The MONSANTO MONSTER
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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From wikipedia:
The Monsanto Company is a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as "Roundup".
Monsanto is also by far the leading producer of genetically engineered (GE) seed, holding 70%–100% market share for various crops. Agracetus, owned by Monsanto, exclusively produces Roundup Ready soybean seed for the commercial market.
In March 2005, it finalized the purchase of Seminis Inc, making it also the largest conventional seed company in the world. It has over 16,000 employees worldwide, and an annual revenue of US$7.344 billion reported for 2006.
Monsanto's development and marketing of genetically engineered seed and bovine growth hormone, as well as its aggressive litigation and political lobbying practices, have made the company controversial around the world and a primary target of the anti-globalization movement and environmental activists. While other chemical and biotech multinationals face similar criticisms, Monsanto tends to be targeted more routinely and more strongly. Some activists have referred to Monsanto's products as frankenfoods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
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May 5, 2009
German court rejects Monsanto plea
to end GMO maize ban
HAMBURG, May 5 (Reuters) - A German court on Tuesday rejected an urgent application from U.S. biotech company Monsanto to end Germany's ban on cultivation of Monsanto maize containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, had requested an urgent decision to lift the ban imposed on April 14 by German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner stopping cultivation and commercial sale of Monanto's MON 810 GMO maize which prevented it being sown for this year's harvest.
The court in Braunschweig in north Germany rejected an application for an emergency ruling to overturn Aigner's decision so as to allow sowings for the 2009 crop....
A statement from the court said Germany's law on GMOs laid down that a ban on a new plant variety did not need to be justified by proven scientific research which showed without doubt the crop to be dangerous.
It was enough when research showed there were indications that the crop could be dangerous, the court said....
MON 810 GMO maize is resistant to the corn borer, a moth whose caterpillars damage maize plantings, reducing yields.
The court statement added: "There is no proven scientific evidence that the genetic maize could lead to increased danger to the environment."
"But new studies could indicate that the poisonous substance (generated by genetic mutation) could not only have an impact on the pests which it is aimed at combating, but also on other insects."
On April 27, Aigner allowed open air test cultivation of a potato containing GMOs developed by German chemicals group BASF, saying trials presented no threat to public health or the environment.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan; Editing by Keiron Henderson)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL558166220090505?sp=true
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It’ll blow your mind!
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From Conscious Choice, May 1999:
FRANKENFOODS
by Liane Clorfene-Casten
Like a Celtic sea monster emerging from the depths of a brackish Scottish lake, the footprints of bio-engineered and sterile seeds populating the world have become the focus of international debates, lawsuits, and activist campaigns that will not disappear very soon. The bio- engineering story could become the agricultural issue of the next decade.
In the center of it all is multinational giant Monsanto, the biggest player in the field right now.
But Monsanto is not alone in its efforts to spread bio-engineered and sterile seeds across the globe. It is aided by the White House, the Department of Commerce, the Secretary of State, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshevsky and an economic policy that puts free trade and corporate control ahead of all other concerns.
The FrankenFood Method
Genetic engineering is an artificial laboratory technique that allows scientists to cut, join, and transfer genes between totally unrelated living things. Scientists can transfer genetic material from a species of plant, bacteria, virus, animal, or fish into another species with which it will not naturally breed.
Unlike normal methods of reproduction or traditional crossbreeding, genetic engineers can create combinations of genes that would never occur naturally. Some crops have been engineered to make them resistant to weed killers; others produce their own pesticide.
Those who work in the industry insist genetically-engineered (G-E) foods are safe; that G-E foods can increase yields and profits, enhance nutritional value, reduce waste and improve flavor and shelf life. Monsanto claims their products will help eradicate world hunger by making farming easier, more reliable, and thus cheaper.
Some farmers in the U.S. swear by their new Monsanto G-E seeds. Once a farmer plants them, the only weed control that group of crops will need is one produced by Monsanto. Thanks to a bit of gene splicing, soybean, cotton, and canola seeds will grow in spite of that herbicide while weeds all around it will die. The crops are engineered to tolerate Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate.
There are problems; glyphosate is the third most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among farm workers.
According to the Journal of Pesticide Reform, glyphosate is "Acutely toxic to animals, including humans.... Glyphosate-containing products have caused genetic damage in human blood cells, fruit flies, and onion cells; it causes reduced sperm counts in male rats, lengthened estrous cycle in female rats, decreased birth weights in offspring.... Residues in the soil have persisted over a year; damaging or reducing the population of beneficial insects, fish, birds, and earthworms."
Scientists at an American Association for the Advancement of Science forum in May, 1998 warned of the potential risks of agricultural G-E crops. "I've come to believe that the potential power of G-E dwarfs that of nuclear power," said Liebe Cavalieri, professor of Environmental Science at State University of New York at Purchase. "Society should not be carried away with fantasies promised by the biotech promoters."
Ohio State University scientists have found that G-E crops can pass their traits on to nearby weeds via hybridization. These hybrid, transgenic weeds resist the herbicides that were designed to kill them.
What's perhaps more fundamental is that New York scientists have learned that genetically engineered Bt may accumulate in soil. Bt bacteria occurs naturally in some plants, offering them protection from certain insect predators. But natural Bt becomes inactive in soil. Thus, its toxic effects are limited. Genetically engineered Bt binds with clay and humic acid soil particles and does not lose its capacity to kill insects.
The gene beans also contain potential allergens, microbial genes, new proteins and increased chemical residues. Currently, "gene beans" are grown separately from others but are mixed after harvest with conventional soybeans; the company and the U.S. government aggressively refuse to keep them separate.
So far, there are insufficient long-term tests of these products, but if the general public continues to be as unaware as it is, the consequences to public health can be serious.
G-E products interfere with the natural order of nature. When these products are introduced at random into the food supply of an unknowing public, there is no certain cause-and-effect relationship, no identifiable way anyone can say "My allergies are the result of the food I'm eating." (There is no control group.)
Thus, the manufacturer of these products will take no responsibility for their effects.
In fact, the U.S. has been accused of "bullying" foreign governments in order to protect Monsanto's global ambitions. But Monsanto itself is far from clean. One alarming tale is the story of Dr. Arpad Pusztai, a Hungarian-born research scientist now in Aberdeen, Scotland. Front-page headlines in the U.K. told of Dr. Pusztai's suspension from his research post at Rowett Research Institute in August, 1998, ending a distinguished career.
Pusztai found, to his own surprise, that consumption by rats of G-E potatoes had a "profound physiological effect" on their growth and development. Dr Pusztai, a research scientist with a world reputation, has published over 200 papers on lectin, a protein which is a natural insecticide found in the snowdrop flower.
In his 1998 experiments, he fed lectin to rats. The rats who ate potatoes mixed together with lectin suffered no ill effects. But the rats who ate potatoes into which lectin had been genetically engineered became ill.
Pusztai sums up the situation as follows: two harmless substances, potato and lectin, were found to become toxic after genetic modification.
Pusztai is the first world-renowned scientist whose research findings question the use of genetic engineering as a whole, and it is significant that he is, at heart, an advocate of genetic engineering. His experiment had not been done to see if the potatoes were safe as human food, but to devise a way of testing for safety in general, as part of a project set up by the government. The findings surprised Dr Pusztai as much as anyone else.
"I was totally taken aback," Pusztai told the press. "I was absolutely confident that I would not find anything, but the longer I spent on the experiment the more uneasy I became. I believe in the technology. But it is too new for us to be absolutely sure that what we are doing is right."
Pusztai was attacked by "Britain's most august Fellows of the Royal Society," his computers were "sealed," and all data from his experiments was confiscated.
While Pusztai's findings were subsequently duplicated by a panel of 20 other international scientists, he is deeply bitter that he took a fall as the result of corporate pressure. "His firing and the ensuing scientific cover-up by the U.K. government were a direct consequence of ongoing White House pressure on Tony Blair to keep the door open to Monsanto and other biotech companies," said Ronnie Cummins of the Pure Food Campaign.
Dr. Pusztai added, "If anyone dares to say anything even slightly contraindicative, they are vilified and totally destroyed."
Reaction is taking hold -- slowly -- across North America. Lawsuits are being filed, as Monsanto's altered form of Bt (along with Roundup,) has been used in growing cotton with negative results. One U.S. farmer nearly lost his whole crop and is suing Monsanto for $250,000. Almost 200 cotton farmers in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina are suing Monsanto for damages after crop failures on both Monsanto's Bt and Roundup Ready cotton seeds.
Twenty-five Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana farmers are suing Monsanto for fraud and misrepresentation -- thanks to Bt cotton failures. Monsanto and Delta and Pine Land Company were forced through legal proceedings to pay more than $1.9 million to three Mississippi cotton farmers who planted Roundup Ready cotton seed that was defective. Other Mississippi farmers settled privately.
On February 18, an international coalition of public interest organizations, led by attorneys from the Center for Food Safety, filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. to have all Bt crops taken off the market, citing hazards to the environment and public health.
Last May, the CFS sued the FDA to have all G-E foods taken off the market on the grounds that they are neither properly labeled nor safety-tested. Lack of mandatory labeling illegally restricts the freedom of choice of those who would choose, on religious or ethical grounds, to avoid G-E foods.
But Monsanto is fighting back. Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer who has been farming his fertile acres his whole life, is being sued by Monsanto for what the company calls "seed piracy." It's a landmark case; the outcome could influence how much control biotech companies will have over the world's food supply for years.
Schmeiser is one of hundreds of farmers in the U.S. and Canada who are accused by Monsanto of replanting the company's patented gene-altered seeds in violation of a three-year-old company rule requiring that farmers buy the seeds fresh every year.
He denies having bought Monsanto seeds, saying pollen or seeds must have blown onto his farm. He accuses the company of harassment.
Why? Pinkerton detectives are sent into farmers' fields, and the company sponsors a toll-free "tip-line" to help farmers blow the whistle on their neighbors. It places radio ads broadcasting the names of non-compliant growers caught planting the company's seeds. Critics say these tactics are fraying the social fabric that holds farming communities together.
(UPDATE: Not surprising when a small farmer climbs a Genetically-Engineered beanstalk and takes on a giant corporation in court: Monsanto won the lawsuit!)
