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TechnoratiFrightening Food for Thought
Content conquers craft in Marie-Monique Robin's devastating exposé Le Monde selon Monsanto (The World According to Monsanto).
The French journalist's documentary format is pedestrian -- lots of phone calls, talking heads, cheesy mock-dramatic background music. But her seriously researched critique of the international chemical "life sciences" giant Monsanto will freeze the blood in your veins.
You may know Monsanto for its role in those old chestnuts PCB, dioxin and Agent Orange, poisons so pervasive and so stubborn they have spread their toxic stain from pole to pole.
But did you know the 100-year-old company is a major player in the GMO revolution? Under the plausible guise of eradicating world hunger with genetically modified seeds resistant to Round-Up, a best-selling herbicide it also developed, Monsanto has launched an insidious campaign to achieve worldwide market supremacy, regardless of the social cost to small farmers and rural economies.
It's all laid out in previously classified documents, and confirmed by scientists, politicians and victims. What the evidence suggests is that Monsanto has long waged a dirty war of pressure campaigns, corruption, collusion with government and prevarication, also known as big fat lies.
We know where Robin stands on Monsanto. We also know she tried early and often to get the company to talk for her documentary. It refused, on the grounds it would not come off looking good. It doesn't.
As far back as 1937, a study showed the "systemic toxic effects" of PCBs. Its production continued for decades, with shattering results still felt today.
Repositioning itself as an agricultural company, Monsanto developed Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) to increase milk production in dairy cows. Despite flawed science and obvious health risks, the company rushed the product to market, using such subtle measures as attempting to bribe Canadian government officials.
It failed, and the drug never crossed the border. But it was accepted in the States, where deregulations initiated during the Reagan years have put the company into bed with successive governments committed to leading the biotech revolution. Yes, that's Bush senior checking out the mutant Monsanto seeds when he was Ronald Reagan's VP.
As someone says, "biotech is so important, we can't let problems get in the way." Which explains the current GMO saturation of global markets and the stealth penetration of those seeds through "transgenics" into native seed stock.
It's not scary. It's terrifying. Like a Kurt Vonnegut Ice Nine effect, Monsanto's GMO market penetration looks to turn the world to mono-culture and potential environmental catastrophe. Rather than feed the planet, says Robin in this essential wake-up call, Monsanto is well on the road to ruining it.
jgriffin@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008
15 Comments so far
Show AllYears ago, Jeffrey Smith - author of 'Seed of Deception' - did an interview on C2C in which he described a meeting in which Mosanto executives were asked by their high-powered marketing firm what their ultimate goal was in entering the seed market. Monsanto executives got back with them in a subsequent meeting stating that their goal was "that there be no natural seed available anywhere in the world" - thus their development of the 'terminator gene'.
Then we can travel by rickshaws pulled by vegetarians!
No, Vera, the Monsanto monsters all have their own organic gardens to raise pure food in for their families and free range pastures for their livestock and chickens that they eat while they are poisoning the rest of us.
Just think, though, of all the extra corn their GM seeds will produce to make fuel for our vehicles so we can continue to waste it running around in big SUV`s. If we can use all of the corn for fuel, there will not be any left for livestock and everyone will have to go vegetarian, how about that?
Aren't Monsanto people eating the same 'garbage' they expect US to eat? Do they have a devine dispensation that makes them immune to the effects of the garbage they produce? How about ASPARTAME...another contribution to humanity.
BOYCOTT MONSANTO FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES!!!
Mark Abram, Monsanto plots to destroy the political/economic independence of world farmers with terminator seed while its allies in the US government enable such plots with "free market" policies. Other such plots include Microsoft's plot to extract ongoing monopoly rents from all computer users.
Not surprisingly the elites abuse biotechnology like they abuse everything they get their claws on. in the case of Monsanto, genetic modification is contaminating wild and heirloom varieties. The benefit of these varieties is that they have withstood the test of time.
If you believe biotech has potential, you might want to help halt the elites' abuse. There can be a domino effect after that, and progress will greatly accelerate when all of the elites' abuses are eliminated.
