Tag Archives: GMO crops

Dead Man Gnawing: Man Made Maize and the Gods Made Man (3,700 B.C.)

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Writing about genetically modified food last week got me thinking about Humanity’s history of mutating the plant world to its gastro-nutritional whim.  It is those directed mutations that created civilization itself.  For instance:

This Mayan maize god was, among many diverse roles, the partron of scribes.

In the beginning, the gods of the Maya created humans out of mud.  But the mud men squinted at the world, and could not take it in.  They could not move to chase game or to seek shelter, and their thoughts were clogged.  The rains washed them away.

The gods then made humans out of wood.  These men could speak and see and move.  On all fours, they climbed through the jungle canopies and rambled over the valleys, but they failed to honor the gods as the gods saw fit.  Perhaps their taste of freedom was too complete.  Perhaps they razed the jungles where their flesh was found.  The gods thus destroyed them.

And so the gods tried a third time.  They made Man out of maize.  And this Man was in harmony. Continue reading →

Community News: Chief Justice Roberts on Your Fruits and Veggies

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The hubbub over Chief Justice John Roberts deciding in favor of the Affordable Care Act—specifically, the way he found it constitutional on the basis of taxation rather than the power of the federal government to regulate commerce—got me thinking about our gardens and dinners.  See, a shocking amount of American law that I think essential to an equitable society rests on the rather narrow Constitutional text “The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce.”  A significant aspect of the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for instance, depended on the Court’s determination that the Commerce Clause gave the feds the power to regulate businesses that served mostly interstate travelers.  Thus motels and restaurants across America could not discriminate against black Americans. Equality through Commerce.  Crazy, right?

Okay, so what does this have to do with food?  Well, the House is currently considering the next Agricultural Appropriations bill, which happens to contain a rider, known as “the Monsanto rider,” that has received, curiously, little to no coverage in the national press.  This rider requires that the Secretary of Agriculture grant a farmer or industrial agri-giant a  permit to plant genetically engineered crops (GMO), even if a federal court has ordered the planting halted for safety or environmental impact studies.  You can read it here.

Monsanto, DuPont, etc., only have to ask, and every ruling by a federal court or enforcement of current consumer protection laws on the part of the White House or a federal regulatory agency is overridden and they can plant whatever crop they chose.  Even state congresses become powerless: if they try to create local or state laws to protect eaters and farmers, they are in violation of federal law, a federal law that is written to override all other pertinent federal laws. Continue reading →

Dead Man Gnawing: Stealth DNA and One Stubborn Old Man (1970 & 2005)

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Canola is also known as Rapeseed. Its seeds are crushed to make vegetable oil.

Since we’re only a few days past Independence Day, I thought I’d take a look at the borders between the dominion of the public and the gated garden of the private.  In 1998, multinational industrial agrichemical giant Monsanto discovered that a Canadian farmer named Percy Schmeiser was growing its Roundup Ready Canola in his fields.  The seeds that grow into our food have generally been considered public property.  That is, our foods are held in common by allhumans; no one person or company can own the seeds that sustain civilization.

Monsanto had the U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 at their back, though.  That law gives companies the right to exclusively own the DNA of the plant varieties they develop.  That right of ownership includes the sole right to “reproduce” the plant, i.e. to generate the seed from which the plants grow.  That means that a farmer or gardener is forbidden to save the seeds produced from one year’s crop in order to plant the next year.  Schmeiser was growing Monsanto’s genetically-modified (GM) plants without paying for them. Continue reading →