Thursday, February 7, 2019

8 of 8: Seeds of Destruction...Avian Flu Panic and GMO Chickens ...Genetic Armageddon: Terminator and Patents on Pigs

Image result for images from Seeds of Destruction' The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
CHAPTER 13 
Avian Flu Panic and GMO Chickens 
The President Helps out a Friend 
On November 1,2005, President George W. Bush went to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland to hold an unusually high profile press conference to announce a 381-page plan officially called the Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan. It was in many respects as unusual and significant as the President's May 2003 press conference where he declared his intent to file WTO action to break the European Union moratorium on GMO. 

The NIH press conference was no ordinary Bush photo opportunity. This one was meant to be a big event. The President was surrounded by almost half his cabinet, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, joined by the Secretaries of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Health & Human Services, Transportation and, interestingly enough, Veteran Affairs. And just to underscore that this was a big deal, the White House invited the Director-General of the World Health Organization, who flew in from Geneva, Switzerland for the occasion. 

The President began his remarks, "at this moment, there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world. But if history is our guide, there is reason to be concerned. In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics-and viruses from birds contributed to all of them .... " 

Bush spoke about an imminent danger to the American people: "Scientists and doctors cannot tell us where or when the next pandemic will strike, or how severe it will be, but most agree: at some point, we are likely to face another pandemic. And the scientific community is increasingly concerned by a new influenza virus known as H5Nl--or avian flu .... " 

The President went on to warn: 

At this point, we do not have evidence that a pandemic is imminent. Most of the people in Southeast Asia who got sick were handling infected birds. And while the avian flu virus has spread from Asia to Europe, there are no reports of infected birds, animals, or people in the United States. Even if the virus does eventually appear on our shores in birds, that does not mean people in our country will be infected. Avian flu is still primarily an animal disease. And as of now, unless people come into direct, sustained contact with infected birds, it is unlikely they will come down with avian flu. 1 

Bush then called on Congress to immediately pass a new bill with $7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare for that possible danger. The speech was an exercise in the Administration's "pre-emptive war:' this time against avian flu. As with the other preemptive wars, it followed a multiple agenda. 

Prominent among the President's list of emergency measures was a call for Congress to appropriate another $1 billion explicitly for a drug developed in California called Tamiflu. The drug was being heavily promoted by Washington and the WHO as the only available medicine to reduce symptoms of general or seasonal influenza, which also "possibly" might reduce symptoms of avian flu. The large Swiss pharmaceutical firm, Roche, held the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. With growing scare stories in US and international media warning of the deadly new H5Nl strain of Avian Flu virus and the "high" risk of human-to-human contamination, order books at Roche were backed up for months.

What President Bush neglected to say was that Tamiflu had been developed and patented by a California biotech firm, Gilead Science Inc., a listed US stock company which preferred to maintain a low profile in the context of growing interest in Tamiflu. That might have been because in 1997, before he became US Secretary of Defense in the Bush Administration, the President's close friend, Donald H. Rumsfeld, had been Chairman of the Board of Gilead Science Inc. He had remained there until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the Gilead board since 1988 according to a January 3,1997 company press release. 2 

In November 2004, while Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary, his Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs issued a directive regarding Avian Flu. The document stated that, " ... oseltamivir (Tamiflu) will be used to prevent and treat illness. There is evidence that HSNI is sensitive to oseltamivir. However, its supply is extremely limited worldwide, and its use will be prioritized."3 That 2004 Pentagon directive made a significant contribution to panic buying of Tamiflu by governments around the world. 

Unconfirmed reports were that while Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense, he also purchased additional stock in his former company, Gilead Science, worth $18 million, making him one of the largest if not the largest-Gilead stock owners. He stood to make a fortune on royalties and on the rising stock price for Gilead, as a panicked world population scrambled to buy a drug whose capacity to cure the alleged avian flu was still uncertain.4 

This phenomenon suggested a parallel with the corruption of Halliburton Corporation, whose former CEO was Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney's Halliburton had gotten billions of dollars worth of US construction contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. 5 

Was the avian flu scare another Pentagon hoax, whose ultimate aim was unknown? 