This world is Roundup ready.
Mark Abrams
"...glyphosate, which Monsanto markets as Roundup, is a relatively benign, biodegradable and bio-derived chemical, nonpersistent in the environment and with no known toxic effects on human or animal life."
Apart from increased risk of multiple myeloma, Non-hodgkins lymphoma, hairy cell leukemia, birth defects, damage to placental cells etc as well as issues of environmental effects and persistence in the water table.
See
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/Toxic.htm
A good summary of a number of the studies, including references and links to the original research
and
http://www.biodynamics.net.au/articles/myths_of_safe_pesticides.htm
for a good overall discussion of the myths and risks to the environment of a range of agrichemicals including Glyphosate such as persistence in food and water, risks to wildlife etc as well as to human health. Including the following statement
"One of the biocides linked to NHL by the Hardell study is Glyphosate. A previous study in 1998 had implicated Glyphosate to hairy cell leukemia.19 Several animal studies have shown that Glyphosate can cause gene mutations and chromosomal aberrations.20 Denmark banned Glyphosate in September 2003 because it was so persistent that it polluted most of the water table.
The response of many regulatory authorities is to ensure that use of Glyphosate is increased substantially around the world with the approval of "Roundup Ready" genetically modified crops."
There is a lot of information out there about the risks of this chemical.
Just yesterday on CD:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/21/9126/
Did you know Monsanto "is a major player in the GMO revolution?" Ummm, yeah, we knew that.
"Under the plausible guise of eradicating world hunger with genetically modified seeds resistant to Round-Up, a best-selling herbicide it also developed, Monsanto has launched an insidious campaign to achieve worldwide market supremacy, regardless of the social cost to small farmers and rural economies.
It's all laid out in previously classified documents, and confirmed by scientists, politicians and victims."
WELL, I don't work or speak for Monsanto, and I don't want to defend the company against charges of unfair, dishonest, predatory or coercive business practices.
But I do know that Monsanto's Roundup technology has been enormously successful in American agriculture markets because of its effectiveness, meaning increased yield at lowered cost. It has also reduced environmental burdens, because the herbicide glyphosate, which Monsanto markets as Roundup, is a relatively benign, biodegradable and bio-derived chemical, nonpersistent in the environment and with no known toxic effects on human or animal life.
So, if the company is guilty of some evil business practices, we should perhaps convict them on those charges, but obviously the partisans here are much more interested in using implications of corporate wrongdoing to somehow indict biotechnology as evil in itself, despite a lack of any evidence to support the latter sort of claims.
David Blume has made it his mission to "send Monsanto back to hell".
His "How to" book is selling like hotcakes and his readers might just pull it off!
Patriotis. Yes. Good idea. A while back I realized that I was surrounded by brand names in my living room. I got black tape and covered the words 'sony' 'hitachi' and 'daytek' and 'GE' -fifteen spots in all. My mental landscape became a brighter place.
Monsanto is not the only brand name who is perverting our society into their own image.
I say, quelch the brandnames everywhere, let's wake up and take our world back.
First order of business, white spraypaint or white tape to tape over every brandname in existance and see our world for what it really has and is.
Monsanto paid about $600 for the removal of their patented plant-like objects from Percy Schmeiser's land. The precedent is there. Now let's make them clean up the rest of the biosphere.
The documentary is well worth the time, it's on YouTube
Wake up call? Like 30 years late with that one, baby.
Monsanto and friends needed to be stopped before 80% of the soy, corn, rapeseed, wheat, cotton and, soon, rice, in America were transgenic mutant organisms.
What's the plan? We gonna force 'em to, er, clean up 3 million square feet of contaminated farmland and replant millions of acres with real crops?
Check out the new and improved Farm Bill giveaways - there's a tax break for farmers who "choose" to plant TMOs.
A tax break. For planting mutant creations that have never existed on Earth. Obviously, 80% contamination isn't enough - they're going for the whole damn world.