Monsanto will no longer be pursuing approval for the cultivation of new biotech crops in Europe but will instead focus on the import of existing crops. The easing of pressure is tactical, political analyst and author William Engdahl told RT.
The world’s largest seed company has been on a losing streak,
especially in India and the Philippines. At the end of last week,
Monsanto said that it was due to widespread opposition that it
dropped its bid to get more genetically modified crops onto the
European market – despite using tricks attempting to secure
necessary political backing for their success.
RT: Does the decision mean a victory for the
anti-GMO movement in Europe?
WE: In a word, no. If you look at the fine print of the
interview that the European managing director (MD) for Monsanto,
Jose Manuel Madero, gave to Reuters, what he said is that they’re
withdrawing a request for new approvals in the EU Commission here
in Europe, but at the same time they’re going to increase their
pressure to import GMO products from the US and other countries
into Europe. So this is a tactical move – it’s not a strategic
defeat or rollback by Monsanto in any way shape or…beans.
RT:What are the human and environmental risks?
WE: Well, the Mon810 is primarily being planted in Spain
right now and the agri-multinationals have dominated the
agriculture in Spain for the last 25 years, so they’ve managed to
get a foothold in that country. In most other countries there’s a
broad-based grassroots opposition to any and every sort of GMO
crop – so they just haven’t been able to do it. In France, you
have independent scientists in the universities who have come out
with studies of Mon810, showing the indications of severe side
effects that weren’t reported by Monsanto. So the popular outcry
against that in France, Germany, and other countries is such that
Monsanto’s unable to get it pushed through. So what they’re doing
is resorting to a back doorway of proliferating their GMO in
Europe by increasing the emphasis on imports of GMOs - because
there they have a loophole in the European laws of labeling. The
power feed – the animal feed that’s GMO corn and soy from
Monsanto and other companies - is not required to be labeled as
containing GMO.
RT: Monsanto though stressed that this does not
mean the firm's withdrawing its application to renew the approval
for its GM corn MON810. What does that tell us about the
company's real intentions?
WE: Well, it’s a pragmatic and tactical move by Monsanto.
After Monsanto had a closed-door meeting with the president of
the Rockefeller Foundation in 1999, it announced that it was not
going to commercialize terminator technology that would have
seeds that commit suicide after one harvest, to make sure that
farmers would have to come back to Monsanto every year. Seven
years later, they acquired the company that had the patent -
together with the US government - on terminator or GROTS
technology. But by then, the opposition had been disarmed. They
thought they’d won a victory. All the anti-GMO NGOs were either
sleeping at the switch or looking elsewhere, and there wasn’t a
peep of protest. So I suspect they’re trying to do something
similar here.
First of all, let’s take the songbook that Monsanto and other GMO
companies are using. That GMO crops are the solution to world
hunger. Fact is, there is absolutely no patent on GMO crop that
increases harvest yield. Long term studies in the US and other
countries show that after one or two slight gains in harvest
yield – if any at all - the actual yield per hectare or per acre
begins to drop. Number two [of the songbook] is that they use
less pesticides or herbicides. Well, in fact there’s weed
resistance that develops after three or four harvest years of
Monsanto roundup spraying, meaning that superweeds grow up and
need more – not less - chemicals. So you’re losing on both
counts. The thing is a marketing fraud. It’s designed to lock
farmers into long-term contracts for their seeds. Once they get
that, [farmers] can’t plant normal seeds for at least seven years
after they’ve planted GMO and sprayed heavily with roundup. The
soils become toxic. So you’re more or less enslaved in this new
kind of ‘serfdom,’ as I call it in my book.
RT: MON-810 maize is the only gene crop currently
being commercially cultivated in the EU. However, France,
Germany, and Poland have imposed national bans on it. Why are
only a few governments siding with the people's push against GM
food?
WE: I don’t think it’s supplying cheaper food at all. I
don’t think the profit motive is really the key thing in GMO.
It’s the idea of a monopoly. The model is developed by the
Rockefeller Foundation. Interesting bit of background history:
Back in the 1970s they decided to try – even going back to World
War II – with Nelson Rockefeller and Norman Borlaug, who was a
scientist at the Rockefeller University then - to develop a model
for agri-business that they had developed for oil. Namely a
globalization cartel control - a quasi-monopoly of the market for
food, and that’s the history of the last 30 years worldwide in
the food chain. I was just recently in Moscow. The Russian
supermarkets are overflowing with imported foods, whereas Russia
has some of the best unspoiled topsoil on the planet today.
Russia should be growing natural food for its own citizens and
avoiding the import bill - but the power of these agri-business
multinationals after the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years
ago was such that they managed to get a foothold. You go in, you
see Nestle on the shelf, you see Kellogg’s cornflakes – all using
GMO corn from the US and so forth. So it’s this of food
that’s really the agenda behind GMO, the patenting of
seeds.
RT:A recent poll showed that 95 per cent of EU
citizens are against GMO crops - so do they have a future in
Europe?
WE: I would sincerely hope not. I think fortunately there’s a
very strong grassroots movement in Europe. Monsanto and co. – the
four companies – have done everything imaginable, including
backing appointees to the European Food Safety Administration in
Brussels - the so-called neutral scientists that are supposed to
rule on citizens’ food safety. The majority of the members of
that board are affiliated with Monsanto-financed NGOs. They get
their research grants from Monsanto-related cut-outs and so
forth. So the tricks and manipulations that Monsanto & co.
have used to get GMO into Europe have been enormous, and they
haven’t succeeded. I think they’re tactically trying to ease up
on the opposition because it’s really growing like a groundswell.
Also in the US - for the first time in the last six months, since
the worldwide march on Monsanto in May - at least according to
the reports I get. But it’s interesting. Monsanto is really not
this European thing so much – but worldwide on a losing streak,
as I see it. They’ve lost a major court decision in India from
the patent office appeals court that denies them the right to
pursue patents on certain weather modification traits in all of
their seeds for India. They lost a similar appeal when they tried
to do it through the back door in the Philippines. In other
countries now in the EU, there’s this growing opposition – it’s
locked in. The name ‘Monsanto’ means something very bad. Most
people don’t have time to research these things as you and I do,
but they’ve locked into that message - that soundbite - and with
that in mind, anything GMO is verboten.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.