Monsanto is the company that invented Roundup™. Roundup™ is a broad spectrum weed killer that kills anything green. Monsanto inserts a Roundup™ resistance gene into its genetically manipulated seed, so that farmers can spray the entire crop, killing all green plant life except the GM crop. Therefore, GM crops are repeatedly drenched in Roundup™. By inserting the gene enabling Roundup™ resistance in its Genetic Engineering laboratories, Monsanto effectively uses our food supply (soybeans, canola, cotton and corn) to sell more of its chemicals.
To control insects that attack cotton and corn crops, Monsanto inserts bacterial genes that genetically transform those plants into powerful insecticide factories that kill target insects and the non-target, endangered Monarch butterflies. These crops now appear to be one of the factors behind the unpredicted collapse of bee populations in North America.
Bt cotton, grown in Australia, is genetically manipulated to contain a bacterial toxin designed to prevent pest attack. The cotton and its seed are a registered pesticide. The cotton seed is then pressed for oil and used for deep frying fish and chips and at fast food outlets. Many of us are consuming GM food without our consent!
The Australian branches of Monsanto and Bayer now want our governments to approve their plan to grow herbicide resistant, genetically manipulated canola. Canola pollen, with its herbicide tolerance genes, will contaminate conventional canola crops. If it destroys all non-GM canola crops, as it has in Canada, so be it. Its plant patents are supported by aggressive law firms which have sued hundreds of farmers in North America for 'stealing' patented genetic material, even when it is a result of GM contamination. Monsanto and Bayer are using GM contamination as weapons of mass crop destruction, against conventional crop growers.
In the last 50 years, we unwittingly accepted hybrid vegetable varieties for supermarket distribution, and we lost 90% of our heirloom vegetable varieties. Heirloom varieties are openpollinated, freely exchanged and are a part of our inheritance. Genetically manipulated seeds are owned by multinationals and, if approved for sale, will give them unprecedented control over our food supply. Do you want your food supply to follow the American path led by McDonalds and Monsanto? At least with McDonalds you can choose not to buy their food. Not so with GM food as it enters the food chain unlabelled.
Some farmers are trying to overturn the state bans on GM crops. They say they want to choose to grow GM crops if they want to. However, once GM canola is grown in Australia it cannot be recalled. Neither farmers nor consumers will have a choice.
Choice means domination. "Genetic modification is only an extension of other plant breeding, in the sense that the atom bomb is an extension of other bombs." – Moyra Bremner
Do you want to eat food that generates its own pesticides and has been genetically manipulated to tolerate or produce more chemicals?
Do you want to be forced into buying these seeds from these multinationals each year?
Carol Deppe, a traditional plant breeder and now molecular biologist, said of the latest developments in GM, "I view Terminator™ technology as the genetic engineering version of poisoning wells."
Our State Governments will overturn the bans on GM crops unless you express your opinion in the strongest terms. Your inertia will destroy our food inheritance. Be involved and we can beat GM crops.