Why is GM canola such a threat?
Genetically manipulated canola is a crop that cross-pollinates easily – 20-30% of canola flowers are visited by bees and they pick up the pollen, not just on canola but on plants in the same family, including mustards and weedy brassicas that already plague our croplands.
Seeds ripen unevenly so many seeds fall to the ground before harvesting. Now, because it is genetically manipulated to resist herbicides, canola seed and pollen will cross with weeds and contaminate conventional and organic crops.
GM canola pollen will blow all over Australia. Wild turnip, wild radish and charlock will become herbicide resistant super weeds. Tank mixes of the most dangerous chemicals will be used in attempts to remove them from our public spaces and croplands.
The Department of Agriculture in Alberta, Canada explained why the whole canola crop in Canada was contaminated in just two years. It calculates that if only 1% (not 20-30%) of flowers cross-pollinate and reach a neighbour’s non-GM canola flowers, that would produce 10,000 seeds per acre, or 4 seeds per metre, and that is just in the first year!
Remember Percy Schmeiser? The Canadian farmer who was forced to pay Monsanto $172,000 because Monsanto’s GM canola seed, appeared on his property.
He didn’t buy it, he didn’t plant it, and he didn’t sell it – and what’s even worse, it contaminated his own canola varieties. To add insult to injury the court confiscated his own seed. Percy and his wife had spent 50 years improving their own strain of seeds, just like over a billion other farmers around the world, who select to suit their own soils and their own climate. Our whole food supply, which has been built on these sort of preciously selected improvements, is now under threat.
Genetically manipulated foods are not like faulty products that can be recalled. Once a new gene, particularly in canola which is a member of the promiscuous Brassica family, leaps the fence there is no telling what the repercussions will be!
It has taken decades of lobbying to ban smoking in public places because it poses a health risk to non-smokers. If you are a farmer whose bees pick up GM pollen from a neighbour's GM crop and transfer it to your organic or non-GM canola flowers, then your crop will have GM genes that develop into seed. These seeds are actually now Monsanto's seeds due to their patent. To continue the passive smoking analogy, it is as though your lungs have caught particles patented by Monsanto, so not only do you die without compensation, but you have to pay Monsanto for the privilege!
When a neighbour's tree falls on your property you have a legal redress, this does not apply with patented life forms. In the case of Monsanto, not only does the tree destroy your house, but you have to pay for the tree as well!
Farmers who plant GM crops take away the rights of farmers who don't want GM crops, and the rights of consumers who don't want to eat it! We will all lose our choices.
GM pollen contamination will destroy the seed crops of our organic and conventional canola farmers. It will destroy all non-GM canola, that has been especially adapted to each farm and collected for replanting by those farmers. Whilst a few corporate farmers say they must have the right to choose GM crops, they don't realise that once GM canola is released it will contaminate the whole countryside. It can't be recalled.
These corporate predators have a vested interest in contaminating non-GM crops because they know reproductive isolation is impossible. GM contamination is tantamount to poisoning the water supply.
By refusing to label GM foods, and by refusing to compensate for contamination, these rogue predators (with the tacit approval of our governments) can destroy all other sources of seed.
The honey bee population in the US has collapsed, putting in jeopardy $14 billion worth of horticultural and pasture crops (lucerne and rye). The flowers of apples, soft fruits, kiwis, almonds and many more, won’t set fruit without bees as pollinators. If there is no pollinator there is no fruit.
Bees are dying away from the hives, and it
is feared that pesticides which haven’t been
banned, as they have in Europe, could be the
cause. Pollination/fruiting is lowest near GM
crops, whilst organic fields, where GM is
banned, are unaffected.
Forty percent of the cornfields in the US are planted with insect resistant GM crops, which German Scientist Hans Hinrich Kaatz believes could be the cause of the Colony Collapse Disorder.
Genetically manipulated Bt corn has a gene from Bacillis thuringiensis inserted in its genome, making the corn toxic to caterpillars. It also means that the corn is classified as a pesticide!
The pollen from this corn is thought to damage the surface of a bee's intestines, making them vulnerable to parasites.
Rachel Carson sounded the warning about the complex interrelationships between pesticides and animals 50 years ago. Genetically manipulatd crops have been rushed onto the market without the scrutiny of long term effects. We may be witnessing a similar biological disaster.
Albert Einstein said “If the bees disappeared off the surface of the globe men would only have four years of life left, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
Genetically manipulated corn with a bacterial toxin is not planted in Australia, but Bt cotton is.
If you don’t want GM crops planted in Australia, it’s vital that you express your view.
“Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honey bee to pollinate that food." - Zac Browning, American Beekeeping Federation