From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subj: THE MUTANTS ARE COMING! Date: 9/15/1999 7:03:28 AM Pacific Daylight Time From: <A HREF="mailto:PLANETNEWS">PLANETNEWS</A> BCC: <A HREF="mailto:RUSSBACHER">RUSSBACHER</A> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ PLANETNEWS broadcast...part 1 of 2... http://burn.ucsd.edu/~acf/online/gmfoods.html THE MUTANTS ARE COMING! The development of the technology of Genetic Modification (G.M.) stretches back decades but most people have started to become aware of its implications during the 90's.First in the mid 90's Monsanto introduced rB.S.T. a G.M. growth hormone designed to increase milk yields in the U.S. After some controversy the E.U. decided to ban its import into Europe, a decision which is likely to be overturned by the World Trade Organisation (W.T.O.) soon. Then in 1996 shipments of soyabeans genetically modified to be resistant to Monsanto's herbicide Roundup started to arrive in this country prompting the first major signs of public disquiet. More recently the sacking of Dr Puzstai from the Rowett Institute for claiming that consuming G.M. potatoes harmed rats provoked quite a food scare frenzy in the capitalist media. Pictures of a green faced Tony Blair with bolts through his neck under the headline "The Prime Monster" probably made all but the hardest of us chuckle but the whole "Frankenstein Foods" paranoia tended to obscure the environmental and social disasters which will follow if the corporations carry out their plans to introduce G.M. on a large scale. "LET THEM EAT OIL". G.M. is only the latest stage in the the industrialisation of food production which has been going on throughout the whole post war period under the control of the petro-chemical-pharmaceutical multinationals that have come to dominate the global economy. More powerful than many nation states (in 1995 of the 100 most powerful `economies' in the world 48 were multinational corporations) they, along with the international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, W.T.O. etc) constitute the economic side of the New World Order with N.A.T.O. taking on the role of political centralisation. The process of industrialising food production which they have been imposing on us over the last few decades consists of destroying subsistence and organic farming and replacing it with a system based on *Massive inputs of petro-chemicals in the form of fuel for machinery, artificial fertilisers and biocides (herbicides and pesticides). *Production for a global market rather than for direct consumption (subsistence) or local markets. *More dependence on animal products and the intensification of animal exploitation (factory farming). *The concentration of land ownership into fewer hands. *Dependence on multinational corporations for seed. Major chemical, pharmaceutical and oil multinationals have taken over more than 120 seed companies since the 60,s. The top 5 seed producers now control 75% of the world market. Hybrid, so-called `High Yielding Varieties', have yields 20-40% lower in the second generation if replanted and are hence economically sterile'. *The replacement of mixed cropping systems suitable to local conditions with monocultures. The results of this process (sometimes known as the `Green Revolution') have been landlessness, poverty & starvation for many in the so-called `Third World' as well as massive degradation of the natural world through chemical pollution and loss of biodiversity. The high cost of chemical and mechanical inputs and expensive new seed varieties favours large farmers over small who go bankrupt, lose their land and end up either going to swell the already huge numbers of proletarians inhabiting the shanty towns and slums that surround so many `Third World' cities or become agricultural labourers on the big farms or plantations. Here they may be unlucky enough to become one of the over 40,000 `Third World' farmworkers who are killed each year as a result of over exposure to agro-chemicals which often come with instructions not in the workers mother tongue, which they may well be required to use without proper safety equipment and which could well be banned substances dumped in the `Third World' by the multinationals. (Figures from 1994 UN report, up to 1,000,000 are made ill as a result of over exposure to agro-chemicals). Despite the fact that the world produces l.5 times as much food as is needed to feed the human population starvation and famine are endemic to modern capitalism. One reason people go hungry is because they do not have access to land to grow food to feed themselves, in the mid 80's severe famines occurred in the Sahel countries of Burkina, Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Chad yet during the same period record harvests of cotton were exported to the industrial centres of the world economy. During the famine in Ethiopia the same ships which brought in 'aid for the starving' took out cash crops for the world economy. During the `Irish Potato Famine' of the 1840's while a million poor agricultural workers starved to death wheat and other agricultural products were harvested and exported throughout the period. The increasing use of animal products as well as leading to the misery, waste and pollution of factory farming is also responsible for the erosion of biodiversity and peoples livelihoods in the so-called `Third World'. For example almost all of Central America's lowland and lower montane rainforest has been cleared or severely degraded mainly in order to raise cattle for export. The crops most grown under `Green Revolution' and G.M. regimes of industrial food production are maize and soya not for human consumption but for animal feed. So small scale organic farming systems based around plants and supporting the producers directly are being destroyed in favour of chemical soaked monocultures to feed the farm animals necessary to feed the animal product heavy global food economy. The corporations claims that G.M. and industrial food production in general are necessary to `feed the world' are shown to be straightforward lies The maize/soya/animal product system they are pushing so heavily is not a rational way to produce food - an acre of cereal is estimated to produce 5 times