SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION
By William EngdahlCHAPTER 10
Iraq Gets American
Seeds
of Democracy
"The reason we are in Iraq is to plant the seeds of
democracy so they flourish there and spread to the
entire region of authoritarianism."
George W. Bush
US-style Economic
Shock Therapy
When George W. Bush spoke of planting the "seeds of
democracy" few realized that he had Monsanto genetically engineered
seeds in mind.
Following the US occupation of Iraq in March 2003, the economic
and political realities of that country changed radically. Not
only was Iraq occupied by some 130,000 US troops and a small
army of private mercenary soldiers of fortune closely tied to the
Pentagon, it was also under the comprehensive economic control
of its occupier, the United States.
Control over the Iraqi economy was run out of the Pentagon. In
May 2003, Paul Bremer III was put in charge as Administrator of
the newly created Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, a thinly veiled
occupation authority. Bremer, a former US State Department
terrorism official, had gone on to become Managing Director of
the powerful consulting firm of former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, Kissinger Associates.
In many respects, US-occupied Iraq was a far better opportunity
than Argentina. The US occupation was instrumental in bringing the agricultural system of an entire country under the domain of
GMO agribusiness. The US occupation administration simply
made Iraqi farmers an offer they could not refuse: "Take our GM
seeds or die."
Bremer held de facto life-and-death control over every area of
civilian activity in occupied Iraq. Notably, he did not report to the
State Department, which is typically the department responsible for
reconstruction, but directly to the office of former Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, in the Pentagon.
As head of the CPA, Bremer moved swiftly to draft a series of
laws to govern Iraq, which at the time had neither a constitution nor
a legally-constituted government. The new laws of the US occupation
authority numbered 100 in all, and were put into effect in
April 2004.1 As a whole, the hundred new US-mandated laws-or
orders, as they were called-would insure that the economy of Iraq
would be remade along the lines of a US-mandated free-market
economic model; much as the International Monetary Fund and
Washington had imposed on the economies of Russia and the former
Soviet Union after 1990.
The mandate given to Bremer by Rumsfeld's Pentagon planners,
was to impose a "shock therapy" that would turn the entire state centered
economy of Iraq into a radical free-market private region.
He executed more drastic economic changes in one month than
were forced on the debtor countries of Latin America in three
decades.
Bremer's first act was to fire 500,000 state workers, most of them
soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers.
Next, he opened the country's borders to unrestricted imports: no
tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Two weeks after Bremer
came to Baghdad in May 2003, he declared Iraq to be "open for
business." He did not say whose business, but that was becoming
increasingly clear.
Before the invasion, Iraq's non-oil economy had been dominated
by some 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything
from cement to paper to washing machines. In June 2003, Bremer
announced that these state firms would be privatized immediately. "Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands;' he said, "is
essential for Iraq's economic recovery."2 The Iraqi privatization
plan would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
CPA Order 37 lowered Iraq's corporate tax rate from roughly
40 percent to a flat 15 percent. Without tax revenues, the state would
be unable to playa large role in anything. Order 39 allowed foreign
companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside the natural resource
sector. This ensured unrestricted foreign business activities
in the country. Investors could also take 100 percent of the profits
they'made in Iraq out of the country. They would not be required
to reinvest and they would not be taxed. The beneficiaries of these
laws were clearly not the people or the economy of Iraq.
Under Order 39, the foreign companies could sign leases and
contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign
banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. Appropriate to such
a foreign takeover of the economy, the only laws remaining from
Saddam Hussein's era were those restricting trade unions and collective
bargaining.
Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in
the world, to being the freest and most wide-open market. With
its economy and banking system devastated by war and more than
a decade of US-led economic embargo, Iraqis were in no position
to buy their privatized state companies. Foreign multinationals
were the only possible actors who might benefit from Bremer's
grand economic recovery scheme.
The new laws were imposed on a conquered and devastated land,
with no possibility of objection aside from military sabotage and
guerrilla warfare against the occupiers. Enacted by the United States
Government occupying agency, the CPA, to make Iraq attractive to
foreign investors, the set of 100 new orders gave total rights and
control over the economy of Iraq to multinational corporations.
Moreover, these laws were designed to pave the way for the most
radical transformation of a nation's food production system ever
attempted. Under Bremer, Iraq was to become a model for
Genetically Modified or GMO agribusiness.
Bremer's Order 81
The CPA explicitly defined the legal magnitude of the 100 Orders.
An Order was defined as "binding instructions or directives to the
Iraqi people that create penal consequences or have a direct bearing
on the way Iraqis are regulated, including changes to Iraqi law." In
other words, Iraqis were told "do it or die:' Whenever prior Iraqi law
might interfere with Bremer's new 100 Orders, Iraqi law was made
null and void. The law of occupation was supreme.3
Buried deep among the new Bremer decrees, which dealt with
everything from media to privatization of state industries, was
Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information,
Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law." Order 81 stated:
11. Article 12 is amended to read as follows: "A patent shall grant its
owner the following rights:
1. Where the subject of the patent is a product, the right to prevent
any person who has not obtained the owner's authorization
from making, exploiting, using, offering for sale, selling
or importing that product."
12. Article 13.1 is amended to read as follows: "The term of duration
of the patent shall not end before the expiration of a period of
twenty years for registration under the provisions of this Law as
from the date of the filing of the application for registration under
the provisions of this Law:'
A further provision of Order 81 stated, "Farmers shall be prohibited
from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety
mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph (C) of Article 14 of this
Chapter." Furthermore,
CPA Order No. 81 amends Iraq's patent and industrial design law
to protect new ideas in any field of technology that relates to a product
or manufacturing processes. The amendments permit companies
in Iraq, or in countries that are members of a relevant treaty to which
Iraq is a party, to register patents in Iraq. The amendments grant
the patent owner the right to prevent any person who has not
obtained the owner's authorization from exploiting the patented
product or process for twenty years from the date of the patent's registration in Iraq. The amendments also allow individuals and
companies to register industrial designs.4
In plain English, Order 81 gave holders of patents on plant varieties
(which all happened to be large foreign multinationals)
absolute rights over use of their seeds in Iraqi agriculture for
20 years. While that might appear to be a fair and sensible business
provision to compensate a foreign company for its intellectual
property, in reality it was an incursion on the sovereignty of
Iraq. Like many countries, Iraq never recognized the principle of
commercial patents on life forms such as plants. The patents had
been granted to companies like Monsanto or DuPont by US or
other foreign patent authorities.
What Order 81 did, in fact, was amend Iraq's patent law to recognize
foreign patents, regardless of the legality of such patents under
Iraq law. On the surface, it appeared to leave Iraqi farmers the
option to refuse to buy Monsanto or other patented seeds, and to
plant their traditional native seeds. In reality, as the drafters of
Order 81 were also well aware, it had a quite opposite effect.
The protected plant varieties were Genetically Modified or Gene
Manipulated plants, and Iraqi farmers who chose to plant such
seeds were required to sign an agreement with the seed company
holding the patent, stipulating that they would pay a "technology
fee" and an annual license fee for planting the patented seeds.
Any Iraqi farmer seeking to take a portion of those patented
seeds to replant in following harvest years would be subject to
heavy fines from the seed supplier. In the United States, until a
Court ruling struck it down, Monsanto demanded a punitive damage
equal to 120 times the cost of a bag of its GMO seeds. This was
the occasion for Iraqi farmers to become vassals not of Saddam
Hussein, but of the multinational GM seed giants.
At the heart of Order 81 was the Plant Variety Protection (PVP)
provision. Under the PVP, seed saving and reuse would become
illegal. Farmers using patented seeds or even "similar" seeds, would
be subject to severe fines or even prison. However, the plant varieties
being protected were not those which resulted from 10,000 years of Iraqi farm cross-breeding and development. Rather, the protection
was given to back up the rights of giant multinational companies
to introduce their own seeds and herbicides into the Iraqi
market with full protection of the government, both of the US and
of Iraq.
Iraqi Seed Treasure Destroyed
Iraq is historically part of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization,
where for millennia the fertile valley between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers created ideal conditions for crop cultivation. Iraqi
farmers have been in existence since approximately 8,000 B.C., and
developed the rich seeds of almost every variety of wheat used in
the world today. They did this through a system of saving a share
of seeds and replanting them, developing new naturally resistant
hybrid varieties through the new plantings.
For years, the Iraqis held samples of such precious natural seed
varieties in a national seed bank, located in Abu Ghraib, the city
better known internationally as the site of a US military torture
prison. Following the US occupation of Iraq and its various bombing
campaigns, the historic and invaluable seed bank in Abu Ghraib
vanished, a further casualty of the Iraq war.
However, Iraq's previous Agriculture Ministry had taken the precaution
to create a back-up seed storage bank in neighboring Syria,
where the most important wheat seeds are still stored in an organization
known as the International Center for Agricultural Research
in Dry Areas (ICARDA), based in Aleppo, Syria. With the loss of
Abu Ghraib's seed bank, ICARDA, a part of the international
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
network of seed banks, could have provided the Iraqis with seeds
from its store had the CPA wanted to request such help.5 It did not.
Bremer's advisers had different plans for Iraq's food future.
Iraqi agriculture was to be "modernized:' industrialized, and
reoriented away from traditional family multi-crop farming into
US-style agribusiness enterprises producing for the "world market:'
Serving the food security needs of hungry Iraqis would be incidental
to the plan.
Under Bremer's Order 81, if a large international corporation
developed a seed variety resistant to a particular Iraqi pest, and an
Iraqi farmer was growing another variety that did the same, it was
illegal for the farmer to save his own seed. Instead, he is obliged to
pay a royalty fee for using Monsanto's GMO seed.
In the late 1990's, a US biotech company, SunGene, patented a
sunflower variety with very high oleic acid content. It did not merely
patent the genetic structure though. It patented the characteristic
of high oleic content itself, claiming right to it. SunGene informed
other sunflower breeders that should they develop a variety "high in
oleic acid;' that it would be considered an infringement of the patent.
"The granting of patents covering all genetically engineered
varieties of a species ... puts in the hands of a single inventor the
. possibility to control what we grow on our farms and in our gardens,"
remarks Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin, Director General of the
International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. ''At the stroke of a
pen, the research of countless farmers and scientists has potentially
been negated in a single, legal act of economic highjack:'6 Economic
hijack was just what Bremer and Monsanto intended for Iraq under
Order 81.
Such total control on farmer seed varieties was possible under
the new law on patent rights in Iraq. The CPA's Order 81, behind
the cover of complicated legal jargon, effectively turned the food
future of Iraq over to global multinational private companies hardly
the liberation most Iraqis had hoped for.
The patent laws on plants decreed by Order 81, unlike other
national laws on Intellectual Property Rights, were not negotiated
between sovereign governments or with the WTO. They were
imposed by Washington on Iraq without debate. According to
informed Washington reports, the specific details of Order 81 on
plants were written for the US Government by Monsanto
Corporation, the world's leading purveyor of GMO seeds and crops.
No Seeds to Plant
On paper, it appeared that only those seeds which Iraqi farmers
chose to buy from international seed companies would fall under the new US-imposed Iraqi law on patents. In reality, Iraq was being
turned into a huge laboratory for the development of food products
under the control of GMO seed and chemical giants such as
Monsanto, DuPont and Dow.
In the aftermath and devastation of the Iraq war, most Iraqi
farmers were forced to turn to their Agriculture Ministry for new
seeds if they were to plant ever again. Here was the opening for
Bremer's takeover of the Iraqi food supply.
For over a decade, Iraqi farmers had endured the US-UK-Ied
embargo on much needed agricultural equipment. Also, Iraq had
suffered from three years of severe drought prior to the war, a climatic
misfortune which caused Iraqi wheat crops to decline severely.
Years of war and economic embargo had thus already devastated
Iraqi agriculture and by 2003 grain production had fallen to less
than half the level of 1990 before the first Iraq-US war. Up to 2003,
much of the Iraqi population had depended on UN oil-for-food
rations to survive.
In the name of "modernizing" Iraqi food production, the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US
Agricultural Reconstruction and Development Program for Iraq
(ARDI) stepped in to transform traditional Iraqi agriculture. The
key Washington -appointed agriculture czar for Iraq at that time
was Daniel Amstutz, former US Department of Agriculture official
and former Vice President of the giant grain conglomerate Cargill
Corporation. Amstutz was one of the key persons who had crafted
the US demands on Agriculture during the GATT Uruguay Round
which led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 1995.
The alleged aim of Order 81 was "to ensure good quality seeds
in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq's accession to the World Trade
Organization." "Good quality" was of course to be defined by the
occupation authority. WTO accession meant Iraq had to open its
markets and laws to rules dictated by the powerful industrial and
financial interests dominating WTO policy .
As soon as Order 81 was issued, USAID began delivering,
through the Agriculture Ministry, thousands of tons of subsidized,US-origin "high-quality, certified wheat seeds" to desperate Iraqi
farmers that were initially nearly cost -free. According to a report by
GRAIN, an NGO critical of GMO seeds and plant patents, USAID
refused to allow independent scientists to determine whether or
not the seed was GMO. Naturally, should it prove to be GMO wheat
seed, within one or two seasons, Iraqi farmers would find themselves
obligated to pay royalty fees to foreign seed companies in order to
survive. The GRAIN report stated the intent of Order 81:
The CPA has made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested
from new varieties registered under the law. Iraqis may continue to
use and save from their traditional seed stocks or what's left of them
after the years of war and drought, but that is the not the agenda for
reconstruction embedded in the ruling. The purpose of the law is
to facilitate the establishment of a new seed market in Iraq, where
transnational corporations can sell their seeds-genetically modified
or not, which farmers would have to purchase afresh every single
cropping season.7
While historically Iraq prohibited private ownership of biological
resources, the new US-imposed patent law introduced a system
of monopoly rights over seeds-rights which no Iraqi farmer had
the resources to develop.
In effect, Bremer inserted into Iraq's previous patent law a new
chapter on Plant Variety Protection (PVP) that was said to provide
for the "protection of new varieties of plants." PVP, an Intellectual
Property Right (IPR), was in fact a patent for plant varieties which
gave exclusive rights on planting materials to a plant breeder who
claimed to have discovered or developed a new variety.
The protection in the PVP had nothing to do with conservation,
but referred to "safeguarding of the commercial interests of private
breeders." Under the US decree, "plant variety protection" really
spelt plant variety destruction.
"Let Them Eat ... Pasta?"
Under the program, the State Department, working with the US
Department of Agriculture (USDA), had set up 56 "wheat extension
demonstration sites" in northern Iraq with the purpose of "introducing and demonstrating the value of improved wheat
seeds." The project was run for the US Government by the
International Agriculture Office of Texas A&M University, which
used its 800 acres of demonstration plots all across Iraq to teach
farmers how to grow "high-yield seed varieties" of crops that
included barley, chick peas, lentils and wheat.8
214s
The $107 million USAID agriculture reconstruction project's goal was to double the production of 30,000 Iraqi farms within the first year. The idea was to convince skeptical Iraqi farmers that only with such new "wonder seeds" could they get large harvest yields. As had been the case ten years earlier with American farmers, desperation and a promise of huge gains would be used to trap Iraqi farmers into dependence on foreign seed multinationals.
Coincidentally, Texas A&M's Agriculture Program also described itself as "a recognized world leader in using biotechnology:' or GMO technology. With their new seeds would come new chemicals-pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow.
The Business Journal of Phoenix, Arizona, reports that "An Arizona agri-research firm is supplying wheat seeds to be used by farmers in Iraq looking to boost their country's home-grown food supplies:' That firm was called the World Wide Wheat Company (WWWC), and in partnership with three universities, including Texas A&M, it would "provide 1,000 pounds of wheat seeds to be used by Iraqi farmers north of Baghdad:'9
According to Seedquest, a central information website for the global seed industry, WWWC was a leader in developing "proprietary varieties" of cereal seeds-i.e., varieties that are patented and owned by a particular company. 10 These were the sorts of protected GMO seeds contained in the Order 81. According to WWWC, any "client:' or farmer as they were once known, who wishes to grow one of their seeds "pays a licensing fee for each variety:' W3, as it called itself, formally works in cooperation with the BioS Institute of biosciences at the University of Arizona, which curiously describes itself as a "state-of-the-art garage for bio-research."11
Even more remarkable, according to the Phoenix Business Journal article, "six kinds of wheat seeds were developed for the Iraqi endeavor. Three will be used for farmers to grow wheat that is made into pasta; three seed strains will be for bread-making."12 That meant that 50% of the grains being developed by the US in Iraq after 2004 were intended for export. Indeed, pasta was a food fully foreign to the Iraqi diet, demonstrating that, rather than to produce food for the starving 25 million war-weary Iraqis, Bremer's Order 81 was designed to create industrialized agro-business using GM seeds for production geared toward global export.
Additionally, the $107 million USAID agricultural reconstruction project had the aim to get the Iraqi government out of food production. "The idea is to make this a completely free market;' said Doug Pool, agriculture specialist with USAID's Office of Iraq Reconstruction. 13
The USAID aim-mirroring US and WTO policies-was to help the new government phase out farm subsidies. "The Minister of Agriculture has been quite good in doing that;' Pool said. State enterprises, such as the Mesopotamia Seed Co., "need to be spun off and privatized;' he declared. 14 He did not mention who would have the cash in war-torn Iraq to buy such a. state seed company. Only rich foreign agribusiness giants such as Monsanto could be likely buyers.
To facilitate the introduction of patent -protected GM seeds from foreign seed giants, the Iraq Agriculture Ministry distributed these GM seeds at "subsidized prices:' Once farmers started using the GM seeds, under the new Plant Patent Protection rules of Order 81, they would be forced to buy new seeds each year from the company. Under the banner of bringing a "free-market" into the country, Iraqi farmers were becoming enslaved to foreign seed multinationals.
In a December 2004 interview, Iraq's US-educated interim Agriculture Minister, Sawsan Ali Magid al-Sharifi, stated, "We need Iraqi farmers to be competitive, so we decided to subsidize inputs like pesticides, fertilizers, improved seeds and so on. We cut down on the other subsidies, but we have to become competitive."15
In other words, money for Iraq's impoverished farmers to buy new seeds was earmarked for buying GMO "improved seeds" from foreign multinationals like Monsanto.
At the same time, US commodity exporters were hungrily eyeing new market opportunities. "Iraq was once a significant commercial market for US farm products, with sales approaching $1 billion in the 1980s;' told Bush Administration former agriculture secretary Ann Veneman-who had ties to Monsanto before she came to Washington-to a conference of farm broadcasters in 2003. "It has the potential, once again, to be a significant commercial market." 16
What Veneman neglected to say was that during the Iran-Iraq
war in the late 1980's, the Reagan and Bush Administrations disguised
arms and chemical weapons sales to Saddam Hussein's Iraq
under the US Department of Agriculture Commodity Credit
Corporation export program. The scandal involved billions of US
taxpayer dollars and implicated former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger and National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, as well as
the Atlanta branch of the Italian Banco Nazionale de Lavoro
(BNL)17
According to John King, vice chairman of the US Rice Council, Iraq was the top market for US rice in the late '80s, prior to the 1991 Gulf war. "The US rice industry wants to play a major role once again in supplying rice to Iraq," King told the US House Agriculture Committee. "With the current challenges facing the US rice industry ... renewed Iraqi market access could have a tremendous impact in value-added sales:'18
King added that, "The liberation of Iraq in 2003 by coalition forces has brought freedom to the Iraqi people. 19 The resumption of trade has also provided hope for the US rice industry:' He failed to mention that, in 2003, most US rice was genetically manipulated.
In Spring 2004 as Order 81 was promulgated by Bremer's CPA, supporters of the radical young cleric Moqtada al Sadr protested the closing of their newspaper, al Hawza, by US military police. The CPA accused al Hawza of publishing "false articles" that could "pose the real threat of violence." As an example, the CPA cited an article that claimed Bremer was, "pursuing a policy of starving the Iraq people to make them preoccupied with procuring their daily bread so they do not have the chance to demand their political and individual freedoms."20
That such articles would appear in light of Order 81 was hardly surprising. Neither was it surprising that Bremer's CPA would vigorously try to silence such criticisms of its food policy given the stakes for the entire GMO project.
The Paris Club governments agreed to new terms on the limited $39 billion state-owed debts only after heavy pressure from US Iraq Special Debt Negotiator, James Baker III. Baker was no novice negotiator. He engineered the election of George W. Bush in 2001 through an appeal to the Supreme Court, and he is one of the closest advisers of the Bush family.
In the ensuing horse trading with its OECD allies, the US Government was quite happy to press for a major write-off of old Iraqi debt to Paris Club creditors, for the simple reason that most of that debt was owed to Russia, France, Japan, Germany and other countries. The United States held a minor $2.2 billion of the total debt.
