BREAKING: McDonald’s sues Australian town for rejecting its fast food

Image: www.campusscope.co.kr

(NaturalNews) Plans by fast food giant McDonald's to build its first restaurant in the Australian town of Tecoma, located in the state of Victoria, are being challenged by nearly 100,000 individuals who recently signed a petition demanding that McDonald's stay out of the area. According to Yahoo! TV in Australia, representatives from an activist group known as BurgerOff recently flew 10,000 miles to the McDonald's global headquarters near Chicago to deliver the petition and signatures, which company officials reportedly refused to touch.

For over two years, BurgerOff and the people of Tecoma have been fighting to keep McDonald's out of their town, pointing out that the company's intent to build a large, 24-hour drive-thru location near an elementary school would be "a giant advertisement for junk food" for young children who would walk by it daily. But according to the International Business Times, this massive grassroots effort that has included public demonstrations, flash mobs, social media and other forms of community outreach has thus far been unsuccessful at thwarting McDonald's plans.

So to raise the stakes, BurgerOff went straight to the heart of the beast, bringing along signs, petitions and plenty of fervor, which has put the effort in the global spotlight. The group even set up little inflatable kangaroos at a busy McDonald's location in Chicago, which helped draw even more attention. The ultimate goal of the protest, of course, is to show McDonald's that it is not welcome in Tecoma and needs to look elsewhere for its expansion endeavors.

"They sent out a P.R. [public relations] lady and a guy from corporate responsibility," explained Garry Muratore, a Tecoma McDonald's protester, to Australia's Sunrise Live recently about how McDonald's responded to the arrival of four BurgerOff members. "They wouldn't touch the actual petition; it was like we were giving them poison. They handed the 7,000 pages [of the petition] to a poor security guard there."

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Tecoma residents, according to Muratore, are in opposition to the project, McDonald's plans to move forward with it anyway. The company has even gone so far as to file a lawsuit against the protesters in an effort to keep them away from the proposed construction site, alleging that the project is well supported throughout the local community. But according to Muratore, this claim is absolutely false.

"That's a lie that McDonald's in Australia keeps pushing," he told reporters. "We know that nine out of 10 people don't want this."

McDonald's claims lawsuit will somehow 'protect' people of Tecoma

Muratore and his allies have, of course, challenged McDonald's on this claim. But the response they received is both nonsensical and almost cryptic, as the burger giant claims that suing the protesters is the best way to protect them.

"We then pointed out that if they were being responsible, why are they suing us? And it was a little bit like the quote from the Vietnam War that we had to destroy the village to save it," added Muratore. "They actually told us that they were suing us for our own legal protection... I don't know what that meant, but they seemed to think it was a great idea."

You can keep up to date with all the latest in this David versus Goliath story by checking out the BurgerOff website: http://www.burgeroff.org.

Article source: naturalnews.com

Sources for this article include:

http://au.tv.yahoo.com

http://www.ibtimes.com

http://www.burgeroff.org

GMO Giants Suing to Overturn EU Bee-Killing Pesticide Ban

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Image: www.arc2020.eu

Bayer has just sued the European Commission to overturn a ban on the pesticides that are killing millions of bees around the world. A huge public push won this landmark ban only months ago -- and we can't sit back and let Big Pesticide overturn it while the bees vanish.

Bayer and Syngenta, two of the world's largest chemical corporations, claim that the ban is "unjustified" and "disproportionate." But clear scientific evidence shows their products are behind the massive bee die-off that puts our entire food chain in peril.

Just last month, 37 million bees were discovered dead on a single Canadian farm. And unless we act now, the bees will keep dying. We have to show Bayer now that we won't tolerate it putting its profits ahead of our planet's health. If this giant corporation manages to bully Europe into submission, it would spell disaster for the bees.

Sign the petition to tell Bayer and Syngenta to drop their bee-killing lawsuits here: action.sumofus.org/

Source: whatreallyhappened.com

Organic Farmers Are Suing Monsanto Over Genetic Patents

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PRESS RELEASE 9/5/2013 For Immediate Release Contact: Jim Gerritsen (207) 429-9765 Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association

