May, 31 2016, 09:45am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
American Antitrust Institute: Sarah Frey, 410-897-7028, sfrey@antitrustinstitute.org
Food & Water Watch: Kate Fried, 202-683-4905, kfried@fwwatch.org
National Farmers Union: Andrew Jerome, 202-314-3106, ajerome@nfudc.org
AAI, FWW and NFU Urge the U.S. Department of Justice to Challenge the Dow-DuPont Merger
WASHINGTON
In a letter sent today to the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Renata Hesse, the American Antitrust Institute (AAI), Food & Water Watch (FWW) and National Farmers Union (NFU) urged the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division to challenge the proposed merger of Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co.
The letter details the group's analysis of the proposed merger that would create the largest biotechnology and seed firm in the U.S. The deal would further consolidate an already highly concentrated biotechnology industry and would likely curtail innovation, raise prices, and reduce cultivation choices for farmers, consumers and the food system.
AAI, FWW, and NFU urge the DOJ to critically review the implications of the pending deal. The letter unpacks three major areas of concern, including eliminating head-to-head competition in the corn and soybean markets, reducing vital innovation competition, and creating a large, integrated "platform" of traits, seeds, and chemicals that would make it harder for smaller biotechnology rivals to compete.
The groups point out that aggressive consolidation in agriculture, specifically in the agricultural inputs sector, has changed the landscape for independent crop input companies as well as for independent producers. The current rumored or announced deals--including Dow-DuPont, ChemChina-Syngenta, and Bayer-Monsanto--would be a third wave of consolidation. Two previous merger waves eliminated the majority of small to medium-sized biotechnology R&D firms to create the Big Six--Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, Dow and BASF.
"Any consolidation among the Big Six firms should raise significant antitrust concerns. We encourage the DOJ to move to stop it, as it has in other recent and unfixable mergers that would leave only a few large players," explained AAI's President, economist Diana Moss.
Investor documents note that elimination of duplicative research and development programs will contribute to the $1.3 billion in cost synergies produced by a merger of Dow's and DuPont's agriculture assets. But competitive R&D investments have been "crucial for driving innovation in an industry where the probability of commercial success is relatively low due to the time and cost associated with bringing a trait from research to market," the letter explains.
"The Department of Justice must block this biotechnology mega-merger that would raise farmers' prices and severely limit the choices for farmers, consumers and rural communities," said Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter. "Today's wave of agribusiness and food company mega-mergers is surrendering our food system to a corporate cabal that thwarts our efforts to build an fair and healthy food system."
The proposed merger would create a powerful duopoly between Dow-DuPont and Monsanto. Together, the two companies would control 76% of the market for corn and 66% of the market for soybeans, giving them the power to charge farmers higher prices and effectively decide which seeds farmers could plant.
"Seed costs are the highest input expense for farmers. While some of the cost can be attributed to more sophisticated technology, we have seen time and again that consolidation and market restructuring has increased the cost of crop inputs. In a lagging farm economy with multi-year trends of low commodity prices, additional cost increases for crop inputs could cripple a lot of family farms in this country," said NFU President Roger Johnson.
The groups conclude that the proposed Dow-DuPont merger "would be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy." The letter notes accumulating evidence on failed remedies in other mergers, the difficulty of finding viable buyers of to-be divested assets, and the ineffectiveness of divesting assets to other members of the Big Six firms.
The letter can be read in its entirety here.
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New Jersey Governor Signs Freedom to Read Act Barring Book Bans
The law, said the Democrat, "cements New Jersey's role on the forefront of preventing book bans and protecting the intellectual freedom of our educators and students."
Dec 09, 2024
Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday signed legislation protecting librarians and prohibiting public schools and libraries from banning books—a move that came as Republican state lawmakers are proscribing a record number of titles, many of them works addressing sexual orientation, gender identity, and racial injustice.
Flanked by educators, librarians, and other advocates, Murphy signed
A.3446/S.2421—known as the Freedom to Read Act—in the Princeton Public Library.
"The Freedom to Read Act cements New Jersey's role on the forefront of preventing book bans and protecting the intellectual freedom of our educators and students," said Murphy. "Across the nation, we have seen attempts to suppress and censor the stories and experiences of others. I'm proud to amplify the voices of our past and present, as there is no better way for our children to prepare for the future than to read freely."
