Monsanto and biopiracy

[rollhead]

I haven't been too worried about eating genetically modified food. I really didn't think it was too much of a health risk. But I was outraged when I watched a documentary over the weekend -- The Future of Food.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

It is a film that I would highly recommend everyone watch.

What is disturbing is that the big agricultural companies are using GM patents to basically claim they own all the wheat, rice and corn in the world.

Monsanto -- which seems to have provided half of the Bush administration appointees -- is a particular offender.

Monsanto Biopirates Strike Again in India
RFSTE Press Release
5th August 2003

RFSTE, Greenpeace & Bread for the World Launch Campaign against Monsanto's Biopiracy of Indian Wheat

Monsanto's patent (EP 044592981) claims to have "invented" wheat plants derived from a traditional Indian variety, and products made from the soft milling traits that the traditional Indian wheat provides.

Monsanto repeats the biopiracy pattern that was earlier attempted by RiceTec's claim to have invented Indian Basmati. Through a case filed by the RFSTE in the Indian Supreme Court, which forced the government of India to challenge the RiceTec Patent No. 5663484 in the USPTO, and a national and global movement against basmati biopiracy, we succeeded in having 99% of the RiceTec patent revoked. Earlier we had started the Neem campaign to challenge the USDA/ GRACE patent, which was revoked in EPO in May 2000. With Greenpeace, we are preparing a challenge against Monsanto's biopiracy of Indian wheat. And with farmers groups in India, Navdanya, a programme under RFSTE, is working to conserve, rejuvenate and grow native wheat varieties which were displaced and marginalized by the Green Revolution, even though in terms of nutrition per acre and productivity with respect to water, they are superior to the industrial varieties which depend on intensive inputs of chemicals and water.

[LennyH]

To be expected from the company that brings you "Bovine Growth Hormone" (which is as disgusting and foul as it gets). They were also trying to bring seeds to market that become sterile in the next generation, forcing farmers to buy all new seed every year (I think that concept got squashed for now).

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by LennyH

To be expected from the company that brings you "Bovine Growth Hormone" (which is as disgusting and foul as it gets). They were also trying to bring seeds to market that become sterile in the next generation, forcing farmers to buy all new seed every year (I think that concept got squashed for now).

That's right that concept did get squashed, however check out Monsanto's Licensing Practices

• Monsanto licenses the patents to manufacturing seed “partners”
• Sales of GM seed by seed company to farmer contingent on farmer signing Monsanto’s Technology Agreement
• In exchange for the “opportunity to purchase and plant seed containing” the patented technology, farmer must agree “to not save any crop produced from this seed for replanting.”

Result: farmer must purchase new “first-generation” GM seed for planting each season.

In my opinion: agreements to prohibit seed-saving are an unreasonable restraint of trade, since the farmer is not allowed to purchase the Monsanto technology without also agreeing to buy overpriced new seed. Monsanto ties unwanted new seed to the right to purchase the patented technology. This tying is not for the benefit only of Monsanto. Instead, its seed company licensees derive a financial windfall since farmers have to buy overpriced new seed from the seed companies each year. A farmer cannot purchase the technology unless he also agrees to purchase new seed each year.”

[claude]

There was a high profile case here in Canada where a farmer who allegedly had bio-engineered seeds blow onto his property and grow was sued for licensing fees. Seems to me Monsanto was the company involved but I could be mistaken.

[Tanager]

Originally Posted by claude

There was a high profile case here in Canada where a farmer who allegedly had bio-engineered seeds blow onto his property and grow was sued for licensing fees. Seems to me Monsanto was the company involved but I could be mistaken.

You are correct. The case was decided in favor of Monsanto, IIRC - this was for Roundup-ready soybeans, which means you can spray Roundup all over your crops w/o killing the soybeans, just the weeds. Monsanto makes both the seeds and Roundup. But, in fairness, from what I read about the case at the time, it sounded like Monsanto wasn't really as much of a villain in that one as one would want to believe.

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by claude

There was a high profile case here in Canada where a farmer who allegedly had bio-engineered seeds blow onto his property and grow was sued for licensing fees. Seems to me Monsanto was the company involved but I could be mistaken.

That was Percy Schmeiser a farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan Canada whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready Canola. Monsanto's position is that it doesn't matter whether Schmeiser knew or not that his canola field was contaminated with the Roundup Ready gene and that he must pay their Technology Fee.

Round-Up (active ingredient glyphosate) is Monsanto’s flagship weed killer (or herbicide), accounting for 67% of the company’s total sales or about $2.6 billion annually. The amount of Roundup sold has grown by around 20% each year over the past five years. Monsanto has expanded its capacity to produce Roundup nearly five-fold since 1992.