Schmesier's story is the tip of the iceberg. A bill has been introduced in the Ohio state legislature that would require registration and state-level regulation of any farmer who cleans or conditions self-pollinated seed. According to the Rural Advancement Foundation International, the proposed legislation is part of Monsanto's aggressive corporate strategy to police rural communities and intimidate seed-saving farmers.
The proposal to amend Ohio's seed law originated with Monsanto in 1998. Under U.S. patent law, it is illegal for farmers to save patented seed. To enforce its exclusive monopoly, Monsanto has aggressively prosecuted farmers for "seed piracy." Usually the seed saving is illegal only if the farmer is saving or re-using patented seed.
If this bill becomes law, it would require seed cleaners to keep detailed records on every seed cleaning transaction, to document the name of the farmer, seed variety names, and whether or not the seed is protected by patents or breeders' rights. Thus, the bill discriminates against farmers who are lawfully saving and re-planting their own non-patented seeds. And the bill would shift expenses and the burden of policing rural communities to the seed cleaners and state governments.
Currently, it's estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the foods in U.S. stores contain G-E components.
The FDA projects that 100-150 new G-E products will hit the market by the year 2000. These foods have not been subjected to thorough, pre-market safety testing, nor are they labeled.
(FDA has worked with Monsanto and other G-E companies in keeping consumers in the dark about what is in their foods.)
Soybeans, cotton, canola, corn (ten varieties), potatoes, yellow crookneck squash, radicchio, and tomatoes (five varieties) are already on the list of G-E products which unknowing consumers eat.
Big name products such as Coca-Cola (corn syrup or Aspartame), Fritos, 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), and Cabot Creamery Butter (rBGH) - all include G-E ingredients.
G-E foods represent 30 percent of all soy grown in the U.S and over a quarter of the maize. G-E cotton crops now comprise 45 percent of all cotton.
Monsanto now controls ten percent of the global seed supply and its share is growing rapidly.
Monsanto has been in the process of buying up as many seed companies as it can afford. So far, it has bought Holden's Foundation Seeds, Asgrow Agronomics, De Kalb, Delta, Pine Land, and Cargill (joint venture.)
The company owns 85 percent of all the U.S. cottonseed market alone.
Acquisition price so far: $8 billion in the last two years. So far, the Justice Department has closed a blind eye to this chemical monopoly.
Monsanto predicts that by the year 2000, nearly 100 percent of U.S. soybeans (60 million acres) will be genetically modified.
If the corporation and the U.S. have their way, there's every reason to suggest that over a period of time, every crop in the world can and will be altered and patented.
Anyone for fasting?
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New From Monsanto:
T e r m i n a t o r
T e c h n o l o g y
In March, 1998, Delta and Pine Land Company (purchased by Monsanto that year), in collaboration with the USDA, was awarded U.S. patent number 5,723,765: Control of Plant Gene Expression.
Although the patent is broad and covers many applications, the one application that most attracts these biotech companies is the one that the Rural Advancement Foundation in 1998 dubbed the "terminator technology."
The terminator patent aims at engineering crops to kill their own seeds in the second generation, making it impossible for farmers to save and replant seeds. Each farmer who buys terminator seeds from Monsanto will have to return to that company to buy next year's seeds. Critics call this technology a blatant act of control.
While the final plans for terminator technology are not yet in force (and some scientists suggests the international uproar may keep these plans from being fully implemented), the environmental consequences of these technologies are not fully understood.
Still, several problems already have been identified. For example, the terminator gene is likely to "drift." That is, under certain conditions, it can kill seeds of neighboring plants from the same species, becoming a potential problem for the farmer whose fields are close to the terminator crop. If enough normal seeds die, the farmer next door may not be able to save his or her own seeds.
In addition, scientists speculate that the seeds may have an impact on birds, insects, fungi, and bacteria that eat the seeds.
Other issues related to genetic engineering also apply. Scientists do not yet know how these seeds will affect the ecology of soil organisms; whether they will provoke allergic reactions, or how the effects of these seeds can be distinguished and measured, once they're released into the general population.
These are troubling issues; but they hardly surface in the U.S. news. Watch international news reports to catch a glimmer of the international reaction to these technologies. -- Liane Clorfene-Casten
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Genetically Modified Nightmares
One of the biggest fears of the natural products industry recently became reality when the first known instance of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) contamination of a U.S. organic product was discovered.
A European importer was forced to destroy an entire shipment of certified organic chips from the U.S. after they were genetically tested by Dutch importers and determined to have traces of GMOs.
The contaminated chips, manufactured by Wisconsin-based company Terra Prima, Inc., came from certified organic corn grown on a farm in Texas and were processed by a certified organic facility. According to Melodi Nelson, vice-president of Terra Prima, Inc., the problem was not due to fraud or to the audit-trail system, but to cross-pollination. It is believed that corn genetically modified with Bt, a natural pesticide used to kill corn earworms, was responsible for the contamination.
Because genetic testing is expensive, it is currently not part of the organic certification process and is rarely done in the U.S., leaving questions about how many other organic products on the market have genetic contamination. According to estimates, at least 25 percent of U.S. corn is genetically modified.
Terra Prima lost $147,000 by destroying the contaminated chips, and says it will now do genetic testing on all corn before processing. The company will refuse corn with contamination of more than one part per thousand by weight. They have also joined the Center for Food Safety and other concerned groups, including Greenpeace, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture, and organic farmers from 21 states in filing suit against the EPA to stop the Bt genetic engineering.
The contamination incident could be devastating to the organic industry, whose growth in part has been due to consumers wanting GMO-free products. It also has raised concerns as to how much genetic contamination will be allowed by proposed organic regulations.
"Genetically engineered crops are a threat to farmers, consumers, and the environment," said Charles Margulis, a Greenpeace genetic engineering specialist.
"The evidence overwhelmingly backs our concerns, yet the [EPA] refuses to act. The threat to farmers and the environment is imminent and requires immediate action." -- James Faber
See also: World Trade Organization
From : "Sam Anderson" <ebontek@earthlink.net>
To : blackliberationlist@topica.com brc-discuss@lists.tao.ca soa@yahoogroups.com SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE@LIST.UVM.EDU
CC : AfricansForCuba-owner@yahoogroups.com pawlo@imul.com
Subject : THE MONSANTO AMENDMENT In The Indian Patent Act
Date : 29 May 2002
NOTE: An important read on the rapid monopoly capitalist control of literally "the stuff of life" seeds:
THE MONSANTO AMENDMENT
THE REAL REASONS FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT
OF THE INDIAN PATENT ACT
by Dr. Vandana Shiva
India has amended its Patent Act for the second time since TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) came into force. The first amendment was to introduce exclusive marketing rights and mail box arrangement to implement Act 70.8 and 70.9 of TRIPS.
Why has the second amendment of the Indian Patent Act been rushed through in spite of the double national emergency -- the Gujarat genocide, and the spread of terrorism, and an impending war?
The issue is clearly not product patents in medicine, since these will in any way not be granted until 2005.
The major change in the patent regime achieved through the second amendment is not in the area of medicines and drugs but in the area of seeds and plants, especially genetically engineered seeds.
Methods of agriculture and plants were excluded from patentability in the Indian patent act to ensure that seed, the first link in the food chain was held as a common properly resource in the public domain and farmers inalienable right to save, exchange and improve seed was not violated.
There are two amendments in the definition of what is not an invention that has opened the floodgates of patenting of genetically engineered seed.
First, in Section 3(i) "plants" have been omitted.
According to Section 3(i), the following is not an invention:
>> Any process for the medical, surgical, creative, prophylactic or other treatment of human beings or any process for a similar treatment of animals or plants or render them free of disease or to increase their economic value or that of their products.
The omission of "plants" from this section implies that a method or process modification of a plant can now be counted as an invention and can hence be patented. Thus the method of producing Bt. cotton by introducing genes of a bacterium Bacillus thurengensis in cotton to produce toxins to kill the bollworm can now be covered by the exclusive rights associated with patents. In other words, Monsanto can now have Bt. cotton patents in India. The Amendment of 3(i) is clearly a Monsanto Amendment.
The Second Amendment has also added a new section (3j). This is also a Monsanto Amendment since it allows production or propagation of genetically engineered plants to be counted as an invention, and hence patentable. The section 3 (j) excludes as inventions "plants and animals……..including seeds, varieties and species and essentially biological processes for production or propagation of plants and animals".
However, the emergence of new biotechnologies is often used to define production of plants and animals through genetic engineering as not being essentially biological. Without a clear definition that all modifications of plants and animals, is essentially biological, 3(j) allows patents on GMOs patentability and hence opens the flood gate for patenting transgenic plants. The language of 3(j) is a verbatim translation of Article 27.3 (b) of TRIPs into India law. Article 27.3(b) of TRIPS states:
>> Parties may exclude from patentability plants and animals other than micro-organisms, and essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals other than non-biological and microbiological processes. However, parties shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents of by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof. This provision shall be reviewed four years after the entry into force of the Agreement establishing the WTO.
It is not surprising that the Monsanto Amendments have been made in India's patent laws according to TRIPS. After all Monsanto had a hand in drafting the TRIPS agreement.
James Enyart of Monsanto had said that the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) of the MNCs drafted TRIPS.
Once created, the first task of the IPC was to repeat the missionary work we did in the U.S. in the early days, this time with the industrial associations of Europe and Japan to convince them that a code was possible…. We consulted many interest groups during the whole process. It was not an easy task but our Trilateral Group was able to distill from the laws of the more advanced countries the fundamental principles for protecting all forms of intellectual property…
Besides selling our concepts at home, we went to Geneva where [we] presented [our] document to the staff of the GATT Secretariat. We also took the opportunity to present it to the Geneva based representatives of a large number of countries… What I have described to you is absolutely unprecedented in GATT. Industry has identified a major problem for international trade. It crafted a solution, reduced it to a concrete proposal and sold it to our own and other governments…
The industries and traders of world commerce have played simultaneously the role of patients, the diagnosticians and the prescribing physicians.
Having played patient, doctor and diagnostician, all in one, at the international level, Monsanto is now doing it at the national level.