Kissinger and Biological Warfare 
Back in the mid-1970's, acting as National Security Advisor (NSA) under Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller's protege Henry Kissinger oversaw foreign policy, including his NSSM 200 project, the top secret Third World population reduction strategy for the US, Britain, Germany, and other NATO allies. According to the US Congressional Record of 1975, Kissinger selected to have the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) develop biological weapons.6 Among these new man-made biological weapons were germs far deadlier than the avian flu. 7 

By 1968, when Kissinger requested and received updated intelligence on useful "synthetic biological agents" for germ warfare and population control, mutant recombinant flu viruses had just been engineered by US Government Special Virus Cancer Program researchers. During this program, influenza and parainfluenza viruses were recombined with quick-acting leukemia viruses to deliver weapons that potentially spread cancer, like the flu, by sneezing. These researchers also amassed avian cancer (sarcoma) viruses and inoculated them into humans and monkeys to determine their carcinogenicity, according to AIDS researcher, Dr. Leonard Horowitz.8 

In related efforts, US government researchers used radiation to enhance the cancer-causing potential of the avian virus. Those incredible scientific realities were officially censored. The sudden emergence of a global scare over a supposedly deadly strain of Avian Flu virus in 2003 had to be treated with more than a little suspicion. 

Agribusiness Gains in Avian Flu Scare 
Not only was Defense Secretary Rumsfeld a direct benefactor of US, UK and other governments' stockpiling of his Tamiflu, the avian flu scare was also being used to advance the global domination of agribusiness and poultry factory farms along the model of the Arkansas-based Tyson Foods Inc. 

Curiously enough indeed, the huge, unsanitary and overcrowded factory chicken farms of the global agribusiness giants were not those being scrutinized as a possible incubator or source ofH5N1 or other diseases. Instead, the small family-run chicken farmers especially in Asia, with at most perhaps 10 to 20 chickens, were those who stood to lose in the Bird Flu hysteria. 

The major US chicken factories such as Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms and ConAgra Poultry made a propaganda campaign, falsely claiming that, unlike those of free-running Asian chicken farms, their chickens were "safer" because they were raised in closed facilities. 

As an integral part of the Harvard-run agribusiness vertical integration project of Professors John Davis and Ray Goldberg, the US poultry industry became one of the first targets for industrialization or "factory farming:'

The industrialization of chicken-raising and slaughtering in the USA had progressed to the point that by 2003 when the first cases of H5Nl avian flu virus were reported from Asia, five giant multinational agribusiness companies dominated the production and processing of chicken meat in the United States. Indeed, according to trade source, WATT Poultry USA, as of 2003 the five companies held overwhelming domination of the US poultry production, all of them vertically integrated. 10 

The five companies were Tyson Foods, the largest in the world; Gold Kist Inc., Pilgrim's Pride, ConAgra Poultry, and Perdue Farms. In January 2007, Pilgrim's Pride bought Gold Kist, creating the largest chicken agribusiness giant. Together, the five accounted for over 370 million pounds, per week, of ready-to-cook chicken, corresponding to some 56% of all ready-to-eat poultry produced in the USA. The US chicken factory farms produced almost 9 billion "broiler" or meat chickens in 2005, or 48 billion pounds of chicken meat. The State of Arkansas, home of Tyson Foods, produced 6,314,000,000 pounds of that chicken meat.11 

They produced chicken meat in atrocious health and safety conditions. In January 2005, a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to the US Senate, "Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry;' concluded that US meat and poultry processing plants had "one of the highest rates of injury and illness of any industry." They cited exposure to "dangerous chemicals, blood, fecal matter, exacerbated by poor ventilation and often extreme temperatures:' Workers typically faced hazardous conditions, loud noise, must work in narrow confines with sharp tools and dangerous machinery. 12 

Another report from VivaUSA, a non-profit organization investigating conditions in US factory farms, noted that, "thanks to genetic selection, feed, and being prevented from moving or getting  any exercise on factory farms, chickens now grow to be much larger and to grow more quickly than ever before." They cite a USDA study which noted that "in the 1940's broilers required 12 weeks to reach market weight (4.4 pounds), whereas, due to the unnatural elements of industrialized production methods, now they reach that weight and are killed at just six weeks of age." 13 

The use of the growth boosters created major health problems in the huge factory farm concentrations. Because of hormone and vaccine injections used to speed growth, muscle growth outstripped bone development and the chickens typically had leg and skeletal disorders that affected their ability to walk. Unable to walk, they had to sit in poor-quality litter, creating breast blisters or hock burns. Chicken organs were unable to keep up with their hyper growth rates, causing hearts or lungs to fail or malfunction, creating excess fluids in their bodies, or death.14  

Under special exemptions in US law, chickens were excluded from the protections of the federal Animal Welfare Act. The federal government set no rules or standards for how chickens should be housed, fed, or treated on farms. According to a growing number of animal health experts, factory farming, rather than the small free-roaming chicken operations of Asia, was the real source of horrendous new diseases and viruses such as H5Nl. 

