Tag Archives: Monsanto

Community News: Monsanto Wheat Returns from the Dead and the Rest of the Globe Kicks the U.S. Economy

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In 2004, Monsanto ended its field trials of Roundup-Ready Wheat, the proprietary, genetically-altered version of the grain that would allow it to be sprayed with the company’s Roundup weed killer and survive.  The public was too uncomfortable with the prospect of eating techno-genetic food.  Last week, The New York Times reported that Roundup-Ready Wheat returned from the dead to kick U.S. exports in the shin.

The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, but last week Japan and South Korea banned the importation of the grain – and the E.U. recommended that all 27 of its nations increase testing – because the Roundup-Ready strain was found growing in an Oregon Field.  According to Monsanto’s web site, tests of the grain were never conducted in that field.  This brings up a few points worth emphasizing:

  1. The very fear American farmers have about Monsanto’s techno-genetic seeds – that natural crops cannot be protected from contamination by them – is true even in the case of a controlled field test conducted by one of the biggest and most advanced companies in the world.
  2. When contamination of those natural crops occur, ownership of those crops automatically transfers to Monsanto, meaning that farmers must then pay Monsanto or have their businesses destroyed.  This is enshrined in law by the Plant Variety Protection Act and a recent decision by the John Roberts Supreme Court.
  3. Wheat can, according to Monsanto, linger in the ground for up to two years before germinating.
  4. The company’s GM wheat apparently lingered in the ground for nine years before germinating.
  5. Wheat exports contribute, according to U.S. Wheat Associates, an industry marketing firm, account for between $961 million and $1.8 billion of our GDP.  South Korea imports 2.5 million tons.  The E.U. imports over 1 million.
  6. Countries with large numbers of educated individuals do not want to import GM food.
  7. The inability to control the Roundup-Ready wheat – an inherent component of its design – threatens the U.S. economy and our trustworthiness as world merchants.

And on a final note, Monsanto’s new strategy to introduce its proprietary, fundamental foodstuff into the global food chain is to start selling it to India.

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 →