In the process it has made the [Indian] government undo its own position in WTO in the TRIPS review. Article 27.3 (b) has been under review since 2000. The whole of TRIPs council has to undertake review of TRIPS "in the light of any relevant new developments which might warrant modification or amendment of this Agreement."
As a result of sustained public pressure, after the agreement came into force in 1995 many Third World countries made recommendations for changes in Article 27.3 (b) to prevent biopiracy. India in its discussion paper submitted to the TRIPs Council stated:
>> Patenting of life forms may have at least two dimensions. Firstly, there is the ethical question of the extent of private ownership that could be extended to life forms. The second dimension relates to the use of IPRs' concept as understood in the industrialized world and its appropriateness in the face of the larger dimension of rights on knowledge, their ownership, use, transfer and dissemination. Informal system, e.g. the shrutis and in the Indian tradition and grandmother's portions all over the world get scant recognition. To create systems that fail to address this issue can have severe adverse consequences on mankind, some say even leading to extinction.
Clearly there is a case for re-examining the need to grant patents on life forms anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile, it may be advisable to:
1. Exclude patents on all life forms.
2. If (1) is not possible then exclude patents based on traditional/indigenous knowledge and essentially derived products and processes from such knowledge.
3. Or at least insist on the disclosure of the country of origin of the biological source and associated knowledge, and obtain the consent of the country providing the resource and knowledge, to ensure an equitable sharing of benefits.
A global movement is calling for a ban on patents on life and recovering of the generic basis of life as "commons" which cannot be owned and privatised.
Instead of W.T.O. being amended, the introduction of 3(j), contradicts the governments position in W.T.O. It is also an amendment introduced under Monsanto pressure and is hence most appropriately described as a Monsanto amendment. This was necessary for Monsanto because without patents it cannot harvest super profits from its Bt. cotton.
On 26th March 2002, Monsanto was successful in getting a clearance for commercial planting of Bt. cotton through the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC).
A few months prior, Monsanto had used the same GEAC to order the burning and destruction of 11,000 hectares of cotton planted in Gujarat under the Navbharat 151 variety which was found to have the Bt. gene by Monsanto. The GEAC had recommended the destruction through burning of the standing cotton crop on the ground of its potential to "cause an irreversible change in the environment structure of the soil", danger to "environment and human health and to obviate any possibility of cross pollination" as well as the fact that "the precautionary principles would require that no product, the effect of which is unknown be put into the market stream".
Specifically, on the issue of commercialization, the GEAC had stated:
>> This cotton which in appearance is no different from any other cotton will intermingle with ordinary cotton and it will become impossible to contain its adverse affect. The only remedy is to destroy the cotton as well as the seeds produced and harvested in this manner.
If the destruction of the Gujarat cotton was on grounds of Biosafety, Monsanto should not have been granted clearance on 26th March. If the destruction was not related to Biosafety, then it was related to intellectual property monopolies of destroying seeds sold by a competitor. Since prior to the 2nd Amendment of the Patent Act, Monsanto could not use intellectual property rights to have Navbharat seeds destroyed, it used the GEAC to destroy the crop on grounds of Biosafety.
On 26th March 2002, it used GEAC to gets its own Biosafety clearance for Bt. cotton. However, if Monsanto's Bt. cotton is now deemed to be safe and Navbharat's Bt. cotton would have to be declared safe, and hundreds of Navbharats would multiply and sell Bt. cotton seeds, undercutting Monsanto's market monopoly.
To prevent competitors from selling seeds and to prevent farmers from saving seeds, Monsanto has now turned to the patent laws to get monopoly rights. The Monsanto Amendments of India's patent laws are a logical consequence of the clearance for the commercial planting of GMOs in Indian agriculture.
Corporations like Monsanto genetically manipulate seeds to get control over seed sector not to help farmers. If the seeds could be freely reproduced and patented, Monsanto's monopolies would not have been established.
Patents on seeds are a necessary aspect of corporate deployment of GM seeds and crops. When combined with the ecological risks of genetically engineered seed like Bt. cotton, patents on seeds create a context of total control over the seed sector, and hence over our food and agricultural security.
This is why China has banned foreign investment in the area of genetically modified seed.
Later, there are 3 ways in why the 2nd Amendment of the Patent Laws jeopardised our seed and food security and hence our national security.
Firstly, it allows patents on seeds and plants through 3(i) and 3(j). Patents are monopolies and exclusive rights which will prevent farmers from saving seeds and seed companies from producing seeds. Patents on seed transform seed saving into an "intellectual property crime".
Secondly, since genetic pollution is inevitable, and the condition of 2% refugia in the GEAC clearance is a recognition of the inevitability of genetic pollution, Monsanto will use the patents + pollution to claim ownership of crops on farmers fields where the Bt. gene reached through wind or pollinators.
This has been established as precedence in the case of a Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser whose canola field was contaminated by Monsanto's Round up Ready Canola, but instead of Monsanto paying Percy on the basis of the polluter principle, Monsanto demanded $200,000 fine for "theft" of Monsanto's "intellectual property".
Thousands of U.S. farmers have also been sued. Will Indian farmers be blamed for theft when Monsanto's GM cotton contaminates their crops? Or will the government wake up and enforce strict monitoring and liability?
Finally, the emergence of resistance in pests like Bollworm and creation of super pests is another inevitable consequence of Bt. cotton. Monsanto's research strategy of "gene pyramiding" is an acceptance of the creations of super pests. As super pests spread, farmers will be forced to turn to Monsanto for seed supply and hence will be trapped in Monsanto's patent monopoly.
The Monsanto Amendments of the Patent Act run counter to Section 3(h) of the Act with excludes methods of agriculture from patentability. Will 3(h) guide the rejection of Monsanto Bt. patents or will Monsanto once again subvert law and democracy and claim patents on Bt. cotton?
The humble cotton inspired India's movement, for independence through the Charkha and Khadi. In the age of globalisation and biotechnology, the future of the freedom of Indian people is once again linked to the fate of cotton.
Will India and her farmers and cotton be enslaved by Monsanto patents, or will the freedom of plants and freedom of peasants be defended and protected? These are the issues raised by the Second Amendment of the Patent Act.
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Thank you Brother Malik for your mention of the Work of The Minister General and it's impact on The GLOBAL Black Nation.
- sons of afrika
For more on the WTO, GO TO > > > The World Trade Organization
September 20, 1999
Bad Seeds
The battle heats up between the U.S. and Europe
over genetically engineered crops
BY JEFFREY KLUGER
The folks at McDonald's could not have expected an especially warm reception in France, but the manure in the parking lots still must have taken them by surprise.
For the past month it's been hard to visit a McDonald's anywhere in France without running the risk of encountering mountains of fresh manure - as well as not-so-fresh fruit and vegetables - dumped in front of the restaurants by protesting farmers.
There's a lot about McDonald's that angers the farmers - its sameness, its blandness, the culinary hegemony it represents - yet at the outset the demonstrations were remarkably genteel, with protesters occupying restaurants and offering customers an alternative meal of baguettes stuffed with cheese or foie gras.
But lately things have turned nasty. Protesters are finding ever more to dislike about the uniquely American food - especially the very genes that make the McDonald's beef or bun or potato what it is.
Around the world people are taking a closer look at the genetic makeup of what they're eating - and growing uneasy with what they see.
Over the past decade, genetically modified (GM) food has become an increasingly common phenomenon as scientists have rewoven the genes of countless fruits and vegetables, turning everyday crops into uber-crops able to resist frost, withstand herbicides and even produce their own pesticides. In all, more than 4,500 GM plants have been tested, and at least 40 - including 13 varieties of corn, 11 varieties of tomatoes and four varieties of soybeans - have cleared government reviews.
For biotech companies such as Monsanto, based in the U.S., and Novartis AG, based in Switzerland, the rise of GM technology has meant boom times. Sales of GM seeds rose in value from $75 million in 1995 to $1.5 billion last year, and the crops they produce are turning up not only on produce shelves but also in processed foods from cookies to potato chips to baby food.
But many people question whether it's a good idea for fallible human beings to go mucking about with the genes of other species. It's one thing if a scientific experiment goes wrong in a lab, they say, but something else entirely if it winds up on your dinner plate.
To date, there's nothing to suggest that re-engineered plants have ever done anyone any harm. Nonetheless, the European Union has blocked the importation of some GM crops, and since 1997 has required that foods that contain engineered DNA be labeled as such.
Plenty of trade watchers in Washington see the European actions as one more tweak from an increasingly powerful E.U. no longer intimidated by U.S. economic might. While that may be, the fact remains that the U.S. Congress may address a labeling bill of its own later this year, and some private groups are threatening lawsuits to force the issue.
Even without legal action, public opinion is turning a more skeptical eye on GM technology.
"The farmers in France are right," observes Dennis Kucinich, a House Democrat from Cleveland, Ohio, who stumbled across the GM food issue this year, and is turning it into something of a cause. "There's nothing more personal than food."...
For all the controversy that GM technology is causing, the fact is that biotech companies have succeeded in dreaming up some extraordinary plants. Monsanto, which produces the hugely popular herbicide Roundup, has made just as big a hit with its line of genetically modified crops that are immune to the Roundup poison - thanks to a gene that company scientists tweezed out of the common petunia and knitted into their food plants....
Such souped-up plants are understandably popular with farmers, for whom even a slight increase in yield can mean a big increase in profits. Last year in the U.S., 35% of the soy crop and 42% of the cotton crop were grown with GM seeds. Says Karen Marshall, a Monsanto spokeswoman: "These really do work and have tremendous benefits to growers."
But what happens when they don't work? Several years ago, a company developed a soybean with some genetic threads borrowed from the Brazil nut in an attempt to boost the bean's amino-acid content. The soy began acting like the nut - so much so that it churned out not just amino acids but also chemicals that can trigger allergies in nut-sensitive consumers. The company quickly scrapped the product.
Last May a study published by Cornell University showed that pollen from some strains of corn with built-in pesticides can kill the larva of the Monarch butterfly, a pest by nobody's standards.
"When butterflies start dying," says Kucinich, "I think it's fair to start asking questions."
