Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
With the recent passage of the legislative rider commonly known as the Monsanto Protection Act, many previously-uninformed observers may now be asking themselves just how much control over the United States government and regulatory bureaucracy the multinational corporation has. Of course, long-time Monsanto opponents have been asking this question and pointing out the related connections for some time.
From the environmental contamination as a result of the proliferation of genetically modified food to the destruction of the independent family farmer due to absolutely erroneous lawsuits filed by Monsanto against them, or low crop yields due to deceptive marketing, Monsanto is internationally recognized as one of the world’s worst and most ruthless corporations.
When Monsanto’s ruthless practices combine with the blatant corruption of government officials, the global regulatory agencies – especially those in the United States – have been rendered entirely bankrupt. Indeed, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are two of the most obviously bought-and-paid-for government wings of treacherous multinational corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Southern States, and many others.
Over the last few years, there have been a number of unexplained mass animal deaths which have spawned a variety of theories hoping to explain the causes. While most remain unexplained, there is, in fact, a clear explanation regarding many of the bird deaths occurring in locations across the United States. The cause of the deaths? The USDA and toxins introduced by Big Agra.
Before catcalls of conspiracy theory are hurled about in order to discredit such a statement, bear in mind that the USDA has actually admitted murdering the birds on numerous occasions.
Take, for instance, the 2011 bird die-off in Yankton, South Dakota. As a result of citizen action and investigation into the die-off in Yankton Riverside Park, the USDA actually contacted the local police and informed the officers that it was, in fact, the USDA who was responsible for the bird deaths. As Yankton Animal Control Officer Lisa Brasel stated in an interview with KTIV, “They say that they had poisoned the birds about ten miles south of Yankton and they were surprised they came to Yankton like they did and died in our park.”
After the story was reported KTIV, the USDA then confirmed the mass poisoning yet again, stating that it was “part of a large killing” in Nebraska. Apparently, some of the birds who had been poisoned managed to fly all the way to Yankton before dying.
In this instance, it was reported that a Nebraska farmer had complained that the Starlings were defecating in his feed meal. As Mike Adams wrote, “The answer to this conundrum apparently isn’t to cover your feed meal but rather call the USDA and ask them to poison thousands of birds.”
Thus, the USDA put out a poison called DRC-1339 which the birds then fed on, resulting in thousands of bird deaths. Carol Bannerman of the USDA Wildlife Services claimed that the reason for the bird poisoning was the desire to protect human health. “We’re doing it to address, in this case, agricultural damage as well as the potential for human health and safety issues,” she said.
To date, we are publicly aware of the results of the USDA’s human health protection program as being over 4 million dead birds in 2009 alone.
The USDA’s ornithological genocide even has a name, Bye Bye Blackbird, a program which began in the 1960s and was later placed under the control of the USDA and housed at a NASA facility in the late 1960s.
And there’s more. As Patrik Jonsson of Truthout writes:
In addition to the USDA program, a so-called depredation order from the US Fish and Wildlife Service allows blackbirds, grackles, and starlings to be killed by anyone who says they pose health risks or cause economic damage. Though a permit is needed in some instances, the order is largely intended to cut through red tape for farmers, who often employ private contractors to kill the birds and do not need to report their bird culls to any authority.
Greg Butcher, Bird Conservation Director at the National Audubon Society, stated,
Every winter, there’s massive and purposeful kills of these blackbirds. These guys are professionals, and they don’t want to advertise their work. They like to work fast, efficiently, and out of sight.
. . . . .
My biggest concern is we don’t know how many birds are being killed, and we don’t have a sense of how at risk the rusty blackbird is because of depredation events in their range.
The Yankton kill was not the only mass bird death traced back to the USDA. The Niagara Gazette recently reported in glowing terms that a bird kill in the area was directly related to the poison “Starlicide.” Starlicide, Bob Confer writes, is fed to the bird via tainted seed, after which the birds begin to die from 24 to 36 hours after eating the poison as their organs begin to congest.
Starlicide ironically is marketed by Purina, the dog food manufacturer owned by Nestle, which has itself been implicated in the sickness and death of a large number of dogs.
With this in mind, it is important to point out that the documented deaths of birds alone, which are published by the USDA in a spreadsheet, number over 4 million. Remember, privately contracted kills do not require reporting, so the numbers presented by the USDA may potentially be much lower than the actual number of bird deaths.
What is interesting also is that, despite the constant propaganda regarding the environmental, human, and economic dangers of the Starling, it is not just the Starling that has succumbed to the mass poisonings. As Alan Watt of CuttingThroughTheMatrix stated, “The Starlicide doesn’t have signs that say, oh, ‘Starlings Only. Please Eat Here.’”
Obviously, Starlicide is not Starling specific. It does not have some genetic coding that turns off if consumed by other birds. Thus, any mass poisoning will have some amount of “collateral damage.” But, while the published damage is bad enough, we simply do not know the extent to which it exists because privately contracted kills are not required to be reported.
For instance, the mass bird kill orders, endorsed and undertaken by both the USDA and private contractors have been implicated in the decline of the population of the rare rusty blackbird, which roosts with many other species. Undoubtedly, this is the case with many other types of birds and may be the root cause behind the anecdotal reports of declining numbers of songbirds across the United States and Canada.
While the names of the “farmers” requesting and contracting the bird kills were not provided in any reports seen by this writer, one would have reason to assume that the issue was forced not by the independent family farmer, but by Big Agra. Considering the drastic decline and borderline extinction of the independent family farm, sheer odds would be enough to finger the multinationals in the murder contract taken out on the lives of the Starlings.
After all, Big Agra has been directly responsible for the death of large numbers of birds before. For those who may not have heard, on March 13, 2012, the world’s largest marketer of lawn and garden care products, Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, plead guilty to all charges related to the corporation’s manufacturing and selling poisoned birdseed. The poisons added to the seed were allegedly added to prevent insects from eating the seed while in storage and the practice continued for two years, all the while unwitting consumers fed the seed to their pet birds and wildlife. Much like the privately contracted mass killings of birds by big farmers, there is no real way to determine how many birds died as a result Scotts Miracle-Gro Company’s actions.
Nevertheless, clearly ignorant of the irony, it is interesting to note that Carol Bannerman’s response to questions about the bird kills was as follows: “It’s not that we have anything against starlings, but our charge is to help protect agriculture … and protect property and human health or safety.”
Citizens residing anywhere in North America could only wish that Bannerman’s determination to “protect agriculture, property, and human health or safety” could be extended to the effects of GM contamination and factory farming as doggedly as it is to the scary Starling.
Perhaps after Bannerman and the USDA have rid the continent of such frightening tiny birds and their resulting nuisance (to some major farmers), she and her agency might be able to devote a little of her time to the real danger of multinational food corporations that appear to exist for the sole purpose of destroying agriculture, property and human health and safety.”
In the meantime, it’s nice to know that the USDA has its priorities in order.
Read other articles by Brandon Turbeville here.