According to a statement from Murphy's office:
Under the law, boards of education and governing boards of public libraries are barred from excluding books because of the origin, background, or views of the material or of its authors. Further, boards of education and governing boards of public libraries are prevented from censoring library material based on a disagreement with a viewpoint, idea, or concept, or solely because an individual finds certain content offensive, unless they are restricting access to developmentally inappropriate material for certain age groups.
The legislation "also provides protections for library staff members against civil and criminal lawsuits related to complying with this law."
New Jersey Association of School Librarians President Karen Grant said that "the Freedom to Read Act recognizes the professionalism, honor, work ethics, and performance of school and public library staff" and "promotes libraries as trusted sources of information and recognizes the many roles that libraries play in students' lives."
"The bill will protect the intellectual freedom of students as well as acknowledge that school libraries are centers for voluntary inquiry, fostering students' growth and development," Grant added. "Additionally, we are grateful for the broad coalition of support from so many organizations for this legislation."
The leader of one of those groups—Garden State Equality executive director Christian Fuscarino—said, "Gov. Murphy just made it clear: In New Jersey, censorship loses, and freedom wins."
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The New Jersey law comes amid a near-tripling in the number of books banned or challenged by Republican state lawmakers and right-wing organizations over the past year, with PEN America counting over 10,000 such titles during the 2023-24 academic year—up from 3,362 titles during the previous scholastic year.
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During a 76-minute interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker, Trump said he "absolutely" intends to end birthright citizenship, potentially through executive order, despite the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among many lies the Republican told, he also falsely claimed that the United States is the only country to offer citizenship by birth; in fact, there are dozens.
In response,
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Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) similarly stressed that "birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution as a cornerstone of American ideals. It reflects our belief that America is the land of opportunity. Sadly, this is just another in the long line of Trump's assault on the U.S. Constitution."
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, said in a statement: "'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' It is important to remember who we are, where many of us came from, and why many of our families traveled here to be greeted by the Mother of Exiles, the Statue of Liberty."
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Although Republicans are set to control both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives next year, amending the Constitution requires support from two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures, meaning that process is unlikely to be attempted for this policy.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) highlighted the difficulties of passing constitutional amendments while discussing Trump in a Monday appearance on CNN. The incoming chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus was born in the Dominican Republic and is the first formerly undocumented immigrant elected to Congress.
As Mother Jones reporter Isabela Dias detailed Monday:
Critics of ending birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants argue it would not only constitute bad policy, but also a betrayal of American values and, as one scholar put it to me, a "prelude" to mass deportation.
"It's really 100 years of accepted interpretation," Hiroshi Motomura, a scholar of immigration and citizenship at UCLA's law school, told me of birthright citizenship. Ending birthright citizenship would cut at the core of the hard-fought assurance of equal treatment under the law, he said, "basically drawing a line between two kinds of American citizens."
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The first Trump administration held the initial lease sale in 2021, but with banks and insurance companies increasingly reticent to back drilling projects in the area, it generated little interest and led to less than 1% of the projected sale revenue.
Releasing its final record of decision, the Interior Department said Monday that 400,000 acres of wilderness in the refuge's 1.6-million-acre northwest Coastal Plain would be put up for bidding at a minimum price of $30 per acre—despite vocal opposition from the Gwich'in Nation and the Iñupiat Alaska Natives.
The land supports local communities as well as porcupine caribou herds and polar bears.
"Our way of life, our food security, and our spiritual well-being is directly tied to the health of the caribou and the health of this irreplaceable landscape," Kristen Moreland, executive director of Gwich'in Steering Committee, toldBloomberg News. "Every oil company stayed away from the first lease sale, and we expect them to do the same during the second."
The record of decision concludes the Bureau of Land Management's process for developing a supplemental environmental impact statement, which was required after President-elect Donald Trump's first administration completed an analysis with "fundamental flaws and legal errors," as the Sierra Club said Monday.
Selling the drilling rights just before Trump takes office could complicate the GOP's plans to hold a more expansive sale later on, but Dan Ritzman, director of Sierra Club's Conservation Campaign, emphasized that regardless of who is in office when the sale takes place, "oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge is a direct threat to some of the last untouched landscapes on Alaska's North Slope and to the caribou herds that the Gwich'in people rely on."
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