Overseas, they have been asking them for some time. In recent years Europeans have become increasingly jumpy about bad food - and with good reason. Since the outbreak of mad-cow disease in 1996, the appearance of dioxin-contaminated Belgian chickens last May and the later recall of contaminated cans of Coca-Cola in France and the Benelux nations, health officials have grown fussier about what their citizens consume.
Since 1990 the E.U. has approved the sale of 18 GM products. (The U.S. Government views GM components in foods as mere additives and thus does not require the Food and Drug Administration to approve them. Instead, it subjects them to a less formal review, a relatively low bar that's easy to clear.) This year the E.U. banned the importation of nonapproved GM corn.
In the U.S., GM strains are mixed with ordinary strains, so the country's entire corn export to Europe was effectively outlawed.
"Until we have new rules, we don't want new substances released," says Jurgen Trittin, Germany's Environment Minister. "It's a de facto moratorium."
But one country's moratorium is another country's protectionism, and the U.S. is suspicious of Europe's actions. Tension between the U.S. and the E.U. was already running high recently after Europe decided to continue a ban on hormone-raised U.S. beef and the U.S. hit back with a 100% tariff on some E.U. food exports.
Coming in the midst of such a catfight, the GM ban looks like vengeance as much as prudence. What's more, if Europe is so worried about GM foods, why is it growing them? France produces its own small crop of GM corn and uses more of the stuff than any other country in Europe.
The transatlantic food fight will probably be high on the agenda of the World Trade Organization when it meets in November - good news for companies like Monsanto. Two years ago, chief executive Robert Shapiro gambled big on biotech, spinning off the company's chemical division to focus on the new science.
While the move made Monsanto a Wall Street darling for a while, investors aren't as sweet on it anymore. A year ago, Monsanto stock perched at a lofty 63; today it's mired in the upper 30s.
U.S. companies are not alone. In Europe, investors are backing off as biotech firms buckle under the pressure of public opinion.
In July, Deutsche Bank - Europe's biggest bank - published a report advising large institutional investors to avoid companies involved in the development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs):
"We predict that GMOs, once perceived as the driver of the bull case for this sector, will now be perceived as a pariah."
Swiss biotech giant Novartis has seen its share price dive 30% since January, and smaller firms are more vulnerable.
This month saw the first significant corporate casualty when Axis Genetics - a British company which makes vaccines from GM plants - was forced into receivership.
That news coincided with a survey of 1,000 British consumers by market research company Mintel which showed GM foods had overtaken madcow disease as the public's number one food safety concern.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the most GM foes can hope to push through an agri-friendly Congress is a proposal for voluntary labeling that biotech companies would be free to honor or ignore. In a demand-driven market, however, they would ignore it at their peril.
In Europe the Gerber baby-food company, a division of Novartis, gave in to anti-GM sentiments and announced that its products would no longer contain genetically modified ingredients.
"This decision was not a safety issue," insists Novartis spokesman Mark Hill, "but rather a response to preferences expressed by our consumers."
Not for the last time, to be sure, it's consumers who will have the final word.
~ ~ ~
26% of the U.S. corn crop was grown from genetically changed seeds last year
30% of U.S. dairy cows are injected with the recombinant bovine growth hormone, which boosts production of milk. The hormone is made with genetically engineered bacteria
35% of the 1998 U.S. soybean crop was grown from seeds that had been genetically engineered
75% of all cheeses contain chymosin, which is produced with bacteria that have been genetically engineered
~ ~ ~
What's for Dinner?
There's a lot more than seasoning in your food. Everything from meat to fruit to baby food is developed with the aid of genetic manipulation. Since the U.S. government sees GM components as mere additives, they require little government oversight. Even the simplest meal is loaded with small DNA tricks:
APPETIZER
Some tomato juice is made from tomatoes containing enzymes from Arctic flounder - an attempt to help crops withstand low temperatures
ENTREE
Pork loins could come from hogs treated with human-growth hormones to help them get bigger faster
Potatoes could include genes from the Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring bacterium toxic to insects
Squash may be inoculated with watermelon- and zucchini-virus genes to make the squash virus resistant
The corn in corn bread and other foods could contain a firefly gene, providing a phosphorescent marker to tag other implanted genes
DESSERT
The milk in that innocent-looking rice pudding may have been drawn from cows treated with genetically engineered bovine growth hormone to help boost milk production
- Reported by James Carney and Dick Thompson/Washington; Bruce Crumley/Paris; and Maggie Sieger/Chicago
The BGH Scandals--The Incredible Story of Jane Akre & Steve Wilson (Part 1)
PR Watch, Volume 7, No. 4, Fourth Quarter 2000
Flack Attack
In our Second Quarter 1998 issue, PR Watch wrote about TV investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, who were fired after refusing to go along with misleading alterations to their story about Monsanto's genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone.
Akre and Wilson recently won a landmark whistleblower lawsuit against the station that fired them, yet their former network continues its legal efforts to reverse the ruling and crush them financially. In this issue, we are honored to publish Jane Akre's firsthand account of her experiences standing up to corporate and media powers that have tried to silence them.
Journalists everywhere should take a close look at this case and its implications. If the Fox network and Monsanto get away with destroying the careers of these two seasoned reporters, the same thing can happen to anyone who tries to stand up for a story that they believe in. With few resources other than the courage of their convictions, Akre and Wilson have struggled to place issues before the public that otherwise would remain hidden from view. In addition to their battle in the courts, they have used the skills they honed in the newsroom to fight back in the court of public opinion.
They have created a website ( www.foxBGHsuit.com ) that includes a downloadable video of their suppressed news story, plus court documents and other facts about their case. We encourage you to visit their website and, in light of their continuing financial struggles, to consider making a donation to their cause.
We hope that after reading their story, you will also share it with others and help get the word out. The public needs to inform itself and take action when the news media fails to do its job properly, and this is an egregious example....
~ ~ ~
Don't Ask, Don't Tell: The Story We Weren't Allowed to Air
by Jane Akre
The truth is, only Monsanto really knows how many U.S. farmers are presently using their recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). The company persistently refuses to release sales figures but claims it has now become the largest-selling dairy animal drug in America. The chemical giant's secretive operations were part of what made the story of rBGH such a compelling one for me to explore as an investigative reporter.
In late 1996, my husband Steve Wilson and I were hired as investigative journalists for the Fox-owned television station in Tampa, Florida. Looking for projects to pursue, I soon learned that millions of Americans and their children who consume milk from rBGH-treated cows have unwittingly become participants in what amounts to a giant public health experiment.
Despite promises from grocers that they would not buy rBGH milk "until it gains widespread acceptance," I discovered and carefully documented how those promises were quietly broken immediately after they were made three years earlier. I also learned that health concerns raised by scientists around the world have never been settled, and indeed, the product has been outlawed or shunned in every other major industrialized country on the planet.
Clearly, there is not "widespread acceptance" of rBGH, not in 1996 when I began my research, and not today. By any standard, it was a solid story, but little did I know that it would become the last story of my 19-year broadcast journalism career and the heart of a dispute that could nearly destroy me and my family.
Even if you ask directly, "How much of your milk comes from cows injected with an artificial growth hormone?" We discovered that you are still likely to be misled or lied to today.
Steve helped me gather and produce a TV report based on the information we discovered. The investigation began with random visits to seven farms to determine whether and how widely rBGH was being used in Florida. I confirmed its use at every one of the seven farms I visited, and then I discovered what amounted to an ingenious public relations campaign that seemed to have succeeded in keeping consumers in the dark....
~ ~ ~
Who Is the Dairy Coalition?
by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
Created by the PR and lobby firm of Capitoline/ MS&L with funding from the National Milk Producers Federation, the Dairy Coalition is composed of business, government and non-profit groups, including university researchers funded by Monsanto as well as other carefully selected "third party" experts.
Dick Weiss, director of the Dairy Coalition, now works with former Monsanto rBGH lobbyist Carol Tucker Foreman at the Consumer Federation of America.
Dairy Coalition participants include:
The International Food Information Council, which calls itself "a non-profit organization that disseminates sound, scientific information on food safety and nutrition to journalists, health professionals, government officials and consumers."
In reality, IFIC is a public relations arm of the food and beverage industries, which provide the bulk of its funding. Its staff members hail from industry groups such as the Sugar Association and the National Soft Drink Association, and it has repeatedly led the defense for controversial food additives including monosodium glutamate, aspartame (Nutrasweet), food dyes, and olestra.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, the powerful conservative lobby behind the movement to pass food disparagement laws like the one under which Oprah Winfrey was sued in Texas.
The American Dietetic Association, a national association of registered dietitians that works closely with IFIC and hauls in large sums of money advocating for the food industry. Its stated mission is to "improve the health of the public," but with 15 percent of its budget--more than $3 million--coming from food companies and trade groups, it has learned not to bite the hand that feeds it.
"They never criticize the food industry," says Joan Gussow, a former head of the nutrition education program at Teachers College at Columbia University.
The ADA's website even contains a series of "fact sheets" about various food products, sponsored by the same corporations that make them (Monsanto for biotechnology; Procter & Gamble for olestra; Ajinomoto for MSG; the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers for fats and oils).
The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, representing the top executive of every department of agriculture in all 50 states.
The Grocery Manufacturers of America, whose member companies account for more than $460 billion in sales annually. GMA itself is a lobbying powerhouse in Washington, spending $1.4 million for that purpose in 1998 and currently-funding a multi-million-dollar PR campaign for genetically engineered foods. *
The Food Marketing Institute, a trade association of food retailers and wholesalers, whose grocery store members represent three fourths of grocery sales in the United States.
_________________________________________
PR Watch is a publication of the Center for Media & Democracy 520 University Avenue, Suite 310 Madison, WI 53703 phone: (608) 260-9713 fax: 608-260-9714 email: editor@prwatch.org
* * * * *
Catbird Note:
I see that some food companies are now labeling their products "NO GMO" (Genetically Modified Organisms). From now on, my motto when shopping for birdseed is going to be:
"JUST SAY NO TO GMO!"
How about YOU?
* * * * *
THE PELICAN BRIEF
by Robert Cohen
Dear Friends,
THE PELICAN BRIEF. John Grisham wrote the suspense novel. Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington starred in the blockbuster movie.
