Re: Monsanto submitted its petition for comm. of GE Wheat

[Allan Balliett]

Merla -

Have you listened to the lecture by Vandana Shiva at http://www.ibiblio.org/biodynamics?

It's a good introduction about how multi-nationals bring pressure to bear on a traditional food system. It also makes it clear that the multinationals exploit the gift that we the people should have never given them: immortality.

This immortality allows them to lay business plans across generations. It allow them to erode local infrasystems at such a slow pace that it is never noticed by ordinary people. It also allows them to change laws that seem so insignificant or so unrelated that their goals are never apparent until they gain their last trivial piece and BAM!, the trap is sprung and the people will need years and piles of lawyers to retrieve their inalienable rights from the maws of the corporation.

To create a market for soy oils, the corporations contrived to use economic pressure and legal pressure to make the small edible oil mills/presses that were once in every community in India all but impossible to keep open. Once they could not have their own seed pressed, people turned to store-bought oils. Once there was no recourse, the sesame and mustard oils disappeared and soy oil - - which is not truly edible - - replaced them. Listen to the tape, if you can find the time.

In out own country, we've seen similar tactics used to make small slaughterhouses non-viable. I have to drive my beef for an hour in any direction, and yet I can show you the husks of several small slaughter houses that are very close to us. Extensions plan in this area is that all cattle should be sold IN KANSAS. This means that the livestock auctions will also soon disappear.

Infrastructure stuff is good. You've laid out some good ideas, Merla. My major concern right now, however, is the contamination of traditional seed by GMOs and the possibility that plantings from seed banks, etc will also be contaminate by 'weed' GMOs. This contamination has not only happened in Canada, it has also tainte the germplasm of traditional corns in Mexico.

Hugh has mentioned letting it get worse so it can get better. Socially, this is undeniably true. But some things can be rebuilt through will and insight. Socially, that's pretty much possible. But other things, like traditional DNA, may be lost forever, if allowed to be contaminated with junk DNA.

I guess it's obvious to everyone, isn't it, that a GMO has to have dominant genes to be economically viable. that's what they are "bred" for -- dominant traits. It's not like they can easily be bred out of contaminated seed stocks.



What you say is necessary, but it is not suffecient.