IUF
Uniting Food, Farm and Hotel Workers World-Wide
The GM Industry's Attack on Biodiversity
Posted to the IUF website 12-Mar-2004Share this article.
A new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) demonstrates that it has taken less than ten years of commercial growing to produce "massive" GMO contamination of traditional crops in the United States. The most conservative interpretation of the study results - based on two laboratory samplings of six traditional varieties each of maize (corn), soybeans and canola (rapeseed) - detected genetically manipulated material in at least 50 percent of the maize, 50 percent of the soybeans, and 83 percent of the canola.
The report also states that "there is no reason to believe that the transgenes detected in this study are the only ones moving into the traditional seed supply� genes originating in less popular transgenic varieties, as well as the hundreds of engineered varieties that have been field tested in the United States, could potentially contaminate the seed supply of food and feed crops"
The implications for the environment, food safety and security and for agricultural and food workers are enormous. Seeds are life. While the causes of hunger are many, inadequate plant genetic resources are not among them. On the contrary, combating hunger requires a concerted defence of biodiversity and the diminishing varieties of wild and domestic plants and their seeds which are the common heritage of humanity. Protecting seed stocks from GMO contamination is a vital necessity if the sources of nutrition - and advances in socially and ecologically sustainable farming - for current and future generations are to be preserved. Failure puts us on the highspeed route to an unsustainable monoculture and universal dependence on the biotech transnationals, their herbicides/pesticides and their patents on the building blocks of life.
The US report comes at a time when Monsanto and the other "life science" TNCs are (through the US government) challenging restrictions on GMO labeling rules at the WTO, aggressively forcing developing ountries to accept GMO seeds and imports (often disguised as food aid) and using their financial resources to decimate or capture public interest agricultural research institutions. Spurred by the TRIPS Agreement, one of the pillars of the WTO, international patent law is being rewritten in the corporate interest to permit the patenting of life forms. EU Agriculture Commissioner Fischler is working to dismantle what remains of the EU de facto moratorium on GMO crop authorizations: some two dozen GMO crops are pending EU approval, with more to follow. Despite a series of extensive open-air field trials which clearly documented the GMO threat to plant and animal life, the UK government is preparing to authorize the planting of GM maize. The companies are tightening their lock on the food chain and the international system which enforces their dominance. The biosphere, farmers and workers are the losers.
A spokesperson for the US Biotechnology Industry Association declared that she was "not surprised by this report, knowing that pollen travels and commodity grains might co-mingle at various places." Unlike those who advocate "segregating" field crops and their seeds to guard against GM contamination, she knows what she's talking about. Let us hope that the others get the message and respond accordingly.
The UCS study, and the vast quantity of publicly available scientific information produced independently of the GMO industry, attest to the impossibility of defending seeds from GMO contamination through "isolating" fields sown with GMO seeds or enforcing strict separation of GMO and non-GMO seeds. "Co-existence" of GMO and non-GMO seeds and crops is impossible, because of the way plants propagate, in the first instance, and because of the way seeds are stored, transported and marketed, in the other.
Effective implementation of the "polluter pays" principle is equally illusory, because it ignores the balance of forces under which GMO contamination takes place.
Companies like Monsanto have not, strictly speaking, patented their herbicide and pesticide resistant plants. They have patented the manipulated DNA, so that genetic transfers (through, for example, pollination) make genetically colonized plants vulnerable to charges of patent infringement. "Gene stacking" - the accumulation of GMO induced traits through cross-fertilization to produce new plant varieties, in some cases plants with resistance to multiple herbicides/pesticides - is already occurring on a wide scale.
In Mexico - the cradle of maize - transgenic contamination of native varieties has been detected in 33 communities in nine states despite the fact that the Mexican government has a moratorium on planting GMO maize seed. Up to four GM traits in the contaminated Mexican samples were found in single plant, including the genetically engineered insectidal toxin inserted into GMO StarLink maize. The probable source of the contamination is the import of GMO maize from the United States, which under NAFTAhas flooded over the border at prices below the cost of production.
GMO canola has taken over the prairies of the US and Canada and can be found growing wild by virtually every roadside where the crops are grown. Monsanto, using their private seed police to gather "evidence" of unlicensed seed use, has threatened hundreds of farmers with lawsuits if they refuse to pay for the privilege of hosting the invaders. Monsanto is currently suing Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser for one million US dollars because Monsanto-patented genetic material was found on his farm despite the fact that he never planted the company's GMO Roundup-resistant variety. His case is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada.
It is the polluted, not the polluter who pays under this system. Fear and intimidation are employed to ensure that seeds are no longer saved, but purchased from the companies.
Commercialized GMO technology can no longer be characterized as a potential or speculative threat: corporate control through GM contamination is already being exercised on a vast scale. Evidence documenting the extent of GM contamination doesn't surprise the industry, for the simple reason that it has pursued a conscious strategy of releasing GMOs into the environment on the widest possible scale. Knowing that the transfer of patented genetic material cannot be effectively contained, the corporations are simply waiting for the moment to arrive when "tolerance" thresholds can be declared meaningless, as they will have been rapidly surpassed.
Neither consumer resistance nor selective authorizations of commercial GMO plantings can be relied upon to prevent further GM contamination. Zero tolerance is the only defence against an inherently invasive technology which in the space of a decade is on its way to destroying the seeds which cultivators have developed over thousands of years.