A World GMO Chicken? 
Alone, Tyson Foods processed 155 million pounds of chicken a week, almost three times the production of its nearest rival. Tyson made over $26 billion a year in revenue in 2006. During the peak of the bird flu scare, the Quarter ending September 30, 2005, Tyson Foods" earnings rose by 49%. Its profit margin in chickens grew by 40%.15 Tyson Foods and the small international cartel of poultry agribusiness firms stood to gain from the avian flu scare. 

The giant American chicken processors were out to globalize world chicken production by the turn of the Millennium. The avian flu seemed a gift from Heaven, or Hell, sent precisely for that task. One clear target for those companies was the huge Asian poultry market. Were Asian governments forced via WHO and international pressure to force farmers to cage chickens, small farmers would be bankrupted and large agribusiness firms like Tyson Foods or the Thailand-based CP Group would thrive. 

In a detailed report issued in February 2006, GRAIN, an organization dealing with GMO issues, revealed that the Thai-based CP Group and other chicken factory farms "were present nearly everywhere bird flu has broken out."16 The outbreaks which had been traced as far away as Turkish Anatolia, Bulgaria and Croatia by early 2006 all followed the transportation routes by air or rail of processed poultry from CP Group operations in China, Thailand, Cambodia or elsewhere in Asia where mass crowding and unsanitary closed conditions provided ideal breeding conditions for the outbreak of disease. 

The GRAIN report noted: 

The transformation of poultry production in Asia in recent decades is staggering. In the Southeast Asian countries where most of the bird flu outbreaks are concentrated-Thailand, Indonesia, and Viet Nam-production jumped eightfold in just 30 years, from around 300,000 metric tonnes (mt) of chicken meat in 1971 to 2,440,000 mt in 2001. China's production of chicken tripled during the 1990s to over 9 million metric tons per year. 17 

Practically all of this new poultry production has happened on factory farms concentrated outside of major cities and integrated into transnational production systems. This is the ideal breeding ground for highly-pathogenic bird flu-like the HSNI strain threatening to explode into a human flu pandemic. 

A report by a Canadian organization, Beyond Factory Farming, described the transmission likely pathways from the giant industrialized chicken centers: 

In Thailand, China and Vietnam there is a highly developed industrial poultry industry which has expanded dramatically in the past decade. The large poultry companies raise millions of birds, hatch chicks to supply other intensive poultry operations, export live birds and eggs to countries such as Nigeria (where the first Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza outbreak in Africa was recently reported) and produce and export feed which often includes "litter" (i.e., manure) in the ingredients. [ ... ] 

Manure that may contain live virus is spread on surrounding farmland, or exported as fertilizer, and through run-off may end up in surface waters where wild birds feed and rest. Chicken manure is even found in fish farm feed formulations where it is introduced directly into the aquatic environment. Wild birds and poultry that have fallen victim to HPAI in Asia, Turkey and Nigeria appear to have been directly exposed to HPAI virus originating in the factory farm system. In Asia, a flock of wild ducks died from HPAI-after having come into contact with the disease at a remote lake where a fish farm used feed pellets made from poultry litter from a factory farm. In Turkey a massive cull of backyard flocks-and the deaths of three children-took place after a nearby factory farm sold sick and dying birds to local peasants at cut rate prices. Nigeria has a large and poorly regulated factory poultry production sector which is supplied with chicks from factory farms in China. 18 

As experts on migratory bird flight pointed out, birds migrate in late fall from the Northern Hemisphere to southern, sunnier climates for winter. Bird flu outbreaks followed an East-West route, not North-South. Officials at WHO and the US Government's Centers for Disease Control conveniently omitted that salient fact as they spread fear of free-flying birds. 19 

CP Group of Thailand, Asia's largest poultry factory farming agribusiness group, was no mom-and-pop operation. By 2005, it had operations in more than 20 countries, including China, where, under the name Chia Tai Group, it employed 80,000 people.20 

Group patriarch, Dhanin Chearavanont, a billionaire with a penchant for cock fighting and yachts, was hardly a struggling third world businessman. He started in 1964 when he learned the concept of vertical integration from Arbor Acres Farm of Connecticut in the United States, at the time the world's largest chicken factory, financed by Nelson Rockefeller. Chearavanont was business partner with among others, Neil Bush, brother of George W. Bush, and his own executive Vice President Sarasin Viraphol, former Thai Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs, was chosen to sit on David Rockefeller's elite Trilateral Commission.21 

By early 2006, it seemed clear that the five or six giant poultry agribusiness multinationals, five US-based and one Thai-based and White House-connected, were moving to industrialize the majority of world chicken production, the main meat protein source for much of the planet, especially in Asia. 