as much protein as one devoted to meat production, an acre of legumes (beans, peas, lentils) 10 times as much and an acre of leafy vegetables 15 times as much. The damage done by the production and use of biocides and artificial fertilisers is almost unimaginable. Pesticide pollution of the natural world (air, water & soil) is one of the major reasons for the staggering loss of biodiversity (estimated at a loss of 30,000 species a year) we are witnessing as the world is slowly turned into a huge agro-chemical- industrial facility. Pesticide and artificial fertiliser pollution of the environment along with other petro-chemical forms of pollution and increased exposure to radiation are responsible for massive rates of cancer and birth abnormalities. Then there are the `accidents' which show the systems inhumanity even more clearly such as the 1984 explosion at Union Carbide's insecticide factory in Bhopal, India which left 3,000 dead and 20,000 permanently disabled. Or the less well-publicised events in Iraq in 1971-1972 when large quantities of wheat seed that had been treated with anti-fungus compounds containing mercury were `accidentally' baked into bread. 6,000 neurologically deranged people were admitted to hospital and at least 452 died. Corporate propagandists would have us believe that these are unfortunate side-effects of a beneficial technology we desperately need to `feed the world. Yet, as anyone who takes the trouble to find out the facts must be aware, the world produces more food than is necessary to feed the human population and the reasons people go hungry are landlessness, poverty, and social dislocation caused by capitalist oppression and war. Because `pests' and `weeds' can rapidly become immune to these poisons (I guess these Chief Executive types are too busy to read an `0' level account of the theory of natural selection!) the stuff doesn't even do what they say it does; pesticide use in the U.S. increased by 500% between 1950-1986 yet in 1986 estimated crop loss due to pests was 20% exactly the same as in 1950. But poisoning the earth and its inhabitants brings in big money for the multinationals, large landowners and the whole of the industrial food production system. Yet traditional forms of organic, small-scale farming using a wide variety of local crops and wild plants (so-called' weeds') have been relatively successful at supporting many communities in relative self-sufficiency for centuries. In total contrast to industrial capitalism's chemical soaked monocultures Mexico's Huastec indians have highly developed forms of forest management in which they cultivate over 300 different plants in a mixture of gardens,' fields' and forest plots. The industrial food production system is destroying the huge variety of crops that have been bred by generations of peasant farmers to suit local conditions and needs. A few decades ago Indian farmers were growing some 50,000 different varieties of rice today the majority grows just a few dozen. In Indonesia 1,500 varieties have been lost in the last 15 years. Although a plot growing rice using modern so-called `High Yielding Varieties' with massive inputs of artificial fertilisers and biocides max produce more rice for the market than a plot being cultivated by traditional organic methods the latter will be of more use to a family using it for subsistence since many other species of plant and animal can be collected from it which also have use as either food or medicine. In West Bengal up to 124 `weed' species can be collected from traditional rice fields which are of use to the farmers. The sort of knowledge contained in these traditional forms of land use will be of great use to us in creating a sustainable future on this planet, it is the sort of knowledge the corporations are destroying to trap us all in their nightmare world of wage labour, state and market. FROM `GREEN REVOLUTION' TO GENE REVOLUTION. The latest stage in this process is the use of G.M. organisms in the production of food (although, of course, food production is only one aspect of the G.M. world the corporations are preparing for us). Despite the claims of the corporations that this technology is `Green' and desperately needed to `feed the world' it will in fact continue and accelerate the degradation of the natural world and the immiseration of the human species characteristic of previous phases in the industrialisation of food production. The claim that the introduction of G.M. crops will lessen the use of agro-chemicals is a simple lie. Of the 27.8 million hectares of G.M. crops planted world wide in 1998 71% had been modified to be resistant to particular herbicides. This represents a major intensification of chemical agriculture since usually crops can't be sprayed with broad-spectrum herbicides (such as Roundup) for obvious reasons. Monsanto have applied for and received permits for a threefold increase in chemical residues on G.M. soyabeans in the U.S. and Europe from 6 parts per million (p.p.m.) to 20 p.p.m. Companies involved in this field are also planning major investment in new facilities to increase the production of biocides. Monsanto have announced plans to invest $ 500 million in new production plants for Roundup in Brazil. This is on top of $380 million on expanding production in the rest of the world. AgrEvo have increased production facilities for their herbicide glufosinate in the U.S. and Germany and expect to see sales increase by $560 million in the next 5-7 years with the introduction of glufosinate resistant G.M. crops. Like Roundup glufosinate is hailed as being ` environment friendly' but is in fact highly toxic to mammals (particularly affecting the nervous system) and, even in very low concentrations, to marine and aquatic invertebrates. This last is particularly worrying since glufosinate is water-soluble and readily leached from soil to groundwater. As for Monsanto's `environment friendly' biocide Roundup it can kill fish in concentrations as low as 10 p.p.m. stunts and kills earthworms, is toxic to many beneficial mycorrhizal fungi which help plants to take up nutrients and is the third most common cause of pesticide related illness among agricultural workers in California, symptoms include eye and skin irritation, cardiac