The Organic Consumers Association (OCA), IFOAM International Organics, Navdanya, Regeneration International (RI), and Millions Against Monsanto, joined by dozens of global food, farming and environmental justice groups announced today that they will send Monsanto MON (NYSE), a US-based transnational corporation, to a tribunal for crimes against nature and humanity, and ecocide, in The Hague, Netherlands, next year on World Food Day, October 16, 2016.

The announcement was made at a press conference at the COP21 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris.

Speaking at the press conference, Ronnie Cummins, international director of the OCA (US) said: "The time is long overdue for a global citizens' tribunal to put Monsanto on trial for crimes against humanity and the environment. Corporate agribusiness, industrial forestry, the garbage and sewage industry and agricultural biotechnology have literally killed the climate-stabilizing, carbon-sink capacity of the Earth's living soil."

Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya (India) said: "Monsanto has pushed GMOs in order to collect royalties from poor farmers, trapping them in unpayable debt. Monsanto promotes an agro-industrial model that contributes at least 50 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Monsanto is also largely responsible for the depletion of soil and water resources, species extinction and declining biodiversity, and the displacement of millions of small farmers worldwide."

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Andre Leu, president of IFOAM said: "Monsanto is able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products, and maintain its devastating activities through a strategy of systemic concealment: by lobbying regulatory agencies and governments, by resorting to lying and corruption, by financing fraudulent scientific studies, by pressuring independent scientists, and by manipulating the media. Monsanto's history reads like a text-book case of impunity, benefiting transnational corporations and their executives, whose activities contribute to climate and biosphere crises and threaten the safety of the planet."

Marie-Monique Robin, author of the best-selling documentary "The World According Monsanto" said: "This International Citizens' Tribunal is necessary because the defense of the safety of the planet and the conditions of life on Earth is everyone's concern. Only through a collective resurgence of all living forces will we stop the engine of destruction."

Monsanto's Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world, was designated a probable human carcinogen by the World Health Organization in March.

Relying on the "Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights" adopted by the UN in 2011, an international court of lawyers and judges will assess the potential criminal liability of Monsanto for damages inflicted on human health and the environment.

Full list of founding organizations here. // regenerationinternational.org/ monsanto-tribunal-supporting- organizations/

Full list of Monsanto Tribunal Foundation organizing members here. // regenerationinternational.org/ members-of-the-organizing- committee/

More information available at //www.monsanto- tribunal.org/.