http://www.pyzam.com/profile/3386568 seidesteforp1983 | <a href="http://www.pyzam.com/profile/3386568"> seidesteforp1983</a>
http://www.us.splinder.com/profile/akbugossign1973 akbugossign1973 | <a href="http://www.us.splinder.com/profile/akbugossign1973"> akbugossign1973 </a>
http://www.us.splinder.com/profile/mencfasundmen1970 mencfasundmen1970 | <a href="http://www.us.splinder.com/profile/mencfasundmen1970"> mencfa

A sponsor should always be named. It's the only ethical course of action.

Full disclosure is the wall!

My objection to the piece on genetically modified crops was not that you didn't acknowledge Monsanto as a sponsor, but that you mentioned Roundup - Monsanto's chief product - without mentioning Monsanto, and thereby allowing your listeners to draw the connection. You also quoted a member of the panel which wrote the report who happened to be from St Louis - where Monsanto is based, owns everything and everybody having to do with plants, and where the Biotechnology Information Organization (BIO), a major lobbying organization for biotech crops, also controlled by Monsanto, is based.
This person made an overly favorable statement about biotech crops, as did your report, which made far less of the negative implications of the report than did the New York Times or many of the other news outlets.
A MAJOR drawback of Roundup-Ready (as the herbicide resistant crops are called) crops is that they lead to more, not less, use of the herbicide and this has been leading for many years to Roundup resistance in weeds - a trend which will render the engineering useless, and which has Monsanto scared to death.
The news you did not, and have not reported about Monsanto is that they recently decided to drop the prices of some seeds sold in the US due to reduced demand (they have tripled the price of corn seed in the past 10 years after buying up almost all of the other seed companies with never a peep from the anti-trust folks). You also never followed up on a brief mention you made of a USDA hearing conducted in Ankeny Iowa over market domination by Monsanto, and you have said nothing, as far as I know, that a suit against Monsanto by a seed company in CA will be heard byu the Supreme Court on April 27. Justice Breyer has recused himself as it was his brother who made the ruling to which Monsanto is objecting (he recused himself from the decision over whether to hear the case), while Justice Thomas, a former Monsanto lawyer, did not recuse himself from that decision and will hear the case - we shouldn't have expected any better from him.
Monsanto has stolen the term "sustainable" for its greenwashing campaign (perhaps you should run that by your "Greenwash" brigade), but they are Public Enemy #1 for the real sustainable agriculture community in the US and around the world. There is nothing sustainable about having the world's seed supply dominated by one company or even a handful; or having most of the world's land planted to the limited selection of crops currently dominating the scene.
Biotech crops are more a way of controlling the seed supply than of improving productivity, and pests are able to develop resistance to them as easily as they have to the various chemicals peddled by Monsanto and others over the years.
Real sustainable farming involves seeds adapted to local conditions through local preservation, and involves working with natural systems to outwit the life cycles of the pests in question. A good example in the US is the Rodale Farm in Kutztown, PA; which has been farmed organically for many years and has yields equal to or better than anything Monsanto can boast.
Big Ag is against real sustainable farming because it invoolves local inputs and homegrown expertise and cannot be packaged, licensed, and sold for more than it is worth.
Dump Monsanto as a sponsor, or tell the truth and see how long they stick around.
Thank you,
Peyton Wise
Easton, MD