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Bad seeds (Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004 -- CropChoice news) -- Denise Caruso, AlterNet, 08/23/04: Deborah Koons Garcia, a long-time documentary filmmaker (and wife of the
Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia), spent the past three years writing, directing
and producing Food for her Mill Valley, CA-based Lily Films. The idea for
the film came after her award-winning educational series "All About Babies,"
an in-depth examination of the first two years of a child's life. She's had
a lifelong concern about how food is grown, and "I always wanted to make a
big film about agriculture that was as thorough as 'Babies,'" said Garcia. She has said that her goal in making the film was to produce a cross between
Silent Spring – Rachel Carson's historic shot-heard-'round-the-world about
the dangers of chemical pesticides – and The Battle of Algiers, the 1965
film by Gillo Pontecorvo that became a training film for the Black Panthers
as well as those who opposed the Vietnam War. And it's true, The Future of Food makes no secret of its desire to see GM
seed and food removed from the food supply. But its rendition of the science
of genetic modification (and its potential risks) is clear and accurate. And
the many startling facts that it presents about both the agriculture
industry and the U.S. government, which continues to prop it up with
taxpayer subsidies, make the film very difficult for a reasonable person to
dismiss as mere anti-GM propaganda. Fear of a Modified Planet In farming, a monoculture is the result of cultivating a single plant
variety over a large area of land. Monocultures make a single strain of
plant – one particular variety of soybean, for example, out of the hundreds
that may exist – particularly vulnerable to being wiped out by a single
pest, microbial infection or some other environmental stressor, like an
unseasonable heat wave or cold snap. In fact, according to the film, a monoculture caused the 1845 potato blight
and subsequent famine in Ireland that killed a million people. When the same
blight hit Peru, where potatoes originated and many different strains are
still grown, its effect was far less devastating. One of the hazards that has already come to pass with GM crops is that seeds
from modified, "transgenic" plants are contaminating fields planted with
traditional, non-GM crops. History provides ample evidence that this type of
contamination and other unintentional plantings of GM seed may gradually
create dangerous, invasive species-type monocultures on many of the most
fertile, diverse and productive crop lands in the world. "A single genotype that's preferential crowds out diversity, and that is a
threat to food security," says one of the scientists interviewed in the
film. "Without access to genetic resources, we will have challenges we
cannot solve." And while this is a frightening enough proposition, it becomes clear in The
Future of Food that there are other, equally insidious "monocultures"
involved in this story. The second, more figurative monoculture is developing as a result of
consolidation in the food supply chain. Today only four clusters of seed
companies provide seed to farmers around the world. In the last decade, this
consolidation has started to happen in the retail sector too. Within the
next 10 years, one expert estimates, all retail food will come from six
American firms. This level of corporate control means we'll have virtually
no choice about what's on our store shelves. As another scientist in the film says, "Whoever controls the seed, controls
the food." The third and possibly most frightening monoculture is the political one
that Garcia details. It has already contaminated most of what could pass as
public discourse, and it's co-evolved between government regulators and
industry – industry, in the case of GM food, meaning primarily the Monsanto
Company. A one-stop shop for global industrial agriculture, Monsanto has also managed
to install a revolving door between its corporate headquarters and most of
the agencies in the U.S. government that regulate its products. During the first Bush administration, for example, after Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) scientists protested the lack of regulation for GM
foods, the agency hired Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto official, to write
a new, industry-friendly FDA policy for GM food crops. Linda Fisher, a
former executive vice president at Monsanto, is now deputy administrator for
the Environmental Protection Agency. (According to the film, Fisher has
actually been back and forth between Monsanto and EPA three times.) Ann
Veneman, the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a former
Monsanto executive. So is Mickey Cantor, former Secretary of Commerce. As is
Clarence Thomas: now a Supreme Court judge, formerly a lawyer in Monsanto's
pesticide and agriculture division. One is tempted to begin this next sentence with "As a result ..." But of
course we don't know why, exactly, the U.S. EPA and FDA have determined that
GM crops and the foods produced from them should be classified under the
rubric "GRAS" – 'generally recognized as safe.' In any case, the fact
remains that these products require no labeling, no traceability, no
corporate liability and no ongoing collection of data on health effects. And the GRAS designation doesn't even touch the patent laws that allow
companies like Monsanto to prosecute farmers who end up with Monsanto plants
that they didn't sow contaminating crops on their own property. Just blowing
in from a neighboring field is good enough for the company to drive onto
thousands of farmers' properties and demand a sample of whatever is growing
in their fields. One farmer in the film, who was being sued by Monsanto,
believes the company has sent 9,000 patent infringement letters demanding
payment, and has 100 active lawsuits against farmers. "It's like a return to the feudal system," he said. Roundup of Reliable Sources While The Future of Food falls short of Garcia's goal of creating a hybrid
