GM contamination

 
The growing contamination of the world'a agricultural biodiversity from genetically modified (GM) crops should be seen for what it is: an inevitable consequence of GM agriculture and the cornerstone of the biotech industry’s efforts to make the global acceptance of GM crops a fait accompli. Industry wants people to believe that the only option left is to “manage” the co-existence of GM and non-GM agriculture. They want people to abandon their efforts to stop genetic engineering and to be resigned instead to salvaging remnants of non-GM agriculture, in much the same way that they’ve tried to co-opt the struggle for biodiversity into a non-threatening campaign to protect global “hot spots”. But such co-existence will inevitably lead to a 2-stream system of global food and agriculture – a GM free niche market for the very rich and a GM polluted supply for the rest of the world—with the same small number of corporations controlling both streams, from the seed to the supermarket. In the face of this, more and more people are working courageously, with whatever means they can, for farms, zones, provinces, states, countries and regions that are GM-free.

This section of the GRAIN website is an information resource on the implications of GM contamination, seeking to support those working to reject GM crops. Besides the GRAIN analyses and reports below, there are three categories of resource pages to choose from on the right.

(grain.org/research/?id=47)

GRAIN analyses and reports

Argentina: Driven from the GE Garden?  
Argentina was one of the first countries to bite the transgenic apple, in hopes that this was the path to an earthly paradise. But it misjudged the intentions of the corporate gods, who were only interested in their own profits not a paradise for the people of Argentina. Now the gods are angry and threatening to banish Argentina from the GE garden - for failure to pay royalties on those apples.

Argentina: ¿Expulsados del paraíso (de los transgénicos)?  
Argentina está pagando el precio de haber mordido la manzana de la tecnología transgénica y sufre los embates de los dioses Monsanto y Syngenta que amenazan con expulsarla del paraíso del “progreso” y los agronegocios.

Si bien estas peleas no pasan de ser tironeos muy sobreactuados en los que se dirimen luchas de poder, en realidad dejan al desnudo el único objetivo que persigue la creación de la tecnología transgénica: el control corporativo absoluto de la agricultura a través de los mecanismos combinados de la tecnología, los derechos de propiedad intelectual y el capital.

Push for GM papaya continues in Thailand and Sout-East Asia: A new programme for biosafety might usher further contamination  

América para Monsanto: Decretos y leyes para secuestrar nuestra agricultura  

Some thoughts from GRAIN on GM crops in 2004  

Monsanto's royalty grab in Argentina (Or: How corporations get their way with a little help from their friends in government): A dramatic comedy in three acts (with more to come)  

The day the sun dies: contamination and resistance in Mexico  

Face à la contamination: cinq raisons de rejeter la coexistence  

Enfrentando la contaminación: cinco razones para rechazar la coexistencia con los cultivos genéticamente modificados  
A contrapelo, abril 2004

Confronting contamination : 5 reasons to reject co-existence  
Seedling, April 2004

Sprouting up: Contamination by GM maize found in nine states in Mexico  
Published in Seedling, January 2004

Poisoning the well: the genetic pollution of maize  
(Published in Seedling, January 2003)