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Leading the charge against Monsanto
By Dalton Camp

I wrote last week of India's farmers leading the last cavalry charge against the big  guns of Monsanto. Just about everyone is at war with Monsanto over its newest technological achievements involving genetically-modified crops and plants.

Those few who are on Monsanto's side include the United States and world powers such as Panama, Peru, and Canada.

In February, members of the European Parliament voted to restrict further importation of certain GM products until sufficient study had been done with respect to possible dangers to human health and the environment.

Our own government, apparently without a mind of its own, has followed the American lead which is to leave it to the free market to decide.

The exception to this was the bovine growth hormone BST, a Monsanto product that boosts milk production in cows.

The federal health department, after prolonged and bitter internal debate, followed Europe's decision and banned BST, on the grounds of its effect on the cows.

It is possible to be supportive of genetically-modified seeds and yet support the need for further research. Against the benefit of greater crop yields are the possible, considerable dangers. The Europeans are cautious, the Americans are not (it is largely their technology and to their profit); Canada supports the Americans.

Monsanto, meanwhile, is on the warpath. It is resisting any attempt by governments to require food containing GM products to be labelled as such, or milk products from cows fed with bovine growth hormone being so labelled.

But labelling is only part of the problem: Last February, European health-food importers were obliged to destory 87,000 packages of tortilla chips, imported from the U.S.A., found to contain traces of genetically-modified corn. The tainted corn was likely cross-pollinated from GM maize grown in a neighbouring field.

Monsanto is also militantly opposing those it suspects of hijacking its patents. The company is presently suing a Saskatchewan farmer for illegally growing Monsanto GM granola which a hired detective agency found among his crops. The farmer claims the seeds blew in from a nearby dump (where seed sacks are cast away) and took root in his fields. He has spent thousands thus far in legal fees; his case is due in court this autumn.

An effort by 170 nations to reach an accord regulating the commerce in genetically-engineered products foundered at this month's meeting in Colombia. The
United States, along with a host of lobbying corporations, and of course Canada, were among those seeking to undermine the initiative. They succeeded.

The Colombia protocol was intended to follow the convention on Biological Diversity, ratified by 174 nations, including Canada, at the 1992 Earth Summit meetings in Rio de Janeiro. The Americans, however, have not yet concurred. Although President Clinton signed the treaty in 1993, the Senate has delayed giving consent.

English Nature, the British government's statutory adviser on these matters, has written Prime Minister Tony Blair to offer its measured opinion:

``Our position,'' the letter reads, ``on the likely effect of herbicide tolerant crops is based on good scientific evidence, which demonstates that declines in wild plants, insects, and birds on agricultural land is partly due to the use of more efficient herbicides. More research has recently been commissioned ... but will not report until 2003 at the earliest.

``Our advice to government has been that herbicide tolerant crops and insect-resistant crops, not all GM crops, should not be released commercially until this research has been completed... It is important that English Nature be in a position to reassure the public that the technology is environmentally safe... We cannot assure the public about this currently.''

The British consumer has, at least, a friend in the court of Tony Blair. Canadians have - you won't like this - only the Canadian Senate, whose Agriculture Committee alone took on Monsanto and its bovine growth hormone, along with senior health department officials, and the minister, Allan Rock.

The government, apparently, is in mortal fear of being sued through chapter 11 of the NAFTA - every multinational corporation's best friend - and of losing face in the WTO.

Monsanto, you may recall, are the wonderful folk who brought the world Agent Orange, a defoliant as deadly to people as to weeds, a leading manufacturer of PCBs which cause cancer, and who sued farmers daring to label their produce ``BST free.''

It was the Senate of Canada that gave health department researchers the opportunity to testify to their unwillingness to approve BST and to report Monsanto's friendly offer of $1 million to $2 million to Drs. Haydon and Drennan, made by a Monsanto representative and which Drennan has said he considered as a bribe. (Monsanto has denied it.)

The Minister and senior officials sought to intimidate the witnesses and censor
their testimony, and the government has denied the Senate committee the power to
subpoena department records.

This is a Liberal government?

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