One little-noted research project in England gave a clue as to what the subsequent phase of the globalization of chicken production would be. Once it would be produced in massive factory farm installations worldwide, the world chicken population would be an easy target for the creation of the first GMO animal population.22 

Amid reports of spreading bird flu from Asia across to Europe, the London Times noted in its October 29, 2005 edition, that a very active research project at Scotland's Roslin Institute, operating in collaboration with Laurence Tiley, Professor of Virology at Cambridge University, was on the brink of genetically engineering chickens to produce birds resistant to the lethal strains of the H5Nl virus. The new "transgenic chickens" would have small pieces of genetic material inserted into chicken eggs to allegedly make the chickens H5Nl resistant.23 

Roslin Institute had earlier contracted with a Florida biotech company, Viragen, for the rights to commercialize Avian Transgenic Technology, a method in which flocks of specially produced transgenic chickens would lay virtually unlimited numbers of eggs expressing high volumes of the target drug in the egg whites.24 Roslin had first captured world headlines with their creation of "Dolly the Sheep." 

Tiley was buoyant about the prospects for transforming the world chicken population into GMO birds. He told the Times that "once we have regulatory approval, we believe it will only take between four and five years to breed enough chickens to replace the entire world (chicken) population." 

Within the space of little more than two decades, GMO science had enabled a small handful of private global agribusiness companies-three of them American-based-to secure a major foothold and patent rights to world production of such essential feed grains as rice, corn, soybeans and soon wheat. By 2006, riding the fear of an Avian Flu human pandemic, the GMO or Gene Revolution players were clearly aiming to conquer the world's most important source of meat protein, poultry. 

Soon the next piece in the global control over man's food chain was executed. It played out on a quiet August day in Scott, Mississippi. The implications were staggering. Terminator was about to come into the control of the world's largest GMO agribusiness seed giant.

CHAPTER 14 
Genetic Armageddon: 
Terminator and Patents on Pigs 
Monsanto Finally Takes Delta & Pine Land 
On a Summer day in August 2006, as much of the world was lost in vacation distractions, a corporate acquisition took place which was to set the stage for the final phase of the Rockefeller Foundation's decades-long dream of controlling the human species. 

On August 15,2006, Monsanto Corporation, the Goliath of GMO agribusiness, announced that it had made a new bid to take ownership of Delta & Pine Land of Scott, Mississippi. The disclosed purchase price was $1.5 billion in cash. 1 Unlike when it had tried the same ploy in 1999 and was forced to back down by a storm of public protest, this time the takeover went almost unnoticed. The timing of the second takeover bid by Monsanto coincided with statements by Delta & Pine Land as to when they would be ready to commercialize Terminator. 

The NGOs which had drawn attention to the Terminator issue in 1999 were hardly to be heard beyond a brief perfunctory press release or two. The Major US and international media ran the story under headlines similar to that in the New York Times: "Monsanto Buys Delta and Pine Land, Top Supplier of Cotton Seeds in US."2 Only far down in the last sentence of the article did the Times even note that Delta & Pine Land held "a controversial genetic engineering technology that makes sterile seeds." 

The once-vocal public voice of the Rockefeller Foundation was this time silent. In 1999, Foundation President, Gordon Conway, a passionate advocate of what he even dubbed the Gene Revolution, made a concerted intervention. He personally argued with the board of Monsanto that Delta & Pine Land's Terminator patents, in the hands of a giant GMO company like Monsanto, risked a public revolution against spread of GMO.3 

This time around, the influential Rockefeller Foundation did not even bother to issue a press release opposing the planned second try to capture Terminator rights by Monsanto. Foundation Press Spokesman Peter Costiglio, in reply to a public question tersely replied: "We don't have a statement to share with you .... The Rockefeller Foundation still opposes the use of Terminator technology in developing (sic) countries."4 They declined to oppose Terminator universally, despite the fact that farmer-saved seeds are a major factor throughout the industrialized world as well. 

The general yawn of reaction to the second Terminator takeover bid by Monsanto tended to confirm the fears of skeptics who warned in 1999 that Monsanto's Terminator dreams had anything but "terminated:' They were only dormant until public opposition had weakened. 

Wall Street stock traders greeted the takeover with jubilation and the price of stock of D&PL went ballistic from $27 a share in early August to over $40, a jump of more than 50% in days. 

