Gene Modification
World According to Monsanto, pt 8, Control
Published June 27, 2009 @ 08:58AM PT
This installment starts off talking to a pair of Indian cotton farmers explaining that not only does Monsanto's Bt cotton still need to be sprayed, they can no longer find non-Bt cotton to buy. The narrator sums up:
"Today in India, Monsanto controls nearly all of the cotton seed market, forcing the locals to buy its seeds at prices four times higher than conventional varieties. Small farmers must turn to money lenders, who charge high interest rates. If the harvest is poor, it means bankruptcy."
The entire microcredit movement, started by Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, tried to fix the exploitive finance infrastructure available to the poor, who tend not to have collateral or cash reserves that traditional banks are interested in. Yet even microcredit has run into trouble, as noted at Yunus' website:
BALI, July 28 - In an effort to head off a potential crisis in the fast-expanding microfinance industry, its leaders are adopting global truth-in-lending standards and creating a system for comparing loan terms offered by competing lenders. To manage the effort, a new self-monitoring organization, MicroFinance Transparency, is being set up as the industry's policeman. The goal is to prevent companies from taking advantage of poor people with high interest rates and misleading credit offers.
The initiative was announced on July 28 at a microcredit conference in Bali by Chuck Waterfield, a professor at Columbia University who spearheaded the initiative, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who launched the microcredit revolution in Bangladesh 30 years ago with his Grameen Bank. "Microfinance emerged as a struggle against loan sharks, so we don't want to see new loan sharks created in the name of microcredit," Yunus tells BusinessWeek.
If the industry doesn't curtail abuses and confusion, it faces the prospect of government crackdowns and donor funds drying up. Since Yunus pioneered the idea of lending small amounts of money to poor people without demanding collateral, the phenomenon has spread worldwide. These days, thousands of organizations are making loans to tens of millions of borrowers—usually to help them set up or expand small businesses. ...
As the video segment goes on to note, the introduction of patented seeds sent farmer suicide numbers way up. In an interview with Navdanya founder, Vandana Shiva, she points out that the biotech firms are looking to introduce patented genes into all the seeds they sell, getting everyone used to the idea that companies can have total control over the food supply.
Shiva says, I believe rightly, that control over the food supply is more powerful than guns.
The global poor, who also grow quite a bit of its food, are squeezed by both finance systems that abandon them to loan sharks and corporations who want to be able to charge every year for what farmers used to be able (at least sometimes, if they wanted or needed) to provide for themselves.
I don't even have to stretch my imagination to posit some dire result. The suicide rate among Indian farmers has already increased dramatically.
In response, Monsanto has a very cheery and inclusive mission statement. But you know what they say about good intentions.
Biotech On Trial
Published June 24, 2009 @ 11:56PM PT
So a court has once again ruled against GE/GMO alfalfa. Jill Richardson writes:
Two years ago, a district court ruled that the USDA did not do its homework before approving genetically engineered alfalfa. The USDA approved GE alfalfa without a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which the court ruled was a violation of U.S. law. Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court upheld that decision and its resulting ban on GE alfalfa (pending a full EIS).
... Following that decision, Monsanto Company and Forage Genetics (who entered into the suit as Defendant-Intervenors) requested the appellate court to rehear the case. The news today is that the court denied their request and thus reaffirmed the earlier decision in full. ...
There were the findings in that first alfalfa case, as reported by the Center for Food Safety:
* The judge found that plaintiffs' concerns that Roundup Ready alfalfa will contaminate natural and organic alfalfa are valid, stating that USDA's opposing arguments were "not convincing" and do not demonstrate the "hard look" required by federal environmental laws. The ruling went on to note that "&For those farmers who choose to grow non-genetically engineered alfalfa, the possibility that their crops will be infected with the engineered gene is tantamount to the elimination of all alfalfa; they cannot grow their chosen crop."
