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:'9
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.
