Subject: Monsanto in Saskatchewan
posted by: peter.w@sk.sympatico.ca (Warren Peterson)
Candace Holmstrom
reports for CBC Radio.
Hi-tech canola causes stir in Sask.
WebPosted Tue Feb 23 04:27:23 1999
REGINA - A battle is brewing in Saskatchewan over farm seeds. At stake is
patent-protected canola.
Round Up Ready Canola was developed by the multi-national company Monsanto.
After spending millions of dollars coming up with the product, Monsanto
wants to make sure its special seeds are protected. And it's willing to go
to court to make sure that happens.
The seed has been changed genetically. Once a farmer plants it, instead of
needing three or four herbicides, the only weed control the crop needs is
Round Up -- a Monsanto product.
If farmers want to use Round Up Ready Canola, they have to sign a contract
with Monsanto.
"You cannot re-plant this seed a second year. If you're not comfortable
with the term and condition that we can come and inspect your fields and
bins for up to three years afterwards -- if that disturbs you -- then
please do not buy the technology," said Aaron Mitchell, in charge of
biotechnology in Western Canada for Monsanto.
So far, 16 farmers in Western Canada have been caught breaking the contract
or patent rules. They re-planted or grew seed for which they didn't even
pay. Most are in Saskatchewan.
Noreen Johns, who farms north of Regina, signed the contract with Monsanto
-- and follows the rules. But Johns worries how much control farmers are
losing with this kind of technology and marketing.
"So now we see the chemical companies not only marketing chemical to us,
but controlling in the seed market," Johns told CBC News.
One of the ways Monsanto is catching farmers who break the rules is through
an anonymous tips telephone line. But people like Johns aren't picking up
the phone to tattle on neighbours.
She asks who's the real culprit: the farmer who breaks the rules, or the
chemical company which sets them.
The courts will decide.
The first legal test for Monsanto's patent on canola is expected to begin
this fall in Saskatchewan.
............
The Guardian Weekly Volume 160 Issue 9 for week ending February 28, 1999,
Coming soon: cow's milk with added hormones
Thanks to free trade rules, Britain will be powerless to resist imported GM
food, warns George Monbiot
LIKE a family in the midst of a massive domestic row, the participants in
the great genetic war are already having trouble recalling how it began. Dr
Arpad Pusztai's potatoes and their effect on rats have been all but
forgotten, while the underlying tensions, ever present, but seldom
acknowledged, have burst out into the open. At last Tony Blair's sordid
affair with the corporate seductress and the terrible mess she has made in
the garden are being discussed.
The row is threatening to split the Labour household apart. Jack
Cunningham, the Downing Street "enforcer", has been roaring up and down the
stairs telling everyone else to shut up. The environment minister, Michael
Meacher, having hidden in the potting shed, has run back indoors with the
news that he's seen something nasty in the vegetable patch.
While Dr Cunningham continues to insist that the new plants carry no
conceivable risks, Mr Meacher has hinted at the need to delay the
introduction of commercial planting of GM crops in Britain. His department
told journalists that there will probably be no approvals for full-scale
cultivation before 2001. The neighbours are beginning to weigh in on his
side.The Government's chief scientist, Sir Robert May, has expressed grave
concerns about the damage that the new crops might do to wildlife --
herbicide-resistant crops allow farmers to eliminate almost all other
species from their fields. The environment department has been forced to
publish a delayed report in which these warnings are echoed. Last week the
biotechnology company Monsanto was fined for failing to isolate one of its
test crops from the wider environment.
And Middle England has begun to realise that when Mr Blair is faced with a
conflict between its needs and those of his other constituency, big
business, he sides with the corporations. If the Prime Minister begins, at
last, to listen to Mr Meacher's anxieties, he will soon run into a new
problem: that whether or not it wants to act, the Government might be
unable to do so. Both Tory and Labour governments have been so determined
to facilitate "free trade" that they have progressively signed away their
right to intervene.
If the Government seeks to prevent corporations from forcing us to grow and
eat their crops, the corporations will appeal, first to the European Union,
then to the World Trade Organisation. And they will win, because the
governments of the First World have already determined that, in cases like
this, private profit outweighs public protection.
Food scares happen in Britain because people feel they have no control over
what they eat. Our decisions are made for us by invisible and unaccountable
corporations. We are just about to discover precisely how powerless we
are.In just under three months the media will stumble across another issue
that it has managed to ignore for years. This one is even scarier. Monsanto
has developed an injectable growth hormone that increases the production of
cow's milk. Some scientists argue that it also increases the levels of
something called Insulin Growth Factor 1. IGF-1 can cross the digestive
tract intact from milk to the bloodstream of consumers. People with
elevated IGF-1 levels are at greater risk from breast and prostate
cancer.The EU banned milk and beef from cattle treated with this hormone.
