World According to Monsanto, pt 9, Contamination

by Natasha Chart

categories: Biodiversity, Corporate Kneebiters, Gene Modification, Indigenous Rights, International

Published July 02, 2009 @ 08:30AM PT

A traditional Mexican corn farmer speaks in this portion of the "World According to Monsanto" documentary about the transgenic corn conquest of the ancient home of corn and the center of its greatest biodiversity: "... If they succeed, we'll be dependent on multinationals. We'll be forced to buy the fertilizer and insecticides they sell, because without them, their corn won't grow. Whereas the local corn grows very well without fertilizer or herbicide. Look at it, it's very beautiful. ..."

Now that NAFTA has made import controls on artificially cheap US corn difficult, and as much US corn contains transgenic traits, it's been impossible to keep contamination of this wind-pollinated plant at bay. Even in fields where farmers have been saving their own seed and sharing only with neighbors who do the same for centuries.

The clip goes on to diagram the smear campaign started on the site AgBioWorld against Ignacio Chapela, the researcher who first documented transgenic contamination of Mexican corn, by Andura Smetacek of Monsanto and Mary Murphy of Monsanto's public relations firm, The Bivings Group.

That "activists" would be interested in the research was enough reason to oppose it, to hell with the inconvenient science, it couldn't possibly be relevant. Activists, as you know, are a rather shady lot motivated only by ... well, whatever it is that drives them. If people don't live and die solely out of concern for their next paycheck, they have no place in serious discussions. If 'activists' believe something, it couldn't possibly be true.

The position taken by Monsanto and other biotech firms is that that their products are at base completely harmless, as well offering substantial environmental benefits, and being entirely under control.

Very little research has been conducted attempting to falsify this premise, and when cracks have appeared in those sweeping assumptions, enormous pressure is wielded, often successfully, to silence critics.

Ignacio Chapela was finally vindicated regarding the contamination of Mexican corn, and did finally get the tenure Monsanto agents tried to deny him. Will the rest of us be as successful in our attempts to win the right to know what we're eating from the USDA, which at times seems to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of industrial agribusiness?

(Photo credit: James Tan Chin Choy on Flickr.)