MONSANTO: OR, HOW THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX DOES FOOD
MONSANTO: OR, BLUE BLOODED FRANKENCROPS
As an introduction, I relate this because it caused a flash of awareness in someone when I said it before: "the ideological and the material are not separate worlds. Different ideologies are connected to recommendations of different materials."
This can be seen clearly in the different interests of supply-sided corporate ideologies and their material choices.
Monsanto stands here as my hardly straw man--(1) since Monsanto controls around 90% of world GMO crops; AND (2) standing in as an example of aristocratic family money power durability in the present, since Monsanto Founder John F. Queeny (1859 --1930) named the company after his aristocratic wife, Olga Mendez Monsanto. Her Spanish father, Maurice Monsanto, was the son of Don Emmanuel Mendez de Monsanto, an aristocrat who had been knighted by both Queen Isabella II of Spain and King Frederick VII of Denmark. Her German mother, Emma Cleaves, was a daughter of a private secretary to King George IV of Hanover. These three Monsantos -- father, mother and daughter -- had abandoned Europe and had taken up residence on sugar plantations on the island of Vieques near Puerto Rico (now the infamous poisoned island the U.S. military bombs to smithereens for testing--despite it being populated with people) and on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, before moving to New York in 1878.
"A couple of historical factoids not generally known: Monsanto was heavily involved during WWII in the creation of the first nuclear bomb for the Manahttan Project via its facilities in Dayton Ohio and called the Dayton Project headed by Charlie Thomas, Director of Monsanto's Central Research Department (and later Monsanto President) [1] (http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/chapter2.shtml) [2] (http://books.nap.edu/books/0309050375/html/338.html) and it operated a nuclear facility for the federal government in Miamisburg, also in Ohio, called the Mound Project until the 80s. Also "In 1967, Monsanto entered into a joint venture with IG Farben" "It is the German chemical firm that was the financial core of the Hitler regime, and was the main supplier of Zyklon-B to the German government..." [3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben)[4] (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=3960); IG Farben was not dissolved until 2003. For a short Monsanto history see [5] (http://stlcin.missouri.org/history/peopledetail.cfm?Master_ID=1826). [Thanks to Disinfopedia for the grouped links.]
It's interesting that the
Manhattan Project comes up twice so far in the relatively short life so far of this blog. And this post on GMOs and that one at the link (on flouride) both talk about covert mass human experimentation upon mainly U.S. citizens by the U.S. military industrial complex, of which Monsanto is deeply entrenched. In the past 50 years, has anything changed? From flouride toxicity mass experimentations without peoples knowledge in water, to GMO mass experimentations without people's knowledge in food?
As they say, it's certainly a small (inbred) world at the top.
Moving away from the aristocrats and their ideological material choices for the world, on the other side, there is all the rest of us: the other 6 billion or so. The huge majority of the world's consumers and their interests that have totally rejected such corporate-and-state-government-pressured "ideological materials." [For more on this point see the
Supply Versus Demand article.]
Historically, when supply sided groups fail to get their way typically, do they re-read their brainwashing Anglo-American Economics 101 textbooks for inspiration and adapt their recommendations? To change their desires to be at the beck and call of the conscious, discriminating consumer?
Hardly. Instead, they attempt to reformulate the consumer's mindset or to remove consumer choices to force the consumer by default to consume what they are selling. That's called '
consumptive heresthetics.'
Supply-sided groups, when powerful enough, as consumers reject their products like GMOs, take to "genetic bucanneering"--to piratically seizing, contaminating, holding consumers hostage, and demoting consumer choices, so that no one has any choice in the matter of materials except the supply-sided ones people are attempting to reject. Folks, that's the real lesson of Economics 101 in real life: supply versus demand. Supply-sided interests, as scale grows larger, increasingly have entirely different material and ideological politics than the demand-sided consumer. On three hot points of contention--human health, ecological health, and economic durability and health--these groups tend to separate in their politics because of the increasing externalities that are ecologically required when supply-sided materials come to dominate the ideologies of consumption.
Considering how ideological desires are 'operationalized' into different strategies of materials is a more realistic and subtle way to discuss the issue of GMO crops. Instead of broadbrushing the technique per se, and totally lambasting GMO potentials as a technology, I suggest instead focusing on the issue at hand and critique the IDEOLOGIES of how particular ideological applications of these technologies are being promoted by certain supply-sided groups, instead of the GMO technologies themselves. It's hardly "GMOs" themselves that are the issue. It is the people behind them and their particular ideologies animating material research agendas to developing GMOs in the direction of a globally administrative patents right law for owning life, getting extortive free rent from accidental pollination of copyrighted crops even when GMO could be said to be trespassing on someone else's crops (the Percy Smelser case and others like it), owning all global staple crops, creating consumptive administration frameworks, with supply-sided biases in materials, without any consumer choices at all. And running through it all is the issue of European blue bloods, inherited wealth, and the military industrial complex.