On behalf of Monsanto, the United States government appealed to the WTO.
The organisation has given Europe until May 13 to start importing
hormone-treated beef and milk. Mr Blair will wriggle, Dr Cunningham will
roar, but, short of provoking a trade war, they can do nothing whatever to
protect British consumers.
The European elections will be fought, four weeks later, in the midst of
this crisis. The Greens could win even more votes than they did in 1989,
and this time they will carry seats. Labour's backbench guerrillas will
launch a frontal attack. And Mr Blair, lost as he always is when the
politics of presentation yields to the politics of substance, will wonder
how on earth so vigorous a vine grew from a humble potato.
........
Thanks to MichaelP <papadop@peak.org> for posting this:
The [London] Guardian February 26 1999
Risk of escaped GM food genes
Sarah Hall
GENES from genetically modified foods could evade scientists' control,
"leak out" and infect other organisms, an eminent genetics professor
warned yesterday.
Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College, London, said
evolution was " predictable" and organisms' genetic make up altered
naturally as they developed resistance.
He added: "The genes you put in may actually leak out and get to places
where we can't control them ... Genes can leap in the most extraordinary
and alarming way. There's no reason to say the same thing cannot happen in
genetically modified plants. It only has to happen once. The dangers are
really quite real."
Prof Jones was speaking last night at a Guardian debate - GM Foods: Where
does the truth lie? - at Westminster Central Hall, central London.
Likening the Green movement to Nazism in its reactionary ignorance and
emotiveness, he said he [nevertheless] supported a moratorium on growing
GM crops in Britain.
"I definitely think we need more knowledge before we make the same
mistakes with GM foods that we made with penicillin - and I most clearly
think we should stop doing this until we know more about it," he said.
Guardian columnist and visiting professor at Green College, Oxford, George
Monbiot, warned there was a major gulf between the manufacturers' claim
for GM foods and what they really intended to do: rather than increase
food production in the next century, they would be "the hunger merchants
of the new millennium. "
He said the aim of genetic engineering was to wrest control of "the
biggest commodity market of all - namely food".
........
Biotech firms welcome GMO talks breakdown
ENDS Daily - 25/02/99 -------------------------
European and international biotechnology industry groups have welcomed the
breakdown on Wednesday of talks on an international protocol on trade and
use of live genetically modified organisms (GMOs). According to the
European biotechnology industry association EuropaBio, the biosafety
protocol was so deeply flawed that "it's better to have no protocol".
Paul Muys of the association said that the biotechnology industry would
welcome "a protocol that proved we are serious about maintaining
biodiversity," but that the current proposal would in fact mean "more red
tape and bureaucracy". EuropaBio and other industry groups particularly
object to the demands of some countries that the biosafety protocol should
be given a scope wide enough to cover agricultural commodities, such as
soya and oilseed rape. For several of these genetically modified varieties
are beginning to appear on the market. The international Grain and Feed
Trade Association (Gafta) backed EuropaBio's position on this today, saying
that it did not want a protocol that "gives unnecessary disruption to
trade".
EuropaBio also attacked a proposal for the biosafety protocol to include a
requirement for importing countries to be informed by exporters before any
individual shipment of GMOs covered by the instrument. This would be
"madness," said Mr Muys. EuropaBio and its sister organisation in the USA
are also unhappy with a proposed framework of legal liability under
discussion.
Contacts: EuropaBio (<http://www.europa-bio.be/>http://www.europa-bio.be),
tel: +32 2 735 03, Gafta (<http://www.gafta.com/>http://www.gafta.com),
tel: +44 171 814 9666
.......
Daily Express 25 Feb 99
BY JOHN INGHAM
ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
THE floodgates for unrestricted global trade in genetically modified food
were thrown open last night after Mr Clintonis personal intervention.
Talks at the UNis Biosafety Protocol in Colombia broke down after a US-led
coalition of pro-GM countries blocked restrictions on trade. Delegates from
two EU countries revealed that the President had called their governments
in a bid to persuade them to agree weak regulations. The talks, attended by
more than 150 nations, were intended to lay down worldwide rules allowing
countries to say no to GM crops.
In Britain, Tony Blairis defence of GM food was in crisis after council
leaders voted to ban it from schools, care homes and staff canteens. The
public protection committee of. the Local Government Association voted
60-0. Downing Street officials arranged an emergency meeting after the
Prime Minister ihit the roofi over revelations in The Express that the
association was set to act.
