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Monsanto, Genetic Pollution and Monopolism

285 bytes added, 22:41, 10 March 2006
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Removing any remaining doubt about the intention of biotech is this comment from Don Westfall, biotech industry consultant and vice-president of Promar International, in the Toronto Star, January 9 2001: "''The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded'' [with GMOs] ''that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender''".
In move to absolve itself from blame Monsanto [http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/us_ag/layout/stewardship/marketchoices/growerinfo.asp here] (1) says, in so many words, that it is ''the responsibility of organic farmers to figure out a way'' to keep contamination from Monsanto's GM ingredients out of their crops. This despite the fact that it is the upstart biotech genes that are the trespassers here. Besides this Monsanto has aggressively claimed patent ownership of these genes (e.g. the Schmeiser case) making the responsibility ultimately theirs. Sadly though, one envisions a gloomy future wherein natural organic crops must now and evermore be sequestered from all environmental contact. Still, says Arran Stephens, president of Nature's Path Foods, an organic producer of breads and cereals based in Delta, British Columbia, "There's no wall high enough to keep that stuff contained". Recently Genewatch UK and Greenpeace International have collaborated to create the [http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org/ GM Contamination Register]. It is a record of those contamination incidents that have occurred worldwide (at least that which has been publically documented).
To solidify its hold on world food Monsanto recently paid "about $1 billion to acquire Seminis, the world's largest producer of fruit and vegetable seeds.... The new acquisition not only makes Monsanto the largest supplier of vegetable seeds in the world, but also, according to the company's calculations, the largest seed and biotech company over all" [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50C1FFB345C0C768EDDA80894DD404482]. Though Monsanto says it will only "analyze genes in the crops to speed conventional breeding of improved varieties [and] would refrain for now from putting new genes into the crops" Hugh Grant, Monsanto's current CEO says that "In the long term, there may be opportunities in biotech".
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