While Monsanto maintains that Roundup is safe, many others disagree, including the New York State Attorney General. Based on its investigation, the Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit arguing that the company’s advertising inaccurately portrayed Monsanto’s glyphosate-containing products as safe and as not causing any harmful effects to people or the environment. As part of an out-of-court settlement, Monsanto agreed to discontinue use of terms such as “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly” in all advertising of glyphosate-containing products in New York state and paid US$50,000 toward the state’s costs of pursuing the case.

There are a number of environmental and human health problems associated with glyphosate. For example, in studies of people (mostly farmers) exposed to glyphosate, exposure is associated with an increased risk of miscarriages, premature birth and the cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

In one case, Monsanto paid a US$225,000 fine for having mislabeled Roundup containers on 75 separate occasions. It was the largest settlement ever paid for violation of U.S. Worker Protection Standards. The labels had claimed that the restricted entry period after application of Roundup was four, rather than the actual 12

Round-Up from Monsanto, the company that brought you PCBs and Lasso herbicide, better known as Agent Orange.

[claude]

I also remember some cases of farmers suing Monsanto for contaminating their organic crops with bio-engineered seeds. I never heard what happened on those cases.

[Tanager]

Doc, several fact sheets on glyphosate, including one on the EPA's site (I know, I know, let's keep our cynicism in check), say that under almost all circumstances, glyphosate is strongly absorbed to soil and degraded by microbes. Of course, that assumes your soil has a healthy microbe population, but even still, I've read that glyphosate will adhere to sediments in water even when there is no degradation, thereby inhibiting absorption into the food chain by way of consumption. I'm by no means a fan of big agritech businesses (nor am I fan, being an avid birder, of the golf course/strip mall suburbia which leads to increased runoff and leaching of chemicals and goose shit into groundwater, not to mention the loss of habitat), but is there any chance that Monsanto's defense of Roundup as relatively safe under normal conditions has some merit?

[Douglas]

The impact of the alternative pesticide needs to be borne in mind. Look at the effects of something like atrazine, for example.

I'm not sure what difference the GM angle brings. afaik, only a handful of agobusiness companies supply the seed in any case.

[rollhead]

Percy Schmeiser was interviewed in the documentary that I saw over the weekend. He used his own seeds to plant his canola, but Montsanto sued him and won.

[Scott Dolan]

Rollie, you are such a flirt!!

[Doc Martin]

This is my “beef” with Monsanto. Being a vegetarian, I eat a lot of soy products, an excellent source of protein.

Monsanto has been producing and selling an herbicide called Round-up for several years. Normally, Round-up can only be applied prior to planting a crop, as its application during the growing season would kill the crop as well as the weeds.

Monsanto's patents are expiring, and other chemical companies will be able to market glyphosate under their own brand names. So in an effort to keep farmers buying Round-up, they've produced a genetically altered strain of soybean which is resistant to Round-up. With the new strain of soybeans, Round-up can be sprayed directly on the crops even in growing season. Weeds will die, but Round-up Ready soybeans will grow. Oh, and farmers who want to buy Round-up Ready seed from Monsanto have to buy Monsanto Round-up along with it.

More than a quarter of American soy fields were planted with the new soybeans this year. But what are some of the possible side effects of this technology? If plants carrying the resistant EPSPS gene breed with nearby weedy relatives, it is possible that the weeds would acquire this resistance gene and then themselves become resistant to Round-up.

Another mechanism by which Round-up resistant superweeds can develop, and in fact already have, is the natural evolution of weeds that are resistant to Round-up in fields where Round-up has been sprayed year after year.

The development of Round-up Ready soybeans will certainly increase the rate of use of Round-up and therefore speed up the evolution of these superweeds. If such superweeds arise, it will force farmers to use other more environmentally hazardous herbicides.

Many consumers including me would prefer not to purchase soybeans or products derived from Round-up Ready plants.

However, the FDA has decided that these Round-up Ready soybeans are so similar to regular soybeans that the two need not be segregated during processing and that products derived from Round-up Ready soybeans need not be labeled as such.

I was interested to know how they came up with this determination. My subsequent investigation uncovered something very disturbing. When Doc Alan of The New York Botanical Garden (friend, fellow hippie and vegetarian) and I carefully scrutinized the scientific methods used by the Monsanto scientists in their study, we were startled to find that the Round-up Ready soybeans had not even been sprayed with Round-up! Even if a plant is resistant to a herbicide, spraying it with that herbicide will stress the plant out, possibly changing its chemical composition.

Monsanto's study showed that the Round-up ready soybeans had the same composition as the conventional beans, but they hadn't done the appropriate experiment! Their data is meaningless with regard to commercially grown Round-up ready soybeans which would be sprayed with high levels of Round-up. Our correspondence with Monsanto confirmed that they did not spray the Round-up ready soybeans.