THE STORY
Two supreme court justices are assassinated so that an evil oil billionaire can petition the president to appoint environmentally unfriendly justices to America's highest court. It's all about politics, multi-national firms, and dollars.
TODAY'S PELICAN BRIEF
Life imitates art.
Here's a jigsaw puzzle, and this column provides the pieces. The finished work merges two art forms, combining political influence with political power. You'll be amazed.
THE SCOOP
Many of you wrote to me...requesting a list of PAC donations made by Monsanto.
Interesting thing has occurred...Nearly one-billion dollars were spent on the elections, and Monsanto is aware that they are under the microscope. Do they stop giving, or do they give in different forms that are not easily observed?
THE PLOT THICKENS
During the 2000 election cycle, Monsanto gave a total of only $63,350 to congress...on the record.
Nobody will ever know what amounts were invested in the form of soft money, cash money, party favors, and gifts. The $63,350 paid to 435 members of Congress, and 100 members of the Senate averages out to $118 per member. Sure. I believe that.
The man receiving the SECOND highest total dollars from Monsanto was Larry Combest (R-TX). He got $2000. Combest is the powerful chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
Who got the most from Monsanto? The winner of the Monsanto sweepstakes with $10,000 was:
John Ashcroft, (R-MO)
Ever hear of the man? You will in the coming weeks during the Senate's confirmation hearings.
Now...for those of you who are not regular readers of the not-milk column, let's review the Bush/Monsanto connection.
First . . . Monsanto's lawyer was appointed to the Supreme Court by George Bush, Sr. The deciding swing vote giving the election to George, Jr. was made by Clarence Thomas, Esq.
Second . . . Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense was President of Searle Pharmaceuticals, purchased by Monsanto.
Third . . . Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture was on the board of directors of Calgene Pharmaceuticals, purchased by Monsanto.
Fourth . . . Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health was a supporter of Monsanto in Wisconsin. He received $50,000 from Biotech firms in his election run, and used state funds to set up a $317 million dollar biotech zone in Wisconsin.
Fifth . . . Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Daniels was the vice president of corporate strategy at Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical company. Eli Lilly and Monsanto developed the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone. Lilly "owns" the European "franchise." Daniels presence insures that the bovine growth hormone will one day be approved for use in Europe.
Sixth . . . Last, but not least. John Ashcroft, Attorney General. Winner of the Monsanto PAC sweepstakes.
What will America's prize be?
- Robert Cohen
* * *
August, 2001
From http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/25/milk.htm
Monsanto Pushes Hormones on
School Kids in Their Milk
By Mitchel Cohen of The Green Party
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone is a genetically engineered drug injected into cows, which increases the levels of cancer causing and other dangerous chemicals in milk.
Its manufacturer, the Monsanto Corporation, also manufactured the deadly Agent Orange.
Monsanto has been pushing farmers to inject cows with rBGH since 1994. Many small farms, however, continue to resist. Repeated injections of rBGH artificially stimulate cows to produce 10% to 25% more milk than normal, causing health problems for the cows and danger to consumers, especially kids, who drink rBGH milk or eat butter, ice cream, cheese or yogurt.
Although milk drawn from cows that have not been injected with rBGH is now widely available, New York public schools don't buy that milk. Instead, the Board of Education buys most of its daily 3/4 of a million half pints of milk from Tuscan, whose suppliers inject their cows with the genetically engineered hormone.
Monsanto has been fighting against consumer demands to require labels on genetically engineered products.
In mid April of 1997, the New York City Board of Education responded for the first time to public outcry over the use of genetically engineered hormones in school milk by announcing that, despite the protests, it will continue to buy milk and dairy products from companies that inject their cows with genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone.
"The FDA has given us assurances milk is safe if it contains this growth hormone," said Board spokesperson David Golub. "This is a non issue."
But Golub, the Board he represents, the FDA, and the Monsanto Corporation (which manufactures the genetically engineered hormone), are lying to us; the milk is NOT safe.
And it is banned in Europe and Canada.
rBGH derived milk contains dramatically higher levels of IGF-1 (Insulin Growth Factor), a risk factor for breast and colon cancer.
IGF-1 is not destroyed by pasteurization. An article in "Cancer Research," June 1995, shows that high levels of IGF-1 are also linked to hypertension, premature growth stimulation in infants, gynecomastia in young children, glucose intolerance and juvenile diabetes.
Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and chair of Cancer Prevention Coalition, Inc., reports that IGF-1, which causes cells to divide, induces malignant transformation of normal breast epithelial cells, and is a growth factor for human breast cancer and colon cancer.
Yet rBGH was never adequately tested before the Food and Drug Administration allowed it on the market. A standard test of new biochemically produced products and animal drugs requires twenty four months of testing with several hundred rats. But rBGH was tested for only 90 days on 30 rats.
This short term rat study was submitted to the FDA but never published. The FDA had refused to allow anyone outside that agency to review the raw data from this truncated study, saying it would "irreparably harm" Monsanto.
In 1998, Canadian scientists managed to obtain the full studies for the first time. They were shocked to learn that the FDA never even looked at Monsanto's original data on which the agency's approval had been based.
In reviewing the data, the Canadian scientists discovered that Monsanto's secret studies showed that rBGH was linked to prostate and thyroid cancer in laboratory rats.
Monsanto had actually cut the study short and omitted any mention of the cancers in their report to the FDA -- or so the agency now says!
And so, a few companies which had invested hundreds of millions of dollars developing a product having absolutely no consumer benefit and which poses a severe health risk, was able to foist its dangerous product on an unprotected populace with the help of the government.
All this has outraged Green Party organizer Maris Abelson:
"Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) increases levels of cancer causing hormones and other dangerous chemicals in milk. It was the first genetically engineered drug to be widely marketed through the food supply, and the few long term studies that have been done raise serious questions about its safety. We've got to stop it, now."
Abelson urges every concerned New Yorker to call the Board of Education today: (718) 729-6100. Tell them, "Stop buying from Tuscan. Purchase milk and other dairy products only from companies that do not use rBGH, and that are, preferably, organic."
What's All the Ruckus?
The Monsanto Corporation, manufacturer of rBGH (also known as BST and Posilac), has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in biotechnology development. It insists that IGF-1 levels are not elevated in milk from rBGH treated cows and that rBGH is perfectly safe.
"Satisfied customers across the United States, many with three years experience, attest to the product's safety. Further, the FDA confirms that no unusual or unexpected concerns about cow or human safety have been raised since Posilac's introduction."
But Monsanto's own studies refute that position. In its 1993 application to the British government for permission to sell rBGH in England, Monsanto itself reported that "the IGF-1 levels went up substantially [about five times as much]."
The U.S. FDA acknowledges that IGF-1 is elevated in milk from rBGH treated cows. Even proponents of rBGH admit that it at least doubles the amount of IGF-1 hormone in the milk. The earliest report in the literature found that IGF 1 was elevated in the milk of rBGH treated cows by a factor of 3.6. How could the company honestly assert there have been "no unusual or unexpected concerns"?
The mass outpouring of protests and growing technical data indicate otherwise; clearly, the company intentionally lied about rBGH and falsified its reports to recover its investment.
Since 1994, Monsanto has been pushing every which way to get farmers to inject rBGH into their cows. Bi-weekly injections of rBGH cause an increase in the amount of milk cows produce on average from 10% to 25%.
The market is flooded with too much milk as it is, enabling middle men to pay farmers below their costs, bankrupting dairy farms in record numbers while retail prices remain around the same. (This, of course, enables agribusiness giants to purchase their farms at a song.)
Some farmers have even felt compelled to kill their cows because it cost them more to feed and maintain the animals than they'd gotten back in sales.
With the addition of rBGH, small farmers are caught between a rock and a hard place. They know that the so called "extra" money they're promised for squeezing more milk out of each cow with rBGH is a delusion. The market is already glutted.
How could increasing the total volume of milk possibly help them compete with giant agribusiness conglomerates who can afford lower prices per gallon or even go into debt for a time and absorb the cost of antibiotics to treat the increased instances of diseases such as mastitis brought on by rBGH and more frequent replacement of their cows to win a larger share of the market?
Monsanto has no sensible answer. Instead, it swings its mighty stick: Fear. "Soon everyone else will be using rBGH." It's like any new machine employed in production. It will lower the price of milk even more, and increase the quantity.
If you don't use it, you'll go bankrupt.
But, and here's the carrot, "if you start using rBGH now, before everyone else, you'll get the jump and do all right."
That's quite a powerful "argument" -- the threat of bankruptcy and the looming shadow of bank foreclosure. To counter it, Green activists have joined dairy farmers and other local consumer groups in coalitions across the country to stop Monsanto from achieving the "critical mass" it needs to apply its new genetic engineering techniques to milk production.
Once Monsanto reaches that point, farmers fear, they will be driven by market forces to use any means available -- including rBGH -- to increase the amount of milk their cows produce just to chase the ghost of breaking even as the wholesale price plummets.
Is rBGH Safe for Cows?
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone is like "crack" for cows. Bi weekly shots "rev" up their system and force them to produce more milk for perhaps a few years, and then their milk production declines dramatically. rBGH also makes them sick.
Their udders swell and develop painful, bloody lesions -- an infection known as "mastitis," which is "treated" by giving cows huge doses of antibiotics. The cows suffer through shortened lifespans and increased birth defects, rates of metabolic disease, infertility and stress.
What's more, there's pus in the milk. Farmers must buy heavy doses of antibiotics to treat rBGH cows' frequent infections, which occur seven times as often in cows treated with rBGH than in those who are untreated, last six times as long, and leak pus, blood, bacteria and increased levels of antibiotic residues into the milk.
Shockingly, the very companies that produce rBGH add to their profits by manufacturing antibiotics and tranquilizers which they then sell to dairy farmers to combat the side effects -- which end up in the milk.
High levels of antibiotics passed along to the mother or to children could impair the development of the immune system in children, cause the growth of resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, and lead to serious health problems.
High School students at a "No rBGH" parade and rally in Brooklyn in February 1997, organized by the Brooklyn Greens, were quick to point out that they were moved to participate upon learning of increased levels of pus in rBGH milk.