The Paris Club members issued an official press statement:
The representatives of the Creditor Countries, aware of the exceptional situation of the Republic of Iraq and of its limited repayment capacity over the coming years, agreed on a debt treatment to ensure its long term debt sustain ability. To this end, they recommended that their Governments deliver the following exceptional treatment:
- an immediate cancellation of part of the late interest, representing 30% of the debt stock as at January 1,2005. The remaining debt stock is deferred up to the date of the approval of an IMF standard program. This cancellation results in the write-off of 11.6 billion US dollars on a total debt owed to the Paris Club of 38.9 billion US dollars;
- as soon as a standard IMF programme is approved, a reduction of 30% of the debt stock will be delivered. The remaining debt stock will be rescheduled over a period of 23 years including a grace period of 6 years. This step will reduce the debt stock by another 11.6 billions US dollars increasing the rate of cancellation to 60%;
- Paris Club Creditors agreed to grant an additional tranche of debt reduction representing 20% of the initial stock upon completion of the last IMF Board review of three-years of implementation of standard IMF programs.21
The debt relief of Iraq, in which the principal occupier, the United States, generously wrote off the debt owed by Saddam to Washington's rivals who had opposed the war on Iraq-Russia, France, China-was bound with the proviso that Iraq adhere to the strict IMF "standard program." That standard program was the same as the one applied to Indonesia, Poland, Croatia, Serbia, Argentina and post-soviet Russia. It mandated Iraq to turn its economic sovereignty over to IMF technocrats effectively controlled by the US Treasury and the Washington administration.
Adding insult to injury, that old Iraqi debt of the Hussein era was what international governments called "odious debts"-debts incurred without the consent of the population and not in the interest of that population-in short, illegitimate, as the debts of the defunct Soviet Union had been. That did not bother Washington, London and other members of the Paris Club. The debt was a useful weapon to control the "new" Iraq, and to force its transformation into a "free market." GM seeds and the industrialization of agriculture would be at the heart of that forced change.
Privatization of state enterprises was at the top of the Washington Consensus IMF program. Free-market private enterprise was also at the heart of the CPA's 100 Orders of April 2004. This was hardly a coincidence.
The IMF could be accurately labeled as the "policeman of globalization." Since the debt crisis of the 1980's, the IMF enforced brutal creditor austerity and debt repayment plans in developing economies. The debt terms of the IMF were used to force countries to virtually give away their most precious economic assets to foreign interests in order to repay a debt that grew ever larger.
Typically, giant corporate banking and private interests stood behind these IMF measures. They systematically imposed privatization of state enterprises, elimination of public subsidies for food, health and energy, and cuts in public education spending. Every policy that would allow multinational corporations to dominate postwar Iraq would thus be executed by the IMF and the Bremer laws: a shrunken state, flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no controls on capital outflows out of Iraq, no tariffs, and no ownership restrictions.
The people of Iraq would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs, and foreign products would force domestic Iraqi goods out of the market, of which food would be one major product. Local businesses and family farms would be unable to compete under the imposed rules and foreign competition.
A typical victim of IMF conditions would inevitably be forced to transform its national economy towards export in order to earn dollars to repay their debt. The "carrot" for this was always promise of an IMF "bailout" or "rescue" loan. The blackmail behind the IMF carrot was the threat that a victim debtor country would be permanently blacklisted from all foreign credits should it refuse the IMF conditions.
Iraq was to be no different. The US-mandated Iraqi elections were intended to set the legal stage to bind Iraq's government to the severe IMF controls. In effect, this would place the IMFas the "neutral" agency responsible for Iraqi adherence to the 100 Bremer Orders. The IMF would force Iraq to join Washington's global vision of a "free market."
The IMF planned to reach a specific arrangement with Iraq's new government sometime after the January 30, 2005 Iraqi elections. Since the relief of a large amount of Iraq's external debt was dependent on approval by the Fund, the IMF had considerable leverage in its negotiations with Iraqi leaders.22
United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 1483 had given Bremer the power to manage occupied Iraq, but this was to be within the parameters of international law. Bremer's 100 Orders and economic "shock therapy" however, were undertaken in utter violation of international law.
As protests against the Iraqi privatization and violent attacks on American companies spread, it became urgent to conceal this· embarrassing fact. Bremer therefore rushed back to Washington to discuss with the President a new scheme for taking over Iraq's economy. The result was the interim regime of Iyad Allawi, and the announcement of Iraqi elections for January 2005. Allawi, a hand-picked Washington protege who had worked with the CIA for years, was to "legally" implement the illegal Bremer decrees.
Under Order 39 of what became known in Iraq as "the Bremer Laws:' Iraqi industries and markets were to be opened to foreign investment with few restrictions. These laws were formulated in a way which would make it very difficult for either the interim government or any subsequent Iraqi government to revoke or repeal these policies.
Indeed, Bremer cemented the 100 Orders with Article 26 of the Iraqi interim constitution, which ensured that once sovereignty was handed over to the interim government, it would be powerless to change the Bremer Laws. In addition, hand-picked US sympathizers were inserted by Bremer into every Iraqi ministry, and were empowered with the authority to override any of the decisions made by subsequent Iraqi governments.
The presence of 132,000 US troops across Iraq, firmly embedded in some 14 new US military bases constructed across the country after 2003, were to guarantee that. It was becoming clear to most Iraqis by late 2004 just what Washington meant when it used the noble words, "planting the seeds of democracy" in their nation. The seeds had nothing to do with the ability of ordinary Iraqi citizens to determine their own independent destiny.
After official authority was transferred in June 2004 from Bremer's CPA to the Interim Iraqi regime headed by CIA asset, Allawi, the latter agreed to accept debt relief in exchange for its "openness" to IMF-imposed reforms. Thus, in a memorandum attached to a "letter of intent" sent by Central Bank Governor Shababi and Finance Minister Al-Mahdi to the IMF that September, the men expressed their US-installed government's eagerness to "engage" with the fund. 23
"New financial sector legislation has paved the way for the creation of a modern financial sector;' the letter boasted, going on to state that "three foreign banks have already been licensed to begin operations;' and that "a number of foreign banks have shown interest in acquiring a minority ownership stake in private Iraqi banks." One bank was the London HSBC, which is among the largest in the world.24
The forced transformation of Iraq's food production into patented GMO crops is one of the clearest examples of the manner in which Monsanto and other GMO giants are forcing GMO crops onto an unwilling or unknowing world population.
In September 1986, two years after the Rockefeller Foundation had launched its genetic engineering rice project, US agribusiness threw its now considerable weight behind a radical new international trade regime, the GATT Uruguay Round.
It was a culmination and a logical consequence of thirty some years of work. The work had begun in the 1950's at Harvard University, under the project financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, designed by Wassily Leontief, and implemented, step-by-step, by Harvard Business School Professors, Ray Goldberg and John Davis, under the slogan of "vertical integration."
After three decades of systematic destruction of barriers to monopoly and vertical integration, of eradication of health regulations and safety standards within the United States agricultural sector, the emerging corporate colossus of agribusiness next moved to flex its muscle by demanding the creation of a new supranational, non-elected body to enforce its private agenda of concentration on a global scale.
The WTO headquarters were established in Geneva, Switzerland, a nominally neutral, scenic, and peaceful location. Behind this facade, however, the WTO was anything but peaceful or neutral. The WTO had been created as a policeman, a global free trade enforcer, and, among its major aims, a battering ram for the trillion dollar annual world agribusiness trade, with the agenda to advance the interests of private agribusiness companies. For that reason, the WTO was designed as a supranational entity, to be above the laws of nations, answerable to no public body beyond its own walls.
GATT agreements had no enforceable sanctions or penalties for violating agreed trade rules. In contrast, the new WTO did have such punitive leverage. It had the power to levy heavy financial penalties or other sanctions on member countries in violation of their rules. The WTO had emerged as a new weapon which could force open various national barriers and which could thereby enhance the proliferation of the soon-to-be commercialized genetically modified crops.
The idea of a WTO, as with most major post-war free trade initiatives, came from Washington. It was the outcome of the GATT Uruguay Round of trade liberalization talks, which began in Punte del Este, Uruguay, in September 1986, and concluded in Marrakesh, Morocco, in April 1994.
Ever since 1948 and the initial founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Washington had fiercely resisted including agriculture into world trade talks, fearing any common international rules would open US markets to foreign food imports and would damage American agriculture's competitiveness. Since the 1950's, US agricultural exports had been a strategic national priority tied to Cold War geopolitics.
Unlike all previous GATT trade rounds, the Uruguay Round made trade in agriculture a main priority. The reason was simple. By the mid-1980's, backed by the aggressive policies of deregulation and free market support from the Reagan Administration, American agribusiness was powerful enough to launch its global trade offensive, and in a big way.
The Washington position on the Uruguay Round agricultural
agenda had been drafted by Cargill Corporation of Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Daniel Amstutz, a former Cargill executive and Special
Ambassador for the Reagan Administration at the GATT, drew up
the four-point Amstutz Plan.1
It was, in fact, the Cargill Plan. Cargill was then the dominant US private agribusiness giant, with global sales well over $56 billion, and plants in 66 countries around the world. It had built its mighty global empire through working with the Rockefeller interests in Latin America, as well as with Henry Kissinger in the 1970's Great Grain Robbery sales of US wheat to the Soviet Union at huge profit. Its influence on Washington, and especially on US Department of Agriculture policy, was immense.2
The four Amstutz demands at the GATT talks worked uniquely to the benefit of US agribusiness and their growing global position. The points included a ban on all government farm programs and price supports worldwide; a prohibition on countries who seek to impose import controls to defend their national agriculture production; a ban on all government export controls of agriculture, even in time of famine. Cargill wanted to control world grain export trade.
The final Amstutz demand, presented to the GATT· Uruguay Round participants in July 1987, implied that GATT trade rules limit the right of countries to enforce strict food safety laws! The global "free market" was seemingly more sacred to Cargill and their agribusiness allies than mere human life. National food safety laws were seen by US agribusiness as a major barrier to unfettered pursuit of high profit from low-wage, low quality industrial farm operations in developing countries, as well as in the USA. Furthermore, agribusiness wanted an unrestricted ability to market the new genetically engineered crops, with no national concerns about health and safety getting in their way.
Amstutz was a dedicated champion of agribusiness interests and was named the special liaison of the Bush Administration Department of Agriculture to Iraq in 2003 to direct the transformation of Iraqi farming into US-led, "market oriented" export agribusiness with GMO crops, described in chapter 10.
The main US agriculture demands at the Uruguay Round centered on the call for a mandatory end to state agriculture export subsidies, a move aimed squarely at the European Community's Common Agriculture Program (CAP). Washington called the process "agriculture trade liberalization." The beneficiaries were US agribusiness, i.e. the dominant players, in a scenario reminiscent of how British free trade demands in the late 1870's served the interests of British international business and banking, then the dominant world players.
The Congressional decision to back the GATT and the creation of the new WTO was made easier by the fact that Cargill and their Business Roundtable friends poured millions of dollars in campaign contributions to support key members of the US Congress.3
Not content to put all its eggs in one basket, Cargill also created the Consumers for World Trade (CWT), another "pro-GATT" lobby which, curiously enough, represented not consumers but agribusiness and multinational interests. Corporate membership cost $65,000. Cargill also formed an Emergency Committee for American Trade, to convince Congress to accept the new WTO agriculture agenda.4
The international lobby working with Cargill and US agribusiness to push through the radical GATT agriculture agenda was an obscure and powerful organization, which called itself the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council, or IPC. Founded in 1987 to promote the liberalization of agricultural trade and in particular, the Amstutz Plan for agribusiness, the IPC included top executives and officials from Cargill, GMO giant Syngenta (then Novartis), Nestle, Kraft Foods, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midlands (ADM), Bunge Ltd., Winthrop Rockefeller's Winrock International Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture and Japan's largest trading group, Mitsui & Co. IPC was an interest group few politicians in Brussels, Paris or elsewhere could afford to ignore.
WTO rules were to be dominated by a Group of Four, the so called QUAD countries-the USA, Canada, Japan and the EU. They could meet behind closed doors and decide policy for all 134 nations. Within the QUAD, the US-led agribusiness giants controlled major policy. In effect it was a consensus, but a consensus of private agribusiness, that determined WTO policy.
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture, which was written by Cargill, ADM, DuPont, Nestle, Unilever, Monsanto and other agribusiness corporations,was explicitly designed to allow the destruction of national laws and safeguards against the powerful pricing power of the agribusiness giants.
By 1994, as the WTO was in the process of being established, it had become Washington policy to give full backing to the development of genetically-modified plants as a major US strategic priority. The Clinton Administration had made "biotechnology:' along with the Internet, a strategic priority for US Government backing, formal as well as informal. Clinton gave full support to Mickey Kantor as chief negotiator for the WTO ratification process.
When Kantor left the Washington Government in 2001, he was rewarded for his service to US agribusiness during the GATT negotiations. Monsanto Company, then the world's most aggressive promoter of genetically modified crops and related herbicides, named Kantor to be a member of Monsanto's Board of Directors. The revolving door between the government and the private sector was well oiled.
Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical and other agricultural chemical giants had transformed themselves into controllers of patented genetically-modified seeds for the world's major staple crops. The time was ripe to establish a police agency which could force the new GMO crops on a skeptical world. The WTO Agreement on Agriculture was to. be the vehicle for that, along with the WTO rules enforcing Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
The WTO marked a step for the globalization of world agriculture,
under terms defined by US agribusiness. WTO rules would
open the legal and political path to the creation of a global "market"
in food commodities similar to that created by the oil cartel
under the Rockefeller Standard Oil group a century before. Never
before the advent of agribusiness had agriculture crops been viewed
as a pure commodity with a global market price. Crops had always
been local along with their markets, the basis of human existence
and of national economic security.
Washington's Amstutz Plan, with slight modifications, became the heart of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture, or AoA as it came to be known. The policy goal of the AoA was to create what agribusiness deemed its highest priority-a free and integrated global market for its products. While talking rhetorically about "food security;' it mandated that such security would only be possible under a regime of free trade, an agenda uniquely beneficial to the giant global grain traders such as Cargill, Bunge and ADM.
In 1992, the senior Bush Administration made the ruling, without public debate, that genetically engineered or modified food or plants were "substantially equivalent" to ordinary seeds and crops and hence needed no special government regulation. That principle was enshrined into the WTO rules under its "Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement;' or the SPS. Phytosanitary was a fancy scientific term which simply meant that it dealt with plant sanitation, i.e. with GMO plant issues.
The crafty formulation of the SPS rule stipulated that "food standards and measures aimed at protecting people from pests or animals can be potentially used as a deliberate barrier to trade;' and hence, must be forbidden under WTO rules.5 Under the guise of appearing to enshrine plant and human health safety into WTO standards, the IPC and the powerful GMO interests within it ensured just the opposite. Few politicians in WTO member countries bothered to. even read past the formidable term, "phytosanitary." They listened to their own agribusiness lobby and approved.
Under the WTO's SPS rule national laws banning genetically modified organisms from the human food chain, because of national health concerns regarding potential threat to human or animal life, were termed "unfair trade practices:'6 Other WTO rules prohibited national laws that required labeling of genetically engineered foods, declaring them to be "Technical Barriers to Trade."7 Under the WTO, "trade" was deemed a higher concern than the citizen's right to know what he or she was eating. Which trade and to whose benefit was left unspoken.
Parallel to the international negotiations that ultimately created the WTO, some 175 nations were negotiating safeguards to insure that biological diversity and food safety concerns remained a priority in face of the onslaught of new, largely untested GMO crops.
In 1992, two years before the final WTO document was agreed upon, the 175 participating nations had signed a UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). That CBD dealt with the safe transfer and use of GMOs. As an extension of that convention, numerous governments, especially in developing countries, felt that a protocol explicitly dealing with the potential risks of GMOs was necessary. At that point, GMOs were still largely in a testing phase.
Despite strong resistance, especially from the US Government, a formal working group began to draft a Biosafety Protocol in 1996. Finally, after seven years of intense international negotiation involving hearings from relevant interest groups from around the world, 138 member nations of the UN met in Cartagena, Colombia, expecting to sign the final Biosafety Protocol to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
They were too optimistic. The demands of developing countries including Brazil and several African and Asian nations were ambushed by the powerful organized government and agribusiness lobby backing GMO. After ten days of non-stop debate, delegates were stymied by opposition from pro-GMO countries. Canada, acting as spokesman for what was called the Miami Group, led by the United States and other pro-GMO agribusiness countries, won an agreement to adjourn without an agreement and continue work in a smaller committee. The talks had been sidetracked by the Miami Group, six countries led by the USA and including Canada, a close backer of US GMO policy; Argentina, by then fully in the grip of Monsanto and US agribusiness; Australia, another agribusiness free trade ally of Washington; Uruguay and Chile, two countries whose ties to Washington were extremely close. Curiously, the United States Government was not officially present at the Cartagena meetings. The Clinton Administration, an ardent GMO supporter, had refused to participate as they had refused to sign the earlier Convention on Biological Diversity.
Unofficially, however, Washington representatives orchestrated the entire Miami Group sabotage of the talks. The demands of the Miami Group were simple. They insisted that WTO trade rules be formally written into the protocol and that it be stated that biosafety measures must remain subordinate to WTO trade demands. Their argument was insidious and sophistic. They turned the tables and argued, not that the safety of GMO crops was unproven, but rather that the biosafety concerns of most member countries to the Convention over risks of GMO were unproven and hence, should be considered a "barrier to trade."8 In such a case, Miami Group countries insisted WTO rules prohibiting unfair trade barriers must take precedence over the Biosafety Protocol.
The talks collapsed. Little was heard again of the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol. Washington, the WTO and the GMO interests behind them had cleared the path to the unfettered spread of GMO seeds worldwide.
The doctrine of the WTO was simple: free trade-on terms defined by giant private agribusiness conglomerates-was to reign supreme above sovereign nation states and above the concern for human or animal health and safety. "Free market tiber Alles" was the motto.
Washington argued that only products which had been "substantially
transformed" could be labelled in a given country. They then
asserted under the Bush 1992 ruling that their genetically modified
crops were "substantially equivalent" to ordinary plants, not "substantially
transformed;' and hence, needed no label.
Yet, US patent law allowed agribusiness companies at the same time to claim exclusive patent rights on their genetically modified organisms or seeds, on the argument that the introduction of a foreign DNA into the genome of a plant such as rice uniquely altered the plant or, one could say, "substantially transformed" it.
The contradictions between the "substantially equivalent" ruling of Washington on GMO products and allowing radical new patents on GM seeds to be deemed "substantially transformed" did not bother many Washington officials. Whatever argument it took to advance the agribusiness gene revolution agenda was fine by them. Niceties of logical consistency weren't high on Washington's list of priorities in promoting their gene revolution .
The legal framework for patenting plants was enshrined in WTO rules protecting Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Under TRIPS, all member nations of WTO were required to pass laws to protect patents (intellectual property rights) for plants. The patents would block anyone but the patent holder from making, selling or using the "invention." This little-noticed proviso in the new WTO rules opened the floodgates for US and international agribusiness to advance the Rockefeller Foundation genetic engineering strategic agenda.
The WTO TRIPS rules permitted well-financed agrochemical multinationals with large R&D budgets to set the stage for demanding royalty payments or even denying a customer or country its patented seed. In the case of plants, the exclusive patent was in force for twenty years. As one critical scientist put it, under TRIPS and genetic patent law, "knowledge is property. It belongs to corporations and is not accessible to farmers."9
Backed by the police powers of the WTO and the muscle of the US State Department, the gene multinationals-Monsanto, Syngenta and others-soon began testing the limits of how far they could impose the patenting of plants and other life forms on other countries.
A Texas biotechnology company, RiceTec, decided it would take out a patent on Basmati rice, the variety which has been the dietary staple in large parts of India, Pakistan, and Asia for thousands of years. In 1998, RiceTec took a patent on its genetically modified Basmati rice, and thanks to US laws forbidding the labelling of genetic foods RiceTec was able to sell it legally by labelling it as ordinary Basmati rice. RiceTec, it turned out, had gotten a hold of the precious Basmati seed, which had been put in trust by dubious means at the Rockefeller Foundation's International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.10
The IRRI had made a "safety" duplicate of the invaluable collection of rice seeds collected in the Philippines and stored it in a seed bank at Fort Collins, Colorado, making highly dubious the claim by IRRI that the seeds would be stored as a secure seed resource for the region's rice farmers. IRRI had convinced rice farmers that giving their invaluable seed varieties to the IRRI was for their own security.
