Thou Shalt Have No Other Monsantos Before Me

Monsanto is kind of like the sky, in a way - so big, you rarely even notice it.

I've been doing a heap of reading lately so there's rather a lot of backstory to this particular one...

Let's start with what has happened - last week, Congress passed a critical budget bill, or to be more descriptive, a Continuing Resolution (defined as: strips of duct tape stretched precariously across the yawning chasm of partisan gridlock, kind of like a hideously expensive fiscal combover) which was in due course signed into law by the President on March 26th.

As is often the case, in amongst its various nooks and crannies is an amendment containing a few modest words of wisdom straight from the good lobbyists folks at Monsanto, the mammoth multi-national agricultural conglomerate.  Nothing unusual about that, and certainly nothing to worry about, they're just doing what they always do, y'know, protecting the family farmer, aw shucks...

I was going to quote the key passage here - section 735 of HR 933 - but laboratory testing indicates that the raw text may cause irritability, blindness, loose stools, high blood pressure, moral outrage, and brain aneurysm.

Basically, it says that if a court order attempts to stop Monsanto from selling something, the Secretary of Agriculture (and this is the key word) "shall" issue a permit or exemption allowing them to continue.  

In the past, a Supreme Court ruling established that the USDA "can" issue a permit or exemption... as in, "if" the situation warrants one.  And although nobody seems to remember a time when the USDA wasn't obligingly kneeling down almost every time a big-enough corporation unzipped, apparently that potential flexibility was still a bit too much for the fine folksy folks at Monsanto.

It's hard to imagine Monsanto needing help from comparatively small-time operators like the U.S. Government, but you'd naturally expect our elected officials to provide them with every courtesy due such nice, handsome boy-scouty types.

So the legislative branch has now in a real sense ceded both executive and judicial review over a company's ability to sell potentially dangerous products - at least for the duration of the resolution, which is: six months.

What makes me curious is why this was deemed necessary - why spell it out like that?  Looking at their lawsuit win/loss record, showing up to court is a mere formality for them; they need legal help like an exploding bomb needs privacy to do its job.

And, of course, why slip this (without public debate) into a bill with a 6-month effectiveness window?

Now I don't want this to start sounding like the crazed, tree-hugging conspiracy theorists who wrote the blogs which I had to use to read up on this at first - because, oddly enough, there wasn't a heck of a lot of coverage on the mainstream news sites, at least not until protesters began marching in Washington a couple days later.  

So I'll provide some balance from the other side of the debate, which is trying to soothe fears that this is any sort of big deal, and definitely not trying to set any sort of precedent either.

In fact my favorite quote is from a Biotech Industry Organization spokesperson, Karen Batra, who says very, very carefully:

"It doesn't require the USDA to do anything it wouldn't otherwise have the authority to do."   

Ah - savor the aroma of that one, dear reader, for you are in the presence of a truly exquisite, steaming work of press release... It is entirely factual in every detail, and it requires sophisticated laboratory equipment to spot just how artfully it fails to address the real concern.  

Because the wording of the amendment in fact requires the USDA to do something it in fact already has the authority to do.  It just used to be able to NOT do it, if the situation called for it.  So the authority isn't the issue - it's the discretion which has been pulled out from under the USDA, and delivered to any corporation which cares to fill out a form.

It's more or less like granting you the authority to be affected by gravity.

Why, though?  Why risk stirring up public indignation (to the tune of 250,000 signatures so far, on just one of the petitions held aloft by marching protesters), and why is it in a bill with such a limited lifespan in the first place?

My guess is - the Monsanto legal team wanted a bit of a vacation, and six months off sounded about right.   Perhaps one of them has bought themselves a new island getaway property, like New Zealand, or maybe Japan, and the idea of having to interrupt your holiday and show up in a dingy courtroom every few weeks just to have your ring kissed by the judiciary seemed a bit of a bore.

So one of them gave a quiet nod to the guy serving the drinks, who scurried off back to the Capitol to file a motion for an amendment, because he was the right honorable Senator from Monsanto Missouri, Roy Blunt.

There, that would explain everything, without resorting to implausible or crazy stuff.

We are so very doomed.

* for extra credit, read the amusing bit of text 

just prior to section 735 of HR 933... ah, 

section 734, you made me laugh with confusion!