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Untitled Document
“If you eat food, you need to see The Future of Food.”
— Newstarget.com
Have you have you ever read or seen something so
powerful, so mind-boggling, so eye-opening that you had the urge to rush
out and grab total strangers off the street and insist that they read or
see it, too? To think that it should be a required topic of study in high
schools? That was my reaction the first time I saw The Future of Food, a 2004
documentary as dramatic and intriguing as any thriller flick.
It was just as compelling when I saw it again
recently at “Political Art and the Public Sphere,” a monthly
forum at the University of Illinois at Springfield in which different forms
of “political art” that raise provocative social and political
questions are showcased and discussed.
The Future of Food investigates
the genetically engineered products that have entered our food without
being tested or labeled, as well as the politics and corporate interests
that have manipulated and promoted these products’ rise.
In the most basic sense, food has been genetically
engineered for almost 12,000 years, when early peoples first planted crops
and domesticated animals. Seeds from the best-yielding or tastiest plants
were saved for the next year. Animals were bred for such things as good
milk production, egg-laying ability, and hardiness. As knowledge and
methods became more sophisticated, thousands of varieties of thousands of
plants and animals came into existence, adapted to varying climates, soils,
locations, and human needs. At one time there were more than 5,000
varieties of potatoes. In the 19th century there were more than 7,000
varieties of apples in the United States alone.
Today, it’s estimated, 97 percent of the plant
varieties that existed at the beginning of the 20th century have become
extinct. Only four varieties of potatoes are widely grown today. Virtually
all poultry raised commercially for eggs and meat comes from one breed. Why
is biodiversity important, and why is it declining?
Biodiversity is important for many reasons, not least
because it provides choice and variety. Perhaps the biggest reason for
biodiversity, however, is that it acts as a fail-safe mechanism against the
possibility that disease, climate change, or some other disaster could wipe
out a type of plant or animal. In the mid-1800s, for example, the Irish
grew only a few types of potatoes. When blight struck their potato crop,
more than a million people died of starvation. When the same blight came to
Peru, which had hundreds of types of potatoes, it had little effect.
The reasons for biodiversity’s decline are
complex, rooted in agricultural history and the increasing influence and
control of large corporations.
It started with the development of monocultures: huge
tracts of land planted with just one crop. These monocultures depleted the
soil of nutrients (a problem solved through crop rotation and the
application of nitrogen fertilizers initially developed as a means of using
excess nitrogen produced in the manufacture of nitrogen bombs during World
War II). The monocultures were also more susceptible to disease, pests, and
weeds. (The first insecticides were created as offshoots of nerve gases
used during the World War I.) It became a vicious circle. The more farmers
used chemicals, more and stronger chemicals were needed as insects, weeds,
and diseases developed resistance.
Enter the biotech industry. Monsanto developed Roundup, a
herbicide capable of killing pretty much everything green, in the
’70s, but even though it was useful for killing weeds growing in the
cracks in your sidewalk, clearly it couldn’t be sprayed on crops,
which it would kill as surely as it did the weeds.
Monsanto’s answer was to develop Roundup Ready
seed, initially done by genetically modifying soybeans and corn to be
resistant to the herbicide. Now the company that sold the herbicide also
sold the seed.
It’s quite clear — not just in the Future of Food but also in
books such as an excellent history of the biotechnology industry, Lords of the Harvest, by
Daniel Charles — that most scientists making rapid advancements in
genetic engineering were genuinely committed to ending world hunger, be it
through developing plants resistant to herbicides or adding a vital element
such as vitamin K to rice. It was corporate front offices that engendered
the sorry tale of political intrigue and corporate coercion.
It’s important to understand the role played by
U.S. patent law as well. Patent protection is guaranteed in the
Constitution. Until recently, however, patent law specifically excluded
living organisms on “moral grounds.” Since the ’30s,
hybridizers have been able to patent their work but not extend it to
subsequent generations. That changed in 1978, when a General Electric
biologist won a patent for the development of an oil-eating bacteria as a
way to control oil spills. The bacteria was never used — as it turns
out, it ate a lot of other things besides oil — but the floodgates
had opened. Now companies had the ability to own and control Earth’s
species, and the U.S. pesticide industry raced to buy seed companies.