In Colorado, far from the Philippines, the IRRI gave the valuable seeds to RiceTec scientists, who then patented it. They knew it was highly illegal; even in Texas, rice scientists know that Basmati rice doesn't grow normally on the dusty plains around Crawford, Texas. 11
RiceTec, with the collusion of IRRI, stole the seeds for its patent. Yet under the carefully crafted rules set up by the Rockefeller Foundation's IRRI, while seeds from the gene bank should not be patented, once a scientist manages to do breeding work, regardless of how they may patent it.
In December 2001, the US Supreme Court enshrined the principle of allowing patents on plant forms and other forms of life in a groundbreaking case entitled J.E.M. Ag Supply vs. Pioneer HiBred. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether newly developed plant breeds fall within the subject matter of 35 U.S.c. § 101, or whether the alternative statutory regimes provided by Congress showed a legislative intent that the regular utility patent statute not cover plants. To the surprise of most legal experts, the Court ruled GMO plant breeds could be patented. 12
From that point onwards, the genetic agribusiness cartel had the backing of the highest court in the United States. This could now be used as a battering ram to force other, less powerful countries to respect US GMO seed patents.
The complicity of essential US Government agencies, legally and nominally responsible for ensuring public health and safety of the general population; was a decisive part of the GMO revolution. In a full-page New York Times expose that ran on January 25, 2001, the paper wrote that Monsanto gained "astonishing" control over its own regulatory industry, through the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Henry Miller, who was in charge of biotechnology issues for the Food and Drug Administration from 1979 to 1994, told the Times: "In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do."
Ironically, Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and the other major holders of patents on genetically modified plants claimed that genetically engineered rice, corn, soybeans and other crops would solve the problem of world hunger and lead to greater food security. In fact, their aggressive patenting of plant varieties led to restricted research, reduced genetic plant diversity, and concentrated ownership of seeds which had been for thousands of years the heritage of mankind. This process enormously increased the risk for entire plant species to be devastated due to the new monocultures.
By 2004, four global private companies dominated the market for genetically modified seeds and their related agrichemicals. The world's number one GMO company was the Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri, the leading provider of genetically modified seeds and the world's largest producer of the chemical herbicide, glyphosate, which it called its Roundup group of herbicides. Beginning in the 1990's, Monsanto spent some $8 billion buying up seed companies to complement its role as one of the world's leading herbicide producers.
The strategy defined in an interview in the April 12, 1999 Business Week of Monsanto CEO, Robert B. Shapiro, was to create a global fusion of "three of the largest industries in the world-agriculture, food and health-that now operate as separate businesses. But there are a set of changes that will lead to their integration."13 Monsanto saw itself as a kind of modern day King Kanute, moving that sea of changes on command.
Monsanto was founded in 1901 to manufacture industrial chemicals such as sulphuric acid. It produced and licensed most of the world's polychlorinated biphenyls, which later proved to cause severe brain damage, birth defects and cancer.
In early 2007, British investigators uncovered internal UK Government memos and evidence that Monsanto had illegally dumped some 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs (which could have been made only by Monsanto), from one unlined porous quarry in South Wales that waS not authorised to take chemical wastes, polluting underground water supplies and the atmosphere 30 years later. The Guardian reported, "Evidence has emerged that the Monsanto chemical company paid contractors to dump thousands of tonnes of highly toxic waste in British landfill sites, knowing that their chemicals were liable to contaminate wildlife and people."14 Monsanto entered the world of GMO with a less than spotless record for corporate integrity, or demonstrated concern for human health. 15
The second member of the GMO global quartet to emerge in the late 1990's was DuPont Corporation's Pioneer Hi~Bred International, Inc., of Johnstown, Iowa. Pioneer Hi-Bred billed itself as "the world's leading developer and supplier of advanced plant genetics to farmers worldwide;' and was active in 70 countries.
Pioneer Hi-Bred, a company founded in the 1930's by later Rockefeller collaborator in the Green Revolution, Henry Wallace, was taken over by the Delaware chemicals giant DuPont in 1999. With its huge germplasm holdings and intellectual property, Pioneer Hi~Bred International (PHI) was considered to be the largest proprietary seed bank in the world. Pioneer's market dominance was based primarily on its corn seed.
Since the 1980s, Pioneer had been moving into plant genetics. In October 1999, DuPont completed its $7.7 billion takeover of Pioneer, and created a seed-chemical industry complex intended to be a primary engine in the shift by the chemical industry from petroleum-dependency, to a feedstock provided by genetic engineering. 16
Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, the third GMO giant was Dow AgroSciences, a $3.4 billion seed and agrochemicals conglomerate active in 66 countries. Dow AgroSciences was formed in 1997 when Dow Chemical bought drug-maker Eli Lilly's stake in Dow Elanco. The parent company had grown to be Dow Chemical, the world's second largest chemical company overall, with annual revenues of over $24 billion and operations in 168 countries 17
Like its GMO agribusiness allies, Monsanto and DuPont, Dow had a disreputable history concerning environmental and public health issues. Dow's factories at its global headquarters in Midland, MI, contaminated the entire region, including the Tittabawassee River floodplains, with stratospheric levels of dioxin. Tests done by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality found that 29 of 34 soil samples taken in Midland had dioxin levels higher than state cleanup standards.18 Some samples had concentrations of dioxin nearly 100 times higher than cleanup standards. The state warned residents of Midland to "avoid allowing children to play in soils. Wash hands and any other exposed body surfaces after any soil contact. Do not eat unwashed foods from your garden. Do not engage in any other activities that may introduce soil into the mouth .. .. "19
Dioxin is among the most toxic compounds ever studied. It is harmful to life in miniscule amounts and has been linked by experts to endometriosis, immune system impairment, diabetes, neurotoxicity, birth defects, decreased fertility, testicular atrophy, reproductive dysfunction, and cancer. Dioxin can affect insulin, thyroid and steroid hormones, threatening the development of all human newborns, according to one scientific report.20
Dow was the innovator of the infamous napalm used against civilians in Vietnam. The jelly-like chemical, when sprayed over people, would burn them on contact. The infamous 1972 photograph of a naked child running down a street in Vietnam screaming in agony, captured for the world the effects of napalm. Dow's President at the time, Herbert D. Doan, described napalm as "a good weapon for saving lives ... a strategic weapon essential to the pursuit of the tactic we are engaged in without exorbitant loss of American lives."21
Dow AgroSciences described its GMO role as "providing innovative crop protection, seeds, and biotechnology solutions to serve the world's growing population." In 2003, in the case Bates v. Dow AgroSciences, twenty-nine farmers in western Texas went to court contending that Strongarm, a herbicide manufactured by Dow AgroSciences, had severely damaged their peanut crops and had not killed the weeds as promised. The farmers sued Dow for false advertising, breach of warranty and fraudulent trade practices under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Dow AgroSciences won a declaratory judgment against the farmers in federal district court seeking, among other things, a judicial declaration that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempted the farmers' state law claims. The US Government sided with Dow as amicus curiae in the case, which went to the Supreme Court.22
The fourth horseman of the GMO battalion was Syngenta of Basel, Switzerland, which grew from the 2000 merger of the agriculture divisions of Novartis and AstraZeneca into a $6.8 billion agriculture and chemicals company. It claimed in 2005 to be the world's largest agrochemical corporation and third largest seed company. Though it was Swiss-based, Syngenta was in many respects a British-controlled company whose chairman and many directors came from the British AstraZeneca side. Syngenta, which deliberately cultivated a low profile to avoid the controversies plaguing its US rivals, was the world's second biggest agrochemicals producer and third biggest seed producer.
Syngenta became subject of major unwanted media attention in 2004 when a German farmer, Gottfried Glockner of North Hessen, found evidence that planting Syngenta Bt-176 genetically-engineered corn to feed his cattle in 1997, had been responsible for killing off his cattle, destroying his milk production and poisoning his farmland. Syngenta's Bt-176 corn had been engineered to produce a toxin of Bacillus thuringiensis which they claimed was deadly to a damaging insect, the European Corn Borer.23
Glockner was the first approved farmer in Germany to use the Bt Corn from Syngenta for animal feed. He kept detailed notes of his experiences, initially believing he was at the start of a revolution in agriculture through GMO. In the end, his proved to be one of the longest-running tests of the effects of Syngenta's Bt-176 corn anywhere in the world, lasting almost five years. The results were not encouraging for the proponents of GMO.
A test of GMO's efficacy wasn't Glockner's intent, however. He wanted the beneficial effects of the GMO crop to feed his cattle, and to eliminate crop loss from the European Corn-borer insect, which typically cut harvest yields up to 20%.
In the first year, 1997, Glockner was careful. He grew only a small test field of Bt -176 corn. The results were impressive: corn of uniform height, green shoots, "standing tall like soldiers," he recalled. "I was fascinated, as a practitioner, to see high yields, and apparently healthy plants, with no sign at all of damage from the corn-borer." The second year, 1998, he expanded to 5 hectares of Syngenta's Bt-176 corn, working closely with the company's German representative, Hans-Theo Jachmann. By 2000, Glockner had expanded the GMO experiment to his entire field of some 10 hectares, about 25 acres. Each successive harvest he gradually increased the amount of Bt corn he fed his cattle, carefully noting milk yields, and possible side effects. The first three years no side effects from the rising GMO feedings could be noted.24
However when he increased the dosage to a diet of pure GMO corn from his Syngenta green fields, convinced he would gain higher milk yields, he witnessed a nightmare unfold.
Glockner, a university-trained farmer, told an Austrian journalist that he was shocked to find his cattle having gluey-white feces and violent diarrhea. Their milk contained blood, something unheard of in the midst of lactation. Some cows suddenly stopped producing milk. Then, five calves died, one after the other, between May and August 2001, an extremely alarming event. Glockner ultimately lost almost his entire herd of 70 cows. Syngenta rejected any responsibility for the events, insisting that the cows would detoxify the toxin of Bacillus thuringiensis in the Bt-176 corn, according to their tests.
Despite Syngenta's denial of any responsibility, Glockner persisted and obtained independent scientific analyses of his soil, his silo corn and his cows. One lab returned the result that confirmed Glockner's conviction that Syngenta's Bt-176 GMO corn was the cause. It showed that in his Bt-176 corn from the year 2000, were 8.3 micrograms of toxin per kilogram. In June 2004, Prof. Angelika Hilbeck of the respected Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Geobotanical Institute found that from Glockner's Bt-176 corn samples Bt toxins were "found in active form and extremely stable:' an alarming result that Syngenta insisted was simply not possible.25 Glockner's independent test results were in complete contradiction to Syngenta's claims that their Research Center in North Carolina "discovered no Bt toxins in the feed sample."26
In 2005, the same Syngenta made a bold move to lock up a major share of GMO Terminator patents. Syngenta applied for patents that could effectively allow the company to monopolize key gene sequences that are vital for rice breeding as well as dozens of other plant species. Syngenta's enthusiasm for the rice genome stemmed from rice's major genetic similarities (i.e., DNA or protein sequences) to other species ranging from maize and wheat to bananas, genetic similarities called "homologies." While Syngenta was donating rice germplasm and information to public researchers with one hand, it was attempting to monopolize rice resources with the other.
Syngenta's controversial relationship with rice and patents included its involvement with GMO Golden Rice and the Syngenta Foundation's membership in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).27
In early 2001, a New Zealand magazine, Investigate, reported an alarming discovery. In an article titled, "Dow Chemical's Nasty Little Secret-Agent Orange Dump found under New Zealand Town", a former top official at New Plymouth's Ivon Watkins Dow chemical factory confirmed the worst fears of residents: Part of the town was sitting on a secret toxic waste dump containing the deadly Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange. "We've buried it under New Plymouth," the official admitted. The article added, "And if any further proof were needed that surplus Agent Orange had been dumped at New Plymouth, local residents found a drum of the chemical on the beach near Waireka Stream." Dow Chemical had kept it secret for 20 years. 28 Civilian and retired military victim lawsuits against the US Government for diseases contracted in Vietnam as a result of exposure to Agent Orange were still being litigated in US courts more than three decades after the end of the Vietnam War.
In 1990, retired Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, was named to carry out an investigation of the government's knowledge of the toxicity of Agent Orange to its own soldiers and civilians. Zumwalt's report stated: "From 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 72 million liters of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, in Vietnam. Over one million Vietnamese were exposed to the spraying, as well as over 100,000 Americans and allied troops." Dr. James Clary, a scientist at the Chemical Weapons Branch, Eglin Air Force Base, who designed the herbicide spray tank and wrote a 1979 report on Operation Ranch Hand (the name of the spraying program), told Senator Daschle in 1988:
When we (military scientists) initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the "military" formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the "civilian" version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the "enemy:' none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.29
By 2005, the three US leaders in spreading genetically-engineered agricultural seeds and herbicides had built their argument against any government regulation of their research or the safety of its genetic engineered seeds, by claiming that simply trusting them was the most reliable and efficient way of policing GMO safety concerns.
The history of one of the three US makers of Agent Orange, Monsanto, reveals how high that company set the bar for integrity and human life. Keith Parkins described Monsanto's record in Vietnam:
Monsanto was the main supplier. The Agent Orange produced by Monsanto had dioxin levels many times higher than that produced by Dow Chemicals, the other major supplier of Agent Orange to Vietnam. Dioxins are one of the most toxic chemicals known to man. Permissible levels are measured in parts per trillion, the ideal level is zero. The Agent Orange manufactured by Monsanto contained 2,3,7,8-tetrachlordibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD), extremely deadly even when measured against other dioxins. The levels found in domestic 2,4,5-T were around 0.05 ppm, that shipped to Vietnam peaked at 50 ppm, i.e., 1,000 times higher than the norm.
Monsanto's involvement with the production of dioxin contaminated 2,4,5-T dates back to the late 1940s. Almost immediately workers started getting sick with skin rashes, inexplicable pains in the limbs, joints and other parts of the body, weakness, irritability, nervousness and loss of libido .... Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems but covered it up.
Parkins concluded that,
A wide range of products manufactured by Monsanto have been contaminated with dioxins, including the widely used household disinfectant Lysol. Monsanto's attempts at a cover-up were revealed when a court awarded $16 million in punitive damages against Monsanto. It was revealed that Monsanto had intimidated employees to keep quiet, had tampered with evidence, had submitted false data and samples to EPA. An investigation by Cate Jenkins of the EPA Regulatory Development Branch documented a track record of systematic criminal fraud. 30
An estimated 50,000 Vietnamese children had been born with "horrific deformities" in the regions sprayed with Agent Orange, a practice which stopped only in 1971.31 It was an operation enormously profitable for Monsanto's chemicals division sales at the time.32
In 1999, Canadian national radio, CBC, aired an interview with Dr. Cate Jenkins, an environmental chemist with the US government's Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. Referring to the situation when Monsanto faced lawsuits from US veterans over alleged dioxin poisoning from exposure to Agent Orange, she noted that:
Monsanto was very worried about the impact of being sued by Vietnam veterans. So they were worried about lawsuits. They published a press release during the suit by Vietnam veterans saying our studies show that dioxin does not cause any cancers in humans.
The studies were paid for by Monsanto. The bottom line is that the Vietnam veterans were denied compensation for their cancers, their birth defected children. You could not win a court case when you sued a chemical company for exposures to dioxin ... I am a chemist, an environmental scientist working for the Environmental Protection Agency since 1979. I was able to examine the actual statements of the scientist who had conducted the studies for Monsanto. And those were quite revealing. My evaluation of the studies, I would use the word, rigged. They designed a study to get the results that they wanted. The unexposed population that was supposed to be dioxin free actually did have exposures. Also certain key cases of cancers were eliminated from the Monsanto study for spurious reasons.33
Jenkins was transferred to another EPA department and harassed for more than two years as a result of going public.
In 1984, Monsanto, Dow Chemicals and the other makers of Agent Orange paid $180 million into a fund for US military veterans following a bitter, long lawsuit. They refused to admit wrongdoing. More than a decade later, the same companies had refused to pay a single cent to the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange poisoning.
In 2004, President George W. Bush's Administration cancelled an agreed US-Vietnamese project to examine the long-term genetic impact of Agent Orange. Agent Orange was hardly the theme Monsanto wanted the world public to associate with the greatest global supplier of genetically modified food crops, crops it claimed were designed to feed the hungry of the world. Unlike some politically correct politicians, Monsanto was not into public apologies for its actions.
By the middle of the 1990's, with the backing of the WTO and
Washington, those same gene giants-Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Syngenta, and a small handful of others-turned their patented
seeds loose on the world.
In 1996, Monsanto shipped to Europe a container full of soybeans from the US. It was not labeled, and EU inspectors only later discovered that it contained Monsanto genetically modified soybeans, the same soybeans which they had spread across Argentina. It entered the food chain without labeling. The EU replied with a moratorium on the commercialization of GM crops in late 1997.34
When George W. Bush made the proliferation of GM seeds highest priority after the Iraq war in 2003, the seed cartel led by Monsanto had already spread its patented seeds with alarming speed. Bush's prime goal was to force the lifting of the 1997 EU ban on GM seed commercialization in order to open the next major markets for GMO takeover.
By 2004, according to a report from the Rockefeller Foundation funded International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), the planting of genetically engineered crops worldwide had grown by an impressive 20% compared with a year earlier. If it was the ninth such double digit increase since 1996, and the second highest on record. More than 8 million farmers in 17 countries planted GMO crops, and 90% of those were from poor developing countries, precisely the aim of the original Rockefeller Foundation gene revolution. 35 Following the United States as world GMO crop leader, Argentina, Canada and Brazil were by far the largest genetically engineered food producers worldwide.
The ISAAA also noted that GMO soybeans made up 56% of all soybeans planted in the world; GMO corn made up 14% of all corn, GMO cotton was 28% of world cotton harvest, and GMO canola, a form of rapeseed oil, totalled 19% of all world rapeseed harvest.36 Canola oil, toxic in the human diet, was developed as a genetically modified product in Canada, where, in a burst of marketing patriotism, it was labelled Canadian oil or Canola.37
In the United States, with aggressive Government promotion, absence of labelling, and the domination of US farm production by agribusiness, genetically engineered crops had essentially taken over the American food chain. In 2004, more than 85% of all US soybeans planted were genetically modified crops, and most were from Monsanto. 45% of all US corn harvested was GMO corn.38 Corn and soybeans constituted the most important animal feed in US agriculture, which meant that nearly the entire meat production of the nation as well as its meat exports had been fed on genetically modified animal feed. Few Americans had a clue as to what they were eating. No one bothered to tell them, least of all the Government agencies entrusted with a mandate to protect citizens' health and welfare.
The spread of large fields dedicated to planting GMO crops led to contamination of adjacent organic crops to the point that after just six years, an estimated 67% of all US farm acreage had been contaminated with genetically engineered seeds.
The genie was out of the bottle.
It was not a process which could be reversed in any way known to science. A 136 page review of all known worldwide studies of GMO effects, prepared by an internationally respected group of scientists led by Dr. Mae, presented sobering thoughts about the advisability of untested release of GMO plants into world agriculture. The study warned:
The most obvious question on safety is with regard to the transgene and its product introduced into GM crops, as they are new to the ecosystem and to the food chain of animals and human beings.39
The Bt toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis, incorporated in food and non-food crops, account for about 25% of all GM crops currently grown worldwide. It was found to be harmful to mice, butterflies and lacewings up the food chain. Bt toxins also act against insects in the Order of Coleoptera (beetles, weevils and styloplids), which contains some 28,600 species, far more than any other Order. Bt plants exude the toxin through the roots into the soil, with potentially large impacts on soil ecology and fertility.40
The group of scientists, which included Dr. Arpad Pusztai, concluded from their investigation that:
Bt toxins may be actual and potential allergens for human beings. Some field workers exposed to Bt spray experienced allergic skin sensitization and produced IgE and IgG antibodies. A team of scientists has cautioned against releasing Bt crops for human use. They demonstrated that recombinant CrylAc protoxin from Bt is a potent systemic and mucosal immunogen, as potent as cholera toxin. A Bt strain that caused severe human necrosis (tissue death) killed mice within 8 hours, from clinical toxic-shock syndrome. Both Bt protein and Bt potato harmed mice in feeding experiments, damaging their ileum (part of the small intestine). The mice showed abnormal mitochondria, with signs of degeneration and disrupted microvilli (microscopic projections on the cell surface) at the surface lining the gut 41
The Independent Science Panel report stated that in this regard:
Because Bt or Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus anthracis (anthrax species used in biological weapons) are closely related to each other and to a third bacterium, Bacillus cereus, a common soil bacterium that causes food poisoning, they can readily exchange plasmids (circular DNA molecules containing genetic origins of replication that allow replication independent of the chromosome) carrying toxin genes. If B. anthracis picked up Bt genes from Bt crops by horizontal gene transfer, new strains of B. anthracis with unpredictable properties could arise.42
As with other gene seed companies, Monsanto required farmers to sign a Technology Use Agreement which tied them to paying fees each year to Monsanto for its "technology:' namely, genetically engineered seeds.