American Farmers Appeal to U.S. Supreme Court to Seek Protection from Genetic Contamination and Invalidate Monsanto's Patents on Genetically Engineered Crops New York - September 5, 2013 - A group of 73 American organic and conventional family farmers, seed businesses and public advocacy groups asked the U.S. Supreme Court today to hear their case against Monsanto Company challenging the chemical and biotech seed giant's patents on genetically engineered seed. In Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al v. Monsanto, the plaintiffs have been forced to sue preemptively to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement should their fields ever become contaminated by Monsanto's genetically engineered seed, something Monsanto has done to others in the past. In a June 10th ruling earlier this year, a three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that a group of organic and otherwise non-GMO farmer and seed company plaintiffs are not entitled to bring a lawsuit to protect themselves from Monsanto's transgenic seed patents "because Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not 'take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower's land).'" "While the Court of Appeals correctly found that the farmers and seed sellers had standing to challenge Monsanto's invalid patents, it incorrectly found that statements made by Monsanto's lawyers during the lawsuit mooted the case," said Daniel Ravicher, Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) and lead counsel to the plaintiffs in OSGATA et al v. Monsanto. "As a result, we have asked the Supreme Court to take the case and reinstate the right of the plaintiffs to seek full protection from Monsanto's invalid transgenic seed patents." The Petition filed today by lawyers for the family farmers may be found here. The plaintiffs brought the pre-emptive case against Monsanto in March 2011 and specifically seek to defend themselves from nearly two dozen of Monsanto's most aggressively asserted patents on GMO seed. They were forced to act pre-emptively to protect themselves from Monsanto's abusive lawsuits, fearing that if GMO seed contaminates their property despite their efforts to prevent such contamination, Monsanto will sue them for patent infringement. "We have been farming for almost forty years and we have never wanted anything to do with Monsanto," said Jim Gerritsen, an organic seed farmer in Maine and President of lead PlaintiffOSGATA.  "We believe we have the right to farm and grow good food the way we choose.  We don't think it's fair that Monsanto can trespass onto our farm, contaminate and ruin our crops and then sue us for infringing on their patent rights.  We don't want one penny from Monsanto. American farmers deserve their day in Court so we can prove to the world Monsanto's genetically engineered patents are invalid and that farmers deserve protection from Monsanto's abuse." In the case, the plaintiffs are asking the courts to declare that if organic farmers are ever contaminated by Monsanto's genetically engineered seed, they need not fear also being accused of patent infringement. One reason justifying this result is that Monsanto's patents on genetically engineered seed are invalid because they don't meet the "usefulness" requirement of patent law, according to Ravicher. Evidence cited in the plaintiffs' court filings proves that genetically engineered seed has negative economic and health effects, while the promised benefits of genetically engineered seed - increased production and decreased herbicide use - are false. As Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1817, to be patentable, an invention must not be "injurious to the well-being, good policy, or sound morals of society," and "a new invention to poison people ... is not a patentable invention."  Because transgenic seed, and in particular Monsanto's transgenic seed, is "injurious to the well-being, good policy, or sound morals of society" and threatens to "poison people," Monsanto's transgenic seed patents are all invalid. With the rapid adoption of Monsanto's genetically engineered seed technology, America's farmers have been faced with a rampant rise in superweeds, with more than 49% of U.S. farmers reporting glyphosate-resistant weeds on their farm in 2012, up from 34% that farmers reported in 2011. In addition, scientists are reporting the growing failures of Monsanto's genetically engineered insecticide-corn, with reports from scientists in the Midwestern corn belt states detailing the rise of super insects becoming resistant to the genetically engineered Bt toxin, leaving farmers vulnerable to the voracious corn rootworm, the number one threat to corn farmers. "For the past twenty years, Monsanto has used its political and financial power to foist a deeply flawed technology on America's farmers, consistently underestimating the real risks of genetic engineering while putting America's farmers, the environment and the public in harm's way simply in the name of profit," said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots movement of more than 650,000 farmers and citizens. "As the leading arbiters of justice in the U.S., it behooves the Supreme Court to hear this important case to protect America's farmers from abusive patent infringement lawsuits and invalidate Monsanto's flawed patents as their products have been shown to be damaging to human health and the environment and failed to live up to the marketing hype." Complete background on the OSGATA et al v. Monsanto lawsuit is available here. About OSGATA: The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association is a not-for-profit agricultural organization comprised of organic farmers, seed growers, seed businesses and supporters. OSGATA is committed to developing, promoting, and protecting organic seed and it's growers in order to ensure the organic community has access to excellent quality organic seed free of contaminants and adapted to the diverse needs of local organic agriculture. www.osgata.org  Source: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs122/1104248386985/archive/1114774940086.html

Eco-Groups Suing Obama Admin Over GMO Crops In Wildlife Refuges

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By Mike Ludwig, Truthout

Image: internationalpost.co

Environmental advocates are once again suing the Obama administration to stop the farming of genetically engineered crops in national wildlife refuges, this time in five refuges in four Midwestern states.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the environmental groups charge that the US Fish and Wildlife Service unlawfully entered into farming contracts to grow genetically engineered crops at national wildlife refuges in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois without completing an environmental impact review required by federal law.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has allowed farming on national wildlife refuges for decades, and environmentalists claim agriculture has harmful impacts on wildlife, biodiversity and native grasses in the refuges. In recent years, farmers have switched to genetically engineered crops - also known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs - that are altered to produce or be resistant to pesticides...

FULL ARTICLE

Source: truth-out.org