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2005 was a very good year for the biotech food industry
By Peter Montague
Rachel's Democracy &
Health News #837
Thursday, January 5, 2006
www.rachel.org
Felix Ballarin
spent 15 years of his life developing a special
organically-grown variety of red corn. It would bring a high
price on the market because local chicken farmers said the
red color lent a rosy hue to the meat and eggs from their
corn-fed chickens. But when the corn emerged from the ground
last year, yellow kernels were mixed with the red.
Government officials later confirmed with DNA tests that Mr.
Ballarin's crop had become contaminated with a genetically
modified (GMO) strain of corn.
Because Mr.
Ballarin's crop was genetically contaminated, it no longer
qualified as "organically grown," so it no longer
brought a premium price. Mr. Ballarin's 15-year investment
was destroyed overnight by what is now commonly known as
"genetic contamination." This is a new phenomenon,
less then 10 years old -- but destined to be a permanent
part of the brave new world that is being cobbled together
as we speak by a handful of corporations whose goal is
global domination of food.
Mr. Ballarin lives in
Spain, but the story is the same all over the world:
genetically modified crops are invading fields close by (and
some that are not so close by), contaminating both the
organic food industry and the "conventional"
(non-GMO and non-organic) food industry.
As a
result of genetically contamination of non-GMO crops in
Europe, the U.S., Mexico, Australia and South America, the
biotech food industry had an upbeat year in 2005 and things
are definitely looking good for the future. As genetically
modified pollen from their crops blows around, contaminating
nearby fields, objections to genetically modified crops
diminish because non-GMO alternatives become harder and
harder to find. A few more years of this and there may not
be many (if any) truly non-GMO crops left anywhere. At that
point there won't be any debate about whether to allow
GMO-crops to be grown here or there -- no one will have any
choice. All the crops in the world will be genetically
modified (except perhaps for a few grown in greenhouses on a
tiny scale). At that point, GMO will have contaminated
essentially the entire planet, and the companies that own
the patents on the GMO seeds will be sitting in the catbird
seat.
It is now widely acknowledged that GMO
crops are a "leaky technology" -- that it to say,
genetically modified pollen is spread naturally on the wind,
by insects, and by humans. No one except perhaps some
officials of the U.S. Department of Agriculture were
actually surprised to learn this. GMO proponents have
insisted for a decade that genetic contamination could never
happen (wink, wink) and U.S. Department of Agriculture
officials want along with the gag. And so of course GMO
crops are now spreading everywhere by natural means, just as
you would expect.
It couldn't have turned out
better for the GMO crop companies if they had planned it
this way.
Growers of organically-grown and
conventional crops are naturally concerned that genetic
contamination is hurting acceptance of their products. Three
California counties have banned GM crops. Anheuser- Busch
Co., the beer giant, has demanded that its home state
(Missouri) keep GMO rice fields 120 miles away from rice it
buys to make beer. The European Union is now trying to
establish buffer zones meant to halt the unwanted spread of
GM crops. However, the Wall Street Journal reported November
8 that, "Such moves to restrict the spread of GM crops
often are ineffective. Last month in Australia, government
experts discovered biotech canola genes in two non-GM
varieties despite a ban covering half the country.
'Regretfully, the GM companies appear unable to contain
their product," said Kim Chance, agriculture minister
for the state of Western Australia, on the agency's Web
site.
For some, this seems to come as a shocking
revelation -- genetically modified pollen released into the
natural environment spreads long distances on the wind. Who
would have thought? Actually, almost anyone could have
figured this out. Dust from wind storms in China
contaminates the air in the U.S. Smoke from fires in
Indonesia can be measured in the air half-way around the
world. Pollen is measurable in the deep ice of antarctica.
No one should ever have harbored any doubt that genetically
modified pollen would spread everywhere on the Earth sooner
or later. (We are now exactly 10 years into the global
experiment with GMO seeds. The first crops were planted in
open fields in the U.S. in 1995. From this meager beginning,
global genetic contamination is now well along.)
Who benefits from all this? Think of it this way: when all
crops on earth are genetically contaminated, then the seed
companies that own the patented seeds will be in a good
position to begin enforcing their patent rights. They have
already taken a test case to court and won. In 2004,
Monsanto (the St. Louis, Mo. chemical giant) won a
seven-year court battle against a 73-year-old Saskatchewan
farmer whose fields had been contaminated by Monsanto's
genetically modified plants. The Supreme Court of Canada
court ruled that the farmer -- a fellow named Percy
Schmeiser -- owed Monsanto damages for having Monsanto's
patented crops growing illegally in his field.
Armed with this legal precedent, after genetically
modified crops have drifted far and wide, Monsanto, Dow and
the other GMO seed producers will be in a position to muscle
most of the world's farmers. It is for cases exactly like
this that the U.S. has spent 30 years creating the WTO
(world trade organization) -- to settle disputes over
"intellectual property rights" (such as patents)
in secret tribunals held in Geneva, Switzerland behind
closed doors without any impartial observers allowed to
attend. Even the results of WTO tribunals are secret, unless
the parties involved choose to reveal them. Let me see -- a
dirt farmer from India versus Monsanto and Dow backed by the
U.S. State Department and the U.S. Treasury. I'm struggling
to predict who might win such a politico- legal dispute
conducted by a secret tribunal in Geneva, Switzerland.
During 2005, it was discovered that GMO crops have
not lived up to their initial promise of huge profits for
farmers and huge benefits for consumers. It was also
discovered that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has not
enforced its own strict regulations that were intended to
prevent experimental GMO seeds to accidentally contaminating
nearby fields. GMO crops were supposed to produce important
human health benefits - and the be developed under super-
strict government control - but all these promises have
turned out to be just so much eye wash.. GMOs were supposed
to reduce reliance on dangerous pesticides -- but in fact
they have had the opposite effect. Monsanto's first GMO
crops were designed to withstand drenching in Monsanto's
most profitable product, the weed killer Round-Up -- so
farmers who buy Monsanto's patented "Round- up
ready" seeds apply more, not less, weed killer.
But so what? Who cares if GMO seeds don't provide
any of the benefits that were promised? Certainly not the
seed companies. Perhaps benefits to the people of the world
were never the point. Perhaps the point was to get those
first GMO crops in the ground -- promise them the moon! --
and then allow nature to take its course and contaminate the
rest of the planet with patented pollen. The intellectual
property lawsuits will come along in good time. Patience,
dear reader, patience. Unlike people, corporations cannot
die, so our children or our grandchildren may find
themselves held in thrall by two or three corporations that
have seized legal control of much of the world's food supply
by getting courts (backed by the threat of force, as all
courts ultimately are) to enforce their intellectual
property rights.
The Danish government has passed
a law intended to slow the pace of genetic contamination.
The Danes will compensate farmers whose fields have become
contaminated, then the Danish government will seek
recompense from the farmer whose field originated the
genetic contamination, assuming the culprit can be
pinpointed. This may slow the spread of genetic
contamination, but the law is clearly not designed to end
the problem.
Yes, it has been a good year for the
GMO industry. None of the stated benefits of their products
have materialized -- and the U.S. government regulatory
system has been revealed as a sham -- but enormous benefits
to the few GMO corporations are right on track to begin
blossoming. For Monsanto, Dow and Novartis, a decent shot at
gaining control over much of the world's food supply is now
blowing on the wind and there's no turning back. As the
Vice-President of plant genetics for Dow Agrosciences said
recently, "There will be come continuing bumps in the
road, but we are starting to see a balance of very good news
and growth. The genie is way out of the bottle."
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