As independent seed suppliers were rapidly being swallowed up by Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta, Cargill or other large agribusiness firms, farmers increasingly were trapped into dependency on Monsanto or the other GMO seed suppliers. American farmers were among the first to experience this new form of serfdom.
With the 2001 US Supreme Court ruling, GMO firms like Monsanto could intimidate US farmers into becoming "seed serfs:' The Monsanto penalty for not paying the fees was severe punitive legal damages in a court trial. Monsanto also made certain it would have a friendly court hearing. It had written into its master contract the provision that any litigation against the company be heard in St. Louis, where jurors knew that Monsanto was a major local employer.
Monsanto and the other GMO seed companies demanded that farmers pay each year for new seeds. The farmers were forbidden to re-use seeds from the previous years. Monsanto went so far as to hire private Pinkerton detectives to spy on farmers to see if they were reusing their old seeds. In some areas in the US, the company advertised free leather jackets to anyone informing on a farmer using old Monsanto seed.43
Notably, the big four major suppliers of genetically engineered agriculture seed-Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow and DuPont-had originated as and still were major chemical companies. The reason was the same in each case. They all originally manufactured pesticide and herbicide chemicals before they ever ventured into genetic engineering of seeds.
During the early 1990's, the herbicide giants had reorganized themselves as "life sciences" companies. They bought up the existing seed companies, large and small. They forged alliances with transporters and food processors, and emerged at the heart of the global agribusiness vertical integration chain. It was the Goldberg-Davis Harvard Business School vertical integration model in spades.
By 2004, two agribusiness giants-Monsanto and DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred-controlled the majority of the world's private seed companies. The major GMO agribusiness companies had pursued a three-phase strategy. Initially, they either bought out or merged with most major seed companies in order to gain control over seed germplasm. Then, they took out a multitude of patents on genetic engineering techniques as well as on genetically engineered seed varieties. Finally, they required that any farmer buying their seed must first sign an agreement prohibiting the farmer from saving the seed, thus forcing them to repurchase new seed every year. In the case of Monsanto, it allowed a single company, unhampered by US Government anti-trust restrictions, to obtain unprecedented control of sale and use of crop seeds in the United States.44
Cleverly, the GMO seed had been marketed and developed to be resistant to that company's special herbicide. Monsanto GMO "Roundup Ready" soybeans had been genetically modified explicitly to be resistant to Monsanto's specially patented glyphosate, marketed under the brand name Roundup. They were "ready" for Roundup. That insured that farmers contracting to buy Monsanto GMO seeds must also buy Monsanto herbicide. The Roundup herbicide was so developed that it could not be used on non-GMO soybean plants. The GMO seeds were, in effect, tailor-made to fit Monsanto's existing glyphosate herbicide.
Whether such a wide proliferation of genetically modified organisms in the food chain was safe or desirable was of no concern to the agribusiness chemical and seed giants. Phil Angell, Monsanto's spokesman, put it bluntly: "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Answering its safety is the FDA's job."45
He was well aware that the US Food and Drug Authority, on Monsanto demands, had long since abandoned any pretence of independently monitoring GMO seed safety. The Government had agreed to let the GMO companies "self-police" the industry, meaning Angell was describing a perfect circle of lies and public deception, circumscribing the incestuous relationship which had been created between the private agribusiness GMO giants and the US Government.
The Rockefeller Foundation had carefully prepared the media marketing
and propaganda case for the proliferation of genetically
engineered crops. One of its main arguments was to claim that global population growth in the coming decades, in the face of
gradual exhaustion of the world's best soils from over-cultivation,
required a dramatic new approach to feeding the planet.
Rockefeller Foundation President, Gordon Conway, issued a public call for a second Green Revolution which he dubbed the "Gene Revolution". He insisted GMO crops were needed "to enhance food production over the next 30 years ... to keep up with population increase" estimating that the world would have "an extra 2 billion mouths to feed by the year 2020." Conway further argued that GMO crops would solve the problem of how to increase crop yields on limited land, and would "avoid the problems of pesticides and the overuse of fertilizers"46
This carefully formulated pitch for GMO crops was picked up by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank, IMF and the leading advocates of genetically modified seeds, especially the seed conglomerates themselves, to justify their cause. If you opposed the spread of GMO seeds, you de facto supported genocide against the world's poor. At least that was the not-so-subtle message of the GMO lobby.
Whether GMO crops promised large improvement in crop yield per hectare planted was also greatly disputed. Despite the most concerted effort by the GMO agribusiness companies and their financially captive university researchers, evidence began to leak into the press suggesting that those very GMO crop yields were also not what it had been cracked up to be.
A November 2004 report from the Network of Concerned Farmers in Australia concluded, in the case of genetically modified planting of canola, that
there is no evidence that GMO canola crops yield more, but there is evidence they yield less. Although Monsanto claim a 40% yield increase with Roundup Ready canola, their best on their website for Australian trials reveal yields are 17% less than our national average. Bayer CropScience trial yields are also not comparing well against non-GMO varieties.47
The Soil Association in the UK issued a report in 2002 entitled "The Seeds of Doubt" based on extensive research with USA farmers who had used genetically modified crops. The report, one of the few independent assessments available, concluded that rather than boosting farmers' crop yields, "GMO soybeans and maize have worsened the situation."48
Based on six years of GMO growing experience, the study showed that there was real cause for alarm at the increasing farmer dependency on genetic crops. The study reported the analysis by Iowa University economist, Michael Duffy, who found that when all production factors were taken into account, "herbicide tolerant GMO soybeans lose more money per acre than non-GMO soybeans."49
In Argentina and Brazil, studies confirmed the emergence of glyphosate-resistant "superweeds" which were impervious to normal doses of Monsanto's Roundup glyphosate herbicide. In order to combat the damaging weeds threatening Monsanto's Roundup Ready GMO soybean fields, other supplemental herbicides had to be used. In one case in southern Brazil, where Argentine GMO seeds had been illegally smuggled in, a weed had developed which could not be killed with any dosage of glyphosate named in Brazil corda-de-viola. Only by adding DuPont's Classic herbicide would the weed die. The phenomenon became so common in fragile GMO soybean fields that a new growth segment for DuPont and the other herbicide makers became devising, patenting and producing such chemical add-ons to glyphosate. The GMO industry claims to dramatically lower herbicide requirements had been proven false. 50
The results for genetically modified Bt corn planted in the United States were hardly better. Dr. Charles Benbrook of the Northwest Science and Environment Policy Center in Idaho, using USDA Government data in a detailed analysis of the economics of Bt corn, found that "from 1996-2001, American farmers paid at least $659 million in price premiums to plant Bt corn, while boosting their harvest by only 276 million bushels-worth $567 million in economic gain. The bottom line for farmers is a net loss of $92 million-about $1.31 per acre-from growing Bt maize (corn)."51
Another major drain on farmers' income, the study concluded, was the very high fees farmers had to pay to Monsanto, DuPont and the other GMO seed companies for their seeds. A significant cost was the "technology fee" charged by the seed conglomerates ostensibly to reimburse their high research and development costs.
Seeds typically accounted for 10% of normal corn production costs. GMO seeds were significantly more expensive because of the added technology fee. The study concluded that with the technology fee, "GMO seeds cost 25-40 percent more than non-GMO seeds. For Bt maize, for example, the fees are typically $8- $10/acre, about 30-35 percent higher than non-GMO varieties, though they can be up to $30/acre. Roundup Ready soybeans can have a technology fee of about $6/acre."52 In addition, the contract prohibited farmers, at the risk of severe penalty, from reusing a portion of their seeds in the following year's planting.
Monsanto and the biotech seed giants argued that higher yields more than compensated for their added cost. Higher yields were supposedly a prime benefit of planting the GMO seeds. However, the "Seeds of Doubt" research study concluded that Monsanto Roundup Ready soybeans and Roundup Ready rapeseed produced on average lower yields than non-GMO varieties, and although genetically engineered Bt corn produced a small yield increase overall, it was not enough over the whole period to cover the higher production costs.53
Further contradicting the claims that GMO crops required significantly less chemical fertilizer-an argument used to win over ecological opponents-the study in fact found that Roundup Ready soybeans, corn, and rapeseed had "mostly resulted in an increase in agrochemical use" meaning more tons of pesticide and herbicide per acre than with ordinary varieties of the same crops. 54
The study concluded that, "while there are some farmers growing GMO crops who have been able to cut their production costs or increase yields with GMO crops, it appears that, for most producers, any savings have been more than offset by the technology fees and lower market prices, as well as the lower yields and higher agrochemical use of certain GMO crops."55
Numerous other studies confirmed that GMO crops required not less but typically more chemical herbicides and pesticides after one or two seasons than non-GMO crops. Even the US Department of Agriculture admitted the advertised claims of GMO did not bear relation to reality. "The application of biotechnology at present is most likely .. . not to increase maximum yields. More fundamental scientific breakthroughs are necessary if yields are to increase."56
Dr. Charles Benbrook's study, based on USDA official data, revealed that far from using less pesticides, "the planting of 550 million acres of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased pesticide use by about 50 million pounds."57
The main reason cited for the increase was "substantial increases" in herbicide use on "herbicide tolerant" -i.e., genetically modified crops, especially soybeans, similar to the results confirmed across GMO soybean fields in Brazil and Argentina. There was a significant increase in herbicide use on GMO crops compared to acres planted with conventional plant varieties. "Herbicide tolerant" plants were genetically modified to ensure that those who grew the crops had no other option but to also use the herbicides of the same companies.
Farmers across the United States, where GMO crops had been planted for a number of years, discovered that, unexpectedly, herbicide-tolerant weeds had emerged requiring added use of other herbicides in addition to the GMO-specific brands such as Monsanto's Roundup Ready.58 In the case of GMO corn, the weed plague had necessitated the use of the chemical herbicide atrazine, one of the most toxic herbicides that exist, as a supplement to control weeds. Many independent crop scientists and farmers predicted the imminent danger of the creation of super-weeds and Bt-resistant pests which could threaten entire harvests.
Increasingly, it appeared that the case in favour of widespread commercial use of genetically engineered seeds for agriculture had been based on a citadel of scientific fraud and corporate lies.
In January 2006, a respected London newspaper, The Independent carried a story titled, "Unborn Babies Could be Harmed by GMO's"59 The article reported on research results from scientist Dr. Irina Ermakova of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Her study found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on genetically modified soybean diet died in the first three weeks of life-six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets.
Dr. Ermakova added flour from Monsanto's GMO soybean to the food of female rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soybeans, and a third group was given no soybean at all.
The Russian scientist was alarmed to find that 36 percent of the young of rats fed the diet of modified soybeans were severely underweight, compared to 6 percent of the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 percent of those born to mothers on the GMO diet died within three weeks of birth, compared to 9 percent of the offspring of those fed normal soybeans, and 6.8 percent of the young of those given no soybeans at all. "The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing;' said Dr Ermakova. "They point to a risk for mothers and their babies".60
Monsanto and other GMO firms attacked the credibility of Dr. Ermakova while curiously avoiding the obvious call to repeat the simple test in other labs to confirm or refute. Monsanto's Public Relations department merely restated their mantra. Tony Coombes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, told the press, "The overwhelming weight of evidence from published, peer-reviewed, independently conducted scientific studies demonstrates that Roundup Ready soy can be safely consumed by rats, as well as all other animal species studied."
The Russian results were potentially so serious that the American Academy of Environmental Medicine asked the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.61
KARl's Dr. Florence Wambugu was deployed by Monsanto and USAID to give talks around the world, where she proclaimed that the GMO sweet potato of Monsanto had solved hunger in Africa. The GMO sweet potato had been developed by Wambugu while at Monsanto in St. Louis in a project backed by the USAID, ISAAA and the the World Bank. Wambugu claimed it would raise yields from four tons to ten tons per hectare.62 In 2001, USAID backed the project through a high profile promotion to spread GMO crops on a skeptical African population. Forbes, an American financial magazine which referred to itself as, "The Capitalist Tool," proclaimed Wambugu as one of 15 people from around the world who would "re-invent the future':63
The only problem was that the re-inventing project was a catastrophic failure. The GMO sweet potatoes proved susceptible to viral attacks. Their yields were proven less than that of normal indigenous sweet potatoes, not 250% greater as predicted by Wambugu.64 KARl and its corporate backers tried to maintain the fraud, but Dr. Aaron de Grassi of the Sussex University Institute of Development Studies exposed the statistical gimmicks being used by Wambugu and Monsanto to claim their gains.
DeGrassi stated that, "Accounts of the transgenic (GMO-w.e.) sweet potato have used low figures on average yields in Kenya to paint a picture of stagnation". An early article stated 6 tons per hectare-without mentioning the data source-which was then reproduced in subsequent analyses. However, deGrassi noted, "FAO statistics indicate 9.7 tons, and official statistics report lOA tons."65 The World Bank and Monsanto ignored the critical findings and continued financing Wambugu's research for more than 12 years.
As the late American humorist and social critic, Mark Twain, might have said of the situation: "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies and Monsanto lies .... "
In the heady environment of a US biotech stock market euphoria at the end of the 1990's, and the falling barriers to GMO proliferation, Monsanto, Syngenta and the major seed giants nearly ran off the rails with their project to take over the seed supply of the world. It required an extraordinary intervention in 1999 by their patron saint, the Rockefeller Foundation, to rescue the over-eager agribusiness giants from their own methods.
next
PART V Population Control
262s
Notes
1. Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA Official Documents, Orders, http:// www.cpa-iraq.orglregulations/#Orders.
2. Naomi Klein, "Baghdad Year Zero", Harpers' Magazine, September 2004.
3. Coalition Provisional Authority, op. cit. In its introduction, the document declares, "Orders-are binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people that create penal consequences or have a direct bearing on the way Iraqis are regulated, including changes to Iraqi law."
4. Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA Official Documents, Order 81:Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, http://www.iraqcoalition.orglregulations/index.html#Regulations. See also Focus on the Global South and GRAIN, Iraq's New Patent Law: A Declaration of War against Farmers, http://www.grain.org, and Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, Green Books, Devon, UK, 1998.
5. William Erskine, Agriculture System in Iraq Destroyed: Self Sufficiency in Food Production Years Away ... , Press Release, 30 June 2003, http://www.icarda.orglNews/ 2003News/30June03.htm.
6. Hope Shand, "Patenting the Planet", Multinational Monitor, June 1994, p. 13.
7. GRAIN Press Release, Iraq's New Patent Law: A Declaration of War Against Farmers, Focus on the Global South and GRAIN, October 2004, http:// www.grain.org/articles/?id=6.
8. Ibid.
9. Jeremy Smith, "Iraq: Order 81", The Ecologist, February 2005.
10. Portal Iraq, Seeds for the Future of Iraqi Agriculture, 27 September 2004, http://www.portaliraq.com/news/Seeds+for+the+future+of+ Iraqi +agriculture 529.html.
11. Daniel Stolte, "In the Trenches", The Business Journal of Phoenix, 10 June 2005.
12. Ibid.
13. Christopher D. Cook, "Agribusiness Eyes Iraq's Fledgling Markets", In These Times, http://www.mindfully.orglGE/2005/Iraq-US-Agribusiness-Profit15mar05.htm. 15 March 2005.
14. Ibid.
15. IRIN News, IRAQ: Interview with Minister of Agriculture, http://www.irinnews.org, Baghdad, 16 December 2004.
16. Ann M. Veneman, Remarks by Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman to the National Association of Farm Broadcasters Annual Convention, 14 November 2003, US Department of Agriculture, Washington D.C., Release No. 0384.03.
17. US Congressional Record, Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq and BNL, Statement by Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, 28 April 1992, US House of Representatives, Page H2694.
18. John King cited in Christopher D. Cook, op. cit.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Paris Club, Iraq, hUp:/ /www.ciubdeparis.org, 21 November 2004.
22. International Monetary Fund, Iraq-Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, Baghdad, 24 September 2004.
23. Governor Shababi cited in Brian Dominick, "US Forgives Iraq Debt To Clear Way for IMF Reforms" NewStandard, 19 December 2004. '
24. Ibid.
Notes
1. Letter from Daniel G. Amstutz, Undersecretary for International Affairs and Commodity Programs, U.S. Department of Agriculture, published in Choices, Fourth Quarter, 1986, p. 38.
2. Who's Who in Corporate Agribusiness, http://www.electricarrow.com/CARP/ tiller/archives/backlog.htm, 3 April 1997.
3. Eugene W. Plawiuk, "Background on Cargill Inc., the Transnational Agribusiness Giant", Corporate Watch: GE Briefings, http://www.archive.corporatewatch.org, November 1998.
4. Ibid.
5. Lori Wallach and Michelle Sforza, The WTO: Five Years of Reasons to Resist Corporate Globalization, Seven Stories Press, New York, 1999, p. 45.
6. Edward A. Evans, "Understanding the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement': EDIS document FE492, Department of Food and Resource Economics, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, UF/IFAS, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL., August 2004, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu. Evans notes: "The United States feared that, with a reduction in the use and levels of these support measures, some importing countries might turn to technical trade barriers (notably SPS measures) as a means of allowing them to continue providing support to their farming community. Consequently, the intent of the Agreement was to ensure that when SPS measures were applied, they were used only to the extent necessary to ensure food safety and animal and plant health, and not to unduly restrict market access for other countries." Who would determine "extent necessary" were the tribunals of the WTO.
7. World Development Movement, GMOs and the WTO: Overruling the Right to Say No, http://www.wdm.org.uk, London, November 1999. See also, Edward A. Evans,op.cit.
8. World Development Movement, op.cit.
9. Anup Shah, Food Patents-Stealing Indigenous Knowledge?, http://www.globalissues.org, 26 September 2002.
10. GRAIN, Genetech Preys on the Paddy Field, http://www.grain.orglseedlingl ?id=33, June 1998. See also Thai Jasmine Rice and the Threat of the US Biotech Industry, News Release, http://www.biotech-info.net/wescotcthai_rice.pdf.
11. GRAIN, op. cit. The report notes, "Although it is IRRI's policy not to patent either the germplasm collected from farmers' fields or the products of its conven tional breeding work, it cannot prevent those who access their collections from doing so. This laissez faire policy has translated into the appropriation of part of farmers' rice germplasm by the private sector. For example, a US breeding company, Farms of Texas, made some minor modifications on IRRI's IR8 and patented it for exclusive sale in the United States. In early 1998, that company, now named RiceTec, caused public outrage by obtaining a patent on Indian and Pakistani Basmati rice:'
12. United States Supreme Court, ].E.M. Ag Supply V. Pioneer Hi-Bred, 122 S.Ct. 593,2001. Also for background, "CAFC Decision in Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. vs. J.E.M. Ag Supply, Inc. et al.", Biotechnology Law Report, April 2000,pp. 281-289. The issue which the Supreme Court decised in favor of Pioneer HiBred's claim to patent rights for genetically manipulated plants was accepting a ruling of the US Court of Appeals, which had upheld a lower court ruling that patents on Pioneer genetically engineered corn seed were valid. The court concluded that title 35, section 101 of the United States Code (part of the Patent Act) "includes seeds and seed grown plants." This section states that "[wlho[mlever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;' can get a patent to protect their work. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Pioneer, in effect upholding the right of a seed company to achieve iron clad protection for its bioengineered products by allowing general utility patents in addition to a PVPA (Plant Variety Protection Act) certificate." Also, Edmund J. Sease presents an excellent legal review of the process in Edmund J. Sease, "History and Trends in Agricultural Biotechnology Patent Law from a Litigator's Perspective", Seeds of Change Symposium Banquet, http://www.ipagcon.uiuc.edu, University of Illinois, Chicago, 9 April 2004.
13. Robert B. Shapiro, cited in Richard A. Melcher et al., "Fields of Genes': Business Week, 12 April 1999.
14. John Vidal, "Monsanto Dumped Toxic Waste in UK", The Guardian, 12 February 2007.
15. Meryl Nass, op. cit.
16. Press Release, DuPont and Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., Merger Completed, Delaware, 1 October 1999.
17. Dow Chemical Company, Quarterly Report, in http://www.dow.com/ financial/n!ports/07 q 1 earn.htm.
18. Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, "Soil Movement Advisory", Environmental Assessment Initiative, Information Bulletin #3, June 2003.
19. Ibid.
20. Testimonials from Dow Midland employees about effects of dioxin are available on http://www.studentsforbhopal.org. On documentation of Dow Corning's defective silicone breast implants, for which the company had to pay $3.5 billion in damages to thousands of victims, see Implant Veterans of Toxic Exposure, yukonmom47.tripod.com/index.html.