Monsanto crop-biotech competitors DuPont and Swiss-based Syngenta, both in a bitter battle to gain market share from Monsanto, lobbied for Justice Department involvement to block the D&PL takeover by rival Monsanto. DuPont said in a statement, "we have serious concerns about the impact that it would have on farmers, the agriculture industry and ultimately consumers." Their "concern" appeared to be more directed at the staggering implications of Monsanto now controlling world rights for Terminator, a process aided and abetted by the US Government, through the cooperation of the US Department of Agriculture in Delta & Pine Land's Terminator research.5

EU Patent Office Approves Terminator 
In the intervening seven years since the first attempt by Monsanto to acquire Delta & Pine Land and its global Terminator patent rights, D&PL had not been idle. It had aggressively and successfully extended its patent rights on GURTs. In October 2005 Delta & Pine Land together with the US Department of Agriculture won a major new patent on its Terminator technology from the European Union's European Patent Office, Patent no. EP775212B. The patent would cover all 25 nations in the European Union from Germany to Poland and Italy to France, some of the world's most abundant food-producing regions. 

Several days later D&PL and the US Government also secured patent protection for its Terminator technology in Canada under CA 2196410. The advance of Terminator technology to global commercialization had hardly ceased despite the de facto worldwide UN ban imposed years before.6 

The advent of GMO patented seeds on a commercial scale in the early 1990's had allowed companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow AgroSciences to go from supplying agriculture chemical herbicides like Roundup, to patenting genetically altered seeds for basic farm crops like corn, rice, soybeans or wheat. For almost a quarter century, since 1983, the US Government had quietly been working to perfect a genetically engineered technique whereby farmers would be forced to turn to their seed supplier each harvest to get new seeds. 

At the Fourth Meeting of the Working Group of the international Convention on Biological Diversity of the United Nations Environment Program in Granada in January 2006, a group of indigenous farmers from Peru filed a submission on their concerns over possible introduction of Terminator seed technology: 

As traditional indigenous farmers we are united to defend our livelihoods which are dependant on seeds obtained from the harvest as a principal source of seed to be used in subsequent agricultural cycles. This tradition of seed conservation underpins Andean and Amazonian biodiversity and livelihood strategies, the traditional knowledge and innovation systems customarily administered by indigenous women who have made such biodiversity and livelihood strategies possible and indigenous cultural and spiritual values that honor fertility and continuity of life. 

Their petition to ban Terminator internationally argued several points cogently. Perhaps the most important was that on the danger to the biological diversity of hundreds of varieties of plants and crops. They argued: 

Andean and Amazonian biodiversity, both domesticated and wild, is put at risk for contamination through gene flow from Terminator crops, and, as Terminator seeds would not be 100% sterile in the second generation, this risk is great. Indigenous farmers who save the seeds of contaminated varieties for replanting may find that a percentage of their seeds do not germinate, potentially translating into significant yield losses. 

Such contamination could cause farmers to lose trust in their own seed stock, turn their backs on traditional varieties, and increasingly depend on the purchase of Terminator varieties for harvest security so that they can guarantee at least one germination period. Similarly, the introduction of foreign genes into uncultivated varieties through gene flow from Terminator could irreversibly alter the wild varieties on which indigenous peoples have traditionally depended for important medicines and food. 

As a center of origin for potatoes, Peru is home to over 2,000 varieties of potatoes and is considered one of twelve megadiverse countries where 70% of the world's biodiversity resides. Biodiversity forms the basis of global food security and sovereignty for peoples and communities around the world. The spread of Terminator to indigenous agricultural systems in Peru could force indigenous farmers to abandon their traditional role as stewards of biodiversity and in doing so threaten current and future global food security. Considering that Terminator patents on potatoes have recently been claimed (Syrgenta, US Patent 6,700,039, March, 2004), the introduction of GURTs to Peru presents a high risk for irreparable contamination of this center of origin of potato7 

The Peruvian farmers also stressed that Terminator threatened traditional exchange of knowledge and invaluable experience among farmers: 

Traditional knowledge and innovation systems of Andean and Amawnian indigenous peoples are built around seed saving and seed exchange between plant breeders, particularly as evidenced by the extensive crop and seed exchanges at the popular weekly barter markets in the communities of Qachin, Choquecancha, Lares and Wakawasi in the district of Lares. 

Terminator technology would have a concrete impact on these knowledge systems by jeopardizing the availability of fertile seeds for collective exchange and breeding. As a consequence of Terminator ,the very processes of adaptive interaction between man and the climatically complex Andean and Amawnian ecosystems which has allowed for the evolution and current vitality of a highly specialized body of indigenous knowledge would be paralyzed.8 

In fact, GURTs, more popularly referred to as Terminator seeds, were also a threat to the food security of North America, Western Europe, Japan and anywhere Monsanto and its elite cartel of GMO agribusiness partners entered a market.9 What few were aware of, however, was that the proliferation of deadly Terminator seeds might have already inadvertently been released as a result of a natural disaster. 

