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by Ronnie Cummins
August 2003
from
OrganicConsumers Website
Quotes of the Month:
"In summary, the risk to Monsanto's
shareholders from the company's genetic engineering business are
substantial… the company faces business constraints in the form
of market rejection by consumers, producers, and farmers;
significant legislative hurdles to commercialization;
uncertainty in the face of human health and environmental
impacts stemming from the company's products; and finally,
significant risk exposure from potential contamination of the
human food chain by unapproved genetically engineered traits."
Monsanto & Genetic Engineering: Risks for Investors
A report prepared by Strategic Value
Advisors (April 2003)
"Let's go eat some genetically modified food for lunch".
George Bush
at a meeting with EU officials in
Washington, June 25, 2003
Genetically
Modified Democracy - Corralling the Critics
Running full speed to catch up with several thousand non-violent
protestors on "L" Street in Sacramento, I'm just a few yards ahead
of a advancing phalanx of Darth Vader look-alike cops, who are
brandishing stun guns and riot batons.
As a booming voice announces via
bullhorn,
"Leave the area immediately or you will all be arrested,"
it's pretty clear that the White House's biotech bullying has
reached a new level of desperation.
Here at the June 23-25 USDA summit
conference on biotechnology in Sacramento, (sort of a warm-up event
for the September WTO Ministerial Meeting in Cancun), even the
police horses are decked out with ankle guards and head visors,
backed up by heavily-armed motorcycle cops, armored personnel
carriers, and an army of 2,000 riot police-dispatched to "protect"
500 international agricultural delegates from America's Frankenfood
critics.
As a government official from Africa remarks,
"I've never seen such a display of
police force, other than in Communist states."
Rounding a street corner, out of breath,
I watch a beefy policeman charge into a young woman and knock her to
the ground, apparently for the crime of standing too close to a
Starbucks café with a protest sign. Welcome to the post 9/11
Republic of Genetically Modified Democracy.
For more on the Sacramento protests see
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/global_ag_usda.cfm
Global Bee
Swarm - Driving Monsanto & Bush to Desperation
A thousand bee stings from global Civil Society have put Monsanto
and the other Gene Giants on virtual life-support. Overseas markets
for genetically engineered (GE) seeds and crops are closing down,
protests are continuing, scientific evidence of risk is mounting,
and regulations and labeling requirements are tightening.
As Mexico-based biotech analyst
Silvia Ribeiro from ETC Group stated at a teach-in in
Sacramento,
"Five Gene Giants (Monsanto,
Syngenta, Dupont, Bayer, and Dow) selling four GE seed crops
(soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton), to farmers in three
countries (U.S., Canada, and Argentina) with two agricultural
traits (herbicide-resistant and Bt pesticide-spliced) have one
goal: control of the global food system."
The good news, reported daily on the
Organic Consumers Association website, and in previous issues of
BioDemocracy News and Organic Bytes, is that the biotech industry's
Master Plan for global domination seems to be failing.
Even with
George Bush leading the charge,
even with intimidation and bullying reaching new levels of
desperation, the Biotech Express has derailed.
Once mighty Monsanto - whose GE seeds account for a full 91% of all
global Frankencrops - is in critical condition. The company's stock
values have fallen by 50%, reflecting a loss of $1.7 billion on $4.7
billion in sales last year.
As revealed in recent news stories, and
a crucial investment report published in April 2003, by Strategic
Value Advisors,
Monsanto and the agbiotech
industry's mounting vulnerabilities include:
"Global markets for GE seeds and
grains are shrinking, due to consumer resistance and mounting
export and labeling restrictions. Global sales of GE seeds have
leveled off at $4.5 billion, while organic ($23 billion) and
non-GE food sales are booming. U.S. and Canadian farmers have
literally lost billions of dollars in export sales of GE-tainted
corn, soybeans, and canola. Even in the U.S., consumer concerns
are mounting. An ABC News poll released July 15, found that the
majority of U.S. consumers (55%) are now opposed to GE foods,
while 92% support mandatory labeling.
"New labeling and traceability laws are slowly but surely
closing down the market for the last billion dollars of US
GE-derived soybeans exported every year as animal feed to
Europe. Brazil, with a ban on GMOs (genetically modified
organisms), has now replaced the U.S. as the largest exporter of
soybeans in the world. According to the May 2003 trade
publication, The Non-GMO Source, Brazil will export $7.9 billion
of soybeans this year, while the U.S. will export "less than $7
billion."
"The international Biosafety Protocol, which requires the
labeling of seeds and "prior consent" from countries importing
GMOs, will come into force in September, despite objections from
Monsanto and the Bush administration.
Meanwhile the WTO's food standards
body, the Codex Alimentarius, has ruled that countries may
legally require their own additional safety testing and
mandatory labeling for GMOs, including animal feeds, which
currently account for more than 80% of the world's GE crops.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/un_ge_standards.cfm
"Monsanto's only real commercial markets for GE seeds (the U.S.,
Canada, Argentina, and China) are quickly becoming saturated.
-
A
full 80% of U.S. and 90% of Argentina's soybeans are already GE.
-
One-third of U.S. corn is GE, but this is mainly because
Monsanto has been selling
Bt and
Roundup-Ready corn seeds at
bargain basement prices, a practice which it can no longer
afford.
-
Two-thirds of US cotton is already GE.
-
Canada's Roundup-Ready canola
acreage has shrunk from 14 million acres to 9 million acres.
No
other countries in the world are likely to plant GE crops on a
major commercial scale in the near future. A mounting number of
developing nations are not even willing to take GE-tainted corn
and soya in food aid shipments.
"Monsanto and the industry's main future crops and projected
profits are in serious jeopardy. GE wheat, rice, trees, and
biopharm drugs are facing unprecedented opposition, not only
from overseas buyers, but also from U.S. and Canadian farmers.
Even major trade associations such as the National Food
Processors Association and the Grocery Manufacturers of America,
and food giants such as General Mills and Frito-Lay, have told
Monsanto to back off on GE wheat and biopharm crops.
"To the extent that consumers
want choice, they want to choose non-biotech,'' said Karil
Kochenderfer, the biotechnology coordinator for the Grocery
Manufacturers of America, which represents food companies
such as Kraft and General Mills.
"While Monsanto and the biotech
industry continue to lie and paint a rosy future for GMOs in the
media, it is a crime, under U.S. law, for them to deliberately
lie to investors. Thus in their most recent 10K report to
investors, Monsanto admits that genetic drift from biotech and
biopharm crops is unavoidable, that potential financial
liabilities are unpredictable, and that no new countries will be
planting their GE seeds in the near future.
"Monsanto's monopoly patent on
glyphosate, the active ingredient
in Roundup, the top-selling herbicide in the world, traditional
source of almost half of the company's profits, has expired. Now
Monsanto's competitors, such as Syngenta (formerly Novartis),
are selling glyphosate as well, at reduced prices, slicing away
at Monsanto's life support.
In Australia, Monsanto has stopped
selling glyphosate altogether, with lower-priced Chinese imports
taking over the market. Monsanto has also admitted to investors
that its sales of Roundup will continue to decline, from its
current global market share of 77% to the low 60's by 2005.
Meanwhile the price per gallon Monsanto receives for Roundup is
expected to drop from $23 to $14-15 per gallon by 2005.
"As discussed in previous issues of BioDemocracy News, weeds
such as marestail (horsetail), rye grass, and hemp grass are
starting to develop resistance to glyphosate, a literal death
sentence for Roundup-Ready crops, which comprise 71% of the
world's GMOs.
In Arkansas, a full 20% of the state's 2.9 million
acres of Roundup-Ready soybeans and cotton are sprouting
herbicide-resistant marestail weeds.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/070903_ge_food.cfm
Biotech
Bullying - Bound to Backfire
Unable to protect itself from the mounting bee swarm of its critics
or bring new patented crops to market in the overwhelming majority
of the countries of the world, Monsanto and the biotech industry
have turned to the White House, the courts, the police, and the WTO
in desperation.
Among the most recent desperate tactics
of the industry-all of which are likely to backfire-are the
following:
"Bush's WTO Challenge
After years
of threats, the Bush administration filed a formal complaint May
13 with the World Trade Organization to force the European
Union, under the threat of a billion dollars in fines, to accept
GE crops and imports. Unfortunately for
Bush and the Gene
Giants, this move has done nothing but create more anger in the EU, with supermarkets, food manufacturers, farmers, and consumer
groups vowing that they will never accept Frankenfoods, no
matter what the WTO says.
Responding to the Bush move, the
European Union passed in July new strict labeling and
traceability requirements for GE food, cooking oil, and animal
feed. This will result in a major decrease in GMO animal feed
exports from North America to the EU.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/eu_frankencrops_canada.cfm
"As Jeremy Rifkin put it, 'US strong-arming cannot make
Europeans eat genetically modified food. A European GM food
boycott will only expose the underlying weakness of
globalization and the existing trade protocols that accompany
it. In the unfolding struggle between global commercial power
and local cultural resistance, the GM food fight might turn out
to be the test case that forces us to rethink the very basis of
the globalization process.'"
(The Guardian U.K. June 2, 2003)
"Buying off Tony Blair
As if UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
didn't already have enough problems, due to his politically
disastrous support for Bush's Iraq invasion, Blair's continued
support for GE crops has angered British consumers and farmers
even more. The Daily Mail, a major British newspaper, reported
on July 7, that a call from the White House to Tony Blair in
August 1998 likely precipitated the firing of the world's
preeminent GE food safety researcher, Dr. Arpad Pusztai. Pusztai
had discovered, in a government-financed study at the Rowett
Institute in Scotland, that genetically engineered potatoes
damaged the immune system and vital organs of laboratory
animals.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/070903_ge.cfm
"Since then Pusztai has continued his research"
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/gmo_lab_studies.cfm
"Desperate to stifle dissent, even inside his own Cabinet, Blair
fired his popular Environmental Minister, Michael Meacher, in
June. Meacher, in response, urged the UK government to maintain
a moratorium on GE foods, stating, "There could be risk to the
immune system. There could be risk to sexual development in
young children or babies from GM-based soya infant feed. There
have been no tests. That is an enormous gap and I think a
scandalous omission in making the decision about whether or not
these are safe to eat."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/062403_uk_ge.cfm
"Pushing for Commercialization of GE Wheat, Rice, and Fish
Desperate to keep their stock values from collapsing, Monsanto
and the other biotech companies still maintain they will get
permission from the U.S. and other governments to commercialize
new food crops and fish. They may indeed prevail in getting the
Bush administration to approve commercialization of these crops,
but if they do they will alienate-not only consumers and
environmental activists-but major food companies, supermarket
chains, farmers, fishing communities, and overseas buyers.
"Even the Canadian Wheat Board, the largest purchaser of wheat
in the world, threatened in May to sue Monsanto, if they move
forward on GE wheat. Similarly, major international buyers of
North American wheat and rice have threatened to boycott
billions of dollars of U.S. and Canadian exports.
In the words
of the largest wheat importer in Italy, Antonio Costato of
Grandi Molini Italiani SpA, "The European milling industry will
simply not buy one more kilo of any U.S. wheat if the U.S.
approves GMO wheat crops."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/071403_ge_wheat.cfm
"GE Pharm Crops
Even more foolhardy than trying to force-feed
unwilling consumers GE wheat and rice are the "pharm"
crops-whereby pharmaceutical drugs or industrial chemicals are
being gene-spliced into corn and other farm crops, in effect
turning plants or animals into "bioreactors."
There have already been 300 secret
field trials of these pharm crops in the U.S. by Monsanto and
other companies, 2/3 of them utilizing corn, a crop noted for
spreading its pollen (and genetic characteristics) far and wide.
In March the OCA joined the Center for Food Safety and other
groups to file a legal petition to stop the planting of biopharm
crops.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/030503_biotech_usda.cfm
"As Monsanto admitted to investors in its most recent 10k
report, biopharm crops will likely spread their pollen and seeds
into the environment, resulting in more Starlink-type food
recalls. As Frank Dixon, Managing Director at Innovest Strategic
Value Advisors put it "The risk of heavy financial losses due to
genetic pollution or technology failure coupled with sustained
market rejection of GE foods makes Monsanto a poor investment."
As reported previously, the
USDA has already admitted that there have been two cases of pharm crops (pig vaccine, and also possibly an experimental AIDS
drug) getting into animal feed. Even major food manufacturers
and supermarket chains, formerly supporters of agbiotech, are up
in arms about pharm crops.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/071203_biotech.cfm
"Propaganda Barrage
Desperate for acceptance, Monsanto and the
biotech lobby have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars
on advertising and public relations, with repeated (and now
thoroughly discredited) claims that Frankencrops will reduce
pesticide use, feed the world's hungry, and produce healthier
food. But even in the heartland of biotech, a recent ABC News
poll found that 62% of American women would not feed GE food to
their children.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/071703_ge.cfm
"After threatening and harassing thousands of seed savers, and
taking legal action against 400 North American farmers, most of
whom have been forced to pay damages for the "crime" of seed
saving, Monsanto will soon "face the consequences" in Canada's
Supreme Court, where its highly publicized case against
Saskatchewan canola farmer, Percy Schmeiser, comes up for a
hearing in early 2004.
Either Schmeiser will win the case
(with the court ruling that Monsanto does not own the Roundup
Ready seeds found on Schmeiser's farm), which means that
Monsanto will lose their patent on Roundup Ready canola, and
millions of dollars in annual royalties; or else Monsanto will
win (with the Court ruling that Monsanto owns the mutant seed,
wherever it turns up), which will expose the company to millions
of dollars in lawsuits from farmers who have suffered GMO
pollution of their crops.
Either way Monsanto is damned.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/071603_ge.cfm
"Apparently convinced that bullying is still a viable tactic,
Monsanto in July sued a Portland, Maine dairy, Oakhurst, for the
"crime" of telling its customers that its cows weren't injected
with Monsanto's controversial Bovine Growth Hormone. BGH is
banned in every industrialized country in the world, except for
the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil.
The FDA, always Monsanto's
handmaiden in regulatory matters, told Cheese Market News July
11 that the FDA is considering sending "warning letters" to
dairies making rBGH-free or hormone-free claims. In recent
months a Monsanto-funded front group, the Center for Consumer
Freedom, has launched a smear campaign against organic dairies,
including Organic Valley Co-op, claiming they are defrauding
consumers by making rBGH-free claims.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/anti_organic_consumer_group.cfm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/071303_rbgh.cfm
"Unable to sell GE corn and soybeans to many of its domestic or
overseas customers, the biotech industry has enlisted
the Bush
administration to force GE-tainted grain on countries in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America receiving food aid. This has now
backfired into a major public relations disaster for the Bush
administration, with recipient nations rejecting the Frankencrops, and scientists pointing out that the GE-tainted
corn shipments do pose potentially serious health and
environmental risks.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/071403_ge_africa.cfm
"U.S. bullying reached a new ethical low point in May, when a
"sense of the Congress" resolution attached to an AIDS
Prevention bill called for a cutoff of AIDS prevention funds for
countries which refuse to accept America's GMO crops. The move
has disgusted public health officials and enraged AIDS activists
worldwide.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/aids.cfm
Triumph of the
Bees - Lessons for Civil Society
The biotech monster is mortally wounded, and now cornered.
This is the fundamental reason why we
are seeing such desperate moves by Monsanto, the idiot savants of
biopharming, and the Bush/Blair Axis. We the "bees" of global Civil
Society - everyone from the ordinary organic consumer, to
international heroes like Percy Schmeiser, Vandana Shiva, Jose Bove,
Michael Hansen, Ignacio Chapella, Tewolde Egziabher, Jane Akre, and
Arpad Pusztai - should all be congratulated on a monumental victory.
This is the first time in modern history
that a new and unsustainable technology, supported by many, if not
most, major corporations and governments, is being stopped dead in
its tracks. This is the first, but certainly not the last, swarm of
the bees.
The reason we're winning this bee swarm is because we've finally
started to educate, communicate, and mobilize on a global basis,
across class and ethnic divides, in thousands of communities,
reaching out to hundreds of millions, in fact billions, of ordinary
consumers and farmers. We've stuck to the truth and our basic moral
principles.
We've placed our trust in the basic
common sense and decency of everyday people, while our adversaries
have resorted to lies, half-truths, and slick propaganda. We've
realized, as an enormous and diverse global Civil Society, that we
don't have to agree on every detail, tactic, and nuance-as long as
we share an over-arching vision-in this case, healthy food, healthy
farming communities, and biodiversity.
Another reason we're winning this battle
is because we've stubbornly persisted, for 10 long years (Monsanto's
recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone was approved for commercialization
in the U.S. in 1993), even in the face of overwhelming odds,
ridicule, and intimidation. In many cases we've risked arrest, our
jobs, and reputations.
And finally, we've learned, North and
South, East and West, to use our incredibly potent market power, the
power of our consumer dollars, to vote against Frankenfoods and
crops, and instead to cast our votes for,
Of course, as a BioDemocracy News subscriber, a scientist, recently
warned me,
"Techies like Monsanto never die.
They come back again and again."
Constant vigilance will be required,
even as this first generation of 135 million acres of
herbicide-resistant and pesticide-spliced crops shrivels up on the
vine.
We must focus our next collective bee
swarm on the key threats that loom ahead-the WTO and the next
generation of Frankencrops, genetically engineered wheat, rice,
trees, and biopharm crops-and make certain these mutants are
destroyed. But first and foremost, we must grasp the fact that we
are global, vast, and strong, and that is why we are winning.
This is the good news. Spread this buzz
near and far.
And by the way if you want to join in on the next bee swarm, you are
invited to join yours truly, Ronnie Cummins, Michael Hansen, and the
OCA on an escorted delegation to the WTO teach-ins and protests in
Cancun Mexico September 4-11.
Beyond the
Frankenfoods Threat
The bad news is that the unsustainable, energy-intensive,
petroleum-based practices of chemical-intensive industrial
agriculture and long-distance food transportation are major
contributing factors to global warming and climate disruption.
Even without genetic engineering-now
supercharged by NAFTA and the WTO-industrial agriculture poses a
mortal threat to public health, biodiversity, and the environment.
Almost a quarter of all greenhouse gases in the global North are
generated by industrial agriculture: pesticide and nitrate
fertilizer production, food processing, food packaging, food waste
in landfills, and long-distance food transportation.
Beating back Monsanto and genetic engineering must embolden us to
phase-out, as soon as possible, industrial agriculture in general,
and convert the U.S. and global economy to a sustainable economy
based upon natural biological systems, solar power, wind, and
hydrogen, instead of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
If current trends of global warming
persist, sustainable agriculture, in fact all agriculture, will
become problematic by the end of this century, and perhaps as soon
as the year 2050. A number of scientists now believe that rapidly
accumulating changes in the composition of the atmosphere could
trigger a catastrophic "die off" of most living organisms by the
year 2100, similar to what happened in the last catastrophic
extinction of species 250 million years ago.
And of course the second bit of bad news is that non-genetically
engineered, organic food is not going to taste that good in a
fascist state. If corporations and military contractors are allowed
to pollute at will in waterways such as the Colorado River basin, it
won't just be California organic produce
such as lettuce that tests positive
for deadly chemical compounds such as
perchlorate, a residue from
rocket fuel.
If the chemical and petroleum industries, the Pentagon, and
dioxin-spewing incinerators are allowed to continue venting their
poisons, eventually organic food, and even mothers' breast milk,
will become toxic.
If schools and cities are starved for
funds they'll never make the transition to organic foods and fibers.
If citizens and especially the poor remain economically stressed and
impoverished, they'll have little choice but to continue buying
cheap, junk food. If the corporate assault on organic standards and
organic companies continues, and if mainstream food corporations are
allowed to take over the organic industry, then it won't be long
before the "organic" label becomes meaningless.
In other words, we, the worker bees, have got our work cut out for
us.
Stay tuned to
OCA's website and Organic
Bytes for news and alerts on the next moves of the Predators and
swarm of the bees. In the meantime enjoy yourself and count the
blessings of an emerging and powerful global Civil Society that may
indeed save the world.
Peace and Justice.
Bon Appetit...
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