21. Quoted in Arundhati Roy, "The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky", The Hindu, 24 August 2003. A US Vietnam veteran is attributed with this perverse but descriptive quote about the development of Napalm: "We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn't so hot-if the go oks [Vietnamese 1 were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene-now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorus) so's to make it burn better. It'll burn under water now. And just one drop is enough; it'll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning:' See also "Protesting Napalm", Time,S January 1968. During the rising antiwar protests which cost Lyndon Johnson his Presidency, Dow Chemical became the symbol of the brutality of the American war machine. The company refused to cease production of napalm, despite the fact it represented 0.5% of gross revenue
22. Dow Agrosciences Lie, Plaintiff-Appellee Versus Dennis Bates et al., United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, 11 June 2003.
23. Der Spiegel, 8 February 2004.
24. Gottfried Glockner as interviewed by Klaus Faissner, "Der Genmais und das grosse Rindersterben", Neue Bauernkoordination Schweiz, http://www.nbks.ch/ abstiml gentechmais_rindersterben.html#.
25. Gottfried Glockner, in a letter to the author, Gentechnik Mais, 3 February 2007.
26. Klaus Faissner, Gentechnik oder Bauern?, http://www.arge-ja.at/gentechnik _landwirtschaft_faissner.html.
27. ETC Group Communique, Syngenta-The Genome Giant?, http://www.etcgroup.org., January/February 2005.
28. Investigate, New Zealand, January/February 2001.
29. Elmo R. Zumwalt, quoted in Meryl Nass, Monsanto's Agent Orange: The Persistent Ghost from the Vietnam War, http://www.organicconsumers.org/ monsantol agentorange0321 02.cfrn#What.
30. Cate Jenkins, "Criminal Investigation of Monsanto Corporation-Cover-up of Dioxin Contamination in Products-Falsification of Dioxin Health Studies", USEPA Regulatory Development Branch, November 1990. See also "The Legacy of Agent Orange", BBC News, World Edition, 29 April 2005, transcript in home.clara.net/heurekal gaial orange.htm. 31. BBC News, op. cit.
32. Ibid.
33. Cate Jenkins, quoted in "Fields of Genes: The Battle over Biotech Foods", This Morning, CBC Radio, 3-7 May 1999. "Fields of Genes part 4", 6 May 1999, http://www.nyenvirolaw.orglPDF ICBC-05-06-1999-FieldOfGenesTheBattleOverBiotechFoods.PDF.
34. The Monsanto Corporation has been accused of not listening to the groups that would be responsible for marketing their Roundup Ready GMO soybean, as they shipped tons of these beans to soy processors in Europe; in Nature Biotechnology 14 (1996), 1627; Nature 384 (1996),203,301; NS (7 Dec 1996),5: "A trade war nearly began between USA and Europe. Hans Kroner, secretarygeneral of Eurocommerce, representing retailers in 20 European countries, recently called for Roundup Ready to be segregated from other beans. Earlier in 1996, European retail and wholesale groups had asked for separate streams for the Roundup Ready. Retailers in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom wanted segregation so that they could label the products appropriately. German, Austrian, Finnish, and Swedish retailers wanted a separate stream so that they could exclude genetically manipulated food either 'for the foreseeable future' or 'until consumers are happy'." Cited in Food Safety Including GM Foods, eubios.info/NBB/NBBFS.htm.
35. Clive James, "Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2004", IS AAA, No. 32, 2004.
36. Ibid.
37. Sally Falon and Mary Enig, "The Great Con-ola", Nexus Magazine, http:// www.nexusmagazine.com.August-September 2002. The authors conclude: "canola oil is definitely not healthy for the cardiovascular system. Like grapeseed oil, its predecessor, canola oil is associated with fibrotic lesions of the heart. It also causes vitamin E deficiency, undesirable changes in the blood platelets, and shortened lifespan in stroke-prone rats when it was the only oil in the animals' diet. Furthermore, it seems to retard growth, which is why the FDA does not allow the use of canola oil in infant formula." http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/canola.html .
38. The Pew Charitable Trusts, Genetically Modified Crops in the United States, pewagbiotech.org, August 2004.
39. Mae-Wan Ho and Lim Li Ching, "The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World", Independent Science Panel, London, 15 June 2003, p. 23, in http://www.foodfirst.orglprogs/global!ge/isp/ispreport.pdf.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Andrew Kimbrell, "Monsanto vs. US Farmers", The Center for Food Safety, http://www.centerforfoodsafety.orglMonsantovsusfarmersreport.cfm., Washington DC, 2005, pp. 19-21.
44. Ibid., pp. 7-11.
45. Phil Angell, quoted in "Playing God in the Garden': New York Times Magazine, 25 October 1998. That was a direct contradiction of at least officially published US government policy: "Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety"-Food and Drug Administration, Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties (GMO Policy), Federal Register, Vol. 57, No. 104,1992, p. 229.
46. Gordon Conway, The Rockefeller Foundation and Plant Biology, speech, http://www.biotech-info.net/gordon_conway.html. 24 June 1999.
47. Network of Concerned Farmers, Will GM Crops Yield More in Australia?, http://www.non-gm-farmers.com. 28 November 2004.
48. Gundula Meziani, and Hugh Warwick, "The Seeds of Doubt", The Soil Association, http://www.soilassociation.org. 17 September 2002. A very comprehensive scientific independent review of the claims and counter-claims of GMO is the study of Mae-Wan Ho and Lim Li Ching, op. cit.
49. Gundula Meziani, op. cit.
50. Antonio Andrioli, Universidade Regional do Noroeste do Estado do Rio Grande do SuI, Brazil, Private e-mail Correspondence, 27 January 2007, provided on request by Friedel Kappes.
51 . Charles M. Benbrook, "Biotech Crops Won't Feed Africa's Hungry", The New York Times, II July 2003.
52. Ibid. 53. Gundula Meziani, et aI., op. cit., pp. 19-20.
54. Ibid. p. 19.
55. Ibid. p. 20.
56. USDA, Agriculture Information Bulletin, 2001.
57. Gundula Meziani, et aI., op. cit., p. 19.
58. Ibid., pp. 19-20
59. Geoffrey Bean, "Unborn Babies Could be Harmed by GMOs': The Independent, 8 January 2006.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Gundula Meziani, op. cit.
63. Lynn J. Cook, "Millions Served", Forbes, 23 December 2002.
64. Ibid. See also, GM Watch, Wambugu Wambuzling Again: Says GM Sweet Potato a Resounding Success?, http://www.mindfully.orglGE/2004IWambugu-WambuzlingAgain 17mar04.htm, 17 March 2004. Also, "Monsanto's Showcase Project in Africa Fails", New Scientist, 7 February 2004. The article notes, "Three years of field trials have shown that GM sweet potatoes modified to resist a virus were no less vulnerable than ordinary varieties, and sometimes their yield was lower, according to the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. Embarrassingly, in Uganda conventional breeding has produced a high-yielding variety more quickly and more cheaply. The GM project has cost Monsanto, the World Bank and the US government an estimated $6 million over the past decade. It has been held up worldwide as an example of how GM crops will help revolutionize farming in Africa. One of the project members, Kenyan biotechnologist Florence Wambugu (see New Scientist, 27 May 2000, p. 40), toured the world promoting the work."
65. GM Watch, ap. cit.
214s
The $107 million USAID agriculture reconstruction project's goal was to double the production of 30,000 Iraqi farms within the first year. The idea was to convince skeptical Iraqi farmers that only with such new "wonder seeds" could they get large harvest yields. As had been the case ten years earlier with American farmers, desperation and a promise of huge gains would be used to trap Iraqi farmers into dependence on foreign seed multinationals.
Coincidentally, Texas A&M's Agriculture Program also described itself as "a recognized world leader in using biotechnology:' or GMO technology. With their new seeds would come new chemicals-pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow.
The Business Journal of Phoenix, Arizona, reports that "An Arizona agri-research firm is supplying wheat seeds to be used by farmers in Iraq looking to boost their country's home-grown food supplies:' That firm was called the World Wide Wheat Company (WWWC), and in partnership with three universities, including Texas A&M, it would "provide 1,000 pounds of wheat seeds to be used by Iraqi farmers north of Baghdad:'9
According to Seedquest, a central information website for the global seed industry, WWWC was a leader in developing "proprietary varieties" of cereal seeds-i.e., varieties that are patented and owned by a particular company. 10 These were the sorts of protected GMO seeds contained in the Order 81. According to WWWC, any "client:' or farmer as they were once known, who wishes to grow one of their seeds "pays a licensing fee for each variety:' W3, as it called itself, formally works in cooperation with the BioS Institute of biosciences at the University of Arizona, which curiously describes itself as a "state-of-the-art garage for bio-research."11
Even more remarkable, according to the Phoenix Business Journal article, "six kinds of wheat seeds were developed for the Iraqi endeavor. Three will be used for farmers to grow wheat that is made into pasta; three seed strains will be for bread-making."12 That meant that 50% of the grains being developed by the US in Iraq after 2004 were intended for export. Indeed, pasta was a food fully foreign to the Iraqi diet, demonstrating that, rather than to produce food for the starving 25 million war-weary Iraqis, Bremer's Order 81 was designed to create industrialized agro-business using GM seeds for production geared toward global export.
Additionally, the $107 million USAID agricultural reconstruction project had the aim to get the Iraqi government out of food production. "The idea is to make this a completely free market;' said Doug Pool, agriculture specialist with USAID's Office of Iraq Reconstruction. 13
The USAID aim-mirroring US and WTO policies-was to help the new government phase out farm subsidies. "The Minister of Agriculture has been quite good in doing that;' Pool said. State enterprises, such as the Mesopotamia Seed Co., "need to be spun off and privatized;' he declared. 14 He did not mention who would have the cash in war-torn Iraq to buy such a. state seed company. Only rich foreign agribusiness giants such as Monsanto could be likely buyers.
To facilitate the introduction of patent -protected GM seeds from foreign seed giants, the Iraq Agriculture Ministry distributed these GM seeds at "subsidized prices:' Once farmers started using the GM seeds, under the new Plant Patent Protection rules of Order 81, they would be forced to buy new seeds each year from the company. Under the banner of bringing a "free-market" into the country, Iraqi farmers were becoming enslaved to foreign seed multinationals.
In a December 2004 interview, Iraq's US-educated interim Agriculture Minister, Sawsan Ali Magid al-Sharifi, stated, "We need Iraqi farmers to be competitive, so we decided to subsidize inputs like pesticides, fertilizers, improved seeds and so on. We cut down on the other subsidies, but we have to become competitive."15
In other words, money for Iraq's impoverished farmers to buy new seeds was earmarked for buying GMO "improved seeds" from foreign multinationals like Monsanto.
At the same time, US commodity exporters were hungrily eyeing new market opportunities. "Iraq was once a significant commercial market for US farm products, with sales approaching $1 billion in the 1980s;' told Bush Administration former agriculture secretary Ann Veneman-who had ties to Monsanto before she came to Washington-to a conference of farm broadcasters in 2003. "It has the potential, once again, to be a significant commercial market." 16
According to John King, vice chairman of the US Rice Council, Iraq was the top market for US rice in the late '80s, prior to the 1991 Gulf war. "The US rice industry wants to play a major role once again in supplying rice to Iraq," King told the US House Agriculture Committee. "With the current challenges facing the US rice industry ... renewed Iraqi market access could have a tremendous impact in value-added sales:'18
King added that, "The liberation of Iraq in 2003 by coalition forces has brought freedom to the Iraqi people. 19 The resumption of trade has also provided hope for the US rice industry:' He failed to mention that, in 2003, most US rice was genetically manipulated.
In Spring 2004 as Order 81 was promulgated by Bremer's CPA, supporters of the radical young cleric Moqtada al Sadr protested the closing of their newspaper, al Hawza, by US military police. The CPA accused al Hawza of publishing "false articles" that could "pose the real threat of violence." As an example, the CPA cited an article that claimed Bremer was, "pursuing a policy of starving the Iraq people to make them preoccupied with procuring their daily bread so they do not have the chance to demand their political and individual freedoms."20
That such articles would appear in light of Order 81 was hardly surprising. Neither was it surprising that Bremer's CPA would vigorously try to silence such criticisms of its food policy given the stakes for the entire GMO project.
Iraq, USA and the IMF Dictates
On November 21, 2004, the leading representatives of the Paris
Club of creditor governments issued a proclamation on how they
would handle the estimated $39 billion Iraqi government debt
owed to the industrial countries at large, as part of the estimated
$120 billion foreign debts from the Saddam Hussein era. Despite
the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein, Washington was
initially not about to wipe the slate clean and declare the old debts
illegitimate. The Paris Club governments agreed to new terms on the limited $39 billion state-owed debts only after heavy pressure from US Iraq Special Debt Negotiator, James Baker III. Baker was no novice negotiator. He engineered the election of George W. Bush in 2001 through an appeal to the Supreme Court, and he is one of the closest advisers of the Bush family.
In the ensuing horse trading with its OECD allies, the US Government was quite happy to press for a major write-off of old Iraqi debt to Paris Club creditors, for the simple reason that most of that debt was owed to Russia, France, Japan, Germany and other countries. The United States held a minor $2.2 billion of the total debt.
The Paris Club members issued an official press statement:
The representatives of the Creditor Countries, aware of the exceptional situation of the Republic of Iraq and of its limited repayment capacity over the coming years, agreed on a debt treatment to ensure its long term debt sustain ability. To this end, they recommended that their Governments deliver the following exceptional treatment:
- an immediate cancellation of part of the late interest, representing 30% of the debt stock as at January 1,2005. The remaining debt stock is deferred up to the date of the approval of an IMF standard program. This cancellation results in the write-off of 11.6 billion US dollars on a total debt owed to the Paris Club of 38.9 billion US dollars;
- as soon as a standard IMF programme is approved, a reduction of 30% of the debt stock will be delivered. The remaining debt stock will be rescheduled over a period of 23 years including a grace period of 6 years. This step will reduce the debt stock by another 11.6 billions US dollars increasing the rate of cancellation to 60%;
- Paris Club Creditors agreed to grant an additional tranche of debt reduction representing 20% of the initial stock upon completion of the last IMF Board review of three-years of implementation of standard IMF programs.21
The debt relief of Iraq, in which the principal occupier, the United States, generously wrote off the debt owed by Saddam to Washington's rivals who had opposed the war on Iraq-Russia, France, China-was bound with the proviso that Iraq adhere to the strict IMF "standard program." That standard program was the same as the one applied to Indonesia, Poland, Croatia, Serbia, Argentina and post-soviet Russia. It mandated Iraq to turn its economic sovereignty over to IMF technocrats effectively controlled by the US Treasury and the Washington administration.
Adding insult to injury, that old Iraqi debt of the Hussein era was what international governments called "odious debts"-debts incurred without the consent of the population and not in the interest of that population-in short, illegitimate, as the debts of the defunct Soviet Union had been. That did not bother Washington, London and other members of the Paris Club. The debt was a useful weapon to control the "new" Iraq, and to force its transformation into a "free market." GM seeds and the industrialization of agriculture would be at the heart of that forced change.
Privatization of state enterprises was at the top of the Washington Consensus IMF program. Free-market private enterprise was also at the heart of the CPA's 100 Orders of April 2004. This was hardly a coincidence.
The IMF could be accurately labeled as the "policeman of globalization." Since the debt crisis of the 1980's, the IMF enforced brutal creditor austerity and debt repayment plans in developing economies. The debt terms of the IMF were used to force countries to virtually give away their most precious economic assets to foreign interests in order to repay a debt that grew ever larger.
Typically, giant corporate banking and private interests stood behind these IMF measures. They systematically imposed privatization of state enterprises, elimination of public subsidies for food, health and energy, and cuts in public education spending. Every policy that would allow multinational corporations to dominate postwar Iraq would thus be executed by the IMF and the Bremer laws: a shrunken state, flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no controls on capital outflows out of Iraq, no tariffs, and no ownership restrictions.
The people of Iraq would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs, and foreign products would force domestic Iraqi goods out of the market, of which food would be one major product. Local businesses and family farms would be unable to compete under the imposed rules and foreign competition.
A typical victim of IMF conditions would inevitably be forced to transform its national economy towards export in order to earn dollars to repay their debt. The "carrot" for this was always promise of an IMF "bailout" or "rescue" loan. The blackmail behind the IMF carrot was the threat that a victim debtor country would be permanently blacklisted from all foreign credits should it refuse the IMF conditions.
Iraq was to be no different. The US-mandated Iraqi elections were intended to set the legal stage to bind Iraq's government to the severe IMF controls. In effect, this would place the IMFas the "neutral" agency responsible for Iraqi adherence to the 100 Bremer Orders. The IMF would force Iraq to join Washington's global vision of a "free market."
The IMF planned to reach a specific arrangement with Iraq's new government sometime after the January 30, 2005 Iraqi elections. Since the relief of a large amount of Iraq's external debt was dependent on approval by the Fund, the IMF had considerable leverage in its negotiations with Iraqi leaders.22
United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 1483 had given Bremer the power to manage occupied Iraq, but this was to be within the parameters of international law. Bremer's 100 Orders and economic "shock therapy" however, were undertaken in utter violation of international law.
As protests against the Iraqi privatization and violent attacks on American companies spread, it became urgent to conceal this· embarrassing fact. Bremer therefore rushed back to Washington to discuss with the President a new scheme for taking over Iraq's economy. The result was the interim regime of Iyad Allawi, and the announcement of Iraqi elections for January 2005. Allawi, a hand-picked Washington protege who had worked with the CIA for years, was to "legally" implement the illegal Bremer decrees.
Under Order 39 of what became known in Iraq as "the Bremer Laws:' Iraqi industries and markets were to be opened to foreign investment with few restrictions. These laws were formulated in a way which would make it very difficult for either the interim government or any subsequent Iraqi government to revoke or repeal these policies.
Indeed, Bremer cemented the 100 Orders with Article 26 of the Iraqi interim constitution, which ensured that once sovereignty was handed over to the interim government, it would be powerless to change the Bremer Laws. In addition, hand-picked US sympathizers were inserted by Bremer into every Iraqi ministry, and were empowered with the authority to override any of the decisions made by subsequent Iraqi governments.
The presence of 132,000 US troops across Iraq, firmly embedded in some 14 new US military bases constructed across the country after 2003, were to guarantee that. It was becoming clear to most Iraqis by late 2004 just what Washington meant when it used the noble words, "planting the seeds of democracy" in their nation. The seeds had nothing to do with the ability of ordinary Iraqi citizens to determine their own independent destiny.
After official authority was transferred in June 2004 from Bremer's CPA to the Interim Iraqi regime headed by CIA asset, Allawi, the latter agreed to accept debt relief in exchange for its "openness" to IMF-imposed reforms. Thus, in a memorandum attached to a "letter of intent" sent by Central Bank Governor Shababi and Finance Minister Al-Mahdi to the IMF that September, the men expressed their US-installed government's eagerness to "engage" with the fund. 23
"New financial sector legislation has paved the way for the creation of a modern financial sector;' the letter boasted, going on to state that "three foreign banks have already been licensed to begin operations;' and that "a number of foreign banks have shown interest in acquiring a minority ownership stake in private Iraqi banks." One bank was the London HSBC, which is among the largest in the world.24
The forced transformation of Iraq's food production into patented GMO crops is one of the clearest examples of the manner in which Monsanto and other GMO giants are forcing GMO crops onto an unwilling or unknowing world population.
CHAPTER 11
Planting the "Garden
of Earthly Delights"
US Agribusiness
Moves to Dominate
The project of making GMO crops the dominant basic crops
on the world agricultural market was the creation of a new
enforcement institution which would stand above national governments.
That new institution, which opened its doors in 1995 was
to be called the World Trade Organization (WTO). In September 1986, two years after the Rockefeller Foundation had launched its genetic engineering rice project, US agribusiness threw its now considerable weight behind a radical new international trade regime, the GATT Uruguay Round.
It was a culmination and a logical consequence of thirty some years of work. The work had begun in the 1950's at Harvard University, under the project financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, designed by Wassily Leontief, and implemented, step-by-step, by Harvard Business School Professors, Ray Goldberg and John Davis, under the slogan of "vertical integration."
After three decades of systematic destruction of barriers to monopoly and vertical integration, of eradication of health regulations and safety standards within the United States agricultural sector, the emerging corporate colossus of agribusiness next moved to flex its muscle by demanding the creation of a new supranational, non-elected body to enforce its private agenda of concentration on a global scale.
The WTO headquarters were established in Geneva, Switzerland, a nominally neutral, scenic, and peaceful location. Behind this facade, however, the WTO was anything but peaceful or neutral. The WTO had been created as a policeman, a global free trade enforcer, and, among its major aims, a battering ram for the trillion dollar annual world agribusiness trade, with the agenda to advance the interests of private agribusiness companies. For that reason, the WTO was designed as a supranational entity, to be above the laws of nations, answerable to no public body beyond its own walls.