When asked why they didn't, given that spraying might change the composition of the beans, we received no reply for almost 4 weeks. But weknew that this is a significant issue. At worst, the sprayed Round-up Ready soybeans could produce levels of certain compounds that are detrimental when ingested and at best, the experiments do not conclusively show that sprayed, Round-up Ready soybeans, the kind that would be on the market, are in fact essentially the same as conventional soybeans.

This means that until the correct scientific experiment is done and analyzed by the FDA, Round-up Ready soybean products should be labeled or withdrawn from the market.

After we sent another e-mail to Monsanto threatening to write to the FDA and USDA. We received a reply within a few hours. And were directed to Dr. Roy Fuchs (dig that name, I just knew they had some Fuchs at Monsanto) who deals with regulatory science for Monsanto. On the phone Dr. Fuchs told Doc Alan that they had analyzed sprayed Round-up Ready soybeans but just hadn't published the data. They didn't want to "complicate" the issue at the time.

He also told Doc Alan that they would have been happy to give the data to the FDA or other regulatory bodies, if they asked for it. Why not offer it from the outset? And, why didn't the FDA notice what I noticed and ask Monsanto for the appropriate data at the time that the Round-up Ready soybeans were being assessed? Dr. Fuchs continued to tell Doc Alan that their data showed that sprayed Round-up Ready soybeans showed no differences to unsprayed soybeans. With a bit more probing we realized that they only looked at amino acid and phytoestrogen levels. They did not do the full compositional analysis that they should have done, and indeed did do originally on the unsprayed beans. So, the composition of sprayed Round-up Ready soybeans in comparison to conventional soybeans remains unknown.

Clearly, the regulation of novel, genetically engineered foods is inadequate. Agri-biotech companies are happy about this, as it means that their new products can be foisted upon unknowing consumers.

And if the Organic standards are changed to allow genetically engineered products to be labeled as Organic (which they and the government are pushing for) then the "Organic" label won't protect you either.

These are just a few reasons I don’t like Monsanto.

[rollhead]

I have 56 acres upstate, Doc. You need to bring your hippie friends up here and be organic sharecroppers for me.

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Rollie, you are such a flirt!!

Scotty, and I love it when you pick up my scented hankie when I "accidentally" drop it.

[jesus marion joseph]

Hey, if GM science can create "super weed", I'm all for it!!

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by rollhead

I have 56 acres upstate, Doc. You need to bring your hippie friends up here and be organic sharecroppers for me.

Only if we can bring Arturo S. Rodriguez with us.

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Hey, if GM science can create "super weed", I'm all for it!!

[Scott Dolan]

Goddamn pot smokin hippies..............

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Goddamn pot smokin hippies..............

You left out long haired.

[Scott Dolan]

Like there is such a thing as a short haired hippie.

Oh my.

Stick with me, Doc. I learn ya some things.

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Like there is such a thing as a short haired hippie.

Oh, but there is, Scott. Those are the ones you got to watch out for, short haired hippies in blue suits and red ties. Subversion at it’s finest.

[Scott Dolan]

Goddammitt, Doc!! That wasn't funny!

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by Doc Martin

Only if we can bring Arturo S. Rodriguez with us.

Hell, Cesar Chavez is buried on our farm -- of course Arturo can come.

[Nefertiti]

Originally Posted by rollhead

Percy Schmeiser was interviewed in the documentary that I saw over the weekend. He used his own seeds to plant his canola, but Montsanto sued him and won.

I think he won partially. Monsanto's patent wasn't annulled, but it ws decided that he had not infringed it.

This case made Germany, Austria and other countries who had to implement the EU biotechnology patents directive decide to add a provision to their law that excludes patent infringement in cases where a field is accidently polluted with genetically modified material.

[Tanager]

Doc, I'm ashamed that I didn't think of the invasive species ramifications to producing herbicide-resistant mutations.

[kenny weir]

So correct me if I'm wrong: Monsanto's line was thus - wherever the wind blows our product, the owner of the land where it lands has, whether they know it or not, "bought" said product from us? And must pay for it?

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by kenny weir

So correct me if I'm wrong: Monsanto's line was thus - wherever the wind blows our product, the owner of the land where it lands has, whether they know it or not, "bought" said product from us? And must pay for it?

Kenny, actually, I think Monsanto's line is "wherever the wind plows our product the owner of the land where it lands has "stolen" our product."

this is dated, but still interesting. I understand that Connie Rice also has a connection to Monsanto.

Monsanto's lawyer was appointed to the Supreme Court by George Bush, Sr. The deciding swing voter gave the election to George, Jr. That justice: Clarence Thomas, Esq.

SECOND
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, was president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, purchased by Monsanto.

THIRD
Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture, was on the board of directors of Calgene Pharmaceuticals, purchased by Monsanto.