Now, to the blog-like point at hand about the ideologies of how these technologies are being materially developed. There is some GMO news I find interesting and worth noting. A new Russian rat study shows unborn/undeveloped babies could be harmed after eating GMO tainted crops. Mortality rate for new-born rats six times higher when mother was fed on a diet of modified soya. Details below. This is hardly surprising if you read the recent book
The Whole Soy Story (2005).
We're not a rat in an experiment, are we? Or are we... [see the flash animation at the
link.]
How widespread are GMOs?
This is data from several years ago, and little has changed: three countries in the world account for around 96% of all GMO plantings: the United States, Canada, and Argentina. (The tiny portion of the rest is mostly China, which is developing its own cotton-GMOs and others to be independent of Monsanto and others. It still may be poisioning itself anyway. China already has enough trouble with air pollution and smoking: 25% of ALL mortality in China are bronchial/lung diseases, I read somewhere. Don't believe the hype that the Chinese economy is the "next best thing". They are killing themselves with externalities. They are the "last bad thing" running at hyperspeed corporate based development.)
Let's remember the predictions about 10 years ago about GMOs. What were these predictions?
“Despite projections made five years ago [around 1995] by Monsanto and the White House that most countries would soon adopt biotech farming, basically only four countries are currently cultivating gene-altered crops (US, Canada, and Argentina, with 96% of total acreage; and China with 3%). In addition, only two crops, soybeans and corn, account for a full 82% of all global acreage, while two others, cotton and canola, account for 17%.
In the year 2000, the seeds of one company, Monsanto, made up 91% of all GE crops, while, for all practical purposes only two other Gene Giants have products on the market, Syngenta (formerly called Novartis/AstraZeneca) and Aventis (now owned by Bayer).”
However:
“
While total sales of agbiotech seeds and rBGH will amount to less than $5 billion this year, global organic food sales will be five times greater or $25 billion. While only four countries are growing GE crops on any scale, farmers in 130 nations are now producing and exporting certified organic foods and crops. At the current annual 24% growth rate of the organic sector in the US, organic farming will make up over 50% of US agriculture by 2020. And of course, if current consumer and regulatory trends continue, Frankencrops will be driven off the market long before organic becomes the norm.” This information is from Ronnie Cummins of Organic Consumers Association, writing in BioDemocracy News #39, http://www.purefood.org.
What, you say? The aristocratically inclined military industrial GMO corporations tell you on the one hand that their products are safe. On the other hand, watch their actions as you pay attention to their preaching: Monsanto fails to publicize that it forces farmers growing its GMO-crops to sign contracts totally removing Monsanto's corporate culpability in the event of anything unhealthful occuring...with their...totally safe(TM)...GMO crops.
So, in the numbing corporate media airtime: 'everything normal, everything safe,
eat up!.'
And in legal cases and contract laws the reality is exactly the opposite: "We do not stand behind our GMOs. We take no responsibility for anything we unleash in the environment or your bodies."
Which do you trust? Their words or their actions? I recommend following actions as the best clue for what they know and refuse to tell the consumer.
Another article below shows 'genetic buccannering' as well: how since GMOs are forms of genetic pollution, and can naturally hijack other crops via (copyrighted) pollen grains drifting everywhere, once the world is increasingly contaminated with crops under private copyright the corporate groups will have a captive market. (Personally I don't think that anything living should be owned by someone else, it's a form of slavery. That concept is intregrated into the extended Ecological Bill of Rights that you can read about in the
Toward a Bioregional State book, or hopefully in the French Constitution very shortly (which you can read about in
Toward a Bioregional State as well)). Think of these GMO-pollen grains as a military operation of infiltration.
After all Monsanto is part of the U.S. military industrial complex: it has been on intimate aristocratic family terms with the U.S. military for 100 years, sheperding the U.S. military's nuclear warfare, biochemical warfare (remember many "herbicides" were originally developed as a military application in U.S. wars overseas by these associated companies--Agent Orange and others included; cite:
Living Downstream), and now food warfare. Let's recall that one of the last acts of Bremer in the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to force corporate GMO crops into the U.S. controlled Iraq and
destroy Iraqi local agriculture.
