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Monsanto and the Heirloom Seed
MONSANTO AND THE HEIRLOOM SEED
World food control is almost in place thanks to the reduction of seed diversity with genetically modified seeds being distributed by only a few transnational corporations. Genetic engineering has made proprietary control through the use of intellectual property rights possible over the seeds on which the world’s food supply depends on. To cover these costs, food prices are raised.
Monsanto is a leading corporation in agribusiness has been gradually taking over smaller heirloom seeds suppliers in addition to trademarks acquisition of a number of heirloom seeds. This started several years ago and it’s continuing. There’s significant probability that when buying seeds from a local store, one may get a genetically modified product.
Monsanto was formed in 1901, that’s more than a century ago, in the year. Throughout the ages, Monsanto has emerged and secured its reputation as a face of corporate evil. Demonstrations have been held globally by environmental activists and when Monsanto introduced Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) seeds. Monsanto modifies a plant or crop artificially, making it immune to a specific, all-purpose poison through genetic engineering. It’s expected that the modified crop stays safe with the use of pesticides while everything else is killed.
THE MONSANTO CONTROVERSY
The controversy that lies with Monsanto is not recent; the company used to be a chemical company which produced Agent Orange and its main poison, Dioxin. The company was also involved in selling DDT, dairy cow hormone rBGH, the carcinogenic Aspartame sweetener, and PCBs in the past.
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Rachel Carson’s Critics Keep On, But She Told Truth About DDT
Rachel Carson’s Critics Keep On, But She Told Truth About DDT
More than half a century after scientist Rachel Carson warned of the dangers of overusing the pesticide DDT, conservative groups continue to vilify her and blame her for a resurgence of malaria. But DDT is still used in many countries where malaria now rages.
Any time a writer mentions Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring or the subsequent U.S. ban on DDT, the loonies come out of the woodwork. They blame Carson’s book for ending the use of DDT as a mosquito-killing pesticide. And because mosquitoes transmit malaria, that supposedly makes her culpable for just about every malaria death of the past half century.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, devotes anentire website to the notion that “Rachel was wrong,” asserting that “millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm.” Likewise former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn has declared that “millions of people, particularly children under five, died because governments bought into Carson’s junk science claims about DDT.” The novelist Michael Crichton even had one of his fictional characters assert that “Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler.” He put the death toll at 50 million.
It’s worth considering the many errors in this argument both because malaria remains an epidemic problem in much of the developing world and also because groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, backed by corporate interests, have latched onto DDT as a case study for undermining all environmental regulation.
Canada 5 years behind Europe when it comes to banning neonic insecticides
‘Clear connection’ between DDT-like problems and neonics today, French researcher says
Canada’s wait and see policy on neonicotinoids, the controversial insecticide often blamed for the widespread death of bees, is “where France was five years ago,” says a researcher with the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Jean-Marc Bonmatin says Canadian jurisdictions are five years behind France and most of Europe when it comes to banning neonics, adding, “there is a clear connection between what happened with DDT and what is happening now with neonics.”
Bonmatin, who is also vice-chair of a group of European scientists formed in 2009 amid growing concern over rapid declines in insects in Europe, reviewed more than 1,000 studies on neonics and concludes that the evidence is clear.
“Neonics are very, very toxic to all invertebrates including butterflies, earthworms and aquatic invertebrates, which are at the very heart of the food chain.”
- Senate report finds neonics harmful to bees but wants more study
- Bee researchers raise warning flags about neonicotinoid use
Alarmist?
Bonmatin was in Toronto recently as a guest of the David Suzuki Foundation to help bolster Ontario’s plan to dramatically restrict neonic use for the next growing season.
French researcher Jean-Marc Bonmatin says there is growing evidence neonics pesticide use is affecting humans. (CBC)
Ontario is, to date, the only Canadian jurisdiction to consider restricting neonic use, beginning next spring with corn and soybeans.
But Ontario grain farmers say statements like Bonmatin’s are alarmist and are derived from “cherry picking anti-pesticide studies to prove their point.”
Kevin Armstrong, a farmer near Woodstock, Ont., and a director of the Grain Farmers of Ontario, says he has been planting neonic-treated seed on his farm for 10 years and he still sees plenty of earthworms, birds, fish in the stream, and bees.
The campaign against neonics, he says, is “nothing but an anti-pesticide agenda.”
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