* USDA argued that, based on a legal technicality, the agency did not have to address the economic risks to organic and conventional growers whose alfalfa crop could be contaminated by Monsanto's GE variety. But the judge found that USDA "overstates the law." ...
Shorter version: A federal judge ruled that crop contamination by genetically engineered foods is a serious problem and the pro-Monsanto USDA argued that it shouldn't matter.
Anyone making the stupid argument that contamination doesn't happen? No. Because the discussion happened in a federal court and there, as opposed to the venue provided by the comments of this blog, you can go to jail for lying.
You may have noticed that the particular breed they were talking about was Roundup Ready, a spin off of their many popular Roundup/glyphosate-resistant crops. Glyphosate seems, according to data accepted by government regulators, to be safer for humans and animals than other pesticides.
However, as I noted not too long ago, pure glyphosate isn't sprayed on crops. It's mixed with ingredients that, because they aren't directly responsible for the desired effect of killing plants, don't have to be listed on the label because they can legally be described as inert, or in other words, as having no effect.
Glyphosate is supposed to be safer for aquatic organisms because it tends to settle out of water in its pure form, but it's commonly mixed with chemicals whose sole purpose is to make it more water soluble, in which case it appears to be a hazard to aquatic life. As for the effects of Roundup's 'inert' ingredients on humans:
Used in yards, farms and parks throughout the world, Roundup has long been a top-selling weed killer. But now researchers have found that one of Roundup's inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. ...
Surprise!
Thank goodness there's at least one less Roundup Ready crop on the market to be spreading this plague farther still.
(Photo credit: daryl_mitchell on Flickr.)
World According To Monsanto, pt 7, Informed Consent
Published June 24, 2009 @ 07:24AM PT
Would it be all right with you if your parents, if you are an adult on your own recognizance, were still allowed to decide what cities or towns you could live in? Would your answer be any different if your parents were real estate agents and would probably make good decisions?
Would it be all right with you if the government made up a national menu and required you to eat only that food to conform? Would your answer be any different if the menu contained your favorite foods?
Well, I think I'd have to say no on both counts, and in case of both contingencies.
Believing in self-determination, free will and informed consent as I do, I couldn't approve of such policies. This is the level of choice that I see being removed from each of us when the government refuses to require the labeling of transgenic foods.
By way of self-reported studies and captive university research laboratories whose future grant funding depends on the favor of the biotech industry, the FDA has approved numerous transgenic crops that are processed in the regular food supply and sold to an unsuspecting marketplace.
They've been allowed to patent self-replicating, living organisms and release them into the wild without the public even having a chance to debate the implications.
'Oh,' the biotech folks will say, and have said in the comments at this blog, 'but you can buy organic food.'
First, it's as ridiculous that I should have to pay a premium to have food that wasn't sprayed with poison in the first as that I should have to pay a premium in order to know what I'm eating. Second, I can't be sure that I know what I'm eating, not even if I buy organics.
World According to Monsanto, pt 5, Consensus
Published June 19, 2009 @ 10:26AM PT
Seed magazine hosts a discussion of GMO crops, with three cheerleaders, plus Tom Philpott and Raj Patel, who do a good job poking holes in the opposition case. Key takeaways:
- There isn't scientific consensus.
- There hasn't been adequate safety testing.
- Other promising methods of improving farming get starved of funding in favor of profitable GMO research that benefits private companies.
From Philpott:
... Thus in the first-ever multi-generational study of the effects of GMO food, evidence of serious reproductive trouble comes to light: reduced birth weight and fertility. If the reproductive system can be viewed as a proxy for broad health, then the Austrian study raises serious questions about the effects of consuming foods derived from transgenic crops—i.e., upwards of 70 percent of the products found on U.S. supermarket shelves.
... The Austrian results raise an obvious question: why did the first multigenerational study of the health effects of GMOs emerge more than a decade after their broad introduction in the United States?