Before he left his position, CPA administrator Paul Bremer, “the [military dictator] leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan.” These orders effectively changed Iraqi law. A good example of this business invasion involves agriculture. The details of this part of the “market make-over” are laid out in the Grain website article called “Iraq’s new Patent Law: a declaration of war against farmers.”
“Order 81” of the 100 is entitled “Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety.” According to Grain staff writers, this order “made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law.” Plant Variety Protection (PVP)is the tool used for defining which seeds are re-useable and which are not. PVP “is an intellectual property right or a kind of patent for plant varieties which gives an exclusive monopoly right on planting material to a plant breeder who claims to have discovered or developed a new variety. So the “protection” in PVP has nothing to do with conservation, but refers to safeguarding of the commercial interests of private breeders (usually large corporations) claiming to have created the new plants.”
Dovetailing with this order is a plan to “re-educate farmers” in order to increase their production. As part of a $107 million “project” facilitated by Texas A&M, farmers will be given equipment and new high-yielding PVP protected seeds. Jeremy Smith from the Ecologist points out that, “After one year, farmers will see soaring production levels. Many will be only too willing to abandon their old ways in favor of the new technologies. Out will go traditional methods. In will come imported American seeds.” Then, based on the new patent laws, “any ‘client’ (or ‘farmer’ as they were once known) wishing to grow one of their seeds, ‘pays a licensing fee for each variety’.”
Smith explains that “Under the guise of helping Iraq back on its feet, the U.S. setting out to re-engineer the country’s traditional farming system into a U.S.-style corporate agribusiness.” In that traditional system, “97 percent of Iraqi farmers used their own saved seed or bought seed from local markets.” He continues, “Unfortunately, this vital heritage and knowledge base is now believed lost, the victim of the current campaign and the many years of conflict that preceded it.”
Of course, this project will also introduce “new chemicals—pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow.”
Cargill is another interesting 'aristocratic' corporation. It's entirely privately owned (without stock market connections, or reqirements to give public information on what it does similar to the extreme privacy of international merchant banks). From Hoovers.com, the business resource, Cargill turns up:
Company Name Location Sales ($mil) Company Type
Cargill, Incorporated Wayzata, MN, US $71,066 Private
Banks Cargill Agriculture Ltd. Lincoln, UK - Subsidiary
Cargill Meat Solutions, Inc. Wichita, KS, US $12,500 Subsidiary
Cargill Development Corp.(dba "Stellar Engineering") Warren, MI
Cargill Dry Corn Ingredients, Inc. Paris, IL
Cargill Financial Services Corporation Hopkins, MN
Cargill Investor Services, Inc (dba "Cargill") Chicago, IL
Cargill Juice North America, Inc. (dba "Cargill") Frostproof, FL
Cargill Limited (dba "Cargill Nutrena Feeds") Winnipeg, MB
Cargill Malt Co Sheboygan, WI
Cargill Marine And Terminal, Inc (dba "Cargill; Rogers Terminal & Shipping Div; Cargo Carriers Division; Greenwich Marine Division") Wayzata, MN
Cargill Meat Logistic Solutions Inc Wichita, KS
Southern Poultry Farms Inc (dba "Cargill Turkey Product") Harrisonburg, VA
Cargill is another aristocratic crony corporation in many ways, and very central to the way the U.S. is run:
"Cargill may be private, but it's highly visible. The US's largest private corporation, Cargill's diversified operations include grain, cotton, sugar, and petroleum trading; financial trading; food processing; futures brokering; and feed and fertilizer production. The company is the leading grain producer in the US, and its Excel unit is one of the top US meatpackers. Cargill's brands include Diamond Crystal (salt), Gerkens (cocoa), Honeysuckle White (poultry), and Sterling Silver (fresh meats). Descendants of the founding Cargill and MacMillan families own about 85% of Cargill."
Company Type Private
Fiscal Year-End May
2005 Sales (mil.) $71,066.0
1-Year Sales Growth 13.0%
2005 Net Income (mil.) $2,103.0
1-Year Net Income Growth 58.0%
2005 Employees 124,000
1-Year Employee Growth 22.8%
There's even a book on the Cargill/MacMillian dynasty:
"TO SAY THAT the MacMillans have achieved financial success would be understating the fact considerably. The MacMillans, with their Cargill cousins, are today the owners of the largest privately held company in the world: Cargill, Inc." *
Cargill's Top Competitors
* ADM
* Bunge Limited
* Corn Products International
*The group-hegemons ('competitors') are additionally dynastic for the planet.
