More Monsanto

Hello again Monsantonians...I see you are still in my blog.

While you are at it (whatever it is that at it means when you work there) feel free to take the time to review, correct or comment as needed. I am starting to feel like we are old friends here.

All the info below was copied from Wikipedia, for the benefit of people who never had the time to look you up & learn more about the wonderful work you do.

A BIT OF HISTORY

The 1940s saw Monsanto become a leading manufacturer of plastics, including polystyrene, and synthetic fibers. Since then, it has remained one of the top 10 US chemical companies. Other major products have included the herbicides 2,4,5-T, DDT, and Agent Orange used primarily during the Vietnam War as a deforestation agent (and later proven to be highly carcinogenic to any who come into contact with the solution), aspartame (NutraSweet), bovine somatotropin (bovine growth hormone (BST), and PCBs. Also in this decade, Monsanto operated the Dayton Project, and later Mound Laboratory in Miamisburg, Ohio, for the Manhattan Project, the development of the first nuclear weapons and, after 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission.

Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along with some 15 other companies. The use of DDT in the U.S. was banned by Congress in 1972, due in large efforts to environmentalists, who persisted in the challenge put forth by Rachel Carson and her book, Silent Spring in 1962, which sought to inform the public of the side effects associated with the insecticide. In 1947, an accidental explosion of ammonium nitrate fertilizer loaded on the French ship S.S. Grandcamp destroyed an adjacent Monsanto styrene manufacturing plant, along with much of the port at Galveston Bay. The explosion, known as the Texas City Disaster, is considered the largest industrial accident in US history, with the highest death toll. As the decade ended, Monsanto acquired American Viscose from England's Courtauld family in 1949.

Monsanto scientists became the first to genetically modify a plant cell in 1982. Five years later, Monsanto conducted the first field tests of genetically engineered crops.

Throughout 2004 and 2005, Monsanto filed lawsuits against many farmers in Canada and the U.S. The lawsuits have been on the grounds of patent infringement, specifically the farmer's sale of seed containing Monsanto's patented genes–which require the farmer initial purchase of the seed and its technology–unknowingly sown by wind carrying the seeds from neighboring crops.

These instances began in the mid to late 1990s, with one of the most significant cases being decided in Monsanto's favor by the Canadian Supreme Court. By a 5-4 vote in late May 2004, that court ruled that "by cultivating a plant containing the patented gene and composed of the patented cells without license, the appellants (canola farmer Percy Schmeiser) deprived the respondents of the full enjoyment of the patent." With this ruling, the Canadian courts followed the U.S. Supreme Court in its decision on patent issues involving plants and genes.

As of February 2005, Monsanto has patent claims on breeding techniques for pigs which would grant them ownership of any pigs born of such techniques and their related herds. Greenpeace claims Monsanto is trying to claim ownership on ordinary breeding techniques. Monsanto claims that the patent is a defensive measure to track animals from its system. They furthermore claim their patented method uses a specialized insemination device that requires less sperm than is typical.

In 2006, the Public Patent Foundation filed requests with the U.S. Patent Office to revoke four patents that Monsanto has used in patent lawsuits against farmers. In the first round of reexamination, claims in all four patents were rejected by the Patent Office in four separate rulings dating from February through July 2007. Monsanto has since filed responses in the reexaminations.

ENVIRONMENTAL & HEALTH RECORD

Monsanto has been identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as being a "potentially responsible party" for 56 contaminated sites (Superfund sites) in the United States. Monsanto has been sued, and has settled, multiple times for damaging the health of its employees or residents near its Superfund sites through pollution and poisoning.

In 2004 The Wildlife Habitat Council, (which has incidentally also given awards to nuclear power companies, waste management companies, steel manufacturers, and oil companies), and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Environmental Performance Track presented a special certificate of recognition to Monsanto Company during WHC's 16th Annual Symposium.

Monsanto is the largest producer of glyphosate herbicides through its popular brand, Roundup. Roundup has been a source of ongoing controversy, as researchers in several studies have argued that it leads to the first stages of and/or causes cancer, while a review of the toxicity of roundup concluded that "under present and expected conditions of new use, there is no potential for Roundup herbicide to pose a health risk to humans".

Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications explained the company's regulatory philosophy to Michael Pollan in 1998:

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is FDA's job."

A message to the Monsanto folks

Hello,

Saw you guys browsing my blog.

Please feel free to add any comment you'd like with your side of the story.

Have a great day & remember to eat organic & support small farms!

MUBs, F1s, Heirlooms...and the longest post ever

Hold on to your bridges. This is a long java-propelled-frustration-induced post.

I have been promising something a bit more substantial than shots of things with pretty colors for a long time. Here goes it.

A couple of evenings ago I was chatting with some well educated people and it turns out, a lot of well educated people don’t know the difference between Genetically Modified (GM) & heirloom seeds...and the problems (yeah, skip the word potential here as these are not potential problems) they present to this generation and the ones to follow.