depression and vomiting. Crops have also been genetically modified to produce their own pesticide most notably by inserting genes from a naturally occurring bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which produces a toxin which kills some insects and their larvae by destroying their digestive tracts. The substances produced by the G.M. crops are however more toxic and persist in the soil longer killing a wider range of insects and soil organisms. It is also inevitable that some of the target organisms will develop immunity and farmers will return to chemical sprays or whatever the next technical fix the corporations come up with happens to be. It is also likely that either through cross pollination or through the action of bacteria and/or viruses the Bt gene will end up in other, wild, plants with unpredictable effects on food production and ecosystems. This shows another one of the corporations justifications for G.M. technology, that it is only an extension of traditional breeding methods, to be utterly false. Human beings can alter the characteristics of plants and animals by crossing closely related individuals, we cannot cross a bacteria with a plant, a fish with a strawberry or a human with a pig yet G.M. potentially makes possible any juxtaposition of genes from anywhere in the web of life. Two biotech companies, Astra Zeneca and Novartis, have actually patented techniques to genetically modify crop plants so that they are physically dependant on the application of certain chemicals. So much for the claims that GM. will lessen the use of agro-chemicals. G.M. technology is also set to plunge countless thousands of people into poverty by using G.M. plants or tissue cultures to produce certain products which have up until now only been available from agricultural sources in the tropics. For example lauric acid is widely used in soap and cosmetics and has always been derived from coconuts. Now oilseed rape has been genetically modified to produce it and Proctor and Gamble, one of the largest buyers of lauric acid have opted for the G.M. source. This is bound to have a negative effect on the 21 million people employed in the coconut trade in the Philippines and the 10 million people in Kerala, India, who are dependant on coconuts for their livelihood. Millions of small-scale cocoa farmers in West Africa are now under threat from the development of G.M. cocoa butter substitutes. In Madagascar some 70,000 vanilla farmers face ruin because vanilla can now be produced from G.M. tissue cultures. Great isn't it? 70,000 farming families will be bankrupted and thrown off the land and instead we'll have half a dozen factories full of some horrible biotech gloop employing a couple of hundred people. And what about the farmers thrown off the land? Well, the corporations could buy up the land and employ 10% of them growing G.M. cotton or tobacco or some such crap and the rest can go and rot in some shanty town. This is what the corporations call `feeding the world'. DOWN ON THE FARM. Farmers are made more dependent on the multinationals by the fact that seed varieties (along with all forms of life) can now be patented (owned). This means that if they buy Monsanto's Roundup Ready soyabeans they have to sign a contract committing themselves to use only Monsanto's chemicals, not to save any seed for replanting (one of the basics of sustainable agriculture) and to be prepared to allow representatives of the company onto their farms for up to 3 years after the purchase to check this. In order to enforce these `Technology Use Agreements' in the U.S. Monsanto have employed the Pinkerton private detective agency (famous for their violent strike breaking activities on behalf of U.S. capital), they have `named and shamed' `guilty' farmers in local radio station adverts and even opened a `freephone hotline' for people to dob in offenders The fact that 475 farmers in the U.S. and Canada have so far been sued for breaking their `Technology Use Agreements' is probably one of the reasons they have developed `Terminator' technology a technique where genes are inserted into a plant which render its seed non-viable. From the corporations point of view a great improvement - from `economic sterility' to biological sterility. Of course the real aim of terminator technology is the untold sums of money to be made from stopping `Third World' farmers from saving and sharing their seeds and making them dependent on high tech seed from the multinationals. Nothing in the preceding paragraph should be taken to mean that we should see large capitalist farmers in the U.S. and Canada as being somehow victims of the corporations. Like large scale industrial farmers everywhere they are part of the industrial food production system of which G.M. is the latest stage - they exploit wage labour (although labour on farms is drastically reduced by the industrialisation process large scale industrial farming exploits wage labour massively in the chemical industry, machine production, transportation etc) and happily produce for the global market and act as a market for every new agro-chemical or whatever. But patented seed varieties and terminator technologymake them even more like mere functionaries of the multinationals. Great pressure will be applied to any who are unwilling to use the new technology ; already complaints of crop damage due to herbicide drift are starting to increase as farmers growing Roundup Ready G.M. crops spray and the spray drifts onto the crops of farmers growing ordinary plants. One farmer from Canada is being sued by Monsanto for growing seed without a license when what actually happened was that his oilseed rape crop had been contaminated by pollen from G.M. crops on nearby farms. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ See part 2...beginning with THE MEAT MARKET @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Nancie Belle [EMAIL PROTECTED] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ RMNEws: If you want to see part two of this, contact Nancie and get on their mailing list. They put out some very informative articles. --------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ---------------------------- GRAB THE GATOR! 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