Some of the students altered Dairy Council ads, and made signs out of them. Instead of "Got Milk?," the signs read "Got Pus?"
Ben & Jerry's donated free non rBGH ice cream for the protest.
Cows into Cannibals
The use of rBGH intensifies the already unhealthy confinement of animals in industrial scale dairy production.
Factory farming of animals is immoral; some cows spend their whole lives tethered to machines. Increasingly, they're viewed as "units of production" instead of sentient beings. Some Florida dairy herds grew sick shortly after starting rBGH treatment.
One farmer, Charles Knight, lost 75 percent of his herd due to the injections while Monsanto and company funded researchers at the University of Florida withheld from him the information that the same thing was happening to other farmers and their herds. Knight says Monsanto and the university researchers blamed him for the high death rate.
Even in death -- which, in general, comes earlier to rBGH injected cows -- the animals are seen as part of the machine, the "production process." In recent years the industry has taken to "rendering" animal carcasses, which means grinding up dead and often diseased cows into animal feed and other meat products. (Some ad agencies have added their own "spin" on the practice, calling it "recycling.")
Approximately 40% of the "rendered" beef is used to make hamburgers. The rest is mixed into cow feed, along with sheep brains and other "rendered" animal parts. Cows, like many animals, are by nature vegetarian.
Turning cows into cannibals is gruesome enough. But now, with meat being derived from diseased rBGH treated cows, each burger or bucket of feed contains an increased proportion of antibiotics, synthetic hormones, viruses, bacteria, and chemicals. The ratio intensifies each time around the cycle of death.
The situation is compounded by genetically engineered hormones. rBGH injected cows require more protein than normal. So they consume even more rendered meat in their feed, which concentrates the amounts of synthetic hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals even further.
Just a short time after this practice became widespread, health officials began to notice a dramatic increase in the rate of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- "mad cow" disease -- which is caused by "prions" found in diseased and waste animal body parts, offal and blood.
Prions cause infected cattle to literally develop holes in their brains, suffer seizures, fall down and die. Recent studies indicate that mad cow disease is linked to the devastating Creutzfeldt Jakob disease in humans.
A prion is a form of protein having the normal chemical composition but is shaped differently. When it comes into contact with normally constructed proteins it causes them to relapse into the deformed shape, triggering a chain reaction. Prions are able to withstand severe heat, such as pasteurization and even irradiation.
There is no known way to defuse them. They may incubate for 30 years, and are passed to humans who eat meat from sick cows, regardless of how well one cooks the meat.
The U.S. government, of course, maintains that no BSE infected cattle have been discovered in the U.S. But, as Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn write, the disease may have appeared in the U.S. before the outbreak in England.
"Richard Marsh, a veterinary scientist at the University of Wisconsin, was raising the alarm about BSE in American cattle back in 1985. Marsh discovered an outbreak of spongiform encephalopathy at a mink farm in Wisconsin. The mink had been fed a protein supplement made from rendered cows that had supposedly died from `downer cow syndrome.' Marsh believes the cows had actually succumbed to a previously undetected form of BSE."
Around 100,000 cows a year die from downer cow syndrome in the U.S. Most of these dead cows are rendered into protein supplements to feed other cattle.
(For a story on 'rendering' dogs, cats and other animals for pet food, GO TO > > > All God's Creatures )
As Cockburn and St. Claire see it, "if this is true, the U.S. cattle population may already be infected with BSE and American meat consumers may have already contracted CJD."
All of this has severe environmental and economic as well as health consequences. Groundwater becomes even more polluted as mutated, drug resistant viruses, fungus, and bacteria develop in response to the increased use of antibiotics and genetically engineered chemicals and, through waste run off -- often used as fertilizer -- enter the water supply and soil.
Ever greater quantities of herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, fertilizers and other toxic chemicals are applied to the land to deal with the new strains of resistant germs, blights and diseases, further contaminating soil and water.
These are manufactured by the very companies that produce rBGH and other genetically engineered products. So are the antibiotics and tranquilizers sold to dairy farmers to combat the "side effects" of rBGH.
For Monsanto, as with other corporations, the name of the game is profits, profits at any cost.
A Method to Their Madness
Monsanto is playing the same game it once played in developing the herbicide 2,4,5 T, used in Agent Orange, another Monsanto product.
Back in the 1960s, Monsanto, working closely with the Pentagon and the Veterans' Administration, intentionally falsified key data on the effects of Agent Orange on human health in order to sell the deadly defoliant to the government for "use" in Vietnam.
Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged that the government's exoneration of Agent Orange was "politically motivated .. to cover up the true effects of dioxin, and manipulate public perception."
Similar concerns erupted over Monsanto's manufacture of Aspartame, the chief ingredient in NutraSweet and in diet soda, which causes brain lesions in laboratory rats.
And then there's Monsanto's manufacturer of PCBs. Monsanto's Sauget, Illinois plant discharges an estimated 34 million pounds of toxins into the Mississippi River. The facility is a major producer of chloronitrobenzenes, bioaccumulative teratogens detected at levels as high as 1,000 parts per billion in fish over 100 miles downstream.
The factory was the world's only manufacturer of PCBs until Congress finally banned them in 1976. They are still present today, 22 years later, at high levels in Mississippi River fish and are ubiquitous in the global ecosystem.
Monsanto also manufactures butachlor (trade names: Machete, Lambast), an herbicide which poses both acute and chronic health risks and can contaminate water supplies.
Although Monsanto manufactures butachlor in Iowa, the herbicide has never been registered in the U.S. or gained a food residue tolerance. In 1984, the EPA rejected Monsanto's registration applications due to "environmental, residue, fish and wildlife, and toxicological concerns."
Monsanto has refused to submit additional data requested by the EPA. Despite its recognized dangers, Monsanto sells butachlor abroad. Dozens of countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa use the product, primarily on the paddy rice which constitutes almost all of U.S. rice imports.
Clearly, Bovine Growth Hormone is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, Monsanto, Hoffman LaRoche and other manufacturers of vaccines injected, often involuntarily, into GIs, are working "behind the scenes to contain the government investigation of Gulf veterans' health problems."
Monsanto and other pharmaceutical companies continue to cover up the dangers in genetically engineered drugs, herbicides, pesticides and uranium weaponry -- a cover up essential to ensuring mega profits, business as usual.
As in the cases of dioxin/Agent Orange, PCBs and Aspartame, neither Monsanto nor the FDA have performed the appropriate long term studies on the effects of rBGH on the environment or on the health of people. Nevertheless, rBGH was fast tracked through government, with strong support from the Clinton/Gore administration.
Meanwhile, Monsanto flouted the law at every opportunity.
One law, for instance, required Monsanto to notify the FDA about every complaint the company received from dairy farmers such as Charles Knight, whose situation we discussed earlier. But four months after Knight complained to Monsanto, the FDA had still heard nothing from the company. Monsanto officials say it took all of those months to figure out that Knight was complaining about rBGH!
After witnessing so many lies, it is no wonder that people across the country -- indeed, throughout the world -- don't trust a thing Monsanto says. For instance, the company claimed that every truckload of milk in Florida is tested for excessive antibiotics. But Florida dairy officials and scientists on camera say this is simply not true.
Likewise, Monsanto says that Canada's ban on rBGH had nothing to do with human health concerns.
But Canadian government officials say just the opposite, and that, in fact, Monsanto had tried to bribe them with offers of $1 to $2 million to gain approval for rBGH. (Monsanto officials say those funds were for "research.")
No wonder that outraged consumers have forced legislation to be introduced requiring labeling of dairy products derived from rBGH cows in state after state, only to be torpedoed as often by Democrats as Republicans at the behest of Monsanto.
Instead, new legislation pending before Congress limits the liability of corporations, and is receiving fervent support from the pharmaceutical industry to fend off consumer lawsuits against genetically engineered products.
Both major parties fill their warchests with campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry.
Taking their cue from Washington, many so called progressive Democrats such as 1997's NYC mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger and Bronx Boro President Fernando Ferrer have gone to bat for the industry and opposed labeling, under thedelusion that genetic engineering is the key to progress.
In today's Mayoral race in New York City, Alan Hevesi has joined Ferrer in championing the development of genetic engineering facilities as a means for "developing" New York City's infrastructure in the inner city.
Radiation and Milk
Cows' milk and other dairy products have been associated with serious health problems even before recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone was given the go ahead by the Food and Drug Administration in late 1993. Atomic bomb tests caused radioactive isotopes like Strontium 90 to enter cows' milk in the 1950s. It became the subject of protests and national debate, and played a role in winning the first comprehensive test ban treaty on nuclear weapons.
The issue was raised again following the disastrous accidents at the Three Mile Island (March 1979) and Chernobyl (April 1986) nuclear power plants.
For the first time, statistical evidence was gathered directly relating the large increases in total and infant mortality that occurred across the United States in the summer of 1986 to the heightened amount of radioactive iodine, cesium, strontium, and barium in rain and milk fallout from Chernobyl halfway around the world.
Radioactive isotopes in milk have, by now, compromised the immune systems of an entire generation. While protests have forced a few of the most dangerous chemical sprays like DDT off the market, new and even more dangerous sprays have taken their place.
Chemical, hormone, antibiotic and radioactive residues in dairy products continue to contribute to the rise of asthma, cancer, AIDS and other illnesses.
The direct injection of rBGH into cows raises the issue once again. As long as kids drink milk or eat butter, ice cream, cheese or yogurt, they are especially susceptible to radiation, pesticide residues, impurities, and, in the case before us, the high levels of antibiotics and increased hormonal levels found in rBGH derived dairy products.
Monsanto claims that the government monitors antibiotic levels, and that they are safe. But the FDA generally tests for only four types of antibiotics. "Both the GAO and the Milk Industry Foundation, which reports on drug testing, have found that a wide variety of drugs are used and not tested for.
Thus, an increased use of antibiotics in response to a rise in rBGH induced mastitis would likely go undetected in the milk supply."
While most milk companies now oppose rBGH and have pledged not to use it, New York City public schools continue to contract with Tuscan, which refuses to sign rBGH free pledges and continues to contract with farmers for milk that may come from cows injected with rBGH.