I'm unsure about Corn Products International, which is described as a spin off of Bestfoods, though the other two 'competitors' are both historical dynasties. That means the global food supply can be linked very tightly back to about three or four dynasties for 200 years! Bunges (private until 2001), Cargills (private to the present), MacMillians (in Cargill, private to the present), Queeny/Monsantos (aristocratic European bluebloods, in military industrial pharmaceutial complex), and the family behind ADM (I'll add more on them later).
1. Bunge
"Even after cutting back on consumer foods, Bunge Limited (formerly Bunge International) is still sizable. The company is a leading global soybean processor, and, through subsidiary Bunge North America, is a major US food processor. It is also a leading South American fertilizer maker. To focus on soybean, grain trading, and fertilizer, Bunge sold all of its consumer food processing firms, except Bunge Alimentos (margarine and soybeans). Its joint venture with DuPont makes specialty food ingredients. The acquisition of Cereol in 2003 made Bunge the world's largest oilseed producer. Founded in 1818, Bunge was held mostly by families descended from founder Johann Bunge until it went public in 2001."
*2. ADM
By the way, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), you guessed it, is another family operated mega-corporation highly involved in the U.S. consolidated aristocratic world.
"Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) knows how to grind and squeeze a fortune out of humble plants. It is one of the world's largest processors of oilseeds, corn, and wheat. Its main offerings include soybean, peanut, and other oilseed products. From corn, it produces syrups, sweeteners, citric and lactic acids, and ethanol, among other items. ADM also produces wheat and durum flour for bakeries and pasta makers. It processes cocoa beans and has a variety of other business interests, ranging from fish farming to a regional railroad. Archer Daniels Midland has interests in food processors in Asia, Canada, Europe, South America, and the US."
* And from a review of the book about ADM, Rats in the Grain (1995):
"Archer Daniels Midland--popularly known as ADM, the "Supermarket to the World"--spends millions on ads during Sunday morning TV talk shows and on public radio to burnish its popular image. But behind the façade lies a vicious business eager to fix prices with its competitors and employ prostitutes in corporate espionage, according to James B. Lieber's muckraking account, Rats in the Grain. Lieber tells the story of why the FBI raided ADM's Illinois headquarters in 1995, as well as the events leading up to the raid and the trial that resulted. ADM was not an easy target--it's extremely well connected in Washington (an appendix listing politicians who have received financial contributions from ADM reads like a who's who of Beltway power brokers), and it was a leading recipient of federal largesse. In the end, ADM paid a criminal antitrust fine of $100 million, and two top executives were sent to prison for collaborating with competitors. But the case was messy. The FBI's informant, Mark Whitacre--once believed to be in line to succeed the company president--twice tried to commit suicide following the FBI raid, and was eventually sentenced to nine years for fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.
"But Lieber tells the story of ADM's crisis well, and with a strong anti-ADM slant. He's no master of prose style, but his writing is clear and to the point. His book simply crackles with detail--at times, it's difficult to keep up with all the characters (there's another appendix identifying them for easy reference). Throughout the text, readers will feel as if they're in the middle of a 60 Minutes exposé of dirty business practices--a sense augmented by several pages of photos taken from hidden surveillance cameras spying on backroom deals. After reading Rats in the Grain, it will be impossible to look at one of those feel-good ADM ads the same way again. --John J. Miller
"...Agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, which bills itself as "supermarket to the world," had its wholesome image tarnished in 1998 when a federal trial in Chicago found two of its top executives guilty of fixing prices with the firm's competitors; each got two years in prison. The FBI informant who put them there, Mark Whitacre, former president of ADM's bioproducts division, secretly made audio and video tapes of ADM meetings. A
ccording to Whitacre, ADM's bizarre unofficial motto was: "The competitor is our friend and the customer is our enemy." [Certainly goes with the quotes from Monsanto, below, on its 'hate the consumer' "ethic".] Thanks to Whitacre, ADM in 1996 agreed to pay a record antitrust fine of $100 million for price-fixing schemes that cost consumers much more than inflated prices for soft drinks, detergents, poultry and other products. Amazingly, Whitacre, who himself pleaded guilty in 1997 to money laundering and tax fraud, got a far more severe penalty--a nine years in prison--than the corporate crooks he exposed. In this thoroughgoing, devastating expose, Lieber (
Friendly Takeover) suggests one reason for this disparity may be that
ADM, a premier beneficiary of federal subsidies and tax loopholes, is a politically well-connected behemoth whose law firm had unbridled influence at the Justice Department. "The book's centerpiece, a labyrinthine re-creation of the 1998 trial,
includes testimony alleging that ADM used prostitutes to gather information on competitors, that it set up phony trade associations as camouflage and that it stole technology by bribing rival companies' employees. Lieber meticulously serves up a seamy stew of sex, lies and videotape, revealing corruption that taints an entire industry. Photos include stop-action shots from the FBI tapes. (Aug.)
