Monsantos GM alfalfa contaminates Washington cropsRady Ananda Of course we knew this was going to happen. Alfalfa seeds are only 2mm in size and can spread for miles on the wind alone. The Oregon crew who sabotaged the GM beet fields in June didnt go far enough. Alfalfa is planted on 17 million acres in the US and earns over $8 billion a year, reports Reuters, adding: Exports of hay, including alfalfa, have been rising, hitting a record $1.25 billion in 2012, according to the USDAs Foreign Agricultural Service. Washington state is one of the largest producers of alfalfa for export. Alfalfa is the most common forage used for grazing, and the organic meat and dairy industries are dependent on GMO-free hay. Not only the organic industry, but biotechs inability to contain their product is also economically sabotaging export farmers who use chemicals, but not GM seeds. When Bayers GM rice contaminated a third of all US rice in 2006, no regulator stopped them: not the USDA, the EPA nor even the judicial system. Regulators are still investigating the GM wheat contamination in Oregon last May. The $8 billion wheat export business took a hit this year, and will likely suffer next year, thanks to another act of economic sabotage, the blame for which falls squarely on Monsanto, the company that brought us Agent Orange. But, throwing money at the problem wont fix it: Federal regulators and the biotech industry are contaminating all natural crops, whether we like it or not. This problem will not go away without serious intervention, because they do not want it to: this is the plan. The GM experiment started here, and contamination is worse here than anywhere else. Regulators have allowed GM crops to be planted in our wildlife refuges. Our refuges! The source of vast biodiversity, where pollinators caught a break from all the chemical farms. No more. Biotechs nasty chemicals see to that. Oh, sure, we won a partial victory back in 2011, when the US Fish Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed to yank GM plants from 11 Northeast states. In 2012, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, et al. got two dozen Southeastern refuges to be GM-free. The same plaintiffs just filed suit last month, again against the FWS, for allowing GM crops in refuges in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and Minnesota. Anyone who believes that only less than half of California voters want GMO foods labeled, when 95% of the nation wants it, should just keep voting. But know this: All electronic vote counting systems can be hacked without detection. There are dozens of independent scientific studies proving this. Good luck on I-522, Washington. I genuinely suggest you hand count paper ballots. Its a good thing the Organic Growers and Seed Traders Assn, representing 300,000 people and over 4,500 farms, has taken their case to the US Supreme Court. They KNOW their fields will be contaminated. They are demanding a covenant not to sue (because in this Orwellian world, Monsanto sues farmers whose fields they destroy with their product, whose livelihoods they destroy, whose export business they destroy). But, maybe not such a good thing to take this to SCOTUS. In 2010, Monsanto lackeys including Clarence Thomas (former Monsanto lawyer) and Elena Kagan, deregulated GM alfalfa, despite evidence proving contamination would be unavoidable. Talk about collateral damage. In fact, thats the same term used by State Sen. Maralyn Chase, who told The Oregonian that Washingtons alfalfa contamination shows the dangers of genetically modified crops: Our states farmers are becoming collateral damage to the reckless practices of the agriculture industry in this country, Chase said. More than 60 of our trade partners throughout the world have bans on the import of unlabeled GMO foods. This government, now fronted by Obama, is about to bomb the life out of Syria, the same government that sprayed so much Agent Orange in Vietnam that four generations later, theyre still producing malformed babies. Both companies who profited from that contract, Dow and Monsanto, also produce genetically modified seeds and a requisite ecocidal chemical soup their seeds require. Those companies should have been shut down, permanently, for the number of lives theyve destroyed, here in the States as well. Truly, now is the time for all good folk to come to the aid of the planet. Rady Ananda is the creator of Food Freedom News and COTO Report, Rady Anandas work has appeared in several online and print publications, including four books. With a B.S. in Natural Resources from Ohio State Universitys School of Agriculture, Rady tweets @geobear7 and @RadysRant . 