Dear Sir Gustav,
In recommending the lifting of the moratorium on GM canola there are numerous phrases you use which cast doubt on your impartiality.
In The Age article of June 23 you describe a much “maligned multinational” which we assume is Monsanto because they supply 90% of worldwide GM plantings. Did you know Monsanto was convicted by US Justice Department of bribing Indonesian officials to expedite introduction of GM cotton in 2005? Monsanto was also convicted of outrageous behaviour in 2002 for secretly releasing tonnes of unauthorised toxic PCB chemicals. The judge described their behaviour as “outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, so as to be atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilised society”
In fact the sentence “The quickest way for the much maligned multinational to go broke…” you use in the Age article was written in the same month the business press reports Monsanto’s fourteen-fold profit increase in five years – at nearly one billion US dollars. (Don’t you think a profit of 25% - 33% on sales is predatory?) It’s not surprising really considering they operate like a monopoly having patents over all the GM crops they sell.
Wasn’t it Monsanto that said GM crops would feed the poor, and didn’t you endorse this view, and yet in a year of Monsanto’s super profits there has been a huge increase in the number of starving people.
Sir Gustav, you should know that GM corn and soy is a feedstock for grain-fed animals and processed food for the rich American lifestyle, not for the starving poor who could never afford to pay high grain costs and licence fees.
While you have been doing all that brilliant health research in your laboratory you couldn’t have had time to study patent law and predator behaviour. According to Monsanto’s internal memos the stimulus to pioneer GM was the patent run-out of its Roundup chemical.
By engineering Roundup tolerance into the genes of corn, cotton, soy and canola with patent protection it planned to control the world’s food supply. Using monopoly power like Bill Gates’ Microsoft, Monsanto could turn seeds into software.
Your whole article exhibits the arrogance of many of the scientific community who presume GM approval is simply a scientific matter. The conferring of monopoly power over our food supply via plant patents coupled with the refusal to label transgresses a fundamental customer right to choose what to eat.
70 - 90% of people do not want to eat GM food so our rights to refuse are denied. GM is a production driven process being forced down our throats without consent. We can choose not to buy McDonalds by simply growing our own but we cannot avoid GM canola because Monsanto, with our government’s compliance, refuses to label.
Now I know you think we anti-GM warriors are ignorant “flat earthers”, but haven’t you swallowed Monsanto’s PR hook, line and sinker?
Sir Gustav, call us old fashioned but we think of seeds as being part of the world’s commons we all share – an unbroken chain stretching back through history. Monsanto recently bought out Seminis, the world’s largest seed vegetable seed company which included a huge gene bank. They can now transfer 10,000 years of plant breeding in vegetable seeds into patented GM varieties so not just our grain crops but also our vegetables will be owned by “poor Monsanto”.
Under the old system of unpatented genes – if a neighbour’s tree fell over your fence and damaged your house you could gain restitution – but if Monsanto patented that tree as it patents food crops and it falls on your house - you have to pay Monsanto because the law now treats you as a thief. Doesn’t sound fair does it, Sir Gustav, but these are the implications of the system you endorse.
Many scientists like you think GM will be the answer to climate change; well GM is the problem, not the solution. GM food is like gas-guzzling cars in that its globalised broadacre application requires lots of fuel, electricity, fertilisers, and chemicals. Bred in the US and not adapted regionally, these global strains are all part of a globalised food system accounting for nearly 30% CO2 emissions. When Monsanto acquired Seminis they swallowed Yates bulk vegetable business forcing small companies like us to buy our vegetable seeds from Monsanto – thereby transferring our Australian plant breeding and wealth to Monsanto. Do you think it wise to transfer ownership of our seeds from public hands to a corporation convicted of corrupt and outrageous behaviour?
“Poor Monsanto” is laughing all the way to the bank. We have to swallow their food, and they have brainwashed you and Mr Brumby into swallowing their story.
Yours sincerely,
Clive Blazey