’s in our food and what it is doing to our guts.
You say “barring a sold out judge”, but that’s the problem. Most of the judges on the Supreme Court are owned by Monsanto and even if this lawsuit passes on a local level, Monsanto themselves may take it to the SC where they’ll win. This lawyer could have photo and video evidence as well as any other sort of proof and millions of people backing him up, but Monsanto has the money. They’ll stuff the pockets of the Justices (Looking at you, Clarence Thomas) and the case will be dismissed with the plaintiffs being forced to pay their own legal fees as well as possibly Monsanto’s.
Hmmmm… I wonder when they’ll make the connection between roundup and the chronic gut problems found in almost every autistic person on the planet? People’s own immune systems attacking themselves, in attempt to rid their bodies of Monsanto poison…