This country embarrasses me sometimes

I posted this article a while ago about a court case in which Biowatch SA was ordered to pay the legal costs of a big corporation when Biowatch had actually won the case. We have been waiting to hear the outcome of Biowatch’s appeal against this ABSOLUTELY LUDICROUS judgement. The judgement was passed yesterday and Biowatch’s appeal was rejected, so they still have to pay the costs of Monsanto Corporation. Read Biowatch’s statement here.

Biowatch took the Department of Agriculture to court because they would not provide Biowatch with documentation relating to genetically modified food trials. According to the law, the public has a right to this information. Thank goodness we have organisations like Biowatch who are looking out for us, organisations that take the time and spend the money in order to check that everything is being done correctly. So Monsanto joins itself to the case, because it’s worried about what information is going to be made public. The judge rules that Biowatch should have access to the information and that the Department of Agriculture must hand over the documents, but Biowatch must pay the legal fees of Monsanto and the Dept. of Agriculture.

Is he completely nuts? We need organisations like Biowatch to take issues to court when necessary. We don’t want them to be afraid to do that in case they end up having to pay the legal fees of some huge corporation. Monsanto and the Dept. of Agriculture should have been made to pay Biowatch for all the time (years) they had to put into getting the information which should have been freely available.

I have tears of rage and frustration in my eyes. What an embarrassment.

Biowatch, we support you and thank you for all the work you do.

www.biowatch.org.za

If you want to read more about Monsanto and Genetically Modified foods and maybe understand why they don’t want us to have access to the information, read my post ‘Where is James Bond’ or ‘Men’s Health, the magazine men die by’.