It’s ironic that biotech companies continue to
insist that there’s no danger of contamination/cross-pollination of
genetically engineered crops yet vigorously pursue litigation against small
farmers who’ve chosen not to use them. Take, for example, the case of
Percy Schmeiser, a farmer in Saskatchewan.
Schmeiser has been farming wheat, canola, oats, and
peas on his family farm for 53 years, saving and developing his own seed.
He’d never used or purchased Roundup or Roundup Ready Seed for his
crops. In 1997, Schmeiser sprayed Roundup to kill weeds around fence posts.
He noticed that some canola plants there weren’t killed. Somehow
Monsanto heard about it, took samples from his farm without permission, and
filed a lawsuit, claiming that Schmeiser had infringed on Monsanto’s
patent and illegally obtained Roundup Ready seed. Eventually Monsanto
dropped the charge that Schmeiser had illegally obtained the seed, but the
company claimed that that didn’t matter — it was still patent
infringement. Schmeiser’s best guess about the contamination source
is that his fields abut a road on which other farmers bring their canola
seed to the elevator. Loose tarps and winds blew Roundup seed into his
fields, where they cross-pollinated with Schmeiser’s non-Roundup
crops. After a protracted legal battle that cost Schmeiser his life savings
and more than 1,000 pounds of seed he’d spent a lifetime developing,
the Canadian Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled in favor of Monsanto.
Sadly, this wasn’t an isolated case. In the United States and Canada,
Monsanto has sent more than 9,000 letters threatening litigation. Most
farmers can’t afford the legal costs and so settle out of court, but
at the time Future of Food was made more than 100 lawsuits were pending.
According to Fred Kirschmann, of the Leopold Center
for Sustainable Agriculture, farming ethics used to dictate that
responsibility for anything damaging rested with its owner. For example, if
cows got loose and destroyed a neighbor’s property, their owner was
responsible for damages. Now it’s become the victim’s
responsibility to keep contaminants and damaging elements out.
How did this come to pass? One of the main reasons is
the close, almost inbred, relationship between big biotech companies and
the U.S. government. It’s gotten much less press than that between
government and, say, Big Oil, but the list of Washington insiders with ties
to the biotech industry is broad and deep, including such people as U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (a former Monsanto attorney for
regulatory affairs), Mickey Kantor (secretary of commerce under President
Bill Clinton and a member of the Monsanto board of directors), Ann Veneman
(secretary of agriculture in the current Bush administration and board
member of Calgene, a Monsanto subsidiary), William Ruckelshaus (first head
of the EPA and a Monsanto board member), and Donald Rumsfeld (former
secretary of defense and former head of Searle, a Monsanto subsidiary).
Other lesser-knowns, such as Linda Fisher, have flipped back and forth
between government and biotech-industry positions — Fisher served as
an executive vice-president at Monsanto, then worked at the EPA for 10
years, then headed Monsanto’s Washington lobbying office before
landing in her current position as deputy administrator of the EPA.
Deregulatory sentiment in Washington led to
genetically modified foods’ being categorized as “substantially
equivalent” to conventional foodstuffs, thus keeping them from being
tested and labeled and making it impossible to track their impact on human
health and worldwide crops. The biotech industry has vigorously — and
successfully — fended off any attempts to investigate, regulate, or
monitor GMOs, leaving consumers ignorant of what or how much of them they
consume. Polls consistently show that 80 to 90 percent of U.S. consumers
want GM foods labeled.
There’s lots more in The Future of Food, including the
effect of corporate grants on independent and academic research — and
the role that government farm subsidies play in promoting bioengineered
crops. It’s estimated that U.S. taxpayers pay a $20 billion dollar
subsidy to the biotech industry each year.
Still, the film’s ending is upbeat, noting that
“there has been a revolution in genetic engineering, but there has
also been a counterrevolution.” The number of local farmers’
markets increased by 79 percent between 1994 and 2002. Organic, sustainably
raised foods (many of which proudly claim to contain no GMOs) are easier to
purchase than they have been in decades.
The Future of Food ends
simply: It’s up to you.
For more information on “Political Art and the
Public Sphere,” contact Richard Gilman-Opalsky at 217-206-8328 or
e-mail [email protected].
Send questions and comments to Julianne Glatz at
[email protected].
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