In August 2005, two of Delta & Pine Land's greenhouses were destroyed and eleven others were damaged by a tornado. Delta & Pine Land was testing Terminator seeds in greenhouses. The company declined to inform the public whether there were Terminator tests in the houses that were destroyed or what bio-safety risks, if any, might be posed. The event showed that even seemingly secure physical containment was vulnerable. It also may have unleashed a Terminator pollution plague on the world. That would take years to determine.10 [That is just some wonderful news DC]

Selling Seeds of Destruction Everywhere 
The Terminator deal closed the circle for Monsanto to emerge as the overwhelming monopolist of agricultural seeds of nearly every variety. A year before the Delta & Pine Land bid, Monsanto had paid more than $1.4 billion for a loss-making California GMO seed giant, Seminis. Seminis, active in the patenting of GMO seeds for fruit and vegetable varieties, was the world leader in marketing vegetable and fruit plant seeds. 

Seminis boasted at the time, "if you've had a salad, you've had a Seminis product."11 At the time Monsanto took it over, the company controlled over 40% of all US vegetable seeds sold and 20% of the world market. They supplied the genetics for 55% of all lettuce on US supermarket shelves, 75% of all tomatoes and 85% of all peppers, with large shares of spinach, broccoli, cucumbers, and peas. Their seeds, primarily sold to large supermarket chains, were also widely used by conventional and organic farmers. 12 

The purchase pushed Monsanto past rival, DuPont (Pioneer Seed), to create the world's largest seed company, first in vegetables and fruits, second in agronomic crops, and the world's third largest agrochemical company. With the final acquisition of Delta & Pine Land in 2007, Monsanto was moving itself into position to hold absolute control over the majority of the planet's agricultural seeds for plants. That was not sufficient however. They were also moving into a highly controversial genetic engineering and patenting of animal seeds.

Patents on the Semen of Pigs and Bulls? 
In August 2005 researchers in Germany uncovered a European patent application by Monsanto Corporation which set off new alarm bells over the scope of the attempt by private agribusiness giants to control, patent and license the entire food supply of the planet.[this stuff is bad karma attached all over it,how anyone anywhere,ever thought this might be a good idea and condition for the planet needs to be taken to the task,bad bad juju right here,playing with the food supply,sure way to make enemies DC] 

Monsanto had filed application for patent rights internationally with the World Intellectual Property Organization on what it claimed was its development through genetic engineering of a means to identify specific genes in pigs. Of course, the genes had come from semen provided by genetically-altered Monsanto patented boars or male swine. 13 

Monsanto spokesperson, Chris Horner, claimed that the company merely wanted protection for its selective breeding processes, apparently a kind of eugenics for pigs, including the means to identify specific genes in pigs and use of a specialized insemination device. "We're talking about the process itself, Horner stated." 14 

The actual wording of the patent application refuted Horner's claims. In addition to seeking to patent pig breeding methods, Monsanto sought patent rights and hence, the right to collect license fees for "pig offspring produced by a method ... :' a "pig herd having an increased frequency of a specific ... gene ... :' a "pig population produced by the method ... :' and a "swine herd produced by a method ... " respectively. IS If accepted, these patents would grant Monsanto intellectual property rights to particular farm animals and particular herds of livestock. 

"Any pigs that would be produced using this reproductive technique would be covered by these patents:' Horner admitted in a Reuters interview. The practices Monsanto wanted to patent involved identifying genes that result in desirable traits in swine, breeding animals to achieve those traits and using a specialized device to inseminate sows deeply in a way that uses less sperm than is typically required. "We've come up with a protocol that wraps a lot of these techniques together:' said Monsanto swine molecular breeding expert Mike Lohuis. 16[professional pig f*#ker DC] 

There were several techniques being used to genetically engineer animals. One method used viruses, particularly so-called retroviruses, as "vectors" to introduce new genetic material into cells because they are naturally well equipped to infiltrate them. Retroviruses are a type of virus which replicates by integrating itself into the host DNA and is then copied with the host genetic material as the cell divides. 