FOURTH
Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health, was a supporter of Monsanto in Wisconsin. He received $50,000 from biotech firms is his election run, and used state funds to set up a $317 million biotech zone in Wisconsin.

FIFTH
Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, was the vice president of corporate strategy at Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company. Eli Lilly and Monsanto developed the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone. Lilly "owns" the European "franchise." Daniels' presence insures that the bovine growth hormone will one day be approved for use in Europe.

SIXTH
The House of Representatives Agriculture Committee Chairman, Larry Combest (R-TX), named Richard Pombo to head Agriculture's dairy, livestock, and poultry sub-committee. Pombo will have enormous power in chairing this committee. In 1994, the Dairy Committee considered a bill that would label milk and milk products containing the genetically engineered hormone. The Dairy Committee stalled the proposed bill until the 1994 elections. When the 1994 session of Congress expired, the bill died. It was never even voted upon. A subsequent investigation of Pombo revealed that he accepted money directly from Monsanto while voting on a bill that impacted Monsanto's future, and the future of biotechnology.

SEVENTH
Last, but not least. John Ashcroft, Attorney General. The one man out of 535 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate receiving the greatest amount of financial support from Monsanto. He received five times the amount of money as the congressman finishing second.

[rollhead]

This Thursday, March 2, Congress will vote on a bill to gut food safety and labeling laws. H.R. 4167, the National Uniformity for Food Act, would eliminate current state or local laws and prevent the enactment of future laws that impose stricter requirements for food safety than current federal standards. If passed, this dangerous bill would reduce food safety laws to the federal government’s “uniform” lowest common denominator, wiping out laws in at least 30 states from California to Maine. These laws empower consumers with essential information about what’s in our food—such as toxic chemicals, mercury, potential allergens, and genetically engineered ingredients. Given the sweeping implications of this bill, it is shocking that Congress held no public hearings on this issue, essentially putting the interests of big food companies ahead of the health and safety of consumers.

[rollhead]

15 February 2006

Oppose H.R. 4167 "Food Uniformity" Bill is Uniformly Bad for Consumers
Dear Representative:

Consumers Union, the non-profit, independent publisher of Consumer Reports, is writing in strong opposition to H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act". The bill is not a simple food-safety uniformity bill, as its proponents claim. Under the guise of national "uniformity," this bill would eliminate critical state laws that protect consumer health while leaving in place an inadequate federal system based on the lowest common denominator of protection.

As drafted, the bill would wipe out state food safety laws and regulations that are not "identical" to federal law - even in areas where the federal government has not acted. The bill could directly harm consumers by increasing their exposure to food-borne illnesses, undermining the authority of state food safety officers, and overturning state food labeling laws. In order to keep current laws in place, states would be required to go through a new costly, time-consuming, and burdensome regulatory appeals process, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would cost the federal government alone more than $100 million over five years. In the end, the federal government could wind up denying state requests to keep their own laws in place.

If H.R. 4167 passes, states would be undermined in their ability to enact laws to protect new threats to public health and food safety. Today, states often are leading the way in developing and implementing innovative policy solutions that can be copied into federal law. California required labels on alcohol regarding dangers to pregnant women before the federal government did so; California law goes beyond the scope of federal law, also requiring such postings in restaurants and bars, to ensure that pregnant women are informed about the dangers of consuming alcohol even when they are not handed a bottle. If H.R. 4167 passes, states would lose the ability to act in areas that the federal government has not already acted - undermining this important state role.

The bill would also handcuff the authority of state and local food safety officials to enforce current laws. These officials, who are responsible for 80 percent of the country's food safety work, regularly improve training, sanitation and labeling standards to address food borne diseases and other dangers to our food supply whether natural or man made. In 2001 alone, states took action in 45,000 separate instances to remove adulterated foods from the marketplace. H.R. 4167 could nullify the enabling legislation for most of these actions.

States also have led the way in requiring food labeling laws to inform consumers of potentially dangerous substances in food, which ensures that consumers have the information they need to make informed choices about what to eat. For example, California's Proposition 65, which H.R. 4167 would overturn, requires labels on products containing substances at levels that pose a significant risk of causing cancer or birth defects. Laws like Proposition 65 have created a market incentive to keep dangerous substances out of the nation's food supply, ultimately making us all better off.

State food safety laws also address issues of particular importance to specific states or regions. Among the many laws that would be nullified by H.R. 4167 are Arkansas and Mississippi requirements that catfish be labeled as farm-, river-, lake-, or ocean-raised and New York requirements for processing smoked fish.

H.R. 4167 is uniformly bad for consumers. We urge you to oppose this bill. Please contact me at (202) 462-6262 if you have further questions.

Sincerely,

Susanna Montezemolo
Policy Analyst