A couple of days ago I watched a 2008 documentary film
called The World According to Monsanto.
Until now, I’ve had this sort of vague understanding of what genetically
modification is and acknowledged the general sort of discomfort that people
have with the idea of genetically-modified (GM) food, but I’d not really looked
into the issue. After all, we have GM products on our supermarket shelves and
nobody’s died yet, so they must be reasonably okay, right? I mean, somebody’s surely
looked at the effect of GMOs (the “O” stands for organism, incidentally) on test animals,
haven’t they? And I sort of knew that there were issues that farmers had in
some places with having to pay extra for GM seed from seed companies, but I
didn’t cotton on (no pun—and it’s a bad pun—intended) to the whys and
wherefores and links between GMOs, health, farming, profit, food safety, and a
whole cornucopia (another bad pun) of unsavoury practices meted out by
agri-chemical companies like Monsanto.
The doco, and it’s a good one, is written and directed by
French investigative reporter/filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin and plays out like
a good detective story. It goes something like this:
Monsanto, an American Fortune
500 agri-chemical and biotech firm headquartered in St. Louis Missouri,
makes a popular herbicide (weed-killer, which means it’s designed to kill
plants in general) called Roundup, which they have been marketing to farmers
and gardeners for almost 40 years. In the 1990’s when biotechnology was all the
rage, some Clever Clogs at Monsanto got an idea. If they could alter the DNA of
common crops to make them resistant to Roundup, then farmers could spray their entire
crops with Roundup herbicide, rather than using it as a side-dressing or only
when necessary, and not worry about killing the plants they were trying to grow, and in the mean time, they'd kill all of the weeds that were competing with the crops.
This would not only be a boon to farmers, who could grow their crops more
productively and easily, but also to Monsanto, who could sell more Roundup.
What’s more, thought these Clever Clogs, if Monsanto registered a patent on the
GM seeds, then they could sell the GM seeds as well, at inflated prices, and
made a double profit. Sweet!
But could they sell the concept of GM food to consumers? And
what about the years of product testing that seemed inevitable before they
could begin marketing? Monsanto approached the US Administration, then under
the auspices of George Bush Sr., and asked for help in cutting through red
tape and bureaucracy so they could fast track their research and get the new GM seed to farmers. The world,
they pointed out, is hungry and crying for more efficient food production. And after all, genetic modification is just a
rejig of existing plant DNA, nothing like promoting a new chemical or drug, and
we know people consume DNA all the time. So what harm could there be in that?
The lobbying must have been pretty persuasive, because
shortly thereafter the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared GM and
non-GM foods “substantially equivalent,” thereby exempting Monsanto’s GM
foods from clinical trials. The first of
their new biotech seeds, Roundup Ready soybeans, came to the market in 1996, to
be followed a few years later by Roundup Ready corn, and later canola, cotton,
maize, and sugar beet.
Researchers examining the effects of GM food on test animals who noted some disturbing abnormalities quickly
found their research budgets slashed and publication of their negative findings
discouraged. Some lost their jobs. With opposing voices squelched if not completely silenced, the Monsanto
juggernaut armed itself with bags of GM seeds and barrels of Roundup and set
out to take on the world. By 2007, some 90% of the US’s soybean crop was GM,
and nearly 60% of the world’s[i] soy
production; the majority of that is used in animal feeds and for cooking oil. Likewise in 2007, 90% of US cotton was GM, and 73% of US maize[ii], the
latter modified to be resistant to both herbicides and insects. Worldwide production figures were lower but still significant. GM maize, like GM soy and
cotton seed, is used primarily for animal feed and for ingredients like corn syrup commonly found in a range of prepared foods.
In the second part of the documentary, Robin talks with
farmers in various GM-hotspots around the world to ask about the effect of
Monsanto and GM crops in their lives. In India, where farmers were encouraged
to grow GM cotton, a new blight has damaged crops and left them unable to pay
back Monsanto for the seed and unable to provide food for their families.
Farmer suicides in the area are common. In South America, skin lesions and a
general malaise among peasant farmers is attributed to the effects of Roundup that
is routinely and widely sprayed throughout rural areas, sometimes right up to
houses. In Mexico, indigenous farmers growing traditional heritage corn crops
worry about cross pollination and contamination from GM corn plants that bizarrely
seems to sprout up out of nowhere alongside rural roads and the edges of their
fields.
All in all, this is an intelligent and thought-provoking
film and well worth a watch. Click on the film title at the top of this article to watch it (its free). Food is an essential commodity for all of us. The
deliberate genetic manipulation and mutation of our basic food sources by a
multi-national company in the interest of corporate profit, apparently without
significant regard for any potential damage that might be caused to health and—in
the case of poor, rural communities dependent upon being self-sustaining—lifestyle,
is disturbing at best, and terrifying at worst.
As of December 2011, the New Zealand Ministry for the
Environment reported “To date no GM crops are grown commercially in New
Zealand,” but genetically modified foods and products containing them can be imported into New
Zealand, although they are supposed to be labelled as such. In many other
countries, including the US, no label is required, so it is easy to imagine how a box of American breakfast cereal or cookies that contain GM ingredients could slip through to New Zealand supermarket shelves. Prepared foods containing GM ingredients, such as
you might find in a cafe or restaurant, also need not be identified in New Zealand.[iii]
There is some agriculture research with GM crops going on in NZ, and several watch groups raise
occasional alarms about it. Australia has looser regulations which may impact
New Zealand. More on this in a latter post.
[Added October 2014: I've written several other posts related to the GM issue. See Why Genetically Modified Foods are Big News Right Now, Genetically Modified Animal Feeds in New Zealand, and Cows, Swedes, and Dodgy Seeds.]
[Added October 2014: I've written several other posts related to the GM issue. See Why Genetically Modified Foods are Big News Right Now, Genetically Modified Animal Feeds in New Zealand, and Cows, Swedes, and Dodgy Seeds.]
The Activist Post lists the top 10 GMO foods to avoid. Corn and soy top the list, but for the rest, check out their list: http://www.activistpost.com/2012/07/top-10-gmo-foods-to-avoid.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ActivistPost+%28Activist+Post%29&utm_content=FaceBook
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