A second method involves use of embryonic stem cells. To date however, despite many attempts to obtain ES cells from rats and farm animals, ES cells had only been isolated from some strains of mice. The technique allowed for more selective modification techniques with some control over the integration site. For example, modification can be targeted so that a transgene replaced the equivalent native gene or so that genes were "knocked out"-made ineffective by removal or disruption. A third technique was called "sperm mediated transfer." Genetically modified sperm was used as a vector for introducing foreign DNA into the egg. It had obvious attractions as artificial insemination of livestock and poultry was routine. These were the kinds of techniques being patented as fast as the GMO industry lawyers could file patent applications.17 

1980 US Supreme Court Ruling 
The Rockefeller Foundation's decades long nurturing of the field of molecular biology, its financing of the project for sequencing of genomes and the development of cloning, had led biotech giants such as Monsanto or Cargill to spend huge sums of money to genetically modify animals. The companies were focussed on one goal: patents and license rights to the results. This constituted a radical and highly controversial arena for the battle for patenting life. 

The door had first been opened wide to recognition of such patents by the US Supreme Court. In 1980, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, Diamond v. Chakrabarty, declared that "anything under the sun that is made by man" is patentable. The case concerned the patenting of genetically engineered bacteria that eat oil sludge. In 1987, the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a pronouncement of the patentability, in principle, of nonhuman multi-cellular organisms that were not naturally occurring. It was followed by a landmark patent on the so-called "Harvard mouse" which was engineered to be susceptible to cancer.18 

Monsanto was not alone in attempting to control entire animal genetic seed lines. In July 2006, Cargill Corporation of Minnesota, the world's largest agriculture trading company, and one of the dominating firms in beef, pork, turkey and broiler production and processing, applied for a patent, no. US 2007/0026493 AI, with the US Patent and Trademark Office. The application was titled, "Systems and Methods for Optimizing Animal Production using Genotype Information;' and the application stated its purpose was to "optimize animal production based on the animal genotype information."19 Cargill had been engaged in a joint venture with Monsanto, Renessen Feed & Processing, near Chicago, to use advanced breeding techniques and transgenics for patented sorts of feed grains, oilseeds and other crops.20 

With stealth, system, and a well-supported campaign of lies and distortions, the four major GMO agribusiness giants-Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow-were moving towards the goal once dreamed of by Henry Kissinger as ultimate control: If you control the oil, you can control nations; if you control food, you control people:' 

The relentless pursuit of global control over oil had been the hallmark of the Bush-Cheney Administration. Few realized that pursuit of Kissinger's second goal, control over food, was also well advanced and at a dangerous point for the future of the global population. Perhaps the most effective tool in the effort of the powerful and arrogant elites behind the spread of GMO agribusiness was their calculated cultivation of the dangerous myth that "science:' in the abstract, is always "progress." This naIve popular belief in the idea of scientific progress as axiom had been one of the essential tools in the process of taking control of world food as the end of the first decade of the new century neared. 




notes
Chapter 13
1. George W. Bush, President Outlines Pandemic Influenza Preparations and Response, Washington D.C, NIH, http://www.whitehouse.gov/newslreleasesI200S/ 11/200S1101-l.html, 1 November 2005. 
2. Gilead Sciences, Donald H. Rumsfeld Named Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Press Release, Foster City, CA., 3 January 1997, http://www.gilead.com/wt/sec/ pr_9331901S7/. 
3. William Winkenwerder Jr., Department of Defense Guidance for Preparation and Response to an Influenza Pandemic caused by the Bird Flu (Avian Influenza), US Department of Defense, http://www.geis.thp.osd.mil/GEIS/SurveillanceActivities/ InfluenzaIDoD_Flu_Plan_04092l.pdf., 21 September 2004. 
4. F. William Engdahl, "Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?': Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.calindex. php?context=viewArticle&code=%20EN200Sl 030&articieId=1169, 30 October 2005. 
5. Rep. Henry A Waxman, Halliburton's Iraq Contracts Now Worth over $10 Billion, Committee on Government Reform, US House of Representatives, Washington, D.C, Fact Sheet, 9 December 2004, http://www.truthout.org/ mm_0l/S.120904A-l.pdf. 
6. Leonard G. Horowitz, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional?", Sandpoint, Tetrahedron Publishing Group, Idaho, 2001, pp. 275- 288. 
7. Ibid.,p.41l. 
8. Ibid., pp. 41O-41l. 
9. Ira Wolfert, "Chickens: Cheaper by the Mission': The Reader's Digest, February 1968. 
10. WATT Poultry USA, WATT Poultry USA's Rankings, October 2006. 
11. Viva! USA, Chicken/Broiler Industry Media Briefing, http://www.vivausa.org/ campaigns/chickens/media.html,200S. 
12. United States Government Accountability Office, Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry, While Improving, Could Be Further Strengthened, Washington, D.C, January 2005, GAO-OS-96. 
13. Viva! USA, op. cit. 14. USDA, Animal Welfare Issues Compendium. A Collection of 
14 Discussion Papers, September 1997. http://warp.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/97issues.htm. Accessed on 30 September 2005. 
15. Tyson Foods, Inc., Annual Report, 2006, http://www.tyson.com/Corporate/. AVIAN FLU PANIC AND GMO CHICKENS 293 
16. GRAIN, Fowl Play: The Poultry Industry's Central Role in the Bird Flu Crisis, http://www.grain.orglgo/birdflu, February 2006. 
17. Ibid. 
18. Beyond Factory Farming Coalition, Fact Sheet: Avian Flu, http://www.beyondfactoryfarming.orgldocuments/Avian_Flu_FacCSheet.pdf. Cited in GRAIN, op. cit. See also, World Health Organization, Bird Droppings Prime Origin of Bird Flu, 17 January 2004, Geneva. 
19. Walter Sontag, "Der Fluch der Vogel", Wiener Zeitung, 5 November 2005. 
20. Details of CP Group can be found on the company's website, http:// ·WWW.cpgroup.cn. and Time Asia magazine, "The Families that Own Asia", http://www.time.com/time/ asia/ covers/SO 1 040223/ chearavanont.html. 
21. Trilateral Commission, The 2005 Trilateral Commission Membership List, New York, May 2005. 
22. Roslin Institute, Research Reviews, Practical Environmental Enrichment to Improve Poultry Welfare, pp. 55-60, http://www.roslin.ac.uklresearch/ hostResponse.php. 
23. Mark Henderson, "Scientists Aim to Beat Flu with Genetically Modified Chickens", The Times, 29 October 2005. 
24. Viragen, http://www.viragen.com/aviantransgenicbio.htm.