* After all that, what occured only several years later in 2001 is merely par for the course. It seems that Monsanto attempted to "hijack" Italy. 'Genetic buccannering' as a theme here reminded me of a 2001 article below concerning the corporate raiding attempt to "contaminate Italy" with GMOs. Italy has banned all GMOs. However, once you pollute a country, it feasably would be 'open'. After all, remember "the consumer is the enemy" according to their supply-sided mindset.
Monsanto representatives on the Italian contamination of GMOs there: "It is not accidental. It is normal."
Monsanto, the military industrial complex, food as a strategic invasion, the consumer as the "enemy." Kinda puts it all in a new perspective, eh?
That reminds me of another great Monsanto quote:
"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job.''
Phil Angell,
Monsanto's Director of Corporate Communications,
New York Times 10/25/98Of course those in the know are aware that Monsanto's passing the buck to the FDA means little for two rationales:
1. Monsanto executives have been appointed to the head of the FDA.
2. the FDA relies on corporate based science, instead of doublechecking it themselves on the state level.
So Phil's quote is pretty much empty air.
Comparing the 2006 with the 2001 article, little has changed in 'genetic buccaneering 'practices during the subsequent five years.
Doesn't this sound like an Orwellian corporate version of Cold War Vietnam: "We had to destroy the consumer to save it"? "The consumer is the enemy. The competition is the friend"? This is the way the world works. Removing the consumer from the equation is just a cover for masking a very ideological and irrational choice of materials coming from all these corporations--materials that consumers, rationally (when given information) worldwide have rejected en masse.
So the ADMs and the Monsanto's of the world take to the high seas (and the high airwaves) to attack, destroy, and attempt to reformulate consumers to see it their way.
And for a prediction, the more uphill that job is for them, they more violent their corporate campaigns against consumer and market choice will be...
three articles:
1.
London Independent | January 8, 2006
By Geoffrey Lean
Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies, startling new research suggests.
The study - carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences - found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many were also severely underweight.
The research - which is being prepared for publication - is just one of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food damages human health. Italian research has found that modified soya affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon a decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study found they caused lung damage.
And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech giant Monsanto [a study they refused to publicize though knew about], which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn had smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional one.
The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation held a workshop on the safety of genetically modified foods at its Rome headquarters late last year. The workshop was addressed by scientists whose research had raised concerns about health dangers. But the
World Trade Organisation is expected next month to support a bid by the Bush administration to force European countries to accept [Monsanto's near monopoly in] GM foods.
The Russian research threatens to have an explosive effect on already hostile public opinion. Carried out by Dr Irina Ermakova at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is believed to be the first to look at the effects of GM food on the unborn.
The scientist added flour from a GM soya bean - produced by Monsanto to be resistant to its pesticide, Roundup - to the food of female rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soyaand a third group was given no soya at all.
She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya at all. [GMO as a depopulation agenda as well? Certainly, Monsanto already knew this...though refused to tell anyone. Interesting book to read
here.
"The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing" said Dr Ermakova. "They point to a risk for mothers and their babies."
Environmentalists say that - while the results are preliminary - they are potentially so serious that they must be followed up. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has asked the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.
The Monsanto soya is widely eaten by Americans. There is little of it, or any GM crop, in British foods though it is imported to feed animals farmed for meat.
Tony Coombes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, said: "The overwhelming weight of evidence from published, peer-reviewed, independently conducted scientific studies demonstrates that Roundup Ready soy can be safely consumed by rats, as well as all other animal species studied."
What the experiment found
Russian scientists added flour made from a GM soya to the diet of female rats two weeks before mating them, and continued feeding it to them during pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were give non-GM soya or none at all. Six times as many of the offspring of those fed the modified soya were severely underweight compared to those born to the rats given normal diets. Within three weeks, 55.6 per cent of the young of the mothers given the modified soya died, against 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed the conventional soya.
Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies, startling new research suggests.
The study - carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences - found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many were also severely underweight.
The research - which is being prepared for publication - is just one of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food damages human health.
