By Systemic Disorder
The ultimate monopoly would be
control of the world’s food supply. Although not the only multi-national
corporation attempting to achieve the ability to dictate what you eat, Monsanto
Company appears the most determined.
Already infamous for toxic
chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), Agent Orange and dioxin,
Monsanto’s march toward control of the world’s food supply is focused on
proprietary seeds and genetically modified organisms. No corporation or
corporate oligarchy possessing a food monopoly would be desirable, but Monsanto
is a particularly frightening contender. So powerful is the company that a special
law tailored for it was snuck into a congressional appropriations bill funding
U.S. government operations.
The Farmer Assurance Provision
— better known by its nickname, the “Monsanto Protection Act” — was
quietly slipped into an appropriations bill in March by a Missouri senator, Roy
Blunt. The appropriations bill had to be passed to avert a government shutdown,
providing an opportunity to do a favor for the powerful. Slipping off-topic
special measures into bills hundreds of pages long is routine in the U.S.
Congress.
Efforts to remove the language
from the bill have so far failed. The relevant
language is this:
“Directs the Secretary [of
Agriculture], if a determination of non-regulated status under the Plant
Protection Act has been invalidated, to authorize movement, introduction,
continued cultivation, or commercialization for the interim period necessary
for the Secretary to complete any required analyses or consultations related to
the petition for non-regulated status.”
In plain language, what the
above passage means is the U.S. Department of Agriculture is required to ignore
any court order that would halt the planting of genetically engineered crops
even if the department is still conducting a safety investigation, and
rubber-stamp an okay. The group Food Democracy Now! summarized
the implications of that requirement:
“This dangerous provision, the
Monsanto Protection Act, strips judges of their constitutional mandate to
protect consumer and farmer rights and the environment, while opening up the
floodgates for the planting of new untested genetically engineered crops,
endangering farmers, citizens and the environment.”
The Monsanto Protection Act
expires at the end of the government’s fiscal year, September 30, with the
expiration of the appropriations bill of which it is a part, but the language
could easily be included in next year’s appropriations bills. As outrageous as
the special provision is, it is consistent with the basic methodology of public
safety in the United States — new products are routinely put on the market with
minimal testing (or the product’s manufacturer providing the only “research”
and declaring it safe), and can’t be removed from sale until independent
testing determines the product is unsafe.
Sell first, ask questions
later
In other words, it’s not up
the company selling a product to prove it is safe; it is up to others, after
the fact, to prove that it is unsafe. This is the case with, for example,
chemicals and pesticides. And it is the case for genetically modified organisms
(GMOs). No corporation has more riding on GMOs than Monsanto. That is not
merely because GMOs have steadily taken an increasing share of foods grown for
animal and human consumption, but because of genetically engineered seeds. A
report by the Center For Food Safety and Save Our Seeds puts
the magnitude of this change in stark terms:
“The vast majority of the four
major commodity crops in the U.S. are now genetically engineered. U.S. adoption
of transgenic commodity crops has been rapid, in which [genetically engineered]
varieties now make up the substantial majority: soybean (93 percent transgenic
in 2010), cotton (88 percent), corn (86 percent), and canola (64 percent).” [page
5]
Seeds containing genes
patented by Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, account for more than
90 percent of soybeans grown in the U.S. and 80 percent of U.S.-grown corn,
according to a separate report by Food & Watch Watch. These seeds have been
engineered to be resistant to insects or to withstand the application of
herbicides. The report, “Monsanto: A Corporate Profile,” states:
“Monsanto not only markets its
own patented seeds, but it uses licensing agreements with other companies and
distributors to spread its traits throughout the seed supply. … The acreage on
which Monsanto’s [genetically engineered] crop traits are grown has increased
from a total of 3 million acres in 1996 to 282.3 million acres worldwide and
151.4 million acres in the United States in 2009. … Monsanto’s products
constitute approximately 40 percent of all crop acres in the [U.S.]. …
“A lawyer working for DuPont,
the next largest competitor in the seed business, said ‘a seed company can’t
stay in business without offering seeds with Roundup Ready in it, so if they
want to stay in that business, essentially they have to do what Monsanto tells
them to do.’ ” [page 8]
DuPont is one of the world’s
largest chemical corporations and a major competitor in many fields. If an
enterprise as powerful as DuPont finds itself at the mercy of Monsanto, what
chance does a family farmer have?
The reference to “Roundup
Ready” in the quote above is a reference to a suite of Monsanto agricultural
products (soybeans, corn, sugar beets and other crops) that are genetically
engineered to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Farmers growing
these crops with Monsanto seeds can thus spray more herbicides on their crops.
Unfortunately, as more pesticides are sprayed, weeds and insects become more
resistant, inducing farmers to spray still more and thereby introduce more
poisons into the environment.