... A recent event reported by the New York Times illustrates the lack of independence—and thus, arguably, rigor—that surrounds too much GMO research. A group of 23 US scientists signed a letter to the EPA declaring that, “No truly independent research [on GMOs] can be legally conducted on many critical questions.” The Times reported that because of draconian intellectual property laws, scientists can’t grow GMO crops for research purposes without gaining permission from the corporations that own the germplasm—permission which is sometimes denied or granted only on condition that the companies can review findings before publication.
Stunningly, “The researchers … withheld their names [from the EPA letter] because they feared being cut off from research by the companies,” The Times reports. So this is the sort of scientific consensus around GMOs that environmentalist should bow to—one literally based on fear among tenured faculty? ...
Philpott also points to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which ends up recommending an approach that leans heavily towards the agroecological and encourages crop diversification, while warning against the effects of restrictive intellectual property laws and the search for technological magic bullets. That's the international scientific consensus on agriculture, where they say outright that much of what's being done right now in agriculture isn't sustainable.
And of course, there's the consensus among US government regulatory agencies on the safety of genetically modified foods, because that government is riddled with former Monsanto employees who don't require all GMO crops to be submitted for independent safety testing. Or, at least, if government employees think otherwise, they're not going to be allowed to say so without a lawsuit.
World According to Monsanto, pt 4, rBGH and Bt Crops
Published June 18, 2009 @ 03:37PM PT
This installment of the World According To Monsanto documentary (and a big shout out to Robert Wager, who convinced me that I wasn't taking a nearly hard enough line on biotech) starts out talking about rBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone.
Understand that this hormone is a mimic of a hormone naturally found in cows' bodies during a certain stage of their development. It's nothing very strange.
Nonetheless, rBGH use in adult milk cows causes painful, continuous udder infections and other health problems. This requires the use of constant, elevated doses of antibiotics, and there still ends up being pus in the resulting milk. The hormone isn't reactive in human bodies; not directly, not until it breaks down, and then it seems to promote reproductive cancers.
It's extremely important to understand that protein and hormone interactions in living bodies are very complex. Introducing a hormone at the wrong developmental stage can prove a disaster. Introducing a normally safe protein or compound at high doses, or to the wrong person, or with the wrong chemical companions, can be a disaster.
This is why controlled, independent safety testing is important when introducing novel compounds to the food system or medical repertoire.
Even though rBGH is ostensibly natural, it isn't normally present in adult cows at these artificial levels, or in food that we've had a chance to try over the long term for safety. This is where the equivalence arguments fall down, because even a cursory understanding of the problems inherent in the safety testing of medicinal and food compounds reveals cases where assumptions of safety were badly misplaced because one compound seemed to be 'just like' some other, normally encountered compound.
Sometimes, problems don't reveal themselves for decades.
With Bt crops, not only are they far more expensive and higher input than traditional crop varieties, but it still requires plenty of pesticides and may cause allergic reactions.
The Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) toxin comes from a bacteria and no amount of garden-variety plant breeding or typical food preparation technique would ever add significant quantities of it to the human diet. Yet Bt crops produce this toxin throughout their tissues, including the edible portions.
Perhaps stories of animals dying after foraging on crop remains, something that rarely happens in the US because of the separation of animal and crop agriculture, are anecdotal and not related. I want a public, independent, well-controlled study to prove it.
Perhaps stories of field workers getting allergic reactions from handling Bt cotton are anecdotal, maybe they were reacting to some crop chemical or other unknown allergen. Prove it. Run proper studies and make the data public.
'It's safe because we said so,' whether the 'we' at this point is the biotech firms or their cowering minions at USDA and the land grant universities, cuts no ice.
There's very little in the history of industrial agriculture that leads me to believe they should get the benefit of the doubt.
World According to Monsanto, pt 3
Published June 18, 2009 @ 06:35AM PT
This segment starts out with a heavy emphasis on the safety angle. Monsanto's genetically engineered crops (and everyone else's genetically modified organisms) haven't been tested for safety, they were just declared to be safe.
We've been eating them for years, so they're safe. This is medically unsound, unscientific reasoning.