[Other] Italian research has found that modified soya affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon a decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study found they caused lung damage.And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech giant Monsanto, which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn had smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional one.
The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation held a workshop on the safety of genetically modified foods at its Rome headquarters late last year. The workshop was addressed by scientists whose research had raised concerns about health dangers. But the World Trade Organisation is expected next month to support a bid by the Bush administration to force European countries to accept GM foods.
The Russian research threatens to have an explosive effect on already hostile public opinion. Carried out by Dr Irina Ermakova at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is believed to be the first to look at the effects of GM food on the unborn.
The scientist added flour from a GM soya bean - produced by Monsanto to be resistant to its pesticide, Roundup - to the food of female rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soyaand a third group was given no soya at all.
She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya at all.
"The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing" said Dr Ermakova. "They point to a risk for mothers and their babies."
Environmentalists say that - while the results are preliminary - they are potentially so serious that they must be followed up. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has asked the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.
The Monsanto soya is widely eaten by Americans. There is little of it, or any GM crop, in British foods though it is imported to feed animals farmed for meat.
Tony Coombes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, said: "The overwhelming weight of evidence from published, peer-reviewed, independently conducted scientific studies demonstrates that Roundup Ready soy can be safely consumed by rats, as well as all other animal species studied."
What the experiment found
Russian scientists added flour made from a GM soya to the diet of female rats two weeks before mating them, and continued feeding it to them during pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were give non-GM soya or none at all. Six times as many of the offspring of those fed the modified soya were severely underweight compared to those born to the rats given normal diets. Within three weeks, 55.6 per cent of the young of the mothers given the modified soya died, against 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed the conventional soya.
2.
Wednesday, 28 March, 2001, 20:22 GMT 21:22 UK
Italian police raid Monsanto GM stockpile
Monsanto headquarters in St Louis, Missouri, USA
Monsanto: "It is not accidental. It is normal"
Police in Italy have
raided a warehouse of US biotech company Monsanto and seized 112 tonnes of genetically modified maize, the use of which is illegal in that country.
Italian Health Ministry tests of the maize revealed the presence of the banned genetically engineered Monsanto strain Mon 810, an official said on Wednesday.
"It is not accidental. It is normal that we have very low levels (of genetic material). It is possible," said Jean Michel Duhamel, President of Monsanto's Italian subsidiary.
"We do not sell GM corn or soybeans in Italy," Mr Duhamel said, adding that Monsanto was conforming with current regulations. [Then what are 112 tons of GM-contamination doing there in their private Monsanto warehouse?]
Italian police have also been asked to seize some 300 tonnes of soybean seeds suspected of containing GM material which Monsanto has already distributed to retailers, according to Italian Farm Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, a member of the Greens.
Italian GM ban
The use of GM seeds in open fields is forbidden by law in Italy.
Last year Italy banned four varieties of GM maize, saying they were not "substantially equivalent" to conventional maize.
Two of the four banned GM maize varieties were developed by Monsanto -- maize Mon 809 and maize Mon 810.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1248443.stm
3.
"Monsanto lab in Crystal closes amid food protests -- NatureMark facility raised insect-resistent potatoe"
Bangor Daily News
May 3, 2000
CRYSTAL -- Worldwide protests of the use of genetically modified foods have forced the closure of the NatureMark facility in Crystal, [Maine] a transgenetic laboratory and greenhouse operation owned by Monsanto that first opened in late 1992. ...
The operation in Crystal was involved in the growing of genetically modified seed potatoes that would repel Colorado potato beetles, which eat the leaves of potato plants. ...
Each of the plants contained a gene from the microbe Bacillus thuringiensis (abbreviated as Bt), a common soil microbe that was introduced into a potato chromosome in a process known as transgenetics.
When the potato cell carrying the Bt chromosome is grown into a new plant, the entire plant is able to produce the Bt protein, which controls the Colorado potato beetle.
The beetle has to eat only a small portion of a leaf before the ingested Bt protein causes its digestive system to malfunction. The beetle then can't eat, and it dies. ..
Last November, the company [McCain] announced it would no longer buy genetically altered potatoes because of what a spokesman said was months of pressure from consumers who feared that genetic modifications to potatoes used for french fries and other processed potato products could damage the environment and human health.
That decision has spilled over into Maine, where farmers most likely won't be planting any of the modified seed this year. ...
Other companies such as Gerber and H.J. Heinz Co. have stopped using produce from genetically modified plants in their baby foods. http://www.biotech-info.net/monsanto_lab2.html
