Petition Launched Against Home Depot and Lowe’s to NOT Carry New GMO Grass from Scotts and Monsanto

The genetically modified food experiment (also known as genetic engineering) was foisted upon the American people without their consent, and mostly without their knowledge, in the mid-1990s as the so-called ‘Flavr-Savr’ tomato hit store shelves.

But thanks to a backlash from consumers and food companies, the product was eventually pulled from store shelves. That wasn’t the end of the GMO experiment, however: over 20 years later, GMOs are still widespread in the American food supply, even though they’re banned in nearly 40 countries across the world including most countries in Europe.

While it’s frustrating for many that unlabeled GMOs are lurking in the vast majority of the processed U.S. food supply, avoiding them is still quite possible for most people, albeit a little pricey thanks to government subsidies for corn, soy and other GMO crops.

Soon, avoiding GMOs and toxic herbicides may become harder than ever. Thanks to Monsanto and Scotts, genetic engineering could be coming to a neighborhood park, golf course, or lawn near you.

Petition Launched: Tell Home Depot NOT to Carry GMO Grass!

As noted in a recent post by the website GMO Free USA, genetically engineered grass has been deregulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, without independent long-term environmental safety testing.

A new petition has been launched aimed at making sure that Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement store, does not sell the risky and controversial grass. Its competitor Lowe’s is also being targeted.

The new grass will allow its owners to spray as much Roundup as they’d like — killing weeds without killing the GMO grass, all the while spreading a “probable human carcinogen (glyphosate, the main ingredient)” into the wind and onto grasses and lawns everywhere.

Not only does Roundup spread, but the grass seed and genes itself may be capable of spreading too: the first type of GMO grass, developed jointly by Monsanto and the Scotts Lawn Care Company, managed to escape its test plots in Oregon and is still found growing in the world several years later despite heavy fines from the USDA and a pledge to clean it up that was not fully carried out by the company (Scotts).

The grass is also potentially hazardous to wildlife: already the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has gone on record as saying that it threatens endangered plant & animal species including the Willamette Daisy and Fender’s Blue Butterfly. Considering that the monarch butterfly population has already dropped a staggering 80 percent since the 1990s due to the destruction of its habitats including the milkweed plants usually found on U.S. farmland, the GMO grass situation is of high priority.

Thankfully, there is still plenty of hope, if we can get the jump on the issue and get Home Depot’s attention sooner than later.

Past actions have been successful in getting Home Depot to announce a phasing out of selling neonicotinoids, a controversial type of bee-killing seed that is coated with toxic pesticides. Lowe’s, the next biggest home improvement giant, also followed suit.

For now, however, the focus is on genetically engineered grass, which could become one of the biggest and most all-encompassing GMO experiments of our lifetime if it’s not stopped.

For more information or to sign the petition and tell Home Depot and Lowe’s not to carry it, you can click on this link.

You can also learn more by visiting the GMO Free USA Facebook page here.

Thanks for installing the Bottom of every post plugin by Corey Salzano. Contact me if you need custom WordPress plugins or website design.

Comments

comments