"If I can't test for it, I'm not going to put our company's neck on the line by making that kind of pledge," said Peter Stigi, senior vice president of Tuscan Dairy Farms.
But the FDA, Monsanto and Tuscan are able to test for it; they've chosen not to. In 1991, the American Medical Association said that it was possible to develop a test to distinguish between the natural hormone and rBGH.
But incredibly, the FDA refused to develop an rBGH detection test. Nor did it require Monsanto to do so. Then, a German company announced that a test could easily be developed to detect rBGH in milk.
But no one thought it important enough to develop it. As long as no test existed, the FDA and Monsanto could pretend that rBGH is indistinguishable from the natural hormone, implying falsely that the two hormones are identical.
Angry members of the National Farmers Union (NFU) decided to take on the bureaucracy. The NFU raised contributions and hired a laboratory, Kara Biologicals of Stanton, New Jersey, to develop a low cost strip test to detect the presence of rBGH in milk.
And now, two Cornell University researchers, Vitaly Spitsberg and Ronald Gorewit, have developed another way to detect rBGH in milk. As it turns out, Monsanto's claim that there is "no difference" between the natural hormone made by the cow and the synthetic hormone manufactured in the lab is but another false pearl in its necklace of lies.
The synthetic hormone is detectable in milk because it has an addititional amino acid sequence, methionine, compared to the naturally produced hormone. How will this affect those who consume milk derived from rBGH injected cows? No one knows; those tests have never been done.
Nevertheless, Monsanto continues fighting tooth and nail against consumer demands to require appropriate labels on dairy products. And now, the giant pharmaceutical companies are gearing up for the real battle, in which rBGH is only the opening salvo: The right to patent, own, and profit from the very substance of life itself.
What Is Genetic Engineering?
Genetic Engineering is the process of redesigning DNA molecules to create new forms of life. Scientists are recombining genes from plants, insects, bacteria, animals and humans to more fully exploit the commercial possibilities of agricultural and pharmaceutical production.
Genetically engineered foods are unlabeled and, mostly, untested. The health consequences of eating genetically engineered foods are largely unknown; what has been engineered into the genetic code of such staples as corn, soy and rice has never before been part of our diet.
Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans, for example, are genetically modified to withstand increased exposure to the company's herbicide Roundup. The company advertises its soy as "herbicide resistant" -- a euphemism for what is actually herbicidesaturated. We ingest these additional chemicals, produced in every cell of the plant, along with our food.
Cows fed Roundup Ready soy produce milk with significantly higher fat content than those fed ordinary soybeans. At a meeting of the Working Group on Biosafety of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity on October 13 17, 1997, scientists from around the world concluded this to be direct proof of a substantial difference between genetically modified and ordinary soy.
They also found that the application of glyphosate (such as the herbicide Roundup) increased the level of plant estrogens of bean crops. Estrogen, including that from plants, is known to impact mammalian tissue and is one of the triggers of humans cancer.
As if all of that is not bad enough, certain diseases are, for the first time, beginning to cross the "species barrier,"following trans species genetic implantations.
There has already been some crossover between pig and human viruses, and gene modification across species also subjects us to higher levels of toxins and allergens. Genes from peanuts and Brazil nuts implanted in soy can cause severe allergic reactions, even death.
Yet the products containing peanut genes have no warning labels. (Soy with Brazil nut genes were forced off the market several years ago.)
Genes from flounder implanted in tomatoes to keep them from freezing, and genes from chicken spliced into potatoes to keep them from bruising raise all sorts of ethical problems for vegetarians.
Genetically synthesized scorpion toxin is brushed on fruit to keep away pests. The manufacture of synthetic vanilla is already playing havoc with the economies of Madagascar, the Comoros Islands and Reunion Island, which depend on natural vanilla exports as their primary source of income.
Bio engineering, backed by the might of the U.S. military, is now being used as part of a conscious policy to drive indigenous people from the lands they've traditionally shared and on which they'd grown food for themselves and their communities. Agribusiness companies, increasingly tied to pharmaceutical corporations, want profitable crops grown for export.
As Oxfam puts it, "Hunger is increasing because immense wealth is flowing out of poor countries and into rich countries. Far greater wealth in the form of crops, minerals, timber, labor power, skills and cash is being removed from poor countries and transported to the world's wealthier countries than the other way around.
More than $50 billion in capital is transferred annually from the global South to governments, banks, corporations, and lending agencies based in the global North...
Today the free market revolution has only widened already extreme income inequalities and worsened poverty throughout Latin America. ("Oxfam urges big changes at World Bank," Financial Times, Sept. 30, 1994.) In fact, in 1973, 36 of the world's most impoverished and starving countries were chief suppliers of export crops to the U.S.
And it has only gotten worse.
By newly "enclosing" agricultural lands and pasture, legalizing confiscations after the fact, agribusiness corporations, USAID, the World Bank and the IMF have been able to drive formerly self sufficient peasants and the rural proletariat off their lands and to cities in search of work, generally as laborers in near slave conditions in assembly or export zone sweatshops.
The lands are then taken over by giant corporations and plundered for soil depleting strip farmed export crops and the extraction of natural resources.
According to the USDA, only two percent of genetically engineered foods are developed to enhance taste or nutrition. 98 percent are artificially designed to make food production and processing more profitable for the 3 percent of the world's landlords -- mostly giant corporations -- that have come to control 80 percent of the world's land and the food grown on it.
One of the ways international agencies accomplish this is by systematically dumping cheap or free food onto the local markets, undermining local producers and forcing them to drastically cut their prices to compete. (This is different from legitimate food emergencies in which short term contributions are critical, although even there many so called "natural" famines are in reality man made by the policies of the IMF and World Bank.)
Since so many small producers are dependent on immediate income to stay afloat, any significant drop in income destroys their community and way of life, and enables large corporate farmers to take them over and consolidate their hold on both the production apparatus and the market.
The dumping of hybrid and now cheap genetically engineered corn in Mexico, the special water and soil requirements, and the corporate patenting of seeds threaten to undermine stable indigenous communities centered around growing and marketing local corn.
The Zapatista rebellion in January, 1994, focused on opposing the importation of corn under NAFTA and the destruction it would cause to their local, self sufficient economies.
As the industry grows more sophisticated, genetic engineering -- which reduces everything in nature to objects for commercial manipulation, the commodification of life itself, and the constant genuflection before the gods of profit -- and the private patenting of seeds provide international capital with powerful weapons for imposing the IMF, World Bank, and USAID's "structural adjustment programs" on the Third World.
Take the new genetically engineered corn. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a naturally occurring insect repellant that organic farmers effectively apply in small doses to individual plants.
In the early 1990s, Novartis (the gigantic corporation recently invented by combining Ciba Geigy and Sandoz) patented a way of encoding each corn plant to produce its own Bt.
Instead of limited amounts of Bt being applied in specific and well defined areas, Bt now is produced in every cell of every plant over entire fields of genetically engineered corn.
Not only does this kill insects beneficial to crop pest management, it quickens widespread resistance among undesired pests, reducing diversity and, in effect, making it easier for diseases to spread quickly across the entire field, rendering Bt -- which is relatively harmless to humans -- completely ineffective and depriving organic farmers of one of the few insecticides that they can use safely.
As weeds and insects are repeatedly exposed to herbicides and pesticides, the varieties tolerant to the toxin survive and become the norm, reducing (and even eliminating) its effectiveness, requiring farmers to apply heavier doses of pesticide to kill increasingly resistant pests.
Organisms that had been under control now become veritable plagues wiping out enormous quantities of crops. Genetically engineered foods subject us to viruses, bacteria and other organisms that mutate into more virulent strains for which we've developed no resistance.
Scientists race the blights by "designing" new insecticides and herbicides before bacteria, viruses and fungi are able to modify their capacities accordingly. This only leads to an acceleration of the crop chemical treadmill, where farmers use more and stronger chemicals to control pests, more chemicals in the environment, more damage to nearby plant varieties and soil fertility, and vast reduction of biodiversity.
And so, as we move into the new millennium, we find that in just 100 years, the world has lost 95 percent of the genetic diversity that existed in agriculture at the beginning of this century.
Agribusiness already dumps more than 500 million pounds of herbicides on U.S. farmlands each year. Monsanto's Roundup, whose product sales come to $1.2 billion a year, leads the toxic parade. A study released in August 1995 found that levels of herbicides in drinking water in 29 cities and towns tested in the Corn Belt exceeded federal safety levels.
And now, researchers at Riso National Laboratory in Denmark are finding that plants -- whose "natural" immunities develop over many years through the interaction of many varieties, species, and microbes as part of a coherent (if fragile) ecosystem -- spontaneously cross fertilize.
Genetically engineered canola (rapeseed), for instance, passes its genes for herbicide resistance to surrounding weeds; the same is true of other plants. The offspring resulting from the cross breeding of genetically engineered and weedy plants are not only herbicide resistant themselves, they also are capable of passing on resistance to subsequent generations.
Unlike defective products of other technologies, genetically altered organisms, once released, are irretrievable and self replicating. Herbicide resistant qualities can spread to weeds.
Rapid growth capacities can spread to pests. Antibiotic resistance can spread to bacteria such as staphylococcus, diphtheria, salmonella, bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid and a whole range of dangerous diseases.
And genes for new and virulent toxins can, accidentally or purposefully, spread to wild plants. Engineering on the genetic levelintroduces dangers of a qualitatively different magnitude which can easily become irreversible. Genetically engineered lifeforms are on the verge of permanently disrupting the already precarious ecological balance of the planet.
Why Didn't Government Just Say "No"?
In the global capitalist system, "research and development" means the public takes all the risk and pays for development and corporations then privatize that knowledge and reap the profits.
Human health and safety, and environmental degradation, are rarely factored in in determining corporate costs. In such a system, genetic engineering makes monocropping the cost effective option. It fills acre after acre with the same kind of crop, the easier to utilize certain kinds of machinery and chemicals, "speeding up" agricultural production the way Taylorism assembly lined industry.
Genetically engineered soybeans, corn and corn syrup (a sweetener used in almost everything we drink), potatoes, strawberries and cotton are now coming to market. rBGH continues to be the spearhead of the new genetic engineering technologies which are overturning the previously unbreechable biological boundaries between species, and even between the plant and animal kingdoms.