I don’t blame anyone for not knowing. We are constantly getting bombarded with deadlines & urgent stuff to take care of…and that is exactly the reason that I decided to take the time to hammer this keyboard & leave the info here…just in case some unsuspecting soul comes looking for shots of things with pretty colors and decides to read this humble PSI ☺

First, allow me to introduce the monsters under the bed (MUBs). The ones who are feverishly working on grabbing your feet and tickle you into a slow death when you least expect it. There are six: Monsanto, Dow, Mitsui, Aventis, DuPont & Syngenta. Know these names. Together they control in one way or another 98% of the seeds in this world. Got your attention, eh?

In a nutshell, these MUBs are taking something that is inherently nature’s property and found a way to commodify it as their own. How? Well, it started by simply patenting seeds that will bear true just once during their life (F1s) leaving farmers unable to save and replant seed...after that the MUBs moved into more genetically scary territory (more on this below). That is why, we should make an attempt to educate ourselves so that when we are looking to buy seeds from a catalogue and read stuff like “F1,” “Biodynamic,” “Open Pollinated,” “Heirloom,” …we know what it all means and are able to make a sound decision…the same way we were practically forced to learn to read labels for the pantry stuff we buy. For our own good.

Keep reading...why should you? Seems like such a long & boring post...no photos with pretty colors...well, MUBs, just like an unfaithful partner, are banking on our ignorance. That is why.

Let’s start with “F1” …and I can’t help it but wonder how the naming went down at the MUBs corporate fufu table…I can just see a greedy animal in a starchy suit saying -“This type of seed will make us rich beyond belief. It will make every farmer in the world fully dependant on us. And small farmers eventually will be forced to sell their farms because of their inability to pay for their overhead. Let’s call it F1!!!” Reminds me of the time Dr. Evil said "Let's call it 'The Alan Parsons Project!!!' Only this is not funny & makes you wonder what the F stands for. Well, I don't actually know for a fact who named these seeds F1 (still researching it...if you know please let me know)...but still...

**Clarification: there are two types of F1 seeds, the ones that haven't been GMd (and those I will gladly buy from a reputable company), and the ones that have been GMd. It is hard to know which is which because the MUBs are not legally obligated to disclose such an unimportant piece of information...so in many cases it becomes a matter of trust.**

What these guys have done, surely in the name of science and with our well-being at the core of their decisions, is engineer GMs in the majority of our U.S.-grown corn, soy, cotton, and canola. By the way, did you know cotton & peanuts are the two most heavily pesticide laden crops? If you will choose ONE thing to buy organic let them be those two.

What they do is...

“...one of two things: (1) put a bacterial gene into the plant that kills caterpillars, or (2) alter the crop’s physiology so it withstands the herbicide Roundup, so that chemicals can be sprayed over the crop. (The crop stays alive, the weeds die.) If you guessed Monsanto controls sales of both the resistant seed and the Roundup, give yourself a star. If you think you’d never eat such stuff, you are probably wrong. GM plants are virtually everywhere in the U.S. food chain, but don’t have to be labeled, and aren’t. Industry lobbyists intend to keep it that way.”

This excerpt was taken verbatim from Barbara Kingsolver's book, which I cannot recommend highly enough, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

By the way, it is not only the herbicides they are helping us put on our dinner table, but also, did you know that the EPA allows the use of toxic waste in non organic fertilizers? That means that any non organically grown foods we buy are likely to have that little added bonus. Makes my mouth water.

One more important item for gardeners to learn about involves seed suppliers. Kingsolver says that,

“In internal reports, Monsanto notes ‘growers who save seed from one year to the next’ as significant competitors, and allocates a $10 million budget for investigating and prosecuting seed savers…Agribusinesses can patent plant varieties for the purpose of removing them from production, leaving farmers with fewer options each year. The same is true for home gardeners, who rarely suspect when placing seed orders from Johnny’s, Territorial, Nichols, Stokes, and dozens of other catalogs that they are likely buying from Monsanto.”

I found a list online that includes most of the “dozens of other catalogs” Kingsolver refers to in the paragraph above and I will post it this week. As you can see, I have removed my ‘Favorite Suppliers’ list from my sidebar…I will have to start looking again to give my business to folks who are not related to the MUBs.

So what’s so wrong with reducing the varieties of seeds people have been saving from generations to merely the most marketable and cost efficient ones via GM? Well, for starters, these GM seeds create plants whose pollen will travel and contaminate (yup, contaminate) heirloom plants. As if that was not enough, the MUBs can sue (they have…and they’ve won) a farmer whose plants get Monsanto-marketed plant genes. Even if this was unintentional. Even if in a perfect world the farmer should truly sue the MUBs for messing up the gene pool of seed that have been kept and passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years.

Another crucial point is that we must safeguard our right to 1. Grow our own food if we chose to do so, and 2. The planet’s biodiversity.

We show so much care for the whales, and the owls, etc. and that is great…but what happens when the Irish famine (caused by the fact that they relied on solely one kind of potato) becomes the corn famine or the canola famine? How will we recover from such disasters?

These are just a few reasons why is so important to continue caring for our heirloom seed, buying it, sharing it and safeguarding its biodiversity with as much care and passion as we put into caring for whales or manatees...as if our livelihood depended on it.

Because it does.