GATT agreements had no enforceable sanctions or penalties for violating agreed trade rules. In contrast, the new WTO did have such punitive leverage. It had the power to levy heavy financial penalties or other sanctions on member countries in violation of their rules. The WTO had emerged as a new weapon which could force open various national barriers and which could thereby enhance the proliferation of the soon-to-be commercialized genetically modified crops.
The idea of a WTO, as with most major post-war free trade initiatives, came from Washington. It was the outcome of the GATT Uruguay Round of trade liberalization talks, which began in Punte del Este, Uruguay, in September 1986, and concluded in Marrakesh, Morocco, in April 1994.
Ever since 1948 and the initial founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Washington had fiercely resisted including agriculture into world trade talks, fearing any common international rules would open US markets to foreign food imports and would damage American agriculture's competitiveness. Since the 1950's, US agricultural exports had been a strategic national priority tied to Cold War geopolitics.
Unlike all previous GATT trade rounds, the Uruguay Round made trade in agriculture a main priority. The reason was simple. By the mid-1980's, backed by the aggressive policies of deregulation and free market support from the Reagan Administration, American agribusiness was powerful enough to launch its global trade offensive, and in a big way.
It was, in fact, the Cargill Plan. Cargill was then the dominant US private agribusiness giant, with global sales well over $56 billion, and plants in 66 countries around the world. It had built its mighty global empire through working with the Rockefeller interests in Latin America, as well as with Henry Kissinger in the 1970's Great Grain Robbery sales of US wheat to the Soviet Union at huge profit. Its influence on Washington, and especially on US Department of Agriculture policy, was immense.2
The four Amstutz demands at the GATT talks worked uniquely to the benefit of US agribusiness and their growing global position. The points included a ban on all government farm programs and price supports worldwide; a prohibition on countries who seek to impose import controls to defend their national agriculture production; a ban on all government export controls of agriculture, even in time of famine. Cargill wanted to control world grain export trade.
The final Amstutz demand, presented to the GATT· Uruguay Round participants in July 1987, implied that GATT trade rules limit the right of countries to enforce strict food safety laws! The global "free market" was seemingly more sacred to Cargill and their agribusiness allies than mere human life. National food safety laws were seen by US agribusiness as a major barrier to unfettered pursuit of high profit from low-wage, low quality industrial farm operations in developing countries, as well as in the USA. Furthermore, agribusiness wanted an unrestricted ability to market the new genetically engineered crops, with no national concerns about health and safety getting in their way.
Amstutz was a dedicated champion of agribusiness interests and was named the special liaison of the Bush Administration Department of Agriculture to Iraq in 2003 to direct the transformation of Iraqi farming into US-led, "market oriented" export agribusiness with GMO crops, described in chapter 10.
The main US agriculture demands at the Uruguay Round centered on the call for a mandatory end to state agriculture export subsidies, a move aimed squarely at the European Community's Common Agriculture Program (CAP). Washington called the process "agriculture trade liberalization." The beneficiaries were US agribusiness, i.e. the dominant players, in a scenario reminiscent of how British free trade demands in the late 1870's served the interests of British international business and banking, then the dominant world players.
The IPC and the
Agribusiness Lobby
Cargill was one of the main drivers of the US Business Roundtable,
a powerful lobby made up of the largest US corporate executives.
The Business Roundtable formed an alliance for GATT in 1994 to
lobby the US Congress to accept its agriculture agenda-which it
did almost without question. The Congressional decision to back the GATT and the creation of the new WTO was made easier by the fact that Cargill and their Business Roundtable friends poured millions of dollars in campaign contributions to support key members of the US Congress.3
Not content to put all its eggs in one basket, Cargill also created the Consumers for World Trade (CWT), another "pro-GATT" lobby which, curiously enough, represented not consumers but agribusiness and multinational interests. Corporate membership cost $65,000. Cargill also formed an Emergency Committee for American Trade, to convince Congress to accept the new WTO agriculture agenda.4
The international lobby working with Cargill and US agribusiness to push through the radical GATT agriculture agenda was an obscure and powerful organization, which called itself the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council, or IPC. Founded in 1987 to promote the liberalization of agricultural trade and in particular, the Amstutz Plan for agribusiness, the IPC included top executives and officials from Cargill, GMO giant Syngenta (then Novartis), Nestle, Kraft Foods, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midlands (ADM), Bunge Ltd., Winthrop Rockefeller's Winrock International Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture and Japan's largest trading group, Mitsui & Co. IPC was an interest group few politicians in Brussels, Paris or elsewhere could afford to ignore.
Cargill, the IPC, and the Business Roundtable all worked closely
with Clinton Administration US Trade Representative and later
Commerce Secretary, Mickey Kantor. By presenting the WTO as
being substantially similar to GATT consensus rules-thus, by
essentially lying-Kantor got the Uruguay Round's WTO proposal
through the US Congress.
WTO rules were to be dominated by a Group of Four, the so called QUAD countries-the USA, Canada, Japan and the EU. They could meet behind closed doors and decide policy for all 134 nations. Within the QUAD, the US-led agribusiness giants controlled major policy. In effect it was a consensus, but a consensus of private agribusiness, that determined WTO policy.
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture, which was written by Cargill, ADM, DuPont, Nestle, Unilever, Monsanto and other agribusiness corporations,was explicitly designed to allow the destruction of national laws and safeguards against the powerful pricing power of the agribusiness giants.
By 1994, as the WTO was in the process of being established, it had become Washington policy to give full backing to the development of genetically-modified plants as a major US strategic priority. The Clinton Administration had made "biotechnology:' along with the Internet, a strategic priority for US Government backing, formal as well as informal. Clinton gave full support to Mickey Kantor as chief negotiator for the WTO ratification process.
When Kantor left the Washington Government in 2001, he was rewarded for his service to US agribusiness during the GATT negotiations. Monsanto Company, then the world's most aggressive promoter of genetically modified crops and related herbicides, named Kantor to be a member of Monsanto's Board of Directors. The revolving door between the government and the private sector was well oiled.
Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical and other agricultural chemical giants had transformed themselves into controllers of patented genetically-modified seeds for the world's major staple crops. The time was ripe to establish a police agency which could force the new GMO crops on a skeptical world. The WTO Agreement on Agriculture was to. be the vehicle for that, along with the WTO rules enforcing Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
WTO and Bad TRIPS
Washington's Amstutz Plan, with slight modifications, became the heart of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture, or AoA as it came to be known. The policy goal of the AoA was to create what agribusiness deemed its highest priority-a free and integrated global market for its products. While talking rhetorically about "food security;' it mandated that such security would only be possible under a regime of free trade, an agenda uniquely beneficial to the giant global grain traders such as Cargill, Bunge and ADM.
In 1992, the senior Bush Administration made the ruling, without public debate, that genetically engineered or modified food or plants were "substantially equivalent" to ordinary seeds and crops and hence needed no special government regulation. That principle was enshrined into the WTO rules under its "Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement;' or the SPS. Phytosanitary was a fancy scientific term which simply meant that it dealt with plant sanitation, i.e. with GMO plant issues.
The crafty formulation of the SPS rule stipulated that "food standards and measures aimed at protecting people from pests or animals can be potentially used as a deliberate barrier to trade;' and hence, must be forbidden under WTO rules.5 Under the guise of appearing to enshrine plant and human health safety into WTO standards, the IPC and the powerful GMO interests within it ensured just the opposite. Few politicians in WTO member countries bothered to. even read past the formidable term, "phytosanitary." They listened to their own agribusiness lobby and approved.
Under the WTO's SPS rule national laws banning genetically modified organisms from the human food chain, because of national health concerns regarding potential threat to human or animal life, were termed "unfair trade practices:'6 Other WTO rules prohibited national laws that required labeling of genetically engineered foods, declaring them to be "Technical Barriers to Trade."7 Under the WTO, "trade" was deemed a higher concern than the citizen's right to know what he or she was eating. Which trade and to whose benefit was left unspoken.
Parallel to the international negotiations that ultimately created the WTO, some 175 nations were negotiating safeguards to insure that biological diversity and food safety concerns remained a priority in face of the onslaught of new, largely untested GMO crops.
In 1992, two years before the final WTO document was agreed upon, the 175 participating nations had signed a UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). That CBD dealt with the safe transfer and use of GMOs. As an extension of that convention, numerous governments, especially in developing countries, felt that a protocol explicitly dealing with the potential risks of GMOs was necessary. At that point, GMOs were still largely in a testing phase.
Despite strong resistance, especially from the US Government, a formal working group began to draft a Biosafety Protocol in 1996. Finally, after seven years of intense international negotiation involving hearings from relevant interest groups from around the world, 138 member nations of the UN met in Cartagena, Colombia, expecting to sign the final Biosafety Protocol to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
They were too optimistic. The demands of developing countries including Brazil and several African and Asian nations were ambushed by the powerful organized government and agribusiness lobby backing GMO. After ten days of non-stop debate, delegates were stymied by opposition from pro-GMO countries. Canada, acting as spokesman for what was called the Miami Group, led by the United States and other pro-GMO agribusiness countries, won an agreement to adjourn without an agreement and continue work in a smaller committee. The talks had been sidetracked by the Miami Group, six countries led by the USA and including Canada, a close backer of US GMO policy; Argentina, by then fully in the grip of Monsanto and US agribusiness; Australia, another agribusiness free trade ally of Washington; Uruguay and Chile, two countries whose ties to Washington were extremely close. Curiously, the United States Government was not officially present at the Cartagena meetings. The Clinton Administration, an ardent GMO supporter, had refused to participate as they had refused to sign the earlier Convention on Biological Diversity.
Unofficially, however, Washington representatives orchestrated the entire Miami Group sabotage of the talks. The demands of the Miami Group were simple. They insisted that WTO trade rules be formally written into the protocol and that it be stated that biosafety measures must remain subordinate to WTO trade demands. Their argument was insidious and sophistic. They turned the tables and argued, not that the safety of GMO crops was unproven, but rather that the biosafety concerns of most member countries to the Convention over risks of GMO were unproven and hence, should be considered a "barrier to trade."8 In such a case, Miami Group countries insisted WTO rules prohibiting unfair trade barriers must take precedence over the Biosafety Protocol.
The talks collapsed. Little was heard again of the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol. Washington, the WTO and the GMO interests behind them had cleared the path to the unfettered spread of GMO seeds worldwide.
The doctrine of the WTO was simple: free trade-on terms defined by giant private agribusiness conglomerates-was to reign supreme above sovereign nation states and above the concern for human or animal health and safety. "Free market tiber Alles" was the motto.
Having Your Cake and Eating it too
Yet, US patent law allowed agribusiness companies at the same time to claim exclusive patent rights on their genetically modified organisms or seeds, on the argument that the introduction of a foreign DNA into the genome of a plant such as rice uniquely altered the plant or, one could say, "substantially transformed" it.
The contradictions between the "substantially equivalent" ruling of Washington on GMO products and allowing radical new patents on GM seeds to be deemed "substantially transformed" did not bother many Washington officials. Whatever argument it took to advance the agribusiness gene revolution agenda was fine by them. Niceties of logical consistency weren't high on Washington's list of priorities in promoting their gene revolution .
The legal framework for patenting plants was enshrined in WTO rules protecting Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Under TRIPS, all member nations of WTO were required to pass laws to protect patents (intellectual property rights) for plants. The patents would block anyone but the patent holder from making, selling or using the "invention." This little-noticed proviso in the new WTO rules opened the floodgates for US and international agribusiness to advance the Rockefeller Foundation genetic engineering strategic agenda.
The WTO TRIPS rules permitted well-financed agrochemical multinationals with large R&D budgets to set the stage for demanding royalty payments or even denying a customer or country its patented seed. In the case of plants, the exclusive patent was in force for twenty years. As one critical scientist put it, under TRIPS and genetic patent law, "knowledge is property. It belongs to corporations and is not accessible to farmers."9
Backed by the police powers of the WTO and the muscle of the US State Department, the gene multinationals-Monsanto, Syngenta and others-soon began testing the limits of how far they could impose the patenting of plants and other life forms on other countries.
A Texas biotechnology company, RiceTec, decided it would take out a patent on Basmati rice, the variety which has been the dietary staple in large parts of India, Pakistan, and Asia for thousands of years. In 1998, RiceTec took a patent on its genetically modified Basmati rice, and thanks to US laws forbidding the labelling of genetic foods RiceTec was able to sell it legally by labelling it as ordinary Basmati rice. RiceTec, it turned out, had gotten a hold of the precious Basmati seed, which had been put in trust by dubious means at the Rockefeller Foundation's International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.10
The IRRI had made a "safety" duplicate of the invaluable collection of rice seeds collected in the Philippines and stored it in a seed bank at Fort Collins, Colorado, making highly dubious the claim by IRRI that the seeds would be stored as a secure seed resource for the region's rice farmers. IRRI had convinced rice farmers that giving their invaluable seed varieties to the IRRI was for their own security.
In Colorado, far from the Philippines, the IRRI gave the valuable seeds to RiceTec scientists, who then patented it. They knew it was highly illegal; even in Texas, rice scientists know that Basmati rice doesn't grow normally on the dusty plains around Crawford, Texas. 11
RiceTec, with the collusion of IRRI, stole the seeds for its patent. Yet under the carefully crafted rules set up by the Rockefeller Foundation's IRRI, while seeds from the gene bank should not be patented, once a scientist manages to do breeding work, regardless of how they may patent it.
In December 2001, the US Supreme Court enshrined the principle of allowing patents on plant forms and other forms of life in a groundbreaking case entitled J.E.M. Ag Supply vs. Pioneer HiBred. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether newly developed plant breeds fall within the subject matter of 35 U.S.c. § 101, or whether the alternative statutory regimes provided by Congress showed a legislative intent that the regular utility patent statute not cover plants. To the surprise of most legal experts, the Court ruled GMO plant breeds could be patented. 12
From that point onwards, the genetic agribusiness cartel had the backing of the highest court in the United States. This could now be used as a battering ram to force other, less powerful countries to respect US GMO seed patents.
The complicity of essential US Government agencies, legally and nominally responsible for ensuring public health and safety of the general population; was a decisive part of the GMO revolution. In a full-page New York Times expose that ran on January 25, 2001, the paper wrote that Monsanto gained "astonishing" control over its own regulatory industry, through the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Henry Miller, who was in charge of biotechnology issues for the Food and Drug Administration from 1979 to 1994, told the Times: "In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do."
Ironically, Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and the other major holders of patents on genetically modified plants claimed that genetically engineered rice, corn, soybeans and other crops would solve the problem of world hunger and lead to greater food security. In fact, their aggressive patenting of plant varieties led to restricted research, reduced genetic plant diversity, and concentrated ownership of seeds which had been for thousands of years the heritage of mankind. This process enormously increased the risk for entire plant species to be devastated due to the new monocultures.
The Four Horsemen of
the GMO Apocalypse
With the full backing of the powerful WTO, and the USA and UK
governments, the major international biotech companies consolidated
their grip, using genetically modified patents on every plant
imaginable. The Gene Revolution was a monsoon force in world
agriculture by the end of the 1990's. By 2004, four global private companies dominated the market for genetically modified seeds and their related agrichemicals. The world's number one GMO company was the Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri, the leading provider of genetically modified seeds and the world's largest producer of the chemical herbicide, glyphosate, which it called its Roundup group of herbicides. Beginning in the 1990's, Monsanto spent some $8 billion buying up seed companies to complement its role as one of the world's leading herbicide producers.
The strategy defined in an interview in the April 12, 1999 Business Week of Monsanto CEO, Robert B. Shapiro, was to create a global fusion of "three of the largest industries in the world-agriculture, food and health-that now operate as separate businesses. But there are a set of changes that will lead to their integration."13 Monsanto saw itself as a kind of modern day King Kanute, moving that sea of changes on command.
Monsanto was founded in 1901 to manufacture industrial chemicals such as sulphuric acid. It produced and licensed most of the world's polychlorinated biphenyls, which later proved to cause severe brain damage, birth defects and cancer.
In early 2007, British investigators uncovered internal UK Government memos and evidence that Monsanto had illegally dumped some 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs (which could have been made only by Monsanto), from one unlined porous quarry in South Wales that waS not authorised to take chemical wastes, polluting underground water supplies and the atmosphere 30 years later. The Guardian reported, "Evidence has emerged that the Monsanto chemical company paid contractors to dump thousands of tonnes of highly toxic waste in British landfill sites, knowing that their chemicals were liable to contaminate wildlife and people."14 Monsanto entered the world of GMO with a less than spotless record for corporate integrity, or demonstrated concern for human health. 15
The second member of the GMO global quartet to emerge in the late 1990's was DuPont Corporation's Pioneer Hi~Bred International, Inc., of Johnstown, Iowa. Pioneer Hi-Bred billed itself as "the world's leading developer and supplier of advanced plant genetics to farmers worldwide;' and was active in 70 countries.
Pioneer Hi-Bred, a company founded in the 1930's by later Rockefeller collaborator in the Green Revolution, Henry Wallace, was taken over by the Delaware chemicals giant DuPont in 1999. With its huge germplasm holdings and intellectual property, Pioneer Hi~Bred International (PHI) was considered to be the largest proprietary seed bank in the world. Pioneer's market dominance was based primarily on its corn seed.
Since the 1980s, Pioneer had been moving into plant genetics. In October 1999, DuPont completed its $7.7 billion takeover of Pioneer, and created a seed-chemical industry complex intended to be a primary engine in the shift by the chemical industry from petroleum-dependency, to a feedstock provided by genetic engineering. 16
Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, the third GMO giant was Dow AgroSciences, a $3.4 billion seed and agrochemicals conglomerate active in 66 countries. Dow AgroSciences was formed in 1997 when Dow Chemical bought drug-maker Eli Lilly's stake in Dow Elanco. The parent company had grown to be Dow Chemical, the world's second largest chemical company overall, with annual revenues of over $24 billion and operations in 168 countries 17
Like its GMO agribusiness allies, Monsanto and DuPont, Dow had a disreputable history concerning environmental and public health issues. Dow's factories at its global headquarters in Midland, MI, contaminated the entire region, including the Tittabawassee River floodplains, with stratospheric levels of dioxin. Tests done by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality found that 29 of 34 soil samples taken in Midland had dioxin levels higher than state cleanup standards.18 Some samples had concentrations of dioxin nearly 100 times higher than cleanup standards. The state warned residents of Midland to "avoid allowing children to play in soils. Wash hands and any other exposed body surfaces after any soil contact. Do not eat unwashed foods from your garden. Do not engage in any other activities that may introduce soil into the mouth .. .. "19
Dioxin is among the most toxic compounds ever studied. It is harmful to life in miniscule amounts and has been linked by experts to endometriosis, immune system impairment, diabetes, neurotoxicity, birth defects, decreased fertility, testicular atrophy, reproductive dysfunction, and cancer. Dioxin can affect insulin, thyroid and steroid hormones, threatening the development of all human newborns, according to one scientific report.20
Dow was the innovator of the infamous napalm used against civilians in Vietnam. The jelly-like chemical, when sprayed over people, would burn them on contact. The infamous 1972 photograph of a naked child running down a street in Vietnam screaming in agony, captured for the world the effects of napalm. Dow's President at the time, Herbert D. Doan, described napalm as "a good weapon for saving lives ... a strategic weapon essential to the pursuit of the tactic we are engaged in without exorbitant loss of American lives."21
Dow AgroSciences described its GMO role as "providing innovative crop protection, seeds, and biotechnology solutions to serve the world's growing population." In 2003, in the case Bates v. Dow AgroSciences, twenty-nine farmers in western Texas went to court contending that Strongarm, a herbicide manufactured by Dow AgroSciences, had severely damaged their peanut crops and had not killed the weeds as promised. The farmers sued Dow for false advertising, breach of warranty and fraudulent trade practices under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Dow AgroSciences won a declaratory judgment against the farmers in federal district court seeking, among other things, a judicial declaration that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempted the farmers' state law claims. The US Government sided with Dow as amicus curiae in the case, which went to the Supreme Court.22
The fourth horseman of the GMO battalion was Syngenta of Basel, Switzerland, which grew from the 2000 merger of the agriculture divisions of Novartis and AstraZeneca into a $6.8 billion agriculture and chemicals company. It claimed in 2005 to be the world's largest agrochemical corporation and third largest seed company. Though it was Swiss-based, Syngenta was in many respects a British-controlled company whose chairman and many directors came from the British AstraZeneca side. Syngenta, which deliberately cultivated a low profile to avoid the controversies plaguing its US rivals, was the world's second biggest agrochemicals producer and third biggest seed producer.