I've already outlined a number of reasons why rBGH is bad: The cows get sick more often, die more quickly, and there's pus and increased hormone levels of all sorts in the milk, which are potentially cancer causing.
There is already a milk surplus in the U.S. and no need to artificially induce cows to produce more.
Thousands of dairy farmers are being driven out of business by large factory farms; rBGH accelerates that process, in line with the IMF's and World Bank's structural adjustment programs.
Yet Monsanto, along with such huge transnational corporations as Novartis and Eli Lilly (in which the family of former Vice President Dan Quayle holds controlling interest), remain unregulated warlords over their fiefdoms, policing dissidents and public health advocates.
How could this have happened?
In 1993 the Food and Drug Administration approved recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone for use in milk cows without performing the required longterm health studies.
The FDA official who "fast tracked" rBGH approval was Michael R. Taylor. Until 1991, Taylor had been a law partner atKing & Spaulding and lawyered on behalf of Monsanto during the FDA approval process of rBGH. He was soon appointed to the Food and Drug Administration, where he "fast tracked" rBGH approval.
Upon becoming Deputy FDA Commissioner, Taylor appointed others from Monsanto to positions at the FDA, withPresident Clinton's approval. Margaret Miller, former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, was one of them.
She is now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the US Food and Drug Administration.
She published a number of pro rBGH papers as an FDA official which were co authored by Monsanto's hirelings, and called for policy directives exempting rBGH milk and other genetically engineered foods from labeling.
Meanwhile, Richard Borroughs, the doctor who originally supervised the rBGH target animal safety studies, was fired (under pressure from Monsanto) for insisting on enforcement of stringent animal health standards in rBGH research.
King & Spaulding continued to represent Monsanto even as its former directors and employees fast tracked rBGH approval through the FDA.
Monsanto filed lawsuits against dairies that had labeled their milk "rBGH free," and threatened to sue any dairy company making similar claims.
Monsanto never won any of those suits; but the hundreds of millions of dollars it was willing to spend has enabled the company to get away with strong arming dairies refusing to inject their cows with the hormone, and deterred small companies from labeling their products as "rBGH free".
Despite failing to win a single round in the courts, Monsanto has been nevertheless able to create enough economic and political intimidation on smaller companies to win economically what it cannot win in the courts.
In March 1994, the Pure Food Campaign and the Foundation for Economic Trends, under the leadership of Jeremy Rifkin, petitioned the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate Taylor's apparent conflict of interest. Three members of Congress then asked the General Accounting Office to investigate. Within days of the FET complaint, Taylor was mysteriously transferred out of the FDA.
But Taylor and Miller are hardly the only officials doing Monsanto's bidding inside the government. As Secretary of Commerce,Ron Brown did more than anyone to insure that Clinton and Gore became, indeed, the Administration from Monsanto.
As head of the Democratic National Committee Brown garnered huge financial contributions from the biotech industry and vigorously promoted their interests. Brown also flacked for the biotech industry's attempts to patent genetically engineered human cells against the opposition of foreign governments:
"Under our laws, as well as those of many other countries, subject matter relating to human cells is patentable and there is no provision for considerations relating to the source of the cells that may be the subject of a patent application."
At the time his plane crashed over war torn Yugoslavia, Brown was accompanying a few dozen high level corporate executives seeking to ferret out "investment opportunities" among the misery there. The conflicts of interest between government and industry are appalling, and dangerous.
From Brown on down, the Clinton administration catered to every outrageous whim of the biotech industry.
Much of the government's position on genetic engineering came under the supervision of former Hunter College presidentDonna Shalala, who was Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Except for Clinton and Gore, it was Shalala who had final say over these odious policies and corruption. And it is the "progressive" Shalala who let Monsanto and the other corporations get away, literally, with murder.
Take the case of Mickey Kantor, a power broker, former U.S. Trade Representative and trusted Clinton adviser. Kantor became Secretary of Commerce following Ron Brown's death and continued his predecessor's boosterism for biotechnology.
In mid 1997, Kantor left his job at Commerce. He was immediately appointed to the Board of Directors of ... the Monsanto Corporation.
Joining officials who changed job assignments from service in government to positions in the biotechnology industry wasMarcia Hale. She had been assistant to the President of the United States for intergovernmental affairs.
Her new appointment: Senior official for the Monsanto Corporation in coordinating public affairs and corporate strategy in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Also switching sides over the last couple of years were:
L. Val Giddings, who went from being a biotechnology "regulator" at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to being the Vice President for Food and Agriculture at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a pro biotech propaganda arm. Giddings, who had represented U.S. government (and, purportedly, the people's) interests at the first meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Biosafety Protocol, attended the second meeting on the protocol as the representative of the industry;
David W. Beler, former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc., and now chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore; Linda J. Fisher, former Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, and now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto;
Josh King, former director of production for White House events, and now director of global communications in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto;
Terry Medley, former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the US Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice chair of the US Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the US Food and Drug Administration food advisory committee, and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont's Agricultural Enterprise;
William D. Ruckelshaus, former chief administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, now (and for the last 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto;
Lidia Watrud, former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto, now with the US Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division; and,
Clayton K. Yeutter, former Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, former US trade representative (who led the US team in negotiating the US Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical.
One of the leading shills for Monsanto and a very visible proponent of genetic engineering is former US President Jimmy Carter. And, should any of the legal cases make their way to the Supreme Court they will be argued before Justice Clarence Thomas, among others.
Thomas -- one might remember from Anita Hill's testimony -- began his career as a lawyer for ... Monsanto.
And one of the chief witnesses on behalf of Monsanto will be Dr. Louis Sullivan, former head of Health and Human Servicesand now a paid apologist for the company.
Media & BGH
In February, 1997, two veteran news reporters for Fox TV in Tampa, Florida, were fired for refusing to water down an investigation reporting that rBGH may promote cancer in humans who drink milk from rBGH treated cows. It is the link between rBGH and cancer that Monsanto pressed Fox to remove from the story.
Award winning reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre had been hired by WTVT in Tampa to produce a series on rBGH in Florida milk.
After more than a year's work on the rBGH series, and three days before the series was scheduled to air (starting February 24, 1997), Fox TV executives received the first of two letters from lawyers representing Monsanto saying that Monsanto would suffer "enormous damage" if the series ran.
Monsanto's second letter warned of "dire consequences" for Fox if the series aired as it stood. Despite the fact that WTVT had been advertising the series aggressively, the station canceled it at the last moment.
According to documents filed in Florida's Circuit Court (13th Circuit), Fox lawyers then tried to water down the series, offering to pay the two reporters if they would leave the station and keep mum about Fox's censorship of their work.
The reporters refused Fox's offer, and on April 2, 1998, filed their own lawsuit against WTVT. The Wilson/Akre lawsuit charged WTVT with violating its license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by demanding that the reporters include known falsehoods in their rBGH series.
The reporters also charged WTVT with violating Florida's "whistle blower" law, and that Fox ordered them to remove all mention of "cancer," changing it to "human health effects" whatever that may be.
After a five week trial and six hours of deliberation which ended August 18, 2000, a Florida state court jury unanimously determined that Fox "acted intentionally and deliberately to falsify or distort the plaintiffs' news reporting on BGH."
In that decision, the jury also found that Jane Acre's threat to blow the whistle on Fox's misconduct to the FCC was the sole reason for the termination... and the jury awarded $425,000 in damages which makes her eligible to apply for reimbursement for all court costs, expenses and legal fees.
The whistle blowing journalists, twice refused Fox offers of big money deals to keep quiet about what they knew, filed their landmark lawsuit April 2, 1998 and survived three Fox efforts to have their case summarily dismissed.
It is the first time journalists have used a whistleblower law to seek a legal remedy for being fired by refusing to distort the news.
(See, "Milk, rBGH, and Cancer," Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly #593, April 9, 1998.)
What Can We Do?
1) Demand mandatory labeling of all dairy products derived from rBGH cows. Fight for legislation banning rBGH dairy products and all genetically engineered foods.
2) Throw the bums out of office. But our fight cannot be limited to the electoral arena or we'll lose. We need to leaflet stores and target them for more militant action if they continue to stock dairy products derived from rBGH cows.
If they don't respond, organize picket lines at the stores. Make "No rBGH" part of the powerful unionization campaign of immigrant workers now underway at local markets. (Leaflet the WORKERS on the picket lines, too!)
3) Bring up this issue at every opportunity. Circulate petitions against rBGH at PTA and Community School Board meetings. Get your friends to carry them in school and around the neighborhood. Confront candidates as they run for elected office.
4) Every college has some connection to pharmaceutical corporations and biotechnological research and development. Demand an end to patents on life: Eliminating patents takes the profits out of genetic engineering.
We'll then see which scientists will continue to do their "research" on behalf of the public good and not suck at the udders of Washington cash cows injected with genetically engineered hormones.
Pharmaceutical corporations and biotechnological research and development facilities provide sitting targets, just as ROTC buildings and Department of Defense research and recruitment once did. Every college now has some connection to them.
We need to begin a similar campaign against the privatization of our universities and colleges, and especially against their collaboration with pharmaceutical and biotech corporations.
5) Hold contests for the best parody of the "Got Milk?" advertisements. Put up posters and "improve" existing ones. Organize your building, school, workplace and neighborhood.
Remember: In every danger there also resides opportunity, if only we learn to look for it and develop it correctly.
The issue of rBGH in milk is so straightforward that it is an ideal place from which to launch a much greater campaign against the genetic engineering of foods, vaccines and medicines, privatization of knowledge through "intellectual property rights," patenting of synthesized genetic sequences for private profit, the consolidation and concentration of farmland, who controls our food?, mistreatment of animals, the growing domination by corporations and, in general, the system of exploitation that rules our lives.
- GaryNull's Natural Living
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Highly Recommended Sites > > > www.purefood.org ; How to Avoid Monsanto Investments
For more on Monsanto and NutraSweet, GO TO > > > The NutraSweet Syndrome
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NOW...DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S IN YOUR BIRDSEED?
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Last Update February 24, 2010, by The Catbird