"Our message is that all the GM foods on sale are perfectly safe to eat"
said a No 10 official.
.........
UK seed merchant confirms huge commercial opportunity for non-gm foods
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 22:02:31 -0000
Hampshire seed merchant Robin Appel was interviewed this week by the
British "Independent" newspaper (20 February 1999) about a new variety of
non-genetically modified soya his company has developed for growing in the
UK. Robin Appel confirmed the huge commercial opportunities for UK
businesses being generated by consumer demand for food sources which are
not genetically modified.
.........
NDIAN SUPREME COURT NOTICE GIVEN TO MONSANTO
OTC 23.02.99 10:37
NEW DELHI, Feb 23, 1999 (Asia Pulse via COMTEX) -- India's Supreme Court
(SC) has notified the federal government and life sciences multinational
Monsanto on the grounds of a violation of environmental laws that regulate
genetic engineering.
The SC's notice is in response to a writ petition filed by Delhi-based NGO
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) against
illegal trials conducted by Monsanto on genetically engineered Bacillus
Thuringensis (Bt) cotton.
Monsanto has been under scrutiny since it tied up with Maharashtra Seed
Company MAHYCO in June last to conduct trials in nine states for
genetically engineered cotton. The petitioner has requested a moratorium on
commercial sales and distribution of seeds and crops while strict
ecological test designs and environmental regulations are formulated. RFSTE
also asked the Court to declare the August 1998 guidelines framed by the
Department of Biotechnology as Ultra Vires.
Monsanto was also sued in England and lost the case, an RFTSE statement
said. The UK government is said to have announced a two-year ban on
commercial planting of genetically engineered plants. (PTI)
.........
Some things in the US that are GE
These big-name products include genetically modified ingredients:
Coca-Cola (corn syrup and/or Aspartame), Fritos (corn), Green Giant Harvest
Burgers (soy), McDonald's french fries (potatoes), Nestle's chocolate
(soy), Karo corn syrup (corn), NutraSweet (Aspartame), Kraft salad
dressings (canola oil), Fleishmann's margarine (soy), Similac infant
formula (soy), Land o' Lakes butter (rBGH), Cabot Creamery Butter (rBGH).
If you want to avoid genetically modified products entirely, stay away from
non-organic tomatoes, potatoes, corn, soy, canola and yellow squash. Avoid
corn syrup and fructose--which are in almost all beverages and sodas (even
health food brands) and in almost all sweet products, yogurt and aspirin.
Avoid non-organic corn oil, cornstarch, corn meal, baking soda, baking
powder, glycose syrup. Avoid soy; soy flour in baked goods, pizza, cookies,
cakes, pasta; fillers in meat products (for example Big Macs), vegetarian
meat substitutes (for example tofu, tofu burgers, tofu hot dogs), soy milk,
infant formula, babyfoods; diet and protein shakes, protein bars; chocolate
and candy bars; margarine; ice cream; pet food; soy oil in salad dressings
and snack chips; soy sauce; lecithin and soy lecithin. In all, well over
30,000 products.
Aspartame--the artificial sweetener Equal or NutraSweet--contains a
genetically engineered enzyme, as do most non-organic cheeses. Amylase
(used in making bread, flour, whole wheat flour, cereals, starch), Catalase
(used in making soft drinks, egg whites, liquid whey) and Lactase are all
genetically altered. Most livestock and commercial seafood are being fed
genetically modified feed. Commercial pork has been genetically altered
with DNA from human beings.
Data from: Phillip Frazer and Annie Berthold-Bond, editors, NEWS ON EARTH,
December, 1998, pg. 4. NEWS ON EARTH [ISSN 1099-0054] is a high-quality
environmental newsletter published monthly; write them at 175 Fifth Avenue,
Ste. 2245, NY, NY 10010; or noe@newslet.com; or phone (212) 741-2365.
_________________________________________________________
Richard Wolfson, PhD
Consumer Right to Know Campaign,
for Mandatory Labelling and Long-term
Testing of all Genetically Engineered Foods,
500 Wilbrod Street
Ottawa, ON Canada K1N 6N2
tel. 613-565-8517 fax. 613-565-1596
email: rwolfson@concentric.net
Our website, http://www.natural-law.ca/genetic/geindex.html
contains more information on genetic engineering as well as
previous genetic engineering news items
Subscription fee to genetic engineering news is $35 for 12 months
See website for details.
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