But Congress doesn't give a damn about safety until people are actually dropping dead from your product, so, on to the next thing. Biotech representatives will insist that depriving poor countries of biotech seeds is a hateful, possibly racist act, spawned of a lack of concern for the starving and poverty-stricken.
Erm, about that, from the Center for Food Safety:
Washington D.C., February 11, 2009 - A new report released today by the Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth International warned that genetically modified (GM) crops are benefiting biotech food giants instead of the worldís hungry population, which is projected to increase to 1.2 billion by the year 2025 due to the global food crisis.
The report explains how biotech firms like Monsanto are exploiting the dramatic rise in world grain prices that are responsible for the global food crisis by sharply increasing the prices of GM seeds and chemicals they sell to farmers, even as hundreds of millions go hungry.
The findings of the report support a comprehensive United Nationsí assessment of world agriculture ñ the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) - which in 2008 concluded that GM crops have little potential to alleviate poverty and hunger in the world. IAASTD experts recommended instead low-cost, low-input agroecological farming methods.
... "GM seeds and the pesticides used with them are much too expensive for Africaís small farmers. Those who promote this technology in developing countries are completely out of touch with reality," he added.
"U.S. farmers are facing dramatic increases in the price of GM seeds and the chemicals used with them," said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the US-based Center for Food Safety and co-author of the report. "Farmers in any developing country that welcomes Monsanto and other biotech companies can expect the same fate - sharply rising seed and pesticide costs, and a radical decline in the availability of conventional seeds," he added.
GM seeds cost from two to over four times as much as conventional, non-GM seeds, and the price disparity is increasing. From 80% to over 90% of the soybean, corn and cotton seeds planted in the U.S. are GM varieties. Thanks to GM trait fee increases, average U.S. seed prices for these crops have risen by over 50% in just the past two to three years. ...
The world's poor can't afford this. They need low cost solutions that have a chance at profitability even when the fertilizer budget runs low.
World According to Monsanto, pt 2
Published June 17, 2009 @ 02:44PM PT
At CivilEats, Paula Crossfield deals, ever so much more patiently than I, with the pointlessness of promoting our failed biotechnology models abroad:
... Instead of teaching poor countries to fish, so to speak, we are selling them the fish with the hook still in its mouth.
That hook infers dependence, but there is also another catch: depleted resources. Biotechnology as it is used right now cannot be sustainable. It relies heavily on three things that are waning: surplus water, cheap oil and a stable climate. As much as biotech proponents claim their technologies could be used for sustainable aims, we don’t have decades to wait while the technology is perfected. And what if it is never perfected? In addition, in putting all of our eggs in one basket with biotech, the problem is misrepresented, and solutions that are already out there are being ignored.
It seems, therefore, that the only real solution to hunger is to transform the food system from the ground up. In Africa, 80% of the population is rural, and there are 33 million small farms (those farming less than 2 hectares), which produce 90% of the continent’s food (Patel and Giménez, 2009). Why don’t we, then, instead of promoting an intensive agriculture that is ruining our environment, our health and is lining the pockets of a few corporations, increase aid to agriculture? ...
Again, in a place so dependent on small-scale, local agriculture, introducing dodgy and expensive biotech traits, as well as export-oriented policies that encourage people to "get big or get out", as they say in the US, is a recipe for disaster. There's no housing or employment infrastructure to turn them all into urban professionals, or even a blue-collar working class, as we would think of those things.
With many of African countries decimated by AIDS, drought or civil war, they can't bear the cost of our capital and input intensive agricultural models. They need the best modern agricultural research, the cheapest and the most effective, which happens to be ecological agriculture methods.
Anyway, here's more documentary goodness. This second part starts off talking about the PCB chemicals Monsanto has been releasing since early last century, knew were toxic in the 1930s, and continued to produce until forced to stop. They've contaminated the entire world, and these abusive liars want us to trust their word on the safety of biotech crops:
