A while back I wrote a brief introduction to GE Foods and Monsanto (although far from being the only bio-tech corporation who specializes in Agriculture, it is likely the most notorious), when Canada was deciding whether to label GE Foods or not. Sadly, the bill was rejected.
When it comes to GE Foods, the primary concern for Canadian consumers is usually health. Because foods with tampered genes haven't been around for very long, we don't know the long term effects.
For many others, the consequences of GE Foods can mean life or death. Something that many feared when Monsanto introduced the 'suicide gene' in 1988. This 'terminator gene' or 'Gene Use Restriction Technology', is a seed that has been altered so that the its seeds are sterile for the next season. Farmers have been growing crops and saving the seeds for the next year for generations and a terminator seeds makes this impossible.
As mentioned in my previous blog, it's practically impossible to keep GE seeds separate from untampered ones so even if a farmer doesn't use the seeds there's no guarantee it won't end up in their harvest.
Canada may have come dangerously close to having these seeds in their harvests but less wealthy nations with farmers with little education haven't been so lucky.
Many have blamed Monsanto for playing a part in the high suicide rate of farmers in India. SourceWatch estimates that 125,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997 after promises of rich harvest from Monsanto have meant they've had to purchase new seeds every year. And since you can't promise the conditions will be optimal, many farmers don't have the funds to purchase new seeds after each year and therefore have no way to make a living.
India has become a testing ground for GE seeds and now Monsanto is even seeing business opportunities in the wake of disaster.
I hate to be the environmentalist that dumps on the big corporation because it's never that simple or black and white. Technology has the power to do good or damage, but Monsanto makes themselves such an easy target. Do they ever get any good press?
Showing posts with label GE Foods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GE Foods. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Surrounded by Monsanto
Last year I wrote a post on Monsanto and GE Foods, a subject I find myself talking about quite frequently.
It's an interesting subject that I'm always eager to talk about and usually surprised that people know so little about.
As a follow up I found this article on one man's attempt to completely banish Monsanto from his life for a month. How difficult could it be? How difficult should it be to banish associations from any company for a month? When does a corporation have too much power? (Probably more often than not.)
Many consumers and advocacy groups feel that mandatory labeling of GE Foods would prompt consumers to stop purchasing GE Foods and therefore reduce Monsanto's power. As of 2008, the BC Government said that they agreed with labeling GE Foods but didn't feel that a bill in which 15,000 citizens supported would do the job (see my 2008 post).
It's an interesting subject that I'm always eager to talk about and usually surprised that people know so little about.
As a follow up I found this article on one man's attempt to completely banish Monsanto from his life for a month. How difficult could it be? How difficult should it be to banish associations from any company for a month? When does a corporation have too much power? (Probably more often than not.)
Many consumers and advocacy groups feel that mandatory labeling of GE Foods would prompt consumers to stop purchasing GE Foods and therefore reduce Monsanto's power. As of 2008, the BC Government said that they agreed with labeling GE Foods but didn't feel that a bill in which 15,000 citizens supported would do the job (see my 2008 post).
What's the latest update? Well labeling of GE Foods has been mandatory for many years now in the European Union, Japan, and Australia and is still being demanded by many people in the United States and Canada, although with no plans to make it mandatory (an action that more than 80% of Canadians support).
Friday, August 15, 2008
Bill C-517
Recently a little bill called Bill C-517 was turned down in both federal and provincial parliament. People might be familiar with it since Greenpeace has been spearheading a campaign to have it passed along with a handful of other organizations however their efforts proved unsuccessful.
For now.
What’s the deal with Bill C-517? Well it called for mandatory labelling on genetically engineered food. For those of you who are unfamiliar, GE foods are food that have had their genes altered with (an example would be taking a gene from a seal to make your corn more resistant to the cold), which is a very simplified explanation. Passing the bill should be simple, right? Well it’s not.
Studies have shown that 85-90% of Canadians want to know if their food is GE and I personally helped Greenpeace hand over 22,000 signatures in support of the Bill before it was about to be voted on. Again however, this proved to be ineffective. When I wrote my MP asking what the deal was, he wrote back with this:
“Although I support labelling on GE foods, I don’t think this bill will accomplish that.”
A response that ridiculous doesn’t require me to elaborate.
With such overwhelming support of such that bill, you think politicians would jumping all over themselves to endorse it and take credit for it. But that’s not the case, why?
As always, there are giant corporations with big money involved and continuing with our current prime minister’s agenda, we are going to do whatever keeps the U.S. happy (see Bending Over for Bush post).Many people have heard of Monsanto, which is the largest or at least most public supplier of GE seeds to farmers. Older people will remember Monsanto as the creator of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. To quickly summarize, Monsanto eventually got into the seed business after the war and began manufacturing weed killer. However the product became so strong that it was killing not only weeds but crops as well. As a solution, Monsanto began selling GE seeds that would not be killed by their weed killer. Essentially if you sprayed your crops with this killer everything would die except for the GE crops, this is the only visible difference between natural crops and GE ones.
So for people that oppose GE foods that’s problem number one, I don’t want to ingest any food that has been sprayed with such strong fertilizer that it would be dead without changing the DNA of the seed. And it is estimated that around 70% of the food Canadians eat are either GE foods or contain GE ingredients.The next concern is an obvious one, with such a new product we don’t know the implications of eating GE foods. There are no long term studies. However most countries aren’t taking chances, China, Mexico and most of Africa are among nations that have banned GE Foods.
The next issue with labelling is that without it, there is no way to trace any health effects back to GE foods. If I have a violent reaction to something I ate and it had GE ingredients, there is no way for me or my doctor to document it without the labelling. So it is easy for opponents of the labelling to argue that GE foods are exactly the same when it’s impossible to link any side effects to it.
Organic farmers have a problem with GE foods as well, because it is almost impossible to avoid contaminations. Wind, birds, and pollination are all ways that natural and organic crops can be contaminated by GE foods.
And here’s where it gets really, really messy. For the first time in history, Monsanto and other companies are able to copyright their seeds. It used to be that no one could have a copyright on anything living, however now that GE foods are on the market this has changed. Monsanto has taken advantage of this by saying that farmers who buy their seeds can only use them once; forcing them to re-buy seeds every year or face a lawsuit.
So what happens if you are an organic farmer who has had their crops contaminated for one reason or another by GE seeds? Who owns the crops and who is responsible? A recent landmark case involving Percy Schmeiser was brought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and it was decided that if your farm gets contaminated by GE seeds, it is your fault and your responsibility to pay Monsanto or whoever infringement fees. Unless you want to pay every year for new seeds, it is your responsibility to keep GE foods away from your land.
Another way to look at it is, if you have grown a tree on your land even for a hundred years and it gets contaminated by GE seeds, it is now property of Monsanto or whoever owns the right the GE seed.
The scary part about all this is not just the ramifications for Canadian farmers, but for farmers in third world countries. What happens when GE products inevitably end up contaminating farms in Guatemala for example? Most farmers don’t have the resources to keep GE foods out (which almost impossible anyways) or to pay settlement fees to buy their crops back.
Monsanto is a really powerful corporation however this doesn’t immediately mean that it can stop bills from being passed in parliament. Although it helps to have former Monsanto employees now working in parliament and former politicians working for Monsanto. It’s a little bit like Bush’s government, which is full of former oil company executives. (http://www.purefood.org/monsanto/revolvedoor.cfm)
This is all a very brief and simplified explanation of the facts involving GE foods and getting them labelled. Anyone looking for more information, I encourage you to click on the links below and check out the documentary “The Future of Food”.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
http://www.gefreebc.org/gefree_tmpl.php?content=home
http://www.thefutureoffood.com/AboutFOF.htm
For now.
What’s the deal with Bill C-517? Well it called for mandatory labelling on genetically engineered food. For those of you who are unfamiliar, GE foods are food that have had their genes altered with (an example would be taking a gene from a seal to make your corn more resistant to the cold), which is a very simplified explanation. Passing the bill should be simple, right? Well it’s not.
Studies have shown that 85-90% of Canadians want to know if their food is GE and I personally helped Greenpeace hand over 22,000 signatures in support of the Bill before it was about to be voted on. Again however, this proved to be ineffective. When I wrote my MP asking what the deal was, he wrote back with this:
“Although I support labelling on GE foods, I don’t think this bill will accomplish that.”
A response that ridiculous doesn’t require me to elaborate.
With such overwhelming support of such that bill, you think politicians would jumping all over themselves to endorse it and take credit for it. But that’s not the case, why?
As always, there are giant corporations with big money involved and continuing with our current prime minister’s agenda, we are going to do whatever keeps the U.S. happy (see Bending Over for Bush post).Many people have heard of Monsanto, which is the largest or at least most public supplier of GE seeds to farmers. Older people will remember Monsanto as the creator of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. To quickly summarize, Monsanto eventually got into the seed business after the war and began manufacturing weed killer. However the product became so strong that it was killing not only weeds but crops as well. As a solution, Monsanto began selling GE seeds that would not be killed by their weed killer. Essentially if you sprayed your crops with this killer everything would die except for the GE crops, this is the only visible difference between natural crops and GE ones.
So for people that oppose GE foods that’s problem number one, I don’t want to ingest any food that has been sprayed with such strong fertilizer that it would be dead without changing the DNA of the seed. And it is estimated that around 70% of the food Canadians eat are either GE foods or contain GE ingredients.The next concern is an obvious one, with such a new product we don’t know the implications of eating GE foods. There are no long term studies. However most countries aren’t taking chances, China, Mexico and most of Africa are among nations that have banned GE Foods.
The next issue with labelling is that without it, there is no way to trace any health effects back to GE foods. If I have a violent reaction to something I ate and it had GE ingredients, there is no way for me or my doctor to document it without the labelling. So it is easy for opponents of the labelling to argue that GE foods are exactly the same when it’s impossible to link any side effects to it.
Organic farmers have a problem with GE foods as well, because it is almost impossible to avoid contaminations. Wind, birds, and pollination are all ways that natural and organic crops can be contaminated by GE foods.
And here’s where it gets really, really messy. For the first time in history, Monsanto and other companies are able to copyright their seeds. It used to be that no one could have a copyright on anything living, however now that GE foods are on the market this has changed. Monsanto has taken advantage of this by saying that farmers who buy their seeds can only use them once; forcing them to re-buy seeds every year or face a lawsuit.
So what happens if you are an organic farmer who has had their crops contaminated for one reason or another by GE seeds? Who owns the crops and who is responsible? A recent landmark case involving Percy Schmeiser was brought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and it was decided that if your farm gets contaminated by GE seeds, it is your fault and your responsibility to pay Monsanto or whoever infringement fees. Unless you want to pay every year for new seeds, it is your responsibility to keep GE foods away from your land.
Another way to look at it is, if you have grown a tree on your land even for a hundred years and it gets contaminated by GE seeds, it is now property of Monsanto or whoever owns the right the GE seed.
The scary part about all this is not just the ramifications for Canadian farmers, but for farmers in third world countries. What happens when GE products inevitably end up contaminating farms in Guatemala for example? Most farmers don’t have the resources to keep GE foods out (which almost impossible anyways) or to pay settlement fees to buy their crops back.
Monsanto is a really powerful corporation however this doesn’t immediately mean that it can stop bills from being passed in parliament. Although it helps to have former Monsanto employees now working in parliament and former politicians working for Monsanto. It’s a little bit like Bush’s government, which is full of former oil company executives. (http://www.purefood.org/monsanto/revolvedoor.cfm)
This is all a very brief and simplified explanation of the facts involving GE foods and getting them labelled. Anyone looking for more information, I encourage you to click on the links below and check out the documentary “The Future of Food”.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
http://www.gefreebc.org/gefree_tmpl.php?content=home
http://www.thefutureoffood.com/AboutFOF.htm
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