of Silent Spring and The Battle of Algiers, that's hardly her fault. First,
there's a shameful lack of scientific data about genetic engineering
overall: simply not enough to support or condemn GM food in the same way
that Carson condemned DDT. As one scientist says, transgenic manipulations
are "probably the largest biological experiment humanity has ever entered
into," while there's been virtually no long-term risk or safety analyses to
support their widespread deployment. As for Algiers: so far, successful
guerrilla warfare against multinational corporations has proven to be even
more difficult to sustain than war on the equally elusive target of
terrorism. That said, the film is an eloquent, compelling introduction to one of the
most complicated, critically important and criminally overlooked issues of
the day. It's a story well-told, mostly by the people who are living it –
the film's "consultants," as they're called, are for the most part involved
in blowing the whistle, or trying to, on the present situation. They include Andrew Kimbrell, the executive director of the Center for Food
Safety; Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., the former director of the Board on
Agriculture for the National Academy of Science whose extensive research
counters much of the biotech industry's hype; Rodney Nelson of Nelson Farm
Enterprises in North Dakota, who claims his livelihood and reputation were
destroyed by a Monsanto lawsuit; Ignacio Chapela, the U.C. Berkeley
professor whose graduate student discovered that the Mexican land races of
maize had been contaminated with Monsanto's Bt version – and whose
peer-reviewed results were subsequently disavowed in pages of a leading
science journal; and Arpad Puzstai, the former Rowett Research Institute
scientist who was suspended from his position after releasing preliminary
results that transgenic potatoes had stunted growth in rats. And perhaps most famously, Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian canola farmer whose
fields were invaded by Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" canola seeds which blew
off a neighbor's truck driving by his land. ("Roundup Ready" seeds have been
genetically altered to resist the popular herbicide, Roundup, so that
farmers can douse entire fields with the chemical and only the crops
survive. Monsanto sells farmer both the seed and the herbicide.) Monsanto
sued him for infringing on its patent, and the case went all the way to the
Supreme Court in Canada; Schmeiser lost. People who know the subject matter may have some quibbles with Garcia's
presentation. For example, nowhere in the film does she say that she tried
to contact Monsanto for a comment, although apparently she did and they
didn't respond. Noting this would have deflected at least the most obvious
criticism about why and how Food is an un-balanced representation of the
situation. And some of the facts of the cases she presents – in particular, the Percy
Schmeiser case – may have suffered a bit from wishful interpretation. The
Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser decision made headlines around the world
because for the first time a company won control over the higher life form –
in this case, the plant – that contained its patented gene, and not just the
gene itself. But according to an article on the decision, published in the July-August
2004 issue of the newsletter GeneWatch, "the Court was at pains to point out
that its decision was based on the facts as found at trial and that in
different factual circumstances, a different legal outcome" might have
resulted. The factual circumstances were that a year after Schmeiser's
fields were contaminated, Monsanto's tests showed that 95 to 98 percent of
his plants contained the company's patented gene. "The issue is not the perhaps adventitious arrival of Roundup Ready Canola
on Mr Schmeiser's land in 1998," it says in Paragraph 92 of the decision.
"What is at stake in this case is the sowing and cultivation [its emphasis]
which necessarily involves deliberate and careful activity on the part of
the farmer." Nowhere does Schmeiser or the film explain the conflict between the
original, accidental arrival of Monsanto's canola on his land and the
court's finding – undisputed by Schmeiser – that he'd sown and cultivated
the seeds once they were there. Analyses of the case have been based on
wildly diverging versions of what actually happened. By not acknowledging
this factor in the court's decision, the film again opens itself to
accusations of selective interpretation of the facts. But these are small as quibbles go. If The Future of Food starts making the
rounds on VHS and DVD in living rooms, as Garcia is hoping it will, it might
well start a movement that cannot be stopped in the usual fashion; that is,
by maligning researchers or suing farmers. Garcia says she often sees people
cry during the film, or they "get so freaked out about food that they stay
awake at night and end up going through all their cupboards checking
ingredients and chucking food." Such reactions might instigate a grassroots response across the U.S. much
like that which is happening in California today: Following the example of
Mendocino and Trinity counties, which have passed laws banning genetically
modified organisms, several other California counties have begun GE-free
campaigns. Vermont and Maine are considering moratoria or bans as well. The
power of such a response should not be underestimated: In response to
overwhelming negative reaction from consumers and suppliers around the
world, Monsanto has dropped its Roundup Ready wheat globally and withdrawn
its applications for food use in all countries except for the U.S. Of course, it has already been approved for human consumption here. 'The Future of Food' will be screened August 20-27 at the ArcLight Theater
in Los Angeles as part of the International Documentary Association's InFACT
Festival. VHS copies are available now; DVDs will be ready mid-September. | |