notes
Chapter 14
1. Monsanto Corporation, Monsanto Company to Acquire Delta and Pine Land Company for $1.5 Billion in Cash, Press Release, 15 August 2006, in http:// monsanto.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item =211. 
2. Andrew Pollack, "Monsanto Buys Delta and Pine Land, Top Supplier of Cotton Seeds in US", The New York Times, 16 August 2006. 
3. See Chapter 12, endnote 9 for details. 
4. Peter Costiglio, untitled email reply to author, 12 February 2007, and " 9 February 2007. 
5. See Chapter 12, endnote 12. 
6. Cited in Lucy Sharatt, "The Public Eye Awards 2006: Delta & Pine Land", Ban Terminator Campaign, http://www.evb.ch/cm_data/NOM -DELTAPINE.pdf. 
7. United Nations Development Program, The Convention on Biological Diversity, Fourth meeting, Granada, 23-27 January 2006, Potential Socio-economic Impacts of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (Gurts) on Indigenous and Local Communities, ii, Submissions from Indigenous and local communities, Indigenous Peoples of Cusco, Peru, http://www.biodiv.org. 
8. Ibid. 
9. F. William Engdahl, "Monsanto Buys 'Terminator' Seeds Company", Financial Sense Online, 28 August 2006, http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html. 
10. Woodrow Wilkins Jr., "D&PL Storm Losses Top $1 Million", Delta Democrat Times, 30 August 2005. 11. Matthew Dillon, "And We Have the Seeds: Monsanto Purchases World's Largest Vegetable Seed Company", The Seed Alliance, http://www.seedalliance.org/ index.php?page=SeminisMonsanto, 24 January 2005. 
12. Ibid. 
13. Carey Gillam, "Crop King Monsanto Seeks Pig-Breeding Patent Clout': Reuters, 10 August 2005. 
14. Jeff Shaw, "Monsanto Looks to Patent Pigs Breeding Methods': New Standard, 18 August 2005, http://newstandardnews.net. 
15. Ibid. 
16. Carey Gillam, op. cit. 
17. Gene Watch UK, Techniques for the Genetic Modification of Animals, http://www.genewatch.org. 304 SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION 
18. Max F. Rothschild, Patenting of Genetic Innovations in Animal Breeding and Genetics, Center for Integrated Animal Genomics, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, http://www.poultryscience.orglpba! 1952-2003/2003/20030/020Rothschild.pdf, 2003. 
19. US Patent and Trademark Office, US Patent Application Publication, Systems and Methods for Optimizing Animal Production using Genotype Information, Pub. No. US 200710026493 AI, Washington, D.C., 1 February 2007. 
20. Cargill Corporation website, http://www.cargill.com/about/organization/ renessen.htm.



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