Syngenta became subject of major unwanted media attention in 2004 when a German farmer, Gottfried Glockner of North Hessen, found evidence that planting Syngenta Bt-176 genetically-engineered corn to feed his cattle in 1997, had been responsible for killing off his cattle, destroying his milk production and poisoning his farmland. Syngenta's Bt-176 corn had been engineered to produce a toxin of Bacillus thuringiensis which they claimed was deadly to a damaging insect, the European Corn Borer.23
Glockner was the first approved farmer in Germany to use the Bt Corn from Syngenta for animal feed. He kept detailed notes of his experiences, initially believing he was at the start of a revolution in agriculture through GMO. In the end, his proved to be one of the longest-running tests of the effects of Syngenta's Bt-176 corn anywhere in the world, lasting almost five years. The results were not encouraging for the proponents of GMO.
A test of GMO's efficacy wasn't Glockner's intent, however. He wanted the beneficial effects of the GMO crop to feed his cattle, and to eliminate crop loss from the European Corn-borer insect, which typically cut harvest yields up to 20%.
In the first year, 1997, Glockner was careful. He grew only a small test field of Bt -176 corn. The results were impressive: corn of uniform height, green shoots, "standing tall like soldiers," he recalled. "I was fascinated, as a practitioner, to see high yields, and apparently healthy plants, with no sign at all of damage from the corn-borer." The second year, 1998, he expanded to 5 hectares of Syngenta's Bt-176 corn, working closely with the company's German representative, Hans-Theo Jachmann. By 2000, Glockner had expanded the GMO experiment to his entire field of some 10 hectares, about 25 acres. Each successive harvest he gradually increased the amount of Bt corn he fed his cattle, carefully noting milk yields, and possible side effects. The first three years no side effects from the rising GMO feedings could be noted.24
However when he increased the dosage to a diet of pure GMO corn from his Syngenta green fields, convinced he would gain higher milk yields, he witnessed a nightmare unfold.
Glockner, a university-trained farmer, told an Austrian journalist that he was shocked to find his cattle having gluey-white feces and violent diarrhea. Their milk contained blood, something unheard of in the midst of lactation. Some cows suddenly stopped producing milk. Then, five calves died, one after the other, between May and August 2001, an extremely alarming event. Glockner ultimately lost almost his entire herd of 70 cows. Syngenta rejected any responsibility for the events, insisting that the cows would detoxify the toxin of Bacillus thuringiensis in the Bt-176 corn, according to their tests.
Despite Syngenta's denial of any responsibility, Glockner persisted and obtained independent scientific analyses of his soil, his silo corn and his cows. One lab returned the result that confirmed Glockner's conviction that Syngenta's Bt-176 GMO corn was the cause. It showed that in his Bt-176 corn from the year 2000, were 8.3 micrograms of toxin per kilogram. In June 2004, Prof. Angelika Hilbeck of the respected Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Geobotanical Institute found that from Glockner's Bt-176 corn samples Bt toxins were "found in active form and extremely stable:' an alarming result that Syngenta insisted was simply not possible.25 Glockner's independent test results were in complete contradiction to Syngenta's claims that their Research Center in North Carolina "discovered no Bt toxins in the feed sample."26
In 2005, the same Syngenta made a bold move to lock up a major share of GMO Terminator patents. Syngenta applied for patents that could effectively allow the company to monopolize key gene sequences that are vital for rice breeding as well as dozens of other plant species. Syngenta's enthusiasm for the rice genome stemmed from rice's major genetic similarities (i.e., DNA or protein sequences) to other species ranging from maize and wheat to bananas, genetic similarities called "homologies." While Syngenta was donating rice germplasm and information to public researchers with one hand, it was attempting to monopolize rice resources with the other.
Syngenta's controversial relationship with rice and patents included its involvement with GMO Golden Rice and the Syngenta Foundation's membership in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).27
GMO and Pentagon Deals
Quite notable was the fact that three of the four global players in
GMO were not only American-based, but had decades-long involvement
with the Pentagon in supplying war chemicals, including
napalm and the notorious Agent Orange plant defoliant used by the
US military in Vietnam. In early 2001, a New Zealand magazine, Investigate, reported an alarming discovery. In an article titled, "Dow Chemical's Nasty Little Secret-Agent Orange Dump found under New Zealand Town", a former top official at New Plymouth's Ivon Watkins Dow chemical factory confirmed the worst fears of residents: Part of the town was sitting on a secret toxic waste dump containing the deadly Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange. "We've buried it under New Plymouth," the official admitted. The article added, "And if any further proof were needed that surplus Agent Orange had been dumped at New Plymouth, local residents found a drum of the chemical on the beach near Waireka Stream." Dow Chemical had kept it secret for 20 years. 28 Civilian and retired military victim lawsuits against the US Government for diseases contracted in Vietnam as a result of exposure to Agent Orange were still being litigated in US courts more than three decades after the end of the Vietnam War.
In 1990, retired Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, was named to carry out an investigation of the government's knowledge of the toxicity of Agent Orange to its own soldiers and civilians. Zumwalt's report stated: "From 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 72 million liters of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, in Vietnam. Over one million Vietnamese were exposed to the spraying, as well as over 100,000 Americans and allied troops." Dr. James Clary, a scientist at the Chemical Weapons Branch, Eglin Air Force Base, who designed the herbicide spray tank and wrote a 1979 report on Operation Ranch Hand (the name of the spraying program), told Senator Daschle in 1988:
When we (military scientists) initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the "military" formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the "civilian" version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the "enemy:' none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.29
By 2005, the three US leaders in spreading genetically-engineered agricultural seeds and herbicides had built their argument against any government regulation of their research or the safety of its genetic engineered seeds, by claiming that simply trusting them was the most reliable and efficient way of policing GMO safety concerns.
The history of one of the three US makers of Agent Orange, Monsanto, reveals how high that company set the bar for integrity and human life. Keith Parkins described Monsanto's record in Vietnam:
Monsanto was the main supplier. The Agent Orange produced by Monsanto had dioxin levels many times higher than that produced by Dow Chemicals, the other major supplier of Agent Orange to Vietnam. Dioxins are one of the most toxic chemicals known to man. Permissible levels are measured in parts per trillion, the ideal level is zero. The Agent Orange manufactured by Monsanto contained 2,3,7,8-tetrachlordibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD), extremely deadly even when measured against other dioxins. The levels found in domestic 2,4,5-T were around 0.05 ppm, that shipped to Vietnam peaked at 50 ppm, i.e., 1,000 times higher than the norm.
Monsanto's involvement with the production of dioxin contaminated 2,4,5-T dates back to the late 1940s. Almost immediately workers started getting sick with skin rashes, inexplicable pains in the limbs, joints and other parts of the body, weakness, irritability, nervousness and loss of libido .... Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems but covered it up.
Parkins concluded that,
A wide range of products manufactured by Monsanto have been contaminated with dioxins, including the widely used household disinfectant Lysol. Monsanto's attempts at a cover-up were revealed when a court awarded $16 million in punitive damages against Monsanto. It was revealed that Monsanto had intimidated employees to keep quiet, had tampered with evidence, had submitted false data and samples to EPA. An investigation by Cate Jenkins of the EPA Regulatory Development Branch documented a track record of systematic criminal fraud. 30
An estimated 50,000 Vietnamese children had been born with "horrific deformities" in the regions sprayed with Agent Orange, a practice which stopped only in 1971.31 It was an operation enormously profitable for Monsanto's chemicals division sales at the time.32
In 1999, Canadian national radio, CBC, aired an interview with Dr. Cate Jenkins, an environmental chemist with the US government's Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. Referring to the situation when Monsanto faced lawsuits from US veterans over alleged dioxin poisoning from exposure to Agent Orange, she noted that:
Monsanto was very worried about the impact of being sued by Vietnam veterans. So they were worried about lawsuits. They published a press release during the suit by Vietnam veterans saying our studies show that dioxin does not cause any cancers in humans.
The studies were paid for by Monsanto. The bottom line is that the Vietnam veterans were denied compensation for their cancers, their birth defected children. You could not win a court case when you sued a chemical company for exposures to dioxin ... I am a chemist, an environmental scientist working for the Environmental Protection Agency since 1979. I was able to examine the actual statements of the scientist who had conducted the studies for Monsanto. And those were quite revealing. My evaluation of the studies, I would use the word, rigged. They designed a study to get the results that they wanted. The unexposed population that was supposed to be dioxin free actually did have exposures. Also certain key cases of cancers were eliminated from the Monsanto study for spurious reasons.33
Jenkins was transferred to another EPA department and harassed for more than two years as a result of going public.
In 1984, Monsanto, Dow Chemicals and the other makers of Agent Orange paid $180 million into a fund for US military veterans following a bitter, long lawsuit. They refused to admit wrongdoing. More than a decade later, the same companies had refused to pay a single cent to the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange poisoning.
In 2004, President George W. Bush's Administration cancelled an agreed US-Vietnamese project to examine the long-term genetic impact of Agent Orange. Agent Orange was hardly the theme Monsanto wanted the world public to associate with the greatest global supplier of genetically modified food crops, crops it claimed were designed to feed the hungry of the world. Unlike some politically correct politicians, Monsanto was not into public apologies for its actions.
Letting the GMO Genie
Out of the Bottle
In 1996, Monsanto shipped to Europe a container full of soybeans from the US. It was not labeled, and EU inspectors only later discovered that it contained Monsanto genetically modified soybeans, the same soybeans which they had spread across Argentina. It entered the food chain without labeling. The EU replied with a moratorium on the commercialization of GM crops in late 1997.34
When George W. Bush made the proliferation of GM seeds highest priority after the Iraq war in 2003, the seed cartel led by Monsanto had already spread its patented seeds with alarming speed. Bush's prime goal was to force the lifting of the 1997 EU ban on GM seed commercialization in order to open the next major markets for GMO takeover.
By 2004, according to a report from the Rockefeller Foundation funded International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), the planting of genetically engineered crops worldwide had grown by an impressive 20% compared with a year earlier. If it was the ninth such double digit increase since 1996, and the second highest on record. More than 8 million farmers in 17 countries planted GMO crops, and 90% of those were from poor developing countries, precisely the aim of the original Rockefeller Foundation gene revolution. 35 Following the United States as world GMO crop leader, Argentina, Canada and Brazil were by far the largest genetically engineered food producers worldwide.
The ISAAA also noted that GMO soybeans made up 56% of all soybeans planted in the world; GMO corn made up 14% of all corn, GMO cotton was 28% of world cotton harvest, and GMO canola, a form of rapeseed oil, totalled 19% of all world rapeseed harvest.36 Canola oil, toxic in the human diet, was developed as a genetically modified product in Canada, where, in a burst of marketing patriotism, it was labelled Canadian oil or Canola.37
In the United States, with aggressive Government promotion, absence of labelling, and the domination of US farm production by agribusiness, genetically engineered crops had essentially taken over the American food chain. In 2004, more than 85% of all US soybeans planted were genetically modified crops, and most were from Monsanto. 45% of all US corn harvested was GMO corn.38 Corn and soybeans constituted the most important animal feed in US agriculture, which meant that nearly the entire meat production of the nation as well as its meat exports had been fed on genetically modified animal feed. Few Americans had a clue as to what they were eating. No one bothered to tell them, least of all the Government agencies entrusted with a mandate to protect citizens' health and welfare.
The spread of large fields dedicated to planting GMO crops led to contamination of adjacent organic crops to the point that after just six years, an estimated 67% of all US farm acreage had been contaminated with genetically engineered seeds.
The genie was out of the bottle.
It was not a process which could be reversed in any way known to science. A 136 page review of all known worldwide studies of GMO effects, prepared by an internationally respected group of scientists led by Dr. Mae, presented sobering thoughts about the advisability of untested release of GMO plants into world agriculture. The study warned:
The most obvious question on safety is with regard to the transgene and its product introduced into GM crops, as they are new to the ecosystem and to the food chain of animals and human beings.39
The Bt toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis, incorporated in food and non-food crops, account for about 25% of all GM crops currently grown worldwide. It was found to be harmful to mice, butterflies and lacewings up the food chain. Bt toxins also act against insects in the Order of Coleoptera (beetles, weevils and styloplids), which contains some 28,600 species, far more than any other Order. Bt plants exude the toxin through the roots into the soil, with potentially large impacts on soil ecology and fertility.40
The group of scientists, which included Dr. Arpad Pusztai, concluded from their investigation that:
Bt toxins may be actual and potential allergens for human beings. Some field workers exposed to Bt spray experienced allergic skin sensitization and produced IgE and IgG antibodies. A team of scientists has cautioned against releasing Bt crops for human use. They demonstrated that recombinant CrylAc protoxin from Bt is a potent systemic and mucosal immunogen, as potent as cholera toxin. A Bt strain that caused severe human necrosis (tissue death) killed mice within 8 hours, from clinical toxic-shock syndrome. Both Bt protein and Bt potato harmed mice in feeding experiments, damaging their ileum (part of the small intestine). The mice showed abnormal mitochondria, with signs of degeneration and disrupted microvilli (microscopic projections on the cell surface) at the surface lining the gut 41
The Independent Science Panel report stated that in this regard:
Because Bt or Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus anthracis (anthrax species used in biological weapons) are closely related to each other and to a third bacterium, Bacillus cereus, a common soil bacterium that causes food poisoning, they can readily exchange plasmids (circular DNA molecules containing genetic origins of replication that allow replication independent of the chromosome) carrying toxin genes. If B. anthracis picked up Bt genes from Bt crops by horizontal gene transfer, new strains of B. anthracis with unpredictable properties could arise.42
Licensing Life Forms
Just as they vigorously insured a non regulatory regime, the GMO
seed cartel imposed rigid licensing and technology agreements
insuring annual royalties to Monsanto and the other biotech seed
companies from farmers using their seeds. The private companies
were not at all anti-government; they only wanted Government
rules to serve their private interests. As with other gene seed companies, Monsanto required farmers to sign a Technology Use Agreement which tied them to paying fees each year to Monsanto for its "technology:' namely, genetically engineered seeds.
As independent seed suppliers were rapidly being swallowed up by Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta, Cargill or other large agribusiness firms, farmers increasingly were trapped into dependency on Monsanto or the other GMO seed suppliers. American farmers were among the first to experience this new form of serfdom.
With the 2001 US Supreme Court ruling, GMO firms like Monsanto could intimidate US farmers into becoming "seed serfs:' The Monsanto penalty for not paying the fees was severe punitive legal damages in a court trial. Monsanto also made certain it would have a friendly court hearing. It had written into its master contract the provision that any litigation against the company be heard in St. Louis, where jurors knew that Monsanto was a major local employer.
Monsanto and the other GMO seed companies demanded that farmers pay each year for new seeds. The farmers were forbidden to re-use seeds from the previous years. Monsanto went so far as to hire private Pinkerton detectives to spy on farmers to see if they were reusing their old seeds. In some areas in the US, the company advertised free leather jackets to anyone informing on a farmer using old Monsanto seed.43
Notably, the big four major suppliers of genetically engineered agriculture seed-Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow and DuPont-had originated as and still were major chemical companies. The reason was the same in each case. They all originally manufactured pesticide and herbicide chemicals before they ever ventured into genetic engineering of seeds.
During the early 1990's, the herbicide giants had reorganized themselves as "life sciences" companies. They bought up the existing seed companies, large and small. They forged alliances with transporters and food processors, and emerged at the heart of the global agribusiness vertical integration chain. It was the Goldberg-Davis Harvard Business School vertical integration model in spades.
By 2004, two agribusiness giants-Monsanto and DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred-controlled the majority of the world's private seed companies. The major GMO agribusiness companies had pursued a three-phase strategy. Initially, they either bought out or merged with most major seed companies in order to gain control over seed germplasm. Then, they took out a multitude of patents on genetic engineering techniques as well as on genetically engineered seed varieties. Finally, they required that any farmer buying their seed must first sign an agreement prohibiting the farmer from saving the seed, thus forcing them to repurchase new seed every year. In the case of Monsanto, it allowed a single company, unhampered by US Government anti-trust restrictions, to obtain unprecedented control of sale and use of crop seeds in the United States.44
Cleverly, the GMO seed had been marketed and developed to be resistant to that company's special herbicide. Monsanto GMO "Roundup Ready" soybeans had been genetically modified explicitly to be resistant to Monsanto's specially patented glyphosate, marketed under the brand name Roundup. They were "ready" for Roundup. That insured that farmers contracting to buy Monsanto GMO seeds must also buy Monsanto herbicide. The Roundup herbicide was so developed that it could not be used on non-GMO soybean plants. The GMO seeds were, in effect, tailor-made to fit Monsanto's existing glyphosate herbicide.
Whether such a wide proliferation of genetically modified organisms in the food chain was safe or desirable was of no concern to the agribusiness chemical and seed giants. Phil Angell, Monsanto's spokesman, put it bluntly: "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Answering its safety is the FDA's job."45
He was well aware that the US Food and Drug Authority, on Monsanto demands, had long since abandoned any pretence of independently monitoring GMO seed safety. The Government had agreed to let the GMO companies "self-police" the industry, meaning Angell was describing a perfect circle of lies and public deception, circumscribing the incestuous relationship which had been created between the private agribusiness GMO giants and the US Government.
Lies, Damn Lies and Monsanto Lies ...
Rockefeller Foundation President, Gordon Conway, issued a public call for a second Green Revolution which he dubbed the "Gene Revolution". He insisted GMO crops were needed "to enhance food production over the next 30 years ... to keep up with population increase" estimating that the world would have "an extra 2 billion mouths to feed by the year 2020." Conway further argued that GMO crops would solve the problem of how to increase crop yields on limited land, and would "avoid the problems of pesticides and the overuse of fertilizers"46
This carefully formulated pitch for GMO crops was picked up by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank, IMF and the leading advocates of genetically modified seeds, especially the seed conglomerates themselves, to justify their cause. If you opposed the spread of GMO seeds, you de facto supported genocide against the world's poor. At least that was the not-so-subtle message of the GMO lobby.
Whether GMO crops promised large improvement in crop yield per hectare planted was also greatly disputed. Despite the most concerted effort by the GMO agribusiness companies and their financially captive university researchers, evidence began to leak into the press suggesting that those very GMO crop yields were also not what it had been cracked up to be.
A November 2004 report from the Network of Concerned Farmers in Australia concluded, in the case of genetically modified planting of canola, that
there is no evidence that GMO canola crops yield more, but there is evidence they yield less. Although Monsanto claim a 40% yield increase with Roundup Ready canola, their best on their website for Australian trials reveal yields are 17% less than our national average. Bayer CropScience trial yields are also not comparing well against non-GMO varieties.47
The Soil Association in the UK issued a report in 2002 entitled "The Seeds of Doubt" based on extensive research with USA farmers who had used genetically modified crops. The report, one of the few independent assessments available, concluded that rather than boosting farmers' crop yields, "GMO soybeans and maize have worsened the situation."48
Based on six years of GMO growing experience, the study showed that there was real cause for alarm at the increasing farmer dependency on genetic crops. The study reported the analysis by Iowa University economist, Michael Duffy, who found that when all production factors were taken into account, "herbicide tolerant GMO soybeans lose more money per acre than non-GMO soybeans."49
In Argentina and Brazil, studies confirmed the emergence of glyphosate-resistant "superweeds" which were impervious to normal doses of Monsanto's Roundup glyphosate herbicide. In order to combat the damaging weeds threatening Monsanto's Roundup Ready GMO soybean fields, other supplemental herbicides had to be used. In one case in southern Brazil, where Argentine GMO seeds had been illegally smuggled in, a weed had developed which could not be killed with any dosage of glyphosate named in Brazil corda-de-viola. Only by adding DuPont's Classic herbicide would the weed die. The phenomenon became so common in fragile GMO soybean fields that a new growth segment for DuPont and the other herbicide makers became devising, patenting and producing such chemical add-ons to glyphosate. The GMO industry claims to dramatically lower herbicide requirements had been proven false. 50
The results for genetically modified Bt corn planted in the United States were hardly better. Dr. Charles Benbrook of the Northwest Science and Environment Policy Center in Idaho, using USDA Government data in a detailed analysis of the economics of Bt corn, found that "from 1996-2001, American farmers paid at least $659 million in price premiums to plant Bt corn, while boosting their harvest by only 276 million bushels-worth $567 million in economic gain. The bottom line for farmers is a net loss of $92 million-about $1.31 per acre-from growing Bt maize (corn)."51
Another major drain on farmers' income, the study concluded, was the very high fees farmers had to pay to Monsanto, DuPont and the other GMO seed companies for their seeds. A significant cost was the "technology fee" charged by the seed conglomerates ostensibly to reimburse their high research and development costs.
Seeds typically accounted for 10% of normal corn production costs. GMO seeds were significantly more expensive because of the added technology fee. The study concluded that with the technology fee, "GMO seeds cost 25-40 percent more than non-GMO seeds. For Bt maize, for example, the fees are typically $8- $10/acre, about 30-35 percent higher than non-GMO varieties, though they can be up to $30/acre. Roundup Ready soybeans can have a technology fee of about $6/acre."52 In addition, the contract prohibited farmers, at the risk of severe penalty, from reusing a portion of their seeds in the following year's planting.