Patents on life reverses
precedent
As with the consolidation of
seed companies, the rise of genetically engineered crops and the right to
patent living organisms is a recent development. After decades of refusal by
the U.S. Congress to allow patents on food-producing plants that re-produce via
seeds, it passed a law in 1970 allowing patenting of “novel” varieties produced
from seeds.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued
rulings in 1980 and 2001 allowing living organisms, including plants, to be
patented, opening the floodgates to current corporate practices. A frenzy of
acquisition of seed companies and a rapid expansion of patents on seeds and
plants ensued. The report by Center For Food Safety and Save Our Seeds
summarizes what these changes have wrought:
“As a consequence, what was
once a freely exchanged, renewable resource is now privatized and monopolized.
Current judicial interpretations have allowed utility patents on products of
nature, plants, and seeds, without exceptions for research and seed saving.
This revolutionary change is contrary to centuries of traditional seed breeding
based on collective community knowledge and established in the public domain
and for the public good.” [page 5]
The ETC Group, in
its report, “Who Owns Nature?,” also highlights the privatization of a
commons:
“In the first half of the 20th
century, seeds were overwhelmingly in the hands of farmers and public-sector
plant breeders. In the decades since, [biotechnology companies] have used
intellectual property laws to commodify the world seed supply — a strategy that
aims to control plant germplasm and maximize profits by eliminating farmers’
rights. … In less than three decades, a handful of multinational corporations
have engineered a fast and furious corporate enclosure of the first link in the
food chain.” [page 11]
Proprietary seeds now account
for 82 percent of the world’s commercial seed market. Monsanto, according to
the ETC Group, directly accounts 23 percent of the world’s seed sales by
itself. Monsanto and the next two biggest seed companies, DuPont and Syngenta,
sell almost half.
Once a farmer contracts with a
giant seed company, the farmer is trapped. Standard contracts with seed
companies forbid farmers from saving seeds, requiring them to buy new
genetically engineered seeds from the company every year and the herbicide to
which the seed has been engineered to be resistant. Monsanto aggressively
litigates against farmers to enforce this provision, dictates farming practices
and requires its inspectors to be given access to all records and fields. The
company has even sued neighboring farmers whose fields unwillingly became
contaminated with Monsanto’s seeds.
Doubts raised on ‘benefits’ of
GMOs
Nobody knows the full effects
on the environment or human health of these chemicals and GMOs. A recent study published in the journal
Entropy found that residues of Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s
Roundup herbicide, are found in a variety of foods in the Western diet and in
turn can cause cellular damage leading to several diseases, including
gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. More than 800 scientists have signed a letter
calling for a moratorium on all field trials of GMOs for at least five years, a
ban on patents on life forms and declaring that genetically modified crops
“offer no benefits to consumers for farmers.”
Genetically modified crops, of
course, are carried along by winds and don’t stop at property boundaries. Last
month, genetically modified wheat was discovered in the fields of a farmer in
Oregon. The Guardian reports that the wheat
has never been approved for human consumption and is a variety developed by
Monsanto in an experiment that ended a decade ago. Several Asian countries
responded to this news by banning imports of U.S. wheat and the European Union
advised wheat shipped from the U.S. be tested.
Hoping to expand its reach,
Monsanto (and three other corporations) are attempting to corner the market in
maize in Mexico, the staple crop’s birthplace. The companies have applied to
plant genetically modified maize on more than two million hectares in two
Mexican states. Already, according to a report in Truthout, farmers near Mexico
City have found their crops
contaminated with genetically modified maize.
Sixty-four countries currently
require GMO labeling, but such labeling in the United States is bitterly fought
by Monsanto and other giant agribusinesses. The companies argue that GMOs are
safe, but if they are so proud of their products, why do they resist them being
put on a label for consumers to see? Nor does the revolving door between the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Monsanto inspire confidence.
Corporate lawyers and others
who have done work for Monsanto, for instance, subsequently moved to the FDA,
where they gave approval for Monsanto products. Although corporate executives
going to work for the U.S. government agencies that regulate them, then going
back to their companies, is a common practice, Monsanto has sent an extraordinary
number of executives to government posts.
Nonetheless, this specter
shouldn’t be looked at overly simplistically as Monsanto being an evil company.
It and its competitors are acting in the way that capitalist competition
mandates they act — grow or die is the ever present imperative. All industries
move toward monopolization (a handful of companies dominating an industry, not
necessarily a “pure” monopoly of one); corporations grow to such massive size
that they can dominate their societies; and the surviving corporations convert
ever more human activity or traditionally public spheres into their private
profit centers. This is the natural result of market competition and allowing
“markets” to determine social outcomes.
Monsanto happens to be the
company that is most ruthless at navigating and further developing these
ongoing systemic trends, just as Wal-Mart is the company that is the leader
among retailers
forcing the moving of production to the lowest-wage countries, squeezing
suppliers and exploiting workforces. That does not mean that we should be
content to allow Monsanto to grab control of the world’s food supply or make
life itself a commodity. Quite the contrary. The specter of any enterprise
gaining a monopoly over food is too frightening to contemplate, never mind an
enterprise so dedicated to squashing anybody who gets in its way.
The idea of Monsanto (or any
other corporation or bloc of corporations) wresting control of the world’s food
supply sounds like a bad science fiction movie or a crazy nightmare. But modern
capitalism is heading toward that previously unthinkable place. The time is to
organize is now, for we never have as much time as we think we do.
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