Monsanto and the biotech seed giants argued that higher yields more than compensated for their added cost. Higher yields were supposedly a prime benefit of planting the GMO seeds. However, the "Seeds of Doubt" research study concluded that Monsanto Roundup Ready soybeans and Roundup Ready rapeseed produced on average lower yields than non-GMO varieties, and although genetically engineered Bt corn produced a small yield increase overall, it was not enough over the whole period to cover the higher production costs.53
Further contradicting the claims that GMO crops required significantly less chemical fertilizer-an argument used to win over ecological opponents-the study in fact found that Roundup Ready soybeans, corn, and rapeseed had "mostly resulted in an increase in agrochemical use" meaning more tons of pesticide and herbicide per acre than with ordinary varieties of the same crops. 54
The study concluded that, "while there are some farmers growing GMO crops who have been able to cut their production costs or increase yields with GMO crops, it appears that, for most producers, any savings have been more than offset by the technology fees and lower market prices, as well as the lower yields and higher agrochemical use of certain GMO crops."55
Numerous other studies confirmed that GMO crops required not less but typically more chemical herbicides and pesticides after one or two seasons than non-GMO crops. Even the US Department of Agriculture admitted the advertised claims of GMO did not bear relation to reality. "The application of biotechnology at present is most likely .. . not to increase maximum yields. More fundamental scientific breakthroughs are necessary if yields are to increase."56
Dr. Charles Benbrook's study, based on USDA official data, revealed that far from using less pesticides, "the planting of 550 million acres of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased pesticide use by about 50 million pounds."57
The main reason cited for the increase was "substantial increases" in herbicide use on "herbicide tolerant" -i.e., genetically modified crops, especially soybeans, similar to the results confirmed across GMO soybean fields in Brazil and Argentina. There was a significant increase in herbicide use on GMO crops compared to acres planted with conventional plant varieties. "Herbicide tolerant" plants were genetically modified to ensure that those who grew the crops had no other option but to also use the herbicides of the same companies.
Farmers across the United States, where GMO crops had been planted for a number of years, discovered that, unexpectedly, herbicide-tolerant weeds had emerged requiring added use of other herbicides in addition to the GMO-specific brands such as Monsanto's Roundup Ready.58 In the case of GMO corn, the weed plague had necessitated the use of the chemical herbicide atrazine, one of the most toxic herbicides that exist, as a supplement to control weeds. Many independent crop scientists and farmers predicted the imminent danger of the creation of super-weeds and Bt-resistant pests which could threaten entire harvests.
Increasingly, it appeared that the case in favour of widespread commercial use of genetically engineered seeds for agriculture had been based on a citadel of scientific fraud and corporate lies.
GMO Soybeans and Infant Death?
From Russian science came another test, the results of which were
attacked and belittled by the marvellous propaganda machine of the
GMO agribusiness lobby. In January 2006, a respected London newspaper, The Independent carried a story titled, "Unborn Babies Could be Harmed by GMO's"59 The article reported on research results from scientist Dr. Irina Ermakova of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Her study found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on genetically modified soybean diet died in the first three weeks of life-six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets.
Dr. Ermakova added flour from Monsanto's GMO soybean to the food of female rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soybeans, and a third group was given no soybean at all.
The Russian scientist was alarmed to find that 36 percent of the young of rats fed the diet of modified soybeans were severely underweight, compared to 6 percent of the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 percent of those born to mothers on the GMO diet died within three weeks of birth, compared to 9 percent of the offspring of those fed normal soybeans, and 6.8 percent of the young of those given no soybeans at all. "The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing;' said Dr Ermakova. "They point to a risk for mothers and their babies".60
Monsanto and other GMO firms attacked the credibility of Dr. Ermakova while curiously avoiding the obvious call to repeat the simple test in other labs to confirm or refute. Monsanto's Public Relations department merely restated their mantra. Tony Coombes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, told the press, "The overwhelming weight of evidence from published, peer-reviewed, independently conducted scientific studies demonstrates that Roundup Ready soy can be safely consumed by rats, as well as all other animal species studied."
The Russian results were potentially so serious that the American Academy of Environmental Medicine asked the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.61
Africa's Fake "Wonder Potato"
In one of its more widely publicized acts, Monsanto donated a
genetically engineered virus-resistant sweet potato in Africa to the
Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARl), an institute supported
financially by, among others, the World Bank and Monsanto. KARl's Dr. Florence Wambugu was deployed by Monsanto and USAID to give talks around the world, where she proclaimed that the GMO sweet potato of Monsanto had solved hunger in Africa. The GMO sweet potato had been developed by Wambugu while at Monsanto in St. Louis in a project backed by the USAID, ISAAA and the the World Bank. Wambugu claimed it would raise yields from four tons to ten tons per hectare.62 In 2001, USAID backed the project through a high profile promotion to spread GMO crops on a skeptical African population. Forbes, an American financial magazine which referred to itself as, "The Capitalist Tool," proclaimed Wambugu as one of 15 people from around the world who would "re-invent the future':63
The only problem was that the re-inventing project was a catastrophic failure. The GMO sweet potatoes proved susceptible to viral attacks. Their yields were proven less than that of normal indigenous sweet potatoes, not 250% greater as predicted by Wambugu.64 KARl and its corporate backers tried to maintain the fraud, but Dr. Aaron de Grassi of the Sussex University Institute of Development Studies exposed the statistical gimmicks being used by Wambugu and Monsanto to claim their gains.
DeGrassi stated that, "Accounts of the transgenic (GMO-w.e.) sweet potato have used low figures on average yields in Kenya to paint a picture of stagnation". An early article stated 6 tons per hectare-without mentioning the data source-which was then reproduced in subsequent analyses. However, deGrassi noted, "FAO statistics indicate 9.7 tons, and official statistics report lOA tons."65 The World Bank and Monsanto ignored the critical findings and continued financing Wambugu's research for more than 12 years.
As the late American humorist and social critic, Mark Twain, might have said of the situation: "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies and Monsanto lies .... "
In the heady environment of a US biotech stock market euphoria at the end of the 1990's, and the falling barriers to GMO proliferation, Monsanto, Syngenta and the major seed giants nearly ran off the rails with their project to take over the seed supply of the world. It required an extraordinary intervention in 1999 by their patron saint, the Rockefeller Foundation, to rescue the over-eager agribusiness giants from their own methods.
next
PART V Population Control
262s
Notes
1. Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA Official Documents, Orders, http:// www.cpa-iraq.orglregulations/#Orders.
2. Naomi Klein, "Baghdad Year Zero", Harpers' Magazine, September 2004.
3. Coalition Provisional Authority, op. cit. In its introduction, the document declares, "Orders-are binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people that create penal consequences or have a direct bearing on the way Iraqis are regulated, including changes to Iraqi law."
4. Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA Official Documents, Order 81:Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, http://www.iraqcoalition.orglregulations/index.html#Regulations. See also Focus on the Global South and GRAIN, Iraq's New Patent Law: A Declaration of War against Farmers, http://www.grain.org, and Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, Green Books, Devon, UK, 1998.
5. William Erskine, Agriculture System in Iraq Destroyed: Self Sufficiency in Food Production Years Away ... , Press Release, 30 June 2003, http://www.icarda.orglNews/ 2003News/30June03.htm.
6. Hope Shand, "Patenting the Planet", Multinational Monitor, June 1994, p. 13.
7. GRAIN Press Release, Iraq's New Patent Law: A Declaration of War Against Farmers, Focus on the Global South and GRAIN, October 2004, http:// www.grain.org/articles/?id=6.
8. Ibid.
9. Jeremy Smith, "Iraq: Order 81", The Ecologist, February 2005.
10. Portal Iraq, Seeds for the Future of Iraqi Agriculture, 27 September 2004, http://www.portaliraq.com/news/Seeds+for+the+future+of+ Iraqi +agriculture 529.html.
11. Daniel Stolte, "In the Trenches", The Business Journal of Phoenix, 10 June 2005.
12. Ibid.
13. Christopher D. Cook, "Agribusiness Eyes Iraq's Fledgling Markets", In These Times, http://www.mindfully.orglGE/2005/Iraq-US-Agribusiness-Profit15mar05.htm. 15 March 2005.
14. Ibid.
15. IRIN News, IRAQ: Interview with Minister of Agriculture, http://www.irinnews.org, Baghdad, 16 December 2004.
16. Ann M. Veneman, Remarks by Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman to the National Association of Farm Broadcasters Annual Convention, 14 November 2003, US Department of Agriculture, Washington D.C., Release No. 0384.03.
17. US Congressional Record, Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq and BNL, Statement by Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, 28 April 1992, US House of Representatives, Page H2694.
18. John King cited in Christopher D. Cook, op. cit.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Paris Club, Iraq, hUp:/ /www.ciubdeparis.org, 21 November 2004.
22. International Monetary Fund, Iraq-Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, Baghdad, 24 September 2004.
23. Governor Shababi cited in Brian Dominick, "US Forgives Iraq Debt To Clear Way for IMF Reforms" NewStandard, 19 December 2004. '
24. Ibid.
Notes
1. Letter from Daniel G. Amstutz, Undersecretary for International Affairs and Commodity Programs, U.S. Department of Agriculture, published in Choices, Fourth Quarter, 1986, p. 38.
2. Who's Who in Corporate Agribusiness, http://www.electricarrow.com/CARP/ tiller/archives/backlog.htm, 3 April 1997.
3. Eugene W. Plawiuk, "Background on Cargill Inc., the Transnational Agribusiness Giant", Corporate Watch: GE Briefings, http://www.archive.corporatewatch.org, November 1998.
4. Ibid.
5. Lori Wallach and Michelle Sforza, The WTO: Five Years of Reasons to Resist Corporate Globalization, Seven Stories Press, New York, 1999, p. 45.
6. Edward A. Evans, "Understanding the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement': EDIS document FE492, Department of Food and Resource Economics, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, UF/IFAS, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL., August 2004, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu. Evans notes: "The United States feared that, with a reduction in the use and levels of these support measures, some importing countries might turn to technical trade barriers (notably SPS measures) as a means of allowing them to continue providing support to their farming community. Consequently, the intent of the Agreement was to ensure that when SPS measures were applied, they were used only to the extent necessary to ensure food safety and animal and plant health, and not to unduly restrict market access for other countries." Who would determine "extent necessary" were the tribunals of the WTO.
7. World Development Movement, GMOs and the WTO: Overruling the Right to Say No, http://www.wdm.org.uk, London, November 1999. See also, Edward A. Evans,op.cit.
8. World Development Movement, op.cit.
9. Anup Shah, Food Patents-Stealing Indigenous Knowledge?, http://www.globalissues.org, 26 September 2002.
10. GRAIN, Genetech Preys on the Paddy Field, http://www.grain.orglseedlingl ?id=33, June 1998. See also Thai Jasmine Rice and the Threat of the US Biotech Industry, News Release, http://www.biotech-info.net/wescotcthai_rice.pdf.
11. GRAIN, op. cit. The report notes, "Although it is IRRI's policy not to patent either the germplasm collected from farmers' fields or the products of its conven tional breeding work, it cannot prevent those who access their collections from doing so. This laissez faire policy has translated into the appropriation of part of farmers' rice germplasm by the private sector. For example, a US breeding company, Farms of Texas, made some minor modifications on IRRI's IR8 and patented it for exclusive sale in the United States. In early 1998, that company, now named RiceTec, caused public outrage by obtaining a patent on Indian and Pakistani Basmati rice:'
12. United States Supreme Court, ].E.M. Ag Supply V. Pioneer Hi-Bred, 122 S.Ct. 593,2001. Also for background, "CAFC Decision in Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. vs. J.E.M. Ag Supply, Inc. et al.", Biotechnology Law Report, April 2000,pp. 281-289. The issue which the Supreme Court decised in favor of Pioneer HiBred's claim to patent rights for genetically manipulated plants was accepting a ruling of the US Court of Appeals, which had upheld a lower court ruling that patents on Pioneer genetically engineered corn seed were valid. The court concluded that title 35, section 101 of the United States Code (part of the Patent Act) "includes seeds and seed grown plants." This section states that "[wlho[mlever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;' can get a patent to protect their work. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Pioneer, in effect upholding the right of a seed company to achieve iron clad protection for its bioengineered products by allowing general utility patents in addition to a PVPA (Plant Variety Protection Act) certificate." Also, Edmund J. Sease presents an excellent legal review of the process in Edmund J. Sease, "History and Trends in Agricultural Biotechnology Patent Law from a Litigator's Perspective", Seeds of Change Symposium Banquet, http://www.ipagcon.uiuc.edu, University of Illinois, Chicago, 9 April 2004.
13. Robert B. Shapiro, cited in Richard A. Melcher et al., "Fields of Genes': Business Week, 12 April 1999.
14. John Vidal, "Monsanto Dumped Toxic Waste in UK", The Guardian, 12 February 2007.
15. Meryl Nass, op. cit.
16. Press Release, DuPont and Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., Merger Completed, Delaware, 1 October 1999.
17. Dow Chemical Company, Quarterly Report, in http://www.dow.com/ financial/n!ports/07 q 1 earn.htm.
18. Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, "Soil Movement Advisory", Environmental Assessment Initiative, Information Bulletin #3, June 2003.
19. Ibid.
20. Testimonials from Dow Midland employees about effects of dioxin are available on http://www.studentsforbhopal.org. On documentation of Dow Corning's defective silicone breast implants, for which the company had to pay $3.5 billion in damages to thousands of victims, see Implant Veterans of Toxic Exposure, yukonmom47.tripod.com/index.html.
21. Quoted in Arundhati Roy, "The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky", The Hindu, 24 August 2003. A US Vietnam veteran is attributed with this perverse but descriptive quote about the development of Napalm: "We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn't so hot-if the go oks [Vietnamese 1 were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene-now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorus) so's to make it burn better. It'll burn under water now. And just one drop is enough; it'll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning:' See also "Protesting Napalm", Time,S January 1968. During the rising antiwar protests which cost Lyndon Johnson his Presidency, Dow Chemical became the symbol of the brutality of the American war machine. The company refused to cease production of napalm, despite the fact it represented 0.5% of gross revenue
22. Dow Agrosciences Lie, Plaintiff-Appellee Versus Dennis Bates et al., United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, 11 June 2003.
23. Der Spiegel, 8 February 2004.
24. Gottfried Glockner as interviewed by Klaus Faissner, "Der Genmais und das grosse Rindersterben", Neue Bauernkoordination Schweiz, http://www.nbks.ch/ abstiml gentechmais_rindersterben.html#.
25. Gottfried Glockner, in a letter to the author, Gentechnik Mais, 3 February 2007.
26. Klaus Faissner, Gentechnik oder Bauern?, http://www.arge-ja.at/gentechnik _landwirtschaft_faissner.html.
27. ETC Group Communique, Syngenta-The Genome Giant?, http://www.etcgroup.org., January/February 2005.
28. Investigate, New Zealand, January/February 2001.
29. Elmo R. Zumwalt, quoted in Meryl Nass, Monsanto's Agent Orange: The Persistent Ghost from the Vietnam War, http://www.organicconsumers.org/ monsantol agentorange0321 02.cfrn#What.
30. Cate Jenkins, "Criminal Investigation of Monsanto Corporation-Cover-up of Dioxin Contamination in Products-Falsification of Dioxin Health Studies", USEPA Regulatory Development Branch, November 1990. See also "The Legacy of Agent Orange", BBC News, World Edition, 29 April 2005, transcript in home.clara.net/heurekal gaial orange.htm. 31. BBC News, op. cit.
32. Ibid.
33. Cate Jenkins, quoted in "Fields of Genes: The Battle over Biotech Foods", This Morning, CBC Radio, 3-7 May 1999. "Fields of Genes part 4", 6 May 1999, http://www.nyenvirolaw.orglPDF ICBC-05-06-1999-FieldOfGenesTheBattleOverBiotechFoods.PDF.
34. The Monsanto Corporation has been accused of not listening to the groups that would be responsible for marketing their Roundup Ready GMO soybean, as they shipped tons of these beans to soy processors in Europe; in Nature Biotechnology 14 (1996), 1627; Nature 384 (1996),203,301; NS (7 Dec 1996),5: "A trade war nearly began between USA and Europe. Hans Kroner, secretarygeneral of Eurocommerce, representing retailers in 20 European countries, recently called for Roundup Ready to be segregated from other beans. Earlier in 1996, European retail and wholesale groups had asked for separate streams for the Roundup Ready. Retailers in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom wanted segregation so that they could label the products appropriately. German, Austrian, Finnish, and Swedish retailers wanted a separate stream so that they could exclude genetically manipulated food either 'for the foreseeable future' or 'until consumers are happy'." Cited in Food Safety Including GM Foods, eubios.info/NBB/NBBFS.htm.
35. Clive James, "Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2004", IS AAA, No. 32, 2004.
36. Ibid.
37. Sally Falon and Mary Enig, "The Great Con-ola", Nexus Magazine, http:// www.nexusmagazine.com.August-September 2002. The authors conclude: "canola oil is definitely not healthy for the cardiovascular system. Like grapeseed oil, its predecessor, canola oil is associated with fibrotic lesions of the heart. It also causes vitamin E deficiency, undesirable changes in the blood platelets, and shortened lifespan in stroke-prone rats when it was the only oil in the animals' diet. Furthermore, it seems to retard growth, which is why the FDA does not allow the use of canola oil in infant formula." http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/canola.html .
38. The Pew Charitable Trusts, Genetically Modified Crops in the United States, pewagbiotech.org, August 2004.
39. Mae-Wan Ho and Lim Li Ching, "The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World", Independent Science Panel, London, 15 June 2003, p. 23, in http://www.foodfirst.orglprogs/global!ge/isp/ispreport.pdf.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Andrew Kimbrell, "Monsanto vs. US Farmers", The Center for Food Safety, http://www.centerforfoodsafety.orglMonsantovsusfarmersreport.cfm., Washington DC, 2005, pp. 19-21.
44. Ibid., pp. 7-11.
45. Phil Angell, quoted in "Playing God in the Garden': New York Times Magazine, 25 October 1998. That was a direct contradiction of at least officially published US government policy: "Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety"-Food and Drug Administration, Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties (GMO Policy), Federal Register, Vol. 57, No. 104,1992, p. 229.
46. Gordon Conway, The Rockefeller Foundation and Plant Biology, speech, http://www.biotech-info.net/gordon_conway.html. 24 June 1999.
47. Network of Concerned Farmers, Will GM Crops Yield More in Australia?, http://www.non-gm-farmers.com. 28 November 2004.
48. Gundula Meziani, and Hugh Warwick, "The Seeds of Doubt", The Soil Association, http://www.soilassociation.org. 17 September 2002. A very comprehensive scientific independent review of the claims and counter-claims of GMO is the study of Mae-Wan Ho and Lim Li Ching, op. cit.
49. Gundula Meziani, op. cit.
50. Antonio Andrioli, Universidade Regional do Noroeste do Estado do Rio Grande do SuI, Brazil, Private e-mail Correspondence, 27 January 2007, provided on request by Friedel Kappes.
51 . Charles M. Benbrook, "Biotech Crops Won't Feed Africa's Hungry", The New York Times, II July 2003.
52. Ibid. 53. Gundula Meziani, et aI., op. cit., pp. 19-20.
54. Ibid. p. 19.
55. Ibid. p. 20.
56. USDA, Agriculture Information Bulletin, 2001.
57. Gundula Meziani, et aI., op. cit., p. 19.
58. Ibid., pp. 19-20
59. Geoffrey Bean, "Unborn Babies Could be Harmed by GMOs': The Independent, 8 January 2006.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Gundula Meziani, op. cit.
63. Lynn J. Cook, "Millions Served", Forbes, 23 December 2002.
64. Ibid. See also, GM Watch, Wambugu Wambuzling Again: Says GM Sweet Potato a Resounding Success?, http://www.mindfully.orglGE/2004IWambugu-WambuzlingAgain 17mar04.htm, 17 March 2004. Also, "Monsanto's Showcase Project in Africa Fails", New Scientist, 7 February 2004. The article notes, "Three years of field trials have shown that GM sweet potatoes modified to resist a virus were no less vulnerable than ordinary varieties, and sometimes their yield was lower, according to the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. Embarrassingly, in Uganda conventional breeding has produced a high-yielding variety more quickly and more cheaply. The GM project has cost Monsanto, the World Bank and the US government an estimated $6 million over the past decade. It has been held up worldwide as an example of how GM crops will help revolutionize farming in Africa. One of the project members, Kenyan biotechnologist Florence Wambugu (see New Scientist, 27 May 2000, p. 40), toured the world promoting the work."
65. GM Watch, ap. cit.
No comments:
Post a Comment